Removal of auction-transport fee to support ingame Economy

There is another thread of Yquem about the removal of the transportation fee of auctions, but since that thread is based on the annoyance of not knowing on which planet you can grab your item, I decided to make my own thread. If your are interested in that subject you can go to the thread of Yquem or to the thread of Serica.

please note that this thread is not about the removal of the fee that is charged to move your avatar to different planets.

In my opinion it is important for the continuation of ROCKtropia, future planets, Calypso and the Entropia Universe as a whole that the transportation fee on the auction is removed. The biggest share of the resources is gathered by colonists on Calypso and therefor it is not attractive for crafters to go to ROCKtropia or future planets, since there is not that much supply of resources. Same goes for the sales of crafted products.
Due to crafters crafting on Calypso, miners and hunters should sell their supplies there to have a good chance of selling them for the market value. This also makes it for these two groups a better thing to stay on Calypso.

These vicious circle is very hard to break, but in to give miners and hunters a good reason to go to future planets and allow the Entropia Universe Economy to keep rolling, it is important that there is no additional fee to auction interplanetary. If the transportation fee stays, the Entropia Universe is not one big universe, but rather a set of independent games.

Im going to have to dissagree with you on this one.

As each planet is encouraged to bring its own new players into the entropia universe, exposing each planets new colonists to the full market competition currently on calypso is a terrible idea.

By having these transport and auction fees in place a good deal of crafters will remain on calypso, and a good share of the crafted items too. That means that there will be a seperate market for these items on the new planets that will always be within a % of the market price on other planets. Giving the new colonists this small measure of protection prevents them from being bullied straight out of the market as soon as they enter it.

In the future this will also create trading opportunities for savvy traders who are able to purchase resources or crafted items and transport them between planets to take advantage of various planets differing supply/demand conditions.

addz said:

In the future this will also create trading opportunities for savvy traders who are able to purchase resources or crafted items and transport them between planets to take advantage of various planets differing supply/demand conditions.

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Yes, I think the reason for the auction fees are to encourage traders to travel back and forth between planets

As it is now, traders can make a few PED by running L items and weapons to the new planets instead of simply putting it on auction

or they can buy 100 (L) items in Calypso auction, go to RockTropia and relist them there.



However, I do agree that it should be:
1) More clear about where you are buying the item from.
2) Possible to sort which planet(s) you want to see offers from.

a good fee between planets is no problem to me like addz said it might give opertunities for traders, but local fee is silly cost.
Auctioning items is like the system taking 90% of your markup if its smaller stacks what u mostly have and what most ppl are looking for.

I just like how the auction fees are designed to keep the lilttle guy broke while big item sellers enjoy an extremely low max on what they sell. The ratio between cost to sell and total sale is WAYYY outta proportion in that regard.

IMHO, the transportation fee for auctions has to stay. The transport is a service provided by some yet invisible individuals which has to be paid for, even though it's just beaming or whatever (we haven't learned yet how this is really done). It's also part of the separation between planets. If you're asking to remove the transportation fee for auctions, you're also asking to remove the transportation fee for us players. Otherwise it just doesn't make any sense to me.

It's the planet partner's fault if their planets are (even) less attractive due to this fee. If they can't come up with something interesting or unique or whatever, they need to improve. Nobody asked to have more of the same. If the majority of the player base stays on Calypso, well, it's their free decision to do so, and they usually have a reason. Mine is that it's too expensive to go there just to look. And reading what others are saying, Rocktropia is the same, just some other mobs.

There's no need to crawl up to the planet partner's asses. EU is an RCE. That's true for us so it has to be true for them, too. They should have thought about this before they joined.

If they fail, they fail. This still is an economy, even if it's a virtual one.

The situation with CND and CP is a different one, of course. Since it's not possible to have a similar set of everyday actions there compared to Calypso, I'd say that it makes sense to cut the fees in half or make them even less.

Nonetheless I believe that the transportation fee for auctions is part of the experience.

addz said:

Im going to have to dissagree with you on this one.

As each planet is encouraged to bring its own new players into the entropia universe, exposing each planets new colonists to the full market competition currently on calypso is a terrible idea.

By having these transport and auction fees in place a good deal of crafters will remain on calypso, and a good share of the crafted items too. That means that there will be a seperate market for these items on the new planets that will always be within a % of the market price on other planets. Giving the new colonists this small measure of protection prevents them from being bullied straight out of the market as soon as they enter it.

In the future this will also create trading opportunities for savvy traders who are able to purchase resources or crafted items and transport them between planets to take advantage of various planets differing supply/demand conditions.

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for such thing as planet, that will lead to have his own customer base, and having to build economy around planet with trading outside the planet, I think fees are a good idea.

But for the CP exemple, not sure.
and for rocktropia as it is.. u cant build a planet if u cant bring crafters miner trader hunters overthere, and make them survive at least as good as on calypso, so transport fees right from the start .. not sure its a good idea with on top of it a huge tp fee..
its gonna make things very hard to build something from nothing on rocktropia with those two factors.calypso trading is almost unavoidable to build rocktropia.. so it will be very costly for newcommers on rocktropia as it is and a bad experience spawning there imo.
in this case, i think a better way would have been to implement transport auction fees later on rocktropia ?

