Should prices be capped in the AH?

I've been mulling this around in my head as an idea but I'm not sure how it would or could work - and I can see great benefits and I can see huge pitfalls too - maybe.

But I'm no economist and I'm not sure if I've covered all the bases. At this stage I'm not even sure if I know what the bases are so there are big gaps in my knowledge

But it occurred to me that there's a discussion that's worth having here, and just seeing what other opinions are - what benefits and what disadvantages would it give?

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

The only thing price caps in the AH would do is cause people to sell things off-market. Witness the most valuable PvPIOs where people buy & sell them outside the market to get around the influence cap. If your recipe or salvage is worth Cap+X to someone, then any enterprising person will find a way to get Cap+X for it.

Artificial price caps would cause demand to exceed supply creating shortages and players would have to wait even longer to get the items they want or go to direct trades and pay the same high or higher (since there's added risk in direct trades) prices since players would simply remove sales from the Consignment House as is already done with many PvP IOs. Prices are high because that is the Market value of those items in terms of Inf, to change that you either need to reduce the items value or increase the value of Inf.

Also not an economist. Not a marketeer either, but I've heard their arguments here, and they make immense amounts of logical sense.

If you price cap in the auction house at - chosen at random 1,000,000, you're not actually preventing transactions over 1,000,000. You're just preventing them from taking place at the auction house.

In other words, it doesn't do what laypeople expect it to. It doesn't limit the cost of goods - it limits the availability of goods.

Since that's not (or rarely is) the intent of the suggestion, it works out to being a bad idea.

Edit - Scooped!

No.

You can see this for yourself, because the prices in the Consignment House are already capped - at 2 billion inf. There are threads in the Market forum where people are trading the highest-end PvP IOs for sums above 2 billion. There are no threads for trading any goods for prices lower than that.

As long as there are people who can get more than 2 billion Inf, and items that are rare enough that people will want to sell them for more than 2 billion, a 2 billion cap just makes all the stuff worth more than 2 billion be traded outside the market. Now, is there any reason this should suddenly change when the price cap is lowered to 100 million? To 5 million? To 5000 inf?

It would make RagManX extremely happy - he's been advocating market caps
(semi-jokingly) for years.

Actually, the only way to truly "limit" prices on the market would be the same
way they're limited for Common IO recipes (ie. have a "vendor" sell them
for a dev mandated, arbitrary, fixed price - like the crafting table in this case).

So, if for instance, you could go buy a LotG 7.5% from some vendor for
say, 200 Million, that would effectively cap the market price of it as well.

A variant of this mechanism is already in place with R-merits and A-merits,
although it's not a particularly good limiter since those don't have a concrete,
consistent, exchange-rate to actual inf.

I am fairly sure though, that the devs won't implement a true fixed-price
store for premier recipes for several reasons, but mostly, because the
current amount of influence in-game already would cause a massive
supply flood - effectively shifting the balance of toon performance totally
over to those sets, and rendering all other enhancements obsolete due
to an easily obtained, and limitless supply of the Good Stuff.

Given that the devs have stated many times over the years that the
content is balanced for SOs, that would be a Bad Thing. Additionally,
they've made it fairly clear that they intend (through drop rarity, and
merit-conversion settings) for characters to have to strive (or grind,
depending on your perspective ) to obtain the premium enhancements.


Regards,
4

The other point is that - if this is brought up because of "high prices" on the AH - there are other ways of getting what you want. Not only do the same items drop in normal play (the only ones you can't get in normal play as drops are the AH teleporters,) but if you want a specific item, you can invest time instead. Use AE. Use alignment merits.

The AH isn't the only source.

No caps, thanks. (And no, I'm not saying this as someone rolling in INF, either.)

See my Guides and Tutorials

I say no caps but I wish some of these flippers would check thier greed at the door.

I just wish the market showed retail price so you could easily throw items up at a break even without running back and forth to check.

They are already capped. At 2 billion.

To my way of thinking, the only way to "reasonably" cap prices on the AH (outside the data cap of 2 billion inf) woudl be an alternate, influence bades, way to acquire everything. It woudl require a series of vendors who act precisely like the current stores who sell the recipes, salvage and inspirations at a specific price. That would act as a maximum cap on what people woudl typically pay. For instance, if you could but a LOTG +recharge global on the market for 100 million inf OR go across the street and buy the same recipe at the level you wanted for 25 million, you'd typically cross the street, thus capping the standard bidding under 25 mil without there being an actual cap. There would be the occasional "overbid" that went past the vendor price (just as there is often salvage that sells under vendor buying prices now) but for the most part it would keep prices well below whatever arbitrary limits the devs set at the vendors.

However, this would require a serious revamp of the AH systems and bidding styles to make it work. The AH would have to work more like Ebay with completely open asking and bidding amounts and auctions that start and end at specific times plus "buy it now" settings.

Basically to "cap" the market, you'd have to destroy the current one and build it basically from scratch again.