Guild Wars 2

OK, I’m no economic, so i might not have a clue about what I’m talking about. But hey, at least I’m aware of it.

I just wonder if this is how its supposed to work:

A player puts out a item on the tp, he puts it on a selling price cause he doesn’t really need the money right now. Its quite an expensive item and there are few sellers, so he expects it to take some time for it to get sold, however the next day he discover that there has been an undercut of his price by 1c and will therefore sold before his.

I understand that 1c can be a big deal when we are talking about materials that are bought / sold in mass quantities. but why should an item priced at i.e 2g be sold after an item that have been put out later and been priced at 1.9999g. in my eyes the 2g (even though its more expensive) should be sold first, aka FIFO. Because i suppose that if 2 items have the exact same price its FIFO, right?

well, u might say. why didn’t the player just put out the item at a lower price then? well the point of a free market is to find a items true value right ? I’m not sure but I think that’s one of the main ideas behind it. so, lets assume that he finds the true value in some magical way. even though the true value is X anyone that want to sell the item would just have put up the price at X-1c (assuming its not a mat) the overall price reduction is to small to be noticeable but the gain in time is significant.

I hope you get my point by now. i’m not very good at explaining in English.

what i think this does to the economy:

- it makes the item take longer time to reach its true value, due to everybody just selling at -1c ( not all )

well, thats about it, aswell as its unfair to the player that put it up there first.

possible solutions:
- have a minimal undercutting marginal make it 2,5% or 1% or something in that area i think is reasonable (if this can be done) this would make fewer “steps” from the current price to the true value and at some point people would actually start to line up. this obviously can’t be done with mats, and doesn’t need to be done there either because the “steps” are already small enough. Or there is so much of it that even if there is alot of steps it will find the right price anyway.

As i said I’m no economic so i don’t know what consequences this might have. and I’m not saying that this is a must for the economy to function, I’m just saying that the system could benefit from it (i think) and if I’m wrong i would love a quick read of why it doesn’t work from a real economic or someone that actually know what they are talking about (unlike me).

anyway, thats my 2 coppar, and please excuse my english.

have a nice day

I don’t see it as a problem at all.

Since value is determined by the intersection of what someone is willing to buy for and what someone is willing to sell for, someone willing to sell for less changes that “magical” X to X-1 for as long as someone is willing to take the loss. And there’s nothing “fair” about “first come, first serve,” like you argue. If you don’t want to be undercut, then YOU have to be the one willing to take the loss. The lower YOU sell for below the current market rate, the less likely you are to be undercut. If that means taking 5%, 15%, or 50% off of the current sell price, that’s your choice.

The higher you price it, the longer you wait.

I would cerainly agree with a minimum gap of 2, 3 or even 5%. Because it IS indeed a problem, there are waaaay too many outstanding orders out there from people that don’t want the item, they just want to resell it.

Another possible solution would be to not allow copper values for items listed greater than 10g, and maybe not allowing silver values for items listed greater than 100g.

As the minimum price increment approaches zero (relative to the cost of the item), the system becomes much more like LIFO than FIFO.

However, either case is fair in that all players have the same options available to them.

@Targren
well, the problem isn’t the undercutting part. let me give you an example:

you want to sell item X

Buying price atm is at a steady 1,6g

sell orders:

1 at 2,3g
1 at 2,1g
1 at 2,0g

so lets say that we know that the true value is 1,6 if you sell it now and the true price is about 2gold if you wait for it. from this point i have 2 strategic options:
A: undercut 2g by 1c hoping that ill get it sold before there is another seller.
B: undercut with so much so that I can be relative safe from being undercut.

if i choose A and there is another seller he will just sell it at my price minus 1c.

or if I choose B so he thinks the price is to low he will just undercut the next seller with 1c. why would he even consider anything between unless he also was trying to avoid this 1c undercut. (i doubt a lot of people have this awareness, i would probably agree with this system as it is now if people knew about the average price on everything, we don’t have to worry about this IRL because the companies that compete with each other take the prices to its correct level.)

