What press told me about GW2 that I didn't already know

[Simply Kedde]

I admit I completely missed the phrasing about the first item of a kind to be sold. I also assumed a completely free market situation where the price for that first item would then be decided by each sides willingness to part with their respective goods. I see that isn't the exact same market forces in question there.

[Alaris]

You pretty much need a trading system for anything the traders can't handle well. So you cannot remove normal trading entirely, ever, unless all of your items are less than super-rare.

[raspberry jam]

I understand supply and demand. You could have spared that wall-of-text aka look-at-me-I-can-talk-about-stuff-and-look-smart-even-though-it's-unrelated.

Please look up "staircase procedure" and "reliability at small samples". I deal with sample sizes and gradient descent algorithms fairly regularly in my work. I hope that I don't have to wall-of-text you to gain credibility.

In trader models, prices are adjusted using staircases or some related algorithm. These algorithms are very unreliable when your sample size is very small, which is the case for super-rare items. Even if there are 2-3 trades, that still leaves you with a large margin of uncertainty.

It's not about reliability. A price is a price, no? If you want something, here's the price tag. 100% reliability always.

Look, it's dead simple, as I have explained to you time and time again: you set an initial price depending on supply (actual, such as with limited-issue items, or expected, like with drop rate times expected kill rate). Then you let these prices fluctuate with the purchases and sales. The variables you set (and you can let these self-adjust as well, without any problems as long as the total amount of all trades is big enough, since gold is a common commodity) are related to the buy/sell spread, which gives you a sort of gold sink. You also need to define elasticity for the few initial transactions, though in most cases, perfect elasticity (no change in price at all) for the initial transactions is ok. If that isn't suitable (as might be the case for limited-issue items), you use an hysteresis curve. Regardless of which, the amount of trades is so great that after a couple of days, the system is running on its own. You need about 8 or 10 trades for the prices to look free-floating. Before that, the traders (as in, the players who are buying and selling) will "see through" the system since their sales and purchases affect the price. That doesn't mean that they can exploit it, but it feels more artificial - but then again, no more artificial than that all GW1 major runes cost 100 gold or whatever it is. And that is just the beginning, as I said, after a couple of transactions, something just goes snap and the prices look completely "real".

These systems already exist, and have been proven to work by actually testing them. They just haven't made it into any product yet.

[Alaris]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Btw, these systems exist and have been used a lot in systems. We use them all the time in psychophysics. I have work experience on what makes them fail.

But you're either interested in winning an argument even if wrong, or in annoying me. Either way, there's no point continuing that conversation.

[djacob]

Yeah jam, I have to say that I hate trading, but if all items I got in a game were sold to other players for a fixed price I'd quit. Because I wouldn't agree with those prices. And I'm quite agreeable normally. If you want a game with such a system, make it yourself. I doubt many would play it though.

[Alaris]

That's just it...

I'd prefer an auction house even if

1) traders set the price properly due to supply and demand (which is likely for anything I'd buy or sell anyway)
2) all items were available via those traders

It's like saying that races make for a less perfect game from a game mechanic perspective. Yeah, they do, but I still really love to play as different races with different abilities so if a dev makes a game with races and a good-enough system they'll get my $$

[raspberry jam]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

Btw, these systems exist and have been used a lot in systems. We use them all the time in psychophysics. I have work experience on what makes them fail.

But you're either interested in winning an argument even if wrong, or in annoying me. Either way, there's no point continuing that conversation.

I know what you mean, but no, these are not the same systems at all. These don't fail - at least not from what I've seen. There are pitfalls, but they are easy to plug.
But if you have experience, then please tell me, what does cause them to fail? Because the stuff you've been saying so far like saying you can't build a house of bricks because plants need water to grow. Maybe you're talking about that the house of bricks look ugly, but that is beside the point.

Yeah jam, I have to say that I hate trading, but if all items I got in a game were sold to other players for a fixed price I'd quit. Because I wouldn't agree with those prices. And I'm quite agreeable normally. If you want a game with such a system, make it yourself. I doubt many would play it though.

It's not a fixed price. And you are not selling these items to other players. You are selling them to an NPC. Surely, you don't mind selling things to an NPC, do you?

[Alaris]

New things from guildcast:

1) particle effects in large-scale PvP, it tones down stuff not important to you while keeps stuff that affects you
2) underwater PvP, even one conquest map has lots of underwater
3) another conquest map has really strong NPCs which you interact with

Conquest sounds more fun with the variety of secondary mechanics... I'm still hoping for one that brings GvG-like gameplay.

@jam: I've been telling you over and over what the pitfalls are, you're not listening. Remember the part about these algorithms being hugely inaccurate at low samples?

