A proposal for trading

[rob]

I was thinking that if you put an item up for sale, it sits in your long-term storage until it sells or you cancel the sale. Likewise if you put up a buy offer, you must have the coins available; if your coin total drops below the price you put in the buy offer, the offer is disabled until you get enough coins. As well, you must have a free long-term storage slot in which the newly bought item will go; if your storage fills up, your buy offers will be disabled until you free up a slot.

Tarbomb, I like your mockups. They use our new Metro look.

About anonymity, not needing to be logged on for transactions to happen, and always taking the best bid/ask, I agree.

[hypevosa]

Actually, something we've ignored but that I think would work better, is if bought items automatically take up long term storage space, we'd be highly limiting market manipulation capacity.

Having limited buying and selling slots would also prevent mass manipulation in some regards.

Until we see how the crafting system works, and if we need large quantities of items to be bought or sold, I can't really give solid recommendations aside from what I have (don't have impossible to find items, have large numbers for coins bought with money so cheap items still can be bought and sold, don't tax really small purchases so that already new players aren't kept in poverty longer, etc)

EDIT: Using the long term storage slots as selling/buying slots too is a great way to prevent the chances for manipulation. *thumbs up*

I was making this post long before you posted, sorry things seem a little off for it.

[tarbomb]

rob: agreed on the long-term slots; that would prevent hoarding too. I'd just like one thing: a "liquidate volatile storage" button that immediately sells everything in your volatile storage for the current highest bid.

Hype and I had a discussion about the trading system just now. Here's the log; hopefully someone finds it useful.