why do I have to think of this 1c undercut of doom?! its the same price with an difference of 1c! that’s nothing. but the gain is huge

i want to see something like this:

3 at 2,3g
7 at 2,05g
1 at 1,80g

not this:
1 at 2.3g
1 at 2.2999g
1 at 2.2998g
1 at 2.05g
1 at 2.0499g
…
1 at 2.0494g
etc

that’s the opposite to FIFA ! witch is the one i would prefer to have if same item is priced at the same price. if there is an significant price difference like 2,3 to 2,05 then i can accept they get sold before. there is few items where you can see major differences, i mean hell even in the legendary there is an difference of 2s 16c!! when we are talking about 100s of gold even though its to an lesser extent.

i could probably argue that the buying list have the same problem , but it doesn’t cost anything to relist it so it’s not hat big of a deal if i get overbid.

I hope you see my problem now (if there is any)

@zander
I’ve given that a thought as well , but it makes really no sense why there should be the same limitations to a 10g price as to a 90g price, also i think it might have other problems .

Waraxx, as a buyer I would not want to be forced to pay 2G for the item you placed earlier, if someone else is willing to sell it to me for 1.99G, regardless of when they placed that item up there.

There are a lot of tweaks to a MMO marketplace that can make it more favorable for buyers or more favorable for sellers. This one seems to have been overall tilted somewhat in the direction of buyers. That is a valid decision on the part of the developers, and one I think is justifiable given their target of “casual” players. You are welcome to try to change their mind though, as is any other forum goer.

@Kozai
Yes, I agree with you that I’ve been from a buyers point of view, I took that side because this mostly concern the buyer in how long time it takes to sell an item. If i was to defend my point from a buyer perspective, i would probably have the following as base reasons:

-lesser time to get things to its correct value, meaning that if something is ill-priced , it will more quickly turn into the correct price because there is lesser sell order “steps” instead of having to go through every coppar price it will only go through every 1% or so. a stable market is a happy market i think …

-easier to overview. sense there will be less steps there have to be more items on every step making it easier to overview the generall price. this is not a strong argument but an argument never the less.

but as i said this mainly concerns sellers , and who are the sellers? well, we all are.

and the solution i presented will not make a person have to buy the more expensive one but rather take away the option of making so small undercuts. and if you care so much about those 1c – 20c , you will get undercuts much lower than 1 – 20c.also i think we could have a more stable market, but as I said i might be wrong about things that concern economics.

hope this satisfied your need of a buyers point of view.

Thinking out loud as a producer:

The posting fee is not refunded, so there is a disincentive for sellers to adjust their sell offer. If there were an ability to repost which refunded the original fee, active sellers would be better able to move their inventories, albeit at a lower price. The consequence would be greater price volatility, pushing casual sellers out of the market.

The difficulty is that it’s hard to read market demand, so it’s hard to tell where the natural price is at a given moment. Sellers have to guess at this, and since most sellers emphasize profit, the amount by which they undercut tends to be conservative. Meanwhile, if the demand isn’t there, this leads to the market being flooded with goods with small differences in their prices.

The materials markets are better off as the demand is practically constant and one can watch the ebb and flow of goods and prices in real time. The markets for crafted goods are slower and smaller, however, meaning they’re more sensitive to fluctuations in demand, so the supply tends to lag in its adjustments.

It’d be nice if the natural price were held high, but that favors sellers over buyers in an already small market, so it’d backfire. It’d be better to move goods quickly at a lower price, but that requires demand that doesn’t flatline, and would benefit from quality of life improvements to help casual producers stay in the market.

I look at it more simply. If I price something -1cp, and someone else does the same, etc. sellers will stop undercutting when it becomes unprofitable. LIFO is actually the case, and limited supply drives the price UP if demand buys the lower-priced offerings.

As demand goes up, they buy from the bottom price tiers, working their way up the price scale.

If an item I’ve listed gets undercut severely over time, then demand must be lagging and I can either re-list it or cancel the listing and vendor the item instead.

