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Originally Posted by Bad_Dog
Oh how silly, a logic where you cap a price on something and it makes it more expensive. What planet does that happen on?
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I'll stick with this part of the post, because the rest isn't worth my time nor my energy. I doubt this is, either, but at least I can
try to make you understand basic economics, though if my experience in the market forum is any indication, those who are ignorant often choose to remain so despite being made aware of their ignorance.
For an example of what price caps can do, check out
this section of the Wikipedia article on price caps. Notice the words "hoarding" and "shortage" appear a few times. Let's say a 100 inf price cap was suddenly added to every item in the game. Great, you can now buy your LotG for 100 inf! Well, theoretically you could, but suddenly every single player in the game would be in line for one too, and you'd be competing with not hundreds but thousands or tens of thousands of bidders wanting the same item. Maybe if you're lucky you'd get one of the ones that goes to the market. If you're not, however, you might find someone willing to sell you one off-market... for 100 million, maybe 200 million, and they'll get away with charging that because most people won't want to wait in line. In other words, if sellers can't get what they think is a fair price for their item, they just won't put it on the market, leading to a supply shortage, which in combination with the greatly increased demand actually drives the actual value
higher. You may not be able to
bid more than 100 inf on the market, but you could probably find one off-market in short order, provided you were willing to pay.
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I do understand game economics, you are the one that's being naive. Currently, there is "very little" to "none at all" supply of PvP IOs at the market, so I can't possibly see how supply gets any worse. But since you are confused, I'll explain how changes would work in reality for you.
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Correction - there is "very little" to "none at all" supply of
a few PvP IOs on the market, specifically two or three of the more-desirable procs. Most are at least adequately supplied. Now imagine if
every PvP IO was like that, even the "crappy" ones. That's the sort of situation you'd be looking at. Apparently I'm not the one that's confused.
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If they raise the cap to $3 bil inf then that +3% PvP IO is going to sell for more than $2 bil. That $2 bil IO got MORE expensive. That's a fact. I'll predict if they raise the cap to $10 bil you will find the selling price of something is going to be $10 bil. The only ways to fight this spiral of greed is either drastically increase the drops, drastically lower the cap, or to a degree do both.
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Newsflash: the +3% PvP IO
already sells for more than 2 billion. Notice how there are hundreds of bids on the market and only a sale being made every day or two - this is because to most buyers the actual value of the item exceeds 2 billion inf, so they're forced to look for sellers off-market. The 2 billion acts as a market-enforced price cap on this item, which is lower than the actual value, so buyers who want one quickly and don't want to gamble with whether their bid might fill in the next four months are forced to look elsewhere. This would happen with every item selling for more than "X" inf if the amount you could bid were suddenly reduced to "X" inf, and you think that price caps will
help people!? Roffles. If they magically raised the "price cap" (in this case the amount of inf a character can hold) to 10 billion inf (which is impossible without a substantial rewrite of how the game holds inf, because 2 billion is the closest convenient large number to the limit of a signed 32-bit integer), there would be a steady supply on the market, and they would sell for between 3 and 5 billion, because that's what they routinely sell for off-market.
I'm not sure what this "spiral of greed" you're talking about is, as a seller can't get any more for their item than the buyer is willing to pay. It's not
my fault I list an item for 1 inf and it immediately sells for 10 million. Blame the impatient buyer who wants the item right away and just bids 10 million instead of waiting a few hours for a lower bid to fill. I could list a Nevermelting Ice on the market for 2 billion and be guaranteed it would never sell because 2 billion far exceeds the actual value of that item. Are you getting this yet?
Lowering the inf cap (or bid cap) is not a solution, it is yet another contributor to the "problem" of high prices (completely ignoring that you're looking at this from the perspective of a buyer only, forgetting that someone can make the same amount of inf by
selling such a drop) brought on by the rampant inflation following I14 and the hollowing-out of lower-level supply brought on my merits in I13. Increasing the drop rate or providing meaningful inf sinks (the alignment merit conversion, which costs 20 million inf, is one such inf sink, but more are needed) is how prices will come down, not price caps.
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If they lower the cap to, (just picking a drastic arbitrary number), let's say $100 mil then the selling price of that IO is going to be $100 mil. Not at first. Price caps do not affect the price of what players will attempt to get out of other players, it also will not stop those people who will hoard them for a while. In reality, players don't sit on something that has market value forever. Those not hoarding are selling theirs on the market for $100 mil. Eventually there will be no other outlets for the hoarders but the market and then they too will accept the selling price is no more than $100 mil. The prices got out of hand because they were allowed to. That is a fact.
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If they lower the cap to 100 million inf, the selling price of that IO
on the market will indeed be 100 million inf. I'm not arguing that. I
am saying that sellers who know the item is worth more than 100 million inf won't even bother to list their item on the market, and they won't have to because there will be people willing to pay more for it to not wait in a bidding line. The +3% defense PvP IO is the only in-game example of how a price cap causes supply shortages, hoarding, and a
real black market, yet you're trying to use it as an example of why there should be
lower price caps on
everything? Ludicrous, ignorant, and incredibly uninformed.
People who need a quick buck or just don't know you can trade items off-market may list their items on the market and be happy with that 100 million, but when I can get 2 billion off the market I'm going to hold onto that item, advertise I have it, and within a few hours I'll have several people competing for that item, and I'll get the actual value instead of an arbitrarily low limit someone thought would be appropriate.
By all means, continue pushing for price caps. I'll just laugh when it makes the already-rich people obscenely rich while the people who Just Don't Get It continue to complain loudly.
...Oh, and before you go into a rant about "THIS IS JUST YOUR OPINION OH MY GOD I'M SO MAD RIGHT NOW BECAUSE YOU AREN'T LISTENING TO ME" just remember that 1) the above information is factual, based on real-world evidence, and is the core of the supply and demand mechanics taught as part of every basic economics class from middle school through college, unlike the drivel I was responding to; and 2) getting mad on the internet is silly.
