traders and resellers a bad thing? let me know

[Sharyn]

I do not mind ppl trying to make a living ingame by trading "in the streets"
The only thing that bugs me, and it REALLY does, is seeing certain ppl all over the auction, buying stuff and then re-auctioning it for enormous profit oportuinity....this is really sick....

[CBB]

would it be a idea if all items put in market woudl start at opening bid TT plus 1 ped?
that way u can set buy out as high as u like, but people get a fair chance to have a bid market mechanism working on it.
Problem woudl be mutiple avatars drive up prize, but if they do and they forced to buy it they loose in the end cause next time openign bid will eb tt again
i really think that woudl take out some of the anger, i noticed soem vet players always opening at 1 ped or so, always thought that s fair

[Virnai Saal]

I'm not a trader or reseller, all I've ever sold is a few bottles of sweat and I've yet to buy anything at all, but I think that all you people who think that traders should log out and stay out should try hanging out in real life around shops, or better yet a stock exchange, loudly voicing these opinions to the people who work there. See how silly you look then.

The bottom line is that the money tends to stay in circulation within PE, you'd have to be trading a long time to acrue enough to make withdrawal worthwhile. It's the big HoF winners who are more likely to cash in a windfall and remove PEDs from the game.
Yes, items in traders' stock at high prices mean it's more difficult to get hold of them at the price you want to, but that makes the game more of a challenge. I don't go around complaining that B&O won't sell me a Hi-Fi at a price I can afford, I go somewhere else with my money and buy something that'll do a similar job for less money.

Having said that, I don't agree with market manipulation. I think that the idea that all new auctions should start at TT price is a good one. Set a buy out price by all means, but start the bidding at TT.

Cheers,
Virnai.

[elisa]

Originally Posted by Virnai Saal

Yes, items in traders' stock at high prices mean it's more difficult to get hold of them at the price you want to, but that makes the game more of a challenge. I don't go around complaining that B&O won't sell me a Hi-Fi at a price I can afford, I go somewhere else with my money and buy something that'll do a similar job for less money.

Imagine if tomorrow you drive in to a petrol station and find that petrol from now on costs $40/litre. Would you consider it as something outrageous or just as 'a challenge'?

IRL there is a hell of a lot of regulations, preventing unfair trade. There isn't anything like that in PE yet. And some people are using it in their (financial) favour. I don't mean all the traders do it. Of course not. There are so many good ones. But few people still do it and find it normal to rip off people.

[zzzztj]

Couple more points. In RL resellers exist because they - in business parlence "add value". This may be a superior customer support, or some added features, In medical publishing there are companies that produce abstracts and journal databases. These allow researchers to quickly have access to multiple resources in a single search. The advantage is obvious when you consider the scenerio of not having that facility. (it's time for those that didn't get it :p)

In our loverly world there is no option to add value - with one exception. Colourers. They add value to the clothes the tailors produce. The so-called resellers of our world do not, in fact cannot, add value to the products.

As a weapons maker there are a number of things I would like to see - Named products and modifications to weapons that would add-value.

I think the term is being confused with wholesaler in the case of people who buy lots of little and resell - wholesale. And those that hawk the auctions or try to buy out all of an item - i seem to remember overhearing a conversation about a group that tried to buy all the Kanierium a while ago. The business word for those are "con-artists". This is the term because they - as mentioned in previous posts rely on two factors, buyer ignorance and a buyers need for an item "now".

As for the mention of the stock market - Stocks don't have a TT value so there is no comparison. They can be any price from suspended (untradable) to infinity (although I've yet to see that in any of my shares :\ )

[Aziphirael]

I think the term is being confused with wholesaler in the case of people who buy lots of little and resell - wholesale.

I would say that is probably one of the core business propositions as it were for SMA. Economies of scales work in PE, I'm able to buy in bulk and sell it for small margins through the shops, especially in the pre markets.

Thing is though when you look at Added Value, Supermarkets are resellers. They buy produce and sell it on. The Added Value in that sense is not adding something to the product, but to actually have all products in one place. So the Added Value that supermarkets give, is one of conveniance. That ultimately is the only piece of added value that I think people can give in PE at this moment in time.

