Why not just add a store system?

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

I have heard a lot of complaints about a lot of things in this game, but the most irritating thing for me, to be honest...is the fact I have to stop playing to sell things. 

Warframe literally wants you to stop playing sometimes (like the items that take 12-72h to be created, or the 1,5h gap between eidolon hunts), it's no big deal at this moment because players don't really bother at all for some reason. 

But what annoys me the most is having to spend maybe hours of my day trying to sell items. I don't see any harm on a store system, you just put the items there with the price you want and forget about their existence. 

People buy it, you receive the platinum on the inbox, perfect.

Edited September 9, 2019 by (XB1)XG1anBl4derX

[GinKenshin]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

But what annoys me the most is having to spend maybe hours of my day trying to sell items. I don't see any harm on a store system, you just put the items there with the price you want and forget about their existence. 

People buy it, you receive the platinum on the inbox, perfect.

not perfect, at least not for DE. They want you to take time to get plat. If it's as easy as putting an item on a board and getting free plat if someone buys is they plat and PA/PV sales will go down the hole. If you want plat, then spend the time making it, period. 

[Jiminez_Burial]

DE have stated on multiple occasions that they want the trading in their game to be active, for people to converse with people and negotiate prices.

[Nez-Kal]

Side Note: If you've EVER put anything into Warframe.Market, then you know it's not as simple as "you just put the items there with the price you want and forget about their existence". You need to always keep an eye out on the Market and the Patchnotes. What's not Meta today could suddenly become insanely valuable tomorrow as Demand for it sykrockets, or what was an easy 120p sale (Looking at you, Eidolon Lens) becomes a "Must be at or lower to 80p" sale as DE updates the Lens's into the in-game Market for 80p.

Setting and Forgetting it a failing strategy as a Sales Person in this game. Just saying.


(Also, imagine the people complaining "WHAT?! X-Mod is super valuable now?! The Store System sold it to someone from my Inventory for only 5p before I had a chance to come home and alter the price!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!" if your system did exist. Heh.)

Edited September 9, 2019 by Tangent-Valley

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

7 minutes ago, Jiminez_Burial said:

for people to converse with people and negotiate prices.

What DE wants = this. 

What happens = people look for a price on the market.site, they check yours, if they don't like it normally is just a "F!^@ YOU" or "GTFO" right in your face. 

No negotiation happens most times.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

4 minutes ago, Tangent-Valley said:

Side Note: If you've EVER put anything into Warframe.Market, then you know it's not as simple as "you just put the items there with the price you want and forget about their existence". You need to always keep an eye out on the Market and the Patchnotes. What's not Meta today could suddenly become insanely valuable tomorrow as Demand for it sykrockets, or what was an easy 120p sale (Looking at you, Eidolon Lens) becomes a "Must be at or lower to 80p" sale as DE updates the Lens's into the in-game Market for 80p.

Setting and Forgetting it a failing strategy as a Sales Person in this game. Just saying.


(Also, imagine the people complaining "WHAT?! X-Mod is super valuable now?! The Store System sold it to someone from my Inventory for only 5p before I had a chance to come home and alter the price!!! REEEEEEEEE!!!!" if your system did exist. Heh.)

Your example is not even tangible, because no item has ever gone from 5 to 120, not even from 5 to 20. Actually, no item has ever raised the price above 50% as far as I know. 

So, no. What could happen is: the price decreases while you're farming/sleeping/etc. But, you would only lose costumers, not platinum. 

That's a low effort argument, a very low one honestly.

[Nez-Kal]

Just now, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

What DE wants = this. 

What happens = people look for a price on the market.site, they check yours, if they don't like it normally is just a "F!^@ YOU" or "GTFO" right in your face. 

No negotiation happens most times.

You've clearly gotten burned by one or two people, and given up. Negotiations ALWAYS happen, and you and your little comment won't suddenly change that reality.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

14 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

not perfect, at least not for DE. They want you to take time to get plat. If it's as easy as putting an item on a board and getting free plat if someone buys is they plat and PA/PV sales will go down the hole. If you want plat, then spend the time making it, 

That would just make the platinum on the market run out faster (and that is good for them lol), because: if it's easier to trade it, it becomes easier to spend.

