Quick and dirty fix

[Morgan Lalique]

If you aren't going to make any code fixes in the near future, maybe you can just run a few updates to make the pricing thing more bearable. I suggest 3 updates:

First, truncate hugely ridiculous prices asked:

Update price asked
Set price asked = 200,000
Where price asked > 200,000 and
Price paid < 182,000

Or maybe set them to 100,000 where price paid < 90,000.

Then reduce markups by 80% on pics > 549

Update price asked
Set price asked = ( price asked * .2 ) + ( price paid * .8 )
Where price asked > 549 and
Price asked > price paid

This works because price asked = price paid + markup,
Times .2 gives .2 markup + .2 price paid, plus .8 price paid. You are left with price paid plus 20% of markup.

Then reduce the money on hand for all accounts to 10% of current totals. This will make the runaway accounts catchable in our lifetimes. Active players will quest and be able to buy off some of the pics from the inactive accounts. If in 3-4 months prices are still a problem then maybe run another update.

What do people think about this?

 

[HotnessRater]

Then reduce the money on hand for all accounts to 10% of current totals. This will make the runaway accounts catchable in our lifetimes. Active players will quest and be able to buy off some of the pics from the inactive accounts. If in 3-4 months prices are still a problem then maybe run another update.

I'm not going to take someone's account that they had been working on much longer than you have and cut it to 10% of their total. Even if they aren't actively playing right now. They worked up to over a million or two actively trading. It took them quite a while to do it and they did it before quests came into the game. There is no reason why you can't surpass them with the current rules. They got to that level. You already have half the pictures that many of them have.

 

[El Duderino]

What do people think about this?

It smells. It smells badly.

Changing the rules in the middle of a game certainly is dirty.

 

[HotnessRater]

Changing the rules in the middle of a game certainly is dirty.

Well we did it when we allowed people to set the price for their pictures

 

[HotnessRater]

I do think we have to do something about the price setting since it completely kills the liquidity of the game... but hacking peoples balance is uncalled for

 

[Morgan Lalique]

Well, the point reduction would be proportional across the board, it would have no effect on current standings.

 

[HotnessRater]

Well, the point reduction would be proportional across the board, it would have no effect on current standings.

Except it would cut the most points off the larger accounts since it is a percentage... making it easier for you to catch up. I'm not sure what the point of that would be.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

Well, the point reduction would be proportional across the board, it would have no effect on current standings. But it could make the game more attractive to new players if there weren't a couple dozen inactive accounts with 3 year point leads.

Acornett1 quit 2 years ago at a million points, since then his account has scored another two million while doing nothing other than coasting endlessly upward. Who knows how long the others have been inactive? My data only goes back to Feb. Scores like that aren't really worthy of lifetime protection, are they?

El Duderino says he wants to catch RCrus, but I've been watching, and that account is pulling away from him, on autopilot. Dude says he has his strategy, well, RCrus's strategy seems to be to never play any more. But he's been slowly pulling away for months, with no end in sight. In a year the account will be up by more than a million, maybe sooner.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

The point would be for new players to not be blown away by a bunch of inactive accounts they have no hope of ever catching. Not hard to figure, if you put yourself in the shoes of a new player.

 

[HotnessRater]

It's not impossible to catch up. I'm not going to kill peoples accounts though. I could make a rule that accounts need to be active within the last week to accumulate points from views.

Also allowing users to filter out inactive accounts from the list could be an option... but I would like them to toggle them on or off so people can see an "Active Player" list or an "All-Time" Player list.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

Okay, I like both those ideas, that works. I'd use the 30 day quest counter maybe for active players. People who are playing regularly keep it moving.

So, ixnay on chopping down points, but what about the two updates that would reduce the insane markups? Of course, atm active players would run around marking their stuff back up, but a lot of stuff on inactive accounts would become buyable, if you were determined enough. It wouldn't suck so much searching for pics only to find everything good is 10,000, or 20,000, or 20,000,000.

Wish we had a mechanism for marking like 10% of our pics as not for sale, though. Or a mechanism to buy a high reserve price. For instance, say I wanted to mark up a pic 200,000, but my markup allowance is distributed already. I could buy a 1-year markup of 200,000 for like 20,000. If I think the pic will go viral or something, I might sell it in a few months, and my 20,000 would look like a good investment.

 

[HotnessRater]

I could see letting you invest 200,000 to increase the price of a picture by 200,000. I don't know though. I would rather just put the standard markup on it and if you lose it, just buy it back.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

Well, I agree with Duderino to a moderate degree, people should be able to ask what they want for a picture. But it is also clear that to have a viable game there needs to be both limits and costs.

So paying 200,000 for an extra 200,000 markup is silly, there is no potential profit. 10% for a speculative or precautionary temporary markup is sometime I would, as a player, consider making use of. That is my measuring stick for reasonableness.

Having a certain number of slots for pics that are just not for sale seems reasonable to me. As a player I want some to use, but I don't want so many that my opponents can protect every damn picture they buy. 5-10% of the number of pics a person owns seems reasonable to me. It also adds a dynamic of buying up another player's pics to reduce the number of pics he can protect.

