Worlds Becoming Unbalanced on Goods Production

[Dew Spinner]

A few points:

1. All fellowships and players are welcome to play as they wish.
2. I do hope others enjoy the game. Helping grow the game and creating entertainment for ourselves and others is why we play.
3. Part of that entertainment for many, but not all, is friendly and respectful competition.
4. My word choice”stupid” was unnecessarily inflammatory. Given the earlier points, I apologize for my word choice. I was reacting to words I find sometimes to be inflammatory, “fair” and “unfair”. Anything within the game rules I view as “fair”, what other choose to add to their fellowship rules is a choice and has nothing to do with “fair” play by others outside that fellowship.
5. The more correct statement was the popular rule “reduces the competitive performance of fellowships choosing it.”

1. Predatory trades are not "respectful".
2. Players that adopt this Predatory practice always try to justify it with the same debunked reasoning..."real life market forces"...that is comparing apples to oranges and not a good basis for an argument. Real Life Market Forces are NOT the same as Game Mechanics.
3. If you really felt what you were doing was right, you wouldn't need to compare apples to oranges to justify the behavior, again it is just basic logic.

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

side bar: apples and oranges do have a lot in common

 

[SoggyShorts]

Even even, calling speculators "parasites" is a bit much.

My google result is
"The definition of a parasite is a person or organism that takes from or exploits others, giving nothing in return. "
If the player does not actually produce the goods, and is only a totally unnecessary middle man adding no value to the transactions, then that is parasitic behavior, and I would say the definition is apt enough.

Speculation is not the same as manipulation, and importance of speculators to the markets is well established.

I completely agree. The market manipulator on each server is not a speculator. It's not speculation when you have control. (like investing in a company vs insider trading)

And pulling off market manipulation, especially with perishable commodities, is a lot harder than it sounds - even in a virtual world. Otherwise, a lot more people would be at least trying to do this.

I completely agree again. It's not easy to start, and very hard to follow once someone else has a stranglehold on it. Basically whoever did it first on each server wins unless they quit.

a lot of the people on these forums dislike free-market systems and prefer fixed prices. Don't know if this is restricted to the game or is it an overall worldview

As others have pointed out, the real world free-market analogy breaks down pretty quickly when you factor in that there is no SEC, anti-trust, or really rules of any kind governing trades in Elvenar.

Also, purely selfish behavior in the real world is at least understandable as there is a tangible benefit to it. Behaving in such a way in a game like this is something I find reprehensible.
This just isn't that sort of community. A little competitive spirit with the tournaments and a handful of FS in the FA is about as PvP as Elvenar players seem to want this game to be.
The type of player who manipulates the trader like this is the same kind who hangs out in low-level areas of other games killing new players. It's effective, easy(once you are powerful) and you up your kill count. Still icky though, and it's the sort of thing that drives Elvenar style players away from such games.

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

not that watching you guys talk past each other trying to prove who has the better morals and/or ethics, and/or business sense in the land of elevanr isn't entertaining, but it has nothing to do with "worlds becoming unbalanced in goods production" so i am going to agree with Galdrias and say that some things have become unbalanced in the game and i'm talking about the goods which i think is a product of who sticks and who quits, and how many moonstone libraries are out there and not the people in here who seem to have missed your point lol

 

[Dew Spinner]

not that watching you guys talk past each other trying to prove who has the better morals and/or ethics, and/or business sense in the land of elevanr isn't entertaining, but it has nothing to do with "worlds becoming unbalanced in goods production" so i am going to agree with Galdrias and say that some things have become unbalanced in the game and i'm talking about the goods which i think is a product of who sticks and who quits, and how many moonstone libraries are out there and not the people in here who seem to have missed your point lol

Part of the problem of who sticks and who quits is predatory trades and people who try to justify them, when in reality they are only benefiting themselves. The players trying to justify predatory trades the loudest are the ones benefitting themselves the most.

 

[Alram]

i am going to agree with Galdrias and say that some things have become unbalanced in the game and i'm talking about the goods which i think is a product of who sticks and who quits, and how many moonstone libraries are out there.

Do you think some of it might also be due to people making only one of their boosts and trading for everything else?

 

[Silver Lady]

Do you think some of it might also be due to people making only one of their boosts and trading for everything else?

I wondered about the same thing. I’ve noticed a couple of players who seem always to offer only one type of good for everything they want.

 

[NightshadeCS]

The game is designed to produce boosted only. That's not the same as producing only T3 and trading for all the other 8 regular goods. And definitely not the same as grabbing up all goods at two star or above and then offering 1 star trades in return.

 

[Iyapo1]

Sentient goods people will have to answer this. Is part of the imbalance caused by too many people making magical and crafted sentient goods and trading for basic sentient goods? Or trading sentient goods for standard goods?

 

[Kekune]

This whole thread feels like a glitch in the matrix...

How about a new forum drinking game? One shot every time you see:

• A complaint about goods shortages
• Advice to adjust to market rates
• Laments about predatory trades
• A treatise on the definitions of "fair" and "unfair"
• Laments about rules barring free trade
• Debate about open markets and their applicability to a game world
• A mod and a locked thread

An extra shot for all of those things in sequence.

 

[hvariidh gwendrot]

add complaints about push accts and you get the bingo

 

[Alram]

How about a new forum drinking game?

I'll drink to that!

 

[Lelanya]

Sentient goods people will have to answer this. Is part of the imbalance caused by too many people making magical and crafted sentient goods and trading for basic sentient goods? Or trading sentient goods for standard goods?

