Market Offer Creation Limit - Stop market manipulation and control.

[Zukran]

Suggestion

Can we implement a limit on how many market offers you can create in a day? Ideally that number would be 10-15. Note this does not limit how many market offers you can fill.

Why

Currently there a select few individuals that are constantly 1 upping or 1 downing any offer on the market typically within minutes of you placing an offer. This makes it really frustrating when trying to buy or sell resources as you have to constantly update your price to beat those few individuals that spend a significant amount of time manipulating and controlling the market. By setting a offer creation limit on how many offers you can create in a day, you limit this behavior making those individuals choose and stick with their price rather than constantly updating their offers 16 hours a day(they gotta sleep sometime). 

This would be a targeted approach to end the manipulation and control of the markets which would likely not affect 99.9% of the players. However it would allow those 99.9% of the players to participate in the markets and have a better chance at buying or selling goods. 

 

Thoughts?

[BelgiumFury]

47 minutes ago, Zukran said:

Currently there a select few individuals that are constantly 1 upping or 1 downing any offer on the market typically within minutes of you placing an offer. This makes it really frustrating when trying to buy or sell resources as you have to constantly update your price to beat those few individuals that spend a significant amount of time manipulating and controlling the market. By setting a offer creation limit on how many offers you can create in a day, you limit this behavior making those individuals choose and stick with their price rather than constantly updating their offers 16 hours a day(they gotta sleep sometime). 

I do not think this is an issue that needs fixing; this isnt market manipulation but rewarding people for putting in time in a core game mechanic.
People listed examples earlier that were actually issues (for example; people that cant fufill the market orders they have). 

But this; i would go as far to call it intended game design. 
If your price is right these one up one down people will not matter, I promise.

[Zukran]

32 minutes ago, BelgiumFury said:

I do not think this is an issue that needs fixing; this isnt market manipulation but rewarding people for putting in time in a core game mechanic.
People listed examples earlier that were actually issues (for example; people that cant fufill the market orders they have). But this; i would go as far to call it intended game design. 

While it is a reward for putting time in the game. It has a direct negative impact on the rest of the players in the game. It's gotten to the point where the majority of the resources each day filter into/out of 1 or 2 nations.  I am pretty sure the developers did not intend for a few nations to control the marketplace, it was just a biproduct of lack of restrictions. 

 

Quote

If your price is right these one up one down people will not matter, I promise.

If the price is "right" the few nations will buy up your resources and post them at the rate you wanted to price it at.

Edited March 30, 2022 by Zukran

[Jacob Knox]

So, let me make sure I'm getting this straight... TKR, Grumpy, and Guardian arguably dominate a large portion of the market (don't believe me, just go look at who currently holds the lowest sell offers for food and most manufactured rss and the highest buy offers for most rss)... and you're saying that there are players who manipulate the market by consistently undercutting and whatnot. In other words, I just want to make sure that you're actually saying your allies manipulate the market and need to be stopped by limiting the number of offers they can post per day. That is what you're saying, right?

[Kan0601]

I think the better idea is you can only post 1 market offer at a time for each resources since if you look at the current market people can have 10 offers for food and its just keeps cutting the price down. This will still reward those who are active on the market and checks constantly just doesnt allow people to put up 10+ offers to undercut everyone. 

[Zukran]

26 minutes ago, Jacob Knox said:

So, let me make sure I'm getting this straight... TKR, Grumpy, and Guardian arguably dominate a large portion of the market (don't believe me, just go look at who currently holds the lowest sell offers for food and most manufactured rss and the highest buy offers for most rss)... and you're saying that there are players who manipulate the market by consistently undercutting and whatnot. In other words, I just want to make sure that you're actually saying your allies manipulate the market and need to be stopped by limiting the number of offers they can post per day. That is what you're saying, right?

It doesn't really matter who is doing it, just that it is being "dominated" by 2-3 individuals. The fact that its happening and you hereby recognize it is proof that its an issue. I can't imagine the game devs thought, lets have a free open market where a couple people will control the entire market and the rest of the players just have to deal with it. 

Also with that same thought process, everyone not in TKR, Grumpy or Guardian should therefore be angry that Hollywood is dominating, controlling, manipulating the markets and want this change enacted.

