traders and resellers a bad thing? let me know

[CBB]

Hi there, my name is CBB (Core blood brother) and been playing PE now for a year or so.
After 8 months of having fun hunting i ended up depositing 100 -200 dollars a month and noticed i couldnt keep up with the amount of hunting i liked to upkeep. ( 2 -3 hours a day non stop).

This is no complaining cause by my knowledge everybody who deposits frequently does this knowingly, i never seen someone deposting with a gun too his head. Every ped i spend was of free choice and i loved every minute and excitment of it. ( my word to all whiners: dont deposit, dont hunt,stop whining, if u buy a ticket to a rollercoaster ride dont be surprised if ride is over aftehr short while).

So i had a litlle chat with myself, what do i like about PE?; ofcourse, hunting and mining, but i found there was more too it. I have a nice soc (V.I.P. Assasins) with great frends from over the globe with whom i have loads of fun ( my wife complains i talk more to them then with her..).
but most of all i like the PE experience, being online, seeing the game develop, experience events like the spacestation (what a blast) and remenessing with online players what that will do for the game (like using the auctioneer as storage and transfering things from spacestation too entropia)

End conclusion was i love every aspect of PE and wanted to stay part of it. So i decided to become a trader/reseller , which one soudns better i dont know.

Now 2 months later i made some cash and can pick up hunting and mining ocasionally and still exspand my litlle bussiness. And more important i noticed i like it.

But resellers and traders get a lot of heat, people yell, curse and acuse traders of al sort of things that go wrong in PE. i like to start a discussion about that and , from my point of view, maybe point some things out;

1. if i buy animal hides at 160% and molisk at 550% that is a service. People with large enough amount will know their own way to auction, or decide for themselves if they want quick cash. And for players with small amounts (most often i buy 4 - 8 molisk tooth from a player) the 1 ped auction fee makes their position hard. I spend time makign the deals, putting them togetehr, and i take the risk of auction. ( i bought 1k lytarian for 130 % over period of time, now prices are liek 110 % max..)
2. like it or not traders and resellers keep prices relaitvely in balance, u know what to exspect and what to ask.
3. A trader is not a scammer, at least not necesseraly. Every trader who wants to be around for long while will have to think about his reputation and its good for his bussiness to have a filled FL with traders, miners, crafters to quickly suply any need for their customers. Traders can help u find stuff or connect u to people
4. If u are not sure of a trader, alt tab to a PE fan site and check prices there, or run to another one and ask second opinion.

its not the serieus trader u gotta be scared of, its the scammer, or the mutiple avatar that adds disciples and never helps them, or the people with bigger amounts of cash then your average trader,who manipulate certain corners of the auction, deciding when prices drop or rise. (not even a conspiracy theory, but fact)

But most of all ,as goes with depositing, u are responsible for your own PE experience and the things u do or decide not to do.

my in game name is also CBB, u can find me in PA or twin often , feel free to drop by for some more discussion on the topic.

[Jove]

I am sorry but I disagree about traders keeping things in Balance. Traders make PE cost more for me. I see them trying to domainate the market. They buy all of one type of gun and then up the price. They have 5+ nemesis thighs in storage jsut to keep them at 300 ped each.

Then it gets worse. There are resellers who use multiple avatars to manipulate the prices in auction either by offering 15 items per avatar or using the avatars to have multiple items at same price and make people belive that the item is that price. And worst are the morons who use 2 computers jsut to bid thier items up. I watch them win that item and then relist it.

I can uderstand traders who go and buy loads of small amounts to sell in bulk. But its when tehy abuse the system and make PE cost more for me to play that I get annoyed.

I watched someone stand in Twin Peaks and claim that imp faps sell for 60k peds when that same week I saw 2 sell for 41k and 45k. But the sellers didnt want to sell it to a reseller beacse so many dislike what tehy do.

