Fair Trades?

[KidWillow]

There is a disturbing trend in the Trader these days. A majority of people are posting seemingly fair trades for 3-tier downward goods. I find this practice to not just be rude and exploitative but insulting. Since lower goods require considerably more time and space, our primary resources, these are not by any definition “fair trades”.

If there were ether a better definition of a fair trade or perhaps an exclusion feature for these with type of trades in the Trader, perhaps this scam would be less attractive and as such, discouraged.

 

[Yavimaya]

There is a disturbing trend in the Trader these days. A majority of people are posting seemingly fair trades for 3-tier downward goods. I find this practice to not just be rude and exploitative but insulting. Since lower goods require considerably more time and space, our primary resources, these are not by any definition “fair trades”.

If there were ether a better definition of a fair trade or perhaps an exclusion feature for these with type of trades in the Trader, perhaps this scam would be less attractive and as such, discouraged.

I agree with you it does not seem to look fair, but for some odd reason other people keep taking them so that's why others keep posting them. I do not ever do that unless I make it a 3 star trade and a good one at that, not just 1 number lower. On occasion I will tell a lower player in my fs if they want to here and there to post one I will take it to help them out. Other than that I never take them unless I need one of them and as long as they are 3 star of a decent amount.
Some people taking them though do feel it is a fair trade to them. It's not always to help somebody else out. If they want to take them that's on them not me and does not affect me.

 

[Deborah M]

I get so tired of having to sift through cross tier trades! I don‘t want to benefit folks who post them. This has been debated over & over & over. I have never been convinced that they are not just trying to take advantage so they don‘t have to produce goods needed to balance their city. I am now in utter disbelief that ascended goods trades are being swamped with the same greed. I do use the limited filters available all the time but still have to be vigilant not to pick up 0 or 1 star trades. I am a whole lot less disgusted with players after this has been allowed to grow than I am disgusted with Elvenar being too lazy to add filters so that players who want same tier non predatory trades can filter out cross tier & unfair trades posted. I’ve gotten to the point I just don‘t go in and try to pick up trades to help others nearly as much as the multiple times per day that I used to. So far having to be so careful in the trader for ascended goods is the only really negative thing I have to say about the new chapter.

 

[crackie]

but for some odd reason other people keep taking them so that's why others keep posting them.

Do they though? Trades expire after a week. If they're not taken, they just go back to your inventory. Most of these sit for a week and then gets reposted. Maybe for every trade that expires, Elvenar pops up a notice when you enter the trader that says "So sad...nobody wanted your stuff! <shows your trade offer that expired>" If you make 30 listings of these types of trades, you get 30 reminder notices to close. People are free to continue to post them and others are free to continue to ignore them, but poster has to take responsibility for spamming themselves.

 

[Silver Lady]

@crackie I would double, triple like your post if I could. My trader is full of T3 down cross trades and I’m just not taking them period. There definitely needs to be someway to discourage this practice.

 

[Mykan]

There is a disturbing trend in the Trader these days. A majority of people are posting seemingly fair trades for 3-tier downward goods. I find this practice to not just be rude and exploitative but insulting. Since lower goods require considerably more time and space, our primary resources, these are not by any definition “fair trades”.

If there were ether a better definition of a fair trade or perhaps an exclusion feature for these with type of trades in the Trader, perhaps this scam would be less attractive and as such, discouraged.

I am amazed by how much old and outdated information about trading is still out there. For a start it has always been a debate about what is a fair trade and one could always argue 2 star trades were fair, cross-tier or not. As many players factor in space as well as actual costs to produce the rating system was changed sometime ago to factor this in. So a 2 star trade is fair when based on space and cost. Its one reason why more cross-tier trades appear now as more people see this as fair and are willing to do the trades as it gives them more options in balancing their goods.

Wait until you get to sentient and then ascended goods. Cross tier is not uncommon in sentient and if you have a pyramid of purification you can't control what you produce so you have to cross trade to balance things out.

Then with ascended goods the trading is so restrictive that cross trading is a given, in some ways you could argue encouraged. You build up loads of goods of different tiers but mostly only need 1 good. So you can accept cross trades and get the goods faster, using your mostly useless stockpile, or wait days on end.

Elvenar being too lazy to add filters so that players who want same tier non predatory trades can filter out cross tier & unfair trades posted.

The devs have previously stated they don't want to hide trades, as they want to encourage trading. The filters are there to help you find things faster. Also worth noting for human players at least they have building demands requiring goods they don't produce. So for a small human town the only way to progress is through cross-tier trading.

Main reason I use the filters is not cross-trades but the sheer volume of 2 star trades from neighbours, a bonus is I skip the actual predatory 0/1 star trades. I haven't got the time to sift through 220 pages of trades to find the 5 trades I want. For those curious:

• 19 pages of basic (2 pages of 0 and 1 star)
• 60 pages of sentient (28 pages are 0 and 1 star)
• 142 pages of ascended ( and I am not even at A3 goods yet)

To me there is a bigger issue with the flood of T3 goods from events with people hording those buildings and then not rebalancing their towns factory production. Inno can (but won't) fix the event building issue but players and fellowships can teach people how to get a better balance. If you want 10 event good producing buildings then maybe drop a T3 factory or 2

 

[KidWillow]

My thanks to all of you who have commented here! Somehow knowing how horid you all feel about it makes it just a small amount better.