[GinKenshin]

1 minute ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

That would just make the platinum on the market run out faster (and that is good for them lol), because: if it's easier to trade it, it becomes easier to spend.

Not quite. Plat will be more available, thus prices will go down hard, thus people purchasing less and less plat. It's basic economics 

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

3 minutes ago, GinKenshin said:

Not quite. Plat will be more available, thus prices will go down hard, thus people purchasing less and less plat. It's basic economics 

No, I don't think that's how economics work. If that was true, no economy would ever be able to establish itself due to how easy it is to trade nowadays. Your argument is a half-truth. 

Platinum wouldn't be easier to obtain, just faster, because someone would still have to pay for it. You actually didn't present an argument but just half of one in my opinion.

[GinKenshin]

18 minutes ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

No, I don't think that's how economics work. If that was true, no economy would ever be able to establish itself due to how easy it is to trade nowadays. Your argument is a half-truth. 

Platinum wouldn't be easier to obtain, just faster, because someone would still have to pay for it. You actually didn't present an argument but just half of one in my opinion.

Faster is easier. If yo don't need to waste hours looking at chat, but just write some stuff on a store and wait for plat to come in, it's still easier. Plus, people usually have lots of stuff in their inventory they can sell but don't want to since, again, it takes time and it's slow and hard. That someone who's paying for it also would have plenty to spare since making plat is faster/easier. Prices will also go down since the market will be saturated, thus there'll be less incentive to buy plat. At this point you have your answer, both from players and DE. You can call this feedback all you want but many others tried and it's still isn't changing. If you want plat, either buy it or spend the time making it, simple as that

 

Real life economy is of course not similar to this. I only brought up a general rule for economy, real life is totally different 

[Teitaka]

Also, if DE add a store like auction house, people would just start dumping EVERY prime part etc they have on there, and in a matter of an hour or so, pretty much EVERY tradable prime part in the game would beocme worth 1-7 plat (1p for 15 ducat items, 3p for 45 ducat and 7p for any rare parts (100 ducats)) with no exceptions, ruining the games economy.

[Jiminez_Burial]

1 hour ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

What DE wants = this. 

What happens = people look for a price on the market.site, they check yours, if they don't like it normally is just a "F!^@ YOU" or "GTFO" right in your face. 

No negotiation happens most times.

Then that's an issue with people.  It doesn't mean DE is just gonna give in.

[(PSN)NewcastleDisease]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb (XB1)XG1anBl4derX:

I have heard a lot of complaints about a lot of things in this game, but the most irritating thing for me, to be honest...is the fact I have to stop playing to sell things. 

Warframe literally wants you to stop playing sometimes (like the items that take 12-72h to be created, or the 1,5h gap between eidolon hunts), it's no big deal at this moment because players don't really bother at all for some reason. 

But what annoys me the most is having to spend maybe hours of my day trying to sell items. I don't see any harm on a store system, you just put the items there with the price you want and forget about their existence. 

People buy it, you receive the platinum on the inbox, perfect.

...i do not really get why someone feels forced to sell items for hours...

i never sold any item, and never had any restriction out of this. 

that DE don't want a store system is clear: the have to made some money, so they want players to buy plat. it's an easy system. but they gives players the option to sell items for plat. there is even a 3rd party market for this stuff.

so again.. don't get whats wrong with the system..

that said, if there would be a store system, the plat prices were extremly low, because you can always get it for less money at the next store. so the whole eco system (not that it would bother me) would be crashed, and for you stuff you would only get e few plats

Edited September 9, 2019 by (PS4)NewcastleDisease

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

I have to stop playing to sell things.

This, I think, is the absolute key thing for you to understand.

You have to stop playing to sell things because DE does not have dedicated servers for regular play. It's peer-to-peer, meaning that a player is hosting your session. Given this, and the base system that they handle accounts on (whenever you're in mission you are no longer directly connected to DE and therefore in a point where exploitation could take effect, meaning they do not update your actual account until you leave the mission and return to your Orbiter), if you are not somewhere there is a consistent connection to DE's system to prove no foul play is going on, then DE will not (maybe cannot) verify your transaction.

