ET-inf3rno
Well-Known Member
Summary:
Hiding unfair trades is a possible fix to the phenomenon where some people are making profit on buying all the goods from the market, making artificial shortage and reselling them with unfair trades to make profit.
Details:
Research:
Currently some players are sucking the blood of others in Sinya Arda when taking certain goods from the market with slightly good trades like 101k for 100k, making a shortage and reselling them with really unfair trades like 87k for 100k. This kind of behavior is very common by sentient goods and kills the market. I took over the sentient goods market this week by sacrificing around 1M sentient goods and several hours a day in the process with the goal of looking into this and finding a possible fix. Previously we had a shortage of shrooms and ink and now we have a shortage of soap and velvet instead. So I think the shortage was not because players produce a different amount of these goods, but because shrooms and ink was holded back by certain players and this way they made an artificial shortage of the goods to earn profit on them. This kind of market manipulation appears to be a serious problem and I have a proposal about how to solve it.
How it works:
If players outside the FS could not post unfair trades that are visible to us, then our players would not be able to take them out of desperation and it would be harder for outsiders to make profit on them. It would be still possible to earn some profit on trades by waiting for 3-star trades and accepting them, but it would be close to impossible to manipulate the market by collecting all goods from it with slightly good trades.
For example if there are less velvet producers and more obsidian producers in a world, then currently they can post 101 obsidian for 100 velvet and sell it in a 87 velvet for 100 obsidian trade. The profit is 100/101 * 100/87 - 1 = 0.138 = 13.8% in this trade chain. In the proposed system they could post 101 obsidian for 100 velvet and they can sell it only in a 100 velvet for 100 obsidian trade, which makes it not profitable since 100/101 * 100/100 - 1 = -0.001 = -0.1%. All they could do to earn profit is waiting for a good trade, something like 110 obsidian for 100 velvet and accepting it and trying to take velvet from the market with a 100 obsidian for 100 velvet trade. This would take a lot of extra work for them, because they need to frequently check the trader to be able to find good trades, which can be taken very fast by others too and if the price of the velvet is high, then everybody will accept a better trade as 100 obsidian for 100 velvet, so it would be a lot harder for them to make profit and to manipulate the prices by collecting a significant amount of goods from the market.
Warnings:
Be aware that this proposal is not the same as completely banning unfair trades, because many people needs them inside the fellowships to aid fellows who ran out of certain goods or who need some extra goods to complete a research faster. Another thing here that making this fix optional by a checkbox does not solve the problem, even if it is enabled by default, because there will be desperate players who turn it off and accept the unfair trades.
Benefits:
- The price of sentient goods on the market would be a lot harder to manipulate.
- The trader would not contain many pages of unfair trades.
- We would not be able to accidentally accept unfair trades from outside the fellowship when the trader is sometimes automatically reordered after accepting a trade.
- It would unite the sentient goods market and we would not need to avoid certain players even when they are posting 3-star trades just because their trading behavior does not meet our moral code.
Downsides:
- It takes developer time. It can be implemented by adding another condition to the database query that lists the trades for a certain player something like "and (trade.rating >= 1 or sender.fellowship = player.fellowship)".
- It is harder to help new players with extra goods if they are outside our fellowship and this is used for both sentient and normal goods, since we cannot see the unfair trades they posted and when we post good trades, then they can be taken by somebody else if our neighbour is not fast enough. This is a downside even if we filter sentient goods trades only, because the same would be true for players who just entered the sentient goods market and need some help from outside their fellowship.
- People who play with multiple cities in the same world cannot move goods between their cities.
Compensation for the downsides:
- A possible compensation for the 2nd and 3rd downsides could be adding exceptions, something like a list of friends outside the FS. This could be useful for adding extra features, like sending messages to all friends or allowing sending URLs to friends.
- Another possible compensation is watering this down and adding a checkbox to show even the unfair external trades. This is easier to implement, but it would allow the same exploitation the main feature intends to solve.
