A proposal for trading

[rob]

I've been tinkering with some ideas over the last few weeks, based on my experience with trading in RotMG and other games. People love to trade, and we resisted trading in RotMG for a long time, to no avail. We eventually gave in and built a trading mechanism, only to see rampant Nexus advertising and begging, and the rise of black market sites and real-money trading (RMT).

Rather than go through all of that again, I'm considering embracing trading much earlier and more thoroughly, while addressing the antisocial behaviors trading encouraged in RotMG. Here's the plan:

• Implement an item marketplace, where players can put items up for sale, and make buy offers.
  
• Introduce a new currency ("coins"?) which are used for buying in the marketplace.
  
• Do not allow items to be traded or given away outside the marketplace.
  
• Charge an eBay-like tax on trades in the marketplace (1%? 10%? 30%?).
  
• Jetbolt sells coins for real money.
  

Players acquire coins in two ways: by buying them for dollars, or by selling excess loot in the item marketplace. This avoids the "paying customers only" divide for things like vault space that we saw in RotMG. In fact, there need not be a cash shop at all: everything that might have been sold in a cash shop (vault space, skins, character slots, class unlocks, etc) can just drop as loot, and be sold by players in the marketplace. Players that bring real money (instead of skill or grinding time) participate in a real economy -- their coins go to other players for items the sellers have earned, rather than going to Jetbolt for items that Jetbolt just conjures out of thin air. This closely resembles what EVE Online has done with the PLEX system.

There is no begging, because nobody can give you an item.

There is no Nexus advertising, because you don't arrange trades person-to-person; you just open up the item marketplace.

Black-market stores are not nearly as attractive, because everything in the game is for sale in the marketplace if that's what you want to do. And buying an item doesn't devalue other people's collections, because you aren't buying a NEW item, you're buying an EXISTING item.

The only reasons I could see a black-market store existing would be:

• To let people sell in-game items for real cash -- but there would be no buyers, because the buyers would just use the non-scammy in-game marketplace.
  
• To sell coins at a cheaper cost than Jetbolt sells coins. Would people go to a scammy black-market site for a simple discount? I wouldn't.
  

And finally, Jetbolt has its business model: it effectively takes a percentage of each trade. There is no item store. Will this make as much money as a traditional item shop? I don't know. I'm not sure that anyone does.

I'd love to hear what people think of this idea.

[hypevosa]

People will buy jetbolt coins in bulk from others for cheaper than jetbolt sells them. You may not, but anyone who has a strong desire to spend money on the game will as it's only an intelligent business decision. Honestly, if I myself had any real reason to buy a bulk of coins, I would be turning to the black market and checking prices first, as much as I love you, and as much as I'm enjoying this game, because I cannot justify buying 100 jetbolt coins for a dollar if I can buy 250 for the same dollar, you know? While in the beginning there will always be risks black markets develop reliable sellers, and I doubt playing the compete with the black market game is what you want to do, but that's kinda what Kabam was forced to do with ROTMG, and look at what they felt was necessary :\

The other major issue here is this will cause certain items to be junk. No one will be willing to buy them for coins just to see their total be taxed, and so no one will sell them. We'll end up with an economy that completely ignores half the items in the game again - that said, this may not be a bad thing since players will be forced to learn the game before jumping into the economy, and no one can give them items anyways.

This also ends up locking a number of players out of the economy until they get their item that is actually worth any gold, which is a frustrating an sad place to be, and giving them any starting gold will be introducing free currency, which gives black market an easy way to get more to undercut your prices.

While the blackmarket may have trouble starting up, it will start up in time when reliable buyers and sellers appear with this method:

1) You pay 10.00 paypal
2) You put up item X for insanely high price no one would pay
3) Black marketeer buys said item to give you gold
4) black marketeer sells item you bought with paypal for the number of coins you just received, an insane amount no one would pay.
5) you buy it

So the system still exists, but you get a cut this time at least if it doesn't bother you people are buying ingame items for real world cash.

A few things:

1) If this is how things must be, make it so jetbolt coins are a HIGH number per dollar. This will allow all items to be traded for coins - if you give me 1000 coins per dollar, I can justify buying some noobish items for crafting at a few coins a piece. This allows all players to enter the economy quickly.