[BelgiumFury]

13 minutes ago, Zukran said:

Also with that same thought process, everyone not in TKR, Grumpy or Guardian should therefore be angry that Hollywood is dominating, controlling, manipulating the markets and want this change enacted.

if this is actually true; i have huge respect for TKR Grump and Guardian.
And to everyone who is not controlling the market while they are: massive skill issue.

edit: 

 

Edited March 30, 2022 by BelgiumFury

[Xi Jinping]

Market manipulation is fun. 

Not to mention, as a member of Guardian you are complaining about what your own sphere has the ability to do the most. Lot of rich folk in GG. 

[Zukran]

1 hour ago, BelgiumFury said:

if this is actually true; i have huge respect for TKR Grump and Guardian.
And to everyone who is not controlling the market while they are: massive skill issue.

edit: 

 

I wouldn't really call it a skill... It's really easy to do, you just have to dedicate an obscene amount of time(12 hours+ a day) to compete with the current players. 

 

7 minutes ago, Xi Jinping said:

Market manipulation is fun. 

Not to mention, as a member of Guardian you are complaining about what your own sphere has the ability to do the most. Lot of rich folk in GG. 

As I said before, it again doesn't matter who is doing it, just that it is being done. I don't understand why you guys keep bringing up spheres and alliances, except as purely a deflection of the issue at hand. You're also assuming that the specific individuals share profit with the rest of the bloc, which they do not. Those few individuals are "rich". The rest are long time whales.

 

[BelgiumFury]

5 minutes ago, Zukran said:

I wouldn't really call it a skill... It's really easy to do, you just have to dedicate an obscene amount of time(12 hours+ a day) to compete with the current players. 

 

I do not spend 12 hours (or even one hour) on the market in this game and i seemingly do not have much issues in the current market; so i really am not sure what you are talking about.
95% of the time I spend in this game is in our internal affairs departement, and i've been exceedingly busy in real life and yet I am completly fine with how it goes now..

[Zukran]

13 minutes ago, BelgiumFury said:

I do not spend 12 hours (or even one hour) on the market in this game and i seemingly do not have much issues in the current market; so i really am not sure what you are talking about.
95% of the time I spend in this game is in our internal affairs departement, and i've been exceedingly busy in real life and yet I am completly fine with how it goes now..

And thats fine, however things could always be better which is what I'm pushing for.

[BelgiumFury]

3 minutes ago, Zukran said:

And thats fine, however things could always be better which is what I'm pushing for.

the thing is i dont think they could be better; rewarding people for actively engaging with a core mechanic is good.

[Lossi]

Okay I'll address the root suggestion in a moment, but first.  Really?  The biggest criticism you nitwits could come up with is that his allies are the ones doing it?  What would have been your criticism if he was from t$ or TFP?  Entirely irrelevant to the suggestion, and each of you needs a mod to come in and educate you on derailing.

 

As for the root suggestion, yeah I gotta agree with belgium on this, creating a limit on number of trades would be counter intuitive to rewarding activity.  Especially during peace time, the only point to logging in is grabbing grants, selling / buying resources, and seeing what the latest drama in the world is, or participating if you're in gov.  If you have other ideas for how to fix the issue, by all means, the sensible people are probably willing to discuss them with you.

[zigbigadorlou]

4 hours ago, Zukran said:

Also with that same thought process, everyone not in TKR, Grumpy or Guardian should therefore be angry that Hollywood is dominating, controlling, manipulating the markets and want this change enacted.

Leaders largely ignore the economic side and seemingly don't care about this issue. Its something I've brought up countless times, and its almost always responded to with a "meh, let them do what they want" attitude. I've been wanting to have market wars for ages. Unfortunately, the ones that actually care the most don't want that because they'd lose literal billions if people took notice. Also, you might as well say who specifically is market manipulating and just embargo them. I've thought about putting up a comprehensive list on who ruins the market just so we can mass embargo them, but no one seemed to care enough. 

Anyways, just give your stuff to kinns to sell. That's the major one in Guardian. 

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=263794

Unless things changed, Grumpy just has dominance because of how much is produced. 

[Emperor Adam]

Alternatively: git gud.

 

But yeah, I genuinely don't see this as a problem. Trading isn't necessarily a difficult thing to get into, it's just time consuming and you have to have a decent amount of money to begin with. 150m is honestly plenty to start manipulating most of your own markets.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Emperor Adam

[Xi Jinping]

2 hours ago, Zukran said:

I wouldn't really call it a skill... It's really easy to do, you just have to dedicate an obscene amount of time(12 hours+ a day) to compete with the current players. 

