Why not just add a store system?

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

"gradual decline in prices over longer periods of time..."

Maybe because there is a lack of demand as most people already have the items in question, or they've been unvaulted several times, increasing the available supply, or newer, better frames or weapons have been released that make previous items/frames less desirable and possibly only wanted to complete collections and MR ranks... or do you expect everything to hold to a specific price over the life of the game? Vaulted things still hold a value, especially for newer people joining now, who never had access to them, and will always hold value to those people, unless new ways to acquire them become available (as has been talked about for the earliest vaulted relics).

I certainly wouldn't attribute this phenomenon solely to the warframe.market... there's more going on here.

As I've said before, allowing everyone access to trading what they have will remove the "false scarcity" that leads to the currently artificially inflated prices of some things, but that's not anything near a "market crash" that doom and gloom people propose. I've experienced enough AH's to know this, playing since Ultima Online days, (and MUDs before that)... what does that make it... 30 years of online gaming. Yeah, at least 30 years of experience in many games. AH's don't ruin economies. I'm getting tired of this blame game and scapegoating to defend the laziness of not adding this feature to a modern game.

Yeah, this is starting to frustrate me... the whole banging one's head against a brick wall phenomenon I hate forums for. Almost pointless to discuss this with other players. Perhaps the absurdity of the claims against AH's will pile up enough to change something in the minds of the devs, when faced with the creative solutions presented in past games and with currently still working AH's not ruining their economies.

(the fact that this game uses the premium currency is a notch in its favor, not against it, btw... as I've tried to point out several times. In-game currency AH's are easily plagued by run-away inflation (mudflation) due to infinite methods to make it, trying to balance it with currency sinks in the form of fees, consumables, travel costs, etc, which are all unnecessary in Warframe, being entirely protected from this downside to in-game economies, due to the currency requiring real money to introduce to the mix.)

And thus, the headache starts again. It just pains me to watch these points (and others) go completely ignored, while the same old trash talk is dished out against AH's, based on "economics" students who think they just know this economy would be ruined if everybody got a chance to take part in it.

Works better when you use the forum quote tool. Or at least @ me. 

You can disagree about the cause all you want to, and I support your right to do so because I know that it's impossible to attribute it to just a single factor. However that cuts both ways.

What's worse is that all of the alternatives you suggest indicate that supply is potentially infinite while demand is highly finite. If you add an AH you increase the number of potential sellers, but only adding new players, who have plat, and wish to spend it in trade, and are online, can increase demand. 

So actual concurrent supply takes a quantum leap, while demand remains near constant. Maybe you should ask an "economics student" to explain what effect that would have on price? Or maybe you'd like to take a look at Lin Ostrom's Nobel prize winning work Governing the Commons to get a better idea of the sort of thing that need to be done to prevent that race to zero, and how very insanely unlikely they would be to happen here? (But hey she's probably just a mere student too, or whatever.) Maybe you should start back at Lloyd with his ideas on overgrazing, where the greedy few cause chain reactions throughout the entire group which causes us to end up destroying what we're hoping to continue to use for a long time, because someone had the bright idea that they could take more and benefit themselves without thinking about what would happen to the whole system. 

 

But hey, I definitely get the impression that people supporting AHs have spent way too much time banging their heads on brick walls. Not doing that might actually be a good idea. Leaves terrible stains on the wall I hear. 

[FrostDragoon]

2 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

based on "economics" students who think they just know this economy would be ruined if everybody got a chance to take part in it.

 

6 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

... (nothing important)

Yeah, sounds about right.

[(XBOX)Duke DEFCON]

Honestly, I like the system we have now. It's rewarding for those that put the time in.

[FrostDragoon]

11 minutes ago, (XB1)Taz Deduction said:

Honestly, I like the system we have now. It's rewarding for those that put the time in.

And it's a scam for everyone else. Not to mention a waste of time for those that don't have immense amounts of time to put into it.

[peterc3]

4 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

AH's don't ruin economies.

Can you point to a game where one was added after the fact and not built in from the beginning?

[FrostDragoon]

7 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

Can you point to a game where one was added after the fact and not built in from the beginning?

EverQuest

[Althaline]

32 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

EverQuest

See how much better your argument looks when you actually give examples rather than just insulting everyone who disagrees with you?

[FrostDragoon]

27 minutes ago, Iamabearlulz said:

See how much better your argument looks when you actually give examples rather than just insulting everyone who disagrees with you?

