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How would you improve the GTN?


funkiestj

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Get rid of it and make it a consignment house where purchasers place orders for what they want. I am seeing the same behavior that I have seen in every other game where people break down item lots to maximize profit and to corner the market on goods. Mind you I haven't seen the gold spammers which is good but you still have people that think the are the next Trump trying to make as much game cash as they can which hurts the economy.

 

Supply side economics never works will never work and games like this just drive the point home. For an economy to work you need rules and regulation like any game, without them people will simply abuse the system. Make the economy demand side which is how real economies work and use the whole population both player and NPC to regulate abusive users.

 

Well that isn't fair, for those that want to play that way. We want an economy that works for everyone not the few, it is fair it removes abuse it limits currency sellers, and it allows demand to drive the market and players will get what they need because there will always be someone to sell it to them player or NPC.

 

I have another post which contains an high level over view on economics that I post shortly after the game released and I will be writing up the rest of what has been running around in my head now that I have ironed at some of the last bits.

 

First of all, screw that. if I want to buy something, I don't want to wait around for somebody to fill and order IF it gets filled at all. I want to go to the market, buy what I need, and be on my way. Or, at the very least, be able to see right away that there are none on the market so I can go farm whatever it is myself.

 

Secondly, where do you get the idea that supply-side economics don't work and will never work? Define "work". Because it seems to be working just fine in plenty of games, including this one. Just because YOU don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't working. Not working, to me, would mean MOST people don't like it. And that's just not the case.

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remove posting time lengths

 

remove upfront auction fees. have the buyer pay a fee if you feel it is needed.

 

remove or increase number of items to be posted

 

look at other auction house models other than blizzards and thier clones. soe has done some nice inovations over the years. there are other companies out there as well.

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Stacks.

 

1. being able to sell like 100 units in stacks of 10 or 25 whatever but have the AH do the split up.

 

2. have it remeber the price I set for the same items in the same unit size is used as well. IE is i sell red goo x10 for 20k and want to put up 10 stack It would nice if i didnt have to keep entering the price.

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Wouldn't a cross-faction GTN be kinda bad, lore-wise. Maybe planet specific cross-faction GTN, like on Nar Shadaa?

The difference between whether or not to enable cross faction is purely a policy decision, not a technical one. We could have GTNs that span multiple servers with or without cross-faction GTN. Likewise, policy could be to only group PvE servers with other PvE servers.

 

I think having a cross server GTN would have market ramifications that we couldn't even predict.

This seems like an irrational fear. The world in general and MMOs also have lots of empirical evidence regarding how markets behave. Of course there is no way to definitely refute the argument "what about things you haven't thought of yet" :)

 

You are also assuming that the magical Bioware tech wizzards already have it in their hat to be able to do that, whereas it seems like it would be reeaaalllyyyy complicated to me.

 

Not really. Markets don't have to work in realtime. If BW adds buy contracts (a la EVE online) then it is very easy to broker deals across servers by matching sell contracts with buy contracts.

 

Speaking as someone who has developed software professionally for 20 years, I know that features take time to develop and test but this is not a particularly difficult feature (if buy contracts are included in the feature).

 

Other than that, it works just fine for me. I think having an automated undercut feature, or something that alerts you to someone else undercutting you is just kind of silly and pointless. And it also makes it so that people who aren't online constantly just plain lose.

 

Bug fixes would be awfully nice though.

TRUTH! All in all, the current GTN is pretty awful. Someone above made a ton of good suggestions including having a column showing "per unit price" and being able to sort by that. Sorting by absolute price is comparatively useless.

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A cross server GTN would be a HORRIBLE idea! Each server's economy is unique. A cross server GTN would obliterate that. I'd be floored if they added that.

 

Are you upset that we have global stock markets? That EU nations and USA states don't have completely closed markets?

 

One of the dreadful things about underpopulated PvE servers is that the crafting game is unplayable because the market is too small. This is not the sort of uniqueness I want to preserve.

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I would like to be able to sell a set of items together.

