Suggestion: Tax the leeches

[SoberPhil]

You do understand that I'm talking about players with 0 turnover across all 3 main professions, right?

it doesn't magically cause everyone to flee at once

And no, not everyone at once, it'll be botters Vs resellers with a side of sweaters for some time...

 

[TheOneOmega]

You do understand that I'm talking about players with 0 turnover across all 3 main professions, right?

Yes.

And no, not everyone at once, it'll be botters Vs resellers with a side of sweaters for some time...

Botting is in a different category. MindArk has always made their choice to forbid bots clear, which I think is a reasonable design decision.

 

[Aloisius]

I have an issue with the way our economy runs. It's not really a free market and there is a large degree of communism behind the scenes. So, I have to agree with OP about taxing the leeches (especially the ones that get 10 AUDs for the price of 1 like that prick i cursed with karma). On the other hand I also have to agree with 5$ that the level of communism should be ZERO!!! and I think there are some leftist ideologies in already play that should be left behind. It really could be great, as I always said.

The reason I think it's not free market is the way we have to buy stuff. Artificial scarcity and base TT values really make it a closed system with no relation to real life markets at all. For instance, when an avatar loses control of his account (death, jail, alzheimers or repossession by MA) the items don't make their way into the economy. The AH, stores and shopkeepers are really restrictive and in person deals are klunky AF (there should be a way for RL people to improve these but agaim MA is closed to outside innovation). A truly free market would allow citizens to create instruments of trade.

I suppose MA's biggest problem is managing the lines between the free market and communism while maintaining the illusion of freedom. Seems so funny to me how close to reality this game wants to be to RL but how far away it is due to the closed control system. I propose MA acknowledges it's positon as government, makes it into a democracy and let's the players control the rules and laws. Or at least give us the illusion of it. Just like RL!!

 

[pechunter]

Reselling is not a crime, any1 can do it but i do belive it goes out over us hunters and our returns. Seems like the only way to profit or break even longterm is trading and selling event weapons.

 

[SoberPhil]

Sooo, proponents of a truly free market, do you think the protagonists of these stories should have been arrested, or should have they been allowed to hoard basic necessities, because "free market".

1. Medical supplies seized from alleged price gouger to be distributed to hospitals

2. Brothers Who Hoarded 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Forced to Donate to Charity

3. AG says Ohio man hoarded 1,200 medical masks, hiked price 18 times original cost

There's many stories like that out there, shit like this was going in in many countries, such actions are largely condemned by society everywhere. Not in Entropia tho, maybe some of these people learned how to become price gouger right in thin game, which would be illegal in any country.

I hate to break it to some of you, but Sweden is a social democracy with a generous welfare state and tax redistribution, so the idea that I came up with is not detached from reality, quite the opposite in fact. Also, I hope you are smart enough to understand than when people say free market, it's just a figure of speech, that notion does not exist in real life, because every country has laws, rules and regulations.

 

[Alukat123]

Sooo, proponents of a truly free market, do you think the protagonists of these stories should have been arrested, or should have they been allowed to hoard basic necessities, because "free market".

1. Medical supplies seized from alleged price gouger to be distributed to hospitals

2. Brothers Who Hoarded 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Forced to Donate to Charity

3. AG says Ohio man hoarded 1,200 medical masks, hiked price 18 times original cost

There's many stories like that out there, shit like this was going in in many countries, such actions are largely condemned by society everywhere. Not in Entropia tho, maybe some of these people learned how to become price gouger right in thin game, which would be illegal in any country.

I hate to break it to some of you, but Sweden is a social democracy with a generous welfare state and tax redistribution, so the idea that I came up with is not detached from reality, quite the opposite in fact. Also, I hope you are smart enough to understand than when people say free market, it's just a figure of speech, that notion does not exist in real life, because every country has laws, rules and regulations.

In RL many people would die without welfare state. When not having welfare state in video games, then nobody dies... so apples and melons right here.

While i oppose free markets irl (because they're shit there and may cause people to die), i oppose welfare in video games.

 

[SoberPhil]

In RL many people would die without welfare state. When not having welfare state in video games, then nobody dies... so apples and melons right here.

While i oppose free markets irl (because they're shit there and may cause people to die), i oppose welfare in video games.