Maybe 5% is best, plus allowing players to buy additional permanently protected slots, at somewhere around 15-20,000 each, about 2 weeks worth of questing.

Limiting total player markups to their net worth seems a good idea. They can either spread it around, or concentrate it, it is flexible. They can mark up some stuff beyond the system standard, but it is imited so the game doesn't get locked up the way it is now.

This requires establishing a number of quantities: the base price of a picture, the standard markup, and their net worth.

Just using points is simple but has some drawbacks that would have a negative effect on gameplay, as has been discussed before. I tried to figure a non-abusable pricing scheme for pics, but anything I came up with left quite a bit to be desired.

I think now that the best thing to do is just use price paid. What finally swayed me to this conclusion is the fact that people do from time to time pay big chunks of points for pictures. It would be unfair to them to then say "well, you paid 20,000 for it, but the system price is 45, so if you want to protect your investment you will have to spend a LOT of your markup allowance on it." That is a nonstarter, I think.

So, I'm starting to think in terms of a sales tax. Consider what a 12% sales tax would do to auctions. Currently, people will bid up auctions to make money, because they get back everything they paid plus more, if they know that others will most likely pay more. This kind of sucks. Currently, the auction price rises by 10%, they can be guaranteed a profit. If they pay a 12% premium, they would lose money on speculative buying, past 500 points. So, they would only bid on pics they actually want to keep.

It would make it costly to do what I currently do with The Mogul, which is bid up pics I want to keep, to keep others from running me up. But, it would remove the need for me to do so, as well.

It would also impose a price on people using multiple accounts to generate artificial sales prices on pics to set higher base prices. If I buy a pic for 10, then sell/buy it with another account for 20,000 to establish a higher markup, I'd have to pay like 2400 for the benefit. It would make people pick and choose, rather than just set 100,000 base prices on all their pics. This would impose a price for what would otherwise be a form of abuse.

I think that would be a simple change to make, and an effective one.

 

[HotnessRater]

So paying 200,000 for an extra 200,000 markup is silly, there is no potential profit

I didn't want people to profit from marking up a picture. I wanted them to buy it back and forth until one person stops. The one person gets the picture, the other gets the profit... the trick is to know when to stop bidding and not get stuck with the picture if you are just looking for profit.

Paying 1:1 to boost the picture would just be a way to prevent people from buying it, not a way to make more.

Maybe 5% is best, plus allowing players to buy additional permanently protected slots, at somewhere around 15-20,000 each, about 2 weeks worth of questing.

I would never do a percentage like that since I wouldn't want protected slots to go up just by buying a ton of cheap pics. Also I would want people to lose a slot unexpectedly because someone bought their other pictures. I really don't like the protected idea at all. Part of the challenge should be to fight for the pictures you want to keep. I could maybe be talked into 1 or 2 lots with the ability to buy more for 100k. Or maybe not. I just don't really want to have them protected at all.

Currently, the auction price rises by 10%, they can be guaranteed a profit.

Unless they get stuck with the picture.

 

[Morgan Lalique]

If they pay attention to other players' buying habits, they don't get stuck very often. They just run prices up to get paid, it sucks. Just one of many reasons your players are numbered in the 10's instead of the 1000's.

That won't change until you start listening and giving them good gameplay, instead of how you want it to work, when you don't even play your own game.

 

[HotnessRater]

Well I wouldn't have 1000's either way. Only 371 people have ever logged in. Only 159 ever made it to 1000 points so no matter how the game operated, there wouldn't be 1000's playing.

when you don't even play your own game.

That's another assumption (which happens to be wrong)

If they pay attention to other players' buying habits, they don't get stuck very often. They just run prices up to get paid

Someone gets stuck with it.

That won't change until you start listening and giving them good gameplay

I did that by listening to the fan base and allowing them to set their own prices and it resulted in the mess you see today. I listen to them. People don't always agree. Some of the things they ask for (like allowing unlimited setting of prices), I disagreed with and would have done better to follow my intuition on it. So no, I won't let you dictate the direction of this game. And you being snarky about it doesn't make me want to implement your ideas any quicker.

 

[acornett1]

Well, the point reduction would be proportional across the board, it would have no effect on current standings. But it could make the game more attractive to new players if there weren't a couple dozen inactive accounts with 3 year point leads.

Acornett1 quit 2 years ago at a million points, since then his account has scored another two million while doing nothing other than coasting endlessly upward. Who knows how long the others have been inactive? My data only goes back to Feb. Scores like that aren't really worthy of lifetime protection, are they?

El Duderino says he wants to catch RCrus, but I've been watching, and that account is pulling away from him, on autopilot. Dude says he has his strategy, well, RCrus's strategy seems to be to never play any more. But he's been slowly pulling away for months, with no end in sight. In a year the account will be up by more than a million, maybe sooner.

Actually, I have been back to check on things now and then. It's hard to completely quit this game. I've been back as an active player in the past week or so. To move back to the top will take 2-3 years.