Market Markup on High-Cost Items

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Irylia
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Market Markup on High-Cost Items

Post by Irylia »

It seems like the market markup for resale stock is probably a set percentage based on several defining factors (like quality of components or possibly availability) - and this is totally fine. But on higher price items it seems like that percentage is a wee bit excessive. For example: a handcart sells to the market for 12732 and then the market sells them out to a consumer for 18705 (about 147% price markup). This doesn't consider whatever other bonuses are being applied, and it's just what I noticed for my character so the prices may vary. For comparison: a large straight branch sells to market for 15 riln and sells from market for 20 riln. The turnover there is far lower at 133% (still high, but at least a nice round number and at 20 riln, not going to break the bank). A seller missing out on 5 riln is not nearly as big a deal as spending a lot of time on a project and missing out on nearly 5000 riln.

I understand the convenience factors of not consigning an item and quicker riln gain both go into determining that the market can inflate the price of what is sold there, but this seems like a very large gap in pricing. It affects the seller by missing out on a sizable chunk of riln and the buyer who then has to pay a very steep markup. With consignments now having a fee and not being permanent like they once were, they're not nearly as practical with a very small playerbase. Direct-selling also seems to be the best option to prevent hoarding of items while leveling skill or trying to earn riln.

So my suggestion is that this markup percent (or the original sell-to-market price) might need some tweaking or scaling for higher price items in general (not just handcarts) so that neither party feels cheated. I'm guessing some of this will eventually be negated with the Trading skill as well, though I'm not sure if it will reduce the gap or just increase sell price in general. Alternatively, maybe there can be some kind of allowance that the town can buy soon-to-expire consigned items as long as they sell for maybe... at least 10% below the market-sell rate. Other ideas are welcome. It just hurts to see that large gap on such a high-price, high-skill, cross-skill-component requiring, high workload item.
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Rias
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Re: Market Markup on High-Cost Items

Post by Rias »

The default market pricing setup is to just pay a flat 75% of the total calculated item value to you when you sell, and then the market sells back to the public at 100% the calculated item value. There aren't any variations on those percentages for any different item types or anything (though there may be at some point in the future if a compelling reason ever comes up). I've just checked the numbers and I can sell a handcart for 12,732, and buy it back for 16,977. (Prices will vary a little based on the components used to put the handcart together.)

Handcart prices have changed a bit as the crafting times and difficulties of their various components have been reconsidered and altered. For instance, one recent-ish change is that timbers produce twice as many long planks as they did before, which means each individual plank (of any size) is now worth less, because they're produced at the double the rate they used to. So that might be throwing your calculations and expectations off a little, if you've still got some of the old numbers in your head.

P.S. The Emberlight market does pretty much rip people off, paying very far less than the calculated price and selling back at full price. It's not meant to be an efficient place to sell goods, but rather to accommodate people that really need money right now for some essential thing. You can sell there and get ripped off but have the money to buy some food or firestones or other vital supplies. Of course, people can also sell there and get ripped off if they're just too lazy to make the trip to Shadgard's market. It happens, I get it!
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Rias
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Re: Market Markup on High-Cost Items

Post by Rias »

And I guess I sort of missed the point you were going for, which was the idea that more expensive items should have a different percentage so there's not as large a gap between the buy and sell prices. But I'm not sure I agree with that, so I'm going to need more convincing.
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Irylia
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Re: Market Markup on High-Cost Items

Post by Irylia »

The biggest issue I have is the way consignment is right now it isn't a viable alternative to a direct-market sale. This is mostly due to the time limit implemented and fee to consign. There aren't enough people to buy things within that timeframe unless there's immediate demand for that specific item, and yet because there's also a fee for consigning the item, people are less incentivized to use that system and take the risk. Essentially you take the risk of no one buying the item in the time allotted and also lose riln for even trying to consign it at all. It might take multiple attempts at consignment for anyone to make a purchase, or no one may make one ever - at which point the market rate may end up better than what you lose in trying to consign.

I understand the limit and fee were added to prevent flooding and items just staying around forever and I agree they're good things for that purpose. But it does make me wonder if items are consigned much at all anymore unless they have no actual market sell price and that's literally the only way to post them. If consignment isn't being used - maybe that's a clue there's a problem there and market buy/sell rates could need adjustment to help accommodate - at least until the population increases.

That's why I suggested altering the buy/sell difference, or changing it so that townies can buy soon-to-expire consigned items if sold below market rate. So that people don't feel penalized for selling their wares using the only way that guarantees an actual sale.

