Triskdaemon
(?)Community Member
Offline
- Posted: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:25:29 +0000
FOMG 2% SALES TACKS ZOMFG 11BBQ!
Now that we've got that out of the way... I've been seeing a lot of people saying that the 2% sales fee will increase inflation because of either migration to the exchange or because of sellers raising their prices.
Both of these claims are patently untrue, and here's why.
Migration to the Exchange
The marketplace rerelease will not cause a migration to the exchange. The fee will be negligible for most items. My (oft-unused, finally useful) graph of the price distribution of marketplace listings indicates that the majority of items sold fall between 10k and 100k. Now, do some math here... Yeah, that's a 200g - 2000g price range for the fee. That is NOT enough to kick people out of the marketplace and to the exchange, because the reason people use the market is for a quick, easy and trouble-free sale. The exchange is harder to get used to, and requires a significant time investment per item sold - bumping, thread creation, etc. The marketplace is fire and forget, and a lot of people won't mind dropping 2k for the convenience. We waste half that on avatar arena entries and towns topics already.
The larger items where the fees will really hurt - news for you, the ones on the marketplace were ALREADY overpriced. Most serious trading of big-ticket items doesn't touch the market. When it does, the prices are normally AT LEAST 2% over the exchange prices. So, GG, that's not going to touch anything.
People will raise their prices!
Nah. They can raise all they want, but the free-market capitalist nature of the marketplace will kick their miserly asses for trying. There will always be people who will undercut, and there will always be buyers demanding lower prices. Look at ebay - they have listing fees, and their prices are (on the whole) pretty damn cheap. It's not what the seller wants, remember, it's what the buyer will buy it for. If the prices on the market were determined by sellers, we'd all be proper ********.
Now, the good news.
What this WILL do is put a damper on inflationary trends. Y'all have been whinging about sealed letter prices for a while now, so guess what! They'll go down. This will take out 2% of the gold in the marketplace economy every day, which adds up sizably. Less gold in the economy means that gold is worth more in relation to items - i.e., lower prices. The gold you have will be worth more, the items won't spiral out of control and be inaccessible to all but the Gaia-obsessed. This will seriously help the affordability of Gaia's items, and will make questing that much easier.
So, stop whining. 2% will save you money - you just don't know it yet.
Now that we've got that out of the way... I've been seeing a lot of people saying that the 2% sales fee will increase inflation because of either migration to the exchange or because of sellers raising their prices.
Both of these claims are patently untrue, and here's why.
Migration to the Exchange
The marketplace rerelease will not cause a migration to the exchange. The fee will be negligible for most items. My (oft-unused, finally useful) graph of the price distribution of marketplace listings indicates that the majority of items sold fall between 10k and 100k. Now, do some math here... Yeah, that's a 200g - 2000g price range for the fee. That is NOT enough to kick people out of the marketplace and to the exchange, because the reason people use the market is for a quick, easy and trouble-free sale. The exchange is harder to get used to, and requires a significant time investment per item sold - bumping, thread creation, etc. The marketplace is fire and forget, and a lot of people won't mind dropping 2k for the convenience. We waste half that on avatar arena entries and towns topics already.
The larger items where the fees will really hurt - news for you, the ones on the marketplace were ALREADY overpriced. Most serious trading of big-ticket items doesn't touch the market. When it does, the prices are normally AT LEAST 2% over the exchange prices. So, GG, that's not going to touch anything.
People will raise their prices!
Nah. They can raise all they want, but the free-market capitalist nature of the marketplace will kick their miserly asses for trying. There will always be people who will undercut, and there will always be buyers demanding lower prices. Look at ebay - they have listing fees, and their prices are (on the whole) pretty damn cheap. It's not what the seller wants, remember, it's what the buyer will buy it for. If the prices on the market were determined by sellers, we'd all be proper ********.
Now, the good news.
What this WILL do is put a damper on inflationary trends. Y'all have been whinging about sealed letter prices for a while now, so guess what! They'll go down. This will take out 2% of the gold in the marketplace economy every day, which adds up sizably. Less gold in the economy means that gold is worth more in relation to items - i.e., lower prices. The gold you have will be worth more, the items won't spiral out of control and be inaccessible to all but the Gaia-obsessed. This will seriously help the affordability of Gaia's items, and will make questing that much easier.
So, stop whining. 2% will save you money - you just don't know it yet.