You're confusing correlation with causation. I don't insult people who disagree with me. I insults trolls/idiots/white knights, because their arguments are EXTREMELY bad and completely devoid of logic. As for giving examples, I'll say a few things about that:

1) Google exists. Use it if you really want an example and aren't just making bad faith arguments. "Give examples" is usually a playground argument, the kind your future ex-girlfriend will use to make a stupid claim that everyone knows is false but is banking on how hard it actually is to cite hyper specific things about your relationship from memory--nevermind the fact that this is usually a distraction from the fact that their own argument holds no water whatsoever. When I tell people the information is out there and that they should look for it themselves, it's because they have the power to fix their own ignorance. They simply don't want to.

2) Not all good ideas have historical precedent. You think the Wright Brothers had any examples of people being able to fly? There were plenty of nay-sayers for that too, I guarantee it! Now international flight is a common and important part of modern life (at least on the macro scale).

3) "Give an example" is often a form of the Begging The Question fallacy, They assume that no examples exist or that those that do all have the same particulars as the point they want to make. Not only are the other examples rarely (if ever) an apples to apples comparison, but it is equally rare that externalities are accounted for.

4) Giving examples is mostly only useful for proving a point has some level of validity, not for disproving the validity of something. It's the "prove God doesn't exist" problem. Evidence generally points to the affirmation of something, rarely the denial of it, and even those denials hinge on other logical mechanisms to be true (such as the mutually exclusive nature of two potential truths--if one is true, the other cannot be).

There's plenty more I could say about it, but I think I've made my point.

Edited September 27, 2019 by FrostDragoon

[peterc3]

58 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

1) Google exists. Use it if you really want an example and aren't just making bad faith arguments. "Give examples" is usually a playground argument, the kind your future ex-girlfriend will use to make a stupid claim that everyone knows is false but is banking on how hard it actually is to cite hyper specific things about your relationship from memory--nevermind the fact that this is usually a distraction from the fact that their own argument holds no water whatsoever. When I tell people the information is out there and that they should look for it themselves, it's because they have the power to fix their own ignorance. They simply don't want to.

Google gives information, it does not provide context. It is great at the "what" and sometimes "how", but is frighteningly devoid of solid "why"s.

EQ adds an AH after the fact. What is sold in that AH? What existed before the AH? What was the game like before and after? This is not the type of stuff that Google can give you.

To then have people assert that an AH being added into Warframe because X or Y game has it is meaningless. Warframe is not WoW is not EQ is not GW2. The fact they are games that lots of people play at once is not a reason to think system A from one game would fit into another game.

1 hour ago, FrostDragoon said:

2) Not all good ideas have historical precedent. You think the Wright Brothers had any examples of people being able to fly? There were plenty of nay-sayers for that too, I guarantee it! Now international flight is a common and important part of modern life (at least on the macro scale).

Hyperbole demonstrates an unseriousness that is extremely uncompelling. Warframe adding in an AH does not have anywhere close to the impact of the invention of human flight. Why not expand on the AH's impact on the game you mentioned?

[AureliusVarro]

@FrostDragoon Maybe let's do a petition for DE to address the store system, and at least split split chat/add in-chat selling?

[FrostDragoon]

50 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

1. Google gives information, it does not provide context. It is great at the "what" and sometimes "how", but is frighteningly devoid of solid "why"s.

EQ adds an AH after the fact. What is sold in that AH? What existed before the AH? What was the game like before and after? This is not the type of stuff that Google can give you.

To then have people assert that an AH being added into Warframe because X or Y game has it is meaningless. Warframe is not WoW is not EQ is not GW2. The fact they are games that lots of people play at once is not a reason to think system A from one game would fit into another game.

2. Hyperbole demonstrates an unseriousness that is extremely uncompelling. Warframe adding in an AH does not have anywhere close to the impact of the invention of human flight. Why not expand on the AH's impact on the game you mentioned?

1. I already acknowledged the limitations of examples in my refutation of them as having much value in this conversation, so I'm not sure what you're really trying to argue here.

2. It wasn't hyperbole. It was an example where "common knowledge" proved to be wrong despite historical precedent (or lack of).

If you want to know more about EQ's AH system (known as Bazaar), I can provide more on that later when I have more time to devote to such a post. The reason I didn't when listing it as an example earlier was simply because it was an off-the-cuff reply with no real thought needed to provide it and nobody bothered to ask for more info until now.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I prefer not to list specific games that have or don't have certain features, because I know it will devolve into nitpicking and comparisons that will lead Anti-AH'ers to say, "AhHA! See, it has X, Warframe doesn't, so it doesn't work." (however, some have already been mentioned)

The problem there is, I've never seen an AH ruin a game's economy over 30 years and dozens of online games. Some allow premium currency, others don't. Even the economies that allow infinite production of in-game currencies still have functioning AH's and the economies aren't ruined  Even Diablo 3's real money AH debacle couldn't be blamed on the AH itself, but on other poor game features (mostly to do with their itemization and class systems, but I saw many more issues) which the AH only managed to amplify.