Here's a scenario. Imagine the algorithm picks a price that is well below what the "real" price is. Sellers won't sell, and if buyers can buy, they'll buy like crazy and make easy money when the price adjusts. If they cannot buy (as in, if the game remembers what it has in stock) then either the price cannot adjust, or you need to increase it over time... but that means prices can grow to huge numbers if nobody wants to sell.

Here's another scenario. What if the price picked is way too high. Anyone that has one can sell for huge profit, and buy back later when price is adjusted. But nobody's buying.

Both of those are fixed by human interaction.

Also.... all the advantages of a trader system (except maybe immediacy, but even then wait times are short with large volumes) are fixed with higher transparency. If people can see how much a given item has been sold lately for (and there is a chance you can get that info in GW2) then you can easily set and ask for a reasonable price. GW2 also lets you ask for an item and set your price, so the market is no longer controlled by supply, both sides have a say in setting the price.

When you have transparency and the ability to post "wanted" ads, the difference between this and traders is very small mechanically... basically it's replacing AI with human intelligence.

[raspberry jam]

@jam: I've been telling you over and over what the pitfalls are, you're not listening. Remember the part about these algorithms being hugely inaccurate at low samples?

Here's a scenario. Imagine the algorithm picks a price that is well below what the "real" price is. Sellers won't sell, and if buyers can buy, they'll buy like crazy and make easy money when the price adjusts. If they cannot buy (as in, if the game remembers what it has in stock) then either the price cannot adjust, or you need to increase it over time... but that means prices can grow to huge numbers if nobody wants to sell.

Here's another scenario. What if the price picked is way too high. Anyone that has one can sell for huge profit, and buy back later when price is adjusted. But nobody's buying.

Both of those are fixed by human interaction.

Also.... all the advantages of a trader system (except maybe immediacy, but even then wait times are short with large volumes) are fixed with higher transparency. If people can see how much a given item has been sold lately for (and there is a chance you can get that info in GW2) then you can easily set and ask for a reasonable price. GW2 also lets you ask for an item and set your price, so the market is no longer controlled by supply, both sides have a say in setting the price.

When you have transparency and the ability to post "wanted" ads, the difference between this and traders is very small mechanically... basically it's replacing AI with human intelligence.

No, no. See, that is not inaccuracy. Accuracy means that you're aiming at something... Here, you're creating reality. There is no "real" price because the price is the price.

In your first scenario. Imagine there's a promo and they gift 25 minis to people via a magazine lottery or something. And one of those 25 thinks, I want to sell this for great wads of dosh. So he heads off to the trader, sees a price of X (set according to the item limit of 25). He now has a choice. sell or not. He doesn't sell? Fine, someone else will. He does? Price drops somewhat, or remains the same, depending on what you've chosen. Now there is a/a few mini/s on the market. People buy them, for slightly more than what the sellers got. And so on.
But imagine that no one sells. Is that a problem? Not really. Price doesn't rise. Minis won't hit the market, at least not right away. Does this matter, then? Again, not really, but if worst comes to worst, the price can be manually adjusted. It shouldn't, though: with 25 people involved, the chance that a couple of them will tire of it or decide that s/he wants money for something else, is quite large. If there is something like, one item in the entire game world, like with Gaile's frogs, then maybe the market will be without such frogs.
This happens naturally and is thus not a flaw (or, I invite you to try to buy Gaile's frogs).

In your second scenario, yes, sure, and that can happen for anything else as well: Imagine theres a game with player-to-player trading, and some item appears, no one knows much about it, everyone thinks that it's rare. So some such items appear on the market and get highly priced. People make large amounts of money. Then it turns out that the item is not rare, not hard to get, or unwanted for some other reason. Price drops. The persons who got large amounts of money buys the item back for small amounts of money.
This happens naturally and is thus not a flaw (people do get rich in this way both in GW1 and WoW).

As for transparency solving everything: Yeah, no, not quite. The point of having a trader house is not just that it replaces the auction house (smaller database, less strain on the servers etc.), but also that everything goes through it. In GW1, WoW, other MMOs, there's a merchant who will give you 35 gold for that sword that some poor enemy dropped when you killed him. With a trader house, he might give you 40 gold for it, if there's been few sword drops lately, or just 12, if there's been a lot.

This is an entirely new way of looking at things such as prices. Instead of finding an item that has a price tag on it as if you picked it up in a supermarket, you'll find an item and then you have to find out what they're willing to pay for it back in the village, just as you would if this was reality. Greater immersion.

[Khanisaurus]

If they take the human element out, and just went the way you want jam, I would scream bloody murder and possibly rage quit. The auction houses are a large draw to the game for me. People should determine what something is worth not some damn algorithm. Take the crappy numbers out and let us be human. I hate games that just turn into number crunching. Lets just have fun and enjoin the game rather than being told you are not doing this or that right, because the numbers say you are wrong/inefficient/idiotic.

Numbers already run our lives enough.