Commodity Market/Mining Suggestions

Cooper

So I've been thinking of ways of making mining and the commodity market better and more healthy. Right now there is a lot of market manipulation that goes on by players and cities, massive stockpiles of commodities that will never be sold or used because of dormant people, and too many of some commodities and not enough of others. I've come up with some suggestions that might help a lot!

These changes would give the admin a better way to control lode spawns, stop the ability of both players and cities to stockpile massive amounts of commodities that can be used to manipulate prices, and allow the admin to make lesser used commodities more useful or more rare.

Here's what I think should be done:

- Clear out the commodity market except for the lowest 5% of commodities available for sale. Alternatively, clear out the entire commodity market and set the current average price to the average of the last 6 months if that information is available.

- Put a cap on how far above the current lowest price you can sell commodities for (5-10%)

- Remove the ability to drop or store commodities anywhere except the commodity market or your rift (forcing people sell them at the currently accepted reasonable price)

- Any commodities currently on the ground in a house, ship, stockroom, or any other place will be placed into the inventory of the person who owns or has control of the room

- Base lode spawns on how much has been used and how much is currently on the market

- Make lode spawns even more random than they currently are, so that all the lodes for a commodity don't spawn at the same time or extremely close together. This will stop people from getting the massive/huge/large spawn and being able to corner the market, and will give everyone a fair chance at them

Trey

Absolutely fucking not on the dropped/stored point. I'm saving for my house, I have nowhere else to keep my steel and wood (and want the ability to negate my losses if I change my mind or it falls through, so I'm not buying housing credits quite yet).

Skye

I kind of believe the comm market is right now on the opposite end of the spectrum. Comm prices can go for as high as they want, but not as low. And people are already selling at a loss which is why some comms are going for such stupid prices. There's also far too many comms in circulation right now with nowhere to go. If you force all the comms onto the market with such a shoddy demand, it'll probably collapse. 

Greys

Isn't the manipulation of costs part of having an player driven economy? I do think its odd that the comm market says you only can price things there for a year but it never gets returned causing items to sit there indefinitely. Unfortunately, having things mailed back is going to be a huge risk to people who can die upon entering realms.

Also, yeah  the vast majority of the commodities are sold at or below cost.

Kresslack

Trey said:

Absolutely fucking not on the dropped/stored point. I'm saving for my house, I have nowhere else to keep my steel and wood (and want the ability to negate my losses if I change my mind or it falls through, so I'm not buying housing credits quite yet).

This, and also people store bulk commodities and sell them strictly outside of the market, at a lower rate than the lowest listing on the Comm Market usually, when they want to sell a whole batch at once instead of waiting for it all to gradually sell and have to keep reevaluating and readjusting the price to stay competitive.

Nataliia

Cooper said:

- Make lode spawns even more random than they currently are, so that all the lodes for a commodity don't spawn at the same time or extremely close together. This will stop people from getting the massive/huge/large spawn and being able to corner the market, and will give everyone a fair chance at them

This is the one I particularly agree with. There are certain people who have spawn times down to a science, and almost always end up with the massive/huge/large while everyone else kind of gets the left overs. It's really not any different than people figuring out the jackpot for wheel spins and the like and getting it several times over. I'd love to see the spawn times more varied.

I don't agree with making it so people can't drop comms wherever they want, though. You can only fit so much in your rift, after all. I keep tons of excess herbs (the common ones at least) out of my rift for times when I haven't wanted to harvest for a while so I have a stockpile to pick from first. Not really that different for people sitting on comms for, as @Trey said, possibly getting housing or whatever else at some point.

That said, I do think a happy medium maybe ought to be looked into. Not sure how easy it'd be to see how many comms are being held by dormant players, though.

@Nicola  @Makarios

Saeva

They changed the spawn predictably once, but about four days later a select few already had it basically figured out. I still wish it went full random. I also wish every commodity was either as lucrative as silver or that silver would become less scarce. One or the other. Silver being the only real thriving commodity is weird.

Siduri

I'd lower silver rarity, personally. Also despawning should come to alleviate unpicked lodes, like those tiny ones who yield less than they cost to build.

Kresslack

Yeah, having untouched lodes despawn if not built on in X amount of time would be great, as would having a much more randamized lode spawn system. I've pretty much given up on mining for now because everything already gets taken by the same people soon as it pops up.

Saeva

Also I meant spawn predictability, not predictably. That's what I get for one handed predictive texting on my phone. 

