Important System Improvements in Going Rogue
By
Adar_ICT,
Posted on: 2010-06-22 09:55 in Developers' Corner
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As am I. I actually cut myself with the knife I was using to cut steak when I read this announcement. (Yes, I know it's bad to eat at the PC, but I clean my mess with sanitizer wipes when I'm done. Really.)
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Originally Posted by Aura_Familia
I'm grining from ear to ear.
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The market loves the abuse. It's always ready to be abused and it doesn't discriminate; everyone can abuse the market whenever they want. It also thinks safety words are for sissies.|
Originally Posted by je_saist
I'm... not entirely sure what you mean by this LoT.
The Auction House is just one way to accomplish in-game item procurement. It is by no means the end-all / be-all of item procurement. Granted the severe abuse of the auction house system has driven players to use everything but the auction house to procure items they want. Merging the servers may or may not address the market abusers. Until the problem players are dealt with, it's generally going to be less time-consuming for the casual player to keep doing what they've been doing: running AE, Ouro, and Task Forces for what they want. |
The market and Silver Mantis would get along really well.
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Here's a thank you from someone who has been quite critical of the way things have been happening for the last two years or so. 
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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I was referring to the atrocious state at which the market is currently in. What do I mean by that? Well as others have already stated the almost complete drought on red side for every item from the most common salvage to the most rare IO. I mean at one point a year or two ago a common lvl 50 accuracy IO was about 200,000 infamy and today it's in some cases ranging from 700 to 1 million. Blue side while not suffering from the same lack of supply that red side does has nonetheless felt the pinch in the sense that prices have increased there as well. I mean when I checked the market a long while back you could get a damage Hecatomb for 300-500 million. Now they are hovering at a BILLION for some of them. |
Originally Posted by je_saist
I'm... not entirely sure what you mean by this LoT.
The Auction House is just one way to accomplish in-game item procurement. It is by no means the end-all / be-all of item procurement. Granted the severe abuse of the auction house system has driven players to use everything but the auction house to procure items they want. Merging the servers may or may not address the market abusers. Until the problem players are dealt with, it's generally going to be less time-consuming for the casual player to keep doing what they've been doing: running AE, Ouro, and Task Forces for what they want. |
Will the market merger help to deflate prices? I don't know but I'm hopeful. However with the system being the way it has been so long there is no way of really knowing how it will react.
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I am genuinely interested in a description of these "problem players" that have "abused" the auction house. What exactly is it that they are doing? What are the effects? I use the auction house to its best effect; selling and buying to make money. Am I a "problem player?" What exactly is a "market abuser?" Is it someone who lists an item for a price higher than you'd like? Is it someone who buys low and sells high?|
Originally Posted by je_saist
I'm... not entirely sure what you mean by this LoT.
The Auction House is just one way to accomplish in-game item procurement. It is by no means the end-all / be-all of item procurement. Granted the severe abuse of the auction house system has driven players to use everything but the auction house to procure items they want. Merging the servers may or may not address the market abusers. Until the problem players are dealt with, it's generally going to be less time-consuming for the casual player to keep doing what they've been doing: running AE, Ouro, and Task Forces for what they want. |
edit: Also, how does one identify a "problem player" or "market abuser" when the only information available is the date of the last five sales, the price they sold for, the number of [item] being sold, and the number of people bidding on it? Is there some way to look at that information and figure out that an individual is "abusing" the market? If so, how do you glean that information from the scarce data available?
I think calling all of it "influence" would be quite a good idea, as that's a suitably neutral word - like your actions give you influence in whatever moral area you operate in, so while Statesman and Recluse are both very influential, only Recluse in infamous.
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I disagree with your skepticism about the merge, but these are good points.|
Originally Posted by ShoeTattoo
The markets have three problems. First, there are far too many markets to have a healthy level of liquidity in more than a small minority of the markets in existence. With tens of thousands of markets and 80,000+ subscribers, this amounts to nothing more than stating the obvious. The solution to this problem is also obvious, given that the number of subs is unlikely to increase 100-fold.
Second, transparency is key to making markets strongly efficient, and providing only the "last five prices" will never be a good solution. The current limits on information provided lead to very high profits for those who stay regularly connected to the markets because they understand price movements far better than those who don't--essentially, some version of technical trading works, in the COX-verse, because historical information is only available to those who gather and remember it. Those who don't spend a lot of time at the markets end up operating at a strong disadvantage when trying to set their bid and ask prices. This leads to fairness issues, which irritates some players and drives them away from participating in the markets, and it lowers overall volume and liquidity. This is on the devs, though, as players can be counted on to do what is in their best interests and designing a system based on any other premise isn't going to work. Third, the transaction system for the markets currently encourages players to spend a large percentage of their time at the markets handling low value items, which lowers their motivation to participate. More generally, players incur high hassle costs as the price of their involvement in the markets, which has depressed trading volume. Reducing the hassle costs of participating, and giving players ways of quickly putting low value items onto the markets (or into item sinks), so they can focus most of their attention on higher value items, would help players feel like their time at the markets is producing more "value" and they'd be more likely to want to participate. Ergo, participation would rise. |
Make IOs level independent (no IO levels. they are simply whatever level you are.), add longer histories, and provide instant convenient access through a portable interface. Those would do as much as a merge.
