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My Vision of Free Trade GE


neogilgamesh

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The following is copied and pasted off my thread in the RSOF I have created today, I'd like to see the tip.it community's thoughts.

 

Under the current system of trading, the Grand Exchange is a convenient tool for the buying and selling of commonly traded/desired items that the players believe to be at the correct price. The GE's systems have not kept up with increase of value (in player's eyes) for certain items, such as discontinued items and the divine spirit shield.

 

However, Jagex has given us the hope that free trade will be reinstated. There are some questions as to how the GE will work if the vote passes. So far the only specifics I have heard from Jagex is that the lower and upper limits will be removed (no min or max or value). I don't know if Jagex already has set in stone how a free trade GE will work, or if they are still accepting suggestions. In the hopes of keeping the GE useful in the era of free trade (and perhaps even more useful than it ever was in the days of restricted trade), I offer my thoughts on how the GE would work to keep trade free while minimizing the threat of price manipulation and real world trading.

 

I'll start with what I think will be the biggest change to the GE, a change in the interface. When you select the item you want to buy or sell, instead of the gp range you are allowed to offer or accept for the item(s), you are instead given a sample of how other players are trading that specific item. You would be given the 5 or 10 highest buyers for the item (as well as the quantities that are being purchased at that price) as well as the 5 or 10 lowest sellers (and again the quantities). This does not deter you from inputting your own price, since this is free trade you can offer or demand however much you want. However this would just be a guideline to help you make an informed decision.

 

Items would be sold in priority of the lowest seller selling the items first (if two people are selling at the same price, Jagex could either give priority to the first poster or split sales evenly between the two, which would be usefull for common items like fire runes). In the same fashion, items would be bought in priority of the highest buyer purchasing the item first.

 

This priority is in place for 3 reasons. First, because it's fair, if you want the item or gp fast, you're willing to accept less or pay more. Second, this would prevent the ability to discretely RWT through the GE. If you tried selling or buying a bucket for 1 million gp, the order would instantly fill at the highest buyer's or lowest seller's price. Finally third, this would make DISCRETE price manipulation impossible. Jagex prohibited price manipulation on the forums for years before the GE was put into the game, with this implementation of the GE into the game, Jagex may want to ammend their item scamming rule to include price manipulation. Being able to see how much an item is ballooning up quickly will alarm players, and hopefully Jagex staff, so that an investigation can be carried out and appropriate action can be taken against the guilty parties.

 

What about the GE section of the website and market values and GE graphs? I think these things will still have a place in the era of free trade. In this model of highest buyer/ lowest seller, there is always a visible disconnect between the two. Fire items like fire runes this disconnect can be as slim as 1 gp. High end equipment, like the divine spirit shield, could have a disconnect potentially in the tens, or even hundreds, of millions. When the GE updates roughly once a day it could take a snapshot of the highest buyer's price and lowest seller's price and make the day's market value the median between those 2 (round to nearest gp). Again market value is merely a guideline, not a royal decree to make informed decisions.

 

 

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Are you saying that if you post in an offer to buy something for a price and there are already selling offers for less than what you're offering, the items wouldn't buy? If so, I don't think it would make much sense. To see someone selling something for 5 gp apiece but the highest buyer is at 100 gp apeice wouldn't be very logical.

 

I never played World of Warcraft, I don't know how their auction house works.

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I like the idea of 'raw trades', you could just select the person. It would make merching through the GE harder though, no one would accept your offer.

 

I would be very interested to know how the ge works now to calculate average price, and the rise/fall. IMO it could be:

 

#1 %age over/under current average price

#2 amount of GP over/under current price.

 

The second option would be transferrable to free trade, the first one wouldn't so much I think. But yeah, I'd just be interested to know.

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Some additional thoughts on how to determine market value in this free trade GE. I can see some problems basing the day's market value for the day based off the median between highest buyer/lowest seller at the specific time of update. Updates occur at random times and in this system there is a foreseeable ebb and flow to the economy and that's natural, but the market value could unduly influence the next day's trade.