Krypton

There is nothing inherently unfair about lode spawns. I was completely brand new to mining a month ago, but in just a few days, I was consistently beating all the top miners in grabbing the best spawns.

Yes, there is something predictable in spawning, but it is easily learned and equally exploitable by everyone. It is not at all like Wheel spins, because you can't just lock out other miners from grabbing good lodes with triggers/a better ping/whatever.

Besides, is it not enough to just learn how spawns trend. From that point on, it takes a lot of diligence, planning, investment of time -- and even some strategic & risky plays -- for a miner committed to keep on the best lodes, to actually pull that off.

This is not an argument against fully randomizing lode appearances. But as mining is deliberately structured to be a competitive business, not an equal-opportunity pastime, people who devote a lot of thought & energy into being maximally productive miners will continue to dominate lodes, no matter how random they're made to be.

Cooper

Re: comms not on the ground. The idea behind this is to force all commodities to either be on the market for a reasonable price, or in use by players. Not stockpiled and not being used.

I understand why some players wouldn't like that, but "because I want to stockpile just in case I want to buy a house in the future but I'm not sure if I want to do that" isn't something that the admin should be taking into consideration.

Re: spawns. Spawns are "random" right now - there's a general order of which comms spawn. The problem is that when a commodity spawns, all the big lodes spawn at the same time. That means if they spawn at 10:01 and I go look at 10:02, I get all the best lodes. The guy who went at 10:08 got screwed. The suggestion would mean that a massive silver spawns at 10:01, a small gems spawns at 11:15, a tiny coal at 11:25, a small iron at 12:30, etc.

If people are still able to predict the times of spawns that also needs to change asap. That was supposed to be fixed a long time ago.

Kresslack

Cooper said:

Re: comms not on the ground. The idea behind this is to force all commodities to either be on the market for a reasonable price, or in use by players. Not stockpiled and not being used.

This effects people who are in the process of building as well though, with current rift limits. Especially with out of sub plots, it's usually a matter of getting either a surplus of wood or stone and having to wait for a good opportunity to get the other so room credits can be acquired.

So a lot of people probably have stockpiles with full intent on using them, just are waiting to be able to obtain or afford the full amount/type needed to use them.

Cooper

You would still be able to have an unlimited amount in your inventory. You can also buy commodities and convert them to room credits 1 at a time if you want to do it that way. A room credit is only 200 wood and 100 stone. You can keep enough in your rift for 12 room credits.

Kresslack

That's a good point about the room credits, but don't commodities fall from your inventory if not rifted? Also, what about the potential limitations this puts on things like Forging? If someone obtained a stockpile of steel or iron or anything else used, shouldn't they be able to hold on to and use it for their trade craft? Not everyone is looking to sell, after all.

Krypton

Cooper said:

You can keep enough in your rift for 12 room credits.

I imagine most people would like to stockpile for something bigger than a 1-room house...

Antonius

Then stockpile room credits rather than the commodities for them. If you know that you definitely want a house then what's the problem?

Krypton

Trey said:

I'm saving for my house, I have nowhere else to keep my steel and wood (and want the ability to negate my losses if I change my mind or it falls through, so I'm not buying housing credits quite yet).

Cooper

Not a valid concern. There is 30k stone available currently at reasonable prices, and more wood than that. If you want to save up for housing you can save gold, and then buy off of the market. My suggested changes would force most the wood/stone onto the market, so there would be even more available for purchase.

If you want more rift space, there are artefacts for that. I can hold 10k of each commodity in my rift.

Trey

Cooper said:

Not a valid concern. There is 30k stone available currently at reasonable prices, and more wood than that. If you want to save up for housing you can save gold, and then buy off of the market. My suggested changes would force most the wood/stone onto the market, so there would be even more available for purchase.

If you want more rift space, there are artefacts for that. I can hold 10k of each commodity in my rift.

Subjective, not objective.

EDIT: For clarity, I haven't gotten the right plot for my house yet, and if it turns out that I get tired of waiting for it I don't want to be stuck with several hundred housing credits that I'll never use. Also, your solution does absolutely nothing for the several hundred thousand commodities I -already have-.

Skye

Cooper said:

Re: comms not on the ground. The idea behind this is to force all commodities to either be on the market for a reasonable price, or in use by players. 

This statement seems to make assertion that commodities on the market are currently not at a reasonable price when in fact most people are selling either break even or at a loss (because they r dumb/impatient). It's certainly a buyer's market right now because the excess of severely underused commodities are forcing people either to undersell their comms to quickly recoup their losses or stockpile in the hope that one day there will actually be an event that doesn't involve the use of silver/iron/stone/wood and actually call for something else like the woefully neglected platinum or obsidian (used in the city orb upgrade that nobody wants to use because people complain about having to walk outside city limits to use their wings). 