Hiding unfair trades is a possible fix to the phenomenon where some people are making profit on buying all the goods from the market, making artificial shortage and reselling them with unfair trades to make profit.
Details:
Research:
Currently some players are sucking the blood of others in Sinya Arda when taking certain goods from the market with slightly good trades like 101k for 100k, making a shortage and reselling them with really unfair trades like 87k for 100k. This kind of behavior is very common by sentient goods and kills the market. I took over the sentient goods market this week by sacrificing around 1M sentient goods and several hours a day in the process with the goal of looking into this and finding a possible fix. Previously we had a shortage of shrooms and ink and now we have a shortage of soap and velvet instead. So I think the shortage was not because players produce a different amount of these goods, but because shrooms and ink was holded back by certain players and this way they made an artificial shortage of the goods to earn profit on them. This kind of market manipulation appears to be a serious problem and I have a proposal about how to solve it.
How it works:
If players outside the FS could not post unfair trades that are visible to us, then our players would not be able to take them out of desperation and it would be harder for outsiders to make profit on them. It would be still possible to earn some profit on trades by waiting for 3-star trades and accepting them, but it would be close to impossible to manipulate the market by collecting all goods from it with slightly good trades.
For example if there are less velvet producers and more obsidian producers in a world, then currently they can post 101 obsidian for 100 velvet and sell it in a 87 velvet for 100 obsidian trade. The profit is 100/101 * 100/87 - 1 = 0.138 = 13.8% in this trade chain. In the proposed system they could post 101 obsidian for 100 velvet and they can sell it only in a 100 velvet for 100 obsidian trade, which makes it not profitable since 100/101 * 100/100 - 1 = -0.001 = -0.1%. All they could do to earn profit is waiting for a good trade, something like 110 obsidian for 100 velvet and accepting it and trying to take velvet from the market with a 100 obsidian for 100 velvet trade. This would take a lot of extra work for them, because they need to frequently check the trader to be able to find good trades, which can be taken very fast by others too and if the price of the velvet is high, then everybody will accept a better trade as 100 obsidian for 100 velvet, so it would be a lot harder for them to make profit and to manipulate the prices by collecting a significant amount of goods from the market.
Warnings:
Be aware that this proposal is not the same as completely banning unfair trades, because many people needs them inside the fellowships to aid fellows who ran out of certain goods or who need some extra goods to complete a research faster. Another thing here that making this fix optional by a checkbox does not solve the problem, even if it is enabled by default, because there will be desperate players who turn it off and accept the unfair trades.
Benefits:
- The price of sentient goods on the market would be a lot harder to manipulate.
- The trader would not contain many pages of unfair trades.
- We would not be able to accidentally accept unfair trades from outside the fellowship when the trader is sometimes automatically reordered after accepting a trade.
- It would unite the sentient goods market and we would not need to avoid certain players even when they are posting 3-star trades just because their trading behavior does not meet our moral code.
Downsides:
- It takes developer time. It can be implemented by adding another condition to the database query that lists the trades for a certain player something like "and (trade.rating >= 1 or sender.fellowship = player.fellowship)".
- It is harder to help new players with extra goods if they are outside our fellowship and this is used for both sentient and normal goods, since we cannot see the unfair trades they posted and when we post good trades, then they can be taken by somebody else if our neighbour is not fast enough. This is a downside even if we filter sentient goods trades only, because the same would be true for players who just entered the sentient goods market and need some help from outside their fellowship.
- People who play with multiple cities in the same world cannot move goods between their cities.
Compensation for the downsides:
- A possible compensation for the 2nd and 3rd downsides could be adding exceptions, something like a list of friends outside the FS. This could be useful for adding extra features, like sending messages to all friends or allowing sending URLs to friends.
- Another possible compensation is watering this down and adding a checkbox to show even the unfair external trades. This is easier to implement, but it would allow the same exploitation the main feature intends to solve.
Last edited: