Merchant Archive

My appologies, ASRID. I should have further clarified some issues in this thread, as I have in others. I believe if you view some rebuttles to concerns that others posed in another thread I made about this issue, you'll see that I have not missed many, if any points.

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"your whole argument seems to proceed from the assumption that a micro-managed price fixing economy somehow reduces the number of economic failures in the system."

Creating a Base Value for resources and having them combine together to create a Base Item Value has nothing to do with micro management of the economy. It simply ensures that items and resources have a value.

According to the 'rules' I laid out, that value could fluctuate, based on the sellers desire, by -10% or +unlimited%. Merchants and Smugglers would be able to alter the BIV, allowing itmes to be sold at a rate below -10% of the BIV, thus undercutting the compitition. The difference here is that one would have work hard to start undercutting the market (by gaining merchant/smuggler skills), rather than the way it is now where anyone can do it without working at all.

"All the available data suggests exactly the opposite. Far from proposing a fail-free system, you seem to be proposing the East German solution --- you avoid the creation of a class system by making sure everyone lives in miserable poverty."

First off, do you have all of the available data? If so, please post it here as it would be greatly helpful. Thanks!Secondly, the system I have suggested will not impoverish anyone. On the contrary, it will ensure that everyone will get at least a fair price for their items. Furthermore, it will save people some real life time, that they may not wish to take, in setting a price for their items. Credits are easy to come by and I am positive that no one in the game will mind paying a fair price for items. I mean, these are the same people who buy milk and butter from the grocery store every week and never even consider that they could get it for far less, if not for free. Why is that? Because milk and butter have a base value, which is a pretty exceptable idea. Perhaps in some instances item prices in the game would increase due to the implimentation of this system, but unless you have a problem with earning what you aquire, then this shouldn't be a problem (insert whineyrebuttle by exploiters here).

"No thanks. It's a game, sometimes you lose, especially if you make poor choices. Whether in combat or economic competition, you will sometimes lose simply because of broken, poorly designed code (cynics can debate where on the scale between 5 and 95% of the time this is the case), but sometimes you will (and should) lose because you screwed up."

Part of the 'broken, poorly designed code' is the way item and resource valuesare handled in this game. In all of their effort to make a wonderful game, SOE forgot to make an ounce of gold worth an ounce of gold.

"Capitalism isn't an ideal solution .... it's a lousy one, except for all the alternatives."

Thank you Mr. Churchill.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been." Winston Churchill

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KzinKiller , for the love of all things natural, what you're failing to relate is that in SWG there is no value to an item, regardless of supply and demand, because there is essentially 0 cost to bring items to the market, because people do not actually need to sell items to pay for the items creation. They can pay for 100% of production cost by running missions.

Follow?

You sell resources based on the cost of production, profit markup, and demand for the resources. That's great, that's the way it's done. However, if you pop out and do 1 level 12 hunting mission every day you've just paid entirely for your production cost. Now, seeing how your production cost is 0, that leaves the price of your resources to based entirely on 2 things, both of which are completely arbitrary. As such, this often leads people to sell things for far less than people who do not pay for their production cost by doing missions. That in turns leads to solely crafting characters losing out on business.

Furthermore, this isn't a 'price fixing' mechanisism. It is a minimum price fixing system for everyone who is not a mechant. Again, you can always sell for more that BIV or upto 10% less. Mechants can earn the privalige to sell for up to 20% less. Smuggers can alter the BIV of an item. And, in person to person trade the BIV is not taken into account.

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donnah, it's niether complicated nor more dificult to impliment than any other item attribute. Here's an example,

Muzzle, made with 6 Abrev Titanium Alluminum and 4 Acopeian Polymer.

Base Value for resources, based on the original formula I posted

Abrev: 334 and Acopeian: 467

Now, if those numbers were divided by 100 (for example, as the actual relationship would need to be properly worked out), we'd be left with 3.34 and 4.67 credits per unit. Multiply each by the respective amount of materials used and you get a Muzzle with a Base Item Value of 39 credits. That's onlyroughly 4credits per unit and considering that niether of these resources are very good, I think that's a fair price to start from. Subtract 10% and you have 36 credits, subtract 20% and that's 32 credits... slice it and maybe you'll knowck off another 4 credits, who knows.

This is not an 'official pricing system', it is simply a way to give each item a unique inherent value, much like aounce of titanium is worth more than an ounce of lard. It is also a way for that inherent value to be reflected on the market. This game is drasticly lacking in this regard. This base item value, as I clearly stated in my original post does not factor in the time it takes to create the item, etc. That, and all which surrounds it, is where the player economy steps in. All this system is meant to do is stop people from selling items for less than they are actually worth, which in the end, will not help anyone.