20:15 <+Hypevosa> What if we just made it so bought items went into your long term storage automatically?
20:16 <+Hypevosa> if longterm storage is limited, that would be prohibitive to massive manipulation until we have enough player to sustain large clans
20:17 <+Hypevosa> the issue with runescape's GE and why it suffers from so much price manipulation is because of the fact that there are many items one can buy in the thousands
20:18 <+Hypevosa> The issue is anyone who gets rich early on will have the buying capacity to perform massive price manipulations
20:18 <+Hypevosa> nearly all of runescape's price manipulation happens from those who were filthy rich from the beginning
20:19 <+Hypevosa> this would even solve that
20:19 <tarbomb> that would work too
20:19 <+Hypevosa> keeping things working freely, while preventing black market is a bitch
20:20 <+Hypevosa> if we can manage with this slight manipulation of the runescape GE setup it would be quite the accomplishment - assuming it holds up to having hundreds of players
20:20 <tarbomb> the reason I suggested the disappear was that you could put an item for sale for $999999999999999999999, nobody would buy it, and then when you wanted it you could just remove the listing
20:21 <+Hypevosa> yeah, I agree that using the GE for extra storage is a problem, I've seen that in a few places
20:21 <+Hypevosa> this is better limited by having only a certain number of slots you can sell things in
20:22 <+Hypevosa> that way we're not deleting player's hard earned rare item that no one has the cash to buy yet, ya know?
20:22 <tarbomb> naw
20:22 <tarbomb> What if I played a whole day and got a shitton of modules?
20:22 <tarbomb> I'd want to offload them all fast
20:22 <tarbomb> so I'd be willing to sell low
20:22 <+Hypevosa> I'm assuming you can stack like items for sale or buying
20:24 <tarbomb> stacking?
20:24 <tarbomb> I assume you mean multiple of the same type
20:24 <+Hypevosa> I got 12 level 9 proto modules
20:24 <tarbomb> still, a limit is annoying mental overhead.
20:25 <+Hypevosa> If crafting is simple, you could also combine all your protomodules enough times to not use up all your selling slots
20:26 <+Hypevosa> I've no idea if Rob's crafting idea is so universally applicable though.
20:27 <tarbomb> cool.
20:27 <tarbomb> I forgot about crafting.
20:28 <tarbomb> What I want is a "liquidate" button
20:28 <tarbomb> that offloads everything in my inventory to the highest current bidder all at once.
20:30 <+Hypevosa> The issue I have is we're heavily slanting this economy to the buyer
20:30 <+Hypevosa> sellers have no means to compete at all except to just undercut eachother to oblivion
20:31 <tarbomb> Why would it be buyer slanted?
20:31 <tarbomb> Buyers have to compete for the best offer as well.
20:31 <+Hypevosa> because the buyer automatically gets the cheapest bid
20:31 <+Hypevosa> the only bids shown for sale are the cheapest
20:32 <tarbomb> And the only "looking for" ads are the highest ones.
20:32 <+Hypevosa> One of the reasons I prefer selective buying, is it gives sellers SOME power
20:32 <tarbomb> It's a symmetric system.
20:33 <+Hypevosa> well think about where the highest bidder is used
20:33 <+Hypevosa> insanely expensive, rare, endgame items
20:33 <+Hypevosa> everything else that is any kind of common will be heavily slanted against the seller
20:33 <+Hypevosa> it's rewarding raw luck all over again :\
20:33 <+Hypevosa> One of the reasons I prefer selective buying, is for what it meant in early runescape before the grand exchange
20:34 <+Hypevosa> people were willing to pay a small sum for anyone who could aggregate large numbers of crafting material
20:34 <tarbomb> Except perhaps luck will have noting to do with rarity, and it will be a matter of crafting.
20:34 <+Hypevosa> this was how I made my 44 million from 4 million, was there was a prayer update coming, and I bought and sold dragon bones
20:34 <+Hypevosa> I bought small quantities from players for a small number
20:34 <+Hypevosa> and that way when a wealthy player came along and wanted to buy in bulk to train prayer
20:35 <+Hypevosa> I got to upsell since I bothered to aggregate such a large number
20:35 <tarbomb> Sorry, never played runescape (or for that matter, know that it is...) - may I presume that the prayer update buffed dragon bones?
20:35 <+Hypevosa> it saved them time, I was compensated for my service
20:35 <+Hypevosa> dragon bones were used to train the prayer stat by burying them
20:35 <+Hypevosa> prayers could boost player stats or even provide temporary immunity to damage
20:36 <tarbomb> Ah. So dragon bones were kind of like vit pots.
20:36 <+Hypevosa> yeah, equating them to a potion is accurate
20:37 <+Hypevosa> the point being an anonymous, but still selective buying setup allows sellers to have some power with items that require quantity
20:38 <tarbomb> Why would selective buying help?
20:38 <tarbomb> You're in a marketplace, you search for the item you want, sort from lowest price, and just click the lowest one.
20:38 <+Hypevosa> if I'm buying 100 protomodule 9s to combine to make a protmodule 30
20:39 <+Hypevosa> and I see joe shmoe has 100 protomodule 9s for sale, but is selling at 25% upcharge or so
20:39 <+Hypevosa> I will buy those 100 protomodule 9s at the upcharge to save me the time of repeatedly buying them in quantities of 2 or 3
20:40 <tarbomb> So all you're saying is that it helps with bulk quantities.
20:40 <tarbomb> Thing is, limited nonvolatile/cold storage (whatever they're called) precludes any game mechanics requiring bulk anyway.
20:40 <+Hypevosa> yes, which I assume low grade items would be for early on players, where selling would currently be heavily slanted against htem
20:41 <+Hypevosa> hmmmmm, I really want to know how the crafting system works I guess
20:42 <tarbomb> It's the same situation in Realm, I guess... anything t8- is summarily dropped in the nexus. I'm not sure how one would address that without artificially separating the market.
20:42 <tarbomb> (which, needless to say, is a horrible idea)
20:42 <+Hypevosa> I really, really liked Rob's idea of combining lesser items to make better items
20:43 <+Hypevosa> suddenly everything I pick up is at least eventually awesome
20:43 <+Hypevosa> with infinite storage, that's even better.
20:43 <tarbomb> As long as there is a proper, predictable formula and chance only plays a marginal goal. (*cough* pet fusion *cough*)
20:43 <+Hypevosa> Hell, if we instantly craft items in volatile storage, that's even better
20:44 <tarbomb> Here'st the thing I'm wondering about.
20:44 <+Hypevosa> pet fusion is a money grab
20:44 <tarbomb> If you can craft anything you want from normal items... what's the point of trading?
20:44 <tarbomb> There has to be some kind of limit
20:44 <+Hypevosa> trading would make crafting up shorter
20:45 <+Hypevosa> you can buy another proto 22 module to combine with the two you've made instead of going another few hours to craft another
20:45 <tarbomb> makes sense.
20:45 <+Hypevosa> also there will be single use items I assume, like dyes and junk as mentioned
20:46 <+Hypevosa> trading has always been a matter of convenience, it's not that I can't wire my own house (I can) it's just easier to hire someone else and saves me time
20:46 <tarbomb> A matter of comparative advantage.
20:48 <+Hypevosa> Also, if things are lost on death or degraded, buying gives you a means of getting back quickly

[rob]

"Liquidate" is a cool function. The system could also auto-liquidate anything that ages out of the 24-hour short-term storage.

[hypevosa]

Apr 25, 2013 9:00:32 GMT -5 rob said:

"Liquidate" is a cool function. The system could also auto-liquidate anything that ages out of the 24-hour short-term storage.

I'm a fan of the idea too, so long as we don't really care about players choosing to play the merchanting game. My issue here is that it means the item will always be flooded by non-rare items - do we care about merchants at all, or are we more concerned with getting items to player who want them?

Personally, while I dabbled in it, I never cared for the merchanting profession as a whole because it tends to interfere with playing the game itself.

Also, what happens to unsellable items, are they just deleted or are they stored up in a grain silo somewhere until someone actually wants to buy them?

Overall, I'm really happy about the proposed system since it makes buying and selling not take hours of time away from playing the game itself.

[rob]

I think it would be ok for certain Grid12 players to spend most of their time buying, selling & crafting. There are plenty of other games in which this works. I think non-rares can generally be crafted into more valuable things, so there ought to be plenty of buyers for them.

If there are no buyers, items will be deleted if they aren't moved to long term storage within 24 hours of dropping. Your amount of personal long-term storage is limited. There are no silos. When you pick up an item from a loot bag, you have 24 hours to use it, sell it, store it, or lose it.