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These are improvements that could (and should) be made on top of a merger, but aren't a substitute for one. Before we knew anything about GR, I'd say that making IOs level-independent would go a long way in helping the redside market, but in light of the ability to switch sides a merged market means people will no longer feel pressure to move to blueside simply because the market is better. There's been quite a bit of that sort of sentiment since side-switching was announced and a market merger was ruled out, but now we know that won't be the case.
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Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
Make IOs level independent (no IO levels. they are simply whatever level you are.), add longer histories, and provide instant convenient access through a portable interface. Those would do as much as a merge.
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
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Before this glorious, shining day, I had every intention of moving any redside characters through the shift sneeded to get them out of the red market but keep access to the red content. No longer. Some might go grey but most will stay parked in the red. I am sure I am not alone.
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Originally Posted by macskull
These are improvements that could (and should) be made on top of a merger, but aren't a substitute for one. Before we knew anything about GR, I'd say that making IOs level-independent would go a long way in helping the redside market, but in light of the ability to switch sides a merged market means people will no longer feel pressure to move to blueside simply because the market is better. There's been quite a bit of that sort of sentiment since side-switching was announced and a market merger was ruled out, but now we know that won't be the case.
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Despite all the doomsaying here, I haven't seen anyone mention the real reason why merging the markets is a bad thing:
Lag.
You think the market lag is bad now? Just wait until that single overworked computer has to handle both sides.
Good move.
If the markets weren't merged, player behaviour would have merged them as the vast majority started to use WW.
It might have been suggested already, but.... any chance of adding an "average price" value to the market UI, showing either over a certain period of time, or since the price wipe? It would help a lot against manipulating the perception of supply and demand the way histories of the past five sales do.
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Umm, I'm pretty sure it does already - far as I remember, when the market server goes down, both sides go down. If anything, the consolidated market data might cause less load than now.
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Originally Posted by Katie V
Despite all the doomsaying here, I haven't seen anyone mention the real reason why merging the markets is a bad thing:
Lag. You think the market lag is bad now? Just wait until that single overworked computer has to handle both sides. |
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Is it a single computer? If it is, there's no reason for it to be. As someone pointed out earlier, what we call the market is actually thousands of individual markets glued together in a single UI. Makes it relatively easy to spread the service out across a cluster of servers.|
Originally Posted by Katie V
Despite all the doomsaying here, I haven't seen anyone mention the real reason why merging the markets is a bad thing:
Lag. You think the market lag is bad now? Just wait until that single overworked computer has to handle both sides. |
(No guarantee that anyone will be willing to spend the cash for the servers though).
Ok, coming late at the thread but... Damn! Never saw this coming! I liked the Posi administration (he´s a nice guy, come on! no reason to blame him for everything!) and was never here to see Statesman´s (but after Champions seems pretty much you can blame him for everything... LOL), but... War Witch FTW!!!
Whatever reason this was done I hope it turns out great as most expect and not bad as the doomsayers goes by...
Now... Trading Sides? check
Moving Tails? check
Market Merging? check
Just makes me wonder what´s next... Lunar base? Underwater (not unless it looks cool)? Moving hair? Getting the Base Raids back? Merging the Server Lists (not the servers, might I add) for us to play with our European friends? I just have to say dream on guys, dream on... :-)
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This is so awesome. I want to Coh to birth mah babies.
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We have no evidence for or against the notion that the market is slow because of transaction volumes. There's no good reason to conclude that merging the volume will actually meaningfully worsen the behavior. Among other things, sometimes players on one or two game servers experience market lag while others have no problem. The issue could be some communication layer between game and market servers.|
Originally Posted by Katie V
You think the market lag is bad now? Just wait until that single overworked computer has to handle both sides.
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Originally Posted by Quinch
Umm, I'm pretty sure it does already - far as I remember, when the market server goes down, both sides go down. If anything, the consolidated market data might cause less load than now.
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Doubt it. Years into the City market, prices have only ever trended up. Wings are a big exception, but their original prices in the millions were buried by deliberately increased supply. The price of just about every nice IO tends to go up with time.|
Originally Posted by Redbone
That will be followed by a slow (likely VERY slow, measured in months) decline in prices (thanks to the "the last 5 sold at X so I want X" effect, even if demand no longer supports prices that high)
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It's the effect of the "last 5 sold" history. People see that the last two guys who sold a thing got 50 million for it, so SWEET! He wants 50 million for his, too. Obviously it's not an iron-clad rule ("I'd be fine with only 40 million." "Meh, I have enough. I'll post it for 10 inf and see what happens."), but in general bid histories don't trend downward. When the market was new, KB IOs averaged around 3 to 4 million. These days 10, 20, or 30 is common, or 100 if you want one in Zephyr form.