I wasn't calling to introduce welfare in Entropia, we already have some freebies we can get in the game but that's beyond my main point. Main point is that the ingame market needs some sort of regulation to function properly, mainly because real cash is involved, and you know what lawlessness leads to.

 

[Granny Rowan]

Trader or re-seller, where exactly is the line drawn ?

Traders are an absolute essential in the game, as there is no way we all have the time, skills, resources to make everything for ourselves, and if we did then what is the point of it being an RCE.
Resellers per Phil's description are those that have never depo'd yet have made ped from trading.
There are many players in this game that would fit that very narrow description, yet are still an essential and a benefit to others simply because they provide a service and are not greedy.
Example : Player hunts or mines, gets loot with moderate to low MU, but stack size is small so he has to choose:-
a) Tack it and sell it later.. fine if he has the ped to afford to do that
b) Sell to TT and not even try to get a little extra profit (or reduce losses from hunt), impatience is the greatest enemy in an RCE.
c) Sell to a 'reseller' or 'trader' who will stack until there is an amount worth listing, then place on AH or sell to a crafter, the good trader/reseller will pay at least some MU to the hunter/miner and will sell at a reasonable price to the crafters Useful- yes Necessary - yes Fair - yes Deserving of name calling for making profit on his/her investment (stock sat waiting for stacks to grow is dead ped) - No some of these traders are non-depo players who sweated and fruit walked to gain ped to start trading, then with care expanded their trading by recycling the profits, is that wrong.. no they have worked long and hard, and just because they cant depo or choose not to depo does not make them bad people.
d) Sell it on AH with super low SB and hope it gets bid up.. if you do, then don't moan if someone with more patience and possibly a bigger bank roll turns a profit when they later re-sell. Again some of these resellers may have started without depo, see note above.

I suspect this is more about people who snipe a good deal on high end items on AH and then resell at higher prices., this is the same as item d above, just bigger in amount of ped spent, though tbh if trading in thousand of ped per item, even 10's of thousands, I doubt they have always been non-depo.
In reality you all had the same right to buy at the lower price but didn't, so don't blame someone else for your failure to regularly check AH, or your inability to buy at that price on that day.

I would add however that I despise Auction bots, like most others I agree they should be sussed out by MA, and with any proven Alts, the accounts should be removed, very publicly to make others aware of the risk.

Every sale in the game can only achieve a high MU if the buyer is willing to pay that much, if you think it is too high, then don't buy, let the greedy trader/reseller/hunter/miner/crafter lose their AH fee and rethink their price. Experience is a great teacher

 

[SoberPhil]

I would add however that I despise Auction bots, like most others I agree they should be sussed out by MA, and with any proven Alts, the accounts should be removed, very publicly to make others aware of the risk.

Every sale in the game can only achieve a high MU if the buyer is willing to pay that much, if you think it is too high, then don't buy.

This. Thank you for saying it out loud. Auction bots buy things not because they need it, but to keep MUs artificially high, thus making profit by reselling, and imposing an additional tax on their buyers. And this has been going on with some expensive UL things as well.

And you're right, you don't have to buy if it's too expensive, totally agree with you here. But generally speaking people are willing to pay whatever they think is a fair price, but how do you know what's fair, if you're fairly new to the game, and the MUs on some items are artificially inflated? You could ask around, of course, but that does not guarantee that you'll get a fairly balanced response, especially if the person you're asking is the reseller.

 

[eyeshark]

This. Thank you for saying it out loud. Auction bots buy things not because they need it, but to keep MUs artificially high, thus making profit by reselling, and imposing an additional tax on their buyers. And this has been going on with some expensive UL things as well.

And you're right, you don't have to buy if it's too expensive, totally agree with you here. But generally speaking people are willing to pay whatever they think is a fair price, but how do you know what's fair, if you're fairly new to the game, and the MUs on some items are artificially inflated? You could ask around, of course, but that does not guarantee that you'll get a fairly balanced response, especially if the person you're asking is the reseller.

This is hands-down the best reason to find a good mentor and/or society. You need to have an impartial 3rd party, preferably someone who has your best interest at heart. Let’s be real thoug, if you’re relying on the person selling you something to tell you whether or not it’s a good price...

 

[TheOneOmega]

Sooo, proponents of a truly free market, do you think the protagonists of these stories should have been arrested, or should have they been allowed to hoard basic necessities, because "free market".