 

[StarLoad]

I have a vague feeling this has been oft-discussed, hashed, regurgitated, and eventually given up upon as no solution is found.
But I could be wrong since I have not been wrong today so far ...

Ed

 

[Farinx]

The devs have previously stated they don't want to hide trades, as they want to encourage trading.

I think this hits the nail on the head. The devs want to encourage trading, and they also want to have players use their brains. Having an imbalance of T3 goods is not necessarily bad, it just makes you use your brain be like, Oh I'm not giving you 10000 marble for 4500 dust. Try again.

Markets aren't always ideal or efficient for all members. I rather think the strategic subtone of the market imbalance is to produce more t1 and t2 goods, and yes probably teleport all your regular T3's. The fact that there is an easy solution to this "problem" shows that the market imbalance is more of a strategic element for players to figure out and less an actual imbalance problem the likes of what the Moonstone set used to cause.

-------

Having said all that, I do think the arbitrary settings of what 2* trades are between tiers is completely that - arbitrary...The pegging a higher tier to 1.5x the amount of the next lowest tier. There was a rebalance of what 2* meant for cross-trades a few years ago, before I played, I can only imagine it was worse then. The only better system I could propose off-hand is some market-based system where 2* trades ~= the average trade proportions between cross tier trades over the past 7 days. Not sure that's a viable option in Inno's book though.

 

[Ashrem]

There was a rebalance of what 2* meant for cross-trades a few years ago, before I played, I can only imagine it was worse then.

Your imagination may not even approach the angst with which Cross-tier trades used to suck up air on the forums. It was not uncommon to have hundreds of messages across multiple threads per week complaining about cross tier trades and wanting to filter them out. The place we arrived at was one of the least-imperfect options. It started with "fair" trades at 16:4:1 based purely on the resources consumed, so it was common to see 100 gems offered for 1600 marble marked as fair. I still dislike seeing them, but they no longer raise my blood pressure.

 

[Nerwa]

I think it'd be cool to have a "counter-offer" option built into the Trader, so people can haggle, both in price & quantity.

 

[mucksterme]

I wonder what you think of trading up.

Sometimes I need T2 and/or T3 and will offer T1 for them.

I always offer true 3 star trades.
So in these cases my trades would look like 100000 Steel for 35000 Gem

 

[defiantoneks]

meh. it's a market and people are free to place whatever trades they think will get taken. and others are free to not take them.

 

[MaidenFair]

Since lower goods require considerably more time and space ....

Actually, not true, at least in some cases. I just checked and in my chapter, Sorcerers and Dragons, a marble manufactory (my boost) upgraded to its highest potential (level 23) gives 290 marble per 3-hr production run (base production, not counting relic boost). A gem manufactory (also my boost) upgraded to its highest potential (level 19) gives 247 gems per 3-hr production run. The gem manufactory has a footprint of 20 squares, while the marble only takes 18. The gems are also 13.62 times more expensive to produce (7900 supplies and 79000 gold vs. 580 supplies and 5800 gold), meaning they need more workshops and residences to support that production. People down-tier trading are actually losing out by quite a bit in terms of space and costs if they are producing those T3 from factories. If they're just excess goods from event buildings, well, then, there's no harm in them trying to even out their goods.

In fact, it can be quite nice sometimes to be able to pick those crosstiers up. I haven't placed any myself because of the hate I see against them on the forum but my late-chapter-5 city has been avoiding putting down a T3 manufactory since they're such space and population hogs and event buildings will mostly start giving me T3 in chapter 6. However, I was running low on T3 trying to finish the requisite provinces to get into chapter 6 but I've got way more T2 and T1 than I needed thanks to the Dwarven Citadel set, so I was able to take a bunch of those trades from the trader, and it was a great boost to my city. Usually, I just scroll past them but there's no harm in them being there, and they may actually be extremely helpful to someone, as in my case.

 

[Darielle]

Do they though? Trades expire after a week. If they're not taken, they just go back to your inventory. Most of these sit for a week and then gets reposted. Maybe for every trade that expires, Elvenar pops up a notice when you enter the trader that says "So sad...nobody wanted your stuff! <shows your trade offer that expired>" If you make 30 listings of these types of trades, you get 30 reminder notices to close. People are free to continue to post them and others are free to continue to ignore them, but poster has to take responsibility for spamming themselves.

Good idea!

 

[Mykan]

Having said all that, I do think the arbitrary settings of what 2* trades are between tiers is completely that - arbitrary...The pegging a higher tier to 1.5x the amount of the next lowest tier. There was a rebalance of what 2* meant for cross-trades a few years ago, before I played, I can only imagine it was worse then. The only better system I could propose off-hand is some market-based system where 2* trades ~= the average trade proportions between cross tier trades over the past 7 days. Not sure that's a viable option in Inno's book though.

