BabeTrader changes

[HotnessRater]

So I had changed BabeTrader so that you could set the sell price. Before that, everything was like an auction forever where the price just went up a certain percent from the last buy price. People complained and wanted to be able to set their own price, resulting in giving people a chance to essentially just price their pictures out of reach of anyone. It deadlocked most of the pictures and made it so you could only really get a picture if you got it new and locked it in.

This kills the whole spirit I was trying to achieve where people who are playing could work hard and get any picture... and the person they took it from had a chance to get it back.

I'm looking for options on how we should fix this. Several have been proposed.

1) We could revert back to no setting prices. If you want a picture, buy it for 10% above the last buyer and its yours. People could steal pictures by making enough cash to steal them. The only way to protect them is to have enough cash to buy it back

2) We could impose some kind of tax on pictures based on their asking price

3) We could put a cap on the total asking price... maybe the users net worth or something.

4) I don't know, you tell me your idea

Personally, I would just revert everything back to no set prices and make it a free for all. No protection, if you can buy it, its yours. I know this would piss off the hoarders out there but I might be okay with that.

I'm not going to make any changes without some input so lets have some discussion. Speak up now and argue your case or you might not like the changes.

Any ideas?

 

[ChaoticPanda]

What if you make it so each player can only hoard so may pictures? Based on your rank you can hoard a number of pictures. The higher your rank the more pictures you can hoard. Of course no one will be able to hoard all of there pictures. And if you drop in rank where you would have to lose a number of hoarded pictures then you'd have to un-hoard down to what your rank allows. This would allow the hoarders to hoard some of the pictures and still allow the game to happen. Plus if you un-hoard a picture you may or may not be able to hoard it again.

 

[HotnessRater]

We could also allow you to toggle a picture as "Not For Sale" and have a daily maintenance fee charged for them. Maybe 100 points per day for each picture that you want to mark as not for sale. Essentially setting the price to 2,000,000,000 means "Not For Sale" anyway.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

Really there are several problems:

1) all the good pics get locked up, creating a static situation that is no fun for new players

2) a number of top accounts seem to be inactive, locking up thousands and thousands of pictures forever

3) the current score system isn’t an accurate representation of a player’s wealth. It doesn’t consider how many pics you have, or what you invested in them. Your score should be the sum of points on hand and the total paid for inventory.

 

[ChaoticPanda]

I think if an account is inactive (say, no completed quests in 7, or 10, or 14 days, that the account stops earning points for hits or matchup wins (it would still get paid for sales). I think it’s markups should be reduced by half each week the account is inactive. For example, consider a pic with a million point markup:

Bought for 10, priced at 1,000,000. Standard automatic markup would be 5, so player markup would actually be 999,985.

Price after:
Week 1: 500,008 (999,985/2 + 15)
Week 2: 250,011 (999,985/4 + 15)
Week 3: 125,013 (999,985/8 + 15)
Week 4: 62,514
Week 5: 31,264
Week 6: 15,638
Week 7: 7,827
Week 8: 3,917
Week 9: 1966
Week 10: 990
Week 11: 507
Week 12: 260

It would take a bit less than 3 months for pics with a markup of a million to become affordable again.

I like this idea. It helps with keeping players active and it makes it so your inactivity doesn't hurt other active players.

 

[HotnessRater]

I think if an account is inactive (say, no completed quests in 7, or 10, or 14 days, that the account stops earning points for hits or matchup wins (it would still get paid for sales). I think it’s markups should be reduced by half each week the account is inactive. For example, consider a pic with a million point markup:

Bought for 10, priced at 1,000,000. Standard automatic markup would be 5, so player markup would actually be 999,985.

Price after:
Week 1: 500,008 (999,985/2 + 15)
Week 2: 250,011 (999,985/4 + 15)
Week 3: 125,013 (999,985/8 + 15)
Week 4: 62,514
Week 5: 31,264
Week 6: 15,638
Week 7: 7,827
Week 8: 3,917
Week 9: 1966
Week 10: 990
Week 11: 507
Week 12: 260

It would take a bit less than 3 months for pics with a markup of a million to become affordable again.

