How many people believe this?

I was reading a thread in the General Discussions forum called What would your pet project be if you were a Dev? In this thread someone suggested setting a cap on the prices of everything in the market. The suggested cap in this post was 100k inf.

I posted to ask if he meant 100 million, and he responded that his suggestion of 100,000 was correct. I briefly explained why this was not workable and he basically said "I don't care". I was prepared to write him off as an anomaly when another person posted pretty much the same thing: add a cap to the market to stop the "greed".

So I was wondering, how many people do you think actually believe that this is a viable method for the market to work?

No-one who understands an MMO market will agree that it would work.

The 2 billion cap doesn't stop people from paying more than that for a PvP IO. Why would a 100k (or any other arbitrary number) be any different?

I think a decent portion of the population probably does believe it. It pops up every so often in either the suggestions or market forums.

In most cases the suggester has no knowledge of economics and is basically thinking "I want X, I have Y influence therefore if the market had a price cap of Y influence I could afford X".

I think this one is my favorite of all time. It wasn't actually suggesting a price cap but close enough:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=188675

EDIT: You know, someone should do one of those copy and paste responses for price caps like the ones Bill has for other common suggestions.

how many people fall for this, this, this, or this?

Simply put, people who don't understand economics try to think of ways to 'fix' it.

Any person who thinks a solution to any problem is simple has, as a subtextual idea, the notion that the people in charge are morons.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

You just can't save the sheeople from the wolves sometimes.

Probably about the same number of people who think raising the minimum wage to some arbitrary number would increase anyone's standard of living...

I for one fully and wholeheartedly agree that Price Caps are the answer I've been looking for. It will solve a lot of problems in the market, just not the problems the poor people are complaining about. I think that we should put them in as soon as possible and maybe cut off Merits while we're at it.

Yeah, you heard me right. I think that the best solution is to end Merits and put a ridiculously low cap on everything.

I fully believe that this would be the singlemost profitable action to take.




(atleast until the market crashes, there's no longer any goods to find, and we've ripped and crushed all of the inf from the casually purpled Warshades out there.)

A lot of people think a lot of things make sense that are really terrible ideas. This is one of them. These players think that the "price people can charge" is a fully independent variable, and so they believe you can control that one variable and it will fix their inability to buy stuff.

Anyone who understands that the sale prices are not a fully independent variable understands that this will not do what said players think it will.

Sadly, if experience is any gauge (and I mean life experience, not just forum experience), an awful lot of these people will never let go of these misconceptions. They will cling to them with the fervor of religious or political views - possibly because they are convolving their lack of understanding of the broader system with personal leanings that designate what they think is going on as "bad" or "wrong".

Reducing the price people pays for stuff is meaningless unless there is a corresponding reduction in how much money people can earn. While it's true that radically capping sale prices would equally cripple market earnings per sale, level 50 characters can still create vast piles of inf for themselves. When disposable income is much greater than prices, you end up with shortages.

The only meaningful and useful way to reduce absolute prices on the market is to reduce how much money characters earn in play. But if that reduction is normalized across all characters (say, everyone earns 1/10 what they do now) that might have well just have been a purely cosmetic change in the long term. Why? Because someone who earns 10x as much as you before still earns 10x as much as you now.

The only meaningful way to reduce wealth gaps takes at least two pretty significant changes. One is to normalize how much inf/hour characters can create/earn in play. For example, they could make level 50s earn 2x as much as a level 10 instead of the ~100x they do currently. Of course, that's just per-mob earnings for a mob of the same rank and level difference. It does nothing to address the fact that a level 10 character can be seriously challenged by 3 +1 minions while a level 50 might wade into 12 +3s - and might defeat them faster. Addressing that would require a pretty severe global nerfing that seems unlikely to deliver benefit worth the resultant backlash.

Of course they would also have to reduce the ability to use the market to make a profit. After all, someone who spends time using the market today is likely collecting a lot more money than someone who doesn't use it. Someone who uses it wisely is probably making more money than someone who uses it without much consideration, even if they use it a lot. Making smart and/or frequent market use not earn a lot of money seems counter productive to having a market - doing that in a way that doesn't dissuade people from using the market seems likely to be a significant challenge.

I am not of the opinion that anything really needs to change. That said, I think that having smaller absolute numbers would probably reduce sticker shock that comes of people equating inf with real currency (as in Dollars, Euros, etc.); I suspect that 50M inf resonates with $50M on some level. I also think that having a smaller earning range between levels would probably reduce the relative sticker shock that arises between a lowbie and a near-50 just based on raw per-reward magnitudes. I think are both probably water under the bridge long ago, however - they could be addressed, but I'm not sure there's really that much value in doing so.

*holds hand up*

My Stalker is sat on 1200 merits redside, pretty much until I have a desire to seriously IO out another redside character. This will be my mind Dom I imagine who just hit 32 yesterday.

Disagree strongly, mainly as this means purples will be selling for the same as some peices of white salvage.

High prices on certain things dont bother me, as i can sell one high priced thing to buy another.
Trading a few merits for a sought after recipe to be able to afford the last few slots in a build is something i do a lot, and helps fill the demand for those recipes. But I wouldnt waste 250 merits on something if its sale (once market costs are deducted) wont even buy me one other capped price recipe.

Also, if everyone could afford everything right off the bat, there will be even more bids, less of the items to go around, and you still wont get the things you want.

guys, you definately need to go read the last few pages of that thread. i just had a nice little discussion with one of the people behind those ideas.

I just had to point out this post. To quote:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Transhade The market doesn't buy crap. The market skims the influence off the top and reduces the amount things cost. If there was no fee to list an item for sale, you know people would be gouging for higher amounts.

(bold added by me)

Eh, what these people are really saying is, "I find the market confusing and irritating to deal with, and I wish it could be less so". Of course their proposed solutions aren't going to be any good -- if they understood the market, they wouldn't have any complaints in the first place.

And I can sympathize, because I don't really understand it either. But instead of trying to get the market changed, I just lowered my expectations.