the only suggestion is to cap the maximum number of ce offer per account, if there isn't this rule yet. likewise the limit is 5, you couldn't make the sixth offer unless you cancelled the previous offers or the trade is completed.
mild regulation may meet less opposite forces than strong intervention

That's a GREAT IDEA!

I have no OBJECTION to this. OOO, don't HOLD IT back!

(Two Phoenix Wright lines at once. Oh yeah.)

I say.
That person has over 22,264,200 crowns..and that's just the offer.

i say
that person made a great profit from the shard bombs fail compensation.
didn't meet the minimum need for accusing me of libeling

There was no offer to buy section in the energy depot. That way people would not be able to put up price walls like this. It would become like the Auction Hall, more price competition.

On current market, you can put and remove offers without any drawback for any amount of time you want.

The thign is AH runs on a timer. Offers only last 2 days max. If noone accepts those blockades, you'll lose listing fees.

You are wrong. Price fixing is near impossible on the AH. That same person who puts up a giant WTB lot would be able to put up zero WTB lots. You can only put up items (or CE) for sell on the AH. as well as there would be a hindrance (listing fees) to false auctions. Lastly, that CE would be tied up for a set duration of 4, 8, 12, 24 hours--agAin with a listing fee consequence to early cancelations.

The AH would produce a CE market that was downwardly competitive as opposed to upwardly competitive.

The broken mechanic of the CE Market is the fact that you can place phony WTB bids and people in desperate need of CE are left virtually no recourse but to offer more (or wait for 2700 bids to clear before they buy 100. More CE to craft or play. This is why the market is short term in elastic. Also the fact that bids are instantly placable and cancel able with no deterrent or time bound commitment.

Just as if we had a brandish market that operated the same way, sum1 could place a WTB 1000 brandishes bid and force sum1 in desperate need of a brandish to pay more. But this is impossible to do in the auction house. Mainly, because that person does not truly WTB 1000 brandishes. In the auction house, the only way to force that higher price to the third party would be to in fact buy the cheapest 1000 brandishes on the market.

So in the CE market, by placing that 2700 bid, they are forcing anyone desperate to buy CE to place a bid above it. If these item were in the auction house, this false pressure could never work. They would actually have to buy the cheapest 2700 lots of CE to force the next player to pay higher.

In effect, this " broken" market allows rich players to "squat" on cheaper CE that they never intend to buy. The threat of them buying up 2700 CE (actually its the threat of them making you wait for 2700 bids to go through, when your need is urgent, now) is what forces the market up. This combined with the fact they can cancel that bid makes for an easily manipulated situation.

The only way it wouldnt work, is if when a bid like that goes in, if every player who needed CE NOW, for playing or crafting, just turned it off, gave up, and came back later. But that's not the way human nature works. Because they WANT to continue playing NOW, they begrudgingly out in higher bids to get the precious CE. This is further driven up by a small group who all need that precious CE NOW, and thus a series of small bidding wars drives the price up higher above the blockade.

Again, none of this is possible in the auction house, as you can place no phony WTB bids, either you buy it, or you don't. No pressure ( primarily time based pressures ) could be exerted in this manner.

I hope that clears it up for you.

Supply vs demand.

This would reach an equilibrium in the AH. Again, that 2700 bid is in all likilehood not real demand. That player(s) mostmlikelyndoes not want to win those bids. But other players must compete against this false demand, or wait any number of hours to buy their CE. This they won't do. Due to impatience, their real demand outwiefpghs their willingness to wait out the fake demand (phony WTB) and thus the manipulation portion of market manipulation.

Your supply demand theory would be 100% correct if CE were traded in the AH.

That is the inherent problem with the CE market as it is, there's an element that perverts and distorts the true supply demand balance that exists for a given commodity.

"False demand" would still exist though. That's what I just said, they would just put up a smaller wall and people will still one up them and prices would go up.

I don't think it's really accurate to say any demand or offer is false in a free market system. When you can say that, it's no longer free.

Ah, I see. That might work, I have to think it through more and I don't have the time to right now. I'm a bit worried about how a lot of people will perceive it when they think about how the people who actually buy CE with real money (and the ones that previous bought with crowns, though the only ones that hoard that are the rich) are the ones that can physically setting the price.