I never have stuff that lasts for literally more then a few seconds if I sell 1cp under.

Rather have the cash quick. Plus how would you even know if someone undercuts you by 1?

-1c wouldn’t be as much of an issue for sellers if they were able to adjust their prices without having to repay the listing fee. It’s fine from a buyer’s perspective as orders can be listed with no downside and -1c benefits the buyer with a cheaper item.

Well, all servers use the same trading post. So the number or buyers/sellers is always so high that undercutting doesn’t usually matter. On several occasions I placed sell orders around 10% more expensive than the lowest seller (and there were thousands of them) – my order was sold out within twenty minutes.

You probably wouldn’t like being on The Price is Right, would you?

This is how an ecomony works. Just because you hate being undercut doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen. That’s how prices drop.

Actually on commodities markets and stock markets higher priced items have higher minimum increments, so what he suggested is how it works in real life.

Go tell your stock broker that those Berkshire A shares he’s got for $135,000 are a bit high and you want them for $134,999.99.

@Leyic
all though I probably didn’t understand you’re entire post, buuut i think i agree with you.

@Bogartan
I know how this works, and I’ve tried to be clear with this:
if we have fewer steps of undercutting (forcing people to undercut with 1s instead of 1c) it will take shorter time to reach that sweet spot when people stop undercutting.

@Lysico
I’m not sure if you’ve understood my post or its me who don’t understand yours.
but how does this reply contribute to the discussion?

@JK arrow
yes, indeed. and during the night I’ve come up with another solution that i think would solve the problem more smoothly. letting sellers re list there item and pay [insert appropriate number here]% of the reduced price it might be no fee at all, just make it possible to re list it somehow. this will also make it go faster for a item to find its sweet spot.

EDIT:
@NoOneShotU
i didn’t know they had those but it makes sense they have it.

I do not want the price that I sell my items for to be decided by some random person because he happened to sell one before me.

I’ll sell at whatever price I kitten well please tyvm.

:edit:

There’s a place to sell things for a pre-defined value.

They’re called vendors.

:edit2:

Or merchants… not sure which term they use in GW2. :P

If getting undercut is a problem for you, you should set your prices lower so that it sells faster.

Or….if someone is willing to do that, why should the buyer be forced to pay you a higher price just because it is more convenient for you?

Jestunhi.7429:

I do not want the price that I sell my items for to be decided by some random person because he happened to sell one before me.

I’ll sell at whatever price I kitten well please tyvm.

:edit:

There’s a place to sell things for a pre-defined value.

They’re called vendors.

:edit2:

Or merchants… not sure which term they use in GW2. :P

Just a questions for you.

1. Do you consider 1c to be a price change when we are talking about items that are worth more than 1g? ( it’s a price difference less then 0.01%)

Also, nobody is deciding what you are selling your items at, I’m are only saying “well, if you don’t undercut by this much then I don’t recognize it to be an undercut.”

lets say that we find 1% to be a good number ( witch i think is reasonable, perhaps even lower) that means that we can do 1c undercuts all the way up to 1s.
and if you want to sell something at 1g you would have to undercut it by 1s. witch I consider to be a undercut. But if you want to sell an item at 1.9999g where the next is at 2g well then I’m pretty sure that you would have wanted the price 1,9998g if the next one was at 1,9999g at witch point you are actually not deciding the price yourself but rather looking at the market and saying " ok, that looks like a nice price, I’ll just go ahead and take that price but with -1c cause then I’ll sell before him" that’s what i don’t want you to say. I want you to either undercut with a good chunk or not undercut at all, meaning placing you in a line. If you want to decide the prices yourself, please do so, just don’t undercut with so little.

:edit:

i don’t really understand how the information about the merchants help this conversation, it’s just unnecessary…

:edit2:

…And stupid.

Jarl.8607:

If getting undercut is a problem for you, you should set your prices lower so that it sells faster.

Or….if someone is willing to do that, why should the buyer be forced to pay you a higher price just because it is more convenient for you?

I doubt you’ve read the wall of texts if put up here, and i don’t blame you for it. But read them if you want to comment.

