The trend of market value manipulation

[Bundlos]

Hi,

Of late I have been noticing same merchants using multiple accounts to manipulate trending items. It's either that or they make their friends or people who they are in cahoots with drop fake offers to permanently manipulate the market value of X Item (or) they themselves post a fake offer and close the thread stating that it is sold to that fake offer and then bring up the same item for sale after a period of time lapse.

It's a choice to overpay for something while making a purchase, one overprice purchase does not always make it the norm that the X item bought is valued at that much. I'll give you an example: Before armor zhulong came out in store some bought it for 70-100m despite knowing that the price would drop significantly once it comes to store (this is overpayment, a self-made choice).

On the other hand we have the people who control the game market, the manipulators who employ the above-mentioned tactics to permanently alter the valuation of stuff to their advantage. Now, as I see it, the root of the problem starts from forums. Seller makes a thread, fakes it, then the thread is there to stay and unsuspecting people fall for it, and that faked amount becomes the norm. Let's classify buyer into two types- the skeptics, and the believers. The skeptics I would say, they do their homework, have an overall idea of the market and often get ganged upon when they call someone out for their manipulation. The unsuspecting believers are the ones who will fall for just about anything they see, then these people also lead others (friends/guildies) to believe the same in their line of communication and that's how an X-price becomes a norm more often than not (I don't blame you if you are the latter, it's only human nature).

Traders market is anyway not a highly monitored place unless someone gets called out or reported and action is taken against them nor can I expect it to be monitored because there are lots of things going on there all the time. I've seen many a times people replying to posts "price manipulation is a ban-able offense" and I went over the ToS, it does not explicitly mention that it is, although it does affect the in-game market significantly. I asked myself this question before making this thread- what purpose does having multiple forum accounts serve? The only thing I could come up with is anonymity, be it for trash talking with people or just for manipulation. I don't see how it serves any useful purpose.

So, I have a few questions for the devs:
1. Where does such action stand according to you all? Would you say it an offense?
2. Third party apps such as Tapatalk at least has a serial number that helps identify a same user of multiple accounts. Can we get an identifier for multiple account users who use forums from other platforms? If nothing else, it will at least keep people from getting played.

Consider this thread as an alert to buyers, a rant, or whatever you want to call it. I'll leave on the note that seeing isn't believing.