 

As I said before, it again doesn't matter who is doing it, just that it is being done. I don't understand why you guys keep bringing up spheres and alliances, except as purely a deflection of the issue at hand. You're also assuming that the specific individuals share profit with the rest of the bloc, which they do not. Those few individuals are "rich". The rest are long time whales.

 

Hey Hey Hey. I didn't only bring up other spheres and alliances. I also said market manipulation is fun. So I disagree on principle and on hypocrisy. 

19 minutes ago, zigbigadorlou said:

Leaders largely ignore the economic side and seemingly don't care about this issue. Its something I've brought up countless times, and its almost always responded to with a "meh, let them do what they want" attitude. I've been wanting to have market wars for ages. Unfortunately, the ones that actually care the most don't want that because they'd lose literal billions if people took notice. Also, you might as well say who specifically is market manipulating and just embargo them. I've thought about putting up a comprehensive list on who ruins the market just so we can mass embargo them, but no one seemed to care enough. 

Anyways, just give your stuff to kinns to sell. That's the major one in Guardian. 

https://politicsandwar.com/nation/id=263794

Unless things changed, Grumpy just has dominance because of how much is produced. 

See now this is a good idea. A mechanic to fix this "issue" already exists. If you don't want the same 3 people buying your stuff as you say, organize your alliance embargoing them and try and get other people involved and you might succeed. 

[Jacob Knox]

1 hour ago, Lossi said:

The biggest criticism you nitwits could come up with is that his allies are the ones doing it?

I mean... I do disagree with the suggestion, personally, for the reasons others have stated in this thread. But I wasn't trying to counter his suggestion with "well your allies are doing it." Rather, I was making sure he was aware that such a change would have the biggest impact on his allies. And don't get me wrong, I commend him for being willing to say that he believes it is wrong regardless of who is doing it (his allies included).

1 hour ago, Lossi said:

each of you needs a mod to come in and educate you on derailing.

Also, how is it derailing, per se, if we are still staying on topic (market manipulation)? Just because you think something is a flimsy response/counter to a point doesn't automatically make it derailing.

[Johnson Boris]

4 hours ago, Kan0601 said:

I think the better idea is you can only post 1 market offer at a time for each resources since if you look at the current market people can have 10 offers for food and its just keeps cutting the price down. This will still reward those who are active on the market and checks constantly just doesnt allow people to put up 10+ offers to undercut everyone. 

Nah, putting up multiple offers makes sense for sellers and buyers because it is more difficult for the market to be bought/sold up if there are more offers up. It could be kind of a problem if the market was even more susceptible to be 100% sold or bought up since it would make prices more unstable.

6 hours ago, Zukran said:

Can we implement a limit on how many market offers you can create in a day? Ideally that number would be 10-15. Note this does not limit how many market offers you can fill.

I don't see how this would ever be an actual problem, if you want to sell or buy stuff you can do it instantly without the need of posting an offer. The sole purpose of posting an offer in the global market is to sell/buy stuff for more/less. If you don't want to be bothered fighting with other people, I think it is totally understandable (and the healthiest choice) to not post and offer and just insta-buy or insta-sell.

 

Besides, it is beneficial for the market for traders to be able to post more offers since the prices will more closely mirror the current state of demand and supply for a particular resource at a particular price. If people weren't able to show their interest publicly, then it would be even harder for prices to remain stable.

 

A good example of when being able to post multiple offers help happened recently. The sell offers for iron were recently completely bought, meaning that there were no offers with a price below hundreds of thousands. Thanks to Hoffman and I as well as other traders it took only minutes for the price of iron to go back to a reasonable amount. I wouldn't have indirectly helped reduce the price of iron that someone increased artificially if there was no way I was gonna make a profit. Also, if Hoffman and I would have filled up that maximum of offers, there would have been close to no one bothering to post bids and the price would have artificially stayed up for longer. Making people unable to bid for a rss artificially restricts the amount of demand there can be for a resource at a certain price.

[Johnson Boris]

35 minutes ago, zigbigadorlou said:

Also, you might as well say who specifically is market manipulating and just embargo them. I've thought about putting up a comprehensive list on who ruins the market just so we can mass embargo them, but no one seemed to care enough.

Posting an offer to sell stuff at a lower price than someone else because it is beneficial to you for whatever reason is not market manipulation. You are not manipulating anything. You are just showing your desire to sell a rss for a lower price than another individual.

