ATTN DEVELOPERS: A few easy fixes for GTN

[Ghisallo]

This is where I would argue your conclusion is incorrect. A number of buyers when commodities are undervalued will buy them and repost for increases. But there is a continuous supply of undervalued product as a result of the repricing cycle I reference above. As a result, the price is only continuously driven downward within a set period of time. Now keep in mind, nowhere above did I state that sales price should be abnormally profitable. The desired gain here is in market stability, not commodity profitability in itself. That is to say there needs to be a mathematic means to calculate worth of a product that is something more than arbitrary, and something less than unreasonable.

 

But the GTN system in and of itself is stable and sustainable because there is no cost of production. I may be misunderstanding you argument but on one hand you are saying that the fact certain items are essentially an inexhaustible resource is bad but you are saying its bad because you are applying the economics of a system where there is a finite source of material, production costs etc.

 

Ultimately what it really comes down to is this. You have 2 general types of GTN users. Those who are looking to make good or maximized profits and those who just want to unload their goods at better than vendor prices because the GTN is not really part of their game. Placing what amounts to financial regulation on the GTN simply because some players don't take it seriously seems like using an elephant gun to kill a mouse.

 

Also this has little effect on inflation or deflation. These factors are based on money supply. When you use the GTN a paltry sum (relative to price) disappears. Ultimately you have only moved credits from one player in the economy to another. So the credits creating inflation are still in the economy. What you need to address inflation (with how rampant it is now, is an almost draconian level of plat sinks but you would have to design these sinks in such a way that they are progressive based on the amount of credits of each character, else new players/characters would be in a state of perpetual virtual poverty.

[Ratajack]

I won't be addressing any of ratajack's point from here in.

 

This is a typical response when someone is faced with the truth, but wishes not to face it.

 

BTW, you do not need to "address" any of my points, as there are plenty of people who see the situation for what it is, and recognize that the GTN is working fine as it is. They are far more eloquent with their explanations than I am, as well.

 

Do you plan to refuse to "address" their points as well, as they do not mesh with your desire to have BW protect you from the "big, bad undercutters"?

[Princess_Chibi]

This is a typical response when someone is faced with the truth, but wishes not to face it.

 

Do you plan to refuse to "address" their points as well, as they do not mesh with your desire to have BW protect you from the "big, bad undercutters"?

 

And personal attacks on the speaker, not the idea under discussion is the typical response when someone is faced with a logical argument but cannot form their own counter with adequate support.

 

...as there are plenty of people who see the situation for what it is, and recognize that the GTN is working fine as it is.

 

Again, you state "GTN is fine", but you provide no evidence or logical support to back your statement. You've made one accurate statement thus far, almost every single other post in this thread has provided some attempt at discussing the topic versus targeting the speaker; this does make their arguments far more constructive.

 

"Recognize the situation for what it is"... Narcissistic self-validation doesn't provide any more evidence or support than any of your previous posts. It does however make one thing apparent, your mind was already made up before you entered the thread, there's no counter-argument that anyone can offer to convince you otherwise. Therefore, there's simply no value in discussing the issue further with you. You have to have an open mind, to BOTH sides of the discussion in order to have a constructive debate.

Edited March 22, 2015 by Princess_Chibi

[Ratajack]

And personal attacks on the speaker, not the idea under discussion is the typical response when someone is faced with a logical argument but cannot form their own counter with adequate support.

 

If boiling sown your "suggestion" into its basest form is a "personal attack", then so be it.

 

Again, you state "GTN is fine", but you provide no evidence or logical support to back your statement. You've made one accurate statement thus far, almost every single other post in this thread has provided some attempt at discussing the topic versus targeting the speaker; this does make their arguments far more constructive.

 

"Recognize the situation for what it is"... Narcissistic self-validation doesn't provide any more evidence or support than any of your previous posts. It does however make one thing apparent, your mind was already made up before you entered the thread, there's no counter-argument that anyone can offer to convince you otherwise. Therefore, there's simply no value in discussing the issue further with you. You have to have an open mind, to BOTH sides of the discussion in order to have a constructive debate.

 

Again, I have no need to provide proof as I am not the one asking for BW to change the game to suit me.

 

The GTN is--in the words of another poster--self balancing. If you do not think you will be able to gouge the other players enough to satisfy you, then you can always hold onto that item and not put it up on the GTN until you can gouge to your satisfaction. If someone undercuts you, you an always buy out the lower price items and then list them at a higher price.

 

You are the one asking for the game to be changed to suit you, so the burden of proof that your "suggested change" is necessary is upon you. So far, you have not been able to provide any proof that your "suggested change" is needed. As I said earlier, "I can't gouge the other players because someone is always undercutting me. Make them stop, BW" is not proof of a needed change, IMO.

 

BTW, ironically, you appear not to have an open mind to even the possibility that the GTN is working fine. Your mind was made up before you created the thread, it would appear.

Edited March 22, 2015 by Ratajack

[Princess_Chibi]

But the GTN system in and of itself is stable and sustainable because there is no cost of production. I may be misunderstanding you argument but on one hand you are saying that the fact certain items are essentially an inexhaustible resource is bad but you are saying its bad because you are applying the economics of a system where there is a finite source of material, production costs etc.

