An argument against the change of the merchant system

[jdizzy001]

I have to agree with Bib. This is a virtual community, you aren't spending real money and you don't even have to win games to win said money (via the virtual allowance) I don't see the problem.

[janjetina]

Response to the point 2:

An average player, who wanted to participate in tournaments, got the needed cards using additional resources (i.e. trading), so the situation doesn't quite relate and this is a guess anyway.

Considering Decipher's release schedule is more useful to make this estimate. Decipher released a new expansion every 3 months (or was it four)? In that period, an average player was expected to build (at least) one deck to participate in tournaments (more competitive players had more alternative decks). By the time a year passed, another base set and another format appeared.

We are in a bit different situation: all the sets are already out and the people want to build a few decks in parallel, for different formats, so the "demand" for cards is even higher.

What I think should be done:

I think that each player should be able to construct his first deck quickly and the rest of the system should be left as it was.

With the old merchant system, this could have been accomplished by giving new players a sizeable starting amount of gold, that should be adequate for building a deck that has reasonable chence of winning in a competitive environment. With the new merchant system, that wouldn't help much, since a player would be unable to acquire any decent cards.

Response to the point 3:

Merchants, who probsably sold not only singles, but packs as well, used to buy cases wholesale (either directly or through a distributer) and were opening booster packs to replenish their stock along with buying collections and singles from their players.

If you decide to go along with limited stock, please consider raising the limits and adjusting them according to the number of players. Limited stock is not necessarily a horrible idea, but transition needs to be gradual (i.e. limits / merchant stock should have been set much higher) and announced. This abrupt shift when one second all the cards were available in unlimited quantities and another second no playable cards are in stock is not a good thing.

My first suggestion is increasing the merchant stock. My second suggestion is giving a one time "first deck" sizeable grant to each new player (which means that the same thing should be given to all the players, to keep the level ground). My third suggestion is that the players be allowed to keep their sealed league product (and that should be applied retroactively). 

[hsiale]

With the new merchant system, that wouldn't help much, since a player would be unable to acquire any decent cards.

Why? He can't do it today, yes. You probably don't play long enough to remember first weeks of the old merchant. All cards were available of course, but it sold cards at very high price and bought very low. It all evened out slowly during next weeks. That's why I made a 3 weeks break with collector's leagues (and may make it a week or two longer if need arises - I monitor the market closely to see how it reacts).

I think when the new merchant stabilizes most cards will be available all the time and others most of the time. In fact, most are available even now (out of 121 FotR set rares only 14 are out of stock).

[bokizg]

I sorry but you are wrong Hsiale.  Out of 621 rares in movie block, 227 are out of stock at this moment.
Of course rares that are in stock are 90% bad and not that playable.
There is no chance to build any viable deck in my collection at this point.
I honestly think that estimation of few weeks to get merchant stabilized is far to optimistic. I don't think it will settle for months if at all. Nobody is selling anything and I doubt that anyone has like 8 hates on stock or even 5 easterling captains waiting for weeks to make profit. Merchant should be more aggressive to get his stock filled.

[bokizg]

I don't want to be all negative about this change. Definitely it would be great to have more stable market then it was.
For example: captured by the ring and easterling polearm at about 20g while elendil was around 13 or so. I would rather eat my own hat then be right about this 

[hsiale]

I have no idea how do you know that I am wrong and not you - neither of us knows the formulae behind merchant. The only way we can learn is by observing the system.

23.12.2012, 13:00 CET
Updated 24.12.2012 CET with price changes

Fellowship of the Ring rare cards out of stock and sell price
Bow of the Galadhrim 2,85 4,39
Double Shot 10,27 15,80
Servant of the Secret Fire 21,60 23,38
Aragorn, Ranger of the North 19,82 25,07
Aragorn's Bow 45,51 80,02
The Saga of Elendil 6,84 15,41
Uruk Lieutenant 19,46 43,61
Cave Troll of Moria, Scourge of the Black Pit 23,87 36,73
Goblin Armory 71,00 89,21
Goblin Swarms 18,17 37,98
Moria Axe 0,76 1,18
Black Steed 0,48 0,81
Thin and Stretched 0,10 0,15
Power According to His Stature 26,24 40,48

I've looked through other sets and the situation seems worse there. I can't research it thoroughly because I don't see sell prices for all the cards (I don't own even one copy of them). I will note down price for some cards out of stock that I have from set 7.

