We deserve a central trading hub.

[Gofretko]

4 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

You ever squeeze an apple and get orange juice out of it? 

Usually, when somebody claims something and even seem to be quite convinced in it, the onus is on them to prove their claim. At least that's what a discussion looks like in other circles I've been in, both science and my work included.

So. It's a historical fact that auction houses haven't killed games economies -- although the devil is in the details as usual. And your argument against this is?...

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

2 hours ago, Gofretko said:

Usually, when somebody claims something and even seem to be quite convinced in it, the onus is on them to prove their claim. At least that's what a discussion looks like in other circles I've been in, both science and my work included.

So. It's a historical fact that auction houses haven't killed games economies -- although the devil is in the details as usual. And your argument against this is?...

I have. I have also explained repeatedly in very simple terms, with very small words why our in-game economy is different than the economies of the games where its been successfully implemented, and yet there are still people who have difficulty understanding. (And word to the wise, and the otherwise, take a good look at the successes and you will see some major blemishes, even in what should have been much more robust systems than what we would likely have). 

Dunning-kruger is a thing. 

Now you can keep demanding that people provide you with proof that the world is not flat, or you can take the steps suggested earlier that would help you to understand what is being discussed. It's your choice. 

Good luck with that, Tenno. 

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Vaeldious said:

Then again, I don't have a desire or need to spend thousands of plat for rivens or gouge prices, nor am I claiming it will be the end "valuable" items if it does change. I'm simply stating that I can understand DE's rationale for not seeing this as an issue, or even doing anything to change it, as it works fairly well with their business model, and comparing what I've actually seen in practice in other communities to offer my opinion of what I would expect to happen.

Thing is, the reason trading "works fairly well" has nothing to do with DE's development. Trading works because a third party is hosting an external market service with all the convenience of a traditional auction house which could be had without actual changes to the game's source code. If the only ways to trade were what DE provided us, trading would be dead in the water in this game, and I say this with some amount of confidence. Do you honestly think that high-priced items get sold to savvy buyers who know and use the in-game system? That those same buyers are the ones who purchase items which can otherwise be earned pretty easily? Because I'd argue that no - it's whales like myself who overpay for things we don't need to pay that much for.

I'm already ~€400 into this game over the span of a year or so, and it's not because the game is P2W. For the most part, it's because I'm too lazy to gridifor relics, then grinding for Prime drops, over and over and over again. It's because I'm too lazy to grind Kela De Dayum for a Medi-Ray, it's because I'm too lazy to grind Arbitrations for Adaptation, etc. I spend money because I can't be arsed to do the work, and I DEFINITELY can't be arsed to use the Byzantine trading system in the game. I'm not going to waste my time digging through trade chat, I'm not going to jump from instance to instance of Maroo's bazaar and haggle with scalpers and I'm certainly not going to bother sitting in the Bazaar with my arm up if I want to sell something. If it weren't for Warframe.market, I wouldn't have bought or sold a single item in this game. I wouldn't have dropped 1700 Plat on a kind fellow offering a premade Rank 10 Arcane Grace, nor would I have done a clearance sale of Rivens for ~10 Plat each just to get them out of my inventory.

I understand why DE won't do anything about the trading situation - because people have done it for them. By doing nothing, however, they're effectively relying on an unregulated third party grey market. Credit to Warframe.market, the site does seem to be run pretty well, but it still has a number of issues - chief of which is that if you get scammed through the site, ain't nothing DE can do about it. A responsible developer would handle real-money transactions from within their own service, rather than delegating something this important to fansites. So sure, they can get away with not doing anything, but that's not exactly the responsible thing to do.

 

14 hours ago, Somi_xD said:

Most MMOs allow you to trade 99% of the Items, Materials are worth something. Until one player reaches the Point of Saturation, of No Demand - it takes very long. And in some MMOs you need low lvl items to craft high lvl stuff, dismanteling Items to get Material or exp for some crafting skills.

In Warframe, it's pretty easy to saturate a players demands. Because most things are not tradable. Things you can trade are needed like 1 or 2 Times, and the only thing that holds the Warframe Economy is new players getting into Warfarme.