2) Avoid making uber-rare drops (1/1000). The biggest area where you will push customers into the black market is with items that they don't think they have a chance to attain under normal circumstances. Knowing I can kill 2000 of an enemy, and still not get my 1/1000 drop, means I don't know I'll ever get it. Knowing that I can collect 20 items that drop at 30% from enemy X to eventually craft an uber item means that I know I can do it by comparison.

3) don't tax transactions that are below a certain number of coins.

[tarbomb]

Disclaimer: RotMG is the only multiplayer game with an economy that I've ever played, and I've never been fond of merching for stuff.

I'm going to address two questions:

Is trading necessary?

I'm not sure it is.

Trading makes sense in Realm for three main reasons: a) multiple skill (and loot!) appropriate zones, b) character advancement directly based on looted items, and c) the soulbound loot system. (a) meant that making yourself more powerful opened up more parts of the game, (b) meant that better gear and more pots was the sole path to getting yourself more powerful, and (c) meant that more skilled players would get richer and create a rough approximation of a meritocratic wealth system, while limiting what you could get just by leeching. That's the reason that trading was so heavy in realm - it was directly correlated with advancing in-game (unless you did NPE, but that's not something you typically do until you've already used trading to get to a high level on your main).

In Grid, on the other hand, we have no level appropriate zones. That alone limits the appeal of trading: loot can at best provide alternative ways of doing the same thing, in particular cannot open up new areas of the game, and modules cannot be too powerful or they would cause a balance problem. Character advancement is based on looting gridshards and VP, not tradeable modules. And the share-everything means everyone is going to have approximately the same amount of wealth. Trading doesn't seem as necessary now.

My position is that trading was a necessary evil in Realm in order to allow linear advancement, but with Grid being based on a wider lateral advancement system, we have the opportunity to avoid trading entirely.

Then again, the game could change a lot, and players may demand trading. So:

Does the proposed system make sense?

As long as players can propose their own prices: yes, I think it does. The initial supply in coins may be an issue (you'll need to give players some currency to kick-start the economy), but this provides a F2P system that isn't pay-to-win.

The only possible concern I see is complexity: how can you make an auction/marketplace system that's way too complex for non-merchers to enjoy? If you can pull this off I'll be really excited.

[hypevosa]

tarbomb - I think trading has its place as it gives the player a sense of progression. Even if items aren't so important as in ROTMG, knowing you're moving up in this virtual world is still a drive for some players to jump in and to keep playing.

If you want a great example of how the system proposed works, look at the grand exchange in runescape (ignore the little kid voice and horrible audio):

[sven]

Excuse me, with the trade system somewhat planned is there a way users can get their trades guaranteed without being scammed?

The complaints and the blacklisting are a pain counting on the past times... I don't have much to say about this, I'm not a merchant or familiar with trading system. I'm a bit wary though, will it alter Grid 12 -- Goals in any matter?

[quicklite]

Wait, I'm a little lost here...how do people get coins in the first place? I know you get them for selling items and whatnot, but where will the original source of coins come from, anyway? Will they be lootable?

Aside from that, this trading system seems kinda promising. A little confusing at first, and even a little offputting (at first I read 'buying money to trade', and was a little turned off, but after re-reading I get it now >_>). I agree with tarbomb's statement that in the introduction of this system, and just for creating a new account, you should get a decent (but not that hefty) sum of coins just to help weave you in to the trading system.

And then four last questions; a) how will the interface work? Will it all be done anonymously to help prevent begging and whatnot? Or will it be a little bit like an easier to navigate USWest in realm? b) will you be able to chat in the marketplace? As nice as chatting is, I think it might lead to mass begging/spamming, and therefore shouldn't be allowed. c) Is there any way you could put items up for sale/request items and prices and then just walk away? Why do I ask this? Because wandering around USWest with my 3 def, looking for that one guy that has the dia I've been looking for for ages (okay, so that price isn't accurate anymore, and dias aren't that rare, but you get the point >_>) was possibly one of the most boring things I've ever had to do in a game. I adored the rest of realm, which was why I went through that, but hated the merching process. What would be awesome is if you could put your stuff up for sale, or even make request for certain items at certain prices all while killing stuff. Because that would make trading completely painless d) on the subject of b)'s 'begging', what's stopping players for begging other people to sell them stuff for 1 coin or something? Fixed prices?