[hypevosa]

Apr 25, 2013 11:34:33 GMT -5 rob said:

I think it would be ok for certain Grid12 players to spend most of their time buying, selling & crafting. There are plenty of other games in which this works. I think non-rares can generally be crafted into more valuable things, so there ought to be plenty of buyers for them.

If there are no buyers, items will be deleted if they aren't moved to long term storage within 24 hours of dropping. Your amount of personal long-term storage is limited. There are no silos. When you pick up an item from a loot bag, you have 24 hours to use it, sell it, store it, or lose it.

Oh, you were talking about the possibility of auto-liquidation at the end of the 24 hour period, that's what I meant by the grain silo thing. So if liquidation isn't possible it'll just delete it, got it.

[Duco]

I agree with all the above.


Just make sure that item values are equal, assuming all tanks will have 1 unique item type, make sure that they are all equally valued.
And how about item for item? Just 1 for 1, to prevent noobs from selling 100 tier 1 cannons for 1 tier 50 cannon (I know, the crafting prevents this).

Best would be 10 credits for $1, otherwise you'll have 0.001 credits instead of 0.01 or something.

[hypevosa]

Item for item means no taxation and possibility for black market trading - so that's a nogo.

10 credits for a dollar would mean no one would buy less valuable items, locking all newish players out of the marketplace, overall decreasing revenue from taxes as it takes longer for players to accrue any coinage that can be used to buy things.

1000 credits for a dollar would mean that even noobish items have a value worth spending real money on - it would be wiser to go this route since it enables players to get into the market earlier, meaning more transactions, and more eventual tax revenue.

[Ood]

Personally, I rather dislike the whole concept of the proposed trading system.

Sure it may have worked (to some extent) in RuneScape, and it may work in EVE Online (never played that). But as someone who played RuneScape before and after their market revolution, it is my opinion that the Grand Exchange is what brought an end to the 'golden age' of the game.

As much as begging, tradespamming, USWest Spam, black markets, spam bots, and all the rest are exceedingly annoying. An 'unregulated' trading system (a la RotMG) provides one very huge positive: Interaction.

Yes, it opens the door (wide open) for RMT, but it also makes me talk to people for my trades, not just go to some little box and Voila!... new items! It lets me give things to my friends that I don't want to sell or need. It lets me do with my items what I want to do with them, not just a) use b) sell c) destroy.

Having a centralized trading system is very nice, I do agree. But finding a way to capture the interactive side of free trading, while minimizing and/or eliminating the begging, spamming, and RMT side should be the highest priority.

How to do this?

Personally, I'd go with some sort of 'afk-mode' player shop, or something of an in-game implementation of RealmEye's trade system.

How does this make Jetbolt money?
If only item to coin (as Rob's proposed) transactions are allowed:
'Tax' Transactions (Makes the game 'pseudo-pay to buy'). Seller has his shop setup to sell Module Alpha for 1000 coins. Buyer pays seller's shop 1000 coins for Alpha and receives Alpha. Tax of 10% is applied on sale of Alpha, seller receives 900 coins for sale of Alpha.

___
I seem to be rambling now... I may come back and change/reword things so that I make more sense to myself... lol

[hypevosa]

I'm also from the golden age of runescape, I would also like a free system, but it's more important to some developers that there be no real world trading. Realize how large runescape was and is, and how much money they made from subscriptions, and realize that they had a system of finding and eliminating RWT where they could for it. We don't, and likely won't have those resources to crack down on RWT and ban players for such things. :\ I abandoned runescape after they got rid of the free market and the wilde, that's how strongly I felt about it, but I don't need that here if we cannot really manage to have it.

[tarbomb]

Ood:

I've never found trading in realm to be a really interactive experience. Most of the trading-related interaction I've encountered in realm has ranged from boring to downright infuriating, generally limited to negotiating prices (which is made unnecessary by the competitive trading system), begging, unreasonable offers, and scamming. I've made many more friends fighting or even talking idly in the nexus than by trading. Therefore, I'd like to see the role of trading minimized, so people can spend more time shooting stuff than grinding in the marketplace looking for better deals.

Giving things to your friends and trading within a guild is nice, I'll admit. The problem is that makes RWT trivial to accomplish, and there's no taxation, so that's going to be impossible. Perhaps a guild-priority trading system could be implemented if/when guilds are introduced, but even that has a bunch of problems associated with it (sell everything for 0 coins to a guild full of alts. Boom - infinite storage).

Your "afk-mode" player shop seems similar to the system proposed above - I'm not sure what the difference is (if any).

[hypevosa]

gamasutra.com/blogs/GaryDahl/20130425/191266/Irrational_Play_and_Design_The_Psychology_of_Money.php

[rob]

This article shaped a lot of my thinking:

massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/10/eve-evolved-do-plex-make-eve-pay-to-win/

[Guest]

No begging, but no giving.

No advertising, no player interaction.

Less RWT, but more P2W (every item in the game is for sale at a real money price).

It's sad that Grid would go down the grand exchange route from the very beginning.

Can we at the very least have item for item trades, where a tax is applied based on the market price of the items?