That comparison hasn't really held true for any of the MMOs I've played, personally. It doesn't really feel true for Warframe, either. As I said above, I've spent a considerable amount of money on Warframe across a year, and I'm nowhere near having all of the things I might want to purchase. I lack most of the Prime items, a lot of high-level Arcanes, quite a few powerful mods, and that's just from the items currently available. What I'm saying is that getting to the point where you "have everything" to the point of never needing to trade is VERY expensive to the point that I don't see most people ever getting to that point with or without it.

And besides, "an auction house" already exists for Warframe. It's called Warframe.market. Other than a few minor inconveniences introduced by its nature as a third-party site, this thing that's being asked for already exists, and it hasn't destroyed Warframe's economy yet. From my experience, there's always plenty of supply and plenty of demand for pretty much anything that's not extremely niche. I just don't see the fears of economic collapse or what have you as being well-supported, is all.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

And besides, "an auction house" already exists for Warframe. It's called Warframe.market. Other than a few minor inconveniences introduced by its nature as a third-party site, this thing that's being asked for already exists, and it hasn't destroyed Warframe's economy yet. From my experience, there's always plenty of supply and plenty of demand for pretty much anything that's not extremely niche. I just don't see the fears of economic collapse or what have you as being well-supported, is all.

Your experience is highly limited, and you are basing your opinions on "warframe.market has always existed". You should have tried to find out how the introduction of the system affected prices. 

Warframe.market had a huge impact on prices, if we are to believe the first hand accounts of the people who experienced the game before and after it's introduction.

Bear in mind that only a fraction of all players are active on that site. Want to take a guess what's going to happen when everyone in the game is encouraged to put their items in the system you're asking for? 

[Jax_Cavalera]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Bear in mind that only a fraction of all players are active on that site. Want to take a guess what's going to happen when everyone in the game is encouraged to put their items in the system you're asking for? 

Prices are going to reach an equilibrium like they did in warframe marketplace?  I don't see riven mods on there selling for a packet of french fries. As someone that owns quite a lot of god tier rivens that I farmed and also paid for in some cases, I'm comfortable having their overall market value drop to something sustainable if it also means trading becomes more accessible to the general player-base. We keep looking at this from the glass half empty perspective, the glass half full can see this actually helps to put sellers in contact with even more players (newer players with wallets bursting at the seams loaded with tasty plat to spend) and they now have this safe, obvious way to get the items you are selling without going out of the game to an unnoficial 3rd party website for that service.

[Oreades]

2 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

and they now have this safe,

Safe is relative, what about the issue with chargeback plat. 

An integrated market would make it significantly easier for a bad actor to spread the pain such as it was. Before we can get to an in game market, DE would really need to figure out how to deal with bad plat in a way that 

1. Didn't significantly negatively effect innocent players 
2. Couldn't be abused by bad actors to launder bad plat. 

Then there is the issue of Warframes actual economy, I'm reasonably certain that a bulk of that is a dumpster fire being held together with duct tape and shining a light on that with a market would could cause a large portion of it to disintegrate. That said things would reach an equilibrium overall and that certainly might not be a bad thing but it is definitely an uncertain thing and something to be cautious with. 

[Jax_Cavalera]

14 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Safe is relative, what about the issue with chargeback plat. 

That will happen regardless but at least if there were an in-house trading system, DE can easily track specific transactions and correctly reverse them.. and include a cool-off period between purchases from newer accounts.. yeah that could also be done with our dojo / bazar trades though having a dedicated interface for stuff like this would surely make it a lot easier to communicate the status of a transaction and be better suited to those non-instant transactions that a trade system like that would help facilitate.

18 minutes ago, Oreades said:

An integrated market would make it significantly easier for a bad actor to spread the pain such as it was. Before we can get to an in game market, DE would really need to figure out how to deal with bad plat in a way that 

1. Didn't significantly negatively effect innocent players 
2. Couldn't be abused by bad actors to launder bad plat. 

Then there is the issue of Warframes actual economy, I'm reasonably certain that a bulk of that is a dumpster fire being held together with duct tape and shining a light on that with a market would could cause a large portion of it to disintegrate. That said things would reach an equilibrium overall and that certainly might not be a bad thing but it is definitely an uncertain thing and something to be cautious with. 

