Trading suggestion to prevent resale of items and abuse of alt accounts

[Ferliando]

A bit confused here. So in short, you didn't like middleman because they earn more than you should be, so you propose that.. *sorry* "horrible" suggestion?

 

I dunno, I don't really like them too much either, but I can see how they help other people to earn something others cannot/hard to earn. How they can help others? Well I guess you and the middleman(s) could have different channels/chat server right? Also, I guess you WILL NEVER know what each of every tennos need in each seconds, so why you must dislike middleman that much? Besides, who knows some of the things you got there came from middleman, if you knew which item came from middleman, would you return the thingy, demand a refund, and ask the real seller? Well at least for me, it IS such a hassle 🤣

[LeMoog]

1 hour ago, Ascarith said:

Some people do not have time (or patience, or resources, or knowledge, or connections) to find the right buyer/seller. The broker adds value by making possible transactions that would otherwise never occur, and the commission a broker makes compensates them for the time and effort of cultivating the right resources, knowledge and/or connections to make sure that transaction goes through. 

If there were less resellers and their agents then perhaps finding the right buyer/seller would be less of a problem, if you look in the earlier threads there was a poster here complaining of exactly this, along with the fact that there is only one actual market means that if buyer and seller are online and looking then they are IMHO more likely to find each other than as things stand now. the "broker" you refer to has a purpose in the real world where there are many markets but since there is only one then I would  say what benefit a RL broker affords is absent in warframe.

[LeMoog]

2 hours ago, ArcaneTitan said:

Just want to add my two cents even though I'm sure these things have been said already.

There are going to be some bad eggs that take advantage of people. That shouldn't ruin it for everyone though. 

I saw you make a point about inexperienced players being taken advantage of, but I would argue that it is part of the experience. You gotta have a few experiences like that to learn. I remember my first sale was a soon-to-be vaulted item and the buyer told me after he bought that it would be worth more later. It's not the buyers fault if you don't do your research. It's been two years since then and I still occasionally make some bad deals. You gotta be cautious, aware, and learn from your experiences. 

The people who really like the game are (generally) the kind of players that are going to engage with the game outside of it. It's near impossible to play/learn the game without doing so and that includes the trading economy. 

Your suggestion would break the trading economy just to punish a miniscule percentage of players.

I understand your point and agree I too went through the exact same situation the result was that I had to assume everyone was out to cheat me, that is the reality of my trade beginnings and it can only be called toxic.

Now imagine if instead your first attempts at trade were met with honesty and a fair price, would you not agree that it would make for friendlier and more enjoyable trading and play, would you not also follow suit.

I know "be nice to each other" is a cliche but most people do not play games to feel bad or cheated and that is what is happening every time a player realises they have been burned. The cost of abusing your peers is that they will abuse others, if you show respect then it is returned and if you rip people off they will do the same, so when the mod complains of DE being ripped off by people buying plat and then taking the money back then you have to wonder if perhaps the villain is just doing exactly what they learned ingame.

I understand that there are cultures that value this toxic behaviour but from what I have seen their members cannot wait to escape to somewhere more like what I am trying to promote.

 

In summary toxic behaviour is not a good thing and if allowed to grow unchecked then the result is everyone trying to cheat everyone else in and out of the game.

Edited June 24, 2019 by LeMoog

[LeMoog]

2 hours ago, Ferliando said:

A bit confused here. So in short, you didn't like middleman because they earn more than you should be, so you propose that.. *sorry* "horrible" suggestion?

 

I dunno, I don't really like them too much either, but I can see how they help other people to earn something others cannot/hard to earn. How they can help others? Well I guess you and the middleman(s) could have different channels/chat server right? Also, I guess you WILL NEVER know what each of every tennos need in each seconds, so why you must dislike middleman that much? Besides, who knows some of the things you got there came from middleman, if you knew which item came from middleman, would you return the thingy, demand a refund, and ask the real seller? Well at least for me, it IS such a hassle 🤣

I have no problems with players earning plat from selling what they have earned but to taking advantage of other players lack of knowledge is toxic and I would suggest spills over into other areas of the game.

I do have a problem when they are allowed to buy up all of an item in demand and then raise the price even though I am more likely to get my own item, I also have a problem with the trade thread being flooded by them and their agents so honest traders are rolled off the screen.

I have yet to hear of anything they do that is a actually a benefit to anyone but themselves, I do hear a lot of the BS mystique about how they are smart and sophisticated and an asset but the fact remains that without people to cheat they would be out of business and in reality cheating people doesn't actually require much brain as most people are trusting until they get burned.

I would be quite happy if as you suggest the middlemen had their own thread (call it B ark) and the could live off each other but OFC that will never happen as they rely upon duping others to obtain what they hope to sell.

 

as to working out if I ever bought from a reseller, I would not, a deal once made is honoured again not something I have seen from every player and I do not need to guess why.

If you do not like the method I propose then come up with another that removes the toxic element from the game and makes trading a lasting pleasure for everyone and I will support it. Get rid of trade being screw them before they screw you and I will be happy along with everyone else who doesn't have to wade through the mire to use trade.

Edited June 24, 2019 by LeMoog

[LeMoog]

7 minutes ago, LeMoog said:

I have no problems with players earning plat from selling what they have earned but to taking advantage of other players lack of knowledge is toxic and I would suggest spills over into other areas of the game.

I do have a problem when they are allowed to buy up all of an item in demand and then raise the price even though I am more likely to get my own item, I also have a problem with the trade thread being flooded by them and their agents so honest traders are rolled off the screen.

I have yet to hear of anything they do that is a actually a benefit to anyone but themselves, I do hear a lot of the BS mystique about how they are smart and sophisticated and an asset but the fact remains that without people to cheat they would be out of business and in reality cheating people doesn't actually require much brain as most people are trusting until they get burned.

