A Not-so-modest Merchant Proposal

[Melkor]

Hi All,

its great to see everyone trying to contribute to make the game better ! Having read the suggestions in the threads of Legion, Grond and sdevelyn, I spent a couple of hours with an Excel spreadsheet. I can now add my idea to the discussion.

As far as I understand the Merchant has two functions:

1. To allow both new and experienced players to construct functioning decks, without relying excessively on luck.
2. To give everyone the collector experience and the excitement of opening boosters. A necessary condition for that is to allow some cards to be more valuable than other equally rare cards, even to people who will not use them in a deck. (For example, everyone to be happy that they have gotten Desert Lord as opposed to Supplies of the Mark, if Desert Lord is more useful in general).

As far as I understand it there 3 problems with the current Merchant:

1.The system can be exploited by people with multiple accounts

The other two are related to inflation, and by that I mean the amount of gold that exists in game as a whole. This is a general problem in many online games, but I thinks its particularly bad in gemp because there are very few ways to get gold out of the system.

2.A player who roughly knows the true value (usefulness) of cards, with some gold, can always make more gold by buying and selling the right cards, with a single account, no exploits used. (I have only ever had one account, and trading cards has never been a priority for me, but I have made quite a bit of money by selling aragorn's bow when the price hits 500 and buying it back when it drops to 50. )

3.The price of cards can get ridiculously high in relation to the way you get cards - i.e. buying boosters. When several cards in a set have astronomical prices (i.e. >300), you can always generate gold by buying boosters in that set (as often happened with RoEL).

As far as I read you guys are suggesting 3 possible solutions:

1.Fix prices of cards
2.Have the merchant only sell packs (presumably still buying singles at a fixed price?)
3.Limit the amount of gold, by introducing a new currency - "tickets" (Grond's suggestion).

Now I think solutions 1 and 2, will eliminate the collector experience and the excitement of opening boosters. I think we can get comparable results without fixing prices, just capping them. Solution 3 is not a bad one, but I think it will only reduce the current problems and not fix them.

My suggestion is the following:

1. Keep the merchant pricing as it is, but set minimum and maximum prices. Based on the current booster price, I suggest the following:
C-1s min / 10s max
U-10s min / 1g max
R-1g min / 150g max
R+ -1g min / 200g max
P-10s min / 1g max

If there are no cards, at the max price, the merchant doesn't sell any, but when a card becomes available it is still sold at the max price.

2. Now this is the crucial bit. People should be prevented from owning more than 4 copies of any card (since anything more than that can be used for speculation). If you get more than 4 copies of a card (for example you get it in a booster, or you buy it by mistake), then extra copies automatically get sold to the merchant at the minimum price. You will still be able to have up to 8 copies of a card if you add foils (we should probably increase the gold to convert to foil though).

I am not sure how much coding this will require to be implemented, but I suspect it will be far less than the ticket system.

3.If there are ways to get gold out of the game on a regular basis, it would be good. Do yo guys have any suggestions on that?

However, I believe points 1 and 2 on their own should fix most of the issues we currently have. I apologise if this seems too long a post, but if you've gotten this far you deserve an awesome Boromir picture!

[Legion]

Maybe combine option 1 and your idea-set the price of cards to be fixed within a certain range, but decide the range for each card.  Sounds like hard work, but I don't like the idea that Ulaire Enquea, Lieutenant of Morgul or The Balrog, Demon of Might being at most worth as much as The Weight of a Legacy.  Especially if cards are being automatically being sold back: every common will be worth 1 silver within a day.  If we're putting values within a range, I don't see the need for much arguing about the value of specific cards for long.  I suppose that there really is no need to have more than 4 of any card, except possibly for shrewd investments, but I really don't see the need for that in this game.  Just play with the cards.

Your idea really does actually seem almost perfect, though.  It probably can be cheated in the same way as before, but it would take ages (and almost certainly hundreds of accounts) to exploit, since you'll make at most 150g per card of you max out it's value (less, really, as the merchant won't buy at the same rate as it sells).  It also allows players to buy singles at fair prices.

[sdevelyn]

I am glad that so many people are taking this issue so seriously. Designing an economy is no small feat, and there are lots of small details that could end up having large implications for the game.