Pretty much yeah I agree with everything you are saying here as well, this is a genuine issue i've had friends hit with before and it's not pleasant.  The fallout would be there and it's something that should be handled with a degree of caution, safeguards like only opening it up to certain types of trades that are already fairly stable in the warframe marketplace (bread and butter mods that have been around for ages) .. then maybe prime parts next.. then resources and if that's all going well .. rivens etc.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

48 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

Prices are going to reach an equilibrium like they did in warframe marketplace?  I don't see riven mods on there selling for a packet of french fries. As someone that owns quite a lot of god tier rivens that I farmed and also paid for in some cases, I'm comfortable having their overall market value drop to something sustainable if it also means trading becomes more accessible to the general player-base. We keep looking at this from the glass half empty perspective, the glass half full can see this actually helps to put sellers in contact with even more players (newer players with wallets bursting at the seams loaded with tasty plat to spend) and they now have this safe, obvious way to get the items you are selling without going out of the game to an unnoficial 3rd party website for that service.

 😧

I really wish people would take a second to try to grasp the concept of supply and demand. 

The vast majority of items that we can trade in this game are not "unique" by design. Things that are unique and desired by many have "low supply and high demand" this means higher prices. 

By contrast even the 'rare' prime parts that have been around for a while, have "high supply and low demand" which explains the prices you see on 'prime junk'. 

When you talk about equilibrium, that's going to apply to almost everything other than the 'godroll' rivens that you don't mind seeing the prices drop on. It would possibly apply to 'junk rivens', but odds are that those aren't the expensive ones that you are seeing on offer. 

If the free-to-play models that exist in the mobile games market applies here, most new players don't have "pockets bursting with plat". I'd hazard a guess based on what I have seen where many consistently beg for plat, or try to convince others to buy prime junk for ridiculous amounts of plat, that crashing the prices of their only source of income, would hurt more than it helps.... Unless you figure that a few wealthy players will happily buy large amounts of their cruft for way more than market value to support the in-game economy? 

Because understand that the potential sellers will typically vastly outnumber the potential purchasers. 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

38 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

That will happen regardless but at least if there were an in-house trading system, DE can easily track specific transactions and correctly reverse them.. and include a cool-off period between purchases from newer accounts..

You know that they already do that tracking, right? 

And you may want to check what the most generous 'chargeback' time is on credit cards, I don't think that you would want to try and lock new players out of trade for many months. Just saying. 

[Gofretko]

All I can see as a rationalisation of "DE should not add auction house" is that people who profit from inflated prices of certain items will get less plat.

Killing oligopoly-like structures is healthy for any economy.

[Jax_Cavalera]

6 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

If the free-to-play models that exist in the mobile games market applies here, most new players don't have "pockets bursting with plat". I'd hazard a guess based on what I have seen where many consistently beg for plat, or try to convince others to buy prime junk for ridiculous amounts of plat, that crashing the prices of their only source of income, would hurt more than it helps.... Unless you figure that a few wealthy players will happily buy large amounts of their cruft for way more than market value to support the in-game economy? 

So essentially you are saying that majority of players are too poor to afford platinum to buy things? Where do you think all these 1k plat purchases are coming from? Veteran players? It's likely more heavily weighted to newer players because from what I've observed over the years playing this game, new players join up to play with a vet who has spent years gradually increasing their loadouts.. and the new players feel very inadequate.. then they see they can just buy the stuff for platinum to "catch up".

I personally don't think we should be avoiding a more accessible trading infrastructure simply to continue supporting artificial scarcity of items that are a lot more readily available than a select few would like newer players to believe.

That's like all supermarkets cutting the number of each product they stock on shelves in half and doubling the prices so they can extort their customers from buying things needed to keep progressing.. consequences be damned... I can't get behind that type of rationale as a valid argument to not do this.

 

26 minutes ago, Gofretko said:

All I can see as a rationalisation of "DE should not add auction house" is that people who profit from inflated prices of certain items will get less plat.

Killing oligopoly-like structures is healthy for any economy.

Yep pretty much

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

44 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

So essentially you are saying that majority of players are too poor to afford platinum to buy things? Where do you think all these 1k plat purchases are coming from? Veteran players? It's likely more heavily weighted to newer players because from what I've observed over the years playing this game, new players join up to play with a vet who has spent years gradually increasing their loadouts.. and the new players feel very inadequate.. then they see they can just buy the stuff for platinum to "catch up".