Reading through the posts here I have to agree that there are some positive sides on the auction-transport-fee which I didn't think of. This doesn't mean I think it shouldn't be removed at all.

xXSqUaLLXx said:

[...]

and for rocktropia as it is.. u cant build a planet if u cant bring crafters miner trader hunters overthere, and make them survive at least as good as on calypso, so transport fees right from the start .. not sure its a good idea with on top of it a huge tp fee..
its gonna make things very hard to build something from nothing on rocktropia with those two factors.calypso trading is almost unavoidable to build rocktropia.. so it will be very costly for newcommers on rocktropia as it is and a bad experience spawning there imo.
in this case, i think a better way would have been to implement transport auction fees later on rocktropia ?

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This part of Squall describes quiet nicely what I see as the problem. This fee is in my opinion part of the reason ROCKtropia doesn't rock that much yet.

endermigne said:

[...]

There's no need to crawl up to the planet partner's asses. EU is an RCE. That's true for us so it has to be true for them, too. They should have thought about this before they joined.

If they fail, they fail. This still is an economy, even if it's a virtual one.

[...]

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The planet partners do indeed have a problem if they fail, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt the Entropia Universe. If the first planet partner fails to stay alive after a short time, it might scare possible future planet partners.
I do agree that it's their own problem if planetary systems die due to bad management by the planet partner after a while. But in my opinion MindArk owes the Universe to give a planetary system a good possibility to get an economy that is big enough to turn on it's own. So a period of no auction-transport-fee might help.

endermigne said:

[...]

If you're asking to remove the transportation fee for auctions, you're also asking to remove the transportation fee for us players. Otherwise it just doesn't make any sense to me.

[...]

Click to expand...

The fee to transport your avatar to different planets is a replacement of the spaceships that require pilots to fly between systems. This is a system that was here and is waiting to be reimplemented. This is like trains in the real world. If MindArk decides that Spaceships have a cargo space for secure transportation from one planet to another planet, then I think that auction shouldn't be able to be retrieved on other planets at all, unless you have a spaceship transporting it for you. But even in this case, there needs to be a certain period of time that allows resources to flow from the current planets, to a new planet.

Neverdie, and other future planet owners should pay back some of the taxes they get to get people to come there... paying huge prizes for events should get a few people doing a few events.

Brother Rick said:

The planet partners do indeed have a problem if they fail, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt the Entropia Universe. If the first planet partner fails to stay alive after a short time, it might scare possible future planet partners.
I do agree that it's their own problem if planetary systems die due to bad management by the planet partner after a while. But in my opinion MindArk owes the Universe to give a planetary system a good possibility to get an economy that is big enough to turn on it's own. So a period of no auction-transport-fee might help.

Click to expand...

I see what you're saying, but IMHO this can't be the solution. I mean if Rocktropia gets subsidies in some way, FPC and future planet partners will feel treated badly when they don't get it. It's like comparing PE with EU. Starting now hasn't got anything to do with starting six years ago.

As far as Rocktropia is concerned, already the idea behind the planet and the current status lacks in everything. It's no different to Calypso. Why would anyone go there? This isn't bad for Rocktropia alone but also hits MA as Rocktropia is their first partner to go live, I totally agree with you on that. Other future planet partners look at it and see that it doesn't work out that great and players are somewhat reluctant.

If there's a new planet partner, MA and the planet partner involved should allow free travelling for the first week, hand out free zero-TT-items for e.g. the first 1,000 visitors, ... The planet partner has to come up with a sparkling something to attract players based on the purpose or idea of the planet.

But that's something they need to think of in the first place! It's rather lame to simply turn on the light. This needs some laser-show, fireworks, ...

MA and Neverdie didn't do anything of that with Rocktropia. Call it bad design, bad timing, misjudgement of us or whatever. I'm thinking that it's not that much the failure of MA, but more of Neverdie. Maybe he thought that his name and the story behind CND alone does the trick? It seems a bit like it.

I'm saying if they come up with something that will somehow be true for the planets to come, I don't have anything against that. However, it can't be that Rocktropia is now the official trial-and-error planet with the sole goal to find out how to make us go there and make the planet partner happy, while not hurting FPC. It's like we'll be sitting here in a year from now and still be wondering what it's all supposed to be. By then Rocktropia has turned into a punching ball. Oh noes...

Don't forget that having a plan spreads confidence among investors. "Trying to make this work" is not really professional and looks odd I assume.

the transport fee would make a lot more sense if each planet had it's own set of items to loot and craft

get some quests up there on the rock... with decent prizes, not just blazers... and maybe, just maybe it'll be worth the visit.

It is a rock oriented planet... so what could be some prizes?

How about free mp3s on itunes or some similar online thing Nevedie cuts a deal with instead of the pay to play Jango thing... or do it as a substitute prize for the Jango thing for people that just want to listen to rock instead of play it.

I think the transport fees make sense -- it wouldn't be logical to have to pay to travel but not transport item(s).
However, what doesn't make any sense is have a 60ped transport fee to buy a pistol on CP that was listed on Calypso. It's only 35 ped return... why the f**k would I pay an extra 25 ped?
It'll take me a whole 3 minutes to TP down, run into an auction house to buy what I want, and TP back up.

The only justification that makes any sense for the exorbitant fees is the past scarcity of space flights (before hangars were taken away). Unless you owned a hangar or had a good friend with one, you couldn't travel on a moment's notice. It sometimes took hours to find a pilot, so the extra transportation fee could be worthwhile on some occasions.

i just have made Roctropia my home...with no buyers here the auction is my only option to get by, I just found out about this transport fee it is rediculous why is there an auction fee and transport. I wish we could do something about it : ( New transporter/delivery people? idk

fees should stay but they also should be reduced.

kosmos

p.s. i won't bother to beat a dead horse people above posted why the fees should stay