So, in my 30 years, I've never seen an AH ruin an economy, providing no historical evidence of the doom and gloom anti-AH people claim. So for all the people asking for a game with an AH that trades premium currency that works... I've yet to see an AH do the opposite. This is what undermines any argument I see against AH's, and why I see it so silly for them to ask for examples where they work... I mean... *randomly points his finger at online games with AH's that work.* there... and there... and there...  (and as I said above, the whole premium currency vs in-game currency thing tips things vastly in DE's favor of the AH not crashing or experiencing run-away mudflation along with RMT botting to create currency to sell to players - since that literally can't happen here - purchases via stolen credit cards withstanding - and that's criminal.)

I see no real benefit to the game as a whole by limiting the number of people who can trade to those who are willing to endure trade chat, or go to 3rd party websites to search or list items for sale. While the current system may be "good enough" for the current traders, it's non-existent for the non-traders. Keeping trade off-limits to many people to keep the market small to keep supply low, to keep demand up... is a... well... almost a deluded way of looking at the health of Warframe's market. It's got a nice shiny coat of paint on it, but it's not so pretty underneath.

DE does not make money from players trading between one another. They make their money when people buy plat from their plat shop. People getting plat-rich in the game's current economy doesn't help DE. Those rich people aren't buying more slots, and every 3 months they might spend 400 plat on a new warframe instead of playing the game to get it. People with little plat, who don't play the market, who rarely trade due to the hurdles involved, are the ones actually making purchases from DE's shop, draining plat from the market.

I HIGHLY doubt people buy plat from DE just to buy things from other players... aside from Rivens, and that's a whole nother ball of wax I'd rather not step in. I like clean shoes.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by (PS4)AyinDygra

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

Look. Let's all just stop and take a moment to realize the following truth. Neither those who are for having a built in store where you can sell your stuff, or against having an in game auction block or store or what ever...have any actual evidence to support our arguments either way... 

If DE did this. It would change the market. None of you have any certain way of knowing rather it would be in a positive or negative direction.

What DE could do is try this. Create a store where you have to buy store space. Not really intended to be for long term, just a control mechanic so that they can just run it as a test system. Charge players who want to run a store 10% of their credits rather that's low or high for each day they run the store until they run out or close their shop. Each store can only hold ten unique items, sets, such as prime weapons, prime frames, etc, can hold the entire set in one slot, mods can be stacked up to 5 deep. Do it for one month. See if it catastrophically effects the market place, and if it does, remove it. If it doesn't, remove the credit cost instead and just let people run a vendor for 10 items at a time, but have the store set to expire when you log out for the day so each time you log in you have to take time to reset your store. This effectively prevents DE from having to host a massive amount of stored data but just dedicating a portion of your own session, running in the background. Just be really public that this is a "test" and "we are NOT responsible for any items that get lost if some part of this system crashes, if the market crashes and you lose rare stuff your selling?............... That is wholey on you." just wait and see if it picks up before putting major effort into supporting the feature and if it turns out to be harming the economy just pull it. That simple. Warframe would not be the only game that is offering vending machines for players to sell their trash. 

Edited September 30, 2019 by (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx

[FrostDragoon]

34 minutes ago, (PS4)Black-Cat-Jinx said:

Neither those who are for having a built in store where you can sell your stuff, or against having an in game auction block or store or what ever...have any actual evidence to support our arguments either way... 

Wrong. We have evidence of it both ways. We have seen examples of good AH and bad AH. DE only has to learn from them and integrate it appropriately. They don't need all these convoluted "systems" and "controls" that people keep going on about. It's exactly those things that make the current market such a $#!7-show.

[(PSN)Black-Cat-Jinx]

22 minutes ago, FrostDragoon said:

Wrong. We have evidence of it both ways. We have seen examples of good AH and bad AH. DE only has to learn from them and integrate it appropriately. They don't need all these convoluted "systems" and "controls" that people keep going on about. It's exactly those things that make the current market such a $#!7-show.