Got news for you there, mate. The answer is 'yes I am saying that'. As to where it's coming from:

9 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

I'm already ~€400 into this game over the span of a year or so, and it's not because the game is P2W

☝️A small number of people pay a large amount of money. A large number of people pay a small amount of money (or none).

Want another example of someone who has spent some larger sums of plat buying a smaller number of items? I got one:

8 hours ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

As someone that owns quite a lot of god tier rivens that I farmed and also paid for in some cases, I'm comfortable having their overall market value drop to something sustainable if it also means trading becomes more accessible to the general player-base.

See? 

 

44 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

I personally don't think we should be avoiding a more accessible trading infrastructure simply to continue supporting artificial scarcity of items that are a lot more readily available than a select few would like newer players to believe.

I personally agree. I support not implementing it because it would crash the economy. Even though I would probably benefit from such a myopic move in the short term, the majority of people would suffer. That's what we call a bad thing. 

44 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

That's like all supermarkets cutting the number of each product they stock on shelves in half and doubling the prices so they can extort their customers from buying things needed to keep progressing.. consequences be damned... I can't get behind that type of rationale as a valid argument to not do this.

You ever go to a supermarket where they only sell things that will never wear out, never need replacing, and never be bought again? Because that describes most of the items we are able to trade in this game. Because if you haven't then your argument falls apart. 

Step back and think about what you are trying to support, what effects they will have, and what that will in turn cause to happen. 

[Jax_Cavalera]

6 hours ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

You ever go to a supermarket where they only sell things that will never wear out, never need replacing, and never be bought again? Because that describes most of the items we are able to trade in this game. Because if you haven't then your argument falls apart. 

If you have been playing this game long enough you would have experienced 2 things:
1. DE changing mechanics in game making old mods redundant or completely removed.
2. DE releasing new mods that outclass the old ones.

This has the same effect as wear and tear.. the mod spot it used to fill needs replacing with a new or different more useful mod.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

11 minutes ago, Jax_Cavalera said:

If you have been playing this game long enough you would have experienced 2 things:
1. DE changing mechanics in game making old mods redundant or completely removed.
2. DE releasing new mods that outclass the old ones.

This has the same effect as wear and tear.. the mod spot it used to fill needs replacing with a new or different more useful mod.

Nope. Not even close because that's actually a "new commodity". And once again, you will need, only one. For most of the mods, as long as you choose to keep it, you aren't going to need another to replace it. 

Apart from (very) newly released items or very new players, the majority of the game population doesn't need another copy of the item we already have by the boatload. 

[Stranger_secret]

nothing here.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Stranger_secret

[George_PPS]

I have used warframe.market to do thousands of trades. You need to learn how to switch between apps or use it on your phone if you are on Xbox, PS4, or Switch. It’s very easy and works extremely well and it’s for players who farm and trade more. Adding an additional auction house would slow down the game a lot as it checks and references stock of millions of items owned by players. 

[Smokefox420]

On 2019-08-06 at 8:29 AM, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Ok let's start with the important bits. Risotto is going to take anything from 45 minutes to an hour to cook. It's also a dish that needs regular attention, stirring often. It's a serious hazard to not pay attention when you have something on the heat, and you should not try to blame the game for your own lack of attention to detail. 

Second, the fact that you priced your item badly and lost to a better offer, is on you, not anyone else. You of all people would suffer worse under a "set and forget" system, as it would be trivial for the rest of the players in the game to undersell you all day long. 

Lastly, I'd ask if you made the risotto to go with txipirones, like what they serve in a little restaurant in the Basque country just outside of, Azpilicuetagaraycosaroyarenberecolarrea, but if you suffer from hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, you might get triggered. So I won't. 

You get an A+. Also, it was a ten minute risotto so it was going to burn no matter what, I wouldn't suffer from the set and forget method due to it working for me in other games like ffxiv, and if I had heard of txipirones I would have made it, but sadly I did not know of it or its place of origin.