So even if DE implemented a store where you could advertise things while you were in game, given the way DE handles accounts, you still wouldn't be able to actually sell those things unless you stopped playing, because there is no guaranteed way to update you, specifically, with the changes to your account.

I mean, think about how many problems that would cause; a player is in a long-run mission for an hour or more, while they're gone, three of their items have been sold, but due to a power cut, the player loses their game and their PC is powered off. When they sign back in, the account hasn't updated because your game did not register you returning to your Orbiter from the mission, you neither get the rewards from the mission, nor the funds from the sales as you were in an unverifiable state when those sales happened. In case this is an attempt at scamming, where a player is trying to gain the funds or just troll the other player, the entire sale is void and a person who might have been playing with their new mods for an hour already suddenly has to have them removed from their account and their plat refunded.

Just for being peer-to-peer, DE has had to limit the trading options, and has said on several occasions that they prefer it this way anyway.

[PollexMessier]

An open market would be a bad idea for a number of reasons but I do feel players should be able to trade with each other a lot easier. The requirement of the clan dojo is somewhat annoying. Just having to go through an unnecessary loading screen and wait for the person with the slowest internet to load in before the trade can commence takes an extra bit of time that it really doesn't need to. Being able to trade with someone by just right clicking on their name in the chat would be a huge step up in convenience from the current system without breaking the economy balance.

Edited September 9, 2019 by PollexMessier

[LuckyCharm]

I dont think id care for a store, but i wouldnt say no to a notice board sorta thing, letting you post what you have for sale, then letting players message you to arrange a trade. 

[TheKazz91]

So I think there is a half way point here that could achieve what DE is trying to promote and the convenience that players want and expect out of the in game trading. 

So DE has stated that the act of trading must be active and it must promote community interaction. Something like an auction from typical MMOs is literally the exact opposite of both of those key points that DE wants. 

So solution: you have a listing board. It would work pretty much exactly the way Warframe.market works but with some trade offs.

- You have an item you list that Item for sale on the listing board in game. Buyers can search this listing board and compare standard asking prices directly IN-GAME. As well as have some sort of indication on if those prices are above or below averages for the last 24 hours/ 7 days/30 days.

- You can set how long you want the item to be listed but you have a maximum amount of total listing time per day based on your MR for all items you post. Let's just say that max is 4 hours plus 1 hour per MR so if you are MR6 you can list items for a total of 10 hours perday this could be 1 item listed for 10 hours or 20 items that are all listed for 30 minutes. (Though obviously you wouldn't be able to trade 20 items per day at MR6 so that might be a bit of a waste.) 

- When listing the item you select an asking price in plat and can put notes in as well like "Will trade for X". You have to pay a listing fee of some amount of credits. Probably a base amount plus some based on the rarity of the item and some percentage of the trade cost based on the amount of plat that was chosen as an asking price. 

- For as long as the item is listed other players can click on it to send the owner an offer that will go to that users inbox and/or a direct message to that person if they are online and available. 

- During the trade process after both players have accepted the system checks the listing board to see if either player had the items being traded listed for sale on there if that did it gives them the option to mark those items as sold or keep them listed (helpful if you have multiple copies of something to sell) as well as recording the trade for the purpose of getting actual sale value to compare average sale prices. (Assuming of course that it was just an exchange of one item for some amount of play if there are multiple items it gets a bit more complicated)

- If you mark something as sold you are refunded the remaining listing time remaining on that item back to your daily allotment. How ever you are NOT refunded for the listing cost.

- Potentially if DE wants to be real sweet hearts they can add functionality to the mobile app that lets us create and manage our listings from the App and receive and respond to trade offers as SMS or Push Notifications from the app.

Personally I feel like this solution is a good compromise. Functionally it doesn't change how 95% of trade takes place today it just makes it slightly more convenient and user friendly as it cuts out warframe.market acting as the middle man to provide this service which just means people don't need to alt+tab over to their web browser. Trade still needs to be active and requires you make offers and counter offers and barter prices in most situations. You still need to actively group up to deliver those items and complete a trade. Again the process is virtually unchanged just stream lined to be entirely in-game. But that added convince comes with costs to using it too that discourage/prevent people from just listing everything they have and over saturating the market and driving plat prices into the ground.