No model is considered viable for evidentiary purposes until tested. It is fair to say that yes DE could use the discussion to build a test model, but until they do, or rather unless they do, both sides of the conversation are purely statements of opinion based on the mutually incomplete understanding of those on both sides. For instance. Economists know how our current global economy works. They know how, if there were some form of catastrophic disaster, to rebuild our current economy if they had to. They do not, how ever, have any way to be certain that our current economy is the best potential economic model, or even if it, ultimately, is even a "good" economic model or just the one that has so far failed to collapse (entirely)..(yet)...

So really all they have to go on here is opinions, they will not really know what effects a new economy will have until they actually build and test a model. Personally i believe adding a vending system will ultimately help the game as the majority of the players are not looking for tens of thousands of plat... The first tier buyers are looking to get things they need to play the game. Mods, weapons, etc. The second tier are people who are looking to buy cosmetics, maybe pick up a few grind heavy pieces of equipment for mastery, it's not really until you get to the higher tiers of players who have mastered everything and aren't overly interested in spending their plat that just kind of participating in the economy for a pass time. which... Is actually kind of similar to how the actual capitalist economy tends to work... The optimal economic function exists in the first two tiers and usually the third is contirbuting little but none the less has the majority of the available funds concentrated at the top... For instance one of those players may have access to extremely rare mods or equipment for having played a longer time..... but do they really need platinum when they already have tens of thousands? It reaches a point where bothering to participate in the economy at all becomes beneath the worth of their time... And again for these players, a vending store would be optimal because they don't really "need" more plat at this point, which means if they have to go out of their way to make sales or trades, they just won't. but if they can just set it and forget it, they might be more interested.

At least there's nothing outside of the warframe environment that people can do with this crypto currency seeing as people with too much of any currency tend to find objectively stupid things to do with it like "duhh im going to make a space program so i can kill people by sending them to mars" or "lol im going to destroy 30% of the economy and destroy millions of plebeian lives because i want automated cars and i haven't bothered to consider how much destruction I'm causing". there's probably a few people who could just unload all their plat onto newly starting players and totally wreck the entire economic model here.

Anyway, if this were a closed system where there is a fixed amount of plat in circulation it would be easier to predict the outcome of changes to the market... As it stands, all that DE can do is build a test model, and see what happens. It can be informed by opinions.... But they are still just opinions. 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

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

So really all they have to go on here is opinions, they will not really know what effects a new economy will have until they actually build and test a model.

I figure that you are wrong. Here's why. 

Warframe.market was added to the mix, it's held up as an example of what people want. But the bump in supply created by the addition of warframe.market caused a significant drop in prices, so much so that threads were created at the time to complain about the effects. 

People also complain about the continued decline in prices. 

 

Now bear in mind that Warframe.market lists only a fraction of the existing accounts. So I contend that it's limited scale introduction is the model for the addition of an auction house. 

Having the whole population added as potential sellers will impact prices that much more. The prices will continue to decline as seen currently, but that much more. 

Will we hit rock bottom in a day? Unlikely. Will we hit rock bottom in a year? That's far more probable. It's already happened to some items under the current system with items going for prime junk value, with the occasional person undercutting even that. People who refuse to admit that this is likely, are either deluding themselves, or ignoring the current state of affairs. 

[Grahark]

Funny thing about this discussion is people trying to compare the actual economy of the entire real world, to an economy in a game where everything purchasable is not necessary in order to play the game. 

There are a myriad of great AH examples listed by me and others.

An AH would only benefit the community as a QoL system and most likely would help the game grow.

I put this game down for a while and played DDO, and then moved on to GW2. Both games have a well refined , streamlined and completely safe and secure, bot free AH system. 

Those that oppose an AH are merely doing so in order to keep the market where they like it without regard to the new player experience. The fact that newer players coming in and then recommending the game to other would be new players is only good for DE's bottom line. 

"Veterans" or "noobs" matters not. It is simply a request to improve the experience for any player trying to earn free plat through gameplay instead of dropping 5 bucks into DE's pocket. 

AH's that I have experienced at least require 1 unit of premium currency per trade. In this case 1 plat per transaction for "premium" items i.e. prime parts/mods.

Now if we could dump ALL resources onto a market that people could pay plat or credits for i.e nuerodes/mutagen mass/ etc etc would be an improvement to the game.

Armchair economists will have all their "theories" proven wrong. The market will stay stable due to the fact that the community will set the prices, and those that are trying to milk the uneducated purchasers will only be the ones disenfranchised. 

Brass tax is the fact that these "veterans" actually know how to most effectively use the market compared to new players. These same "veterans" with this knowledge no longer use real money to purchase plat. DE wants plat to be purchased, by us all. 