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

I have read not one reply and maybe 4 sentences of the OP.  I don't need to, I've seen this argument about a million times.  And I don't believe you're wrong.  Here's what happens if there is a trading hub

I quit buying plat.  

I am incredibly introverted and despise trading.  It's a pain. It's why we want the hub right?  

If I could trade on this game no fuss no muss, I'd never have to buy plat again.  I could nickel and dime my way into prosperity just like I did on DCUO.  I'm not greedy. I have a thing in my inventory that I don't need, and I need plat.  I will undercut every single person on the trading post by as much as 20%.  EVERYTHING MUST GO. 

I (and others like me) am literally the reason why they can't do a hub.  It will lower the cost of plat for items, which lowers the need for plat. 

WHICH KILLS THE GAME.  

Warframe runs on plat sales.  If you lower the demand for plat in the game's economy you lower the actual money intake for DE and DE is trying desperately to figure out a way to introduce new content for everyone, and satisfy both long time players like myself (over 4k hours) and newer players...all at the same time.  With a game that doesn't cater to the plug and prestige crowd.  They need plat from pretty much everyone that touches the game.

All of the MMOs that have a hub also have a membership there OP.  It's not a coincidence.  

A hub kills plat sales which kills the game. You may now lock the thread.

[kapn655321]

I wonder if there's any legal trouble if Waframe tried to use a format of or similar to .market??

Maybe DE can't because .market did it too well, and owns the rights in a sense.
Always wondered that.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

14 hours ago, Smokefox420 said:

You get an A+.

That will ruin my average grade. 

14 hours ago, Smokefox420 said:

Also, it was a ten minute risotto so it was going to burn no matter what,

Those words individually make sense but when taken together do not. Whatever you thought you were making, it wasn't risotto. Get yourself to the correct market and buy the rice, get the stock, maybe some wine, combine lovingly, with adequate attention to the making, and have some risotto. 

14 hours ago, Smokefox420 said:

I wouldn't suffer from the set and forget method due to it working for me in other games like ffxiv,

Again, I live in the topics, about 11 degrees north of the equator, give or take. I have grown up enjoying the fruits of several different types of citrus plants, and have learned the ways to take care of those plants. 

Does that qualify me to try to tell you how to care for your apple trees? Would the experience I have, translate well? 

The answer to both of these questions is an emphatic "no". I have never been able to grow an apple tree, believe me I've tried. (I wanted the wood, not the fruits.) 

Just because something works in one environment, doesn't mean that it will work in another. This has been explained by multiple people on multiple threads. Our economic model is not conducive to such systems, other than for selling batches of prime junk, and truly unique/rare items. 

People who want quick plat, really haven't ever stopped to think about what will happen. Its not that nonsense about "I will never need to buy plat again". It's that their items will crash in value because the increase in supply, doesn't mean an equivalent increase in demand. Because, again, our model has no version of enforced or repeat demand. 

Very simple concept. 

 

14 hours ago, Smokefox420 said:

and if I had heard of txipirones I would have made it, but sadly I did not know of it or its place of origin.

http://mostlyfoodstuffs.blogspot.com/2011/11/txipirones-en-su-tinta-squid-in-ink.html?m=1

Not the best picture, and if you hope to not be given funny looks in public, maybe don't use quite as much of the ink. 😁

 

 

[Lord-KEK]

On 2019-08-30 at 10:34 PM, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

I have read not one reply and maybe 4 sentences of the OP.  I don't need to, I've seen this argument about a million times.  And I don't believe you're wrong.  Here's what happens if there is a trading hub

I quit buying plat.  

I am incredibly introverted and despise trading.  It's a pain. It's why we want the hub right?  

If I could trade on this game no fuss no muss, I'd never have to buy plat again.  I could nickel and dime my way into prosperity just like I did on DCUO.  I'm not greedy. I have a thing in my inventory that I don't need, and I need plat.  I will undercut every single person on the trading post by as much as 20%.  EVERYTHING MUST GO. 

I (and others like me) am literally the reason why they can't do a hub.  It will lower the cost of plat for items, which lowers the need for plat. 

WHICH KILLS THE GAME.  