I admit: I grief resellers. I walk into PA and first thing I do is moan of the reseller lag I pk them when I see them in pvp. They spend all day trading and not contributing to the loot pool. They pull money away from it. Sure its their choice to trade and I can do nothing about it, buts its also my choice to dislike them. I have said in other posts that MA needs to manage the market manipulation. Supply and demand is fine but when they own 5 of the item its a monopoly and I wont pay that to play. But others will and keep reseller manipluation alive. There is a sucker born every minute… isnt that what used car salesmen say?

[Nostrop]

Traders and resellers are worst things in PE. Period!

[system]

I don’t like traders myself. If molisks teeth are bought at 550%, then the molisk buttons will be expansive, so the tailoring skilling will be expansive so the clothing will be expansive. much more than “natural”.

Also the traders don’t care to lower their profits. Currently mk2 is tt+80. That is absurde. Kobold armor. I bought at tt+60. A little more peds and i could have bought vigi.

traders buy sweat at 2.0 in fort argus, nexus at 1.3 and them sell ME at 400%.

i understand high prices for kinda unique items, like the revival chips and so on, but forcing the market on medium armors and guns is bad.

traders are good also. i prefer to sell quickly my loot from hunting and mining so i can get back to field. that is why i choosed several traders i consider reasonable and sell to them.

so, as a part of economy, traders and resellers are good. them only have to keep hunger for profits at a reasonable stage.

[CBB]

agreed

hehe, u excatly say where it goes wrong.
Money makes money :wise:

during a argo raid on PA few weeks back a bunch of argo s made it past the tower and it was trader carnage, glad i am a trader with big gun and always ammo in my pocket.

But traders that lag pa arent the onces manipulating the market. People who use thousands of peds on auction don t waste time to gatehr hides, molisk and paints. they manipulate on another level.

Wanna see? look at the enmatter market; u ll notice some pages with 2- 3 lines of same items, page aftehr page, excalty same amount and prices, from different avatars (funny that the names of those avatars have some simularities in name, look carefully). thats manipulation, not the guy sellign a rep axe, or 1 or 2 items or buys litlel amounts.

but is also the players themselves. If i see a item pass me by with a buy out thats below marketvalue, ofcourse i will buy it and put it back ust a litlle below that marketvalue, so it will sell quickly and i make a ped.
PE should list sale averages for items on auction ,so u decide on a fair basis what price u put it up. but u can also check that on auction sites.

someone who holds all items to keep price high isnt a trader, its a manipulator. But its a thin boudnary,; for example; DNA was very low last days, so i thought i buy a few, might be ncie for future (dontknwo if thats bad) but then i noticed someone buying all left over DNA A and posting them back around 100 or so. I quickly entered my 5 dna A (they are stacked lol, i lost 1 ocne that way) in 1 bunch for 250 opening and 400 ped buy out or so i think.

PE has a economy with all its ups and downs, dont knwo if thats good or bad, i liek to thank the player above this post for his honest comments

[CBB]

ok answers come quickly , actif forum

i agree, its all about reasonable, its the excess that hurts, oh and the price on molisk isnt forced by traders, that item and animal hide are to come by easy and abundant, the price is set by demand , which rises atm with noobs, new clothes and stuff.

all i like is to balance the discussion that all traders and sellers are the same. A noob buying a jester for tt +30 pec from a seller, is a cheap offer. with auction fee that woudl have been 1.30 ped, same goes for low end armors for new players.
Its the manipulatiev part thats bad, cause the game is too small atm. When u have a huge amount of players and items u cant control the market anymore. The spacestation will shine intrestign lights on that. me personally will never ever extract money from PE. Trading is a way of life and way to make it in PE.

It liek ancient time, man hunted for centuries, nothing happend, then trade and commerce came and we got the internet

[system]

also the rare ores. i saw several ores put in auction by a known skilled miner, ok.

BUT. other ores, all rare, by same avatar? please! and u see guys in PA buying kanerium at 150%, next thingie, u see kanerium, by same person all auctions, at 300% in auction.

some ores are heavily manipulated, them just disappeareas instantly. that is why I try to sell to crafters directly. rugaritz as example. is bought at 1500% on streets, but in auction is 3000%. and is put by one person, which i never heard of as a miner. and is hard for me to believe one person would find all that ruga, is damn rare. so if i ever find ruga or terrudite, be sure i will first check auktuma or starman or other crafter who uses them.

