Curse

bilateralrope · Jun 15, 2006, 05:38 AM // 05:38

This suggestion is not intended to have any effect on any of the items currently in stock at any of the trader NPCs (rune trader, crafting material trader, etc) however, depending on how the supply and demand code actually works, it may cause the prices to change suddenly if implemented. However if this suggestion causes the prices at the traders to jump, I expect them to return to their previous values after a short period of time.
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One thing I noticed after the release of factions was how the trader NPCs, and other players, reacted to the introduction of the new runes as well as amber and jadite. For all the new items the trader started off at the lowest possible price and started climbing in price while being out of stock almost all the time. Then, once the price reached a certian point (tipping point) there were more people selling than buying and the price started declining again, while keeping in stock all the time. After a period of this dropping the prices settled off.

The only problem with this is that during the first part it seemed easy to sell the items to players for much more than the trader would if it had them in stock (I saw WTS - assasin rune 40k a lot), which is only a problem because it delayed how long it took for the price to reach the tipping point and for the traders to actually start working reliably.

Now I don't blame the people who decided that, instead of selling to the trader for only a few hundred to a thousand, decided to instead to sell to sell to players for a few thousand - tens of thousands.

So what I'm suggesting is this:
Instead of the starting values at the trader NPCs being at the lowest possible value, ANET should raise it so that when traders start handling new items (like runes for new classes) the trader doesn't have that first stage with rising prices and very limited stock. Now the higher ANET raises this starting price, the quicker it is before the traders settle down to a stable price as they spend less time in the no stock/rasing price stage.

However, the higher this price becomes, the more gold the traders will put into guild wars at the start causing more inflation in prices and the richer the lucky few to find them early will become. Now I have no problem with the latter but I don't want to see the former happen. Setting the starting price to about 10k should be enough for most items without causing too much inflation. Though for those items with an eventual trade value above 10k the origional problem will still remain for those items. Setting it higher will reduce it for the expensive items, but cause more inflation so I feel 10k is a good tradeoff point. But I'll leave it up to ANET to decide the new value (I'm not really convinced the inflation will be that bad even if the price is at 100k, but only ANET has all the data for deciding that).

Sure, a few people will get richer if they are lucky to find such an item during the time before its price becomes stable, but I don't really care about them. And since the price will then change according to the rest of the supply and demand code, this change shouldn't have any further effect once an item has been in the trader for long enough (I'm guessing a month at most). This change should just make the traders start working quicker.

RTSFirebat · Jun 15, 2006, 06:39 AM // 06:39

Couldn't agree more, default starting prices of any new items sold by traders need to be higher.

Tired of rushers being able to reach the traders first, buy up all the new stuff and resell them at a massively inflated till the market settles.

Few get stupidly rich quick, everyone else suffers because the new items aren't available for weeks.

AlbinoChocobo · Jun 15, 2006, 09:36 AM // 09:36

I understand how it is intelectually tempting to let the system reach equilibrium by itself, but the OP is right, it's really counter-productive there.