I'd love to find the person(s) who arbitrarily decided that the price of anything really nice should be 100+ million, or 1+ billion in the case of certain PvP accessories. Same as the guy who every couple of months decides to buy up every piece of one type of salvage on the market, whether to badge or just to delete them away for the fun factor.
Anyway, my vils will benefit greatly from this change, so I'm looking generally forward to it. I'm not anticipating any positive effect on market pricing, though.
Would love to be wrong.
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Much of the market "lag" experience came from the market UI having to query the market server for each and every keystroke. The autocomplete option with the new market UI at least somewhat eliminates that problem (though network connection speed and computer hardware may be at least partially at fault). As far as I'm aware, the client doesn't load specific information about an item until you tell it to, it just lists items - since there is no separate hero and villain version of each item, you'll be loading the same amount of stuff (the exception being side-specific items like the Black Market/WW teleporters).
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Originally Posted by Katie V
Despite all the doomsaying here, I haven't seen anyone mention the real reason why merging the markets is a bad thing:
Lag. You think the market lag is bad now? Just wait until that single overworked computer has to handle both sides. |
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
I just want to know: Where is Evil Ryu?
Oh ... and I think this is a great move that will make it easier for the casual villain to remain villainous. What happens to the market after the merge is anyone's guess. I don't know that much about economics other than the whole supply/demand thing, but I know that the in-game economy is not the same as real life, so comparing it to real life economics is probably not all that great... In game, I don't pay out more than half of my monthly salary on rent and utilities. I do pay a fee for the privilege of using Wentworth's facilities to market and sell my goods - but I don't have to pay banking fees, I can't borrow inf from a bank ... the list goes on and on. Applying real-world economic rules to the market may not be all that accurate. Just sayin'.
I'm going to do what I always do - share the riches of my higher level characters with my lower level characters (only I can now do it without the involvement of a third party, AND I can send my cousins in the Rogue Isles some extra inf so they can buy some of their own necessities -what? Not EVERYONE who lives in the Rogue Isles is a villain - not my cousins... although, now that you mention it there was that time that one of them inexplicably came into some inf and was very vague about winning it at the casino or something). I'm going to use the consignment house to sell what looks like it will sell for above vendor price plus fees and vendor stuff that will not make what the vendor will pay me. All of the changes MAY eliminate my current practice with a new character of buying significantly low priced items at the consignment house and re-selling them to a vendor for a 100% or more profit, and in doing so will result in those items remaining in the economy.
All in all, seems like a win/win for me and people who play like me (there ARE some others out there - I know some of them).
Thanks, Devs!
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Originally Posted by Trialtester
Ok, coming late at the thread but... Damn! Never saw this coming! I liked the Posi administration (he´s a nice guy, come on! no reason to blame him for everything!) and was never here to see Statesman´s (but after Champions seems pretty much you can blame him for everything... LOL), but... War Witch FTW!!!
Whatever reason this was done I hope it turns out great as most expect and not bad as the doomsayers goes by... Now... Trading Sides? check Moving Tails? check Market Merging? check Just makes me wonder what´s next... Lunar base? Underwater (not unless it looks cool)? Moving hair? Getting the Base Raids back? Merging the Server Lists (not the servers, might I add) for us to play with our European friends? I just have to say dream on guys, dream on... :-) |
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if i may im not suggesting something that low. im suggesting something like 5-6 mil for a rare io salvage. something alot more reasonable, that goes for recipes and what not. sorry if i didint mkae that quite clear.
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Originally Posted by CoX_Zombie
There is a cap, it's 2 Billion. Because of that cap PvP IO's have gone to a real Black Market and are selling for way above that. (That 2 billion cap is a tech based cap IIRC, player characters can not hold more than that amount. Through there are ways around that)
I am guessing that you mean an even smaller cap, or even a cap based on what the item is. Hamidon Goo. If they set a cap of 500,00 on it and I know I can get 3million for it. What do you think will happen? The result is you will see less and less items that you want/need on the Market and still go for the prices that the players are setting. What you want is a store. |
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There is a max price that is in place. It is 2,000,000,000.
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Originally Posted by Zyphoid
I agree with this. I really wish there was a max price that could be set, but I know that will never happen.
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I think it is pretty unlikely that prices will drop. As has been pointed out, prices tend to trend upward and with a merger any unspent inf on redside can now chase goods that heretofore were only for sale on blue. That means higher prices across the board.
But so what?
When a Mu Vestemnt drops it used to sell about 1.78 mill or so. Now it comfortably goes for anywhere from 3 to 4 million. The prices for what you sell go up as well.
The only limit is the influence cap.
That means when the really pricey stuff is comforatably hitting 2 billion, the cap will have to be raised or trading will be done privately. That would be a shame because the number of players who frequent the forums is pretty small compared to total population. They won't even know one was for sale.
The Auction House is just one way to accomplish in-game item procurement. It is by no means the end-all / be-all of item procurement. Granted the severe abuse of the auction house system has driven players to use everything but the auction house to procure items they want.
Merging the servers may or may not address the market abusers. Until the problem players are dealt with, it's generally going to be less time-consuming for the casual player to keep doing what they've been doing: running AE, Ouro, and Task Forces for what they want.