And if you have read the walls of texts, you clearly haven’t understood them.(no offence)

and i will also ask you this question:
Do you consider 1c to be a price change when we are talking about items that are worth more than 1g? ( it’s a price difference less then 0.01%)

I know the general value of an item so I set mine in that gap people leave when constantly undercutting when there are a lot of people selling.

When I log in the next morning I usually sell everything. Which is why I walk away with 2-10 gold a day selling a few hundred items.

1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem.

It only bothers people who are trying to sell stuff for more than its worth.

The 1c undercut is clearly a problem. Trying to argue there exists some fictional “correct price” is ridiculous. It takes no genius to calculate this “correct price” in the case of crafted items. It’s the sum of all the crafting materials used to craft the item + TP fees. In other words it’s the price that brings you exactly 0 profit. If you post an item at ANY higher price, you will be undercut by 1c, and due to crafted items being also produced by the Mystic Forge, the price may fall even lower than the sum of material costs. This is hitting crafters really hard, and only benefiting market players.

Ghoest.3945:

1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem.

It only bothers people who are trying to sell stuff for more than its worth.

this is probably the most useless post after the “1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem” you could possibly create, congratulations!

please don’t return to this topic unless you have something useful to add.

@Illgot

that’s good for you. What you are doing I want more people to be doing, undercutting the price or not doing it at all. maybe not by as much as you do (as i understand you undercut with a quite large chunk)

@zerospin
I’m not quite sure if I understand your post but I think that there exist an fictional price and it changes depending on supply/demand. however this thread is not about this so i wont argue with this.

Also I want everybody to know that I do not mind the way it is now, actually I’m am making a few coins because the price of some items move slowly. Don’t ask me how. I’m trying to be as neutral to the problem I possibly can but so far I can only find one counter argument to what I’ve been arguing and that is this:

It’s hard to actually implement such a system into the TP, because of [Insert reasoning here].

This is the only counter argument I can find to myself, but so far nobody have said why this would’t work, or why it can’t be used. Please prove me wrong so that we can have this done with.

zerospin.8604:

It takes no genius to calculate this “correct price” in the case of crafted items. It’s the sum of all the crafting materials used to craft the item + TP fees.

You’re right that it takes no genius, but you’re wrong about what the correct price is. The correct price is what people are willing to pay. If it costs you more to make something than people will pay you for the finished product, you shouldn’t have made it and expected a product.

If the price of a commodity falls below the price it costs you to produce it, the correct response is to stop producing that commodity, not to complain about people undercutting you.

Waraxx.4286:

Ghoest.3945:

1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem.

It only bothers people who are trying to sell stuff for more than its worth.

this is probably the most useless post after the “1 cent under cutting is NOT a problem” you could possibly create, congratulations!

please don’t return to this topic unless you have something useful to add.

You have not addressed why his post is, in your opinion, useless. In fact, I find it to be spot on. If you’re selling a good for a value that people are willing to pay, then they will pay it. If other sellers can continuously undercut you such that you never make a sale, then your price is too high considering the supply and demand for the item.

His replay is useless because he brings up something that we already have brought up. see my reply to targren (my first reply). if he want to bring it up again he have to add more to this argument or make an counter argument. as far as i see “It only bothers people who are trying to sell stuff for more than its worth.” doesn’t fulfill any of these things. If he doesn’t agree with what i wrote to targren then he have to explain why he disagrees.I could explain everything again but i don’t see why i have to put up walls and walls of text explaining the things in every possible way.

I would definitely support higher incremental pricing based on the current buy/sell positions. That is, something like 5%. A higher buy order that is less than 5% higher than the present highest wouldn’t be valid, and a sale price less than 5% lower than the currently posted lowest wouldn’t be valid. I think it would make the TP fairer and more accessible to people who don’t obsess over it to the same degree as some, and certainly it would put a crimp on some botting too.

5% is too large an increment; 1% is a more reasonable figure.