Preparations 15,72 42,16
Arwen, Fair Elf Maiden 3,93 9,81
Shadow Between 6,85 25,27
Terrible and Evil 12,23 25,55
Fat One Wants It 10,84 33,63
Smeagol, Always Helps 9,57 105,01
Anduril, Flame of the West 17,91 42,75
Noble Leaders 12,76 24,50
Fierce in Despair 6,35 82,75
Southron Leader 2,23 3,12
Southron Marksmen 9,28 247,47
Morgul Brute 24,34 59,16
Leowyn 3,40 10,58
Ulaire Lemenya, Assailing Minion 10,42 41,46
Encirclement 5,56 67,03
Troop Tower 16,25 89,56

Now let's wait two days and see how did the prices change. Once they go up enough, you won't need to have cards to sell, you'll simply go, buy boosters and on average cards you sell will give you your gold back with some extra on top of that.

What we need is traders. People who, whenever the market needs, step in, buy boosters and sell them as singles to merchant. And make a little profit on it. Such traders give the market liquidity it needs. But they need information to work. So, I would not change anything with merchant (now). We need time to see how it works. The changes I would do instantly are:

- display sell price of each card all the time for every player, even if this player does not own the card (a quick fix),

- make a daily economy report - each day, at midnight server time, a text file is generated (or, perfectly, each time a player requests it to be generated, but I don't know how heavy this will be on the server) containing market info. Such file should be easily importable into any spreadsheet software for analysis purposes. For example each line could be something like this:
#1#R#1#The One Ring, Isildur's Bane#4#18,52#availability#
Where entries mean: set number, rarity, card number, card name, number of copies you have, current sell price, estimate of copies the merchant has, for example:
- out of stock (0 copies, not selling),
- very low (1 to 3 copies, i.e. less than a playset)
- low (4 to 11 copies, i.e. less than 3 playsets)
- average (12 to 50 copies)
- good (51 to 90 copies)
- very good (91 to 99 copies)
- overstocked (100 or more copies, not buying).

Having such reports we could start making market decisions that help both us and market liquidity. Currently I have no idea at what price it will be a good decision to sell any of the out of stock cards I have so I'm cautious. If I had access to information on prices, it will be much easier to sell for me.

[bokizg]

I didn't say you are wrong about card prices, only about availability of cards. I counted all rares out of stock from sets 1-10 and got number that I wrote in previous post.

[hsiale]

That's true, I looked at RotK and see the situation is different there.

But many rares out of stock means that many rares will increase in price. And once average price rises over 10G, people will buy packs, sell singles and make profit while stocking the merchant. That's why I noted down card prices, in a few days we'll see how they change.

[bign19]

To be honest I'm not a fan of the Merchant at all. Having the ability to buy cards means that Collectors leagues will eventually turn into Constructed leagues with identical decks. With no difference between the two there will be no point in even running the Collectors leagues at all. I'd much rather see Collectors leagues be made entirely from cards opened in boosters. If site become a problem then perhaps they could be made available in the Collectors format.

[hsiale]

Collectors leagues will eventually turn into Constructed leagues with identical decks.

Eventually, yes. But it will take enough time to not care too much about it.

I play Gemp since it started. I played every single sealed league, placing in top 8 in each and in top 3 in more or less half of them. I also played some constructed leagues, but have no time for this since summer. I also increased my collection significantly due to not going for a strong deck during first Collector's league, but selling off all FotR block rares I had then, when their prizes went through the roof, and picking up lots of strong cards from other blocks. I believe no other player has more cards than I and very few, if any, are close.

