Admin pricing interference

I've noticed recently that admin has interfered with the design of the game by implementing "wholesale" pricing on items in the Marketplace. This creates an immediate and dramatic impact on anyone involved in buying or selling the item currently being interfered with. I'll agree that pricing on some items, particularly construction items, has risen to a rediculous level that can act as a deterrent to players, expecially newbees. I could see perhaps perminantly increasing the output of production facilities a bit, as to generate more materials whereas players would need to purchase less, ultimately reducing demand and pricing in the Marketplace. Keeping in mind, this action would have slow, but long term POSITIVE effects on supply and demand, and not dramatically affect those active in the Marketplace at the time admin applies a market pricing adjustment via the "Wholesaler". Another option would be to add an additional level to the production facilities, allowing those further in the game to produce more rather than inflate the market to fulfill their increasing needs.

 

What is "wholesale pricing" please?

With regard to high prices, it actually helped me grow as I could get coins on the market.

 

go purchase barley from the marketplace. Currently there are only 3 offers, each of which is a different quantity, all with a sale price of 30. When you purchase, it tells you who you purchased from, "Wholesaler". This is an admin created sale. I have seen the same recently Tile. Market price was around 4500, then admin started selling at 2800 or so via their "Wholesaler". Chances are, what I had for sale would never be sold because this artificially reduced the market price of the item, immediately.

 

Thanks for the info. I rarely buy anything so I don't have much chance to notice these things. Tampering with market has been suggested several times by players but always denied by mods that anything like that is happening. So this whosaler is wrecking the market.

 

I'm a level 43 and really enjoy playing this game. I'm not here to complain. I'd like to make this game fair and enjoyable for everyone, and thats part of the goal of my original suggestion.

 

barley has been controlled for a while now. ive noticed because i only buy, and for me this is a very good thing.
if not, the prices will skyrocket like the rest of the products, because this dynamic market has been going up for months....
havent seen wholeseller on other products, or at least not in the price range i usually buy.

 

I agree with wizardelo. I have bought every item in the marketplace and except for barley have not seen this consistently occurring. They are trying to create one, so far unsuccessfully. I believe that the developers support barley simply because there is no market for it. The developers do step in and support and control the market prices occasionally to keep the game from getting to far out of balance. Just like a Federal Government or a central bank. That is real world. Of course this is my humble opinion.

 

barley issue has been here for a while now, and i kept hoping they would find another solution, rather then just supply it artificially. not to mention that selling 5, 65 and 250 units its a joke, considering that you need 1000 for 1 batch of pilsner, they could at least add a 5-10k units offer at least.

as others said, some other products have the same issue, offer is to small, demand to big and market just keeps going up. some control needs to be imposed both on a lower and upper limit.

 

I'm cool with how it is. So far it has worked great for me when building a new city. Can both sell and buy with reasonable outcome. Have used ups and downs of the market to further my City progress. I'm not much in favour of stiff boundaries for sales and can understand if developpers interfere with the market the way suggested. Would definitelly keep the market reasonably free, even with the danger of prices skyrocketing. As long as there is buyer and seller it's cool. But some more conceptual solution would be welcome, if they can come up with anything smart enough so as not to spoil the game.

 

If said this before but I'm going to say it again.......

The problem is a lack of supply. Farms, mills, brickyards, bakeries and breweries are artificially limited in number and the end result is the market cannot create the required supply - therefore prices go through the roof.
If the market was truly free, we the mayors would decide whether it was worth increasing production and if so, prices would stabilise at the actual value of the goods.
As things stand this problem is only going to get worse. More higher level players will have the CC to buy the ridiculous amounts of materials to upgrade buildings, and they will do so because they have no real choice. Assuming they want to build a bigger city.

Of course, it is not all bad. For new players it must be wonderful. I sold tomatoes at 1 or 2 each. Now you can get 4 or 5. that will make a big difference when starting up. I also sold lumber and beams, but I can't remember what I was getting at the time. I'm sure it was a lot less than it is now.