Another thing to consider is that items such as handcarts, crossbows, wagons (probably when they're finally in) people will generally buy one of and never consider buying another again - especially now that they take up farmland space. With handcarts - people don't tend to get them stolen because they can be stored safely in multiple places. There's no rent/return to make people need to get new ones all the time. They don't currently break. The only time I could really see consignment working - is if there is a new player/character at just the right time to see someone try to sell one at slightly under market rate. Which leaves us back to market sales.

The thing that prompted this to begin with is wanting to de-clutter. As a higher-level crafter, I had a lot of components lying around. I used those to make handcarts. Those handcarts sold very low compared to the re-sell price and it was super disappointing to think that I missed out on 1-2 more handcarts worth of riln just by selling to the market in an effort to use up things I had lying around from leveling my character. My character is by-no-means broke. But it's still a pretty heavy hit to see that huge price difference after putting in all that time and effort. I guess to me it's not necessarily as much about the riln amount, but the feeling associated with the gap.

The only workaround I can think of is to just not make these types of items at all unless there is someone asking for one directly. Which is fine for some, but can be pretty disappointing and boring if your character's thing is they like to make stuff and now they feel discouraged to because of buy/sell ratios. Remember too that these kinds of projects make use of components from multiple crafts so they give work to other players as well. They take longer to make and require more thought so it's not just someone sitting spamming the same component over and over for all eternity to fill a bucket. Variety is the spice of life after all.

Maybe some things to consider related to this topic:
- Handcart decay/breakage/parts falling off finally implemented so people either need repairs or new ones and consignment becomes more viable.
- Re-selling a used handcart could pay out less than selling a newly made handcart so people who didn't make the cart aren't getting as much benefit as those who did (minus the cost difference of actually buying it).
- Lower the market decay threshold of high-cost items so that consignment is more viable and people can offer competing prices.
- Increase the consignment timeframe of items over a certain price-point.
- Alternatively - allow a player to choose up to 5 items to consign that will not expire - when one sells they can choose another. They can remove an item at any time and choose a different one for their list. This would be in addition to normal consignment, not replacing it. (Allows long-term consignment without hassle and keeps market clutter down with the limited number.)
- Allow NPCs to purchase consigned items that are about to expire as long as they're posted below a % of market re-sell value.
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Rias
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Re: Market Markup on High-Cost Items

Post by Rias »

I feel like it's a pretty universal thing where you sell items to NPCs/vendors/markets/etc. at a significantly lower price than you can buy them (assuming you yourself are not the store owner). I understand it bothers you (hence your posting about it), but I'm still not really seeing it as an issue that needs fixing. I can't remember playing a game where I didn't accidentally buy something I didn't need, and then have to sell it back to the vendor at a loss. Or accidentally sell something, and have to buy it back for significantly more than I sold it. That's just how it works, right? Those store owners or market merchants have to make their money. Sell the thing at a higher price than they paid to get it, and it has to be a decent percentage to make it worth their effort.

Consignment wasn't intended as a way to get around that, or to compete with market pricing on common standard stuff. It's supposed to be an option for players to post things for sale that normally can't be sold to NPCs, or to let players set their own economy for certain instances of high-value items. For instance, let's say the mossy shamblers start dropping "whorled acorns", and you can sell them to the market for 25 riln a pop because the townsfolk think they're interesting enough to buy (ooc-logic-wise: to give a little loot potential to those mobs). But then some PC druids realize they can use these acorns as reagents for certain spells, and now these acorns are in high demand from a specific group, and now the other players wise up and start consigning them for 100 riln instead, knowing there are druids out there willing to buy them up at higher than the standard market price. Or there's an influx of fletchers looking for feathers, so people start consigning the feathers which normally don't have any market sell value. Or an Uberium Pickaxe is found by someone who doesn't do mining, and it's worth so much that no NPCs at the market have the money to buy it, so it's put up for consignment instead in hopes that one of the rare wealthy individuals will buy it (in other words, a way to have players determine their own pricing for higher-level items). Those are the kinds of situations consignment is for, rather than trying to narrow the market buy/sell gap and scrape a little more riln out of standard transactions.

I do like the idea of having a limited few long-term consignments at once per character. That would be great for the Uberium Pickaxe example above, or your handcarts, and other big single purchases or rarely-occuring items.

Durability loss on handcarts, crossbows, clothing, etc. has been stated a few times in the past to be in the plans, allowing crafters to have additional use in repairing items instead of only being able to replace. Going toward that most recently is the change yesterday making bowstrings eventually break. Adding stuff like that is ongoing.
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