Master Trader

[Wuselwirbel]

The trade office is cumbersome. The huge spreads (= difference between selling and buying prices for the same goods combination) show that it is also often highly inefficient. Also, as pointed out repeatedly here, some players place predatory trades that seem to be just hoping for accidental clicks. Hence especially new guild members or often confused and scared by the trade office, making trades they regret afterwards.

I understand that BB is unwilling to spend the high amount of resources needed to change that via any market guiding mechanism of their own, so why not use the high level players and open an new avenue of activity: Master trader.
In my experience many high level players are
a) trading only at what they consider "fair" prices, i.e. not trying to take advantage of others and
b) hoarders, i.e. having huge stockpiles of many goods "just in case".
So, why not allow those players to act as brokers (intermediates/market makers) who benefit from aiding the market, not just from selling for a profit? I'll gladly help BB with setting up such a mechanism (being a business professor should help there). It would make the market more effficient, put those hidden resources to use and offer another route to keeping high level players happy and busy. It could be implemented by adding new tabs to the trade office - making it upgradeable (e.g. at levels 60, 70 future levels 80, 90 and 100). If the market were efficient, it would also reduce the problems arising from having many (de fact) currencies in parallel: gems, gold coins, guild coins, star coins, pumkins, presents, Easter eggs, footballs... which so far further increases the lack of transparency of the market.

[vigabrand]

i totally agree. although i dont understand all ur solutions i'm sure some1 at bb can follow it

surely TO should be a place for players to help others yet it just seems to bring out the greed in ppl. i do fear that those same players who spoil trade office will be able to continue this practise as brokers.
Would removing coins help? i see no need for this as is it isn't really a resource and players could barter instead of amassing a huge treasure chest. I hear prices on other servers r much lower than northisle. would it be possible to make TO cross server and would this help? or perhaps a bidding system where u set a starting price, set the length of time and a buy now price?

[Dorotheus]

I fail to understand why you mention Gems and Star coins since they can not be traded.

I presume you have something concrete in mind beyond the minimal outline you have suggested here would you care to flesh it out some ?

[Brotherjon]

An intriguing idea, but some some more detail on what the idea is and how it might work would be good, maybe some examples?

[Kriegor]

Guild and or Friends is where you get help.
TO is where you trade stuff you have for stuff you do not have, at a price you are prepared to pay.
I choose to trade my stuff, or horde it, or give to guild members, or just brag about it. Prices set by a few supposedly benevolent chosen one's sounds like a very bad idea to me.

[Larili]

I agree with Kriegor, there is no benefit giving over control of the market place to a few high level players based on the assumption that they will `play nice' for the benefit of all. The guild structure should be a place for those not understanding the price structure of the game to be protected and learn what is fair, or you can learn the hard way on your own in the TO.
I do not see the need for a market place to be `efficient' but usable, the TO has developed nicely from the early beginnings ( remember stacks? ) Above all its control is firmly in the hands of all players, and we all have the choice to buy and sell at prices that reflect our economies as individuals and across the server on which we play.
There will always be selfish players, however in this game they are considerably out numbered by the generous, and players who look out for the vulnerable, quickly buying `mistakes' and refunding those players making them once they know it was not intended.
What is being portrayed as cumbersome is in my view `choice'. I can sell what ever I want ( That is able to be traded with anything else, not what is deemed to be suitable by a third party. I can do so at what ever quantity I want ( subject to set limits per trade), if some player likes it they can trade, if they don't they can ignore, If they want to over charge on that trade they can put up their own, and if they feel they can do better they can undercut me. Its not broken, so does not need fixing its a free market, that's how free markets work

[lordloocan]

Nothing wrong with the current trade system that I can see. Please leave it as it is. The spread of prices encourages seller competition and gives buyers the opportunity to shop around for the prices that suit them; much like shopping in real life. There already appears to be a pricing agreement on lootspots and I a not convinced this it to the benfit of the buyers in particular.

[SnowBlizz]

Someone who claims to be a business professor should know that some of the worst market corruption comes from the marketmakers abusing their position in the ecosystem. I don't trust in even more people with ability to influence prices.

I agree with lordloocan that there is a definitive price fixing going on, it's not entirely bad however, as having those who can easily star a million granite can spend some of the resources buying ls:s lower down.

You can tell from market prices how the lvling slows up as you need dozens of tens of million to lvl people aren't as keen on buying ls anymore either since a couple of Pandas don't cut it anymore.

[Wuselwirbel]

Lots of questions raised, so let me try to elaborate a bit. The trade office in its current form is an inefficient market. BlueByte made clear that they will not provide a price monitoring system or act as a clearinghouse, so we need a way to improve the market that means a limited effort for BB (thus the Trade Office building upgrade as a basis).
Higher level players know the game (and prices); they often have hoarded huge piles of resources. Let's give them an incentive to help with making the market more efficient for everyone. The idea is NOT to give them power but to use them for making the market more efficient. In my experience high-level players care about XP more than about getting "rich". So, let them provide their excess resources to the market and let them gain XP not for buying and selling but for doing both in equal amounts. That means no XP for dumping stuff/selling cheap or for selling high. Instead, my proposal is to have them gain XP for enabling an efficient market. Thus XPs are gained for transactions only once the same amount is bought and sold by them at identical prices. They don't need a margin (spread) - the XPs are their "fee"
That way the incentive is on finding a price enough people see attractive enough to buy and sell for (i.e. a true market price). So, if they set the price too low, they run low on stock, if they set the price too high, they keep hoarding in that trade office account without gaining XP. Economists like to use people's selfishness for the public well-being (that is one of the things markets do).