Completed quests is not a good indicator. 7 of the top 10 people complete the log in quests weekly (even if they don't go to babetrader)

 

[HotnessRater]

I still like just the standard markup on all pictures. If you lose it daily, you can buy it back for price + 10%. Paid price is always just under current price. It will go back and forth many times but that creates rivalry... and eventually someone gives up. One person gets the picture, the other gets a ton of cash

Of course to make this work, we would have to give you the ability to clear lost pictures from your list.. the ones you give up on.

Then when you log in, go to lost pictures. Buy back the ones you care about and clear the ones you give up on.

 

[HotnessRater]

Hmm, it doesn't give me the login quests until I buy a picture. I think that is how it should be, btw. You should have to do more than just click refresh on your browser window once a day, you should have to take some actions, rate some pics, something useful.

Well that isn't what the quest says:

"Visit all 3 sites (must be logged into them)"

 

[ChaoticPanda]

I don't get credit for logging into the sites until I buy a picture either.

 

[gtsecond]

I think a simple cap on value per picture, say, 16000 units, should be introduced. Any system where one can still put 1,000,000 on an item stops trading, so a cap is essential IMHO. In parallel, an inactivity tax, to reduce picture value by, perhaps, 1% per inactive day, would help to encourage the dormant accounts to play actively. A bot guard of some kind would help this process. I would not recommend taxing player points, as this would reduce liquidity in the system.

At any rate, change is good, as it favours active players who will adapt to whatever is enacted. If designed well it will also derail any bots to reduce abuse of the system.

 

[HotnessRater]

So, is there any sort of plan for what changes we can expect, in what order, and maybe some time estimate?

Nope, it's highly dependent on how much time I have to put towards it. There is a little tweak I need to do to the rating/match up system and pagination across all pages (except infinite scroll) will be a priority. No estimate on a timeline.

I've come to like the idea of limiting total markups to an amount equal to our current net worth. It's a pretty safe number to use, as currently the only way to lose net worth is to actually price a pic below what we bought it for, and actually sell it.

It is a much more stable number than points on hand, which can go up and down like a yo-yo if you are active in auctions. I've been up and down 4 or 5 times just in the last week between 50k and 125k.

I think markup margin should start with some base number, like 10k, or 100k, whatever seems reasonable, and add our net worth to that. That gives new layers some concentrated power over a low number of pics until they get their feet wet.

Before this could be implemented, it seems natural to first fix the scorebord, so the number is easily available. I think it would be useful to players as well, to see a better representation of how strong all of our competitors really are. We have some people laying in the weeds below position 100 in cash, but who have a lot of pics. I see them pop up onto the list once in a while, then disappear again. It would also be helpful in evaluating how strong our opponent's image holdings are (how much they paid, so what kind of shopping we can do).

Yeah I like that too. Agreed

If this is what you choose to do, then it would be good to freeze cross-buying for a few days after a pricing change so people can distribute their markup power. You could start by just dividing their markup power equally beteen their pics, in auto mode. Then people could switch to manual and take away markups here and there to protect the stuff that matters most to them.

When I do this I won't be freezing it. I'll leave the prices at what they are and slowly drop them something like 10% a day until until they hit their buying power threshold.

 

[HotnessRater]

It's pretty simply really.

If total markup > total worth, Get all pictures with markup higher than system markup and reduce their price to their current price - 10% or to the system markup price whichever is higher.

And when setting a price their total markup can't exceed their net worth

 

[HotnessRater]

Okay, that makes sense to me, but you should order the list from greatest markup to least before starting reductions, and stop marking down whenever you either get to the end of the list or their total markup is finally below their net worth. Otherwise, you may keep reducing prices below their total net worth, until you get to the end of the list, leaving them more vulnerable than they should be.

Yeah, you're reading my mind

So, users are going to need a running total of their available and used markup. When they look at their pics they will need to see the extra markup on each pic.

Agreed

Are you going to change the scoring screen first?

Yes

Those seem like clear incremental changes, that can be tested to make sure it is working before moving on. I dunno about doing the price restriction stuff at the same time as the price reduction code, or doing those changes separately to make debugging easier. If done separately, which should be done first?

They will probably be done at the same time

Nah, I just thought of another problem. With your incremental markdown plan, players with the smallest markups will become shoppable loooong before the biggest markups become affordable. So, people should go mark everything up as high as possible right now, so their pics become vulnerable last. That lets them shop other people's pics while still being protected.