[FrostDragoon]

Since a certain chimp keeps repeating the same dumb argument, here's the skinny about prices dropping:

1. If an AH system that allows fair participation in the market results in lower prices, this indicates artificial inflation of those goods.

2. Inflation decreases buying power, which discourages plat purchases. The inverse is also true; lower prices encourages plat purchases.

3.

• a) If an item drops to 1p and isn't being flipped by wealthier players, it's not actually valuable.
• b) If an item is valuable, or has some way to convert into something that is, people will buy up those 1p items in bulk. Prime parts are a great example, because they can be translated into ducats, which can then be used for a wide variety of personal or market opportunities.
• c) If b happens, the prices on those items will begin to climb again, which is the stabilizing effect that AH systems have on economies.

4. AH doesn't just introduce more sellers to the market. It attracts more buyers too. Facilitating trade will do more to retain more players in the long run, which represents an increase in the game's broader status among games in general and in DE's bottom line if you assume the Pareto principle in that 20% of players will buy platinum (this actually refers to whales, but still). If you increase your player base by 100, you gain 20 buyers, basically. This isn't a hard and fast statistic, obviously, but is a generalized rule that is reasonable to assume as true. Even if you want to debate the exact numbers, you can't argue the logic--more players translates into more buyers.

5. The prices of particular goods is in no way an indicator of the health of the economy. The access to income and the ratio of buying power it represents is far more meaningful.

There's your free economics lesson for the day. Since I know that troll is pretending to ignore me, I just want to say to him, "Educate yourself."

[-Kittens-]

On 2019-09-09 at 2:45 AM, Tangent-Valley said:

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.

Not even kind of. Trade Chat is a mess of ignorance and opinion, and not much else. People routinely both over advertise and overpay or underpay by expecting proposed theoretical prices barfed out on discord to be the actual norm, and that's during a point in the game where the riven market has literally cratered, because there aren't terribly many players playing right now compared to the actual install base, and most of these are new players that simply want the current meta before the parents take away the credit card, especially on consoles.

Forced social interaction is a sum negative and content creators don't play PUGS unless they're trying to prove a point about the social aspects of a game, as in the case where two partners recently making videos about how easy WF is, literally showed themselves AFKing in a public group, a group they never normally play with ever, and the reason is they don't want to, and the reason they don't want to is 1 Atterax Saryn or 2 players more invested in talking than playing cause WF is both very easy and very wide, but not very deep which is completely coincidentally conducive to the kind of behavior we have now where try hard macro guy camps the akkad northwest spawn while the people actually defending the pod get zero affinity.

The reality is your anecdotal evidence doesn't hold up, and if you spent any actual time in trade area you'd know that. Also your fanciful notion that someone in their spare time between one to two jobs should also hang out in glorified IRC to "meet new friends and exciting opportunities in trade!!!" is literally what a child with no actual responsibilities thinks.

Other games have automated markets because it's the de facto method of what people do in a game you actually play.

Edited September 30, 2019 by -Kittens-

[FrostDragoon]

3 minutes ago, -Kittens- said:

Also your fanciful notion that someone in their spare time between one to two jobs should also hang out in glorified IRC to "meet new friends and exciting opportunities in trade!!!" is literally what a child with no actual responsibilities thinks.

Other games have automated markets because it's the de facto method of people do in a game you actually play.

This can't be emphasized enough. The trolls who oppose AH always say, "It's rewarding if you invest enough time into it," but people with jobs don't want to invest their free time into a second digital job. They want to invest it into playing the game! AH solves this.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

The whole "AH will make it harder for newbs to make plat" because prices crash... has been addressed. Yes, prices will likely fall. Most "Prime Junk" will still sell for a minimum of 1 plat in any AH I'd design or support. Whereas most newbs wouldn't use trade chat or know about warframe.market, an in-game AH would make it abundantly clear that they could sell some of their stuff there, and a price history would show them that their item is worth 1 plat. They could then list it and go along their merry way, playing more Warframe until it sells (and it will, because people want prime junk). Now, this newb that would never have seen any value (0 plat) from their drop suddenly have a little plat. It will take a week at MR3 to get a slot (3 prime parts a day at 1 plat each)... which is something I could see a F2P person finding reasonable. (even less time for a couple weapon slots.)

Now, if a F2P person wants to get cosmetics and stuff, they'll have to get more rare wares (like rare mods, axi-gold-tier prime pieces, etc) to get to their plat goals in more reasonable time periods... or buy plat for themselves from DE, which is a good thing for the game's devs and thus the longevity of the game. I don't think people having access to a little plat like this would hurt the game. I think it would benefit more in the long run with retention of new players, and those new players having frames that they now want to buy cosmetics for, and putting forma into... and it goes on, with benefits, as far as I can see.