If you force all commodities to be on the market (and believe me, there are a lot), without a minimum price threshold, then the prices will plummet even further. Because yes people are that dumb. 

Cooper

The majority of commodities are actually priced so that they will not sell. Platinum, gold, ice, coal (LOL), iron, gems, stone, and wood all have the majority priced for unreasonable prices.

Skye

That's because if it goes any lower, the miners would be selling at a loss. And the reason why this is happening for a lot of things (like platinum) is because there's a terrible excess of commodities. This was not an issue when comms were a denizen generated thing, there was a fixed price threshold. Now if there's any threshold it would be the amount of money you had to funnel into digging all this stuff out of the ground. If this means that commodities are (unfortunately) going to be more expensive, then that's the uncomfortable reality to live with.

Btw refined platinum is going for 109 per right now and at least half of it is under 150. I'm pretty sure people paid more for that buying from Blackrock when/if they needed it. So I'm not sure where you get this idea that it's 'priced to not sell'. The stuff is unspeakably slow and expensive to mine and the demand is abysmally low. Regardless, low demand doesn't automatically equate to double digit selling prices, sellers still have their overheads to consider. 

Nataliia

Gems. They're at 400gp or so on Meropis in the comm shop, and the lowest is selling at 190gp on the comm market. In fact, there are no gems on the market selling at or over 400gp. 

Siduri

Nataliia said:

Gems. They're at 400gp or so on Meropis in the comm shop, and the lowest is selling at 190gp on the comm market. In fact, there are no gems on the market selling at or over 400gp. 

Yes, because the stock is at zero, like all other mineable comms. And this is why denizen shops no longer establish floor prices save for leather, lacquer, rope and wood.

Krypton

And cloth.

Tahquil

Doing my calculations. If I refined and sold off my last haul of gems I could price them at 80g per and still turn a profit.

Cooper

Skye said:

That's because if it goes any lower, the miners would be selling at a loss. And the reason why this is happening for a lot of things (like platinum) is because there's a terrible excess of commodities. This was not an issue when comms were a denizen generated thing, there was a fixed price threshold. Now if there's any threshold it would be the amount of money you had to funnel into digging all this stuff out of the ground. If this means that commodities are (unfortunately) going to be more expensive, then that's the uncomfortable reality to live with.

Btw refined platinum is going for 109 per right now and at least half of it is under 150. I'm pretty sure people paid more for that buying from Blackrock when/if they needed it. So I'm not sure where you get this idea that it's 'priced to not sell'. The stuff is unspeakably slow and expensive to mine and the demand is abysmally low. Regardless, low demand doesn't automatically equate to double digit selling prices, sellers still have their overheads to consider. 

No, it's because the majority of stock is priced at 50-500% more.

Take coal for example:

About 41k for sale at decent pricing (25g or lower)

250k+ for sale at 100g or more.

Platinum at 109 is still making a lot of gold unless you happened to take a small lode. I get the idea that it's "priced to not sell" because while there is 5k available at 109, there's 13,621 priced at 150g or more, with 1.9k at 444 per. 80% of the platinum stock is priced 20% higher than the current lowest price, with 50% of it priced 40% or more higher.

So yeah, most of platinum is priced to not sell. I'm not sure what you're not understanding.

Tahquil

It could very possibly that these prices that are so insultingly high are from the early stages of mining where lodes of everything were abundant and the cost to mine them were ridiculously high. Not every move is an intentional attempt fuck over the market.

To your suggestion of only having being able to drop Comms in rifts and on the market. This will only make people walk around with 50k Comms in their inventories instead. 

I think all that really needs done is to fix the bug of returning Comms from the market. At the moment everything sits on there indefinitely and that may be why we are seeing the bigger prices because they reflect a market trend long passed.

Cooper

Having less available for sale (when all the dormant people comms are taken off the market) will increase prices, not decrease them. Supply goes down, demand stays the same, price goes up.

Tahquil

What do you think will happen with your 5%-10% of lowest current price idea? People 'pricing not to sell' will charge 10% over. All the cheaper stuff will go making those higher amounts the norm. Rinse and repeat.

We are getting conflicting problems here. Some Comms people are undercutting and selling at obvious lose. However some people are pricing at what is considered ridiculous prices. Whatever fix goes in, if one does, will have to take into account both.