Sorry if my fast reading meant that any of the above questions have already been answered

[rob]

Coins are generated by players spending real money for them. That's how Jetbolt survives as a company. I suppose some coins could drop as loot, but I'd want that to be a tiny fraction of new coin generation. We need to pay the electric bills!

I disagree about giving out free coins with new accounts. People will create many spam accounts, just to get the coins and buy stuff from their mains.

a) The interface will be like the WoW auction house or other similar systems -- a list of stuff for sale, and a list of buy offers that people have made. There will be scroll bars or pagination buttons. You won't walk around through a bunch of icons like in RotMG. You won't need to meet up with your trading partner live in person.

b) When in town, your marketplace button will light up, and if you click it, you'll see lists of what's on the market. You can still chat while this window is up, just like you can chat while the tank window is up.

c) Yes, you'll pick an item to sell, type in the price and click "Sell". If there is already a buy offer for that item at or higher than your price, it sells immediately. Otherwise, it sits on the market until it sells or until you take it off the market.

Likewise to buy, you'll determine what type of item you want and type in your price. If the item is already for sale at an equal or lower price, you buy it immediately. Otherwise, your buy offer sits there, waiting for a seller to come along.

d) People can't beg to be sold a big item for 1 coin because there will undoubtedly already be many buy offers in the system for 5000 or so coins. As soon as you put the item on the market for one coin, the highest existing buy offer will trigger and you'll have sold it for 5000 coins.

[quicklite]

Ah, that makes sense. The one concern I had about coins is that paying people to use a trade function never goes down well. I've seen games that have tried it, only to have the feature completely abandoned for all but the rarest merch. So that leaves me with one final question: how would you describe this system in a sentence? A trading system which has to be paid for, an in-game item shop run by the players, a way to recycle small items to get larger ones, or all of the above?

[rob]

Yes, it remains to be seen how well the system will work. I'd describe it as "an F2P business model based on taxing trades". In a single word, it's eBay.

BTW Quicklite, I like your sig. Thanks for helping to distribute codes.

[hypevosa]

I guess I should ask explicitly - how many jetbolt coins for one dollar? (I'm ignoring bulk discount atm)

what's the lowest drop rate for an item you plan to have?

Will you tax small transactions or just leave the taxation to larger purchases?

[rob]

If prices can specify fractions of a coin, then maybe we can just have 1 coin = 1 dollar. Then you could sell a tiny little module for .001 coins, or 1 millicoin.

We could have incredibly low drop rates for certain items. Eventually, somebody will drop one, somewhere. And it will probably end up for sale. If you were a poor African farmer and you found a 10 karat flawless diamond, you'd sell it. So, the smallest drop chance could be 1 in a million. Or you could have items that NEVER drop, but must be made from many hundreds of items with a .01% drop chance. I think having super rare, almost-never-seen items is really cool.

I guess I'd apply the tax to all transactions, even small ones.

[hypevosa]

Well, why bother with having players enter the decimal for the coins I guess? it's just easier (and less accident prone) to have every dollar be 1000 coins or some such number. Otherwise you're going to have alot of incidents with people accidentally putting the decimal to the left or the right of where the really wanted and mucking up a transaction by 10 fold. People aren't accustomed to fractional currency.

While I like seeing rare items myself, everyone does, I don't enjoy the really really high luck factor for some things, and feeling like you're never going to get something ever is one of the reasons people turn to the black market where they'd otherwise avoid it. If we're talking a drop of 1/1,000,000 - why would anyone not try to sell that for real cash instead of game money? Heck, at that point, you sell the the account that has it for a hundred bucks or so if you don't want to try playing the market place - not everyone is so attached to their name as I.

Having hundreds of items be required that drop at 0.01% is also rather cruel - if there's already a one in ten thousand chance of getting an item, why would you require someone hit 1/10,000 a hundred times to make something? Assuming you get it every 1/10,000, you're requiring 1,000,000 kills of something to get an item: At 30 seconds a kill, you're requiring almost an entire year straight of doing nothing but killing that enemy (347.22222 days). At that point you may as well just hand out the individual rare item since everyone in the game would have to work to make it together otherwise.

