the auction house is like an online auction with free instant teleport service.

[Nihilist]

Originally Posted by Daikiba Old

I didn't mean they would resell on auction.. they would buy from shops and sell p2p or from their own shops. What you are suggesting is to limit the channels of trade, which will lead to more monopoly + more horrendous markups. The advantage of a free market is that everybody can sell to everybody. That is what keeps prices down and things running efficiently.

how would it limit the channels of trade?!? it wouldn't change a thing. it would simply change a behavior in the "Real Cash Economy" that is nothing like a "Real Cash Economy" to make it more like it should be. auction average prices would naturally drop as there would be less demand for waiting on things.. and more demand from the instant gratification of shops. which would be much more "dynamic" like a real world economy.

Originally Posted by Cron

I don't use Ebay much, but I do live in farm country, with many farm auctions. The items are at the auction site, and if you win the bid (say on a flatbed truck) you pay the fee at the stand/booth/building whatever and drive it home. From time of winning a bid to driving it from the auction site might be 5 to 10 minutes (I've never had to wait over 1/2 hour). Delivery is my responsibility too.

Generally you can visit the site before the auction, and check out the items to see what you are willing to bid on them. Also you are pre-approved on what amount the auction is willing to take in the form of a check. Entropia auction is VERY much of what I am used to, I would hate a waiting period.

In essence, the way it is now, is the way auctions do behave from my experience.

your comparison isn't at all what i am talking about. you can't order a truck from the other side of the planet and have it in your driveway instantly.

with what you say you are actually saying you are more used to shops.. where you walk in.. look at everything there.. and then decide what you want.. more like a "farmers market" then anything.. not a global auction house with free instant teleportation service

[Cron]

Actually with teleportation I would have no need of a truck.
With the instant teleport granted in EU why would there be a delay?

The items you find at the auction (irl) have been delivered to the site before hand too. In EU if we loot a nice part of rare armor, we still need to take it to the auctioneer. Once there you are generally right next to a storage bin (which is itself a teleporter of sorts) or near a tp to take us to properties.


"with what you say you are actually saying you are more used to shops.. where you walk in.. look at everything there.. and then decide what you want.. more like a "farmers market" then anything.. not a global auction house with free instant teleportation service"

Nope. Its a competitive auction. No price fixed. If the auctioneer starts out too high, no one bids and he/she lowers the opening bid. No buyout either, and the auctioneer does not want one as they make a % off of the final price. My point is at the farm auctions I'm used to, you take possession immediately on paying your wining bid. If in real life we could teleport items, why wait to deliver them?

[Daikiba Old]

Originally Posted by Nihilist

how would it limit the channels of trade?!? it wouldn't change a thing. it would simply change a behavior in the "Real Cash Economy" that is nothing like a "Real Cash Economy" to make it more like it should be. auction average prices would naturally drop as there would be less demand for waiting on things.. and more demand from the instant gratification of shops. which would be much more "dynamic" like a real world economy.

While I don't presume to know all the consequences such a change would have, I am sure it would have a lot of foreseeable AND unforeseeable consequences on the market. I will try though..

Many if not most of end-buyers buy on auction at BO because they want/need the items fast. Speed is as important as price for them. The typical end-buyer would rather buy something at 145% on auction than spend 1 minute on the street buying the same amount at 140%. If you put a delay on auction, the auction would become useless for this type of buyers.

If we take p2p trades out of the equation, that means shopowners have a near monopoly on sales to the end-buyers..frankly I don't understand how an intelligent guy like you (no sarcasm) can say that that will "not change a thing" - should we expect shopowners not to take advantage of this? or should we expect resellers to not be buying out all of one type of item on sale in shops at market price and resell p2p or from their own shops with a fat profit?

Sure, we might see an emergence of p2p sellers on the streets, which will offset some of this monopoly, but knowing that many endbuyers prefer not to engage in p2p trading, that might not happen, and even if it happened, I'm not sure it would have the effect on market prices that you are looking for.

[Nihilist]

Originally Posted by Daikiba Old

While I don't presume to know all the consequences such a change would have, I am sure it would have a lot of foreseeable AND unforeseeable consequences on the market. I will try though..

Many if not most of end-buyers buy on auction at BO because they want/need the items fast. Speed is as important as price for them. The typical end-buyer would rather buy something at 145% on auction than spend 1 minute on the street buying the same amount at 140%. If you put a delay on auction, the auction would become useless for this type of buyers.

If we take p2p trades out of the equation, that means shopowners have a near monopoly on sales to the end-buyers..frankly I don't understand how an intelligent guy like you (no sarcasm) can say that that will "not change a thing" - should we expect shopowners not to take advantage of this? or should we expect resellers to not be buying out all of one type of item on sale in shops at market price and resell p2p or from their own shops with a fat profit?

Sure, we might see an emergence of p2p sellers on the streets, which will offset some of this monopoly, but knowing that many endbuyers prefer not to engage in p2p trading, that might not happen, and even if it happened, I'm not sure it would have the effect on market prices that you are looking for.

it would create no such monopoly as no one person owns the deeds to all the shops and all the shopkeepers in game.

the point is that Mindark essentially owns Auc*Mart and all the shops in game are fairly useless aside from novelty usage. sure theres going to be the one off shops that have the rare stuff.. and the one off shops that specialize but the product spectrum is fairly limited when you really think about it.

my point is really driving at.. what really was the point of putting shops in the game at all? and malls? aside from novelty use of course.

like you said if an end-buyer needs something he is going to go right to auction and get whatever he can right then and there.. essentially negating all shops in the game. if there is a global Auc*Mart with free instant delivery the only reason then to have a shop is novelty or specialized use.