Warframe runs on plat sales.  If you lower the demand for plat in the game's economy you lower the actual money intake for DE and DE is trying desperately to figure out a way to introduce new content for everyone, and satisfy both long time players like myself (over 4k hours) and newer players...all at the same time.  With a game that doesn't cater to the plug and prestige crowd.  They need plat from pretty much everyone that touches the game.

All of the MMOs that have a hub also have a membership there OP.  It's not a coincidence.  

A hub kills plat sales which kills the game. You may now lock the thread.

you obviously dont know how the free market works. Supply and Demand.

even if you undercut everybody in a hypothetical  AA, your supply is limited, even if every trader undercut each other supplies are limited (eg: vaulted relics, hard to get mods, event items, baro items etc.)
yes item prices will drop sharply after introduction but prices will bounce back once supply of said items is exhausted, i have personally seen this many times with Baro items. (and no AA btw)

also an AA will get more players involved in the economy which means more potential plat sales for DE, and if trade is expanded, more plat sinks to avoid devaluation of currency.
also it will mitigate grind to some extent which in turn will lure more new players into the game which means more money.

btw do you have DE's financial records? how do you know that the game runs on plat sales exclusively? ever heard of prime access? or merchandise? or steam sales? 

a hub will not kill plat sales, it will kill absurd speculation which i assume you benefit from.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, Lord-KEK said:

you obviously dont know how the free market works. Supply and Demand.

Congratulations you understand the concept and from the looks of it, you understand how it works in the real world..... Where things are going to wear out, be used up and need to be repaired or replaced over time. 

None of that applies to the vast majority of the things that we can trade in warframe. 

1 hour ago, Lord-KEK said:

even if you undercut everybody in a hypothetical  AA, your supply is limited, even if every trader undercut each other supplies are limited (eg: vaulted relics, hard to get mods, event items, baro items etc.)
yes item prices will drop sharply after introduction but prices will bounce back once supply of said items is exhausted, i have personally seen this many times with Baro items. (and no AA btw)

Consider most items that have been around for a while. We're all constantly getting more of them, and have no use for them. So we try to sell them, but there are literally tens of millions of Tenno, each with multiple copies of the thing, and only a handful of newbs to sell them to. 

And if by some miracle you find someone to buy it, that person now counts on the sellers side of the equation, not the buyers. What have you got now? Even more competition..... Oh and as time goes, on more junk to sell. 

In the long view, supply for most items is, for all intents, near infinite. Demand on the other hand is highly finite. 

The prices won't truly bounce back for the vast majority of items. That's why prime junk is a thing. Spend a few hundred plat on prime junk and you'll get multiple complete sets. Spend a while on warframe.market and you will even occasionally find sets going for less than the price for prime junk. 

That what happens when supply outstrips demand. 

1 hour ago, Lord-KEK said:

a hub will not kill plat sales, it will kill absurd speculation which i assume you benefit from.

You guys really need to stop using this ridiculous argument. The only people whose prices wouldn't be affected by the change you propose are the ones who buy and resell rivens. Seriously, if you are going to try to poison the well, at least make sure that you have the right target ffs. 

[(PSN)BattleCry1791]

On 2019-09-01 at 6:43 AM, Lord-KEK said:

you obviously dont know how the free market works. Supply and Demand.

even if you undercut everybody in a hypothetical  AA, your supply is limited, even if every trader undercut each other supplies are limited (eg: vaulted relics, hard to get mods, event items, baro items etc.)
yes item prices will drop sharply after introduction but prices will bounce back once supply of said items is exhausted, i have personally seen this many times with Baro items. (and no AA btw)

also an AA will get more players involved in the economy which means more potential plat sales for DE, and if trade is expanded, more plat sinks to avoid devaluation of currency.
also it will mitigate grind to some extent which in turn will lure more new players into the game which means more money.

btw do you have DE's financial records? how do you know that the game runs on plat sales exclusively? ever heard of prime access? or merchandise? or steam sales? 

a hub will not kill plat sales, it will kill absurd speculation which i assume you benefit from.

Oh look another junior economist that doesn't understand that a Market is not a game of Monopoly.

