Buy orders are a part of nearly all MMO's but here in SWTOR, 2.5 years in, we still don't have them. Why? WE obviously have a use for them here and its a useful option to have. Instead we have people vending items they can't sell because two parties which may never be on at the same time, can't communicate.

 

What if the one thing I want is only currently being made by one guy anymore and he plays at a time I don't? He can't peddle his wares and I can't purchase them. This has got to be remedied. Sure, there can be downsides in buy orders, but no more than in sell orders and they can be designed in a way which limits their abuse. Of course, these designs may limit their usefulness but better to have limited use buy orders than none at all.

 

What is the community's opinion on the subject and what I've written.

why can't you just send him a mail and get him to mail you the item COD?

why can't you just send him a mail and get him to mail you the item COD?

Cause COD has a time limit to it.

I can see it now. Millions of Buy Orders for Revans Masks and Overlord Command Thrones for 1,500 credits, Thermal Regulators for 75 credits, Level 52 stims for 18 credits.

I don't see how buy orders is a good idea. It will be filled with stupid.

Don't know if I agree that things can't be sold because two people are never on at the same time. You can list items for 48 hours. People that regularly sell items can continually re-list their items and have them up on the GTN.

However, that being said, I definitely agree that buy orders would be a very useful addition. Would save a lot of time constantly checking the GTN for listing. CoH had a pretty good buy order system. Also, I wish they would put appropriate deposit amounts on some of this CM stuff so people can't just keep de-listing and re-listing items without forfeiting a legitimate deposit.

I can see it now. Millions of Buy Orders for Revans Masks and Overlord Command Thrones for 1,500 credits, Thermal Regulators for 75 credits, Level 52 stims for 18 credits.

 

I don't see how buy orders is a good idea. It will be filled with stupid.

Why must you be the voice of reason in some threads and the voice of an alarmist on others, you confuse me.

Limit one buy order per person at a time. Not many people will waste that on dumb and if they do, that's their issue. It's easy with the right interface to sort out stupid from good.

I have been as specific as I intend to be. I am not going to provide the cliff notes for how to manipulate the GTN through various buy/sell mechanics. If a player or group of players works it out on their own.. so be it.. but I'm not feeding the negative propensities of players to behave badly inside an MMO by providing strangers the data they need to do so.

 

You are free to dismiss my comments if you like, but as a person who does play markets in MMOs that I play, I can assure you that it is very unwise to underestimate the veracity of players to exploit anything and everything in an MMO. Different MMOs take different approaches to try to mitigate this of course, but the most common is to limit the ability of players to work the market through price fixing. Sell orders or buy orders by themselves are fine, but combining them into a single market is an invitation to players destroying the natural stability of the player markets. A simple review of world commodities markets (which do work under buy/sell mechanics, and are the closest real world equivalent to what is being begged for here) should amply illustrate the human propensity to manipulate anything for profit.

I choose to dismiss your comments because what you've said is all predictive, worse case scenario-ism. You haven't touched on the positives of the matter.

In fact, I've given answers to all of the "issues" that have been brought up about why it could be bad. There are solutions to these issues. Why must so many of you always look for the worst and reject change out of fear?

Allow everyone only one buy order at a time and all your problems are eliminated and the usefulness of the buy order remains.

Why must you be the voice of reason in some threads and the voice of an alarmist on others, you confuse me.

 

Limit one buy order per person at a time. Not many people will waste that on dumb and if they do, that's their issue. It's easy with the right interface to sort out stupid from good.

It's not alarmist. It won't kill the game or make anyone's life horrifying. It would just be beyond useless to wade through thousands of idiotic buy orders that will never be fulfilled in order to find the one gem that's almost worthwhile.

Why must you be the voice of reason in some threads and the voice of an alarmist on others, you confuse me.

 

Limit one buy order per person at a time. Not many people will waste that on dumb and if they do, that's their issue. It's easy with the right interface to sort out stupid from good.

And make people need to pay a fee for posting a buy order

I have no earthly clue. I haven't played any other MMO's in 2 and a half years. Before that, I played a few and they did have them, so I imagine its a part of all the best ones right?

 

Are you interested in discrediting my viewpoint by way of misspoken proxy?

Buy you initially wrote: Buy orders are a part of nearly all MMO's but here in SWTOR, 2.5 years in, we still don't have them.

So you can't support that. You are full of crap.

Forgive my stupidity, but what exactly are buy orders and how do they work?

I'd at least like to know what everyone is getting so worked up over, and perhaps even have a go at getting similarly worked up myself.

Forgive my stupidity, but what exactly are buy orders and how do they work?

 

I'd at least like to know what everyone is getting so worked up over, and perhaps even have a go at getting similarly worked up myself.

I might be wrong, but I understand it to be a sort of "reverse GTN" where the buyers list the things they want and the price they'll purchase it for.

Yeah, that's what I figured, but I wasn't sure. So it's basically that the sellers become the ones who have to trawl through pages of listings instead of the buyers?

Er, okay then.

I might be wrong, but I understand it to be a sort of "reverse GTN" where the buyers list the things they want and the price they'll purchase it for.

Hehe, I completely misunderstood it then. I thought it was like a macro you set up to purchase an item should it become available at or below a certain price. Hence my original post that those with vast reserves of credits could just snap up stuff as it appeared on the GTN at low prices whether they were online to see it or not.

