I think that everyone would agree that the merchant is currently broken. I think that a temporary fix that prevents buying and selling of cards while the admins have time to figure out what went wrong is in order first and foremost. Whether or not there is a reset will be up to the admins. We play thanks to them, and we need to let them take whatever time is needed.
That being said, here is my proposed solution assuming that any glitches get fixed. As a fair warning, I am an economist in real life so this might get technical.
To be clear, the two most important aspects of the game economy are efficiency and equity. You want a system that can help fairly allocate cards to the people that desire them the most. While inequality will arise, we want to make sure that new players do not face an enormous start-up cost.
I, for one, fully support the basic platform that was implemented here on Gemp. I like that cards are not traded between players, as this can lead to collusion and make it extra difficult for new players who will not have a good idea what cards are worth and will therefore be vulnerable to being taken advantage of. The current system favors transparency, which will especially help new players. I also support the 30% spread between the buy price and the sell price for most cards. This will decrease the incentive for speculation which in theory should help stabilize prices.
But obviously we did not see stable prices, so what can be done about it? First, it is important to realize that if there are X rares in a set, then spending 10*X will net you an average of one of each rare. Therefore, the most that a rare should EVER sell for is 10*X.
If this was real life, packs cost $10 each, and there were 60 rares in a set, then what would a merchant do if they were offered $600 for a card? They would open packs to find one! While we could have the merchant randomly open packs until one was opened, it might be easier for the merchant to just automatically get 1 of each rare (and an appropriate number of uncommons and commons) and immediately sell them all to itself. This will keep the price of the offending card at less than $600 and will reduce the price of all other cards in the set. [technically, it would also be nice if the same system happened when the total sell price of all the rares exceeded 10*X, but that might be harder to implement.]
In the current system, the same stabilization process takes place, except you have actual people spending time opening packs just to sell the rares. This takes time and bandwidth. It also favors the more wealthy individuals as they have the luxury of having a lot of wealth to invest in buying packs.
Perhaps I have already written too much. In closing, I will simply mention other aspects that will need to be addressed.
1. The fixed cards and promo cards that are not available from packs - make them prizes that cannot be bought or sold?
2. Common/Uncommon staples with a high price but that cannot be sold (like boromir, hobbit swords) - allow them to be sold at dramatically lower prices?
3. Other price fluxuations - perhaps the method that prices get adjusted will also need another look.
Thank you to all who help make this game wonderful. Please keep up the
good work. Also, let me know if there is any way I can help. Again, I really appreciate what you do.
Topic: Post your Gemp-LotR bugs here (Read 169213 times)
