The only reason this works is because people are willing to price to beat them. Which means the market is behaving as expected. If some dude posts 100 bids at a price you don't want do beat, just don't out bit them and wait for the orders to fill, it's that easy. The fact that this works just means the exchange hasn't hit the equilibrium yet. As the price rises to about what you make on a solid jelly run, it will probably get harder to affect the price this way.

did you think you magically figured out the solution that even SEC cant figure out?
people have been manipulating prices everywhere, in ce markets, supermarkets (yes stores like walmart have different prices at different geographical locations), and stock markets, if theres room for manipulation and methods of doing it, people will take advantage of it, thats the beauty capitalism, you spend the time effort and knowledge, you profit, or in this game's case, you got a "deep wallet" you do whatever you want with your in game virtual wealth.
and even in true communist societies, leaders and people with power often have much more resources than anyone else.

you also didn't seem to get a few things straight.

1. many people raise ce prices without the intention to gain anything, they simply want higher prices because they can do it, and won't need to buy a lot of ce in the future. so even with an upfront non-refundable fee, people with 500k+ cr and 50k+ ce will still do it just because they're bored of this game or have quit this game already due to the previous patch, which gives them a reason to destroy this game.

2. an upfront fee hurts newbs even more. have you not placed an order, waited but no one sold / bought ur ce, and changed ur order to another price before? people with the intention to manipulate the market most likely have tons of ce and crowns, or simply buy anything with real money, they are likely to care way less bout losing 20-100k cr for fun than a new player who just lost 10% of their total reserve via a cancellation of an order that will never be fulfilled.

The fact that you can do this means there are people WILLING TO PAY those prices. If you are not willing, do not participate in the market. I understand your complaints, I see that it is bad for you, but all these 'pegs' are doing is helping the market price head to where it needs to be. This strategy will cease to work as soon as players are incapable of quickly outbidding the wealthy.

I understand the situation, however you have to realize that these men do not have the final word on prices. Their methods of creating several dozens of fake offers and then quickly deleting them does not change prices. What does change prices is people reacting to them. If you just tell people to stop reacting to them or, better yet, sell to the fake offers (this would leave them out of the game for a while while they try to convert CE back to Cr), then the prices will stop changing.

Besides, I've been watching the CE market, and prices haven't changed that much recently. It took a week or two to go up 200 cr, but it usually goes back down overnight.

Agree with the OP. Break down the artificial walls.

People say "just don't trade for CE when the price is [artificially] high"... but trading for CE is F2P players' only way to acquire CE and advance.

@akragster: I don't follow your argument that F2P players are only "obstructed"/hindered if they're spending their ME crafting multiple items. As I'm sure you're aware, crafting a 3-star item costs 200 energy, and it only goes up from there (400 and 800). If a F2P player has any desire to advance past 2-star gear (and into Tier 3), (s)he has no option but to trade cr for CE.

The sticking point then is whether T1 (and T2) runs continue to be profitable. Currently they are, of course; the market hasn't gotten that bad. (The AH being a cr sink helps the change of crafting becoming a massive CE sink.) If the cr:CE ratio were to make such runs "unprofitable" (using CE to delve), F2P players would still have the option of delving only with ME (and waiting the 22 hours to recharge)... but that seems to me a pretty poor option, effectively capping the playtime of F2P players.

@patito: So you're saying the perfect equilibrium has, as I stated above, F2P players running on mist and then just waiting the 22 hours because the run was not profitable? The wealthy would still be able to influence the market in the same way they currently are (the people doing this at 5k could still afford to do so at 7k). With a higher trade rate, F2P players would just have to save up (cr) longer before trading for CE instead of being able to reload CE and run again (which, again, limits playtime).

Then call a spade a spade and make it a paid-subscription game. Simple.

Dont do it, when i was a new player every crownt counted and i wouldnt even enter the CE market.

If by 'sane, grounded logic' you mean hand-waving. I find it doubtful that the energy prices are rising at the hands of some secret circle of wealthy players. Seriously... I'm surprised the prices aren't higher. You've got some prat bragging about affecting the energy prices of thousands of players on a post somewhere that was deleted, and that's given you an excuse to complain about energy prices. You know... on second thought, I'm so so so sure you're diagnosis of the energy prices is totally correct. I apologize for arguing, you're clearly right.

#edit: verb/subject agreement... it's so hard!

@kevomatic: The majority of people with problems with the CE market are people who craft all their equipment, THEN try to do runs only to remember that they ran out of ME and CE crafting. The reason they do not advance (which you claimed they were incapable of due to bloated CE prices) is because they are simply incapable of managing their resources. You make it sound as if the reason these players cannot advance are due to the same people who control oil prices. This is not a late-night political/economical talk-show, not every minor facet of the economy needs to be declared heretical and burned at the stake.

@Hanekeda: I was hoping to have a rational argument with you without any insults, but it appears that you've resorted to insulting the intelligence and comprehensive ability of patito and I in order so you don't have to actually respond to our posts and can instead make a follow-up to your last post without addressing the opposing debaters' points.