The biggest issue with this type of system is that it would be much less intuitive, however.

even though this topic was created mainly around the principle I think that we can theorize about a fitting % just so that people get a sense of what numbers we are looking at, and I think that 5% is to much. demanding an undercut of 5s when the item is worth 1g is quite alot considering that the difference between orders and sell orders are between 10 – 25% so having a 1s step at 1g price i think should be more resonable. meaning that we are looking at a 1% difference. this would alow the market to fluctuate more and allowing undercut closer to the real value. consider this:

-the smaller the undercuts are the smaller the possible difference is between the real price and the current price.

-the bigger the undercuts are the faster will it move towards this “real value”.

so the balancing is to find a sweet spot in between that could fit for the majority of all the items. And I think this sweet spot is somewhere around 1%
possibly even as low as 0,5% but i don’t think it should’t go lower.
having the % so low will allow everything below 1 or 2s to be undercut with 1c witch is where i think is where the most mats start selling at. there is a few exceptions such as blood, orichalcum and ectos. all the rest will not be effected by this ( i might have forgot something more).
so im not looking at a perticular big number just not as small as it is now where it is below .01% in some cases.

I hope you see my reasoning with picking such a small number as 1%. and if we would accept that this is the % to go with then every undercut at 1g prices would need to be around 1s with a decreasing number of course.

However this type of system brings a few problems… ill give it in exampels i think its easier to explain and see the problem then.

(undercutt need to be over 1%)

sell orders:

1g
0,99g
0,98g
0,97g
0,95g

now im going to go ahead and sell an item like this but i think that 0,95g is a to low price. so ill go ahead and price it just below the 0,97g sell order because the system only restrict me from undercutting the lowest seller and not all.

this could be fixed by creating “forbidden-zones” so if someone sets a price att 1g nobody else is ever going to be able put a price between 1/0.99 and 1*0.99 until all the things at 1g have been sold at witch point these prices opens up again.

this in turn could cause bigger “forbidden zones” then designed ie

Person A put out at the price 1g and then person B put out at the price 0g 98s 2c
this would actually force people to choose between undercutting the 1g price with almost 2% or not undercutting at all. and almost 2% is approximatly 100% bigger then intended.

at witch point we would have make it .5% in order to make sure that the “forbidden-zones” isn’t bigger than 1%.

that or there is a ton of preset prices that one can list at. But i don’t think this is a very good option. I cant explain why i don’t think its a good option though its just my feeling so if someone have an argument that speaks for a list of preset prices please share those with us.

so in the end of the day we are looking at a 0,5% undercut limit . witch isn’t a hole much! its actually very little but that’s all i suggest. And i think it would bring a great deal to both sell orders and buy orders but as i mention before buy orders isnt as inportant as the sell orders.

It would be great having a Red post here just to let us know if this is something they are discussing/ already have discussed.But I know that one does not simply demand an red post on their thread.

cheers! (and yet another wall of text sorry baout that)

The idea of “forbidden zones” sounds far too complex and unintuitive to me; I think it would tend to be very annoying to use in practice.

Something which has really been bothering me is the constant undercutting that goes on in this market. Likewise, if you are buying something, you’re likely to see a list of people all paying 1 more copper than the person below them.

I feel the trading post could be improved if there were incentives to meeting the lowest seller or highest buyer when putting in items or offers, as well as a system which prevents the ability to prioritize yourself by increasing/decreasing prices by merely 1 copper.

For instance, we could remove listing fees if you meet the lowest seller when trying to sell an item. We could also require a minimum price change of around 5% when selling an item for lower than the lowest seller or buying an item for more than the highest buyer, although this shouldn’t apply to all items such as those which have very similar buying and selling prices.

Thoughts?

So you want all items at the same price, e.g. Small Scale all buy offers at 50 and all sale offers at 55 and anyone who tries to set at 51 buy or 54 sale is going to get punished. You would have X00.000.00 of orders for any item and getting your order completed would take a very very long time. Purpose of trade post is to buy and sell at different prices depending on supply vs demand. Implementing anything that would force players to place the same price would turn TP in to a NPC vendor with static prices where gathering, crafting, farming would be useless since you couldn’t sell anything because of those hundreds of other offers before you. Forcing this would kill farming, gathering and TP use in general. NO in my opinion.

