I am not understanding where
@BrinDarby and
@ajqtrz feel they are being bullied. People have stated their opinions and you have stated yours. Existential discussions about what constitutes fair and unfair have no place in this. PERCEPTION is the key. If your trades are perceived as unfair, they won't be taken. You can argue, fuss, and fight from dawn til dusk and that is not going to change. I think you both are resentful that folks won't take your trades if they are unbalanced to a great degree in your favor. That, to me, is like someone being angry another person won't let them pick their pocket!
This weeks' moves introduced someone to our neighborhood who places trades such as 2000 silk offered and 20000 scrolls demanded. Ridiculousness. Hope they have figured out a way to hatch more scrolls in this scroll starved neighborhood because that's the only way they will get them. Trades like that foster ill will. Like it or not, it reflects back on you.
First, my claim is not that I'm being bullied but that players are. It is an act of coercion to tell a player they will be shunned if they don't do things the way you think they should be done. Here's a definition of bullying: "seek to harm, intimidate, or coerce." Usually it a high status member trying to intimidate a lower status member of the group into doing as the group or he/she wants them to do. I'm not sure why one wouldn't think telling a person they will be shunned, (or shunning them, for that matter), or treated as a pariah when they don't put up trades with which you agree. They are, quite often, lower status players and, quite often, follow the advice exactly because it is a higher status member giving it. And when that member supports the claimed group norm, it makes it an obvious use of social pressure to get the person to conform. Group bullying is just as prevalent in games as in real life. So it's not me who, in this case is being bullied in this manner, though I have been "warned," that I will be shunned if I continue doing what others don't appreciate me doing.
A second point is rather minor, but important. I never post a trade with less than a 5% bonus for the buyer. I can't remember doing that since I was in chapter 10 or so. My trades get taken fast.
Now as for perception, you are right. But if you use idea that "this is how it's done," you are just using an ad populum argument...this one with implied threats of being shunned and/or trades not being taken. Why people perceive 1 and 0 star trades is for two reasons. 1) the players insist on enforcing the idea, and 2) the star system makes the claim of the value of the goods as if it were absolute. It's not, as I've demonstrated and as we've seen over and over in the game. Thus, when we claim the star system is a "fair" measurement of the value of our goods, we are being unrealistic. The value of our goods is, and should be, whatever we say they are. Maybe nobody else thinks so, but if they don't our goods will sit in limbo until we get tired and realize we are asking too much -- and that is a learning experience they will learn. If our goods are worth what we say they will sell because, given their immediate circumstances, the buyer says they are worth that. In both cases encouraging and even implying punishment if they don't do as the group does, is not healthy.
You are right. It's perception. I am only arguing for the right to perceive the value of my goods the way I like, not the way the system claims, a way that is enforced by players who are, in my opinion, suffering from a little group think.
AJ