 

For example, if I was to list all 5 augmented War Hero armor pieces from a set, I have to list them separately. Someone can now come in and buy one of those pieces which lowers the chance of the other 4 selling because a buyer may think they'll never find the 5th piece. If I could sell them all together in a set it would guarantee the buyer a full set and I'd probably even be able to get a premium on the price for it.

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Make the GTN an actual server wide selling point. I.e. when you list something it shows up on all Kiosks on the server, Imp or Reb.

 

When an item you want to sell expires have the option to relist it. SWG had this and it was very nice. When an item expired it went into the vendor storage. All you had to do was go to the storage, highlight an item (or all of em, depending on how many you had listed) and hit the relist button. Would save A LOT of time if you list many items.

 

Up the number of items you can list on the market.

 

all I can think of atm...

 

Remember that the dev did make a confirmed statement that the hutt are buying out all the GTNs to make all of them neutral faction. Mos Eisley radio 076 (interview with Daniel Erickson) is the source.

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Are you upset that we have global stock markets? That EU nations and USA states don't have completely closed markets?

 

One of the dreadful things about underpopulated PvE servers is that the crafting game is unplayable because the market is too small. This is not the sort of uniqueness I want to preserve.

 

Very succinctly stated. Anything that can be done to increase the size of the market is a good thing at this point. I realize that dead GTNs are a direct result of dead servers (like mine on pub side; imp side isn't terribly better off), but the next best answer to increase market size is making it a pool available to all players on a server. I know I've complained to my guildies on more than one occasion that I can't just go to the GTN and buy all the mats I need to power level a new crew skill for an alt or something. I know that's more a luxury, but people leveling professions are what populate the market by and large.

 

After that, my next wish list item is not having to choose a second parameter in order to have a listing show up. Whether this is a bug or working as intended (I haven't paid enough attention to see if it's been acknowledged by Bioware either way, but I wouldn't be shocked if they're keeping mum on it), it needs to go away. The only time I should have to choose a second parameter is when it's a subcategory (armor type, crafting mission/mat/schematic).

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EQ2 actually had my favorite broker of any MMO so far. Going to steal ideas from there:

 

1.) The ability to auction instead of simply sell. I.E. Items are listed with a minimum price and a buy-out. Players can bid until auction expires. Setting the minimum to the buy-out (filled in automatically) is a simple sale, as the GTN works now.

2.) 1 or 2 week max time limit on listings.

3.) R-click item in inventory while at GTN auto-searches

4.) Listing prices are remembered and auto-filled in when re-listing an item (can be stored locally)

5.) Saveable searches (can be stored locally)

6.) Sales log (can be stored locally)

 

0.) Fix existing bugs: Useable By still doesn't work. Certain searches require a "Quality" level to be entered (ex: spaceship parts)

 

That should keep you'all busy for awhile. :)

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EQ2 actually had my favorite broker of any MMO so far. Going to steal ideas from there:

 

1.) The ability to auction instead of simply sell. I.E. Items are listed with a minimum price and a buy-out. Players can bid until auction expires. Setting the minimum to the buy-out (filled in automatically) is a simple sale, as the GTN works now.

 

I was wondering after 4 pages whether someone would mention this!

 

For me, this is the number one desire. A proper auction house with say a 2 week listing time. This helps casual sellers who don't have hours upon hours to watch the market to determine a going price. It also tempers arbitrage buyers who start bidding amongst themselves.

 

also, a simple request to add formatting comma to the selling price window so that 200000 becomes 200,000.

Edited by Cerion
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I was wondering after 4 pages whether someone would mention this!

 

For me, this is the number one desire. A proper auction house with say a 2 week listing time. This helps casual sellers who don't have hours upon hours to watch the market to determine a going price. It also tempers arbitrage buyers who start bidding amongst themselves.

 

also, a simple request to add formatting comma to the selling price window so that 200000 becomes 200,000.

 

I think they should add more than 50 slots!

 

Well, it's not called an Auction House is it? It's a Trade Network. Well, more like a Shopping Mall rather than an Auction. I don't think BW intended on making it that way.

 

This thread should be moved to the Suggestion Box. I don't see how this is relevant with Crafting....

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