I would be quite happy if as you suggest the middlemen had their own thread (call it B ark) and the could live off each other but OFC that will never happen as they rely upon duping others to obtain what they hope to sell. I would be quite happy with a steam like trade where all prices are visible to everyone and you can trade offline then players can see for themselves what price range is selling but whilst it has been asked for many times over the years it never happened 

 

[Dovahzeymah]

Fellow occasional wallet opener here. 

This just seems like a surefire way to skyrocket the prices of items to me, while it may not seriously reduce the amount of items being sold it will still reduce them, the experiaced players holding the rarer parts will be sitting pretty while the new players you are so chivalrousy trying to protect will be scammed far harder than they presumably are now. Also no one forced them to sell the item before checking the price with a simple Google search.

There is a mutual agreement to a trade and if both parties accept it is their responsibility to make sure that the trade is to their liking, hence them accepting. To add to this I've had one or two moments where the guy that I sold to started selling the item I traded for more Plat, and I don't mind, he/she just showed me the correct price, I still have the amount of plat that I agreed to and sold the item for, I was given a valuable life lesson on trade and I like to think I'm better off for it. 

Tldr: This system seems like it will jack prices up due to certain item rarity as they will be fewer in number. when I see an item I sold being resold I make a note of its price and take it as a life lesson, also remember to check the price next time(Google or clan mates) and remember that, after all, no one forced me to choose that price and accept the trade, was all me! 

Edited June 24, 2019 by Dovahzeymah

[krc473]

8 hours ago, LeMoog said:

I do not  mind if the changes to trade are across the board, if you think it will help without problems then fine, I welcome improvements

It would make your system more consistent. I really wouldn’t make the community like it more. In the scheme of things, prime parts and mods are fairly cheap. Restricting their resale is not the end of the world. But spending 1k plus platinum on something you discover you don’t like is a lot. In this instance it is very good that we can resell them. I have certainly spent a couple hundred plat on rivens before because I like the weapon(s). Only to get bored of said weapons and sell the riven. I am sure others might have a similar problem sometimes.

• Restrict prime parts, but not expensive rivens/Arcanes. There will be enough complaints about locking prime parts, let alone the rest.

8 hours ago, LeMoog said:

As to the classic Whimpie "I will gladly paid you next Tuesday", whilst it is possible that a small players may be willing to part with their items on a promise most people are aware that "my word is my bond" is long gone, sadly.

You should have a look into Console’s issue with this. They get item discount coupons instead of platinum. So people offer their coupons for platinum (I.e. I have 75% off, give me 100 plat for Nezha). People are fairly happy to pay first, then “receive” the item in a gift. The comments on this are grossly skewed though, you only get complaints.

8 hours ago, LeMoog said:

I disagree with your assessment of the proposed change's benefit, there is a problem and most of the posts here have IMHO  attempted to prevent anyone addressing it.

The reason I do not think your system is viable is that it is a ‘blanket ban’. From what I understand: your issue is not someone making 10 - 20 platinum on something they purchased to resell. It is people using (abusing) DE’s leniency on Alt accounts to beg for and resell prime parts for large profits. Now, I don’t have any problems with people doing that. But for the sake of this discussion: I feel that a system more tailored to punish/prevent people with alt accounts that do this is a much better option.

[ZeroX4]

9 hours ago, LeMoog said:

If DE chose to implement fixed pricing then fine as it would also act to stop alts for resellers as well but I do not see it being any more popular since so many have posted here how they should be free to abuse ignorant players,perhaps the feeling of superiority is the only reason they run the game.

so in other words ur problem is not with alts but with other players taxing players with less time to play?

well sry to break it to u but thats pretty much how free market works
and in same way players who have more time to play have higher levels in any game

and believe it or not i see it stupid that someone can buy 10 arcane grace for 100p each = 1 000p and then sell it as 1 arcane rank3 for 1 500p later
but its not like they abuse system
because u see someone need to invest their time and plat to do so and then waste more of it try to sell it for higher price

same principal as with clans and multiplier for resources
u care to have higher rank clan? now u need 3x resources for everything u care to build
which is also stupid but well this is how it works

[Golineth]

8 hours ago, LeMoog said:

then you misunderstand, trade continues as before abusive trading is curtained

I do not misunderstand. Your definition of 'abusive' includes the very common practice of buying something from someone and then selling it to someone else. Trade could not continue as before if your idea was to be implemented.

[(XBOX)Shodian]

When you trade somebody something, it then becomes theirs to do as they please. You can't, and shouldn't, control what they do with said item.

[Atsia]

What "fair price" are you expecting to get, when you suggestion is gonna cause prices for everything to skyrocket? Newer players are gonna screwed over even worse than they could be now.

[Hallelion]

13 hours ago, LeMoog said:

well thought out but sadly equally likely to be rejected by the abusers as I wasn't kidding about the drive to rip people off however something needs to be done and I would not oppose any action towards that goal

I couldn't care less, my post is gonna be buried anyway.

One piece of advice I could give is to listen for other perspectives, no matter how far they are from your views. It helps you ground yourself and find more level-headed solutions. Not everyone who disagrees with you are "abusers", or "middlemen", or "looking for someone to rip off". 

Going back on-topic: A blanket action to address the few is not good because it doesn't fix the problem, only imposing a will that not everyone may agree to submit to (unless it's DE's will, which is the Law for this is their game). This is why the suggestions I offered revolve around "time-gating traded items". We need not peer into how people trade, only to do the right thing (which is to report scams and other behavior when it happens, with evidence), and hopefully, deterring their actions, even if it's just a week or so.

[Ascarith]

9 hours ago, LeMoog said:

If there were less resellers and their agents then perhaps finding the right buyer/seller would be less of a problem, if you look in the earlier threads there was a poster here complaining of exactly this, along with the fact that there is only one actual market means that if buyer and seller are online and looking then they are IMHO more likely to find each other than as things stand now. the "broker" you refer to has a purpose in the real world where there are many markets but since there is only one then I would  say what benefit a RL broker affords is absent in warframe.