Edited September 11, 2019 by TheKazz91

[Scar.brother.help.me]

All I wish to be changed is whatever way to avoid loading screens. Hell with this Dojo thing, allow manual trade in chats, that's it. Or do whatever else to make the exchange fast and easy as GIFTs. I need it as a buyer, not a seller ffs. Sometimes I just want to buy prime parts for ducats because I am lazy and Baro is a busy guy. But if there isn't a guy on the marker with at least 10 pieces I won't even bother. I want to spend plat, but flying to dojo or waiting for a few guys for every trade to load is megafun..

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

Ironically people keep saying that a vending system will drive prices down, demand down, and reduce platinum sales when in reality it will do the total opposite. 

Seriously defend your position that de wants people to have to talk to each other. Do not argue it would drive down prices or reduce plat sales becuase that fails logic checks and lacks basic economic model sense. 

There is a reason vending machines exist, provably people will pay more just to have easy access, instant gratification, and not have to deal with people, it also asks players to step out of a game to exchange a meaningfully irrelevant amount of plat on one mod instead of doing something more important or enjoyable. 

A lot of businesses that have high passer by counts are trying to eliminate vending machines in favor of a store. Because they are making people with more important jobs act as cashiers, these businesses are now suffering economic losses becuase the"cashier" missed a call worth 30 thousand dollars or more annually because they were taking two dollars in cash from a passer by they will never ever see again. Forced human interaction is not a positive business model when it is neither needed nor wanted. 

[FrostDragoon]

On 2019-09-09 at 1:33 AM, GinKenshin said:

not perfect, at least not for DE. They want you to take time to get plat. If it's as easy as putting an item on a board and getting free plat if someone buys is they plat and PA/PV sales will go down the hole. If you want plat, then spend the time making it, period. 

Same fallacy across so many games it's ridiculous. Rare items will still be worth more, and in the case of Warframe, it's likely to increase plat purchases from players because the access to sellers would increase--not just access to buyers. Yours is a common, but flawed view.

[FrostDragoon]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Ironically people keep saying that a vending system will drive prices down, demand down, and reduce platinum sales when in reality it will do the total opposite. 

Seriously defend your position that de wants people to have to talk to each other. Do not argue it would drive down prices or reduce plat sales becuase that fails logic checks and lacks basic economic model sense. 

There is a reason vending machines exist, provably people will pay more just to have easy access, instant gratification, and not have to deal with people, it also asks players to step out of a game to exchange a meaningfully irrelevant amount of plat on one mod instead of doing something more important or enjoyable. 

A lot of businesses that have high passer by counts are trying to eliminate vending machines in favor of a store. Because they are making people with more important jobs act as cashiers, these businesses are now suffering economic losses becuase the"cashier" missed a call worth 30 thousand dollars or more annually because they were taking two dollars in cash from a passer by they will never ever see again. Forced human interaction is not a positive business model when it is neither needed nor wanted. 

This is the best post in this thread. Well done.

[Skyfire151]

7 hours ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Ironically people keep saying that a vending system will drive prices down, demand down, and reduce platinum sales when in reality it will do the total opposite. 

This is a misunderstanding of the problem people are trying to point out. An in-game auction house or similar will not drive demand down - as you say, it will probably push demand up at least somewhat. I doubt it will fundamentally affect DE's plat sales in either direction, but if I was going to guess I'd pick a slight increase in sales - again, just as you say. But that doesn't mean it won't screw up the player economy - the ones who suffer won't be DE or people buying mods/primes, it will be the people trying to sell things: exactly the ones who are supposedly going to benefit from this.

The problem is that an in-game auction house would significantly increase the available supply of items.

MMO economies are inherently balanced towards over-supply of everything. Any given player usually only needs one copy of any given item*, but anyone who spends any length of time playing is almost certainly going to produce more than one of most things. That is, on average players produce more than they consume. If you really care about this stuff, look up MUDflation - this is a long way from a new problem (the name 'MUDflation' apparently dates back to 1993), and there's plenty of discussion about it out there in professional game-design circles. (The wikipedia article focuses more on the gold-supply side, which is less relevant to this discussion; that's definitely not the only piece to the puzzle, though.)