[Wendell]

Only people on the market: Guardian, The Knights Radiant and Grumpy. All you are trying to do in this weak and obvious attempt is to monopolize more while feigning fairness...

People have been undercutting and trying to get their stuff sold fast for YEARS. It shouldn't change because one sphere now controls the market. It's just selfish to try to change the game mechanics for only three people (literally). Just sad... 

Edited March 31, 2022 by Darth Tryptophan

[Sweeeeet Ronny D]

For the record, Grumpy does not market manipulate, if anything we try to take advantage of guys that do try it.  You see us selling food all the time because, we make a ton of food.  Its winter in my nation and in the middle of a war, and I am still making 75k food a day, that stuff ain't going to sell itself.  If anything we help keep prices down because we generally never do discounted bulk sales outside the market.

As far as I am concerned, meh, let them do what they want.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Sweeeeet Ronny D

[Ramona]

I would say you could limit the amount of trades someone is allowed at once (for example, maybe like 10 total). Or even just allowing only one trade in a certain rss buy and sell market, I would say that this would also help people reposting their trade offers if their stuff doesn't get sold. 

But idk, ig no life traders are annoying? Idk, just skrt the whole issue and just sell to buyers if you're getting mad tbh, this seems like a minor issue. 

[Steven Hoffmann]

12 hours ago, Zukran said:

By setting a offer creation limit on how many offers you can create in a day, you limit this behavior making those individuals choose and stick with their price rather than constantly updating their offers 16 hours a day(they gotta sleep sometime). 

Sorry, I constantly update my offers 18 hours a day 😛

On a serious note, limiting the number of offers you can create in a day is definitely not the way to go. Trading is one of the few ways that players can generate active income alongside raiding and baseball. So adding a cap on the number of offers you can place will highly discourage players from putting in the hours. This will inevitably cause even fewer people to engage in a game where most already heavily rely on passive income. Trading is also one of the few ways for newer players like me to level the playing field in terms of total income when the overall player base is so established.

While facing an active trader that constantly overbids or undercuts is frustrating, and I admit I am an annoying one at that, it is not like you cannot buy and sell your resources in the market. Like Ramona has mentioned, you can directly buy or sell to existing offers on the market if you cannot bother to compete in the market yourself. Alternatively, nothing is stopping you from finding a trader and making a deal with them. I myself have helped many people buy and offload resources in the market in the past.

Lastly, traders do serve an essential role in the game. Not only do they provide liquidity in the market, but the competition between traders themselves (the constant overbidding and undercutting) is also beneficial for players who don't want to engage in the market. Due to the tightened margins, people can buy or sell to existing orders at much better prices than otherwise. Plus the existence of active traders limits mispricing in the market, as ludicrously priced orders cannot survive on the market for long in this case.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Steven Hoffmann

[Zukran]

17 hours ago, Johnson Boris said:

Nah, putting up multiple offers makes sense for sellers and buyers because it is more difficult for the market to be bought/sold up if there are more offers up. It could be kind of a problem if the market was even more susceptible to be 100% sold or bought up since it would make prices more unstable.

I don't see how this would ever be an actual problem, if you want to sell or buy stuff you can do it instantly without the need of posting an offer. The sole purpose of posting an offer in the global market is to sell/buy stuff for more/less. If you don't want to be bothered fighting with other people, I think it is totally understandable (and the healthiest choice) to not post and offer and just insta-buy or insta-sell.

In that case you will never get the most for your money/resources. Which results in the entire game getting shorted on money because those individuals are making it impossible for you to buy/sell at the true market rate. It doesn't bother me that I get overbid or undercut by non marketers. That's fine, but the few individuals make it nearly impossible unless you post at a severe discount or overbid and they are always on watching and undercutting or overbidding. 

 

18 hours ago, Johnson Boris said:

A good example of when being able to post multiple offers help happened recently. The sell offers for iron were recently completely bought, meaning that there were no offers with a price below hundreds of thousands. Thanks to Hoffman and I as well as other traders it took only minutes for the price of iron to go back to a reasonable amount. I wouldn't have indirectly helped reduce the price of iron that someone increased artificially if there was no way I was gonna make a profit. Also, if Hoffman and I would have filled up that maximum of offers, there would have been close to no one bothering to post bids and the price would have artificially stayed up for longer. Making people unable to bid for a rss artificially restricts the amount of demand there can be for a resource at a certain price.