 

The day's market value of the item could be based off the mode, the price the item is most frequently traded for on the grand exchange. Basing the market value off of the mode gives the value the majority of players agree is the correct price of the item at the time (i.e. people are willing to pay that much for it and sellers are willing to part with their items for it). This could also be aplicable if jagex were to adopt the raw trade system for the GE.

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Thanks for clearing that up, Yeah Jagex has had 3 years to decide whether or not the GE should update more frequently. Their decision to stick to daily updates has caused much criticism from their players. A real economy (and a real stock market, which Jagex said the GE in some way functions like one) can change within minutes. People understand that their resources are limited and hourly updates might be a little much, but most people would agree that the restricted trade GE would be better served with more frequent updates.

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Thanks for clearing that up, Yeah Jagex has had 3 years to decide whether or not the GE should update more frequently. Their decision to stick to daily updates has caused much criticism from their players. A real economy (and a real stock market, which Jagex said the GE in some way functions like one) can change within minutes. People understand that their resources are limited and hourly updates might be a little much, but most people would agree that the restricted trade GE would be better served with more frequent updates.

Remember though that Jagex had to take into account the ability to abuse GE mechanics to transfer wealth. Problems arise because now you have junk items and price manipulation clans created in response to those protective measures. With Free Trade coming back, many of the "safety" features can be removed, so there's no reason not to update average prices hourly. Hell, even that's more of a nicety since anyone can bid or sell at the price of their choosing.

 

I like the GE mechanics better than an auction house. With the free trade GE, you get a better idea on what players think items are worth. I just wonder how the mechanics work in more detail. The best I think is person offering the lowest price for items sells first, but those items are distributed evenly among all the buyers. With respect to single items or items where there's too many buyers, it seems better for a random sell but more weight given to older bids.

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My vision of this:

 

Currently the GE determines the max/min/mid price of an item by how much an item sells for in the GE and also in trade, with the GE max/min trades gone it will solely rely on player-trades (which is BAD) it only takes a group of say, 200 people to get together and constantly trade-around say a Santa hat at 300M for a few hours (eventually ending back in the owners hand with no money lost) and the GE would then raise the Santa price as it's above the mid-price.

 

I'm not entirely sure how Jagex will stop this but I do think having free-trade back will be great, but I do think it will be limited somewhat, whether it's the change of item prices determined by Jagex themselves or some sort of limit to how much you can sell/trade in a day.

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My vision of this:

 

Currently the GE determines the max/min/mid price of an item by how much an item sells for in the GE and also in trade, with the GE max/min trades gone it will solely rely on player-trades (which is BAD) it only takes a group of say, 200 people to get together and constantly trade-around say a Santa hat at 300M for a few hours (eventually ending back in the owners hand with no money lost) and the GE would then raise the Santa price as it's above the mid-price.

 

I'm not entirely sure how Jagex will stop this but I do think having free-trade back will be great, but I do think it will be limited somewhat, whether it's the change of item prices determined by Jagex themselves or some sort of limit to how much you can sell/trade in a day.

 

I doubt Jagex is going to remove the "you just bought this, now you can't trade it for 4 hours" restriction that currently exists on the Grand Exchange. Doing so would cause too much manipulation, as you'd said.

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My vision of this:

 

Currently the GE determines the max/min/mid price of an item by how much an item sells for in the GE and also in trade, with the GE max/min trades gone it will solely rely on player-trades (which is BAD) it only takes a group of say, 200 people to get together and constantly trade-around say a Santa hat at 300M for a few hours (eventually ending back in the owners hand with no money lost) and the GE would then raise the Santa price as it's above the mid-price.

 

I'm not entirely sure how Jagex will stop this but I do think having free-trade back will be great, but I do think it will be limited somewhat, whether it's the change of item prices determined by Jagex themselves or some sort of limit to how much you can sell/trade in a day.