I'm not sure I follow your logic.

If a buyer and seller are both online (and both in the same region's trade chat), then statistically they are more likely to see each others' messages if there are less participants in trade chat overall (because there will likely be fewer messages overall, which increases the time that a specific message is visible on screen). But less buyers/sellers in the market overall also decrease the likelihood of the base assumption (buyer/seller both online, both in same region, both in trade chat) happening. Since the buyer and seller still have to agree on price, now you're talking about an even narrower subset. 

I would agree that a "WF broker" probably has less value than a "RL broker," but I wouldn't say the value is absent. There's still plenty of space for resellers/brokers to add value in WF, because people will not always be online at the same time, in the same region, in trade chat, looking to buy/sell at the same price point. 

[DeadVoid118]

20 hours ago, LeMoog said:

I am not sure that creating monopolies and profitting off other's backs is in line with the image of the tenno more like corpus, perhaps you should petition DE to let you play as that faction?

This logic is mind-boggling. How game mechanics work has nothing to do with the ideals of the faction you play. Gameplay over aesthetics. It'd be nice if the two meshed well, but they certainly don't need to and putting aesthetics or themes over gameplay is the antithesis of games. Additionally, people selling high and buying low is how economies work. It has nothing to do with monopolies because it's what every trader does. However, the buying low isn't always in pure monetary value and is instead sometimes in time and effort. The best trades are ones where both people come out of it feeling like they profited (and never losing that feeling). This is how I trade. I sell low because I don't want to shop around for a buyer, which means most of my buyers are generally other traders who will be selling my stuff for higher prices later, but sometimes lucky individuals who actually need/want to use what I'm selling. I'm benefiting because I get rid of my junk quick, and they're benefiting because they can make a profit.

If your idea was put into practice, prices would immediately go up. I can no longer afford to sell low, because the amount of time it would take for me to find a buyer inconveniences me more than the plat is worth at the current price, so I raise my prices. Everyone that traded with me suddenly has to obtain what they want to sell through gameplay rather than buying low and selling high. Selling high and buying low is, however, more efficient. Those who dislike farming suddenly have to farm to get plat, which means they now have to do something they don't enjoy. They consider their efforts to be more costly than the previous efforts of simply buying off others, meaning they raise the price to make the effort worthwhile.

Furthermore, prices go up for another reason. The basic principle behind a lot of economics. Supply and demand. You have decreased supply severely. Any item traded once is now permanently out of the economy. If I trade ten ayatans, they're now all non-existent in terms of the larger economy. The best someone can do with them is make something look nice or turn them into endo for mods. Any items you trade in a day can literally never be traded again. That's a lot of 'wealth' destroyed.

So, supply has gone way down and demand has remained the same. Those who acquire things have raised their prices in order to make things more worthwhile. This devalues platinum. More platinum is required to trade with other players than previously. This means the amount of platinum I get for X money is now worth less. This means less people will buy platinum because it's simply 'not worth it'. Less platinum gets traded around because less people buy platinum to put into the system. Platinum becomes rarer, meaning people now have two options. Buy platinum, or wait for a trade. F2P players get shafted, and now horde platinum they acquire through trading to purchase things they can't properly farm, like slots. Even less platinum is now traded. On and on it goes. This is called a recession.

10 hours ago, LeMoog said:

If there were less resellers and their agents then perhaps finding the right buyer/seller would be less of a problem, if you look in the earlier threads there was a poster here complaining of exactly this, along with the fact that there is only one actual market means that if buyer and seller are online and looking then they are IMHO more likely to find each other than as things stand now. the "broker" you refer to has a purpose in the real world where there are many markets but since there is only one then I would  say what benefit a RL broker affords is absent in warframe.

Resellers make finding the right buyer easier. See my above paragraphs. I find a buyer for convenience, they find a buyer for profit; we all come out feeling better for it. Sure, more people would buy a thing if the price was lower. This, however, is opposite for sellers. The higher the price, the more people willing to farm item and sell it. If the price of an item magically went down in the economy, less people would sell it and thus people willing to buy it at said price still wouldn't get the item.

If the buyer and seller are both online then sure, they can find each other better with less resellers. However, I'm not always at the fruit stand advertising my wares. I like to play the game, not play Trading Simulator 2019. Resellers are the people that will be trading more often than the likes of me, so I sell to them. They're not even really 'resellers'. You're framing them wrong. I'm the producer, they're the grocery store, and some end user is the shopper. I make and sell to the store because it's more convenient then me trying to sell on my own, and they buy from me because they don't have to farm which makes it feel more convenient for them. Everybody wins.

10 hours ago, LeMoog said:

I understand your point and agree I too went through the exact same situation the result was that I had to assume everyone was out to cheat me, that is the reality of my trade beginnings and it can only be called toxic.

Making trades one-time per item would only increase toxicity. People get mean during a recession. I'd, honestly, be more likely to try to scam people if your suggestion was implemented because the amount of platinum I get would never really be worth the time required to find a buyer, in my opinion. I never feel like I'm winning with my trades anymore. I've lost convenience, and I've lost profit with that convenience. I can't farm X items, I have to spend the time instead yelling into trade chat or advertising elsewhere. Time isn't money, it's more valuable than that.

10 hours ago, LeMoog said:

I have no problems with players earning plat from selling what they have earned but to taking advantage of other players lack of knowledge is toxic and I would suggest spills over into other areas of the game.

I do have a problem when they are allowed to buy up all of an item in demand and then raise the price even though I am more likely to get my own item, I also have a problem with the trade thread being flooded by them and their agents so honest traders are rolled off the screen.