I have to disagree (for once) with billyjim and say that the wholesale barley prices are an attempt to keep market prices DOWN, not up. In the real world of course, this is a disastrous course of action for a government to take.

So, please RC let us upgrade our manufacturing facilities

The effect would be gradual and non catastrophic. Two more bakeries were allowed and this hardly made a dent on the market, because demand was still going up as the bakeries were being built.

 

It sort of sounds like a perfect match, doesn't it? Low levels get their money to grow, and high levels can spend their money on what low levels sell. Both get helped.

I think the team in part keep it this way as a sort of slow down. The single limiting factor for my growth has been without any doubt Beams, or Wood mill production capacity if you will. It looks like a deliberate speed limiter to me, which of course might not be deliberate at all. I might see a purpose where there is none.

With regard to produce, I just use it as I need, for sale or for PP, as the economic need dictates. Not saying the market could not function better, but so far, being on level 25 in about 6 weeks playing, it worked well for me. And limited production capacity is just, in my oppinion, deliberate speed limiting factor.

 

Brucenic - I am so sadden that we have finally disagree. We will have to have a summit and see if we can not work out our differences. But, history has shown that if you go to far in either direction Capitalism or Socialism you almost always end up with a financial system in chaos. I believe that there needs to be balance between the free market and central control. Now where that balance is a subject for debate.

I would love to see an increase in production capacity. I do not care how it could be achieved - The most popular choices are:

• Additional facilities
  
• Additional level for current facilities
  
• New sources of products
• RC management injecting additional products into the game (rewards)

I would find any of these acceptable. I still liked one of my old ideas which was to create a new industry which would increase or speed up production.

 

Thank you Brucenic. Finally someone who agrees and nearly mirrored my original post. Demand is higher than supply, in many cases. Dont increase supply artificially, make us earn it via increased production capability. I will say, I generate far more production points than I use, and only via worker only residences. I could spare some and perhaps find myself turning other residences into workers as well, should the game demand. Maybe I would need them for additional production? Keeping things fair, if increased production doesnt settle the market, perhaps create restrictions of minimum and/or maximum sell prices.

I do have to disagree with the profitability for new players. They really need to use the majority of thier production for growth. There is only so much they can do with the cash.

 

Would you mind taking into account my above mentioned experience, as I'm one of those "they" you are talking about? I'm not voicing just my opinion. High prices at the market have been very very profitable for me as a new player and helped me grow a lot faster. Actually the higher the prices were, the faster I was growing.

 

i dont argue the value of coin here, and the help new players receive by selling. and you are probably right, as long as people will buy it means the market is working properly
the only thing i am afraid of is that market for other products will become like barley, 3 robot offers to sustain it...
game could use a little production increase, right now the values indicate that production is alot less then demand, so people are forced to buy, and there isnt enough newcomer output generated to settle the high lvl demand.

again, since we're still buying, i dont argue the fact that its broken, i remember having this argument with nortoncommander while back and he had very valid points on this. but as you go higher you torn from a seller into a buyer, and most of the funds are diverted into market purchase instead of anything else.

so why not give high level players an opportunity to produce more, and give prices a reason to settle, at this rate, prices will keep going up which slows the game even more on top of the limited production. and when you end up having to wait a week to be able to buy+produce enough materials just for 1 upgrade.. game is not fun anymore...

this is very different to low levels when you always have something to do...

 

It doesn't surprise me in this kind of game that the higher you go, the longer things take to be finished. It's concept for high level players which is missing. They need something to do while they are waiting to upgrade their posh houses, I think. Just growing the city and upgrading buildings is no high level concept at all. This must slow down increasingly as otherwise the game would turn into a space/building/programming race.

 

well at this point there is nothing else to do,
i've rearranged city a few times but its not so easy to move things around with all the land is full, even with alot of inventory slots.. and right now i dont even think its worth another try. when everything takes 4-6h to be ready the game is not fun anymore.