1. Medical supplies seized from alleged price gouger to be distributed to hospitals

2. Brothers Who Hoarded 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer Forced to Donate to Charity

3. AG says Ohio man hoarded 1,200 medical masks, hiked price 18 times original cost

There's many stories like that out there, shit like this was going in in many countries, such actions are largely condemned by society everywhere. Not in Entropia tho, maybe some of these people learned how to become price gouger right in thin game, which would be illegal in any country.

What this and your comment in Post #10 are doing, whether you realize it or not, is gesturing in the direction of views whose refutation would, by the nature of the case, almost certainly violate Discussion and Posting Rule 3.6 - Real-world Controversial Discussion. I am not making a claim as to whether your posts violate this rule as it is applied in practice; perhaps you could defend them by treating the questions you've raised as rhetorical. However, if the implication of a rhetorical question is a dubious conclusion, then the way to show this is to address it as though it was a bona fide question, a task which has been made artificially difficult in this case by the aforementioned methodological barrier. At minimum it is important for other readers to realize that the implications at which you're gesturing, i.e., that governments should override private ownership rights by force when doing so yields the higher collective utility, are not going unchallenged because there are no counterarguments, but because you've either crossed the line set by Rule 3.6, or positioned your rhetoric so close to it that no one can respond without crossing.

With that said, if we take your argument to be the modus ponens...

1) Governments should override private ownership rights by force when doing so yields the higher collective utility.
2) If governments should override private ownership rights by force when doing so yields the higher collective utility, then developers of roleplaying platforms which include a notion of private ownership rights should override those rights by "dev's prerogative" when doing so yields the higher collective utility among users of the platform.
____
3) Therefore, developers of roleplaying platforms which include a notion of private ownership rights should override those rights by "dev's prerogative" when doing so yields the higher collective utility among users of the platform.

...then even if questioning the first premise is off-limits by fiat, I think we can undercut your conclusion by questioning the second premise without saying anything politically controversial. In fact, it seems rather obvious that the roles of governments and roleplaying platform developers are only very weakly analogous. Regulation is part of real-world economies for reasons that don't apply to idealized virtual economies within roleplaying platforms. Avatars in the latter generally pay no recurring, monetary costs to sustain their lives and face no irremediable health/safety concerns. In fact, even in "hardcore mode (you only get one life)" platforms which may violate these norms, and thus where your analogy should be at its strongest, we still don't take it to be the responsibility of the platform developer to ensure avatars' survival. Indeed if we did, the solution would be never to implement a hardcore mode in the first place. So I'd say you have much more work cut out for you if you want to argue for the second premise, on top of the concern that your first premise is very likely not able to be criticized on this forum.

 

[SoberPhil]

Regulation is part of real-world economies for reasons that don't apply to idealized virtual economies within roleplaying platforms.

Thank you for your detailed answer. I feel like this is your main point, and I can't agree. This game has an RCE, the cash is real, which means it needs to be regulated at least partially, because again, the cash is real, it not minecraft we're talking about.

And I just checked the ToS we accept every time we login. There's a paragraph where it says: "You may not interfere in any way with the virtual economy of Entropia Universe and/or with other Participants’ ability to use or enjoy the auction system or any other trading system in Entropia Universe. The foregoing includes, without limitations, the prohibition of manipulation or cause to manipulate statistical data, directly or indirectly. This prohibitions includes, without limitation, prohibition of price manipulation and/or price fixing regarding virtual items on the auction system".

We already have some rules in place, except they're not enforced properly. When you have people hoarding stuff for the purpose of inflating the prices, that's the very definition of price gauging, and it is banned, yet rampant.

Ma, at least remove the auction bots, or "bots", whatever they are, they are so annoying.

 

[Svarog]

Trader or re-seller, where exactly is the line drawn ?

There is no line. There is this notion that "traders" are people who charge less than "resellers", but if there are willing buyers at higher rates, it means that those who sell for less just underperform at their chosen job. So we essentially assign better karma for incompetence.

 

[Alukat123]

When you have people hoarding stuff for the purpose of inflating the prices

Hunters, Miners, Crafters do that too, at least those who are profiting.... it's called balancing supply against the demand... what should MA do, force everyone to sell the item the second it's being looted, mined or crafted, even if the MU is total shit and would end up in loss?