Still I'm even not half way done with Movie Block playset. And I expect it will take me 2,5-3 more years (if I play similar number of games and manage to stay top level sealed league player) to finish the playset of whole LotR. This is a lot of time. I have no idea if I will play this game for so long. And for sure there never will be a significant number of players with such big collections active in Collector's leagues.

If there was no merchant, it would be no problem for people with big collections. What's the difference between having all cards and 70% of them (due to some repeated in packs there are some you don't have). I can build enough strong decks anyway. No merchant is worse for people with smaller collections, who have 20 strong rares, sell them and buy 14 strong rares which go into one deck. The big difference is between having no deck and one deck. Further progress is way smaller.

[sgtdraino]

I think that each player should be able to construct his first deck quickly and the rest of the system should be left as it was.

With the old merchant system, this could have been accomplished by giving new players a sizeable starting amount of gold, that should be adequate for building a deck that has reasonable chence of winning in a competitive environment.

I think this sounds like a great idea. A bigger initial payout, enough to build one decent constructed deck.

What if you simply got your first 60 singles for free?

What we need is traders. People who, whenever the market needs, step in, buy boosters and sell them as singles to merchant. And make a little profit on it. Such traders give the market liquidity it needs.

The problem is that Gemp gold just isn't that useful. In real life, people deal in singles in order to make a profit, because real life money can be spent on all kinds of things. But in Gemp, there's basically only two things gold can be used for: Joining leagues, and buying more cards. Maybe we need more ways to use gold?

And if you ever arrive at a situation where people can buy boosters from the merchant and reliably make a profit selling the cards back, then you've effectively gamed the system. I'm pretty sure MarcinS doesn't want that, because people will be able to just grind their gold up infinitely.

[Raelag]

Well I loved to collect cards and play collector.. But after this day I think that collectors leagues are gone:( The new merchant should be limitedly supplied to the start, then when some cool cards would be gone the new system should work. But now from 10 golds you can make thousands of golds and plenty of cards... I now see that i cant be interested in collection as I used to be, cause I can have everything within a few hours... That is very sad... I think that the best sollution is to return a server week ago on the start of new merchant or just restart all collections and make some normal prices.... I would be pissed off but I dont see any others sollution but deleting or collections or reload some backup with the state before new merchant (and fix up all bugs)

[hsiale]

A backup from two days ago would be nice indeed. And then reintroducing new merchant, but before he goes online he gets confronted with a (computer) trader who will restock the merchant (because all problems we have now are caused by merchant being dramatically understocked). Trader should work the following way:
- for each pack available in the game, it calculates the average (expected) resell value of singles in the pack,
- if the value is 110% of cost of the pack or more, it buys the pack and sells singles to merchant,
- this is repeated till the trader does not want to buy any packs.

110% to leave a small margin so that it still is good to buy packs from the start, but not ridiculously profitable. I haven't calculated too much, but the current return rate on RotK packs is around 300% (I started the day with 50 Gold, went through well over 1000 RotK packs and my current wealth is around 30 thousand Gold + a RotK playset). And card prices still didn't go down to a reasonable level despite me feeding merchant with all I could.

[Raelag]

Well please think about a restoring cause now the collectors is ruined.. Also I dont see a point in the leagues cause the main reason are prizes which are now very devalved..

[hsiale]

Well I don't know if it is so much ruined. For example cards I have have completely no influence on Collector's because I haven't played in such league for half a year and don't think this is going to change - I have no time for two leagues and sealed is way more fun for me.

Also are the prizes really the main reason for playing leagues? For me playing in a competitive environment is a far bigger reason.

But doing something to card prices is definitely needed. Because the old system was in place for too long to players to fix it on their own. I fed the merchant with 3-4 copies of all RotK rares and haven't seen a big difference for him.