Merchant Archive
Thread: Anti-Trust: Why in-game Monopolies are pure fiction.
Sigrun
Fri Aug 13, 2004 11:52 am
#144
joined42904 wrote:
Sigrun,
Do it, please.And keep us updated.
We'll see. It's probably more effort than it's worth. It's certainly not worththe effortif the devs continue their streak of 1 really bad decision per week.
I know my limits for dev stupidity. I hit that limit on AC2 in 4 months. SOE is very, very close to that limit right now...
AloraElon
Fri Aug 13, 2004 1:13 pm
#145
I'm a Weaponsmith and run a successful business on Starsider server.One very large company on our server does a high volume business in weapons and other products.If they sell a lot it's not because they are a "monopoly" which controls the market, but because they sell products which are are high quality and the customers who buy from them are willing to pay the prices they ask. They have no way to control what other Weaponsmiths make or the prices that other Weaponsmiths set. I've noticed that a few Weaponsmiths who make items of almost the same high quality as the very large company choose to sell at lower prices, and this attracts customers to buy from other Weaponsmiths.
Every server has a few crafters who do very well at their buisiness. They are hard-working people who are smart enough to figure out how to satisfy their customers. Yes, it's hard for newcomers to compete with established professionals, but if they are smart and work hard, in time they will have gathered the right resources and have set up successful shops of their own.
Gavvot
Fri Aug 13, 2004 1:14 pm
#146
BoberFett wrote:GavvotIf the problem is big crafters buying out the stock of new crafters so that people simply find empty vendors, won't a vendor limit hurt new crafters more? A new crafter has one vendor with 50 items. Unless that newbie charges outrageous prices which drive away customers, I as a monopolist could buy it all up and just destroy it. So it costs me a little money, big deal. It maintains my control.This fix, if intended to break up supposed monopolies, will hurt the little guy just starting as it will the big guys.
You, as a monopolistic can buy them and destroy them.
but you don't make any money in the process so :
- you cannot do that indefinitively
- you cannot hurt more than a limited number of crafter.
Basically, you annoy a few people, but you don't control the market and force a big number of player to buy at your price.
You're not a good monopolistic.
Gavvot
Fri Aug 13, 2004 1:27 pm
#147
group of people want to control a big part of a market, let say vasarian brandy.
This group of people have unlimited money. Flaw #1 - nobody has unlimited money.
A single individual will need some time to achieve this, but a group with a good starting money can have virtually unlimited money.
That's easy in a game where money is generated on demand.
The number of people that can achieve this on each server is limited, but do exist.
All they have to do is go to food shop and buy every single vasarian brandy. Flaw #2 so they can't do this for very long. Flaw #3 - they can't *find* all of them.
#2 As long as they have money, they can.
And as they sell the brandy, they do make money.
#3 They don't need to find *all* of them. They just need to find a vast majority, focusing on the one that are on planetary map they can control a very big market as most of the people when looking for something go on planetary map first.
... so we're nerfing vendors because we don't think the market-driven economy that exists in SW:G can self-correct out any potential monopoly? IOW, fixing a problem that doesn't exist yet? That's retarded.
Well the current state of the economy show that the market cannot self-control.
Money generated by mission don't increase, but price of buff, food and armor don't stop to increase.
And I think they don't nerf vendor for such specific problem.
I think they nerf vendor to spread business on more crafters.
For the moment, a very small number of crafter deal a vast majority of the business in some market. And they don't like it.
The big number of complain from this change already showed that most if not all the merchant don't like to have empty vendor, so if someone always buy all their brandy, they'll just quit. Flaw #5 - no, we don't like the elimination of one of the tools we use to satisfy our customers.
What I say, what you say, any relation ?
Back to Flaw #1 - they do NOT have unlimited money.
see above.
Thanks for playing. Please come back when you understand what Logic is.
Whatever.
You wanna flame, go ahead. Like I care.
This group of people have unlimited money. Flaw #1 - nobody has unlimited money.
A single individual will need some time to achieve this, but a group with a good starting money can have virtually unlimited money.
That's easy in a game where money is generated on demand.
The number of people that can achieve this on each server is limited, but do exist.
All they have to do is go to food shop and buy every single vasarian brandy. Flaw #2 so they can't do this for very long. Flaw #3 - they can't *find* all of them.
#2 As long as they have money, they can.
And as they sell the brandy, they do make money.
#3 They don't need to find *all* of them. They just need to find a vast majority, focusing on the one that are on planetary map they can control a very big market as most of the people when looking for something go on planetary map first.