 

Valid point. The resources and therefore the supply is inexhaustible, but the time to adjust prices and monitor the GTN for fluctuations in average is not. There's always more doonium so long as players continue to run missions, sell units and farm it. At that point the economy shifts away from a financial system to a time-sink wherein the objective is to dump product for the lowest cost. A production cost would make this activity prohibitive at some point, regardless of how much time is spent repricing (or how many repricing cycles occur) there's a diminishing return in place on the product itself. So short of pulling the item being sold off the market altogether, price is always a consideration (the point at which price floor hits net zero) and the product being dumped either has no worth or very little.

 

Ultimately what it really comes down to is this. You have 2 general types of GTN users. Those who are looking to make good or maximized profits and those who just want to unload their goods at better than vendor prices because the GTN is not really part of their game. Placing what amounts to financial regulation on the GTN simply because some players don't take it seriously seems like using an elephant gun to kill a mouse.

 

If the minority of players' behavior (dumping) didn't adversely result in overall reduced price of commodity for the majority, then yes, I would agree. There's nothing wrong speaking in terms of a financial system with dumping (to a point, there's a reason why in international commerce dumping is penalized, and that's part of the issue here). In small quantities, it's similar to a sale on the product, for a short period there's a run on the product, prices dip and profit with it. But this is never sustained over the long term, otherwise the market would only ever continue to drop (market crash).

 

Creation of a price floor doesn't force a seller to price in such a way that profits are maximized. But it does apply a penalty which makes dumping undesirable on an ongoing basis. Someone offloading a 99 stack of molytex probably won't notice or care if they lose a few credits getting rid of it to make inventory space. But if they, over an extended period, continuously sell the molytex for crap prices or repeatedly over (or underprice) and then try to reprice (remember, the issue is repricing without a cost, not undercutting as a behavior) eventually the molytex is not worth selling; they're making less than vendor cost because of the way in which they're selling.

 

Also this has little effect on inflation or deflation. These factors are based on money supply. When you use the GTN a paltry sum (relative to price) disappears. Ultimately you have only moved credits from one player in the economy to another. So the credits creating inflation are still in the economy. What you need to address inflation (with how rampant it is now, is an almost draconian level of plat sinks but you would have to design these sinks in such a way that they are progressive based on the amount of credits of each character, else new players/characters would be in a state of perpetual virtual poverty.

 

Is it based on money supply, or the fact that there is no cost affecting the money-supply for price-changing activities? As I mentioned before, there's no cost to manufacture these products, and so the only credits which come into play are those moved between players (to your point). GTN today takes a pointless margin out of each sale for "listing cost", so to some extent, the developers understood 1) the game needs some credit sinks to price down inflation, 2) some pricing controls are necessary. In some ways, what I'm proposing is a "re-listing cost". Not the ~100 credits you spend to put a product up for sale, but if you continuously take it down, reprice, rinse and repeat that at some point the amount is no longer an arbitrary 100 credits, it becomes an amount you have to care about, and factor into your original point of sale. Something similar to a product cost, and you could almost argue an opportunity cost.

Edited March 22, 2015 by Princess_Chibi

[jedip_enguin]

What server do you play on OP, I want to undercut you.

[SelinaH]

There's always more doonium so long as players continue to run missions, sell units and farm it. At that point the economy shifts away from a financial system to a time-sink wherein the objective is to dump product for the lowest cost. A production cost would make this activity prohibitive at some point, regardless of how much time is spent repricing (or how many repricing cycles occur) there's a diminishing return in place on the product itself.

I would consider a "time-sink" part of the production cost. In the case of crafting, even if a player uses only gathered materials and does all of his/her crafting offline (i.e., sets companions up and then goes to do something else) there's still a time cost to the gathered mats. Resources procured through crew missions? Credit cost. Mob drops, FP and quest rewards? Time cost. Items purchased directly from the Cartel Market or through Cartel packs? Time cost (spent in some form of RL income-generating effort).

 

There already is a production cost and, consequently, a break-even point for most items. If you choose not to factor in time spent and the opportunity cost of using that time to acquire or produce that particular item, you may not see it.

[The-Kaitou-Kid]

From: Admiral Steven Hackett

To: Princess Chibi

Subject: Re: A few easy fixes for GTN

 

Princess Chibi:

 

Request denied.

 

Hackett

[Bachannal]

I understand the general sentiment behind the OP's post - there are definitely some GTN "a-holes" out there totally ruining the market value of items/materials listed on the GTN on a routine basis. I get being irritated at those folks - nothing is more annoying than selling your item at the median market rate, and then having some weenie undercut everyone by a huge margin.

 

I get it.

 

BUT - this is part of playing the market. So, be smart - sock the item back away for a while and sell other stuff. Come back to it a day later, a week later, heck a month later and try again - oftentimes you see the market fix itself, and sometimes even improve. If you're not desperate for creds, this shouldn't be an issue. And if you're desperate for creds, you're doing things wrong anyway, lol.