 

[SoberPhil]

Hunters, Miners, Crafters do that too, at least those who are profiting.... it's called balancing supply against the demand... what should MA do, force everyone to sell the item the second it's being looted, mined or crafted, even if the MU is total shit and would end up in loss?

Yes, this is a tough one. No idea how to get over something like that, which is why I originally suggested that turnover across the 3 main professions vs deposits vs withdrawals should be a factor when determining who is a leech and who is not.

And yes, it's much more complicated than that, obviously, I'm not a developer and I don't see the whole picture. But as a player I see that there is a problem, that the market is being abused. I was just trying to offer a solution to this, but I absolutely agree that the issue is extremely complicated.

One thing is certain tho, the ToS clearly say that you're not allowed to manipulate prices, "without limitations".

 

[Alukat123]

No idea how to get over something like that, which is why I originally suggested that turnover across the 3 main professions vs deposits vs withdrawals should be a factor when determining who is a leech and who is not.

there just is no good way...
turnover doesn't work, because then they reseller just spend a little on shooting/mining or crafting...
deposits vs. withdrawal doesn't work either.. because if you play for profit, even without trading just by mining/hunting/crafting , then the amount withdrawn is gonna be bigger than the amount deposited...
also some people just outsource some sales to traders, because they don't have time to chat spam or enough auction slots to enlist everything...

 

[TheOneOmega]

Thank you for your detailed answer. I feel like this is your main point, and I can't agree. This game has an RCE, the cash is real, which means it needs to be regulated at least partially, because again, the cash is real, it not minecraft we're talking about.

And I just checked the ToS we accept every time we login. There's a paragraph where it says: "You may not interfere in any way with the virtual economy of Entropia Universe and/or with other Participants’ ability to use or enjoy the auction system or any other trading system in Entropia Universe. The foregoing includes, without limitations, the prohibition of manipulation or cause to manipulate statistical data, directly or indirectly. This prohibitions includes, without limitation, prohibition of price manipulation and/or price fixing regarding virtual items on the auction system".

We already have some rules in place, except they're not enforced properly. When you have people hoarding stuff for the purpose of inflating the prices, that's the very definition of price gauging, and it is banned, yet rampant.

Ma, at least remove the auction bots, or "bots", whatever they are, they are so annoying.

Any time, it's a pleasure to have such a civil and nuanced exchange on the subject. As for your response, note that no part of the red text challenges the statement you quoted (or its surrounding context). That Entropia has chosen to introduce some regulation into their platform was never in dispute. Rather, the point is that your prior examples, which might warrant governments overriding private ownership rights by force for collective health/safety, certainly do not necessitate that developers of roleplaying platforms which include private ownership rights as a feature must analogously override those rights under superficially analogous conditions. Developers can regulate their virtual economies if and to the extent they want, but so far you haven't given a convincing normative reason that MindArk should. Enter the green text; let's see if it can pull the weight of your argument.

I think we agree that warrant for the regulation of a roleplayed action does not automatically follow from warrant for the regulation of the analogous action in real life. Laws against capturing a queen in real life are necessary, but roleplaying the capture of a queen in chess necessitates no such statutory intervention. Rather, the person making a normative case for regulating a roleplayed action needs to supply specific reasons for thinking that particular mode of roleplay requires the regulation being proposed. Your Mindcraft reference seems to recognize this point.

However, that there is a link in Real Cash Economy roleplay platforms between game play decisions and USD is insufficient to bridge the gap, at least in the general case. For example, roleplaying the capture of a queen in chess does not suddenly require regulation when the game is played with a USD wager. In this scenario, 1) Actions are being roleplayed which would necessitate regulation if the actions analogous to the roleplayed actions were instead being performed in real life, and 2) The roleplay of such actions is likely to have real-world economic consequences, benefiting the person who engaged in roleplaying the actions at the financial expense of his or her opponent. This serves as a counterexample to your claim in green that attaching money to a game is a sufficient argument for dismissing the massive difference in regulatory necessity between the real world, and roleplayed worlds which may or may not, to various extents, implement systems which are analogous to real world systems, such as financial markets. Perhaps you have some hidden premises in your head that better warrant your conclusions, but I don't think anything you've put forward so far does the trick.