[sav]

Gotta agree with CBB in some part on this. Its a huge difference between traders and manipulaters. You gotta ask yourself this. Do you wanna stand around twins for 15 hours just to get 1k animal hides for say 140%? Or do you wanna buy em of a reseller in 3 mins for 160%? He makes a small profit you save some time. He is providing a service to some part… thats my 2 pecs

[HunterZ]

totaly agree with Jove and Nostrop.

traders in general isnt bad, but i dont saw a lot of traders in PE… most of them are resellers, ok i dont have any problem with pplz who buying minerals, materials 5% under market value and then sell them away in big pack and take these 5-10%. its nice work. but other 95% are pplz who camping auction, scaming pplz who know less about game and doing multiple avatar auction speculations. and when some hunter/miner/crafter want to buy something for his own usage he are forced to fight with multiple resselers which ones actualy dont want this item and never gonna use it.
it sukz. why?

let me explain - because money earned by ressellers are out from ANY pool - if these resellers are +/- succesfull they slower or faster acumulating peds, its mean - taking PEDS away from looting pools, which one mean - less money in them, less money mean - crapy loots, crapy loot - more depositing for most pplz. for MA - they doing withdraws… and if MA earns from decay - ressellers are bad for them too no decay. scamed pplz - lost clients for MA.
its a reason why i think MA must control this multiple avatar manipulations and speculations in auction and penaltize/invetigate any scam atempts, and IP tracking/MAC adress must be included in this… i bet many resellers/scamers use multiple avatars, but i am pretty sure they use them from same computers and i am prety sure - most of them are fake avatars, not theyr friends etc. and its not so hard from MA to track them down and then request document if any suspicion.

:wise: and i always said: BANED and PENALTIZED pplz must be publicated in PE web - they broke EULA - its means no more privacy for them, if MA gonna do this in this way it will deter many pplz to do things like these.

[elisa]

CBB, you are talking mainly about commodities market. It is highly competitive as there is a never-ending supply of ores, enmatters, wool, hides, teeth etc. And I would agree, it can be a completely legitimate and respectable business to buy the resources in small amounts and sell them in bulk. In this case resellers actually add value (by spending time putting the things together). And I’m saying ‘can be’ because there are few people (and we see them every day) who try to make quick money by buying stuff at ridiculous % (until somebody points out it’s ridiculous, then they move to another TP) and trying to play a standard scammers’ game of appealing to player’s conscience and trying to convince unexperienced players that their price is fair. But this is a pure scam using on a lack of knowledge, it doesn’t majorly affect the prices.

However, what really a plague is (as Kerham pointed out) the resellers of rare items (weapons, clothes etc). That’s why hunting gear is so expensive. You may go to ‘attachments/scopes(lasers,amps)’, ‘carbines’, ‘rifles’, ‘(any blades)’, any clothes sections of the auction and see the same people selling the same stuff (e.g. few similar lasers at the same over-the-top price) for weeks/months.

Generally speaking it is fair to ask a high price for rare items. What is not fair is to monopolise market and push the prices up without any increase in demand (other then the one created artificially). On the other hand, it only partially depends on players’ fair play. It is also a fundamental feature of PE market: the market of high demand items shares the features of both general consumer market and luxury items market and antiquities market. And the problem is that this market is not regulated.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that MA or community must have some power to change this situation by law or by force. What would partially resolve the problem is a review of general approach to players’ privacy, identity and reputation. E.g. if some player creates some sort of business within PE, some of his personal (ingame, of course) details must be easily accessible. If the auction had a feature of viewing the info about sellers (reputation, soc, time in PE, etc), or if it was easy to find a general information about person in the Soc terminal or somewhere else, that would make the market much more transparent. Unfair resellers (as well as scammers) would have had a much harder life if making publicity of their names and activities wouldn’t not break the EULA and if it was easier to raise awareness within the community about unfair business going on without false accusations, flame etc.

