An automated PMU marketplace

Suggestions and Contributions
1

I talked about this briefly on Skype the other night, but I would like to expand the concept a little here. Essentially, I’m suggesting we add a marketplace where people can list an item for a price of their own choosing, and someone else can purchase that item if they think it is a fair price. At this point, the money is then automatically transferred through the system to the selling player (even if the selling player is offline).

The pros of this would be that it would simplify the trading/selling proccess, make more apparent what the price of some items are, make being able to sell your items while offline possible, and lessen the oppertunities that theivery could happen.

The cons of this (from what I can tell), is it could take a while to develop and implement, items could be posted at unreasonable prices (especially in regards to limited or hard to find items), or certain individuals may buy all of a particular item in order to articicially raise the price, or items could be flooded in the market, brining the price down. Such a system also streamlines the ability to amass wealth by those who have a lot of rare items or cash to begin with, making it harder for newer players to experience the same benefits and conveniences of the marketplace as well.

I also think that if we add a marketplace feature like this, that a 2% tax on the profit would be added from the get-go. There are a couple reasons why I think this, the first being that Poke (our currency in game), is heavily inflaited, making many items easily worth thousands or millions of Poke, shutting out many players with far less avarice from even hoping to get items (for examples of this, refer to the results of any auction ever held in PMU). By instituting a clear-cut, unchanging tax, it would sink Poke out of the game, allowing an otherwise worthless in-game currency to be worth something again.
Secondly, even if a tax like this is added to the marketplace feature mentioned above, it wouldn’t be replacing other ways you could sell your items currently. You can still sell items in your house or negotiate trades however you wish (without any tax), but if the proposed marketplace is easier to use and is more robust in features, it’s highly likely that this would become the dominant method of buying and selling items.
Lastly, if the tax itself is at a low percentage (like 2%), it’s still entirely possible to make a profit off what is sold. Obviously, the concept of “buy low, sell high” plays in here and prices can accommodate how much the tax will take away in order to still gain a profit, but most of our items also are generated endlessly in dungeons (though that being said, some are still hard to find), so it’s also entirely possible to go sell something, get it from the dungeon, and sell it again for the same price and still gain a profit from it.

Let me know what you guys think.

2

I think this is a great idea! But just for clarification, once you put the item in the marketplace for sale, would it be taken out of your inventory/storage? I feel like if it were, it would also create more needed storage space.

3

I’m thinking it will work similarly to the Wakfu and Spiral Knights auction houses.

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Set: Instant Buy Price, Lowest Bid Price, and Duration on the AH. All of these influence the initial “put this up for sale” fee that you have to pay. (Something like Chao’s suggested 2%.)

The item that you have put for sale will be taken out of your inventory. If it doesn’t sell, you will not get the initial fee refunded and the item will be returned to your inventory.

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It might take a little while for item prices to go down, but I think this is a fantastic thing to put into the game. :P

4

I like the idea. Make this happen :D

5

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7

I like the idea. But it’s also true “strong” players with tons of money would buy anything they want, probably making new and poorer players unable to buy anything. And as you say, if you take control of an item, you take control of its value :).

BUT, luckily, i’m quite sure you can fix that, probably the best way is allowing a player to buy an item per week, or, setting a limit of how many times he can have a certain item (Lets say a limit of 3 of the same item).

I believe, probably, that way, things should go smooth. The question is: Is it possible to be programmed?

8

Even if the system existed, the purpose of it would be just to sell unneeded item’s/gain wealth etc. not to make the poor rich off rare low priced items, so the feature isn’t for every one. (but nothing is impossible)

As for the idea, its a great one for any game, the problem is that the players control the value of it, what I mean about that is that when a player asks for the price of an item, the might get it right away, though you have a bad and a good side to it, on one side, you have the players that speak up and say if it is over priced, and on the other side you have those players that say that its cheap, I do wonder who is making the price range list for most of these items in the game… I’m pretty sure no one is, which makes it unfair, because no one knows if its a fair trade or not. (Making it a slow trade, till some one decides to suck it up, months later, or never, flooding it.)

The other thing I see with this, is that I’m expecting to see players post random items non-rare/rare for an over exaggerated price for no reason xD but i do see the tax % come into play to prevent those kinds of problems.

And with the rate at which most hard to get items are being easily accessed, I don’t see why they would be over priced…

(I may have repeated some thing’s just in other words, it’s just my opinion)

9

If it can be implemented, I think this would be a great feature to have. It brings to mind a player-run marketplace, though far more advanced than the one suggested here, from a different game.

I support the idea.

10

It’s actually healthier than you think if the wealthy can buy any items they want, especially from the poorer/less established players out of convenience. It lets younger players get a stack of cash outside of the sometimes price-gouging Keckleon shop, and the rich will distribute their wealth more evenly among the population by buying up items like Revives, since once a person has the cash it would be harder to get motivated to find a huge stack of the things by dungeon scrounging when they could just hop onto a mart and buy it from somebody else who already did the work. The only worry you’d have to have is about inflation and the keckleon shop - prices may have to be adjusted to be more or less expensive as you’d go from a mostly barter-based system to an actual rough economy where currency really needs to retain a basic value.