The 2* value is not arbitrary and that is the point. People are arguing about unfair 2 star trades which is not true anymore. It a false assumption or based on old information. There are a gazillion posts in the past on this issue and the maths is broken down frequently. Even inno when they changed it had maths behind the calculation to factor in space as well as coins/supply costs.

Its interesting just how many fellowships still have rules about cross-tier trading from years ago and never bothered to update or reflect on the changes. Also interesting that those fellowships sometimes use old tourny information too. The game is very different today from 2 years or 5 years ago.

From memory the calculation is not 100% perfect but it is close enough that it is not an uneven trade like people make out they are. Where people remove all factories of 2 tiers and rely only on cross-tier, that tends to upset people. That however has other dynamics at work in a fellowship.

 

[Killy-]

I wonder what you think of trading up.

Sometimes I need T2 and/or T3 and will offer T1 for them.

I always offer true 3 star trades.
So in these cases my trades would look like 100000 Steel for 35000 Gem

Gimme gimme gimme ^^ I think you are wasting your goods, you will get the trade with 2 stars.


The "fair trade ratio" is different for every player - while the size of the factory is set, the space needed for worker and culture depends on the buildings giving them and the wonders interacting with those parameters.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Its interesting just how many fellowships still have rules about cross-tier trading from years ago and never bothered to update or reflect on the changes.

It's not that those FS are just holding on to old rules, the reasons for those rules are still valid.

If everyone in a FS balances their own city so that they are making appropriate levels of each tier of goods and then one player doesn't then the only way to take that unbalanced player's cross-trades is for someone else to unbalance themselves, then when they try to correct someone else must unbalance and so on.

The tournament and spire negotiations ask for more T1 &T2 than T3. This means that since those are by far the greatest goods expense that T1 actually has more value than T3.
E.g. for me to cater the tournament the goods asked for are 45% T1, 31% T2, and 24% T3
So 1,000 planks have more value to me than 1,000 gems. Certainly more than the 444 a 2-star trade would give.
An offer would need to give me nearly 2,000 gems for my 1,000 planks to have an equal value for my city.

Also, there is a balance issue in Elvenar in terms of production. Many of the most efficient and powerful event buildings give T3 goods to those in higher chapters. This means that the biggest producers of goods (advanced players) are given a disproportionate amount of T3 compared to T1&2

E.G. I have​

6x T2 Factories​

4x T1 Factories​

A full double set of Pilgrims Manor that I paid diamonds for to get more T1​

and​

ZERO T3 factories.​

Yet I still produce more T3 than any other Tier.​

People are arguing about unfair 2 star trades which is not true anymore. It a false assumption or based on old information.

Strange that 99% of all posted cross trades that sit there forever are "down trades" though, isn't it? Surely if 2-star cross trades were of equal benefit to both parties there would be more of a balance?
There is a glut of T3 production because of how inno does event buildings by chapter which makes producing T3 far more efficient than T1 which means that the new ratio is still crap, even if it's better than the old 16:1 it's still too high.

Back when I spent 4 years campaigning to have the 16:4:1 ratio reduced to 5:2:1 virtually all goods came from factories, and there were only a dozen chapters. The game has changed and progressed since the "fix" and an update to the ratio is needed again.
Something closer to 1:1:1 would be better, but TBH with the way tournament and spire costs are and how event buildings are designed it should almost be reversed from the current ratio.

I just can't be bothered to spend another 4 years fixing it again, so the simple "no cross-trades" rule stays put.

 

[crackie]

E.g. for me to cater the tournament the goods asked for are 45% T1, 31% T2, and 24% T3

I fight tourney so I hadn’t payed much attention to the catering part until I had to work on the Tourney section of Scrolls of Knowledge. I was surprised to learn even when it does ask for T3s, it’s almost half the cost of T1s. It’s a straight multiplier. That means it doesn’t change regardless of what chapter you are in. Therefore, not only do T3s show up less frequently than T1’s, but when it does, you need half as many to clear the encounter. Unpopular opinion would also be to give us more things to spend T3s on, but changing formulas with a retired MinMaxGamer makes one weep into pillows.

I also don’t buy the argument there is a shortage of T1s. If you make same tier trades for T1s for the same quantity, they disappear in a heartbeat. A shortage would mean they would just sit too because nobody has any to take your trades, but that is never the case. Also, find anyone in a FA fellowship and ask if there is a shortage of T1s and they will have a good laugh.

 

[Yavimaya]

Do they though? Trades expire after a week. If they're not taken, they just go back to your inventory. Most of these sit for a week and then gets reposted. Maybe for every trade that expires, Elvenar pops up a notice when you enter the trader that says "So sad...nobody wanted your stuff! <shows your trade offer that expired>" If you make 30 listings of these types of trades, you get 30 reminder notices to close. People are free to continue to post them and others are free to continue to ignore them, but poster has to take responsibility for spamming themselves.

To be honest idk then?