I have yet to hear of anything they do that is a actually a benefit to anyone but themselves, I do hear a lot of the BS mystique about how they are smart and sophisticated and an asset but the fact remains that without people to cheat they would be out of business and in reality cheating people doesn't actually require much brain as most people are trusting until they get burned.

I would be quite happy if as you suggest the middlemen had their own thread (call it B ark) and the could live off each other but OFC that will never happen as they rely upon duping others to obtain what they hope to sell.

 

as to working out if I ever bought from a reseller, I would not, a deal once made is honoured again not something I have seen from every player and I do not need to guess why.

You assume everyone is a noob when they go to trade. Most people aren't. Most people play the game and have been doing so for a while. Warframe's playerbase is largely one of veterans. The Warframe market site alleviates a lot of the perceived problems you have with the current system. It's a lot harder for someone to just buy up all the things with platinum and raise the price. Besides, with how economies work and supply/demand, if I buy up all of X and increase the price that doesn't increase demand. People won't want to buy my thing at this higher price. I make less money. I lower the price to make more money. Things go back to the way they were. Let's say I increase the price and people are still willing to pay. That's not a bad thing then. I make profit, I feel happy. They get their thing, they feel happy. Just because you consider something too expensive doesn't mean it is. If people are willing to pay and I am willing to sell, it should be a good transaction. Now, in the real world, this ideal is marred with necessities that people have to get no matter what. I need to sell to get food. This means I have to sell lower than I otherwise would, sometimes to the point of insufficient nourishment. Warframe has no such problems.

You consider them buying low and selling high as duping others. This is a stupid idea. If this was true, I would be one of the ones duped. I don't feel duped yet none of their actions are 'hidden' or remain outside my knowledge; if I was duped and I know what they did I should feel duped. However, I feel quite happy knowing we both benefited from the trade.

10 hours ago, LeMoog said:

If you do not like the method I propose then come up with another that removes the toxic element from the game and makes trading a lasting pleasure for everyone and I will support it. Get rid of trade being screw them before they screw you and I will be happy along with everyone else who doesn't have to wade through the mire to use trade.

Also, don't present your idea as the only option. There are many options, and one of them is keeping trading as is. You may not like it, but many people don't like many things that are generally good. No system is perfect, but there is not necessarily a better alternative. I do concede that an in-game system akin to the warframe market site would be better, but that's been suggested plenty of times before to little effect.

[DoomFruit]

22 hours ago, Xenox_Ilz-ot said:

& what if I once bought something but don't use it anymore? If I want to give it to a friend or just sell it, does it means I won't be able to? No thank you

EDIT: Or if I buy something to give to one of my friend, like a (birthday) present, or because they don't have plats?

The solution there is not to prevent trading multiple times, but so that any trade after the first will just be giving the item away with no option to get anything in return.

[CephalonSkii]

IMHO hasn't this gone for long enough everyone here that has had any words to say here has agreed that your suggestion is a bit nono and (god forbid) if implemented would cause the entire market that currently exists to completely and utterly break yes riven flippers are annoying(like the 13 people trying to buy gram rivens for 200 plat in trade chat) but if you look away from the worse part(that's like 3% maybe? Too low 7%?)of the trade you can see people selling at genuinely good and reasonable prices I do see once or twice someone selling for quite low(normally it's a fairly inexperienced player (around mr7 or so)) so I tell them about how to valuate what they are selling and do offer them a fair price along with some of my stuff I have in excess like gems and other stuff of the sort just as a gesture of friendship and it usually cheers them up flippers/resellers/one person using 3 accounts to make some more amount of plat may be a problem that you have but even in the real world where is it told that one man can't own more than one business company and stuff of the sorts it is done in real life and if they can manage it more power to them(also DE's tos allows multiple accounts as long as they are separate entities not working to boost your main account but their progress being seperate so I don't see much problem)

 

Then there comes along supply and demand if for example I bought out 80 sets of loki prime for 200 plat each(just an example) and then sat on them for 6 or so months when the supply goes lower and the demand increases the prices of the sets that I bought(figuratively as again I don't own enough plat smh) will skyrocket to at least double that what I bought it at sitting at about 360-450 platinum per set this is normal in real life too and from what I read you seem to think that this is taking advantage of the seller in all honesty I could go on but I feel like I've made my point that this doesn't need to continue your defences to individual points don't respond to the problem they point out the answers fell like they just say "yeah...but I say we do this cuz this is a thing that happens and I'm annoyed about it so we should just rework the ENTIRE trade system so that instead of being able to find someone with the patience to hoard on to wares we buy directly from the person who is generating the product" can you not matey there's a reason shops like supermarket's,etc exist they provide convenience at an odd time like for example it's 5months after the acolyte event when maiming strike was 90 and now it's 300 etc etc(see inflation) 

K thx bye!

[CephalonSkii]

3 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

This logic is mind-boggling. How game mechanics work has nothing to do with the ideals of the faction you play. Gameplay over aesthetics. It'd be nice if the two meshed well, but they certainly don't need to and putting aesthetics or themes over gameplay is the antithesis of games. Additionally, people selling high and buying low is how economies work. It has nothing to do with monopolies because it's what every trader does. However, the buying low isn't always in pure monetary value and is instead sometimes in time and effort. The best trades are ones where both people come out of it feeling like they profited (and never losing that feeling). This is how I trade. I sell low because I don't want to shop around for a buyer, which means most of my buyers are generally other traders who will be selling my stuff for higher prices later, but sometimes lucky individuals who actually need/want to use what I'm selling. I'm benefiting because I get rid of my junk quick, and they're benefiting because they can make a profit.

If your idea was put into practice, prices would immediately go up. I can no longer afford to sell low, because the amount of time it would take for me to find a buyer inconveniences me more than the plat is worth at the current price, so I raise my prices. Everyone that traded with me suddenly has to obtain what they want to sell through gameplay rather than buying low and selling high. Selling high and buying low is, however, more efficient. Those who dislike farming suddenly have to farm to get plat, which means they now have to do something they don't enjoy. They consider their efforts to be more costly than the previous efforts of simply buying off others, meaning they raise the price to make the effort worthwhile.

Furthermore, prices go up for another reason. The basic principle behind a lot of economics. Supply and demand. You have decreased supply severely. Any item traded once is now permanently out of the economy. If I trade ten ayatans, they're now all non-existent in terms of the larger economy. The best someone can do with them is make something look nice or turn them into endo for mods. Any items you trade in a day can literally never be traded again. That's a lot of 'wealth' destroyed.

So, supply has gone way down and demand has remained the same. Those who acquire things have raised their prices in order to make things more worthwhile. This devalues platinum. More platinum is required to trade with other players than previously. This means the amount of platinum I get for X money is now worth less. This means less people will buy platinum because it's simply 'not worth it'. Less platinum gets traded around because less people buy platinum to put into the system. Platinum becomes rarer, meaning people now have two options. Buy platinum, or wait for a trade. F2P players get shafted, and now horde platinum they acquire through trading to purchase things they can't properly farm, like slots. Even less platinum is now traded. On and on it goes. This is called a recession.

Resellers make finding the right buyer easier. See my above paragraphs. I find a buyer for convenience, they find a buyer for profit; we all come out feeling better for it. Sure, more people would buy a thing if the price was lower. This, however, is opposite for sellers. The higher the price, the more people willing to farm item and sell it. If the price of an item magically went down in the economy, less people would sell it and thus people willing to buy it at said price still wouldn't get the item.

If the buyer and seller are both online then sure, they can find each other better with less resellers. However, I'm not always at the fruit stand advertising my wares. I like to play the game, not play Trading Simulator 2019. Resellers are the people that will be trading more often than the likes of me, so I sell to them. They're not even really 'resellers'. You're framing them wrong. I'm the producer, they're the grocery store, and some end user is the shopper. I make and sell to the store because it's more convenient then me trying to sell on my own, and they buy from me because they don't have to farm which makes it feel more convenient for them. Everybody wins.

Making trades one-time per item would only increase toxicity. People get mean during a recession. I'd, honestly, be more likely to try to scam people if your suggestion was implemented because the amount of platinum I get would never really be worth the time required to find a buyer, in my opinion. I never feel like I'm winning with my trades anymore. I've lost convenience, and I've lost profit with that convenience. I can't farm X items, I have to spend the time instead yelling into trade chat or advertising elsewhere. Time isn't money, it's more valuable than that.

You assume everyone is a noob when they go to trade. Most people aren't. Most people play the game and have been doing so for a while. Warframe's playerbase is largely one of veterans. The Warframe market site alleviates a lot of the perceived problems you have with the current system. It's a lot harder for someone to just buy up all the things with platinum and raise the price. Besides, with how economies work and supply/demand, if I buy up all of X and increase the price that doesn't increase demand. People won't want to buy my thing at this higher price. I make less money. I lower the price to make more money. Things go back to the way they were. Let's say I increase the price and people are still willing to pay. That's not a bad thing then. I make profit, I feel happy. They get their thing, they feel happy. Just because you consider something too expensive doesn't mean it is. If people are willing to pay and I am willing to sell, it should be a good transaction. Now, in the real world, this ideal is marred with necessities that people have to get no matter what. I need to sell to get food. This means I have to sell lower than I otherwise would, sometimes to the point of insufficient nourishment. Warframe has no such problems.

You consider them buying low and selling high as duping others. This is a stupid idea. If this was true, I would be one of the ones duped. I don't feel duped yet none of their actions are 'hidden' or remain outside my knowledge; if I was duped and I know what they did I should feel duped. However, I feel quite happy knowing we both benefited from the trade.

Also, don't present your idea as the only option. There are many options, and one of them is keeping trading as is. You may not like it, but many people don't like many things that are generally good. No system is perfect, but there is not necessarily a better alternative. I do concede that an in-game system akin to the warframe market site would be better, but that's been suggested plenty of times before to little effect.

Also what this person says

[LordDagon]

Talk about a solution that is much worse than the supposed “problem”. No, thank you. I only use one account and think this idea is terrible. I couldn’t care less if someone has multiple accounts. It is a trivial issue. It in no way keeps me from enjoying the game. I like being able to resell items for plat as well. And love or hate it, DE chose to go with an open player-based economy, and everything that entails. If it wasn’t what they wanted, they would simply put everything on the market with a set price tag and be done with it. As for the ethical debate and toxicity… lol You need to get some perspective. It’s not like we are talking about reselling food/water rations to the starving or the cure to cancer with a price tag only the elite few can afford. If DE closed the door on Warframe tomorrow, these items would vanish. Poof! This is a market for virtual items. These things are so far from a necessity that it isn’t even funny. So, what if someone pays more than market value for a virtual toy? The ONLY value these luxury items have is in what people are WILLING to pay. And DE charges up to $140 for a mere handful of their virtual toys. Ethos? Toxicity? RL? This is a game. It is meant to be entertainment.

[LeMoog]

19 hours ago, Ascarith said:

Some people do not have time (or patience, or resources, or knowledge, or connections) to find the right buyer/seller. The broker adds value by making possible transactions that would otherwise never occur, and the commission a broker makes compensates them for the time and effort of cultivating the right resources, knowledge and/or connections to make sure that transaction goes through. 

Supply is finite i.e there is only so many of each tradable item currently in circulation, more brokers do not increase supply and if they are full time brokers (24/7 via agents or bots) then actually playing the game to obtain the parts for themselves takes up far less of their time than if they were not focusing on reselling i.e. less trading time for everyone else.

Since it is unlikely and unwanted for brokers to hold the complete supply (monopoly) then there needs to be a balance, this currently being in the form of people unwilling to stock brokers and those aware that the demand is due to increase (DE announcements). It has been said that these brokers are aware of what all tenno need, which I take to mean they are monitoring all the trade threads in each region through something along the lines of webget. With all these brokers I would suggest that there is a increased cost to DE to maintaining the extra (number of regions * the number of monitoring brokers on each chat server).  What we are talking about is an unfair advantage compared with a occasional trader. If we were all to follow suit and each monitor every trade thread then the chat servers would likely need to be upgraded given how often they fall over as things stand, perhaps the reason they currently fall over is because DE didn't anticipate the extra load that brokers put on the infrastructure to exist.

Brokers need for max profit that everyone else who has the required item to sell to them for X, this being the max market price (at time of resale) minus their commision, they may take less than maximum commision for quicker sales but they will OFC want to take to maximum that the market will take.

 

Now lets look at the market, I will  divide it into 3 groups, those who keep up with DE announcements( A) , those that do not care but watch a single market alone for their pricing(B) and those that have not a clue(C), this is a simple model and I am sure it doesn't include everyone playing. All of these groups will sell at whatever they think people will buy at with reductions based upon their own need to trade. 

So firstly pricing for a period where item is not currently in demand, group A will be selling off excess stock and waiting for the next opportunity to cash in, groups  B and C will be watching the market between games to see if there is anything that they have that they can sell for enough to be worth bothering with or selling what they can because they need plat themselves. The prices here are the lowest for everyone since no one is targeting anything and the price is down to seller's needs.

Next lets look at the price of an item that is going to be vaulted or item's supply is generally low, group A is buying at X , they are flooding the trade thread with offers to buy they may even have posted a bogus low price on one of the external pricing sites with an alt that they leave logged out so the item doesn't get sold. Group A might then use this to try to persuade group C and some of group B to part with their stock at a price lower than they might have got if they waited.Group A will continue to buy as the supply in trade from B and C dwindles until supply dries up or price is higher than max X at which point the price hovers around X with A buying when they can. Price here is <X and the trade threads are flooded by the brokers their agents and more than likely the same monitoring tool anyone not a broker is going to have much less chance of being noticed than the previous mode and since they are just one person then without agents or monitor they are not going to be operating 24/7 so in effect group A has taken virtual control of trade chat with a cost born by DE and groups B&C missed sales. Whilst the price might be lower than the broker's expected selling price they as a group have more exposure so anyone attempting to sell at greater than  X will be ignored or missed.

Lastly item has been vaulted, group A will start selling once price is acceptable, since market is again flooded by brokers B  might make as sale occasionally if below  brokers expected  or if a member of B or C is getting in on the action but for most part brokers remain in control of the price, it is possibel that another bogus price is posted externally to improve their bargaining position.

So in the above modes brokers effectively control the market in 2 out of 3 states, if everyone used their tools then the chances are the trade thread woulds fall over and require further investment by DE.

As to the external "trade websites" they are a misnomer unless trade can only occur off the DE servers i.e. the external site is holds the item and sells it ingame via a bot, I have suggest  just one way that they can be gamed in order to unfairly influence the trading price of warframe items.

 

So in summary I disagree with the premise that broker benefit anyone but themselves, they create a hidden cost to DE and every PC from non-DE trade site would be attempted fraud in the real world. They add nothing to the free supply that determines pricing and the whole of trade is heavily influenced by the brokers who via their own bots or agents  control the market and not to the benefit of either buyers or sellers unless they too are brokers. no normal player can compete with brokers in terms of market presence since they have to sleep. Some say that they are a benefit because not all players are online enough to trade fairly without brokers but I say the cost to everyone else including DE far outweighs any benefit these few players gain. 

I have offered one way to deal with this problem but there are OFC many others, ideally DE would make a steam like market that allows for trading when item holders are offline with a nice chart showing the range of prices transparent to everyone but if we can't have that then a compromise is necessary since anyone without the broker's resources has much less chance of trading at all let alone fairly.

Here is a few pointers to the non-brokers 

To get the best selling price for an item then you need to keep up with the game news and you need to know how to sell, be polite but firm and remember that without your item the brokers would go broke

Thus there is no free market in warframe and the brokers are to blame. monitoring bots are not players if they are in use then it would be up  to DE to remove them and their creators but since you the reader now know they exist then you can see for yourself just how much of the trade thread is full of their spam and decide if they are deserving of your trade.

Remember there is no such thing as thrash items as no one would want them, anyone going to the trouble of posting their want clearly has either a use for it and or knows something you may not, why not wait and see what happens or if you sell then make it small amounts as the people who want to profit off you do not want to run out of trades

If you are told an external PC sites have an item for less than you are selling for then why is the buyer attempting to buy from you, simply because that item either doesn't exist or cannot actually be purchased.

 

Edited June 25, 2019 by LeMoog

[LeMoog]

7 hours ago, Keylan118 said:

This logic is mind-boggling. How game mechanics work has nothing to do with the ideals of the faction you play. Gameplay over aesthetics. It'd be nice if the two meshed well, but they certainly don't need to and putting aesthetics or themes over gameplay is the antithesis of games. Additionally, people selling high and buying low is how economies work. It has nothing to do with monopolies because it's what every trader does. However, the buying low isn't always in pure monetary value and is instead sometimes in time and effort. The best trades are ones where both people come out of it feeling like they profited (and never losing that feeling). This is how I trade. I sell low because I don't want to shop around for a buyer, which means most of my buyers are generally other traders who will be selling my stuff for higher prices later, but sometimes lucky individuals who actually need/want to use what I'm selling. I'm benefiting because I get rid of my junk quick, and they're benefiting because they can make a profit.