... so we're nerfing vendors because we don't think the market-driven economy that exists in SW:G can self-correct out any potential monopoly? IOW, fixing a problem that doesn't exist yet? That's retarded.
Well the current state of the economy show that the market cannot self-control.
Money generated by mission don't increase, but price of buff, food and armor don't stop to increase.
And I think they don't nerf vendor for such specific problem.
I think they nerf vendor to spread business on more crafters.
For the moment, a very small number of crafter deal a vast majority of the business in some market. And they don't like it.
The big number of complain from this change already showed that most if not all the merchant don't like to have empty vendor, so if someone always buy all their brandy, they'll just quit. Flaw #5 - no, we don't like the elimination of one of the tools we use to satisfy our customers.
What I say, what you say, any relation ?
Back to Flaw #1 - they do NOT have unlimited money.
see above.
Thanks for playing. Please come back when you understand what Logic is.
Whatever.
You wanna flame, go ahead. Like I care.
DingoBoi
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:05 pm
#148
How does this stop people from mining power themselves if they don't want to do business with you? For you to have a monopoly on power, you'd have to have the ability to control the harvest of it.
DingoBoi wrote:
I single handedly doubled the price of power on my server. Most other power merchants followed suit and the ones who didn't were bought out by me regularly. Those 'cheap' sellers are no longer in business.
I have the resources and capital to buy out every other power vendor on Eclipse if I choose to.. and to continue to do so for several months which would then transition me from oligopoly to monopoly. Nobody goes back to empty vendors..
exactly right. it doesn't stop others from enterting the market or producing their own. But there is a break even point you must remember. If someone is focusing on harvesting minerals, they must consider the cost of giving up a harvesting lot to harvest power instead of minerals. As long as power is cheaper than the cost of giving up that mineral lot, they will continue to buy power instead of producing it themselves.
I wish you'd come do that on Kettemoor. I guarantee I'd stock 4-5 million units of power a week, each week you bought me out. Yes, at 50-75% of your prices if you "doubled" what I'm charging now.
Wouldn't hurt me a bit.
That wouldn't be my intention. You now effectively serve as my 'supplier' since i'm buying you out regularly. You are no longer selling directly to the public (or minimally so) since i'm buying the majority of your stock. They must then look for a stocked vendor (ie: mine). They are very much less likely to ever visit your store again, because you are rarely, if ever, stocked. Their business comes to me and I make profit simply for buying you out.
It forces retail buyers of power to buy from the "monopoly" for as long as the "monopoly" can afford to buy up all the power vendors on the server.
It also ensures that the rest of the power vendors get to sell power consistently at a rate they're happy with, for as long as the "monopoly" keeps buying them out.
Through all his bluster, I don't think he can do what he says he can do. At least not for long. I don't think he can do it to even one other large-ish scale power miner.
I'mconsidering migrating over to Eclipse to see if he can. I don't like one of the servers that I'm on right now, so maybe...
The other power vendors do get to sell to me at their preferred price. I then markup and resell their production along with mine. Since they are unstocked, their customers come to me. Easy enough to see?
I can do what I say I can do, but you are right. I can't do it indefinitely. But the whole point is I can do it often enough to damage the credibility of the other shops. Going to a shop 5 times and finding them empty 5 times does not make one want to go back. That is ALL i need to do.... and that is very easily done.
You are truly wrong about my capabilities. EPC is the largest power corp in ALL the galaxies (as far as I know). I have immediate resources available of over 250M and sales estimated at over 1 billion this year. There is no other 'largeish' power broker on our server. I've been around since the beginning of the game and have seen them come and go.
Any first day artisan with a survey tool and half an hour of free time can pull up the same power that any "monopolist" can. Any established crafter can raid his couch cushions, pick up some heavy fusions and dump them on a spawn, and likely pull up enough to keep them going for months before it shifts off.
Very, very poor comparison
Very poor comparison indeed... that being yours. A first day artisan can pull up rad, and even with a few harvesters will not be able to match the availability of stock i can. a new entrant will not be able to keep their vendor stocked. Any impact this person would have is negligible. I wouldn't even consider buying them out because the volume of stock I could purchase from them is so minimal.
Kharn_JB
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:17 pm
#149
BoberFett wrote:With shuttle times down to 5 minutes, you can run crafting missions between Bestine and Anchorhead for between 15-30K an hour. A few hours of that can get you enough to buy you at least a used BER12 fusion gen and the cash to run it. Use the leased speeder to find a decent concentration of radioactive. Do this for the next 9 days. Within a week you'll be pulling 100K in profit per day. Use that money to buy additional generators and make deals with other players for static lots. Just hang out in Mos Eisley and find new players who want to make money for doing nothing.I may take down DingoBoi and his ego just for my amusement.
I started my crafter, who is now a master architect with a decent shop, just after they added the new player quests. What I did for cash after I finished the quests was I used my rental bike that i got for a reward for finishing the quests to do survey missions. With that cash I bought myself my own bike in only about an hour to run more missions. Then I did some more missions and bought some grind resources off the bazaar, and grinded up to make my own wind and personal mineral harvestors, which between running missions to get resoruces then grinding took me about to the second day. After surveying for experience and such, and more grinding, I got lucky and found soem really nice polysteel copper with 975 conductivity, which i used to make 97.52% repair tools and 14.25 tools which i sold on the bazaar. The third day I had enough credits to buy a medium harvestor, which i plopped down to get more of this copper, and then a second that day. The fourth day I got another medium and placed that, so i had 3 mediums, 2 personals on that copper spawn, and 2 wind gens, and I was still getting credits to run everything from selling tools i made with the copper. The next few days I ended up harvesting 180k of this copper and for the next cople weeks I funded grinding the rest of artisan and started architect from the 50-100k I was making a day from just selling tools on the bazaar that I made with that copper.
Yeah I got lucky finding that polysteel copper, but this is one of just many ways a new crafter can succeed like I did. I found that I could make really good tools with that copper I found and harvested and I took advantage of that by selling 14.25 tools for 3k and 97.52 repair tools for 2.5k on the bazaar. I worked hard at starting out, and making all of those tools by hand. I spammed in coronet to sell those tools as well as the bazaar, and was making about 50 tools a day to keep up with what I was selling. With a little luck and some hard work I started off well and succeeded, and ended up mastering architect from it, and there's no reason why any other new crafter can't commit and succeed just the same.
DingoBoi
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:22 pm
#150
My understanding of your business from other posts I have readis thatyou have developed a series of contracters who both harvest and sell power for you. That sounds like a successful business to me, so congrats.All businesscreatures If your advertising tag is right, you sell for 1.5cpu (effictive - adjusted for PE). So the effective rate was .75ecpu before? I don't know the business of power a well as you do, but it sounds like power has reached a stable profitably price level to me. If you had a coercive monopoly, you could raise it to 100ecpu and everyone else would have to buy from you. But your pricing power doesn't extend that high likely.
Buying out your competitors is much like boiling the ocean. In theory its possible, but if they are turning a profit you are only contributing to their long term success by giving them the capital to build their organization up to. If they are selling at a loss, then they deserve to go out of business.
You are correct, I do employ quite a number of individuals to harvest power for me, but I sell it all myself. Yes, power was effectively selling at .75 previous to the mineral harvester buff. Due to the increased earnings of mineral harvesters, epc increased power prices, otherwise we would have just switched to minerals ourselves.
Yes, buying power from 'competitors' does give them the capital to reinvest and build up their company, but this is an online game and as such, players are transient. They come and they go, they look for a quick buck. Only a dedicated long term player would be of any concern to me. I'll be here for years. Most people are only here for months. Plus after I destroy a persons clientele, it's very hard for them to regain it.
There is no ability for anyone to have a monopoly on anything in SWG. It simply does not exist. People may try to stroke their own egos by convincing themselves that they had a genuine monoply on some commodity, or even an effective monopoly, but the fact is that there is nothing at all preventing anyone from entering markets, established or not.
Oh how wrong you are. To have a monopoly does not mean having to have total control over a market or production. Anyone can enter the market and I can smack them down easily if I choose to. But the fact of the matter is, a newb entering the business likely cannot produce enough volume of product to even cause concern, much less my interest in buying them out.
So this new spawn hits, and right off the bat a couple of armorsmiths are paying 120-150cpu for the stuff. To someone outside of the scout / armorsmith community, it would appear that those two guys "monopolised" the spawn. What really happened was that those two guys got their fill within a day or two, and you now had rangers sending tells to just about every armorsmith on the server looking to unload the stuff. I bought 200K at 70-80cpu before I stopped accepting offers.
Bottom line, everyone who was remotely funded got all the hide they wanted. Again, if you weren't on the inside of that what it would have looked like to you was that those two guys with the original high offer were getting everything.
Monopolies can't exist in SWG.
Stryker, a weaponsmith on our server, was able to dominate the resource market by offering more cpu than any other weaponsmith could. All the miners sold to him because he paid the most and could offer unlimited contracts. I really need to laugh at you buying 200k of resource there, because that is just a tiny amount compared to what the big boys buy. When you get out of preschool, you might aspire to being a major player.
Monopolies can and do exist.
You may have a near lock on the power market, but that doesn't mean you have a monopoly or anything even resembling one. There's no need for people to come to you for power. Every miner can put down a single fusion gen to power the rest of their ten lots. So you don't truly control the supply. You may think you do. But you don't. You're only a monopoly if you are the only source for power on the server.
Having 60% of the market is considered by most government as having a monopoly. It does not require complete domination of the market or supply. You are correct that miners can harvest their own, but as long as they make more by harvesting minerals than power for their other harvesters, they will continue to do so, and continue to buy power. Unless they are just stupid businesspeople. I don't claim to be a monopoly but I have exerted my power to drive a few power corps out of business and I doubled the price of power on our server. Oligopoly or monopoly doesn't concern me. These are things i've done.
The truly amusing part about this is when dev's state part of the reason is to prevent monopolies. My business would not be affected in the least at their initial proposed limits.
BoberFett
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:36 pm
#151
Gavvot wrote:
BoberFett wrote:
Gavvot
If the problem is big crafters buying out the stock of new crafters so that people simply find empty vendors, won't a vendor limit hurt new crafters more? A new crafter has one vendor with 50 items. Unless that newbie charges outrageous prices which drive away customers, I as a monopolist could buy it all up and just destroy it. So it costs me a little money, big deal. It maintains my control.
This fix, if intended to break up supposed monopolies, will hurt the little guy just starting as it will the big guys.
You, as a monopolistic can buy them and destroy them.
but you don't make any money in the process so :
- you cannot do that indefinitively
- you cannot hurt more than a limited number of crafter.
Basically, you annoy a few people, but you don't control the market and force a big number of player to buy at your price.
You're not a good monopolistic.
Wanna bet? I could buy out numerous small WS out of their tiny vendors worth of weapons for a LOOONG time.
Besides, now you're trying to define which monopoly practices make one a good monopoly? Give me a break. Either you drive others out of business or you don't.
DingoBoi
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:41 pm
#152
200 cpu?
What prevented you from making a similar offer and only buying a fraction of what the "big guys" bought? Obviously you don't do the volume of the "big guys" (or you'd be one), so a percentage should be all you need?
Oh, wait, the monopolies prevented you from posting on the forums and directly communicating with scouts and rangers, even while they hacked all the credits from your bank account!
Nothing prevents them from makign a similar offer or even at the same cpu. What it does is that the 'regular buyers' are going to get the masses all selling to them because they are reliable purchasers. They offer the highest cpu and typically shut out all other offers. Once a relationship is established between a miner and a crafter, it is not easily broken. It tends to continue on as such indefinitely.
I'd lump anyone spending 200cpu+ for a resource simply to keep it out of the hands of others in the stupid category as well.
It's not stupid. It's very smart actually. It effectively limits the ability of other crafters to procure resources and thereby limits their ability to produce quality merchandise and merchandise in volume. Destroy the competition and the customers come to you. True, you can't stop it all.. but it again comes down to reliability. If you don't have it, they will go to find someone who does.
In addition, not every scount and ranger on a server checks the forums. Not every scout and ranger is plugged into current value of creature resources. There is imperfect market knowledge, so there is always going to be someone who sells their resources at below market rates, if only because they don't know any better.
For the umpteenth million time, monopolies cannot exist in SWG's economy. If anything, time constraints alone would prevent the formation of monopolies.
And for the umpteenth million time, we will still make much more profit than the small independent businessperson because we control the volume.
Please explain to me, in very specific terms, how any one or any group has any power to control any portion of the market in SWG. Not implied control, specific control, as in a direct ability to control pricing, demandm and availability in any market.
I single-handedly caused the prices of power to double overnight on my server. Almost ever single other power broker followed suit by raising at comparable rates to the rates they were charging. The others went out of business. Is this a clear enough example since it is something that actually happened?
People don't tend to go back to empty vendors unless everyone runs out regularly which is what low caps like 110 would accomplish. DingoBoi didn't have to buy them out every single day. Just once a week if they didn't have back stock. And folks wouldn't go to that vendor again. After a couple of months, many crafters would pay a bit more to know they can find a reliable source of a needed resource.
BINGO!
A first day artisan with a survey tool may be able to hand mine nuclear power, but I think it will make him or her ill. The artisan can make wind power generators. But they don't get the "same" power as the nuclear power that DingoBoi must deal in.
Agreed. I don't thing a newbie deals in 20million units of power a cycle, although they can, and should produce their own when starting out.
I'm willing to bet that a new player could become a decent sized power dealer on any server in a very short amount of time. I'm thinking two weeks.
Maybe I should play on Eclipse myself.