High traffic, low valued, and items with a very close purchase/sales could be exempt from the 5% minimum price change.

My main issue is with low traffic items costing 10 silver or more. If players want to increase their prices they still can, but increasing the price by less than 0.1% of the items total value just to prioritize yourself won’t work any longer.

It would be better if they made server-based economies. Would cut down on some of that.

And who would set the initial price for those items? Player A sets the price for an item at 1g where that item is not worth that much and everyone else has to set it at 1g also or get punished. In your case every item should have predetermined price and sale offers would be have to be in some margin of that price e.g. 50% or 100% but since most items have cheap vendor price you couldn’t sell e.g. exotic weapon for 5g but in some margin of vendor ( predetermined price ), and no one would bother with tp and waiting for sale if they can just sell it at nearest vendor for 1-2s less. So in this case TP would die fast.
If players set the price than everything would be overpriced. This undercutting is the only thing that is balancing prices so they can’t jump to much.
Heck if they did this I would be the first to unload my stash of crafting material and setting the price to 1-2g a piece since none would undercut me and buyers would have to pay. This would only create a monopoly for suppliers and buyers would be extorted since they would have to match buy offers close to sale offer or pay sale offers that would be overpriced for every item on the trade post.

Server based TP would have the same effect as limiting buy/sell offers. You would get high demand and low supply on some items causing prices to go very high. TP is ok as it is no need to change it, only thing that could be changed is listing and sale fee.
Remove one, leave listing fee but remove sale fee. 5% tax is enough and 15% is too much.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

It would be better if they made server-based economies. Would cut down on some of that.

It also make it easier to corner the market and price gouge too.

I sat back and thought about this idea for a bit.

At the end of the day, I decided that I like it. When you go to a real life auction the auctioneer sets the bid increments, Bidders can try to cut the increment by half or another amount but it is left to the auctioneer to accept their bid or not.

An auction house or trading house could very well have a minimum increment based on a percent of the original set price. This would stop the situation that an item is listed for, as an example, 1000g and then someone comes along and posts an item for 999.99g. In this situation, the second person posting an item is, effectively, getting 1000g for the item but due to the ruleset of the trading post their item will be sold first.

That isn’t ‘supply and demand’ in a market place.

Psychosocial.6293:

If players set the price than everything would be overpriced. This undercutting is the only thing that is balancing prices so they can’t jump to much.
Heck if they did this I would be the first to unload my stash of crafting material and setting the price to 1-2g a piece since none would undercut me and buyers would have to pay. This would only create a monopoly for suppliers and buyers would be extorted since they would have to match buy offers close to sale offer or pay sale offers that would be overpriced for every item on the trade post.

That isn’t what the OP is proposing. They are proposing that there be a minimum increment for the movement of a bid. If an item were listed at 1g then to undercut it the seller would need to list the item at 95s or less.

There is nothing here that -prevents- undercutting. In fact, it would encourage the market to find equilibrium faster.

As stated above, the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to agree that there should be a minimum increment for bidding.

Using the OP’s proposal of 5% then an item listed for 5c could still be undercut to 4c since the increment is greater than 5%. An item listed for 10c could be undercut at 9c because, again, that is greater than 5%.

However, an item listed at 1g would have to be undercut to 95s for it to list.

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

It would be better if they made server-based economies. Would cut down on some of that.

Not really. You would have the same “problem” just with less buyers and sellers.

I like this idea; as much as I make my money by 1 copper undercutting it IS cheesy. Having a minimum percent shift would help balance things a bit.

Imagine how auctions would play out if people brought the bidding down to 1 penny increments.

oZii.2864:

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

It would be better if they made server-based economies. Would cut down on some of that.

It also make it easier to corner the market and price gouge too.

Not particularly.