 

There are many ways to mitigate the downsides, and many are already in the game. A crashed economy (I don't see it crashing as hard as the doomsayers because the Prime Vault, and other factors that help things keep their value) only really hurts the people who like the status quo right now... that is a very small market that leaves out (I'd say) most of the playerbase to retain its false appearance of health. I do not accept the conclusions of doom and gloom based on comparisons with real world economic forces. They're just too different from in games.

While consumables and deteriorating things requiring replacement play a large role in the "real life" economy, it's not entirely applicable to a game economy. I don't think they're essential for a game economy (especially Warframe's) - and yet, Warframe does have such things (forma that gets used up per slot modified, ayatans dissolved into endo to be consumed in ranking up mods, reactors and catalysts are one-time consumable upgrades, but the things they can be put in are a growing list as the game introduces new frames and weapons... and I could go on.)

I've given this all a lot of thought, with the interconnected systems and ramifications, and I don't see an outcome that is worse than what we have now, with so many people not even really able to take part in trading currently, compared to what we'd have with an in-game AH.

 

PS: I write this as one of the poor commoners who some think I'm trying to hurt.

As far as I'm concerned, stuff going from 0 plat value to 1 plat value, is a massive boon, not the end of the world (if you think prices will fall below that, as I said, the automated AH could have that stipulated to be the minimum value allowed, requiring lower prices - multiple items for 1 plat - to be conducted the same as we see now, over trade chat and other means, which will take more work, and will be less convenient - people pay for speed and convenience), and as the market comes down from its artificially inflated heights, player-player transactions will be cheaper, making each plat be "worth more"... and the plat sinks will still be there, cosmetics and slots for the most part (boosters, frames & weapons fully built not withstanding) . My main purchases over the years have been from DE's plat market for slots and a couple cosmetics... not from other players so much (I bought 1 fluctus part and 1 prime warframe piece, I think, from players... and I've sold about just under a dozen Ayatan sculptures for plat. I'm no trading tycoon, and I don't expect to get rich off of the introduction of an AH... the game just becomes playable by more people.)

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

16 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Most "Prime Junk" will still sell for a minimum of 1 plat in any AH I'd design or support.

You think that you can dictate the prices of the free market? Or that sellers need your support and permission to undercut the current minimum? 

You're not going to be able to control this genie once you let it out of the bottle. 

 

Hell, you even talk about price history. Price history is meaningless. Firstly because all it would show is the asking price, and secondly because it doesn't correlate to the actual amount paid for the item. The only thing that counts is what price you are about to agree to.

 

I often buy stuff at substantial discounts from the current lowest online price on warframe.market and half of the time I get that discount from the people who are currently offering it at the lowest price because I negotiate with the sellers (which some people think is impossible). So how does your price history hold up to what I do? 

16 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

As far as I'm concerned, stuff going from 0 plat value to 1 plat value, is a massive boon, not the end of the world

Clipped it by the parentheses because it was just too long. Hope you can understand. 

Set your greed and sloth aside for just a few minutes. You think that the items that you currently can't sell will magically begin to sell. Explain why. 

 

 

Because if the price has dropped to 1 plat, it's because nobody is willing to buy it for more than that. Why would that be? Oh right because the vast majority of us already own that particular piece of junk. And all of us have multiple copies available for sale too. So where are your magical customers, willing to spend one plat, coming from? And why do you think that they won't prefer to buy from any of the millions of other sellers? Remember on an auction house our goods are identical, there's no advantage that you can create other than dropping the price. 

 

I'm sorry but that entire premise of yours doesn't add up. 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)guzmantt1977 said:

Quoted me saying: Most "Prime Junk" will still sell for a minimum of 1 plat in any AH I'd design or support.

~

You think that you can dictate the prices of the free market? Or that sellers need your support and permission to undercut the current minimum? 

You're not going to be able to control this genie once you let it out of the bottle.

Hell, you even talk about price history. Price history is meaningless. Firstly because all it would show is the asking price, and secondly because it doesn't correlate to the actual amount paid for the item. The only thing that counts is what price you are about to agree to.

I often buy stuff at substantial discounts from the current lowest online price on warframe.market and half of the time I get that discount from the people who are currently offering it at the lowest price because I negotiate with the sellers (which some people think is impossible). So how does your price history hold up to what I do? 

~

Quoted me saying: As far as I'm concerned, stuff going from 0 plat value to 1 plat value, is a massive boon, not the end of the world

~

Clipped it by the parentheses because it was just too long. Hope you can understand. 