From my previous posts, it is probably not hard to guess that I am in favor of having the prices on the merchant reflect the "true market price" as much as possible. The trick will be to adjust prices to buys and sells as accurately as possible, and no one outside of our gracious admins can really tackle that (although I would love to be given the opportunity). As such, I would rather impose price ceilings and floors that are more fundamentally related to the value of the card (and thus would allow for a much larger range) and be able to trust in the market. Ignoring uncommons and commons for a moment, if there are N rares in a set, the sum of the buy prices should be no less than N*10 and the sum of the sell prices should be no more than N*10. Hopefully we will see smaller spreads between buy and sell prices, but as I said, that is part of the price adjustment formula that needs to be hammered out.

Your second suggestion seems to be aimed at stopping speculation. An important question to think about is: Why is speculation a big threat here where it was not with real cards? I feel that a properly designed price-response function will severely limit players' willingness to wildly speculate. Instead, people will only be willing to purchase another copy of a card if 1) they want to foil their cards or 2) the card is wildly underpriced.

The first possibility is good for the game, because it ensures that gold retains its value far longer. We don't know what will happen once gold becomes completely meaningless as it could in this environment while it cannot in real life. The second possibility is also good for the game, as it will actually encourage price stability. Note they only buy a 5th if they feel the market price is not reflecting the true price, bringing the price back towards the true price. The key here, is there is a common expectation that prices will never get out-of-control. I look forward to when we can all be secure in that.

Many thanks to everyone who makes this game and this site great. Let's keep up the good conversations.

[Legion]

Actually, you should make it so that you can have 7 of any card.  This would allow you to try to get 4 foils of any card, whilst still keeping 4 of that card if you need it for decks.

Your second suggestion seems to be aimed at stopping speculation. An important question to think about is: Why is speculation a big threat here where it was not with real cards?

Many thanks to everyone who makes this game and this site great. Let's keep up the good conversations.

Because some traders (the fake accounts) are happy to lose money.  This won't happen in real life.

[Melkor]

Hey guys. Thanks for the very intelligent discussion. I agree, we should discuss the ranges of the cards, they are by no means perfect.  I have picked those ranges based on booster/starter prices to discourage speculation (both the fake account abuse/and the smart investor abuse) as much as possible.  That's why they are rather narrow (even though one R can still be worth 150 time another).
 

An important question to think about is: Why is speculation a big threat here where it was not with real cards?

I believe speculation is a huge problem for 2 reasons:

1) As Legion points out, you can create fake accounts that lose money just to manipulate prices of starter set cards for the benefits of main account. This is addressed by the caps on C, U and P (which also add affordability for new players).

2) The current Merchant is not the type of market we used to have in the real world, where we all traded mostly directly with each other (i.e. an over-the-counter market). In the Merchant market we all trade with a central counter-party. Now, that would be perfectly fine if the Merchant simply matched supply and demand. But that would require us to post what prices we would be willing to buy and sell cards at.

Since we don't do that, the Merchant doesn't know a very important thing, i.e. how many people are willing to buy/sell a card at any price (how liquid is the market for a card). So as far as I understand it, the Merchant uses how many copies of a card it has in stock to approximate that information. The problem comes when there is 0 (or close to 0 ) stock. If there is a R that's out of stock the merchant simply keeps raising the price to induce people to sell (although you can still buy the card which is simply created by the Merchant and raises the price further). Since not all people trade all the time and not everyone sells their extra cards, it takes a long time before enough people log in and check the price for a R they have, see it is very high and sell. Therefore it takes a long time for prices to adjust. A smart player can log in frequently and exploit these price spikes. Now technically, the Merchant loses gold from this since it is offering an unreasonably high price for a time, but unlike the real market the Merchant doesn't care about losses and has unlimited gold. So this ends up pumping gold into the game, and I dare say more so than the creation of fake accounts. My idea simply requires that when people have too many copies of a card they, sell their cards automatically, so prices adjust much quicker. Plus it caps the amount you can make speculating on any one card.

sdevelyn, I like your idea for a better pricing function. I don't think the price of a booster*number of Rs in set will work, because on the sell-side the most useful cards in a set will take up a huge part of the sell value allowed and some Rs will be worth 0, unless we have a minimum price. Plus, on the buy side, still huge spikes in price will be possible, since there is only a lower limit. However, I really like the idea of aligning card prices to booster prices. Can you think of a better formula that incorporates booster prices and the quantities of cards available for sale?