As an example, the Wildfire nightmare mod is selling on warframe.market for 3 plat right now - it's a 19% drop chance from the easiest nightmare missions. How many of those do you suppose dropped across the entire playerbase during the recent Nightwave challenge to do 10 nightmare missions? How many spare copies were players already sitting on from farming the missions for Blaze or Hammer Shot (1% drop from the same mission), or from newbies trying out nightmare missions because they just unlocked them? The answer is almost certainly 'way more than one-per-player'.

You can do the same calculation for most things in game - the only reason they keep any value at all is that most of the players who have large amounts of them sitting in their inventory don't try to sell them, and the reason they don't is because it's too much effort. Make it easy and painless to sell things and a lot of those stockpiles would suddenly hit the market as players think 'Hey, maybe I can get some easy plat off this'. Then you get a race to the bottom, and the only reason that things might still be worth 1 plat is that the game doesn't allow you to trade plat in fractions.

High-ranking Arcanes would probably still actually be worth something (but I expect anything that drops from the Teralyst would be at least cheap, if not close to worthless), as would god-roll or meta-weapon Rivens, but that's pretty much it. Baro's items would keep some value, but probably not nearly as much as they're worth now - prime junk would be cheaper, so ducats would also be cheaper. Vaulted primes are hard to predict; prices are pretty much guaranteed to go down (there will be more supply), it's just hard to know how much they'll drop. If there are players with significant stockpiles of parts/relics, they'll drop a lot; if there are only relatively limited stockpiles out there then prices will only be dragged down a bit by the fact that everything else just got so much cheaper.

Everything else would be nearly worthless. @Teitaka predicted up-thread that all common prime parts would be worth 1 plat each - for a fully liquid market, I'd say that's an upper limit. If it's possible to advertise 5-for-4 plat or something similar, then they'll fall even lower than that. Uncommon and rare will be worth 4x and 7x whatever a common part is worth because of the ducat conversion ratios.

I've seen people make real-world comparison a couple of times, but there are some key differences between real-life trade and Warframe: items in Warframe never break or wear out, they have very low barriers to entry for production, and the per-unit cost for most things is literally nothing but time. That's not a good mix for keeping the sale value of something high.

 

*Maybe as high as 3-4 copies if you want multiple different ranks of a corrupted mod or different polarisations for two different frame/weapon builds, but that's A) a relatively rare situation, and B) still a small, finite quantity so the logic still holds.

[FrostDragoon]

It still reads as "this will tank prices," no matter how you dress it up, and you're only addressing a couple small dimensions of the economy. AH-style systems actually work really well, but people keep buying into the same lies and fallacies over and over again, so they are convinced that the barter system--the literal worst trading system in human/gaming history--is somehow better when it isn't. The ability to easily convert your labor into currency is the real world system we use now, and is the secret behind AH systems. The fact that ducat conversion exists means there is a soft floor on how low prices can really go before people buy up all the cheap stuff to convert into more valuable Baro goods. As with every game with an AH system, the self-regulating nature of a mostly free market makes it the most elegant and successful.

[Skyfire151]

59 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

The ability to easily convert your labor into currency is the real world system we use now, and is the secret behind AH systems.

Here's the thing: the fundamental value of 'your labor' in an economy balanced like Warframe's is effectively zero. Whatever it is you're doing, chances are someone else is willing to do it effectively for free (and in fact, someone probably already is doing it purely for the fun of it, they're just not selling the proceeds). The easier it gets to make the conversion from labor to currency, the closer the conversion rate comes to it's true value - nothing.

Unless there's a barrier-to-entry somewhere, then a proper free market will lower prices. That's what they do. For that matter, that's exactly what everyone praises it for in the real world: making the economy more efficient and therefore raising people's standard of living by dropping prices. It's the non-free markets with significant external interference that are famous for having high prices on goods.

Ducat conversion is not much of a safety feature - Baro goods are valuable because of the cost of prime junk, not the other way round. If prime junk prices drop, that puts downward pressure on those Baro goods. If 15 ducats is 1 plat, then most Baro items should cost roughly 20-40 plat. That's where I'd expect them to settle, and it's what, maybe 20% of current values?

You're right that a free market is elegant and efficient and self-regulating and all that stuff - and if we introduce it to Warframe, it will elegantly and efficiently cause prices to tank.