The 2% fee already stops people from making too much of a profit off the market. The only way to do so now is in tiny amounts (like, 20 cr) or to buy a large amount of CE and hope it goes up (it actually goes down quite often, especially when they add benefits to buying CE). The 2% fee is used instead of an upfront fee because an upfront fee would hurt everyone. If these guys are so rich (and/or intent on destroying the economy like you have said in previous posts), they will be able to afford the listing fee. If they can't, neither can the average player. In fact, a listing fee would make the average player spend more on their CE than normal, they might as well just use the give up and use the 'Auto-trade' button at that point and get the worst price possible for their crowns. Fees require everyone to pay, and the only people hurt are those who can't afford them (a.k.a. the poor).

I imagine someone would say 'Don't hate the game, hate the player', but you should hate neither the game nor the player. The player(s) found his/their own place to make a profit. Their being there doesn't ADD money to the overall economy, in fact it subtracts it (2% fee). They actually reduce inflation just by existing. You have no reason to hate these people. People you have never met. They're probably just an anonymous face you bloated to untold proportions in order to throw your anger at it.

Uh.. First off, the offers to Buy CE and Sell CE on the Market tab are tied to each other. When there are 100 orders to SELL CE at 5000 crowns (right column) and someone puts in orders to BUY CE at 5000 crowns on the left column it will start dipping into the supply of CE on the right side.

There is NOTHING artificial about the fluctuation of prices on the left column (buy) as it is limited by the lowest offer on the right column (sell) regardless of whether or not players are putting in "fake" offers. As of this posting there are 249 offers to sell CE between 4996-5005 crowns. To raise the maximum price of CE a wealthy player would have to put in 249 orders at 5005 crowns and SPEND 1.24 MILLION crowns.

No, you can not raise the price above what supply dictates the limit is without actually spending crowns and even if you placed orders 1 crown under the lowest offer to sell CE, this does not prohibit players from making a lower offer if they think the price is good and lowering the crown exchange rate.

Basically the crown exchange rate is rising because people are willing to pay that many crowns for 100CE, not because players are influencing it.

Cliffs: Yes you can force people to basically "trade" at what the trade tab offers, NO you cannot raise the price of CE without actually buying CE.

The difference is they can't really falsely list bids. Those are REAL bids and they can be sold to. If they're pushing the money past the 2% difference you should SELL them CE and then buy CE back after it drops. When I posted the above, it would have taken 1.2 MILLION CROWNS to move the real crown exchange rate 5 crowns. That's crowns that you have to ACTUALLY SPEND.

I think you're completely missing the point here. There is no way to mess with the price unless you actually buy the CE. Despite all the claims that people have been messing with the system, the real crown exchange rate hasn't been able to go well past 5k crowns. Why? Because there are more than enough people willing to sell their CE for that price.

A listing fee won't do anything but prohibit people from competing with rich people. I can't wait for someone to place an order for CE then get outbid by 100 orders. You have to either eat your listing fee or never get CE? Awesome idea.

I have to also admit, i'm scared to death that OOO is gonna 'fix' this :( I have so little confidence in patches to fix issues at this point. I guess i should be careful what i wish for since the fix i'm sure will be something insanely stupid like a 500 crown posting fee AND a 500 crown cancelling fee on CE bids. Ugh.

To me this method seems mutual for both F2P players and P2P players. First of all most F2P players want to buy energy to keep on playing the game and gradually make their own crowns through runs such as Jelly King. Upon obtaining certain items, the players that farm the crowns are able to sell the items they find or craft it to sell it for a much higher price, this in return makes the P2P players buy items with the crowns they bought from the F2P players.

It's a whole cycle of economy, and quite balanced if you ask me. If one side decides to offer low gold prices to the P2P players, the P2p players won't buy the crowns at all, and if the P2P players demand more crowns, the F2P players would be discouraged to provide the crowns. In other words both sides must do their job, in order for this dual economy to work.

Now for the inflation prices, this is not something to be worrying about, most P2P players are in search of 5 star items they could obtain via CE conversion Into crowns. Some would prefer to trade CE instead of crowns, this introduces a 3 way economy none the less. In my opinion all of this fuss isn't caused by the crown inflation but the craft binding limits. This is why P2P players demand more crowns for their energy, is to be able to pay the price for the inflated rare goods that survive the limitation of crafting. I'm very sure that without the binding, there will be more competition in the market for both F2P and P2P. This also could mean P2P people may lower their crown prices as there are plenty of the variant weapon to choose from the AH.

bump

huh, somehow I missed this, sorry for the late add.

It appears people complaining about these "market walls" haven't thought completely through how the cr<->CE exchange works.

As I'm sure everyone knows, there are two different interfaces to the cr<->CE exchange, a simple one where you just hit "buy crowns"/"buy CE", and a more complicated one where you place buy/sell orders. What isn't so obvious is that (with rare exceptions), every buy/sell order placed on the exchange has to be filled by someone clicking the simple interface. Yeah, let that point sink in. The buy orders for CE aren't filled by other people using the complex exchange, but (almost) only by the simple exchange, and vice versa.

