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Why does the "Sell" menu have variable pricing, and the "Buy" menu fixed pricing?

Feb 23, 2005 DekuDekuplex link
"ananzi" recently made an excellent point in the thread "allow people to buy rare ore at station" ( see http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9251#106665 ) that the current market system, in which the "Sell" menu has variable pricing while the "Buy" menu doesn't, simply doesn't make sense:

> i dont know how suply and demand works in vendetta...
> but i know that in real life if a bunch of people wanna buy
> something the price goes up. if you have semi realistic physics
> i dont understand why the economy has to act like a retarded
> soviet bureaucracy.

Currently, AFAIK, when a player sells any product in large quantities at a station, the price there falls, but when that same player buys a product in similarly large quantities, the price doesn't change at all. This is not how real markets work, and doesn't make sense.

If prices for players to sell fluctuate, prices to buy should fluctuate, too. As an especially apt example, it makes no sense that at, say, Coranis Watch (Divinia M-14), the Neutron Blaster MkIII, an extremely popular limited-availability item, costs only 791 c, but that the Flechette Cannon, which very few people use, costs 1297 c. What is the incentive to purchase a Flechette Cannon instead of a Neut III?

Recently, at another player's suggestion, I stockpiled 300 Neut III's at one station, but, as far as I can remember, the price didn't change. In a real market, it would have. (The player who had made that suggestion claimed having stockpiled "700" Neut III's.) Because prices of popular items don't change, players can stockpile on limited items, such as Neut III's, without paying high prices, which is unrealistic.

IMHO, the "Buy" menu's pricing system should be adjusted to account for market value.

-- DekuDekuplex Ornitier
Feb 23, 2005 Fnugget link
For us traders, buy prices being stable is good for tracking. Why, if I was a maniac, I could go write them all down. But I am a maniac. Anyway, I think they never run out of sources. The reason why money is so easily gained, is that theres unlimited money.
Feb 23, 2005 Soulless1 link
they should just link the buy and sell prices but keep the buy price always a certain % above the sell price. That way the market prices could go up as well as down.
Feb 23, 2005 DekuDekuplex link
Re: Fnugget

> The reason why money is so easily gained, is that theres unlimited money.

That doesn't make sense in a real market without unlimited inflation. But there isn't unlimited inflation. Hence, either there isn't unlimited money, or the Vendettaź Online market is unrealistic.

-- DekuDekuplex Ornitier
Feb 23, 2005 Spellcast link
the market is unrealistic, there are quite a few threads on this, i've posted one of them for your perusal.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7350#87852 -this one i linked because the devs responded to it and addressed the buy/sell part; i've linked a couple of specific posts here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7350#87759
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/7350?page=2#88271

tho you can read the whole thread to get a full view of the discussion. several other threads are linked from that thread with other ideas.
Feb 23, 2005 ahtawa link
Actually, DekuDekuplex, I think you have it backwards. Prices usually go down when you purchase larger quantities. If I go to the local computer store and buy 300 computers I'll get a better price (lower) than if I buy just one.

One of the marketing guys at "Neutron Blaster's R Us" received a big bonus for starting a rumor that they should be stockpiled, increasing sales signifcantly :) They probably only sell two Flechette Cannons a year so have nowhere near the economy of scale. Of course weapons aren't trade goods in VO anyway.

What you say holds true for raw resource/commodity items like the ores and food, water and perhaps steel/plasteel/solvents and the like though.

The raw resource/commodity items are sold in too small lots to be useful, we would need big freighters or cargo ships to make them worth it, or perhaps a futures market for us trader types to play, yea, "VO Futures Exchange"! I dont think anyone actually shuttles that stuff around (except when in a mission)
Feb 24, 2005 Furious link
If one were to buy a bunch of item X, then it's purchase price should increase some amount to reflect depleted local supplies. One would also expect that the amount the base was willing to spend to buy it back would increase. If that were to actually happen, someone could buy up all of a certain item and drive it's price way up, then turn around and sell the whole lot for some $$$ without ever leaving the station.

Easiest fix for this is to make the 'supply' infinite, which translates into a fixed selling price.
Feb 24, 2005 Syberfly link
Furious, but it is still easy to crash the market at two stations at the same time, if you know what both stations need and both have what the other needs. It's a little time consuming but you can make some good cash and xp.

Syberfly out
Feb 24, 2005 ahtawa link
> If one were to buy a bunch of item X, then it's purchase price
> should increase some amount to reflect depleted local supplies.

This simply isn't true with the manufactured goods that people actually trade in VO. Show me an example in real life where buying alot of a manufactured good raises the price. The manufacturer simply makes more widgets. Just look at it this way. The manufacturer has planned to sell 1 million widgets this quarter, has set his price accordingly, and the fact that you buy 1000 of them simply helps him achieve his sales goal.

It's the raw resource items that operate in the way you think, but in VO these things (ores etc..) are traded in too small volumes. In real life these things are shipped around by the supertanker and trainload, etc. Hence no-one trades them anyway, I don't think.
Feb 24, 2005 ananzi link
ahtawa, I shuttle that stuff around. Mine 300 units of heliocene in azek, transport to latos. Not to mention going to every @#$ station checking the price.. argh! Not to mention draggin a mineral marauder up from Odia because my last one died. Now trade it... 5 trips! Thru a wormhole! Boring! Slow! Many minutes! What a pain! I want to mine, not trade!!!!!!!!

If people could buy heliocene in azek, they could sell it in latos themselves. They buy for 500, sell for 2400, 1900 profit per cu! Then price goes up to 1,100, they still get 1,300 profit per cu. Now I get 1,100cu per profit on mining heliocene. But I dont have to schlep it all over the galaxy and check a bunch of prices! I can just mine. mine mine mine.

Feb 24, 2005 Spellcast link
next time you have a bunch of heliocine, /msg me ananzi, i'll purchase it from you at a fair price and haul it elsewhere for sale.
Feb 24, 2005 ahtawa link
> ahtawa, I shuttle that stuff around. Mine 300 units of
> heliocene in azek, transport to latos.

Oh I was talking about buying the ore at one place and then selling it at another (ie trading). You're mining and then selling your goods. (http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/9251#106665)

DekuDekuplex was (or seemed to me to be) talking about finished product (weapons in particular) when he started this thread.

Now as a trader and buying something here to sell it there, the ores aren't worth it the way it's set up now. Your idea to let the stations sell the premium and rare ores might help that, but that's the other thread. The price for those raw materials should fluctuate on supply/demand.