If your idea was put into practice, prices would immediately go up. I can no longer afford to sell low, because the amount of time it would take for me to find a buyer inconveniences me more than the plat is worth at the current price, so I raise my prices. Everyone that traded with me suddenly has to obtain what they want to sell through gameplay rather than buying low and selling high. Selling high and buying low is, however, more efficient. Those who dislike farming suddenly have to farm to get plat, which means they now have to do something they don't enjoy. They consider their efforts to be more costly than the previous efforts of simply buying off others, meaning they raise the price to make the effort worthwhile.

Furthermore, prices go up for another reason. The basic principle behind a lot of economics. Supply and demand. You have decreased supply severely. Any item traded once is now permanently out of the economy. If I trade ten ayatans, they're now all non-existent in terms of the larger economy. The best someone can do with them is make something look nice or turn them into endo for mods. Any items you trade in a day can literally never be traded again. That's a lot of 'wealth' destroyed.

So, supply has gone way down and demand has remained the same. Those who acquire things have raised their prices in order to make things more worthwhile. This devalues platinum. More platinum is required to trade with other players than previously. This means the amount of platinum I get for X money is now worth less. This means less people will buy platinum because it's simply 'not worth it'. Less platinum gets traded around because less people buy platinum to put into the system. Platinum becomes rarer, meaning people now have two options. Buy platinum, or wait for a trade. F2P players get shafted, and now horde platinum they acquire through trading to purchase things they can't properly farm, like slots. Even less platinum is now traded. On and on it goes. This is called a recession.

Resellers make finding the right buyer easier. See my above paragraphs. I find a buyer for convenience, they find a buyer for profit; we all come out feeling better for it. Sure, more people would buy a thing if the price was lower. This, however, is opposite for sellers. The higher the price, the more people willing to farm item and sell it. If the price of an item magically went down in the economy, less people would sell it and thus people willing to buy it at said price still wouldn't get the item.

If the buyer and seller are both online then sure, they can find each other better with less resellers. However, I'm not always at the fruit stand advertising my wares. I like to play the game, not play Trading Simulator 2019. Resellers are the people that will be trading more often than the likes of me, so I sell to them. They're not even really 'resellers'. You're framing them wrong. I'm the producer, they're the grocery store, and some end user is the shopper. I make and sell to the store because it's more convenient then me trying to sell on my own, and they buy from me because they don't have to farm which makes it feel more convenient for them. Everybody wins.

Making trades one-time per item would only increase toxicity. People get mean during a recession. I'd, honestly, be more likely to try to scam people if your suggestion was implemented because the amount of platinum I get would never really be worth the time required to find a buyer, in my opinion. I never feel like I'm winning with my trades anymore. I've lost convenience, and I've lost profit with that convenience. I can't farm X items, I have to spend the time instead yelling into trade chat or advertising elsewhere. Time isn't money, it's more valuable than that.

You assume everyone is a noob when they go to trade. Most people aren't. Most people play the game and have been doing so for a while. Warframe's playerbase is largely one of veterans. The Warframe market site alleviates a lot of the perceived problems you have with the current system. It's a lot harder for someone to just buy up all the things with platinum and raise the price. Besides, with how economies work and supply/demand, if I buy up all of X and increase the price that doesn't increase demand. People won't want to buy my thing at this higher price. I make less money. I lower the price to make more money. Things go back to the way they were. Let's say I increase the price and people are still willing to pay. That's not a bad thing then. I make profit, I feel happy. They get their thing, they feel happy. Just because you consider something too expensive doesn't mean it is. If people are willing to pay and I am willing to sell, it should be a good transaction. Now, in the real world, this ideal is marred with necessities that people have to get no matter what. I need to sell to get food. This means I have to sell lower than I otherwise would, sometimes to the point of insufficient nourishment. Warframe has no such problems.

You consider them buying low and selling high as duping others. This is a stupid idea. If this was true, I would be one of the ones duped. I don't feel duped yet none of their actions are 'hidden' or remain outside my knowledge; if I was duped and I know what they did I should feel duped. However, I feel quite happy knowing we both benefited from the trade.

Also, don't present your idea as the only option. There are many options, and one of them is keeping trading as is. You may not like it, but many people don't like many things that are generally good. No system is perfect, but there is not necessarily a better alternative. I do concede that an in-game system akin to the warframe market site would be better, but that's been suggested plenty of times before to little effect.

I am not married to any single method so long as the result is to remove brokers/resellers unfair influence upon the whole market, by fair I am referring to what any other single player can do.

People talk about the importance of a freemarket but the reality is that the market is already biased simply because each single player has to compete with a group who have a shared agenda. A single player must sleep occasionally and he can only post once per time limit in the trade thread. A group can post at least as many times as their are members. Thus the market is not currently free and if a free market really means anything to you  have to agree that this needs to change

[LeMoog]

3 hours ago, LordDagon said:

Talk about a solution that is much worse than the supposed “problem”. No, thank you. I only use one account and think this idea is terrible. I couldn’t care less if someone has multiple accounts. It is a trivial issue. It in no way keeps me from enjoying the game. I like being able to resell items for plat as well. And love or hate it, DE chose to go with an open player-based economy, and everything that entails. If it wasn’t what they wanted, they would simply put everything on the market with a set price tag and be done with it. As for the ethical debate and toxicity… lol You need to get some perspective. It’s not like we are talking about reselling food/water rations to the starving or the cure to cancer with a price tag only the elite few can afford. If DE closed the door on Warframe tomorrow, these items would vanish. Poof! This is a market for virtual items. These things are so far from a necessity that it isn’t even funny. So, what if someone pays more than market value for a virtual toy? The ONLY value these luxury items have is in what people are WILLING to pay. And DE charges up to $140 for a mere handful of their virtual toys. Ethos? Toxicity? RL? This is a game. It is meant to be entertainment.

There is no open player-based community and as to why the trade is like it is rather than say like steam's then I would guess that it was down to IP  or  other priorities at the time and no real focus since due to those profiting off the existing system poo-pooing any forum threads that suggest a change.