[Nihilist]

Originally Posted by Cron

Actually with teleportation I would have no need of a truck.
With the instant teleport granted in EU why would there be a delay?

The items you find at the auction (irl) have been delivered to the site before hand too. In EU if we loot a nice part of rare armor, we still need to take it to the auctioneer. Once there you are generally right next to a storage bin (which is itself a teleporter of sorts) or near a tp to take us to properties.


"with what you say you are actually saying you are more used to shops.. where you walk in.. look at everything there.. and then decide what you want.. more like a "farmers market" then anything.. not a global auction house with free instant teleportation service"

Nope. Its a competitive auction. No price fixed. If the auctioneer starts out too high, no one bids and he/she lowers the opening bid. No buyout either, and the auctioneer does not want one as they make a % off of the final price. My point is at the farm auctions I'm used to, you take possession immediately on paying your wining bid. If in real life we could teleport items, why wait to deliver them?

exactly cron in real life if we could teleport items why would we wait for delivery? if i could /pizza a pizza to myself right now i would!! but i have to get up and drive down to the pizza hut and order myself a pizza.. sure i could speed that up a bit by calling in my order.. but i'd still have to go and get it or wait for it to come to me..

so yeah you still have to bid and what not at a farm auction and you get it right away.. but its not like our system here.. where an avatar in Ithaca could throw 40kg of lyst on auction and have it appear on an avatar in Atlantis within seconds.. even if the avatar were to use the teleport and bring it to Atlantis himself he would still be walking slow as a turtle just to bring that 40kg of lyst from Ithaca to Atlantis.. his trip would be sped up quite a bit since we do have that teleporter.. but he would still need to bring it to you.

[Daikiba Old]

Originally Posted by Nihilist

it would create no such monopoly as no one person owns the deeds to all the shops and all the shopkeepers in game.

Right, not one person, but out of a playerbase of say..100.000(?) some 100+ shopowners would as a group possess the only means of selling to the endbuyer instantly out of p2p trading, creating at least a small group monopoly.

Originally Posted by Nihilist

my point is really driving at.. what really was the point of putting shops in the game at all? and malls? aside from novelty use of course.

like you said if an end-buyer needs something he is going to go right to auction and get whatever he can right then and there.. essentially negating all shops in the game. if there is a global Auc*Mart with free instant delivery the only reason then to have a shop is novelty or specialized use.

I would agree to all of that, but as I said, the shopowners should have been fully aware of that when they bought their shops.

[Nihilist]

Originally Posted by Daikiba Old

Right, not one person, but out of a playerbase of say..100.000(?) some 100+ shopowners would as a group possess the only means of selling to the endbuyer instantly out of p2p trading, creating at least a small group monopoly.

while it would create a "small group monopoly" it would be a lot larger then the in game banking monopoly. each and every one of those in that small group would be vying for your ped.. so they would have to keep their prices competitive or not get business. I highly doubt all the shop owners in the game could create a successful cartel. i myself would have no part of it and drop my prices under the cartel prices.

edit: right now the Auction House is getting your ped anyway.. at least 50 pec or so everytime you drop something into it. so it has the monopoly. - ; P

Originally Posted by Daikiba Old

I would agree to all of that, but as I said, the shopowners should have been fully aware of that when they bought their shops.

being a shop owner myself i can tell you i'm fully aware and was fully aware of the situation before i bought it.. i like the novelty use of it. - ; )

Edit: just something about "real" cash economy and a central distribution system for all commerce where the controlling entity earns a tax and puts the small guy out of business doesn't sound very much like a "real" cash economy to me.

[Nicole]

Originally Posted by Nihilist

i'm just saying if the real world had a auction house distribution system like this no local mom and pop shops would survive.. each and every one of them would shut down.. who wants to compete with walmart/ebay/enterprise??

I live in New York city and Ill tell you what, when I was much younger we had a lot of the so called "mom and pop shops", now there is almost none at all!

They can’t survive in real life for the most part because of high rents, to high prices and most times inferior products!

Why I write this? Because I disagree with what you call reality, unless you live in a very small & remote community that is!

It sounds like you either own a shop or very much support the idea of them, but there are way to few shops and they cut most people out of the much needed selling process unless they are willing to hand over at least 20,000 peds (extortion if you ask me) to own one of them shops!

Maybe you want every one needing to selling somthing have to go threw a shop and pay a % of their sales?

[NastyCenturion]

Why do u think that placing a delay on the market will help Shops ? i think that street selling will flourish. Every soc will have 1 person selling the loot in PA, Twin, Argus TI etc. Why would MA lower their income ? (u know that there is a tax when auctioning an item that goes str8 to MA). The option u say will increase the number of ppl that have a second avatar for selling their loot/ores/guns etc

Consider this:
I put an item in auction for 7 days (compare that to shipping time)
I put a buy out = driving to mall and take out the item
If the option u say it is implemented (not that will ever be implemented but still ...) i also want any shop owner to spend 5H downloading the items in the shops. U know that RL has no relation with a game.
In RL u do not
Click - Get weapon
Click - Refine ore
Click - Get 100 hides
Click - Learn to use a handgun better
Click - U are on the moon
Click - Revive
Click - get 100 peds from TT
etc.

U take the "This is more that a game" statement to serious. I can see that u want shops to be more useful i also want to get korss 400 at TT but lets not give examples from RL because they do not apply.

[Nihilist]

lol so wheres the real economy?

should we also take that "real" cash economy just means "real" cash.. but economy controlled by a central instantaneous distribution system that earns tax on all commerce?

thats not an economy in any real sense.