The whole concepts is based on making the trade office a better market. So what makes a market more efficient?

a) Good markets are transparent

That is currently not the case as obvious by the many websites trying to provide price information. Only one (osettlers price calculator which is systematically flawed by not differentiating game worlds/servers) uses cross-tabulation, i.e. shows how much a resource costs in terms of units of all other resources.
An efficient market would need more of that, so my suggestion is that the Master Trader feature allows to trade for the currency (gold coins) only - if this is efficient enough, you can exchange all goods by going through the currency, just like we do in the real world. Many trades in TSO are not using gold coins but exchange goods for goods (barter), a sign for an inefficient market - money was invented in real life to make transactions easier, in TSO it fails to serve that function. My comment on the de facto existence of multiple parallel currencies was just meant to highlight that this reduces transparency and thus makes the market even more confusing for new players.
The Master Traders could help gold coins to (re)gain their function as the game currency and thus help market efficiency. Eventually, BB could list goods in order of increasing cost instead of the current (chronological?) order - best offers first to make buying and selling easier. That changed order will expose predatory pricing (deals that are way out of the ordinary, apparently only hoping for accidental clicks). Once the market prices have settled, BB might even use the current market prices for goods to order barter prices by value, too.
An easy to implement feature would be colouring Master Trader offers in let's say blue, loot spots and other low prices in green and the highest prices in red to aid transparency further.

b) Good markets are liquid, i.e. have a lot of sellers and buyers.

The Master Traders would act as both (gaining XP only by buying AND selling). They basically "dump" excess resources into the Trade Office, set a price and set limits how much they want that stock to fluctuate until selling/buying stops. Ideally, they sell as much as they buy - showing that their price is exactly the current market price. But nobody is online 24/7, so this "stop-loss" protects them from selling out if prices change while they are offline. Example: During the crisis event the gold coin price for map pieces increased within a few hours at least by a factor of 4 (I saw offers up to 16 times the pre-event prices). An imbalance in buying/selling indicates the need for adjusting prices, so this feature would protect the Master Trader from running out of stock or piling up goods at costs above the current market price. The sooner the Master Trader adjusts prices in such a case, the more (s)he will benefit compared to other Master Traders. So, there is a competition whenever prices change even after the initial swings that are to be expected. Master Trades will strive to be efficient and predict changes in market prices (e.g. prior to events) because that has them gain more XP than other Master Traders.
The proposed market mechanism will not make rare products more common, it will just make prices for plentiful goods more transparent and trades easier. Prices for stones and pinewood logs, for example, will soon settle on a consensus level. That will make trading a lot less confusing for entry-level players who care about those simple products.
The normal trade office functions will continue to exist, as will loot spot selling or giving away goods to non-friends. All normal trades are still working as usual. The Master Traders' prices will provide market participants with reference prices and increase trade volume though. Players could buy/sell even when few other players are online. The better market prices will also obsolete many of the "price check" questions in the trade chat. :-)

c) Good markets have low transaction costs

For the Master Traders, there would be no transaction cost on their automatic transactions, especially no limit to the number of concurrent trades. That makes the market more efficient. If BlueByte decides that the trade office sales for gems are a key part of their business model (I doubt that it outweighs the benefits and think it would be compensated by higher earnings through retaining more new players), the Master Traders could be restricted to not actively posting trades but just reacting to the trades users post. That would greatly reduce the benefits for all players though.


Details of implementing such a feature are of course tricky as usual: We need to set the incentive level high enough for participation but low enough to not have people rushing to 75. This obviously needs more thoughts and analysis. We need to also ensure that people don't benefit from fake transactions like double trades. The proposed market mechanism will not make rare products more common, it will just make prices for plentiful goods more transparent and trades easier. I'd gladly work with BlueByte on the details - their database of trades should actually not just be a good foundation for establishing the mechanisms needed here. It would probably also serve as a neat "market" providing fodder for a few journal articles. :-)

[Larili]

Lmao, You've not been playing long have you? The player base is very good at making the most of opportunities, ( often unintended by BB )and completely ignoring those that don't work for them. Everything you just wrote if implemented would play into the hands of a few, those with sufficient resources to `play' the market. Friends and guild mates could easily round trades indefinitely just to gain xp, they could easily create a false value by exploiting `time of day' player traffic.
Lower level players would have very little influence, as they have limited resources, and different requirements and priorities. If anything those benefit more with the current system than with what is being proposed here, and I would feel disenfranchised in the market place if it was being run by high level players maxing out xp with no real regard to the market for all players.
As for implementation, if word got out, that this was to be implemented, what would happen to the market then? Everyone in a position to do so would hoard everything, then the market would crash as soon as it became live when everyone tries to get the most xp benefit. Players , especially low and mid level use the TO to `survive' not always to make a greedy profit. Would these players hang around till the market found the new level....?
This is a game, there are economic lessons to be learnt from it which would benefit real life on occasions, not the other way around