The solution I offered was aimed at addressing two issues which I met, alt-accounts and reselling. After taking another look at the existing trade thread and hearing from others in the forum and in chat I came to the conclusion that warframe trading had been co-opted and that everyone else's price was limited by the same and that finally enough players felt the same way.

If you are happy with things as they are and you do not care about the impact it is having then fair enough but if you do then by all means come up with a better solution, I personally would like to see a steam like trade system where offline item holders could sell in their sleep as but this has repeatedly been suggested and poo-pooed by those that feel nothing for those that they profit off. There is a lot of talk about community but the type of community where grifters are unchecked is bled to death  and the toxic nature of the community always seeks to escape into other areas as the saying goes "if you lie down with dogs then you are going to get fleas" and no one who has played WF for period cannot have helped but meet toxic players in every interface of the game.

If you enjoy living in the mire then fine, knock yourself out but for my part I would like to believe that the majority of players, including those that never use the forum, would like a breath of fresh air and that means removing the poison as you come across it. I have tried to do my part what are you doing to help?

Edited June 25, 2019 by LeMoog

[Ascarith]

37 minutes ago, LeMoog said:

Supply is finite i.e there is only so many of each tradable item currently in circulation, more brokers do not increase supply and if they are full time brokers (24/7 via agents or bots) then actually playing the game to obtain the parts for themselves takes up far less of their time than if they were not focusing on reselling i.e. less trading time for everyone else.

Since it is unlikely and unwanted for brokers to hold the complete supply (monopoly) then there needs to be a balance, this currently being in the form of people unwilling to stock brokers and those aware that the demand is due to increase (DE announcements). It has been said that these brokers are aware of what all tenno need, which I take to mean they are monitoring all the trade threads in each region through something along the lines of webget. With all these brokers I would suggest that there is a increased cost to DE to maintaining the extra (number of regions * the number of monitoring brokers on each chat server).  What we are talking about is an unfair advantage compared with a occasional trader. If we were all to follow suit and each monitor every trade thread then the chat servers would likely need to be upgraded given how often they fall over as things stand, perhaps the reason they currently fall over is because DE didn't anticipate the extra load that brokers put on the infrastructure to exist.

Brokers need for max profit that everyone else who has the required item to sell to them for X, this being the max market price (at time of resale) minus their commision, they may take less than maximum commision for quicker sales but they will OFC want to take to maximum that the market will take.

I legitimately don't think I understand what you mean when you use certain terms. Sometimes you use terms interchangeably and I'm not even sure what the basic problem we're tackling is anymore. Your original post was about "alts," but now we're discussing "brokers," but it really sounds like you have a problem with all "resellers."

I assume there's going to be a lot of overlap in these definitions, but to clarify, can you define:

• Who or what is a "broker?"
• Who or what is a "reseller?"
• Who or what is a "flipper?"
• Who or what is an "alt?"
• Who or what is an "agent?"

Your post regarding "brokers" sounds as though you have a problem with bots buying low and selling high. I wouldn't really say that's what a broker does.

A broker doesn't buy from sellers at a low price and resell to buyers to make a profit. That would be more characteristic of a normal trader. A broker brings a prospective seller together with a prospective buyer. If the seller agrees to sell to the buyer, then and only then does the broker get the commission. The broker doesn't generate supply, nor does the broker take supply out of circulation. The broker makes it easier to match supply to demand. 

[LeMoog]

6 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

The solution there is not to prevent trading multiple times, but so that any trade after the first will just be giving the item away with no option to get anything in return.

that will remove reselling, allow friends to collect items for a friend but creates a potential issue where all the supply is trapped, DE could increase supply but it would require more monitoring than  the solution I offered.

I am not saying it doesn't fit better than my own, mine also requires increased monitoring

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

41 minutes ago, LeMoog said:

Supply is finite i.e there is only so many of each tradable item currently in circulation, more brokers do not increase supply and if they are full time brokers (24/7 via agents or bots) then actually playing the game to obtain the parts for themselves takes up far less of their time than if they were not focusing on reselling i.e. less trading time for everyone else.

So much of what you have to say is blatantly wrong. Much of it is plainly nonsensical, that if you weren't so invested in your proposal you'd be able to see it instantly. 

There are many people who are pointing out what is wrong and explaining the errors. Not all are greedy traders trying to take advantage of the ignorant. I'm not a reseller and most of my purchases are prime junk for the ducats. But I'd be lying if I said that I didn't get full sets that way, and I have used that to give newbs I have played with Primes that they didn't yet have, for free. 

Your proposed "solution" will prevent me from being able to do that, and that's beyond ridiculous. I see that others have said much the same thing. 

You may not be negatively affected by the proposed changes, but others will, so no thanks. From my point of view, your proposal sucks. 

[LeMoog]

4 minutes ago, Ascarith said:

I legitimately don't think I understand what you mean when you use certain terms. Sometimes you use terms interchangeably and I'm not even sure what the basic problem we're tackling is anymore. Your original post was about "alts," but now we're discussing "brokers," but it really sounds like you have a problem with all "resellers."

I assume there's going to be a lot of overlap in these definitions, but to clarify, can you define:

• Who or what is a "broker?"
• Who or what is a "reseller?"
• Who or what is a "flipper?"
• Who or what is an "alt?"
• Who or what is an "agent?"

Your post regarding "brokers" sounds as though you have a problem with bots buying low and selling high. I wouldn't really say that's what a broker does.

A broker doesn't buy from sellers at a low price and resell to buyers to make a profit. That would be more characteristic of a normal trader. A broker brings a prospective seller together with a prospective buyer. If the seller agrees to sell to the buyer, then and only then does the broker get the commission. The broker doesn't generate supply, nor does the broker take supply out of circulation. The broker makes it easier to match supply to demand. 

So in your definition of the broker they do not trade with either party? how then can they facilitate trade when either of the primaries are offline