Either way, it only buys them a few days. I might make it 20% or higher. For the first iteration, I might even make it a maximum of 10% of their net worth. Not sure yet. I have to do some math

So, prices are ints, right? Signed or unsigned, 32 or 64 bits? Or 128?

32 bit unsigned ints

Rule of 72 gives us a shorthand answer to how fast prices will come down, 72/10 = 7, roughly. So every 7 reductions will cut prices by half. In other words, prices will get cut roughly in half each week. So, if my prices are 4 times higher than everyone else's, I have two extra weeks of protection. 16 times higher gives me 4 weeks.

Yeah I know where you are going with that. I could calculate the percentage of decrease each time to ensure that all pictures hit their adjusted price at the same time. That might mean 50% for some, and 1% for others. I just have to sit down and figure out the math for that. It's definitely doable though. Computers are good at math

 

[HotnessRater]

Lost in all this has been a feature to mark some of our pics as simply not for sale. Nobody has been talking about that very much. I think everybody wants it, otherwise they wouldn't price their pics so high. It should be limited somehow, though, or all the pics get locked up. Currently the top 10 accounts have around 280,000 pics, and most are priced beyond any reasonable ability to buy them (exceptions being rcrus and acornett1).

Yeah, I'm not worried about the not for sale too much. Given the fact that they can still set some pictures beyond reasonable reach is okay with me. It might be something I look at eventually, but not in the near future

 

[HotnessRater]

Breaking it down: it seems that six accounts are related, jinbox, ygroup, qqnov28, sepaol24, janzohom17, and jypt98. They seem to have split pics in a lot of galleries, where you would expect the first in to buy it all, they price the same, all have nearly identical numbers of pics and points, within a couple of percent. It's too close to be coincidence. These six account for about 160,000 pics.

I have no reason to expect these are connected. They all joined at different times over the years. IP addresses are in different countries. No consistency in e-mail addresses. Having similar numbers of pics and points doesn't really mean anything.

 

[HotnessRater]

Well, it takes time to grow points and pics, so why are they all so close if they "joined over the years"? Keeping the user IDs hidden, can you provide a table of join dates, IPs, countries, histogram of usage times, and last activity date for the 6 accounts? Also, number of IPs used, average price paid for their pics, and average price now? I see too many similarities in what I encounter on your system on a day to day basis to be easily convinced without hard data. If I saw that one account mostly shopped auctions, for instance, then I would chalk up the other similarities on that account to coincidence. But generally patterns exist for substantial reasons.

No, of course I'm not going to provide you information on users accounts. I take privacy very seriously. I can tell you about half of the accounts were created before Babetrader even existed. Many of them are people who have uploaded pictures. Some for years. If you want to believe they are connected. That is your right. I see no reason to convince you otherwise.

Even if they are all connected... I don't really care. Multiple accounts are a lot of work. If someone wants to put in that kind of dedication, that's fine. I don't think it gives them a huge advantage anyway.

 

[HotnessRater]

That's why I said to conceal the user's name, to protect privacy.

EXAMPLE:

Account A, 1000 points and 100 x 10 point pictures, net worth 2000.
Account B, same.

And it would take you 2 seconds to figure out who that is with that information

 

[HotnessRater]

B prices a picture at 1000. A buys it, and B buys it back for 1000. Both accounts still have their 1000 points, but one of B's pictures now has an established price of 1000, resulting in a gain in net worth of 990. Both accounts trade all 100 of their pictures the same way. The net worth of each account is now 101,000, allowing each to mark up future pictures by 101,000 total instead of 2000.

Which is why the current net worth does not include the price of the pictures. I'm not sure that should change

 

[HotnessRater]

Well, if it doesn't, then it discourages buying

Well no because that is how you make more points... Buy low and sell high. Just don't overpay for a picture or you'll get stuck with it.

Spending your points for pics would reduce your "net worth"

It increases your revenue by hits coming in and gives you the potential to sell it for higher.

If pic rating worked better

It works great in my opinion... if you don't like it, you don't need to hang around here.

I would limit the number of unbought pics available for each girl.

So make it so they can't be bought? Or don't show them at all on HotnessRater?

 

[gtsecond]

Or just revert to the simple auction.