I foresee this issue being more relivent in six months than it is now. I posted it now so that perhaps in six months SOE will be able to go live with a solution sooner than if I were not to suggest a potential solution. I am a very patient man, but there is a difference between patience and indifference.

"All the crafters selling at superlow prices would still sell low, they'd sell at exactly the minimum price, and now they'd have a game-defined justification for it."

True, but a Master Merchant would still be able to undercut any of those people by 10% and potentially a significan amount more if the Master Merchant had his items sliced before selling them! It's not complicated, but it more than just black and white.

You are quite correct in your line of reasoning that the minimum price would eventually be the only price people will be willing to pay, viewing people who sell for higher than the minimum as greedy. However, how is this any worse than the way it is now, where people do things like callme greedy for selling high quality, factory made crafting tools for 500 credits each? I've sold tons of them for this price and people are happy to buy them, as they are far better quality than average.

Also, I doubt most consumers would be (or go to the trouble of being) explicitly informed about the relationship between base price and resources used. Heck, people eat ketchup andcandy barswithout ever thinkingtwice that they go through a massive engineering process that's chalked full of questionable chemicals... and they love it!

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And there you have it, everything truly realivent I have said about the subject since the original post. Originally I posted this in the SWG forum, but as an after thought, I figured it would better suited to this board, as Merchants would stand to gain the most from the system.

So, in closing ASHRID, I hope you now can conclude as I have that invoking a system similar to the one I have suggested is mearly a fail-safe measure meant to assist the player driven economy and not in any form a replacement for the player driven economy. Thank you very much, everyone, for your input on the subject.

Ok I see what you mean (but all that would have been helpful here from the start:-) )

The problem I still see with that is that everyone would just sell at the imposed base price (because everyone is externally supporting their crafting operations to compete with everyone else) and at that point you may as well have an NPC market because no ones going to care about quality (I'll come to why in a second)

While this looks good on the surface (sellers think they have a guaranteed income per item) I dont think its going to help anyone because it would result in buyers only being prepared to pay the base price for anything regardless of quality, rareity etc (because they can argue that sooner or later someone will put as good, if not superior quality items up for the base price) this is assuming that sellers dont just automatically list at the base price because (the reverse psychology) they dont think anyone will pay more.

The other spin off is that its possible for items to not be economically viable to make - unless you price everything above the 'default overhead' price, price it too low and no one will make it.

Once you price everything above the 'default' price you more than likely have inflated prices that arent really worth what your getting, and then unless you increase the cash flow into the game (assuming the current sinks are fixed) everyone is broke except the crafters (because as long as they sell they are making more money than they spend). At that point every becomes a crafter and (as happened in Eve) suddenly everyone is producing everything they need and not buying off anyone else, only unlike Eve the prices cant crash because theres an artificial minimum on them.

My personal feelings aside, I just cant see it working.

whaoh man, they sky isn't falling

See, the thing is here that the game mechanisms in SWG do not properly account for the value of items. Follow my line of reasoning here...

new artisan samples resources. new artisan sells items and resources. builds a power plant. pays maintence with savings. runs out of money. does missions. mays maintenance. builds extractors. does missions to pay maintenance. crafts mucho items. sells items. buys something cool. profits spent. does missions to pay for maintenane.

crafted items = resources + maintenace fees=free money from missions = no item value = no point in trying to profit off item sales.

What's to stop some one with far too much time on their hands from making a guild who pays for everything by doing missions and sells everything in the game on the bazaar for 1 cedit? Absolutely nothing at all and I bet you every single one of you would cry bloody murder if they did. Though this may not be likely to occur, with the current game system it is entirely plausable. I mean, that guild would still be rich if they had 50 people doing missions and 10 people crafting... someone will do this and others will recall my suggestions.

Would actually make more sense to lower the skill point allotment so that we are more restricted in what we can do. That would do more for the economy than anything else..but with all the threads about people wanting MORE skill points..we know that won't happen.

i cannot do EVERYTHING in this game, but I am very self-sufficient. Too much so, probably.

I am...

1/2 to TKA Novice, and I'll have to quit there with combat
Bio-Engineer--giving up skills now, but I was pretty high up
Scout with explore 4, hunting 4, some survival and trapping
Medic (required for BE) with organic chem IV
Was Marksman (not master), just recently given up, but really, you only NEED one combat skill if you NEED one at all
Master Artisan, Archi w/install IV, contruction I (will not go up housing or furniture)
Merchant with Advert IV, Efficiency II.