Set your greed and sloth aside for just a few minutes. You think that the items that you currently can't sell will magically begin to sell. Explain why.

Because if the price has dropped to 1 plat, it's because nobody is willing to buy it for more than that. Why would that be? Oh right because the vast majority of us already own that particular piece of junk. And all of us have multiple copies available for sale too. So where are your magical customers, willing to spend one plat, coming from? And why do you think that they won't prefer to buy from any of the millions of other sellers? Remember on an auction house our goods are identical, there's no advantage that you can create other than dropping the price.

I'm sorry but that entire premise of yours doesn't add up. 

As to the 1 plat minimum... mechanically, a coded AH can set a minimum price that any item can be sold for... not just listed as a "give-away". It would literally be coded to have the minimum value be 1 plat. Yes, I could enforce that through the automated system.

IF people wanted to haggle and trade multiple items for 1 plat (thus making each item less than 1 plat in value), they'd have to go through trade chat or other mediums to come to such a deal, and manually meet up in a dojo together and fiddle with the trade menus, and complete the trade, just like they do now.

IF people want the speed and convenience of an instant-but-out AH, just to get the prime junk fast, so they can convert them into ducats (that's what Prime Junk is for), they'll PAY for that convenience, just like players pay to rush the foundry, or instantly buy pre-built weapons, or instantly buy warframes they could farm for free.

That's the worst case minimum thing, and I see that as a positive, in this case. I think other things will hold value, such as Ayatan treasures, Axi-gold-tier Prime Parts, and rarer mods like Conditioned Overload, Acolyte mods, dragonkey mods, etc. Even Primes that enter the Prime Vault will hold more value than 1 plat per piece. Obviously, over time, as more of the playerbase gets these things, their cost will decrease along with the availability of new things doing the job of old things better, or being more appealing or being stronger.

Warframe has enforced rarity based on events and going out of your way to acquire something that most others don't bother with.

 

As to the Price History... in a coded AH, I would list prices of completed transactions, and I wouldn't list the current listed values of any items (blind listings). This would make the only values known to be the ones that actually were completed through the AH. (individuals completing manual dojo trades would not be accounted for.) Such a list of completed transactions is the hard fact of the value of the item to other people as of the date of the last sale.

Price Histories have been manipulated by large groups of players in the past, but this system already has a few safeguards that other systems didn't have:
Transactions are made with the premium currency, which is much more limited than a currency that can be created infinitely through in-game means for free.

Limited trades per day. (this could be LESS than the MR limited dojo transaction limitation, requiring more people to use up their daily AH slots, requiring larger groups of people organized to manipulate prices.)

Price History listing names of buyers/sellers & time/date of transactions, and the ability to look at these people's profiles, to see what clans/alliances they're in, and possibly a more in depth AH history for each individual, so it would take maaasssive amounts of coordination to avoid detection of fixed sales between individuals/clans/alliances trying to manipulate in this way.

Outlier Omission: This could be a separate history of sales, indicated in the official price history, indicating that WAY LOWER or WAY HIGHER sales took place at those times, and the list of these outliers would be kept separate, but eventually be re-integrated with the official history. This would make it take longer for manipulation to hit the official price history, and require that the manipulation go on for an extended period of time to make it become the new "normal". This would strain out the sales of 1plat on an item usually selling for 20plat, or sales for 1000plat for items going for 750plat. While these outliers would still exist and be visible to curious players (and maybe some game balance change really made something that much more or less valuable over night...)

There's plenty more, but I'm not designing the full system in this thread.

 

As to the "You think that the items that you currently can't sell will magically begin to sell." ... I never said I can't sell them right now. I've sold several things through the AH as I explained. But I've also bought plat directly from DE, and I just don't want to mess with trade for 1 plat for prime junk, and I value the DUCATS more than the PLAT for those prime pieces... I don't yet have everything I want from Baro yet, and prime junk is the only way to get ducats - They're MORE VALUABLE AS DUCATS, to me.

If Baro was visiting, and I needed his items, and I just didn't have enough ducats, I'd be tempted to buy prime junk from others. (wow, imagine that, demand) but not through dojo-manual-trading... through a buy-out AH that doesn't consume my valuable time... yes. Absolutely yes.