Okay, I thought about it a bit more and I can't immediately think of anything wrong with the idea itself, so that's a good thing. I'm still not entirely convinced it will make much of a difference. Right now if I really wanted to drive the price up for the sake of profit I'd have to mess with both the Offers to Buy and Sell. That could be profitable if I were the only one manipulating it as so but I wouldn't be so that's more or less out of the question. If it were a one way deal, I could just buy all the Energy Offers and then resell at a much higher price until everyone else started selling then too. I would still profit because the price I originally bought a ton of Energy was much lower, while raising the price in the process. In the current system I can't just buyout all the Offers to Sell Energy and drive up price that way because the Offers to Buy Energy would still be and the difference between the two can't be great if I want to profit.

@Asukalan: I think you still missed the point. A Free Market is one that is not regulated. Demand in a Free Market is Demand, regardless of the reasons why. Demand for the sake of profit is still Demand. It's when regulation happens that you can say artificial Demand happens and it stops being a Free system.

"In the current system I can't just buyout all the Offers to Sell Energy and drive up price that way because the Offers to Buy Energy would still be and the difference between the two can't be great if I want to profit."

That's why you wall the Buy side: post a big block of high Buy offers and force legitimate buyers to offer even more if they want their CE. That's what Asukalan's screen cap is demonstrating.

This is a great idea to stop them from controling the market...

These are all values the server can calculate incrementally. i.e. when a transaction occurs, the server can update the existing values of mean, mode and median accordingly, without going through the whole database of bids and asks. So server loads should not be an issue.

One implementation concern is, how frequent should the clients be updated on these data. At first I thought this should be a tiered service in which P2P should receive more frequent updates than F2P. Then I realize this is not a good idea because all it takes is one P2P to link up his account to a web interface and let everyone look at the prices. So I would propose just have everyone (both F2P and P2P) to be updated on the market at equal frequency.

Then the question is, what this frequency should be so that people won't manipulate the market by speeds (an open invitation to hacking, which is no good). I don't think there is an easy solution here. We need to do experiment to be sure.

Hmmm.... Rommil I will buy 1000 brandishes at the right price (ie just over vendor!). I just picked up a load of 3* bombs for 4k cr each!

The market does not need to move to an AH model, the energy model is the same as that used by stockmarkets the world over without any problem. The problem with a trading cap is, people could just use ALTs or form a Cartel with other players. It should not be forgotten that all energy comes into the game via PAYING players, increasing the tax on them from 2% to 10% would not be a popular move! Also auctions are time limited, this would sting just as many genuine players, who get caught the wrong side of a big move.

Personally I think all is needed is a cancellation fee of 1% from both the buy and sell sides, should offers be removed, and the ability to move an order, once a day without en curing any cost.

Well, you would be right, on the assumption that the AH model would be its own disincentive towards putting CE on the market, mostly due to the whole losing your fee if it doesn't sell, and then the 10% cut aftewards.

The thing I would be happy about, is if there was some sort of a 1% cancellation fee if you take down an offer on either side, as it prevents the whole idea of "let's put up 2k offers here so nobody can get lower". Well, I suppose you could still do that, but you can't take it back without incurring loss, so to speak.

If you want ce/cr fast, you hit the "Buy it NOW" button. Yes, you won't get as much as if you put up your CE/CR on the market for someone else to buy, but that's the price you pay for quick conversion.

Whoever put up that price wall in that picture has at least 22,264,200 crowns (as mentioned before). I would not be surprised if he had an obscene amount of CE as well to make up for any cancellation fees thrown at him.

I'll try to explain again why the WTB section is one of the things hindering the price from falling.

When sellers sell CE, they want to sell it at the highest price possible, but at a lower price than others so people will actually buy theirs. This creates a competition until the sellers reach a bottom line where they feel its not worth the loss in profit to go lower. In this scenario, the sellers are setting and controlling the prices. This is good because they try to compete for the lowest price/highest profit.

However, when you introduce buyers setting their prices, things change. Normally, both sides just keep dropping, because buyers don't want to pay more than the seller is willing to sell to them for, usually less. What if, though, one buyer with derpbillions of crowns introduced his set price that was higher than all the rest of the buyers prices? Naturally, the sellers will sell it to him, wanting the highest possible price to sell at. The only way for the others to get the sellers to sell it to them instead is to.... you guessed it: Name a higher price. That is what's happening now.

Now, if the CE were in the AH, derpbillion crown man would not be able to control the market, unless he had all the CE. He would be forced to buy all the CE he could and sell it at his higher price. However, what would happen is other sellers of CE would more likely than not, keep selling CE under his price, and he would have no choice but to either lower his price or keep buying until he is out of money.

Just imagine what Wal-Mart would be like if the customer set the prices. They would be inclined to take the highest offer. It would be chaos. I should stop talking about this now, it's scary.