But where did your iron come from? You took the iron off the market with artificial demand which in return reduced supply resulted in a squeeze due to a lack of iron in the markets. If you didn't purchase that iron it would still be with the original producers and they likely would have posted it when the prices get high in attempt to take advantage of the high price or it would probably have been posted in a sell offer that would have made it more difficult to artificially inflate the price of iron. Its naive to think iron producers wouldn't try to take advantage of the artificially high prices and that only the marketers could bring it down to a reasonable price.

By creating "stability" the marketers are actually manipulating the free market by creating artificial demand and supply. They aren't producing anything, they aren't utilizing the resources and they are ultimately making it impossible for the rest of the game to get a true markets price for their resources which in return makes it difficult to utilize the built in mechanic to post offers to sell or buy resources. 

 

17 hours ago, Darth Tryptophan said:

Only people on the market: Guardian, The Knights Radiant and Grumpy. All you are trying to do in this weak and obvious attempt is to monopolize more while feigning fairness...

People have been undercutting and trying to get their stuff sold fast for YEARS. It shouldn't change because one sphere now controls the market. It's just selfish to try to change the game mechanics for only three people (literally). Just sad... 

I am no one important related to my sphere. So to say this is somehow our sphere pushing for "fairness" while we try to monopolize more is incorrect and is pretty funny you are that scared of Hollywood that you have such outlandish theories as you try to sway others opinions against us. Again I don't care about undercutting by the average joe. Its that certain individuals are utilizing the functionality of the markets to make it impossible to get a true markets value for your resources. Which in my mind is abuse of the system and is why we are here today. I don't really see why alliances and blocs keep getting brought up no matter how many times I address it. They have no relevance here.

 

13 hours ago, Steven Hoffmann said:

Sorry, I constantly update my offers 18 hours a day 😛

 Hahaha, you do you my man. The fact that you spend that much time on it is remarkable, but I don't think the markets were ever intended to be monitored by a single nation and overbid/undercut 18 hours a day.

13 hours ago, Steven Hoffmann said:

On a serious note, limiting the number of offers you can create in a day is definitely not the way to go. Trading is one of the few ways that players can generate active income alongside raiding and baseball. So adding a cap on the number of offers you can place will highly discourage players from putting in the hours. This will inevitably cause even fewer people to engage in a game where most already heavily rely on passive income. Trading is also one of the few ways for newer players like me to level the playing field in terms of total income when the overall player base is so established.

While facing an active trader that constantly overbids or undercuts is frustrating, and I admit I am an annoying one at that, it is not like you cannot buy and sell your resources in the market. Like Ramona has mentioned, you can directly buy or sell to existing offers on the market if you cannot bother to compete in the market yourself. Alternatively, nothing is stopping you from finding a trader and making a deal with them. I myself have helped many people buy and offload resources in the market in the past.

Lastly, traders do serve an essential role in the game. Not only do they provide liquidity in the market, but the competition between traders themselves (the constant overbidding and undercutting) is also beneficial for players who don't want to engage in the market. Due to the tightened margins, people can buy or sell to existing orders at much better prices than otherwise. Plus the existence of active traders limits mispricing in the market, as ludicrously priced orders cannot survive on the market for long in this case.

The game its self was designed to be passive and long term. That's just how it was designed, that's why it takes a month to save up resources and to buy a city. I'm not saying get rid of trading, you should still be able to participate in daily market trades. However I'm almost certain there are probably less than 10 people in the entire game that post more than 10-15 offers a day. So in reality this would not affect 99% of the game aside from those people having more of a chance to buy/sell goods at a true markets rate. As I mentioned above traders create artificial demand and supply, disrupt the free markets and are not essential by any means. If traders were essential it would be an ingame mechanic with a NPC. I am 100% sure if the traders stopped for a week things would be just fine if not better for the rest of the players in the game and there would be a true free market.

Quite simply I'm pretty sure the game developers didn't intend for the markets to be monitored by a couple nations who undercut and overbid every other nation at all times of the day. That is what this specific suggestion is trying resolve and realistically shouldn't take more than a couple hours to implement.

 

~Z

[Ketya]

Here is an odd angle. 
 

I am missing those times where market used to fluctuate a bunch before/during/after the wars. Now, with the 2-3 players that are continually putting lots of buy and sell orders, the market doesn’t really fluctuate at all - making the game more boring. 
 

I like the idea of limiting # of orders just so that market can fluctuate more wildly. 
 

limiting number of order really impact just those 2-3 players.