Ideas for a healthier game economy

I haven't been much of a market person but my husband seems to enjoy that more than the game itself, just like you:) I did reduce his profits by undercutting and doing direct sales though xD

I do like auction house in other games especially the convenience of it as Tagamogi said. But you are someone who did that "profesionally" in other games, you like reselling and playing the AH minigame and even you don't think it's suitable for P:G because, yep, it is a community driven game and I doubt that's going to change.


Side note-I only used fire dust as example, I am aware it's easy to farm etc but it's easy for higher levels. Baby fire mages still need it for research and I wouldn't like to see new players dropping it because they can't afford artificially gonflated prices.

Without resellers, things aren't available. If someone doesn't resell something you can't get, you wouldn't be able to get it.

That said, there's ways - like Khaylara points out - of making the resellers jump through hoops which makes it had for them to corner markets.

"Without resellers, things aren't available. If someone doesn't resell something you can't get, you wouldn't be able to get it."


Sorry Crissa I don't follow your logic. Yes, things would be available AND at lower prices if someone wouldn't hurry to buy them , hoard them and resell them at their set price.

In order to block a reseller from cornering a market you have to do the same thing (providing you have the cash to do so) and constantly undercut them until people will stop buying from the reseller.

This discussion is futile since Citan already expressed his firm stance on auction house.

Related-I noticed the player stalls have their slot number displayed now, my hope is that will lead to a search function:)

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Originally Posted by ANT3RA

I didn't farm much, I just played the market very well. All thanks to the auction house (or whatever flavor it came in) and some handy add on's and online databases where i could keep track of supply, demand, and opportunities for profit. I actually made less money farming and selling at 100% profit, then playing the market and making very small profit on large quantities of items, in less than the time it took me to farm etc.

Searching, buying, unstacking, stacking, reselling is much quicker than farming/selling if you know how in game AH mechanics work and know how to manipulate player's emotional attachments to certain needed items in games. I played the AH for profit more then i played the core game.

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Hah, yes, all of that. Thanks for bringing back some warm and fuzzy memories here.

Random aside: You don't have to be a total jerk in order to play the ah game. I'd buy raw materials on the ah, craft something and then sell the crafted items on the ah, which I like to think is non-jerky. ( Well, ok, the other crafters trying to sell the same items might have thought I was a jerk but I generally didn't bother with trade wars. If someone else really wanted to sell stuff for less than its cost, fine, I'd sell something else.) I had a couple alts covering cut gems and glyphs - consumables with a large variety, so if someone was dinking around with trying to dominate the druid healing gem market, I could always sell my warrior dps gems until they got tired of the game. I hit the gold cap on my glyph alt somewhat accidentally, then kept going because the ah game had become more interesting than the game itself by then.

WoW had a special weakness to the ah game by allowing all kinds of mods, imo. All you needed was some understanding of supply and demand and a nicely programmable mod, and making money without ever setting foot outside of town was very, very easy. Either that, or I just had too much free time. ;)

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Originally Posted by ANT3RA

However, this could still occur with player vendors, the difference is that 3 stack man will always have stock and doesn't care who buys it as long as people come to him first or only him and then 10 stack man will eventually realise that 3 stack man is onto something as he cant seem to make more then 2 sales a day. He is losing a lot of profit not selling what he has. 10 stack is then forced to not sell said stomachs or reduce his price to suit and take a loss. Either way someone holds "the market" for stomachs, but not in the sense that profit margins dictate price. What dictates price, is what people are willing to spend without needing to go and farm it themselves. Supply is high or constant, Demand is high, Price is stable, the player economy wins. Price is then determined by the drop rate of stomachs for instance, which is an unchangeable natural occurrence in the game.

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Sorry, I don't think I follow this one. If the 3-stack player is able to have a steady supply of stomachs, then he could also post his 3 stacks on the ah without caring who buys them, and just keep reposting his new stacks every day? And if 3-stack doesn't have a steady supply, then 10-stack can still buy him out and resell the items, even in a non-ah economy?

Or do you mean that by setting up specific shops, buyers are able to identify sellers they like, and are more likely to buy at their shops rather than searching for a better deal elsewhere?

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

This discussion is futile since Citan already expressed his firm stance on auction house.