 

[MrFatBoy]

to be clear my post below is not aimed at true traders that buy a little lower than market and then sell for a fair price - like the ore traders of day past. These people are indeed a valuable resource and they are true "traders" not resellers that i am talking about below. and yes i have bought items at a great price and sold for a better than fair price most times and market value at most.

resellers that hoard up stuff like A10X amps and use alts to drive up prices are a plague these are the types that screw up the game. Many many times i tried to buy stuff just to have one of them over pay to keep me from getting the item. But then there are people that control the market via 1 of a kind BPs and actively buy their own amp or armor plates to "keep the price stable" so which is right and which is wrong? what about warps - is 20 ped fair or a rip off? A group of people coming together set prices is market manipulation too. I view warps as worth 5 ped max if it is a shared warp with 3 others. A VIP warp is between the buyer and seller imo and if someone is willing to pay 50 ped then so be it.

What about the obvious players that run accounts 24 hours a day to loot rare items and then sell for insane prices - to me that's market manipulation sponsored by MA to allow certain players to profit (for many reason i am sure). again there needs to be a buyer and if no one is willing to pay then prices will drop -maybe - top level gear is probably in its own world that i know nothing about.

How do you track the alts that trade among themselves to drive up the price - i see the same names for years and years selling same items like amps, chips etc.. year after year you can see the price swings and yet they still exist - maybe some of them are the same people you are talking about.

Bottom line is you are never getting rid of all the price bullshit because it is how some people make their profit and has been in game since forever. remember when a mod merc was gonna be worth 250K mod fap were going to cost 400K Jag armor was gonna cost 10's of Ks? it is the same today just with different items. I also could be off on the values as it has been is many years since i even cared to look at them.

bottom line is resellers exist because people buy at their stupid high prices and in general people think they can profit with these items

if no one paid the stupid prices then the resellers would be gone. are they are leeches - maybe - but people let them leech off their $ so who is to blame. imo its the buyer. and anyone that paid 100K for an item that is now worth lot less has only themselves to blame. if they made $ or save a lot with it then they have nothing to complain about.

 

[SoberPhil]

Developers can regulate their virtual economies if and to the extent they want, but so far you haven't given a convincing normative reason that MindArk should.

I guess this mean that you're okay with auction bots that have multiple accounts, rare item hoarders, also using multiple accounts to manipulate the prices, people who sell overpriced stuff to each other though auction to create fake markup, compet deed resellers (ie scammers), people adding an extra 0 to their auction slots, hoping someone would bid or buy by mistakes, which does work sometimes, as was written in this forum. Other stuff too, some of it discussed extensively here on PCF. I guess we have different moral standards, which means I have nothing else to say to you on this subject. At leas you're open about where you stand, I'll give you that.

 

[SoberPhil]

bottom line is resellers exist because people buy at their stupid high prices and in general people think they can profit with these items

You're absolutely right, people should do some research before committing to anything, but some are lazy, and the whales don't care anyway. However, I think that the developers could do more to increase the security of their paying customers, which will certainly help the game grow even further, people will be more inclined to invest if it were safer.

Imagine a new player buying compet deeds, or an A101 for +300 just to realise it's not as good as it seems, that's -1 paying customer straight off the bat,

 

[martinstids]

Make auction free - traders will be dead. But thats impossible

 

[Hego Damask]

Imagine a new player buying compet deeds, or an A101 for +300 just to realise it's not as good as it seems, that's -1 paying customer straight off the bat,

Compet deed. 1 minute of research and you find out its a dead end, so you just dont buy.
If somebody buys it without any idea what is it, guess he is an idiot, and no tax on the seller would save him.

If somebody would pay +200 on that amp and realize it is not as good as it seems, would he be a paying customer?
Atm the price's are rising, so if he buys it for +300 and realises it is not as good, probably when he decides to sell it, it will be 310-320, so that sure not makes him -1.

Btw, EU do tax the leeches often, just check forum about the crying topic's of not processed withdrawal's, they just let them do the daily work, and asking for the tax at the end.

 

[Hego Damask]

Make auction free - traders will be dead. But thats impossible

That is a terrible idea, auction fee is the only reason why the AH is not full with scam priced listing's.

 

[Granny Rowan]

what about warps - is 20 ped fair or a rip off? A group of people coming together set prices is market manipulation too. I view warps as worth 5 ped max if it is a shared warp with 3 others. A VIP warp is between the buyer and seller imo and if someone is willing to pay 50 ped then so be it.

