AJ, please don't mix the Non-Sentient goods trades or issues with the Sentient goods. Each has unique issues that are not exchangeable. It is truly apples and oranges.
Yeah, my example wasn't good as it was standard goods, but the principle is the same. The taking of goods by those trying to corner the market is even easier to break in sentient goods because of the nightly decay. This forces those attempting to do so to make more profit to make the whole thing workable.
@Iyapo1 I didn't see global trading mentioned above as a factor, but I think it matters a lot, too. If someone wants to corner their market on, say, crystal... fine. They can do their thing, but it's always possible for you to go elsewhere: You (probably, unless you're very small and they're very big) have neighbors they don't have, and you can join a fellowship. You can find different trading partners who aren't trying to profit off of you.
With global trading, you can't compensate so easily. AJ's explanation above sounds great, in theory... but it doesn't actually play out that way for sentients. A single very attentive player in a global market can simply accept a very large portion of desirable trades
for the entire server and then repost them for a profit. So even though other people follow AJ's advice and post trades that undercut the bad rates, the person who is being undercut can simply
take those trades too, repost them, and still profit. No, they can't get 100% of them, but they can take enough of the "good" trades and replace them with bad ones to make life difficult for folks. And yes, as AJ pointed out, this is an "opportunity" for folks who have the boosts that are in demand, but it kind of screws over the folks who don't.
You are, of course, correct, that a player can simply take those too, and repost them. However, there are limits. Doing the calculations, -- assuming a 6% decay and a million goods as the starting amount, if one calculates the size of the trades and the limit of slots (60) to use, in a few days the number of trades necessary to keep up with the repost idea becomes untenable.
Here are some numbers to consider given the assumptions above.
Starting with a million if you made the size of your trade 20K, you'd have to do 50 trades. At 30k average size of the trade, its 33 and so on. So what is the average size of the trades being made for, say bisumuth? That determine just how many reposts you can do if you don't resize the trade. So if you purchase, say 1,000 2-star trades at 20k each you can take in a million -- double your investment, which sounds pretty good. But 1,000 trades a day means over 41 trades per hour and if you sleep, you would probably have, at most 18 hours. So it's more like 55 trades per hour. With things like breakfast, lunch and dinner, and just using the bathroom, you are probably talking a trade a minute for 18 hours a day if you size your bismuth trades at 20k. Of course that's what you are selling at a time. It doesn't matter the size of your purchase, but if you can't post a trade it can't be taken.
In the end, then, you are forced to increase the size of your trades OR drive yourself very, very hard for 18 hours a day to keep up. Yes, you might be able to put 60 trades up every hour in a few minutes, but even that would be a bit tedious. I'm not sure anybody would have the fortitude to do so for long. And since you are taking in a lot of stock, eventually, by about day 5-7 if you can't post it, you can't sell it, and if you can't sell it, you lose 6% of it each day. The turning point depends on the volume and size of the posts. If the average player just can't take a 60k bismuth trade you aren't going to be able to sustain that level. In my experience 40k seems to be about the limit if you want to move things quickly, which brings up the second limit.
The second limit is sales resistance. As you post your trades and have to increase their size to keep up the profit levels -- the whole point of the exercise -- you will have fewer and fewer players willing/able to pickup your reposed trades. Even a whole server is a limited number. The higher price raises sales resistance as the value of the trade, for the individual player is personal. Thus, more and more will just say, "it isn't worth it." A diminishing base of buyers will effect just how much you can do as well.
A third limit, is the amount being produced. Obviously, if you are absorbing all that is being produced you will be limited in how much you can sell. If the supply remains stable and the demand remains stable you can live nicely within the margins so long as demand doesn't slip and supply doesn't grow. My comments are all based upon changing the mix by increasing production AND letting the players own pricing practices lower the demand. So let's say the server is producing 5 million bismuth a day. At 100% markup the "nefarious" character, to keep the average profit at 100% needs over 6 million. As you lower the markup the amount gets less, but even at 20% the supply can't meet his/her needs after about 15 days because the server isn't producing enough. So he/she has to drop prices or settle for less and less profit. If you increase supply you increase competition and doing that forces the player to buy even more AND without any increase in profit because he/she has to meet your price -- i.e. pay you the price you use just below theirs. Now, of course, they can do that if they are making a lot of profit -- but as we've seen, increasing the supply floods the market and brings pressure to bear on the "nefarious" characters.
Since the wholesaler never runs out, doesn't have to post and sells everything for 100% profit (my current level) there is a maximum profit the seller can make. With decay that's about 94%. Sounds like a lot but only sustainable, for mentioned reasons, for a few days before the supply isn't sufficient, the demand dries up, others start producing and undercutting it. In the end I'd be surprised if the level of sustainability for more than 14 days is much above 20%. And at that rate, when you subtract 6% decay, you have to ask is it worth 1,000 or more trades a day?
So the answer isn't "restructure the markets" but simply take advantage of them and make what is in demand, even if the demand is artificially manipulated by those "nefarious" players.
In doing the math for this I do recognize the opportunity to keep prices ten to twenty percent above the 1:1 ration of a 2-star trade. But isn't that what's going on with scrolls in some servers? I regularly pay 1.2 to 1 for crystal and silk, but then again, to meet this need, I just produce or trade for the scrolls I need. So the "artificial" value created by those trying to "corner the market" in whatever sentient good, is not a sustainable plan and can be pretty easily broken by a very few players just producing more and more. In the end the owners of all those sentient goods will either just sit on them or sell them -- for a lot less. And who would complain then?
AJ