Final template will be master merchant, archi with the two lines mentioned, novice tka and whatever scouting i can keep...probably explore 4 because I hate being slow.

Sure, there are SOME things I can't do..but not many.

We are, indeed, artifically priced because of missions--so what is the solution? Only solution, really, is to not allow artisans to take missions and not allow artisans to have vendors unless they have Merchant. That way, artisans will be REQUIRED to sell an item for it's "value", which will in the end be decided only by the Merchant--there would be some skewing going on because of PA subsidized artisans.

There's just not a good solution..there really isn't.

Michela, first off, I know you didn't read most if any of the post. Secondly, as I have observed from your other posts, you rarely have anything constructive to add to a converstion. You prove yourself over and over to be nothing more an antognist. As such, please refrain from filling this thread with your inane babble.

Thank you.

To everyone else who really doesn't like the idea, you're not alone. In fact I've only seen one person who did like the idea. Meh, I can't always come up with a good one, I guess Thanks a lot for all of your input, it has helped me refine my horrid idea into, well, a detailed and structured horid idea! lol.

My final thoughts on the matter... Well, we still have the issue of a 0 value being brought to the market, due to ability of crafters to obtain large quantities of free resources, through doing missions or through PA assistance (PA assistance I really don't have a problem with personally, I mean, that is the benifit of having a PA!). Sure, time is money and many crafters do equate that when setting their prices, but it seems to me that many crafters must be hitting ctl+i and seeing their bank account hovering so high when they are setting prices that they think to themselves, "bahh, I may as well give people a deal". That is an inherent game flaw. That is what I was hoping to deal with here. If we had some sort of way in the system where player would have to work hard to give people a deal on something, ie by mastering Merchant, then we'd see fewwer people selling wares 'at a loss', because they couldn't! The way it is now allows any joeblow to not worka day in his life and still be able to undercut everyone in the game without losing a thing. If that's not an inherent flaw, I do not know what is.

Perhaps what I have suggested is not the solution to the issue at large. However, it was a solid effort to address an issue that will only worsen in time. I for one am proud of my efforts.

Not only "no," but "HELL **edit**ing no."

I'll admit I didn't read all of your posts, but I did skim most of them, seeing them getting longer and longer about how to impose a system toestablish the value of everything. The thing is, as I'm sure you understand, everyone is going to have their own opinion of what something is worth. Let them charge (or bid to) the price they think is appropriate. If you don't agree with their opinion, by ALL means, do business with someone else.

Falacy, this is a horrid idea. If you don't like the prices, charge what you want to charge. Don't be a little Nazi and tell the rest of us what to do.

Just going on record to say

I do not, and will not support this plan. I know you placed it on my Merchant Correspondant Thread, and I thank you for sharing your thoughts, but I think this is a BAD idea from the start.

I don't think this is a good idea.

Well, I apreciate you saying so marqie Really, it's nice to have some certainty in life, whether it be good or bad, at least you know!

1) Karl Marx is dead.

2) Karl Marx was wrong.

3) Karl Marx is dead wrong.

You say in your post about prices being low. Where are they low. I haven't seen anyone sell anything anywhere that wasn't at a nice profit.

You can't set a one way price. You say you want a minimum price, thats all well and good except it WILL defacto if not dejour, set a maximum price. No one will want to pay 10k for a gun, even if the stats are the best they've seen, if some formula says its worth 2k. You can talk 2k minimum till blue in the face and it will also become the grade for maximum.

Its totally a sellers market, how is making it a buyers market going to help the sellers?

Finally, remember, Better dead than red.

Workers of the world unite! The only thing you have to loose is your chains!

Come on now! Min pricing? This is a merchant board! Out with your socialist ideas!

Do you even understand why people sell items at below their own cost to produce? Its because you left an item out of the calculation, that being the xp gain.

For a crafter trying to skill up they could do several things:

A. Make items at high prices with good profit margins and slow sales (and slow xp) and maybe practice mode on the side

B. Make items, take a slight loss in money have high sales (and thereby gain a customer base) gain good xp advancement without grinding in practice mode

C. Lose tons of money grind practice mode 100% gain skill VERY fast and lose tons of money.

C is the fastest if you have someone to support you

A is good if you arent worried about advancing quickly and need the money for something special

B is a compromise

Can you guess why most people sell at a slight loss? If you fix minimum prices you force people to either option A or option B and destroy the notion of a market optimization of TOTAL profit (credits+xp)

Resources on the other hand... if someone is selling them below their production cost, grab it up fast, because they wont be able to sustain it and you can make some money off them.