While I agree with most of what was said by MrFatBoy re trading, I do feel that yet again I should defend warp ship owners against this ridiculous notion we are grasping profiteers when warp prices are set at 20 ped. Though I do note your qualifying statements re shared warps. please also note scheduled warps may have a lower ticket price but they rely on getting multiple customers to cover that, and to cover those warps to next location where they may have had no customer.

Firstly not every warp provider charges the same rate, but many are similar due to normal market forces, namely charge too much and they fly with someone else. There has as far as I am aware only been one attempt by an owner to get others to price fix in the 7 years I have been an owner. This is however discussed at length in other threads in this forum.

Many people feel that warps are overpriced yet have scant knowledge of what it is that controls that price..

1. Equus and Firebird. These warp capable quads have a warp cost of 3 ped as they have UL drives they simply repair. However they also have thruster decay, and oil usage, which although small should be accounted for.

2. Privateers (pathfinders and starfinders) and Motherships
Warp drive is (L) and cost 3ped TT. However with MU currently around 400% and rising, the actual cost of warp drive usage is at least 12 ped
They also need thruster to get to ship, as most owner/pilots will spend time on planet rather than live 24/7 on the ship. Then there is oil usage during undocking and docking and travel between SS and warp point.

This also presupposes that all warps are successful and that they don't fail and require a second warp. Warp drives operate similarly to TP chips so they may sometimes dump a warpship in a wrong location (usually a mob filled training grounds) requiring a second warp usage and quite possibly some ammo usage to clear a space to turn ship to warp without the warp being interrupted by a mob.
Yes it does happen, not often thankfully, yet recently happened to me twice in one journey and before you ask no this is not because I have low piloting skills, I probably have one of the top 5 in game.
Since the price of the warp has already been paid, owners do not ask more of the customer, they absorb the costs, but that will need to figure in to their pricing, the same as a retailer of fresh food factors in wastage.

Then there is a return on the investment.
Yes owners do expect to earn something towards their investment, just as FAP services do, with only low level fappers working for skills. You want someone that has invested thousands on a fap and the skills to use it, you expect to pay.
Most ship owners have spent time and ped to upgrade their skills especially avoidance, their gunners have also spent time and loads of ped improving skills.
They also upgrade their Structural Integrity to better protect their customers from Pirates. Why should a ship owner be expected to pay for a ship and upgrades to the ship to protect people and get nothing in return. Like everything in life you get the service you pay for.

Then there is time, people expect to pay a fapper for their time, yet strangely seem to think all ship owners work for free. On average from first contact and discussion of the from where to where and how much, to saying goodbye and good luck on arrival, a typical customer takes 20 minutes minimum, and may be 30 or more.
In the event of piracy attacks larger ships may also use gunner and repair crews, these guys usually do it for the fun and pay their own expenses, bless them. But a good owner will try to give something back whether it be discounts on items traded, free ammo, free spacethruster, that is between them, but still an expense.

So next time you think to book a warp, please people consider the time, expense and quality of service you are paying for, think would I do this for almost nothing ?
You always have the option of travelling in a quad or sleipnir if you don't want to pay what is fair

 

[shoti]

What is this communist bullshit.

If you don't like it, don't pay for those items. If no one paid it, then they wouldn't be that price.

Oh man..its another one here in few days with taxing and socialistic ideas....thats real plague. Where they all are coming from ?

 

[shoti]

Make auction free - traders will be dead. But thats impossible

Thats actua good and bad idea at same time. Totaly free makes AH real hell with gazziolions of items and stack servers will have problem to handle ( even novadays auction have problems like yesterday few hrs ). But making fee like 5-10 pec instead od 50 or fee free with limited slots can wastly improve seling ability for smal turnover avas and making small stacks of goods competitive in prices to large stacks.

 

[TheOneOmega]

I guess this mean that you're okay with auction bots that have multiple accounts, rare item hoarders, also using multiple accounts to manipulate the prices, people who sell overpriced stuff to each other though auction to create fake markup, compet deed resellers (ie scammers), people adding an extra 0 to their auction slots, hoping someone would bid or buy by mistakes, which does work sometimes, as was written in this forum. Other stuff too, some of it discussed extensively here on PCF. I guess we have different moral standards, which means I have nothing else to say to you on this subject. At leas you're open about where you stand, I'll give you that.