Legion, I have been thinking the same thing (i.e. it will be hard to upgrade to foils if 4 is the max). However, I think a better solution may be to allow people to upgrade a single card to a foil, just make it much more expensive (since only long-term players will usually want to have a foil deck/large foil collection anyway). Plus it will be another good way to get gold out of the system.

[sdevelyn]

As always, I appreciate the good discussion. I think Marcin has done a great job with the site, and I would love to help make it even better. I think as we continue to better understand what works well, what isn't working so well, and how we would like things to improve, the better we will be.

As for the pricing function, it can be as simple or as complex as we want it. My current preference (though I do not know how feasible it is) is to have the buy/sell spreads vary over time. When a card gets bought, we would see a large increase in the price the merchant sells the card for but not a large increase in the price the card is sold for. This will lower the ability for people with multiple accounts or who check frequently to disproportionally benefit from any artificial price increase. At some interval (every day?), though, the spread between the buy and sell prices should shrink if there is no activity. As you said, Melkor, not all people trade every day and it can take a long time for prices to adjust. However, I believe this system, if properly implemented, will both discourage exploitation and help cards center in on their true value.

I still stand by the philosophy that the expected sell price of a pack (what you would get on average if you sold every card in a pack) should never increase beyond 10G. At the same time, prices should not plummet, so the expected buy price of a pack should not shrink below 10G. If the long term spreads are relatively narrow, this would keep prices pretty stable. The exact method of stabilization will likely be something akin to a storeowner opening packs herself to put for sale. One thing I would not be worried about, though, is letting some of the rares approach 2S in cost. We saw the same thing in real life. Any rare that never winds up in a deck should be found in the bargain bin.

[Eukalyptus]

Now that the matter has risen up again...

We need a merchant solution and we need it now. Obviously, nobody is happy to scrap the singles. Nor should they be. But, the merchant could sell the C/U/P/S singles. Cap those at 5/10/15 gold to buy each, also the selling price at 0.10/1/2. Exploiting could still be happening, but would be much more time consuming and not worth the effort. Furthermore, include 3 random R cards for the starter decks. Should be doable with minimum work.

As a next point: Do NOT give gold to new players. Give them 2 starter choices as well as 15 booster choices. That should set anyone up pretty good. In addition, cut the 50 gold each week and give out X booster choices + 1 Reflections booster instead. Opening boosters is way more fun, plus there is a chance of 2 R per pack. Of course not every pull can be lucky, but players would have to understand that.

As MarcinS is not doing anything anymore besides maintenance, the ticket system is out of the question, is it? There has to be an alternative for the leagues besides the gold.

[bibfortuna25]

Yes, a thousand times yes. Put an absolute price cap on cards, depending on the rarities. Maybe 25S for a common, 1G for an uncommon, 5G for a promo and 10G for a rare. And 1.5X that price for a foil. You can fiddle around a bit with the values if those numbers don't work, but I think it's a good starting point.

[ZooL]

No.

[sgtdraino]

We need a merchant solution and we need it now.

Unlikely to happen. MarcinS seems to be the only one who can do anything about it, and he does not seem to be around right now.

Obviously, nobody is happy to scrap the singles. Nor should they be.

Last time this happened, scrapping singles was the most popular solution suggested:

http://lotrtcgwiki.com/forums/index.php/topic,8467.msg83258/topicseen.html#msg83258

...so it seems like quite a few people would be happy with this option.

As a next point: Do NOT give gold to new players. Give them 2 starter choices as well as 15 booster choices. That should set anyone up pretty good.

This doesn't work sufficently, so long as players can simply sell cards back to the Merchant. Those who want to exploit the system will simply sell their starting product for gold, and then use that gold to exploit the system.

In addition, cut the 50 gold each week and give out X booster choices + 1 Reflections booster instead.

The weekly gold shouldn't matter much, exploiters generally use new accounts with starting gold.

As MarcinS is not doing anything anymore besides maintenance, the ticket system is out of the question, is it?

That's my understanding of it.

Yes, a thousand times yes. Put an absolute price cap on cards, depending on the rarities. Maybe 25S for a common, 1G for an uncommon, 5G for a promo and 10G for a rare. And 1.5X that price for a foil. You can fiddle around a bit with the values if those numbers don't work, but I think it's a good starting point.

I think price caps could work too. IMO that's the best solution if the merchant keeps selling singles.

[neopium]

It seemed to me Gemp was (at least partly) open source.

Where can the code be found?

I cannot dedicate a lot of efforts in development, but I can at least have a look at how long it would take