@Doreal

Reason why people make walls like that is to keep the price of CE from dropping so they can keep selling CE at a higher price. I imagine if there was no price wall, CE would gradually drop in price, cause once it hits that wall it will not go lower until all the offers are gone. Also, like I said before, this is probably some obscenely rich person doing this. I imagine he has a lot more than what that offer contains.

It will eventually come to the point where people stop buying CE because it's so high and they cannot afford it. Then they'd have no choice but to bring it back down. Also, CE is continuously being put into the market, so there will always be another seller.

Ce reached up to 10k+ in Beta and players still paid that amount. The price is just structured through supply and demand in this game.

Unless someone finds a way to have infinite amount of crowns and crystal energy they can ultimately control the market and remove all shares from both sides and have pure control.

Back in Beta I attempted myself to control the whole market:

I cleared both sides of the Ce market Crowns and Ce then made my own prices on both sides, but problem was players wanted to still sell there Ce at x-price and undercut my HUGE windows, and other players were only willing to offer x amount to buy 100 ce since that is what the market price was set to be even though I try to manipulate it fully.

Back to my original point:

If ce hits 9k or 8k or even 5k its not due to players manipulating the market its just because at the time and point that is the "true" value of 100 ce per crowns.

Example: When this game went open to public less crowns in the game so it was rare to own crowns 1k per 100 ce.....after a few weeks it changed to 2k and kept going higher for awhile a BIG influx of new players 2k+ made the market crash from its 5k price to 3k for a few weeks then went back up to 5k.

@Dorael

Your missing the point entirely. He is not putting up those offers because he wants to buy CE from others. He is putting up those offers to prevent that downward fluctuation so the price stays up instead of lowering. It's just there as a "safeguard" for the higher price. you notice in Njthug's example with the price fluctuation? It was a difference of around 2k cr. If the price dropped by 2k cr in that picture it would be around 6k cr, which is a LOT less when your selling by the bulk.

Also, Price walls won't work on the sellers side, because they are competing for a LOWER price. The only way a true wall would occur is if a seller sold tons CE for nothing, which cannot be beaten (although stupid). When buyers compete, the bid to get the HIGHEST bid so they can find favor with the sellers who want to make the most of their sale. Here, it is possible to make a wall because if no one is as rich as you are, they will never beat your bid.

@Njthug

Your example proved that a guy like in the picture would not be able to manipulate the market so easily if there was only the sell side. Those people beat your high prices, and so people bought from them, not you. This is what I meant by you cannot make a true price wall on the sellers side. Yes, I know the price of CE fluctuates. But this price wall on the buy side is preventing the natural fluctuation. That's why I think it must go.

He is not putting up those offers because he wants to buy CE from others.

That wall is there not because he wants to buy CE. That wall is there to prevent the natural cycle when CE prices fall.

Why is it less than the current price of CE? Because of for some reason it does sell he can wait till the price goes up and sell it away for a profit, even if it's a little. I imagine this guy is not an actual buyer of CE, but rather a seller. Like you said, He probably has a bunch of CE.

There's probably a ton on the seller side so they can hopefully sell a ton of CE at the highest possible price that's below the other sellers. This, however, is not a true wall, cause people can simply price things lower than you. I never made an argument pointing that price walling the selling side is ruining anything.

No, I already understood that you're claiming they don't want to actually win the wall bid. You don't need to repeat yourself there. What I want to know is why they'd want to devalue crowns when they have 20 million of it. You're arguing that they must have much more than 20 million crowns worth of CE on top of the 20 million crowns they placed into bids. If they have more money in crowns than CE, then what you're saying makes no sense. If they have an equal amount of crowns and CE, then it doesn't matter what the value of crown to CE is to them because they are equally rich either way. If they have more money in CE than crowns then yes, they'd want the value of CE to raise so that the larger portion of their wealth is worth more. Thus, in order for you to be right about someone putting a wall the size of 20 million crowns, they'd need quite a bit more than 20 million crowns of CE in addition to the 20 million crowns they already had.

So you tell me, why does someone with that much money who has 20 million crowns and at least 244k CE care about the price of CE to an extent that they'd bother messing with the market to move it a few units? I'd argue that at that wealth point a few hundred units wouldn't matter in crowns to CE. What, in this game, can you buy or spend that puts a sizable dent in the face of 20 million crowns and 244k CE?

You are just talking about such a trivial profit margin for the time and effort they'd have to put in it to make such a small change in their total wealth.

Also I totally forgot you used that avatar when I was looking for a new avatar that other people weren't using.

Apparently I forgot a > and it did horrible things to my post.