LOL... I've done it. No way a newbie player could become a decent power broker in 2 weeks. It's just not possible without outside assistance.
BoberFett
Fri Aug 13, 2004 2:56 pm
#153
DingoBoi wrote:
I single-handedly caused the prices of power to double overnight on my server. Almost ever single other power broker followed suit by raising at comparable rates to the rates they were charging. The others went out of business. Is this a clear enough example since it is something that actually happened?
I think you're too full of yourself. If the others matched your price, it's only because they were undercharging compared to what the market would bear. They saw people willing to buy from you at 1.5, and saw a profit opportunity.
And why did some people go out of business? I thought you were buying all of their power? If you were buying all of their power, then they should be able to stay in business indefinitely.
I might have a character on Eclipse already for a lot trade. I really hope not, I'd love to prove you wrong.
Gavvot
Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:48 pm
#154
BoberFett wrote:
Gavvot wrote:
BoberFett wrote:GavvotIf the problem is big crafters buying out the stock of new crafters so that people simply find empty vendors, won't a vendor limit hurt new crafters more? A new crafter has one vendor with 50 items. Unless that newbie charges outrageous prices which drive away customers, I as a monopolist could buy it all up and just destroy it. So it costs me a little money, big deal. It maintains my control.This fix, if intended to break up supposed monopolies, will hurt the little guy just starting as it will the big guys.
You, as a monopolistic can buy them and destroy them.
but you don't make any money in the process so :
- you cannot do that indefinitively
- you cannot hurt more than a limited number of crafter.
Basically, you annoy a few people, but you don't control the market and force a big number of player to buy at your price.
You're not a good monopolistic.Wanna bet? I could buy out numerous small WS out of their tiny vendors worth of weapons for a LOOONG time.
Besides, now you're trying to define which monopoly practices make one a good monopoly? Give me a break. Either you drive others out of business or you don't.
Exactly.
You could annoy alot of very small WS.
Nothing that can give you power over the market.
You don't achieve monopoly by destroying small business, or really alot of them.
But even if you manage to destroy all the small WS.
You won't be able to do anything against the big one.
because you destroyed your own money.
You actually gave them monopoly.
And don't have the resource to fight them anymore.
I think we don't talk about the same scale.
DingoBoi
Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:07 pm
#155
BoberFett wrote:
DingoBoi wrote:
I single-handedly caused the prices of power to double overnight on my server. Almost ever single other power broker followed suit by raising at comparable rates to the rates they were charging. The others went out of business. Is this a clear enough example since it is something that actually happened?
I think you're too full of yourself. If the others matched your price, it's only because they were undercharging compared to what the market would bear. They saw people willing to buy from you at 1.5, and saw a profit opportunity.
And why did some people go out of business? I thought you were buying all of their power? If you were buying all of their power, then they should be able to stay in business indefinitely.
I might have a character on Eclipse already for a lot trade. I really hope not, I'd love to prove you wrong.
Think what you will. I had the power to do so through market share and I exerted it. Had I not raised power prices, nobody else on the server would have. They saw it was feasible because I did it. Most of them still undercut me... but at the same percentage they did previously. Power prices would NOT have increased had EPC not chosen to raise them because we controlled such a large market share, we dictated the base price of power in our galaxy.
I was not buying all of their power and had no interest in doing so at the time. I have purchased from other vendors on occasion and have previously bought out every broker in the galaxy who sold for less. These are things I've done and can do... and if I choose to, I could do it for several months right now, effectively making me the only power broker in the galaxy. A business is out of business if they don't have customers. If I am their only customer and I stop buying from them, they are screwed, since all their former clientele has come to me.
It's not about me buying them out. The ones I bought from were, for the most part, happy to sell at their price. I just marked it up and resold it for easy credits. Some went out of business due to not wanting to sell...others felt it wasn't the kind of operation they wanted and they moved on to other business ventures, others went out of business thruough standard attrition.
The point is I don't have to decimate another business. All I have to do is undermine the consumer confidence in them and those customers are mine. Time is a premium worth paying for. That is the power I have and is what I can do.
Not boasting and not bragging and I really don't have intention of doing that, but the point is, I could if I wanted to.
BoberFett
Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:30 pm
#156
OK, but what you had was not a monopoly. You simply realized market price based on supply/demand. Your server supported 1.5cpu for power. Everyone was selling below that. If you raise your price now to something beyond what people are willing to pay, they will simply mine their own power. All you've done is find a price point at which it's cheaper for the customer to buy from you than it is to use their lots to mine it on their own. It's a simple case of the price/demand chart.
You may have helped the other power dealers realize their profit potential, but that's different than monopoly power. Smart business, yes. Monopoly no.