This means that half the interactions with the exchange are done in a way that the player can't even *see* these "market walls". More over, I strongy suspect that while the number of 100CE bundles are split almost exactly evenly between the two interfaces, a large majority of the players use the simple interface and a much smaller set of experienced players put up larger blocks via the trade interface. (The exception to the one-to-one simple vs complex interface is that if you use the complex interface to place a buy order for more crowns than what the lowest sell order is, your order will be filled immediately. And, uh vice versa for sell orders being lower. It is pretty rare for players to do this though.)

It is very hard to create any sort of "illusion of demand" when well over half the players never even see these "market walls".

OK, so we effectively have a one-to-one correspondence between 100CE lots traded via the simple and complex interfaces. If, over the long run, even slightly more 100CE lots are traded via the simple interface than the complex one, eventually the exchange will run dry. The "buy crowns" button will drain all trades listed on the "offers to buy CE" listings and the price of CE will plummet, and vice versa, the "buy CE" amount will shoot way up, creating a large spread between these two values. Now there are two ways of bringing the one-to-one correspondence back into balance: either more people need to use the complex exchange, or arbitrage trades need to exist.

Let's use an example of some pretty typical numbers over the last several weeks. Lets say that the high end of the "buy CE" trade offers is 4850, while the low end of the "sell CE" trade offers is 5000. If an arbitrage trader places sell order for 100CE at 5000 crowns and it sells, they will get 98% of 5000cr = 4900cr. They can then place a buy order for 4850cr, and get their 100CE back with a 50cr profit. Now, 50cr profit isn't much, so it is easier to do this arbitrage in larger chunks, say 100 lots of 100CE each. After one cycle, they will get a profit of 100CE. Not huge, but not bad for not much work.

These arbitrage traders are helping the game and the market by keeping the buy and sell columns in balance. They are doing the "complex" work of dealing with the complicated interface so that people who can't be bothered can just press the "buy crowns" button. Yeah, you can complain that complex interface really isn't that much work, but that is really up to all the individual players to decide and both in spiral knights and the almost identical exchange in puzzle pirates, history has show that well over half the players are too lazy to bother.

The amount of profit that arbitrage traders can make rarely gets very large, since even a single trader can keep the market balanced and a couple of these traders will create a competitive market.

Now, I will agree that there are players who are just placing large buy/sell orders to have fun and they can push around the market some, especially around psychological barriers like the 5k point. If they aren't doing arbitrage, then they are just losing a few crowns and not really changing anything. Even if they had 50million crowns, they wouldn't be able to push around the market for long, there are just way too many players. If the players using the simple interface are pushing the market from 5000cr<->100CE to 4500cr<->100CE, there is nothing that any player can do to stop it. Players might be able to push it from 4893cr to 4914cr, but even that won't hold for long.

I have to agree with the assessment that this thread is really just another complaint about how much CE costs for free players, with a boogeyman being thrown up as a way of deflecting the real reason. I've seen nothing that indicates that any real market manipulation has been going on.

Oh, and the idea that there should be listing fees? Bah, the players who are just screwing around won't care if they lose more via listing fees than they already are via the 2% transaction fee, they are having "fun" trolling the forums. A listing fee will hurt the market by keeping it from adjusting as quickly as it should.

I read the first half of the thread but not all of it, so if this has been brought up already I apologize, but a simple solution might be to have the listing fee refundable as it currently is, but only if you let the auction run its course. If you abort an auction early, you lose your listing fee. If you let it run until it expires or someone buys it, you get the fee back like you do now.

That will change essentially nothing for the honest sellers, but it'll hinder people who want to try to artificially manipulate the market with false listings.

Economy is about manipulation of the stocks in a market, it all depends on the producers and the consumers who are battling on the prices. Without Manipulation an auction house wouldn't even exist, bidding wouldn't either. Bidding is more or less a mind game of chance, to trick the opposition to it's bidding.

If you cannot handle this economy, you should leave the game and perhaps deal with the economy of reality which is much worst than this.

Agree with the OP, if only because it would further stabilize the market.

I honestly don't see how anyone can argue that the ideas presented would hurt people that were not attempting speculation.

I'm talking about the Auction House. This market wall would go away if they simply opened up CE and CR to being Auction house items, wherein bids are placed as Sell/Buy orders.

No, an auction format would not solve the "market wall" thing. Trolls would do the same thing they do now: buy up all available CE below a given value (right now, they buy up all the right-hand side sell offers on the exchange). If you have so much CE and crowns that you don't know what to do with, losing a little on this kind of thing isn't a real problem. Well, you would lose a lot more on the AH than the cr<->CE exchange because the fees are dramatically higher, but in many ways that is a problem rather than a solution.

Off topic a little, but still discusses the CE/CR market; I also believe the Auction house should allow buy orders to be placed as well for item, up to a quantity to be fulfilled.

This I agree with and have been meaning to post a thread to the suggestions forum.