Just exposing more information would greatly improve the situation. If items had owners’ history, you wouldn’t be able to sell the stolen item so easily. If player has a dodgy reputation, why have business with him? If we knew about it… Business (in PE as well as IRL) needs guaranteed security. Without security it is (and will be) like a Wild Wild West. Today we are toothless against scam and unfair trading (not counting PvP, but it hardly makes a problem for untrustworthy persons). Information would be a weapon and an instrument of Law.

The transparency of the market is not the case yet. Unfortunately this means that legitimate traders will inherit a bad reputation of their less respected fellas who do dodgy trading and poison the PE universe.

P.S. Damn, while I was typing, nearly all my points had been said by others :duh:

[CBB]

what can they do?

ofcourse i started the post telling i am a trader, and i have no problem with that, thats why i post under my game name, maybesome suggestions to prevent reselling:

1. add sales history to items, price, name
2. take on use of large amounts of mutiple avatar in combination with higher prices for use of more slots (sell 4 slots ,1 ped, 4 - 6 slots, 2 ped, and so on)
3. limit slots too 6 or so and let people buy more slots, by making them officialy trader for which they pay a addictional fee, which goes back in loot pool
4. name average prices on a item in the item description screen
5. look into the biggest scams as there is the enmatter price driving (will be hard, what to do with the person who looted 27 gsi over long periods and not sellign them, therefor driving up price, selling them later
6. educate new players, make a kindergarten for them, or walk through hunt/trade/mine , so they can game and play with bogus peds and loots, maximise it to time or skills. would also lower high drop out percentage of noobs

but it remains hard, everybody should use their common sense. What to do when u meet someone who offers u a jaquar harness for 150 ped +TT ? if i buy it and put in auction at openign tt +150 ped, i know it will sell for 250 or so..does that make me a mean person?. Ok when i meet a noob who has a GSI and he sells it for 1 ped or tt value its easy i tell him price or show him auction, but so much borderline cases

and arent the guys who buy spacestations and land area s the biggest traders? A development i dotn disagree with btw, i think its great chance for PE

maybe they shoudl make certicified traders, people who proven somehow that they mean well and pay for their license (contributing too the so called loot pool). with a code of conduct attacht to it.
So u woudl see if a trader is certified and pays a “trade” tax, and with that he would earn reputation and even provide him with mroe slots at auction for price.
The fee for mutiple trader avatars woudl increae and become less atractive

just typign things that come into mind

oh hehe and if u wanan sell molisk or hide lol, come to me

[Aziphirael]

Better put on my asbestos underpants for this one After all, I am a trader and businessman. My whole goal in PE is too build a RL BUsiness in a Virtual World. And I think I’m certainly on the road to doing that.

First off, its not a clear cut definition. Because everybody at some point has too trade. In my books, everybody is a trader, whether they like it or not. Chucking something onto auction is trading, selling your stuff to somebody else is being a trader. So in that sense everybody is guilty of being a trader or even a reseller because you will have usually bought something from someone, and then when you are tired of gun x you will be selling it on to recoup the value.

I’ve been building up my business ingame (It is a part of a Real Life company, so its quite easy to find who I am ) for the last three odd years and one thing I’ve learnt is the fundamental difference between what is termed a trader and the more derogatory term reseller.

Essentially its Patience. Resellers are looking for the fast buck and will go for a short term gain rather then look at things from a long term viewpoint. Some people do get surprised that when I sell things on the shops, most of the profit I make are measured in the pecs rather then the peds. In general most sales I make have about a 10 pec profit on it.

A lot of customers to SMA for example are long time people who value the services we provide, so there is as ever a use for the middle man

Occasionally I make more when I buy somebodies clearance sale. But this is ultimately due to economies of scale. I am able to buy several thousand US$ worth of goods in one go. In that scale, small profits add up. Economies of scale adds up in the crafting market as well. Again I am able to buy a crafters output and go for small margins, which adds up over time. Its a slow way of doing things, but in some ways the model I’m following is what the supermarkets do.