A better way to do it would be the way you proposed earlier. If I have 3 of item X, I craft them into item X+1. If X has a drop rate of 10%, then it's 15 minutes to get them assuming I average 30 seconds per kill. If I want to craft to X+2, I'm going to need 3 X+1's so it'll take 45 minutes, 3 X+2's will take 2 hours and 15 minutes, etc. At least this way the player always knows they're plowing forward to that sweet X+10 item (or whatever). 30 seconds is also incredibly fast for consistent kills, so this is by no means a perfect estimate.

If you're going to prevent people selling accounts with items on them, or selling items themselves by using paypal and then playing your grand exchange, you really need to not spark that desire in them to begin with - let them know they're always progressing towards that uber item so there's no reason to get it on the black market when they WILL eventually get one through normal play. No one wants scammers or even legitimate black market dealers to make money, right?

As for taxes, I dunno if taxing smaller transactions is really worth it, I mean, why steal from a beggar? If a guy is only selling something worth 10 coins, he barely has that 10% coin to give. If you let him keep it, he may be able to put it towards making larger purchases down the road that you'll make more taxes off of. (think of it like encouraging a middle class for the game that will be where you get all your money from as they keep spending coins)

[tarbomb]

Here's how I think the system should work: When you put in item in the market, you can't use it anymore until you remove it from the market. That allows trades to be performed automatically, with no need to be there to accept a trade. This means there's no need to be online at all when someone wants to trade with you - it's completely automatic.

Listings are completely anonymous. That means that there's no preferential treatment possible. Since the system handles all the trades, scamming simply isn't possible, so reputation is irrelevant.

Only show the current lowest price for an item for sale, or the highest price for an item buying offer. That, along with the above, means Hype's proposed RWT trick won't work, since the super-high listings will never be seen.

Do not allow users to place a higher bid on an item than the lowest available price for that item, and do not allow users to advertise an item with a lower price than the highest bid for that item. Essentially if I want to buy a level 9 protomodule, and the lowest price for it is $2000, either I buy it for $2000 or I generate a looking for listing with a price under $2000.

Some mockups I made of how I think a shop should look like:

Inventory:



Your Listings:



(the buying screen would be similar)

Classifieds


(looking for section is similar)

Create new listing



The system will force you to pick the best deal.

[hypevosa]

So now I can really easily manipulate your entire market by flooding it with insane buy offers after buying up all the cheap stock, or I can crash an item by undercutting everyone with a large number of the same item for super cheap. Then I buy or sell at whatever price I manage to get things to.

You can't force a price for things or you open up the door for really heavy handed price manipulation, and, trust my experience from runescape, it's no fun trying to buy items when someone is forcing them all to be sold for insanely high until they dump a bunch on the market for above their personal cost. It's not fun at all trying to get an item currently being bought at insanely high prices for actual value do to this merchanting either.

EDIT: Essentially, I'm saying that while posting items should be automatic, the buying process should be selective - that way prices cannot be so easily manipulated.

[tarbomb]

@hype:

I don't think selective buying will prevent bad players from seizing control of the market. Fact is: the vast majority of players will play for their own advantage, not for the health of the economy. This majority is the one that controls the economy - and as we saw in realm, with the ICYbots (remember the ones buying life for 8 def when the trade rate was 5-6?) and to an even greater extent with duping, it's not one that's particularly mindful of the greater good. If someone can get a good chokehold on the supply of one item, we've already lost.

Instead, we have to make controlling the economy unfavorable for the prospective manipulator himself. Items that go on the market need to be sold in 24 (or 48) hours or they'll go poof. That means you can't automatically flood the market easily (or use the market as a form of nonvolatile storage).

Besides, I doubt it's going to be easy getting a stranglehold on the supply of any one single item, especially the high-tier high-demand ones that can't be easily substituted (what's the point in driving up the price of dias if everyone can just switch to astrals or necrotics? Market control only makes sense for top-tier stuff) - as soon as the game has a decent number of players and items, the cost of buying everything up with real-world cash will become prohibitive. And with no monetary gains to be had from manipulating the market (as discussed above, RWT is going to be pretty much impossible with anonymous postings and best-bid-only), nobody in their right mind would spend the cash to choke up supplies of an item for long. Sure, we might have bored rich kids troll for a day or two, but the vanishing is going to ensure that they don't have a long-term effect.