[Ghisallo]

Valid point. The resources and therefore the supply is inexhaustible, but the time to adjust prices and monitor the GTN for fluctuations in average is not. There's always more doonium so long as players continue to run missions, sell units and farm it. At that point the economy shifts away from a financial system to a time-sink wherein the objective is to dump product for the lowest cost. A production cost would make this activity prohibitive at some point, regardless of how much time is spent repricing (or how many repricing cycles occur) there's a diminishing return in place on the product itself. So short of pulling the item being sold off the market altogether, price is always a consideration (the point at which price floor hits net zero) and the product being dumped either has no worth or very little.

 

Here however you don't seem to be speaking of the stability and sustainability of the market as a whole. You have an issue what happens to specific products...you see the fluctuations as subjectively bad are are then, again, trying to apply economic principles that simply can't be applied objectively. Example I could take RL economic principles as say something quite different. If certain raw materials have no value because the supply is infinite that means if I find the right crafting skill I can make A LOT of money because there is more money in the consumers pocket and most people don't craft for profit. So the consumer is happy because they have more money to spend, I am happy because as a minority crafter I have more consumers with money to pay my price.

 

If the minority of players' behavior (dumping) didn't adversely result in overall reduced price of commodity for the majority, then yes, I would agree. There's nothing wrong speaking in terms of a financial system with dumping (to a point, there's a reason why in international commerce dumping is penalized, and that's part of the issue here). In small quantities, it's similar to a sale on the product, for a short period there's a run on the product, prices dip and profit with it. But this is never sustained over the long term, otherwise the market would only ever continue to drop (market crash).

 

But this market crash doesn't happen in this game, so again I think an inaccurate metric is being used. There is not built in interdependency between different commodities and goods (either directly in the supply chain or via investment of some sort) for a crash to have an effect on anyone but the specific individual who was looking to make a profit.

 

Creation of a price floor doesn't force a seller to price in such a way that profits are maximized. But it does apply a penalty which makes dumping undesirable on an ongoing basis. Someone offloading a 99 stack of molytex probably won't notice or care if they lose a few credits getting rid of it to make inventory space. But if they, over an extended period, continuously sell the molytex for crap prices or repeatedly over (or underprice) and then try to reprice (remember, the issue is repricing without a cost, not undercutting as a behavior) eventually the molytex is not worth selling; they're making less than vendor cost because of the way in which they're selling.

 

All creating a price floor does is protect an individual sellers profit margin. It would also have a negative effect on sectors of the economy that are not, in essence, an inexhaustible resource. Let's look at oil in the real world. The price plummeted. Why? Putin can claim it was about him but it happened because OPEC wanted to slow US Shale production. It is estimated the US has as much as 4x's the amount of shale oil as Saudi Arabia has in total reserves...however the US drilling companies are not going to drill as aggressively at certain price points per barrel. So yes Oil companies lost money by OPEC not dropping production and thus supply rose due to US Shale production added to the supply chain. BUT this was a net stimulus for the economy because consumers had more money to spend elsewhere. If you were to put a floor on Oil and maintain the same supply that stimulus would be gone due to an artificial measure to protect a specific commodities value.

 

Even where you MIGHT think a price floor has a good effect (say in RL putting in a floor to protect farmers from price fluctuations) what happens is eventually you end up haveing a surplus because fewer will be purchased. Now irl you deal with this by having the government by the excess surplus and this in turn helps establish a new equilibrium in the market. The thing is is bioware going to buy the surplus? No. Even if they did that would be injecting more money into the economy exacerbating inflation.

 

Is it based on money supply, or the fact that there is no cost affecting the money-supply for price-changing activities? As I mentioned before, there's no cost to manufacture these products, and so the only credits which come into play are those moved between players (to your point). GTN today takes a pointless margin out of each sale for "listing cost", so to some extent, the developers understood 1) the game needs some credit sinks to price down inflation, 2) some pricing controls are necessary. In some ways, what I'm proposing is a "re-listing cost". Not the ~100 credits you spend to put a product up for sale, but if you continuously take it down, reprice, rinse and repeat that at some point the amount is no longer an arbitrary 100 credits, it becomes an amount you have to care about, and factor into your original point of sale. Something similar to a product cost, and you could almost argue an opportunity cost.

 

Inflation is about money supply period. You could raise the listing cost and use that as a tool to remove cash from the economy however this is only one option and imo one of the worst...

 

First.. is grossly inefficient because it only removes the money from the sellers (regular sellers being a minority) and all this will do is result in either increased prices to cover the new listing fee OR the " regular" traders going to chat to sell their goods direct to the public (or commissions requested via the same channel).

 

Second...due to the increased production cost above you end up reducing demand, especially for people without a lot of credits (new players, those who only solo etc).

 

If you are going to reduce money supply using the market is a BAD place to do it. You want to do it through things most everyone does but in a moderate fashion... Otherwise you create a system that benefits a few at the expense of others. Now don't get me wrong, any method of removing credits from the economy will effect some other group more than another, I get that. The thing is that your change, regardless of what motive is used (market control, inflation control etc.) Only ultimately benefits those who regularly take part in sales of certain commodities and penalizes the consumer.