Anet is a perfectly competitive market structure. There’s no barriers to entry or exit from any market. So if a couple people happened to try and corner a market other people who spotted the venture to be profitable would shift their resources to that market. Prices would fall and normalize themselves to what the supply and demand curves.

Server-based economies would also bring incentives for people who would go out and farm which particular commodity happens to be profitable….

The two biggest issues with gamewide economies is:

A) Botting. And their ability to shift monetary units around from server-to-server. Which makes their business more profitable.

B) Deflation. The more supply of a commodity, the cheaper it will become. This disincentivizes normal players….

xxxzavulonxxx.8413:

Not particularly.

Anet is a perfectly competitive market structure. There’s no barriers to entry or exit from any market. So if a couple people happened to try and corner a market other people who spotted the venture to be profitable would shift their resources to that market. Prices would fall and normalize themselves to what the supply and demand curves.

Server-based economies would also bring incentives for people who would go out and farm which particular commodity happens to be profitable….

The two biggest issues with gamewide economies is:

A) Botting. And their ability to shift monetary units around from server-to-server. Which makes their business more profitable.

B) Deflation. The more supply of a commodity, the cheaper it will become. This disincentivizes normal players….

With respect to cornering the market, what you say may be true for most commodities, but if you consider the case of harder to obtain items such as precursors or even halloween skins, then it would be significantly easier for individuals to control the supply of these items in a server-based economy.

A) while botters/gold sellers are more easily able to shift gold from server-to-server, having a server based TP wouldn’t really hinder them too much. In other games I’ve played with server based economies, botters/gold sellers just make sure they have a presence on every server.

B) Yes, a game-wide economy means that there is more supply of commodities, but it also means there is a corollary increase in the demand for those commodities.

1 copper undercutting won’t destroy you unless the person undercutting you put up about 100 of that item or 2000 of that resource.

There is a word for it.

Competition.

Thinking about this some more, 5% is probably too high of a minimum change.

Even something like 2% would be enough of a change at a time. For 1 silver this would be a minimum 2 copper price increase/decrease, 10 silver is 20 copper, and 1 gold is 2 silver.

Bri.8354:

Thinking about this some more, 5% is probably too high of a minimum change.

Even something like 2% would be enough of a change at a time. For 1 silver this would be a minimum 2 copper price increase/decrease, 10 silver is 20 copper, and 1 gold is 2 silver.

why do we need a minimum other than 1 copper? Do you think less people will undercut you? No, what will happen is the same amount of people will continue to undercut you, the only difference now is the final sale price that it settles will be lower than it currently is.

If you think people are smarter NOT to do that, look at the current state of the TP. People undercutting by 1 copper is easy to understand. People that undercut by 20% of the current sale price and sell 30 of that item dropping the market faster than it needs.

People will undercut you no matter what constraints you place. Raising the minimum amount you are allowed to undercut will only expedite and drop the current sale value even more.

It’s fine, if you set your items up for a reasonable price, they sell. If you set your item prices too high, they don’t. Even if I get undercut I find that within 24 hours most things are gone. The only exception is when the price is steadily dropping, but then I’d be screwed with your system as well, because more people are selling than buying.

Undercutting is not an issue. If the difference between your item selling and not selling is because you’re being undercut by 1c, your price is already higher than equilibrium. If you feel that undercutting by 1c is dirty, then you can undercut by 10c.

If the lowest price for an item is 50c and there are 100,000 units available, then in actuality that price is a bit high and aren’t selling as quickly as they could be. So you will find some people putting up blocks at 49c/unit which sell more or less instantly. If enough people would rather take 49c than wait for 50c, then 49c becomes the new lowest price. Let’s say at this price the inventory level hovers at 50,000. Repeat until equilibrium is reached. Undercutting is a vital tool for finding the correct market price. If you don’t like to wait in line for the ask price that everyone else is in line for, then you should be undercutting them as well.

What you’re suggesting though is called price-fixing, and is harmful to the marketplace. Though IRL price-fixing is illegal, a lot of industries get away with it, which is why certain items are always the same price regardless of make or quality, and prices never go down even when costs do.