First off
You cannot trade sentients for regular goods. To speculate: because sentient goods are transformed regular goods? To cook some velvet, we use silk and seeds.
Secondly, yes absolutely we do see some players with no S1, because the seed ratio works better the higher we go. Some players have only their S3, and trade down for the rest.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

The fact of the matter is, is that a vast majority, dare I say most, spell it out in their FS Overview that those trades are not allowed. If only a very small minority try to justify their validity, then that is just BS! I am sure a very long manifesto is coming shortly.

Fellowship leaders also tend to never go back and revise or update their rules when something in the game changes. I would bet that in something like 90% of fellowships with rules about trades, that those rules predate the ratio change that Inno did several months back. What counted as a 1 or 2 or 3-star trade used to be much worse and deserved to be restricted.

 

[Lelanya]

Sentient goods people will have to answer this. Is part of the imbalance caused by too many people making magical and crafted sentient goods and trading for basic sentient goods? Or trading sentient goods for standard goods?

But this is not causing a trade imbalance. For about 60% of the cases, there is not enough platinum, obsidian or soap. In other realms it's moonstone, or ink or shrooms. The Wholesaler only sells non boosted for boosted, but trade is global. Everyone's research tree is the same and asks for ever increasing amounts of goods. I am sitting on requests for 700 to 1000k of S3 goods! Of stuff that decays, made with resources that decay. Many players put up 3 star trades so their goods move faster. Other players take all those trades and put up 1 star trades in their place, to create shortages of goods, and try to force players to take their bad trades rather than risk losing 100k goods to decay. One fine fellow told us on the International Forum that since his goods decayed, he was 'owed' the extra. Yup, InnoG designed the system this way, so let's punish everyone else for it!

 

[Sir Squirrel]

I just want to say that I posted 6 trades of 150k scrolls for 100k crystal and they sat for 2 days with no takers. I am now offering 200k for 100k crystal, lets see if that will even go. I have offered some 20k fo10k as well for a test.
I am boosted in scrolls, but I don't even have a scrolls factory myself as with spire libraries and the endless scroll making part of the set (and with taking my FS's trades) I am still gaining scrolls. This is breaking the game no matter what you think, it really is. I am thinking very seriously about quitting because I don't think INNO will or even can fix it now. So many players can make enough scrolls to not even need to trade for them now, that my boost is absolutely useless!

 

[The Fairy]

So adjust to the market and forget about what the game wants you to think is a "fair" trade and you'll be able to use the imbalance to profit. Sometimes it is all about attitude and your beliefs about how you are being treated.

First, though, "profit" does not mean for every scroll you use to purchase silk or crystal you are going to get more silk or crystal than scrolls you offer. Profit is not about a 1:1 ratio because the supply is not 1:1. Right now the supply of scrolls is 1.2 to 1 for crystal and a bit more for silk. Thus, a properly balanced trade would be 1200 scrolls for 1000 crystal. That's the market value because of the surplus of scrolls.

So, if I understand this correctly then I should just offer my scrolls at enough discount that my trades get picked up (and yes, it will probably be cheaper for me than producing unboosted goods myself). But if all offer scrolls at discount then what happens???

Here is an example from H world - one of my scroll and dust boosted cities:

I can see that it is really easy to sell scrolls here (I have 26 pages of trades, half are offering scrolls, but even with 50% discount the trades keep sitting there...).

Luckily I am in a great fs and near the bottom of the fs list - and I intend to stay there. I have seriously considered restarting some of my cities hoping for better boosts, but would loose my fire phoenix if I did

 

[MichaelMichael]

Trades are always optional and free choices. If a player offers goods below the market price, they are accepted. If they are above the market price they are rejected. Players that price their goods below market are giving away free goods. Players unwilling to post trades at one star drive the price of one star trades to a higher market price creating a large bid-ask spread. The rules allow one star trades. A player and fellowship that outlaws one star trades is at a disadvantage. Playing by the rules is never disrespectful. Market price is defined by supply (how much in aggregate is produced) and how much is demanded (used in the game). No individual player is a big enough creator or user to appreciably impact the market price.

Active traders (those that buy and sell) find and maintain more stable market prices by making and accepting many offers at a profit- they do not set the market price, they find it. Players concerned that they might be giving goods away would do better to make offers between the steady state bid ask spead to get a better price. “What price you offer for your goods” and “what price you accept” are trade offs of time and choice. If you choose NOT to ask for a good price by posting below market rates, that is your right to give away goods so that your offer closes sooner. If you choose to take from the deals offered rather that posting at the market rate and waiting, that is a valid choice to save time. If you choose to sell below what others are offering, you create arbitrage opportunities that rational goods maximizing players will close ASAP for a quick profit.

The root cause of the more extreme imbalances is the Spire’s Moonstone set which injects excess Scrolls, Gum Tree and Bismuth. My perception is that the designers may have set some research items to use large quantities of scrolls to drain off some of this imbalance.

On tier one, there seems to be relative surplus in planks and marble vs steel. The smaller size of the marble manufacturies may to some extent created some survival bias and higher marble production. I do not understand where the oversupply of planks vs steel stems from.

 

[Alram]

@The Fairy
Thank you. This is a great example. Goods aren't moving, someone offers a discount, everyone else has to offer a discount...Goods aren't moving, someone offers a bigger discount, everyone else has to offer a bigger discount...and on and on further devaluing the goods.
Discounts don't help the co-op. Solidarity in pricing does. Discounts only move one's own game forward.
*I do see that you are specifically talking about the scroll problem. I hope people are seeing it and that the ones who aren't scroll boosted will, at the very least, stop filling the few scroll orders that are out there.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Here is an example from H world - one of my scroll and dust boosted cities

Looks like you may just be in a bad part of your world for scrolls and the entire server may not be that imbalanced.

I know in my region on Arendyll that people offering scrolls never have to make them that out of balance to get them accepted. Or if they do, the trades get taken too quickly for me to see them.