Ideas for a healthier game economy

[ANT3RA]

From what I remember from Citan's older posts on this topic I think he doesn't want resellers and he doesn't want to completely eliminate NPCs from the economy.

What I understand by resellers and why I think that is bad (and how an AH would encourage reselling).

Let's say player F who has cash already has a large amount of fire dust and he constantly farms that. Players A B C also have fire dust but they are newbies and got their fire dust while leveling. They want to sell fast so they put it in AH with 125-130 a piece. Player F who wants to make more profit simply camps the auctioneer buys every last fire dust he finds with 125 each and puts it for sale at 170 each. Players who need it have no other option than to pay the price player F asks because it's still cheaper than NPC used tab price. So player F ends up controlling the fire dust market.
At the moment it's hard for 1 person to get monopol because he would have to camp numerous NPCs consignments, go check all the player stalls etc to be able to get all the fire dust off the market. With an auction house all that he would have to do is perma camp the auctioneer and keep buying every new small stack of fire dust other people put for trade.
In general terms you can have a handful of people controlling the entire game market and I believe this is what Citan wants to avoid. In a game that has a player base of 7 k it can be partially successful to have an AH because physically 3 people won't be able to control so many items that are traded daily but PG with a couple of hundred can be easily controlled by a couple of older players.
I was okay with AH in a game like Aion where a server population of 3 k was considered an all time low but here I don't think it would be beneficial. We'd have people who just started that couldn't afford the monopolized items if a stack of dust would cost 9 k and gems 400 each and that would be the only option.

You make a very excellent point Khaylara....Ooooh I still need more fire dust

I am one (read: used to be in my gaming prime O.o) of those "resellers" that have been mentioned. Not in PG though as I do not see a need for it nor do I have the time and dedication to that cause as I did several years ago. I find PG to be a community driven environment, whether that be player to player interaction or the sense of community as a whole. We all help each other out as needed etc. Reselling for profit as a "thing" can have dire consequences in my experience.

I was very good at making profit, skimming the fat off profit margins, and generally being "That Guy" that always had good stuff to sell, or vast quantities of "that thing".

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.

I ran several accounts and could create a false sense of competition between my own characters and this would make a buyer feel at ease, knowing that there are "some" "not so expensive" stacks/items, but would ultimately have to buy an expensive stack of far too many items because they needed two more of that item. I was so nasty...I know. They would then take that expensive stack, take the two items they needed, put the rest of the stack on the AH at a much lower price (usually the original "normal" price) to sell quickly and to try and undercut me to make that sale, at which point I would buy my own items back, make profit, smoke a fat one, easy money. Buyer is happy as they have the items they need, they sold the rest of the stack they didn't want, and I was happy cause it was all part of my plan.

I believe I did hold the monopoly on some things in WoW at one point. It was short lived though as many people did exactly the same thing I did, so dominance skipped from player to player etc. The outcome of that monopoly is that I (and my competitors) to a large extent regulated the price of said items. It was incremental, lets say over a two week period, but eventually items were 50% dearer then two weeks prior, and it remained there until that item tanked and the bubble burst. People realised it was easier to not use the AH, farm it themselves or spam trade channel to buy it direct from other players. The economy was very much affected by what players like myself did through playing the AH for profit.

Rinse, repeat, I moved onto the next item/s of the day, until that tanked, and the vicious circle repeats.

Player to player trading, and trading with a player by proxy using a player vendor, slows and has a leveling effect on in game economies by allowing people to find something they need with a bit of know how and leg work, rather then having 200 stacks of it hit them in the face on the AH. Someone will always end up doing what I did with an AH. A large portion of those 200 stacks would belong to one player.

Not having an AH allows someone to have 10 stacks of stomachs, selling them for 1850 a piece, making one or two sales a day, but still being beaten by the guy that has 3 stacks and selling them for 1250, selling everything, and being happy to do so all day every day, cause he knows people will come back to him for stomachs. The AH would allow 10 stacks to buy 3 stacks and then sell 13 stacks for 1850 forcing a price onto players, as the AH is the only quick and easy source of buy/sell.

There is no win win there for the player economy, only a win for one guy....the seller, Mr Entrepreneur. Being forced to use an AH would suit 10 stack man perfectly. As his profits rise, so does his hold on the economy as he has more buying power. Supply is very high, Demand is high but cautious or rising prices, Price is unstable, player economy fluctuates as price is too high and weakens in the long run. Players look for other sources, such as farming, or 3 stack man.

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.

I hope that last section makes...