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

*sigh* I didn't list all the things I'd add to a fully functional AH system... I'm not designing Warframe's AH in this thread. There are other precautions, and safeguards that could be put in place. I don't think I'm all-knowing and would take input from others for potentially better safeguards as well. You're not a very creative thinker if you are stopped by the scenarios you describe. (historical sales trends over the past year or more on a stock-market-like graph for one might help people visualize what value something held in the recent past, not just the silly slope to 1 plat... I mean, if you COULD have 50plat for something 1 day ago, WHY take only 1 plat today, with no changes other than time passing... if that's a price people were willing to buy it for back then, it makes no sense to drop your price that much. That's stupidly cutting one's nose off to spite their face... and I've seen AH's much more stable than you're describing.

The whole undercutting by 1 for each sale until it hits 1 plat thing... just doesn't happen in practice ... in all the AH systems I've seen, and some much worse than would exist with the safeguards I'm describing. You present a doom and gloom scenario that has not played out in games with functional AH's and yet, somehow, Warframe would submit to that fate? I don't think so. Sorry, evidence from the past (and current) AH's, along with good design can curb these pitfalls.

 

And the current AH I said I used is warframe.market (as opposed to trade chat that I wouldn't touch with a primed reach orthos, given the option.) The only thing warframe.market functionally lacks is a method to complete a transaction with a button press, rather than having to message people and trade in a dojo once they agree on the listed buy-out price. Warframe.market is not a perfect, "just put it inside warframe" thing, but it's as close to an AH we have right now.

 

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

46 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

*sigh* I didn't list all the things I'd add to a fully functional AH system... I'm not designing Warframe's AH in this thread. There are other precautions, and safeguards that could be put in place. I don't think I'm all-knowing and would take input from others for potentially better safeguards as well. You're not a very creative thinker if you are stopped by the scenarios you describe.

In an infinite universe there are an infinity of possible safeguards, including a trio of gnomes who speak words of power and regulate the markets by invoking elder gods, whose true names were forgotten before the rise of mankind. But some scenarios are going to be more likely to actually occur than others. 

46 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

(historical sales trends over the past year or more on a stock-market-like graph for one might help people visualize what value something held in the recent past, not just the silly slope to 1 plat... I mean, if you COULD have 50plat for something 1 day ago, WHY take only 1 plat today, with no changes other than time passing... if that's a price people were willing to buy it for back then, it makes no sense to drop your price that much. That's stupidly cutting one's nose off to spite their face... and I've seen AH's much more stable than you're describing.

Again you show that you don't grasp the concept of demand as it applies to warframe. Demand is finite, supply is near infinite. Every single person who bought the item for 50p yesterday is now a supplier, not a demander. Many of the people who spent 50p had extra plat they were willing to part with. Today I'm stuck with fewer people who probably have less plat to throw around. 

Take a look at the prices for any new item. The first few go for fantastic prices. A few hours later, the price has fallen drastically. 12 hours later and you wonder if it's worth the effort. 1 day later and that item that went for hundreds of plat is hardly making dozens. 

 

And again how many of those AH'S existed in environments like ours, that lack enforced demand (your gear doesn't degrade or require repairs or replacement)? How many used true premium currency trades? How many of them are robust enough to have never been cornered by small groups of players for fun and profit? How many are transparent in their workings? 

46 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

The whole undercutting by 1 for each sale until it hits 1 plat thing... just doesn't happen in practice ... in all the AH systems I've seen, and some much worse than would exist with the safeguards I'm describing. You present a doom and gloom scenario that has not played out in games with functional AH's and yet, somehow, Warframe would submit to that fate? I don't think so. Sorry, evidence from the past (and current) AH's, along with good design can curb these pitfalls.

And again I am explaining that I am not just describing a possible future, I'm also describing the current status quo. 

https://warframe.market/items/braton_prime_set

PC prime junk typically goes for 2p if memory serves. A casual glance will show you that you can buy the set for less than junk prices. Why sell for less than they can get? 

Tragedy of the Commons. It's a thing. It's already happening. It doesn't care if you think that it won't happen. 

And again, actual evidence from the past, evidence gathered in our environment when warframe.market was introduced, suggests that we should expect pretty marked drops in price, and sustained slides over time. 

55 minutes ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

And the current AH I said I used is warframe.market (as opposed to trade chat that I wouldn't touch with a primed reach orthos, given the option.) The only thing warframe.market functionally lacks is a method to complete a transaction with a button press, rather than having to message people and trade in a dojo once they agree on the listed buy-out price. Warframe.market is not a perfect, "just put it inside warframe" thing, but it's as close to an AH we have right now.

So.... It is, but it isn't? 

And your choice not to use (and probably refusal to figure out how to use it) a tool that is available to us, might just explain why you have a skewed view of the current situation.