I have to say the generalisation about traders not putting money in is a bit false. I have invested a large sum of real life cash into PE to conduct my business (Perhaps a tenth of the space station ;-). So yes I can afford to play the game, I just choose to do something that I find interesting.

And for me building up a RL business that is dealing with virtual universes is in itself an exciting proposition. Just the other day I was transfering money earnt from the game Second Life into PE to buy some items, so these ventures are paying their own way as it were.

[Virnai Saal]

Well, given the law of supply and demand...

In a game system with a fixed number of items and an ever increasing number of players, if no traders existed, everyone would be buying (and keeping) items for personal use, which would eventually make them hard to obtain, thereby driving the prices high and keeping them there. With traders in the game, not everyone needs to keep the items for personal use (in fact the traders don't want to get stuck with them, they need to sell), so that inflation process would be slowed.

In a game system with a variable number of items directly linked to the number of players, traders are still the only ones who don't want to keep items for personal use, which means more are available to other players than there would be if the traders didn't exist. This tends to keep prices down.

In neither scenario is the presence of traders a bad thing.

It's market manipulators that are the problem, not traders. Still, if you see a known market manipulator buying up items, or hiking auction prices, you could use their greed against them. If you have items of that type to sell, you could put them into auction at a price a bit below theirs. They'll either buy them (at a great margin for you) to maintain their monopoly or else find themselves undercut (which is still a great margin for you). Then walk away and hope they get stuck with them.

BTW, I pay £0.93+ per litre for petrol. No, I don't like it, but yes, I put up with it.

Cheers,
Virnai.

[Darkaner]

Originally Posted by zzzztj

Couple more points. In RL resellers exist because they - in business parlence "add value". This may be a superior customer support, or some added features, In medical publishing there are companies that produce abstracts and journal databases. These allow researchers to quickly have access to multiple resources in a single search. The advantage is obvious when you consider the scenerio of not having that facility. (it's time for those that didn't get it :p)

This is not the only reason resellers exist in RL, so this entire argument is pointless. Resellers buy large quantities from manufacturers, package it nicely and make it available to the public.

Compare that with a PE ore trader for example. He buys small amounts of ore, refine it, and sell it at the auction in larger packages. This saves time for both miners, who just wants to get back to field with a bunch of new bombs, and the crafters who don't want to spend time at Port Atlantis trying to score that specific ore they need.

And for all of you who say prices will get lower if there were no resellers. Well, maybe it would, but that would require both crafters and miners to spend hours trading instead of doing what they really want. And since time is money, there would be no real profit.

[elisa]

Originally Posted by Virnai Saal

In a game system with a fixed number of items and an ever increasing number of players, if no traders existed, everyone would be buying (and keeping) items for personal use.

Players with unlimited supply of cash would hold on to the items they've got. However it's not the case. Players (not counting very IRL rich ones) would always want to sell unwanted items to get more free cash. Therefore trading and supply-demand chains will never die, even if turrets in PA would have been reprogrammed to kill unfair traders

Originally Posted by Virnai Saal

It's market manipulators that are the problem, not traders.

Absolutely! Couldn't argee more.

Originally Posted by Virnai Saal

Still, if you see a known market manipulator buying up items, or hiking auction prices, you could use their greed against them. If you have items of that type to sell, you could put them into auction at a price a bit below theirs. They'll either buy them (at a great margin for you) to maintain their monopoly or else find themselves undercut (which is still a great margin for you). Then walk away and hope they get stuck with them.

As I mentined above, this scenario would be problematic with limited information about trading available and because of specifics of rare items market (which shares the features of antiquities and luxury RL markets. IRL people woudn't fight resellers of Rembrandt by putting the drawings they own at a lower price. The same with PE: I wouldn't put my (F) Neme helmet (just as an example) on the auction just to screw up the strategy of few resellers selling it at tt+450 ).

[Virnai Saal]

I did say 'if you have items of that type to sell', i.e. you intended to sell them anyway.

Cheers,
Virnai.