Looks like we can set any price we want on the auctions, newbies will HAVE to buy one from us. Make them save up 50k to get the first fuel cell. THEY WILL!
There's many people in this game that prefer to think "how can I help new players?" rather than "how can I screw new players?" I find it unlikely you'll be able to pick your price no matter how unreasonable.
I'm all for giving them as gifts to the needy but if you auction low I'll buy cheap and auction higher. I play the auctions for profit - it's another aspect of the game I love! Though I was bit stunned to see the price had shot up from 400c to 1200c for the cells a couple of days ago. Especially considering they were being sold for cheaper than the jellisacs on the auction lmao.
It works for a while, but some of us band together to stop that behavior. For example, have you watched the price of teal-white triangle keys? They used to routinely sell for over 1000c.
Then some of us got together, and each time a certain glitch seemed to be sniping, we'd price right at his highest point. After flooding him with keys, we lowered the selling price so that he'd lose money if he resold those keys at "market" price. It works like a treat. As far as I can tell, the market has never again routinely been at a level where those keys were anything but a loss.
So you guys gang up? Band together or whatever! Interesting, I didn't realise you did that. I don't really notice the keys to be fair, I just grab them when I see them. I don't snipe either, I don't believe in using the scripts I've seen going around. When I play on the auction, I treat it like e-bay, I take the time to look through and compare prices and if I believe I can make a profit I will buy and sell on.
I wonder who has the right to decide what another player can charge? Sure it is down to the buyers to decide if that's what they are willing to pay?
Arabesque (in two months I'll be the Lone Ranger ahahahaha) I always play my way.
Wow, I remember when I told friends how nice people were on Glitch. Those were the days (we also didn't have teleport and I had to walk to the tool vendor uphill both ways).
A key you can pick up for free, and has a listed value of 45 currants is somewhat overpriced at 1000.
He was doing what you described: buying cheap and auctioning higher. He'd buy all the keys that were priced lower than he wanted to sell at. When there were none of those left, he'd list his at the extremely high price.
It was just a matter of watching when he was buying and pricing our keys at the high end of his range. We were selling them at what we thought was a reasonable price. He was buying up our keys and reselling them, trying to corner the market and over charge.
If sellers feel like they are being ripped off by people who are buying their items for resale, then they are free to manipulate the market in the other direction. And if someone thinks the current prices are too high, they can do exactly the same thing: price theirs lower than ours.
I agree with it in principle as an individual seller, I just didn't realise we had an auction mafia behind the scenes! lol The only good thing that comes out of higher pricing is that it does force players to go out and forage for what they need. More players on the streets or Ur is definitely a good thing : )
Edit: I think too for the most part the auction is used mainly by the more experienced players who aren't bothered or no longer receive the xp from harvesting the items themselves. I honestly don't think a newbie for example would hit the auction for the cells. The odds are being new and having learnt the new skills they'll just be making them.
@the OP, if you price too high, all the newbies need to do is a quick run through the home streets to get the supplies they need to make their own fuel cells. That's what I've been doing since the latest housing update and have already accumulated over a 1000 jellisacs and more in peat.
It's more of a culture mafia than an auction mafia. One of the best things about Glitch is its culture of freely sharing.
To see someone come in and try to rip people off goes against the grain. If they're doing it by buying up the low priced items and then reselling those items at a much higher price, there will be community pressure. In this case, it was done by using economic tools against someone who was trying to rip people off by manipulating the auction.
Naturally everyone in the game has a different idea of what a 'fair' price for an item is. But if the price is perceived as 'unfair' there are tools that people can use to combat that.
Yeah, I'll have to bare that in mind and tweak my game play accordingly. Thanks Windborn : ) I'll think you'd be surprised how many players are using the auction playing just that method you described though by using a program that highlights cheaper items so that they can buy quickly and resell. Like I said I don't believe in using outside programs on the game itself. I'd count that as cheating. I use the tools within the game and if that's not enough then I'll make my fun another way.
I'm definitely not a newbie, but oooof, I am finally learning fuelmaking and such and I am just eeeking at the thought of the prices they will be after reading this thread. I appreciate people who band together to drive prices DOWN.
@Synnia you can buy them but they are soooo easy to make especially now we have the home streets with all the resources to make (aside from the gas of course and for that I always hit Kalavanna to get 3-4 stacks of gas). 1 fuel cell will not get you much made especially of the new wood beams. I tend to use the community machine rooms for the other items (blocks and cells) as you always get a freebie after each build. Sometimes jelli, peat, xp, or even gas.
When demand is high, prices will rise. High prices will dampen demand, which will fluctuate at a point roughly matching what buyers are willing to pay.
When prices are high, additional participants will be attracted to that specific market niche, causing supply to rise. If supply rises, prices fall.
Eventually prices 'clear' at a point that matches what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are able to produce for.
Economics WORKS in Glitch. The OP needs to go back to school.
From the official thread in the Ideas Forum - 86 minutes ago,
Mart Lume wrote: Changed the fuel amount in an assembled machine back to 50, until we have a chance to make something 'remember' the amount of fuel in the machine.
WalruZ, in Glitch, not only does economics work in classical suppy/demand ways, there are cultural factors that drive prices down.
Some of us price our auctions at less than what they cost to produce, just to be sure that the prices stay "reasonable". So anyone who is pricing at the actual cost to produce will find their auctions somewhat more expensive than what others are selling at.
It is this 'altruistic pricing' that will keep your classic economic model from working the way you think it should. You always have to check the assumptions of your model against the reality you're trying to apply it to.
When I buy cheap it tends to be looking at what the tool vendor pays for certain items. If I can make a profit that way I will. It's a different way of playing the game when you're not in a social mood for whatever reason. I can just camp out at cebarkul and browse the auctions and compare with what the tool vendor will pay me for it and then sell directly to him on many occasions.
Going OT here.
@ WindBorn, I can't believe you actually chime in when people talk about auction pricing when you only list seeds at above vendor pricing. www.glitch.com/auctions/PCR...
Is that your altruism at work? Actually I don't care what you price your listings at, but I do object to you misrepresenting your pricing practices constantly.
eta: sorry Arabesque, not directed at you..
..I thought you were talking to me then...I was like seeds? I plant them, not sell them (or I'll leave them in the community gardens for others to plant - that is an altruistic way to play I believe).
@Rufus, that's what I was trying to say without saying it out loud...lol Thank you for speaking : ) ) It is very much changing the play of others so the game fits your picture of it. Kind of self serving in a sense even with the excuse that you're doing it for others. I'm not afraid to say that I do auction to make currants.
Artificially suppressing prices, just because you think they're too high (and you're so rich you can afford to throw away currants) is just as bad as being the one who scalps and resells for high prices. No difference, in my book. You're both manipulating prices. There's no moral high ground to stand on there.
Or maybe neither is bad. Noone is forcing their play style on anyone else, and doesn't this fall into "grow and shape the world?" This is a game where people's actions affect others. If people think the prices should be lower, it's their prerogative to do that. Playing the auctions can also be a good way to earn currants. Nothing wrong with that, either. What's wrong with "manipulating prices?"
ETA: What there is something wrong with is trying to tell other people how to play. You can lower prices if you want (and "you" isn't referring to anyone in particular) but please don't try to dictate to other people that they can't raise prices.
No. There are other options. They don't have to sell that item or purchase it off Auction. No one is forced to buy or sell anything. I've had altruistic people flood the market on an item I was selling, so I simply moved on to selling another item and came back when the price went back up. No one prevented me from selling to players, high or low.
What I feel you are saying, rather than that players shouldn't force others to play their way, is that you believe manipulating market prices is an invalid play style, exactly the thing you claim is wrong.
The seeds are packaged and priced in a "convenience store" model. Frequently my auctions expire because other people are able to produce and price their seed auctions using a different model. That's fine. I'm not trying to stop them from pricing things lower. If they want to price their seeds so that they lose money on them, great. I'm providing a service (a few seeds) at a price (a bit more than the vendor would charge) that lets you decide whether you want to travel to the vendor or pay a bit more for convenience. Frequently, other players will provide the exact same convenience at a lower price.
Other auctions are priced using an "altruistic" model. In this case I price things that newbies can only get from other players in a way that is affordable by newbies. Sometimes I price them using a "vendor buy-back" model, so that I earn exactly what I would have earned selling them to a vendor. Sometimes I use the "dump and run" pricing model, selling for a few currants lower than whatever the lowest price is.
In a game like this, few people are going to use a single pricing model. None of the models I use are intended to rip people off by creating artificially high prices that benefit only me and attempting to control the market to increase my currant supply by making sure everyone selling at lower prices than I am is wiped out of the market.
Whatever your anger about my various ways of using the auction, in no case is it intended, as the OP states, to force newbies to pay 50k for something that is worth 380 currants. If anything, my "manipulations" are slanted the other direction.
And, there's nothing inherently wrong with the OP's model. It's just not the way I like to see the game go, and I attempt to give people other choices. The OP is free to price their fuel cells at 50k. I'll price mine using a method that I prefer. The winners are the Glitches who get items at a price that they are comfortable paying.
From what I've read no one is telling others how to play.
OP stated glee over ripping ppl off. Windborn threw a bucket of cold water on the idea.
That Windborn charges what?...slightly less than double on seeds is very different than charging a magnitude from 40 ( or a cpl hundred) to the 1,800 that yellow-white triangle used to go for.
If you want to set the price on an item all you have to do is be persistent and have vast resources. OP can set their price for 50K...but can they keep that inflated price? Heck could they even support 5K?
Windborn's seed business tacks a convenience fee on top of the vendor price, a practice that is perfectly defensible. I have purchased from her before in a pinch. I've also sold items (salt, detailed elsewhere) using this model. Convenience stores all over the world use this model. There's nothing wrong with it.
WB - I would argue that if demand is low, altruistic pricing forces prices down, but if demand is high it just disappears into the mix. If demand is high enough, altruistically priced items are purchased and resold. Take tree poison. Demand is low and supply is high now and prices are trending downwards. Back when demand was high from Paul Bunions seekers, supply could not keep up, prices were high and altruistic sellers did not have enough supply to meaningfully affect them.
There is no "moral high ground". There are simply different styles of playing within the rules. Some play styles tend to benefit a single player to the disbenefit of many. Other playing styles benefit many players to the disbenefit of a few. My approach to the game tends toward the latter style.
If that's the "moral high ground", then feel free to call it that. Personally, I see it as a cooperative style that a lot of people playing Glitch use. But that simply makes Glitch different from other games, not "better" or "worse". or Giants forfend, more "moral".
Ha, I love it when someone attacks my reading comprehension. Always a hoot.
You said there's no difference, but you also specifically stated that neither has the moral high ground and that manipulating anything is "forcing others to play your way." There's no question that you wrote those things -- just to be sure, I did reread.
But manipulating "anything" is not forcing others to do anything in response whatsoever. So it cannot force others to play your way. While there may be no difference between choosing to drive prices up or drive prices down, there is also no difference between the effects on others' play styles -- there is no effect.
Manipulating market prices is a valid play style in sandbox games. Others can respond with their own manipulations, choose to ignore the price fluctuations, choose to sell another product, or choose to ignore the market altogether. There is no elimination of play style freedom.
Kind of off topic, but sometimes the supply is so high the price just dies :) I often pick up meat on auction for 6c apiece. I take trips to Cebarkul whenever the bags start to fill up with drops anyhow, so it's a nice way to earn a tiny amount of currants from those who don't make the same trips to a vendor :) (Though, frankly, I think you used to, and maybe still, get 7 currants from almost ANY vendor, so I've no idea what motivated 6c auction prices. People must know that it's probably not newbies picking up cheap energy?)
@WalruZ,
Tree poison may have stayed at a high price because altruistic sellers simply didn't want to be in that market. Tree poison is not basic tool. At the time, the primary use of tree poison was to create community disharmony. Why encourage either side in that endeavor?
Seeds are not the only thing I sell on auction. Perhaps they are the only thing you can find because the other things have been bought so quickly.
You did notice that I use multiple pricing models, did you not? I did not claim that I was altruistic. I described one (of several) pricing models using that term.
And, I don't think the word means what you think it means. It certainly doesn't mean 'losing money'
What I notice is that you try to shame posters that dare make a profit and while you tout your altruism as if you only list auctions that are below vendor price. And yes, I see your post about different pricing models which was after my post. And yes I know what the word means. Do you know what self righteous means?
"I think fuel cell prices will normalize once the full housing release allows us to have more than one jellisac station per backyard"
Posted 7 hr ago by jello's landscaping
----
Now that's a relevant user name. :)
I remember way back.. when I first tried the auctions.. I put up several of an item I had worked hard to create at a "reasonable" price. I really felt burned when someone bought them and turned right around and upped the price considerably to resell. I I felt robbed.. In hind sight, that was just my newbieness.. no one's fault really. You live, you learn.. I did.. so, I guess all's fair. If someone has to get burned more than once, then that this is a personal lesson - spend more time finding out why. On the flip side, I do think it's just as fair for players to group and flood and bring down the price.
There is no mafia, players are free to price however they like, for whatever reason suits them at the time -- rational or irrational. They are also free to form an economic block. Nothing illegal is happening. If higher priced auctions get undercut, that is the risk the seller took -- they were also free to choose.
I generally post with a small profit margin. It meets my goal of what I consider courteous play. I also posted a chunks of earth at 4x current market price, since my goal was to kick start the market for chunks of earth -- and it took a few days, but it worked.
Finally, any prices which don't reflect the natural market prices -- too high *or* too low -- will over time drift back to the natural price. Just as @WalruZ said -- high prices will induce additional supply, lowering prices -- low prices will curb supply, resulting in higher prices. The poison price correction induced by Lord Bacon-o & company was actually an over-correction by roughly 20% -- prices slowly rose back up. Prices have started back down the last week or so, but that is likely due to the current overabundance of herb plots with R2 phase 1.
And the snark level seems to be getting out of hand.
Psst! I have this rare ( rare as in spawns about 5 mins apart at nandak intention ) teal-white triangle key worth heaps, but just for you the special price of...
100c? lol - actually I think the price for those keys is kind of justified in that people will spend hours in those rooms. it's all relative really. I thought it was 12 minutes. Two of them also spawn up in Callopee or Polokoo...one of 'em a couple of streets apart!