Auction house monopolies...??

[Arterra]

makes sense. kudos to you

SWEET! i am A-cing my econ test...

[Duke]

I doubt there will be much to worry about. The items ae not limited in supply -- if a "monopoly" drives up the price too high, people will simply farm the items themselves, or execute trades outside the auction house for less than the "going rate". Also, as previously noted, item values have limited lifespans due to the introduction of newer items.

[Arterra]

I doubt there will be much to worry about. The items ae not limited in supply -- if a "monopoly" drives up the price too high, people will simply farm the items themselves, or execute trades outside the auction house for less than the "going rate". Also, as previously noted, item values have limited lifespans due to the introduction of newer items.

the reason of the auction house is to capitalize on selling to everyone as a whole. while you can just use trade, u will be limiting yourself...

[Chickdigcookies]

farm loot> buy loot

omg, i solved the crisis.

[Galois]

I wonder if there will really be such an issue. This game is different from other MMOs I've played in that there really isn't a restriction on how many times someone can farm for an item other than time. For example, when I played Final Fantasy XI, monopolies on items existed (earlier on in the game this was more of a problem; later on SE changed this by making some items bind to characters) because an item dropped from a monster that spawned every 21-24 hours, and even then the item was a random drop. There, people could just camp the monster each day, use somewhat questionable methods to claim it, and dominate the flow of an item. There's no such constraint in PL.

Granted, valuable drops are not frequent by any means, but there is nothing stopping someone from running a dungeon as many times as they please except for the time they want to devote.

[FluffNStuff]

Earlier when I posted I mentioned Emperor Norton so I figured I would expand on that. Emperor Norton was a real person living in the mid 1800's in San Francisco who went insane and declared himself emperor. He really is a fascinating person, so you should read about his insane period, but what is relevant to this topic is what happened to him to drive him insane. He was an investor, and when China shut off its rice exportation to the United States, he found an opportunity to corner the market and create a monopoly by buying the only ship with rice. This did cause the price of rice to spike, but he was not able to sell before two more boat loads of rice arrived from Peru. This caused a flood in the market, the price of rice dropped way below what he bought it for and he went bankrupt.
So what does this mean for the economy of Pocket Legends? To really create a monopoly and dictate prices, you need to control BOTH the supply AND the SOURCE. Consider the Zuraz Shock Lance. To create a monopoly, you would first go around and buy up the current supply. But of course people could farm more, so you would need to 'buy the rights' to AO2:4 so that any new shock lances that drop are yours. Considering STS would step in and block any deal you might have made with Z'moxx, controlling the source would be a bit tricky. So don't fear monopolies.

tldr; A monopoly must control the current supply and the SOURCE to work, and that can't happen here.

[setec]

I'm all for the free market. However, I also can't believe some of the prices I see being asked for items. It's insane. 275k for this piece or 1M for a set. Give me a break.

[TwinkTastical]

Aaaaaand, Im gonna do this xD

[Azrael]

MMORPG auction house buyers still have to deal with the market. Sure you can buy up everything and resell at a higher price, but all the player base has to do is not buy the item and the seller will be SOL.

A game designer solves this problem by charging a fee to list an item on the auction house, and limiting the time an item remains on the auction house. Thus if a player tries to sell an item for a price that is clearly to expensive and no one buys it, that player will loose money over and over again by putting it back up on the auction house.

[Teflon]

Very well said Fluff!. Folks please digest the main concept being explained here. You would need to be able to control the SUPPLY and SOURCE for this to be a real threat.

Cheers.

[Arterra]

Very well said Fluff!. Folks please digest the main concept being explained here. You would need to be able to control the SUPPLY and SOURCE for this to be a real threat.

Cheers.

if you consider that the source of certain items is a very veeery narrow chance of looting, you can take the chance of new supplies as negligeble, and if they do come in, your shop wont be overwhelmed and you can just buy it (and sell it high of course)

you know, like the sunkiller, the vyxnar helm... very rare items that a guild can pool money into buying up.