A Market is indeed dictated by supply and demand, but that ebb and flow is cyclic based on the mechanisms that drive the market.  Warframe is a want based economy, not need based.  So the Buyer's dictate the price, not the Seller (Seller can only price what they think will sell at).  This creates a natural price point based not just on the want itself, but the frequency of the want.  It's not just about goods and trade, it's about activity and the amount of it.  The current model requires a considerable timesink that reduces trade frequency and makes outright buying plat an easier option.  Currently:

Farm a good
Post it in trade chat
Hope you find a buyer
Haggle over price
Meet in a Dojo, make transaction

In a hub setting:
Farm a good
Post for sale
maybe profit, maybe not, but it's no fuss no muss.  
Because of the nature of the Hub this also means you can trade more at a time with less energy and time spent  This leads to more trade activity overall.  At insanely reduced prices.

There is no "wiping the board" and starting from scratch in Warframe like in Monopoly.  If you throw up a hub, you'll have to contend with things like this; 

And I'm "poor" by the standards of most folks that have my time in game.  And that's just my relics.  Why do I have 5 Primed Fever Strikes?   Because I can. 

If they opened up a hub, the flood of goods into the Market would lower prices so dramatically that dramatically isn't an accurate word to use.  It doesn't really throw in the ZING factor.
This game has been out for 5+ years on all platforms.  There are players that are sitting on inventory, like me and far more than me because we can farm bigger ticket items and don't need to spend the time on the nickel/dime smaller stuff.

Items stay on a hub listing for 48 hours (or 72, depends on the model) and its a continuous loop of undercutting.  I've even seen "big wallet" players intentionally buy out lower priced items to jack up their own prices on those same items...only to be undercut by...well, me...just hours later.  

A hub at this point in the game's lifecycle would cause havoc with existing natural market pricing and lower the need for plat.  A lot of transactions are at the 5-10p level, with a hub they're at the 3-5p level and maybe less than that.  

And since there is no subscription for warframe, DE absolutely depends on microtransactions funded by currency purchases. 

I don't need to verify that Honda sells cars with engines and tires, and I don't need to understand that micro transactions coupled with access (which works like a DLC release) is the primary way DE monetizes warframe.  Because that's how the system works across the board.  EA made 1.68 billion dollars through "microtransactions" in 2018.  2K, Daybreak, Blizzard...you name it, they all pimp their in-game currencies for a reason - for games that they sold for 60-100 dollars(US) or have a monthly/yearly subscription.  And a Loot Box is just another form of plat.  
Merch sales?  Sure there is.  Primary income is tied to plat. Merch sales doesn't drive player retention.  

And here's the thing, I don't disagree that a hub is a far better way to go for the playerbase itself.  But you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater and harming the game to the point where you may kill it.  The only way I could see a hub as viable...is for Warframe to adopt a subscription service.

If you want to prove me wrong, find me a free to play game with a trading hub (And DCUO doesn't count, you have to pay to use the hub).  There's a fiscal reason it isn't done in Warframe.

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

1 hour ago, (PS4)BattleCry1791 said:

A hub at this point in the game's lifecycle would cause havoc with existing natural market pricing and lower the need for plat.

Just about everything you said was valid except for this part, I figure. 

The cost of each purchase would be lower, but so is the amount earned from each sale. I figure that it'll be even worse than what you suggested where 5-10 p items rapidly become 1-2p items over a few months as the smaller sums of plat most free players have managed to earn dry up. 

Right now, newbs with a bit of spare time, can easily grind for junk and sell it fund their purchases. A lot of newbs get greedy and that's why they have trouble selling. A lot of more experienced players can trade more expensive stuff and make plat from fewer sales. 

With an auction house, and the amount of undercutting it would allow, earning plat will become harder, so newbs will struggle even more, to buy slots and market items.... Unless they can afford to buy plat. 

That'll probably drive up some of the micro transactions, but it might also drive away people who may have stuck around and bought the bigger ticket items like Prime Access when they got more invested in the game. 

I figure that there'll be more plat purchases, but in smaller tranches. DE might earn more per plat, but less overall. 

[BoneBreakerx]

yay another way to avoid dojos... atm its pretty much the only use we have for dojos exept for clan research...

why not have everything in menus? why bother with pretty relays/dojos/hubs?

why do we even have orbiters? it slows down the proces of jumping from mission to mission...

/sarcasme (apperently not everyone understands that)

Edited September 5, 2019 by BoneBreakerx