 

Problem with that plan of buying/selling above market value is you have to do it in the GE with it's anonymous buyer/seller mechanic. I doubt any clan will risk that as it has a fatal flaw.

 

Say Clan A wants to raise Santas for the 500 santas they have using 30b gp. As such, half of the clan puts up 50 hats for 500m while the other half slowly buys them for 500m. Well, because it's the GE, other players not involved in the process are also putting their hats up for sale. All it takes is for "jerks" that want to sell their Santa for 200m, 300m or even 500m to slowly whittle away at Clan A's capital. Clan A keeps buying Santas at 500m, but the gp is going to people outside the clan. Clan A has to resell those hats at a loss to make that capital back.

 

Plus, assuming it actually could work, all you've done is changed a suggested number anyway. Just because Santas are averaging 200m does not mean I have to buy at 200m. And when you get players that get annoyed at waiting for a slow sell at 200m, they'll sell for less.

 

Still, there's no reason not to have cool down periods for GE trades of high value items, in addition to limits on bulk sells. With free trade, if a player thinks that trading in the GE is too slow, they can do player trades. Win/Win.

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I doubt Jagex is going to remove the "you just bought this, now you can't trade it for 4 hours" restriction that currently exists on the Grand Exchange. Doing so would cause too much manipulation, as you'd said.

With Free trade on the table, there's actually no reason to have such a restriction. All it takes is two people working as buyer and seller, free trading between themselves to flip items.

 

First, selling items should have no restrictions. However, having a limit on actual number of items you can buy within a certain timeline in the GE is cool. For example, it could 10,000 per four hours for consumables, 10 per 4 hours for high priced items (I don't have the real numbers).

 

With free trade, Jagex is justified to making the GE even more strict on amounts you can purchase over a time frame. For example you can only get 1000 per hour of consumables, 100 for non-consumables, and even stronger limits based on the value of items: 100k (10/hour or 120/day), 500k (5/hour or 60/day) or 1 mill plus (1/hour or 12/day). So, if you REALLY, REALLY wanted 100 santas in less than a day then buy from players directly and don't use the GE.

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I didn't adress things like buy and sell limits in my original post, but yes I think Jagex would keep the buy limits on items, and yes I think they need to give their limits on some itmes another look.

 

Runes- Elemental runes are fine at 25k/4 hours (alot of resource items have this limit) they are very common and traded alot manipulation would be excessively difficult

Catalytic runes (natures, laws, deaths, etc) They could get away with a lower limit, to use 25k of a specific rune in the span of 4 hours the spell would have to use 6 or more of that rune type.

 

Logs- There's no way to fletch or burn 25k logs in the span of 4 hours they can get away with a lower buy limit.

 

Seeds- Unless you repeatedly plant and dig up plants, there's no way to use 100 of a specific seed type in the span of 4 hours.

 

Iron/Steel Platebodies - The buy limit is rediculously low at 100 per 4 hours, most people that want to buy alot of these items use them as though they are resource items (summoning).

 

Battlestaffs (both regular and the 4 noncombo elemental staves) - Buy limit is too low, these are used not as equipment but resources items (people use the regular staff for crafting, and the elementals in alcing).

 

Discontinued Items- I don't know what the buy limit is on these items.

 

The transition back to free trade will not be without growing pains. Jagex may deem it necessary to make changes to keep the GE useful, and buy limits might be one thing to look at.

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I doubt Jagex is going to remove the "you just bought this, now you can't trade it for 4 hours" restriction that currently exists on the Grand Exchange. Doing so would cause too much manipulation, as you'd said.

With Free trade on the table, there's actually no reason to have such a restriction. All it takes is two people working as buyer and seller, free trading between themselves to flip items.

When you traded an item you can't sell or buy it in the Grand Exchange for 4 hours.

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