Ironically a large amount of stuff on the shops don’t belong to me. A lot of times I get people requesting to put items onto the shop and I charge comission when it sales. Again small gains or a ped or two, but it adds up.

So in the end I may not be as rich as resellers, but I think I get better job satisfaction from happy customers and clients who feel that the service they got is one hundred %. Plus I’ve learnt a lot in PE about business and marketing that I can apply to my RL job

[Crosis]

I too think there are good and bad associated with the trading situation, but it’s called an economy, and some gain and some lose.

I do lots of trading and have made huge amounts of peds on what i see as a gamble on the economic situation in-game. I am currently in the niche market of mind essence, which is very volitile. I think I provide a service, giving noobs 2.4 to 2.5 for thier sweat, and buying nexus at market prices, refining and selling for whatever the market supports.

When i buy, im making a risk that the pricing im paying will be surpassed by the amount the market will support, if it drops I have to sell for what i can get, and re-evaluate my price point formula’s.

One thing that i never do though is buy all of one item from the auction and re-post, in the short term some people may be able to profit from that, but an open economy will always find the “path of cheapest resistance” and those who sell on the street will provide that path, also those who see the price so high may post thier own items of that type that they have been saving for a rainy day, which will flood the market, requiring that the manipulator either pony up more capital to control the market, or the prices crash again because the demand has been filled, making it a big loser for the manipulator.

[RexDameon]

Traders are good when they provide a service. Not simply trying to up market prices.

Buy below market price and sell at market price.

For example say Market Price of Hides is 110% and I have got like 10 hides and i sell them to you for 105% because i can’t be bothered to wait and sell at 110% then you resell a large quatnitiy at 110%.

I think this is kinda what Az does with SMA.

[Moser]

Lot of good points here. In a hurry so didnt read all posts. Anyway my contribution is this.

If a miner comes up to me and offers alot of different minerals in bulk at lets say 110%, I consider it a service buying it from him. He saves time and money figuring out all the different prices on the ores, and I make some peds distributing it out to people who need it.

IMO this aint abusive or a bad thing to do.

[Witte]

In my oppinion the problem is not the traders, but the impatience of the people. Most people choose and item, and then want it as soon as possible. But what if you just say to yourself: Ok i will pay that much and nothing more. Then it doesnt matter if a trader has like 1000 of those items in storage, in time he will sell it for a lower price.

Its just how a market system works. Either accept it or don’t participate. you never HAVE to buy a certain item. And if you do, you must think that is worth it. So I presenally dont see much problems with traders.

Another thing is that when you sell something, you dont have to worry that much if there is a buyer or nor at the current time, as a trader will mostly give you a pretty reasonable price for it.

[Ghandi]

Big items: buy low or average, sell high buyout. Patience is money.

Traders jack up the price for everything, indeed.

[Shumis]

trading all time do money and if u need any extra money just go trading i do it all time but remember 1 thing without traders u won’t get any nececery items in this game/live as i tink.
Oh and CBB i happy to belong to same soc

[Aziphirael]

[QUOTE=RexDameon]
Traders are good when they provide a service. Not simply trying to up market prices.

Buy below market price and sell at market price.

For example say Market Price of Hides is 110% and I have got like 10 hides and i sell them to you for 105% because i can’t be bothered to wait and sell at 110% then you resell a large quatnitiy at 110%.

I think this is kinda what Az does with SMA.
[/QUOTE]

Ultimately its what we try and do, to always work within a median of the market value.

Having said that I’ve recently devolved responsibility to people in SMA who are interested in the ore markets. My interest at the moment lies in Goods. I want to create the Walmart/Marks & Spencers of PE at the end of the day , so its all about building supply chains which is the tough part at the moment.

[Darkaner]

Surprisingly intelligent discussion here guys. I’m an ore and enmatter trader/reseller myself, but I started this game as a miner so I know how important it is to be able to sell low amount of ores for some instant cash. For low level miners, traders are a very important part of the game.

I think most of peoples anger towards traders is because we are the only ones actually making money in this game, and they think we do it at their expense. But if I were a miner or hunter I’d focus my anger on those über-loots instead. That’s were your money goes, people.