Green = YES, these are okay. You haven't offered convincing reasons for others to adopt your positions on any of them, at least in this thread; they appear to be based only in your personal distaste. Fishing for profitable auction mistakes using extra zeros is somewhat questionable, but the best way to address it, if at all, is via code, rather than via some bizarre punitive measure that requires MindArk to reverse engineer players' auction intentions (hopefully getting it right most of the time). The best solution would be an Auction Preferences window, where players could individually impose locks and thresholds upon themselves to prevent mistakes, and could later remove them at will. At the end of the day, once MindArk has given the player base reasonable means to avoid mistakes, personal responsibility has to account for any remaining cases of players falling through the cracks. If one has been given a popup warning, individual item trade locks, Auction Preferences, etc., and just flat out exemplifies too little discipline to utilize those safeguards, there's not much to say except that they've made a mistake in how they've played the game, perhaps a very costly one. The best we can hope for at that point is that the player was responsible enough to refrain from depositing more than they could afford to lose, perhaps the most central advice in Alice's iconic tutorial, and most tutorials that have been written since then (although perhaps the unspoken message of this thread is "you're a leech if you don't deposit more than you can afford to lose"). The general notion of capitalizing on other players' game play mistakes isn't a bug in game design; it's a necessity in all but the purest of luck-based games.

Yellow = YES, these are okay in abstraction from any particular game's rule set, but NO they are not okay in Entropia given its current rule set. Whether to allow multiple accounts and whether to have a regulated or unregulated market (and if regulated, to what extent) are game design decisions. Given that MindArk has chosen the specific rule set they have, it is not okay to violate such policies, even if they are not actively enforced. Doing so creates a situation where only dishonest players obtain a certain game play advantage, while honest players doing their best to follow the rules face the equivalent relative disadvantage. However, in terms of deciding which policies to include in the rule set, there is no objective right or wrong answer. Your game's market can be highly regulated like the U.S. stock market, less regulated like forex markets, or pretty much unregulated like cryptocurrency markets. Different markets exhibit different types of behavior, but any model could work as part of a roleplaying platform.

Red = NO, this is not okay. Scams, such as borrowing items with no intent to return them, offering to upgrade items and running off with them, lying about item functionality to secure a sale, etc., are not okay even if a game's rule set fails to explicitly prohibit them. I won't formalize an argument for this, since we are already in agreement on the matter, but the basic thrust would be to argue that such conveyance of misinformation through a game's chat or private message system constitutes player-to-player, not avatar-to-avatar communication, and falls outside the scope of the roleplay paradigm that the majority of the game falls into.

 

[martinstids]

That is a terrible idea, auction fee is the only reason why the AH is not full with scam priced listing's.

yea its bad idea, but potentially great one if u adjust accordingly. For example players with high turnover can sell more items in auct and guys with no turnover can sell like 5 items at time with mu cap or something. There is deffinately way to make it fair and avoid scamfest. but its kinda scamfest now anyways becouse of resellers

 

[Granny Rowan]

Also consider that if you amend AH fees you would have to consider shop sales tax, else shop owners would be put at a disadvantage which could lead to many more empty or near empty shops.

 

[MrFatBoy]

There is no line. There is this notion that "traders" are people who charge less than "resellers", but if there are willing buyers at higher rates, it means that those who sell for less just underperform at their chosen job. So we essentially assign better karma for incompetence.

I think there is a massive difference.

Lebanner (not sure i spelled that right) was a true trader (long time ago ore/emat traders bought for MU -1% to -3% for those that dont know the name i am mentioning), buying a few % under MU then sell to who-ever for a profit. He takes the risk of MU changes and time to stack. He bought everything pretty much any small stack i had and i was able to continue mining. That is a trader in my mind.

A reseller offers you 105% for a 110% or higher MU item (even when there are buy order in AH at 110%) just to take advantage of those who are Ped strapped. Not illegal but not fair either. DO i blame the reseller - no i blame the seller, i would TT my stuff before, and did on many occasions, than support a re-seller.

A reseller buys up all of a limited resource / item then asks way more than what the MU was, or uses alts to make fake trades to drive up MU, then dumps and waits for MU to crash and repeats. (as i mentioned in my other post).

I have gotten lucky buys in AH and sold for a fair MU i view that as different because the seller said i'll take TT+0 or whatever i get so if i got for TT+0 and sold for TT+200 when MU was +220 then i view that as trading.