TBH, it sounds like it would be a nightmare to trawl through with the need to have a system that could list every single craftable item in the game.

And not to mention Buyers setting their purchase prices as unrealistically low as sellers set them high

You could always do what players have already done with my crafters. Send an ingame mail having noticed items I've listed for sale but wish to trade in like. Or they've noticed I've listed certain mods and asked if I can make other types. The worst any one will say is 'No, pay the price as listed'

Buy orders are a part of nearly all MMO's but here in SWTOR, 2.5 years in, we still don't have them.

I'm neutral on Buy Orders, but I think this is vary badly misstated. I've played a lot of MMOs and the only one I recall having Buy Orders is EVE. I would say that having Buy Orders as a feature is more the exception than the rule.

While getting that detail wrong doesn't discredit the idea, it does start your OP in which you criticize SWTOR for not offering a very uncommon feature, off on the wrong foot.

The only MMORPG I've played that had them was Atlantica Online. And that was for your personal store. You could sell stuff in it, or buy stuff (by listing the price you wanted to buy for that item).

Most people still used the normal market. That would list things forever, but the price would constantly automatically drop if it didn't sell.

I strongly support buy orders but ofc am not hopeful they will ever happen.

"find a crafter" is not really an answer. For one thing, a lot of items I think I would want a buy order for are "commodities." E.g. put up a buy order for Turadim at XXXX, Mk-9 Components at YYYY, Aluminum at ZZZ with the occasional KDY Construction kit. Or you can just place a buy order at 500,000 for a new mount and when the prices drop to that point it is bought for you even if you are offline.

I don't buy the rich get richer objection. Right now, someone unconstrained by credits (rich) can manually scan the market for deals and buy what he wants. Someone willing to devote 65 million credits could buy up the first 1,000 MK-9 kits they saw below 65,000. (In spite of its appearance in MMO forums, cornering a market in MMOs tends to be harder and rarer than the public thinks. Just like in real life.)

I semi-jokingly say the current system favors new parents. I.e., they are going to be up at 3 am anyway so can scan the GTN for good deals.

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The current system rewards bot-like behavior, log in and scan the GTN for the items on "your list" and buy them. The person who scans the GTN 18 times a day will buy for lower prices than some causal who does it 4 times a day.

Should gameplay reward this behavior? YMMV. IMO, deciding on how much and what price Aluminum I want to buy is an interesting decision. Scanning the GTN several times a day is not interesting gameplay; it's quite rote.

There are many ways buy orders could be implemented. The buy orders don't even have to be visible. I could have a buy order in for Aluminum at 250 and some new player could try to sell some for 100. The GTN could prevent him from listing below 250 or accept the listing and then automatically sell it to me for 100 or 250 or 175.

My idea for buy orders was very simple but people didn't understand.

You would only be able to put up a couple buy orders at a time and for no more than 99 of a stack-able item and only 1 of non-stack-able per buy order.

It's not so people can go crazy and corner the market on crap.

we are already able to inspect the schematics of people nearby. perhaps some kind of database to be able to find people on the server able to craft an item, and the ability to send them mail for a request.

or a /say system that sends a mass whisper to those with the schematic

I would love love love to see buy orders available. It would make the GTN more useful for low-volume items. As it is, inflation and the subsequent price gouging has rendered the GTN practically useless during the levelling process. Practically anything would be a help.

I think I need to clarify how this would work in my head - it wouldn't be automated, it would be a WTB listing that people could search out and fill. It would NOT (under any circumstances) be a mechanism to automatically buy an item once it reaches a certain price point.

I would love love love to see buy orders available. It would make the GTN more useful for low-volume items. As it is, inflation and the subsequent price gouging has rendered the GTN practically useless during the levelling process. Practically anything would be a help.

 

I think I need to clarify how this would work in my head - it wouldn't be automated, it would be a WTB listing that people could search out and fill. It would NOT (under any circumstances) be a mechanism to automatically buy an item once it reaches a certain price point.

Exactly, never was auto purchasing part of my vision for buy orders.

One thing which buy orders do is tend to provide long-term market stability; it's hard for the price of an item to stabilize when orders are up for two days at a time, and you can't sell portions of a stack, leading to lots of redundant item listings of one unit each.

Having buy / sell orders in terms of unit prices would lead to a more competitive and interesting market, especially for crafting commodities or common unlocks like ops passes. Extending the time to something more reasonable like a month would be fantastic.

My dream of course would be to simply steal EVE online's market interface / system, but swtor's economy is too small & simplistic to need something like that.

The idea of being able to post a request for an item appeals. But as there seems to be a lot of paranoia around suggesting this, I'd add that any item bought via a buy order becomes instantly bound. (Ok, maybe there needs to be a limit on moving to an alt, but if you are sensible on your orders, it shouldn't matter.)

So if my scoundrel needs a barrel, I place an order for it at the price I want to offer, an armstech makes it, fulfills my order, I have my barrel, they have their cash, and I cant affect anyone else. Even bind mats etc so you are never placing a buy order because you want to affect other people, you place it because you need something, and you will use it. No manipulation, just hundred of people with unrealistic hopes to buy BIS items for 50 crs... But with a quick sort to show the highest offer, who cares if there's thousands of fools?

Oh, and a clever system would link buy and sell, so if someone isn't paying attention, and places something for sale at a price lower than a buy order, it connects, sells/buys and both are happy - not sure who would win about the price gap in that case?