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Possibly futile, but fun! Sorry for derailing your thread with a trip down memory lane. To stay vaguely on topic, I think there are two problems with an ah type system:
- resellers can drive the prices of rare/high demand items very high
- competition can drive the prices of common items very low. (This is, imo, a problem for people who want to craft and be able to sell their products at a reasonable price.)

So, if there was a way of avoiding this, I think it would be a worthwhile discussion and who knows, Citan might change his mind. I just don't see any easy solutions, so yes, we should probably focus on ways to improve our current shop system to make it a bit more user-friendly without becoming an ah system. I should probably check if I can log in and see how the new shopkeeper location system looks.

[MENTION=90]Tagamogi[/MENTION] I think it's fun to just discuss it too but I didn't want people to go into arguments about it that's all(AH has been a controversial topic in PG and people tend to get angry about it):P

"I'd buy raw materials on the ah, craft something and then sell the crafted items on the ah"-non jerky but not a reseller imo, you'd put skill into crafting. A reseller is nothing but a middleman. To use your example with the warehouse and the grocery store, when you buy bananas from the grocery store instead of the warehouse, the grocery store staff put effort into transporting, unpacking, pricing etc so they don't cash retail fee for nothing.
In my opinion a reseller is someone who just camps the auctioneer, snatches everything that people sell cheap and just sells them more expensive, no effort or skill put into it. Buying materials and selling the finished product is more than fine imo.

Could endlessly go around in circles on this, as some people think the AH is end of the world and other people think no auction house is end of the world. However, one important thing is that people often talk about how bad WoW was. It was pretty bad, as people automated using the AH. But when 100k people automated it as ridiculous. That's why I think people have a kneejerk on the AH idea.

Current situation -

Log in, decide to buy X item. Go to vendors. Check all vendors, check all used tabs, ask in trade. an hour later realise you've been playing for an hour, and have to go, and don't have what you need.

Future AH situation -

Log in, decide to buy X item. Go to merchant hall, check 'town crier/auctioneer' for list of all item X for sale. Select what stall to buy it from, run to that stall, say A1 with new system, buy it. Play the game, enjoy life for an hour.


I do not disagree with people saying 'there will be resellers' There already have been - I played around with gems for a while out of interest. Others play with other harvestables etc, and sure - people do buy them, but also people do under cut, and that is good, it stimulates trade.

The current situation limites trade, makes people waste hours trying to buy something, and needs tweaking badly. The new designations for zone and stall number is a SMALL step in the right direction. Now please give us a trade crier/auctioneer/broker whatever you want to call it.. so we don't hve to waste hours running around looking.

That'd be great.

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Originally Posted by Tagamogi

So, if there was a way of avoiding this, I think it would be a worthwhile discussion and who knows, Citan might change his mind.

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Exactly, hence testing phase, and feedback etc. It would be really nice if there were some simple survey things on log out, one time only. Or an ingame poll on log in, to see what people were interested in, for example

'what QoL improvements would you like to see improved?' or whatever. Forums are a tiny tiny proportion of active players opinions.

I really don't want this to turn into a debate. The situation you described is exactly why I started this thread but I think it can be solved by other means than an auction house and without putting up with wannabe biz tycoons.

I made few suggestions about having more organized player stalls, many people pointed out a search function would solve the browsing without getting what you need issues. There are endless suggestions on this topic. Being realistic an auction house would be convenient but it would make player stalls and NPC consignment (and any other form of trade) obsolete except maybe some direct player to player interaction for specific crafted items.

PS before I start a suggestions thread I actually ask for opinions ingame, sadly not many use the forums so I do my own "surveys" if you will. I realize that's not reflecting all opinions ofc (not by far).

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

Sorry Crissa I don't follow your logic. Yes, things would be available AND...

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Literally no. If people can't resell stuff, then it goes off the market. It's not there if you can't hunt it yourself. It would be hoarded off the market. Unavailable at any price.

Basic economics.

But you're right that there are some things that can be done to limit it - but reselling has to exist or the market does not.

I still don't understand the logic. If a person just buys everything and doesn't resell it that person is not a re-seller. It's simply a person who likes to hoard.:confused:

Quoting myself but "In my opinion a reseller is someone who just camps the auctioneer, snatches everything that people sell cheap and just sells them more expensive". Buying all mats and selling a finished product or just buying to hoard for later=not reseller.