 

I thought it's more of a system-created offer than admin-created to ensure there is a supply to sell in the case of the barely. The same offers are always there with much shorter duration than normal offers, probably designed to refresh as needed to adjust with the current offers and keep a price-ceiling. It's been like that for a while now because there obviously isn't enough supply. 30 is as high as I've ever seen it so despite being sold by a 'Wholesaler', I wouldn't call the prices wholesale compared to the other offers that occasionally appear. You'd think they might do that with all products in case of shortage, but I've seen lumber and potatoes run out completely, so maybe it is manual after all. But I've seen those permanent offers with tuna too, and like lumber, it's hard to imagine that getting a shortage.

Haven't yet seen any low-priced offers like that, or by a 'Wholesaler', so I have doubts that anyone related to the game or the game itself is making an effort to bomb prices. Seeing as there are obvious caps in place there isn't much reason to do so, and it would probably be against their interest. The high-priced offers that never sell expire and the average prices fall, and the low priced offers disappear relatively fast leaving the rest around to maintain average, and the min/max price you can offer changes accordingly. It's not some magic instant-effect offer. Prices have always been all over because people are people. You just got out-priced, I'll bet, and are upset that you can't as greedy as you'd like once the prices fall again and you can't sell for what your previous offer sold for. Them's the breaks. Unless you have some proof on the low end, I'm not convinced it, and I'm not about to waste my CCs looking for one. I buy longer production times mostly, and I haven't seen such a thing.

Supply and demand are working just fine. For construction materials, prices always scale accordingly across the products of the same facility. Make what you can when you can, sell the surplus, buy the rest. Produce on the other hand is just broken. It's simply not worth paying for in most cases and supply is impossible to keep up for advanced cities. All prices for all commodities increase during an event that needs that facility to produce event items, or even certain times of day. Supply and demand is working as it should, and that accounts for all of the changing prices/price limits. Overall supply is just too low, so prices are generally high.

With the market as it is, yes, new players actually have it easier can advance even more quickly. It's much easier to have a surplus of commodities at early levels to sell, and the high prices absolutely benefit new players. You don't have to supply as many people. You can make more beams via selling lumber in a hour than making them in the mill and often still have CC left over. New players will probably be making lumber all the time anyway, and I know from experience that you will end up with too much. You absolutely will not need it all for construction, unless you buy a ton of extra permits. If you think otherwise, you're doing it wrong.

Of course, I haven't seen some of the really odd offers that have been reported, possibly due to price controls, but I've seen plenty that I don't expect to sell apparently do just that. It's easy enough to get a lot of CC at higher levels to buy what you need, so it's not that surprising that people are willing to buy some of those offers, especially considering each player's needs. It seems volume almost always has a direct relation with price in this game, which is the opposite of real-world markets. Here, it's like you often pay a premium for having all your goods in one convenient transaction instead of buying a bunch of smaller/annoying offers. So really, the cheap wholesale prices for large lots are rare, I find.

 

even if its not perfect, and even if some of us dont like it, while players sell and players buy , it means it works. apart from the obvious production max output per player, there is also to consider the amount of players that join the game and bring new offers, vs the amount of players who stick around long enough to become buyers.
probably that is why the admins dont intend to touch the production/market, because the overall feeling is that "it works", yes its not perfect, but its so volatile, no way to predict how increasing the production or locking the price into limits might affect.

the problem with barley is somewhat different. the lack of offers locks the price to a fix range, and the fixed range keeps ppl away from selling. I am sure that if players would be allowed to sell for some higher price then hops for example, the effort of producing barley overnight might be worth it, and then player offers would return.

Arsusu made a good point with the auto-balancing of price range due high offers expiring. i just hope there arent any hidden wholeseller offers at the high end which autorefresh, to keep prices up! it used to be that we could see the seller in market offers, now since they merged offers with same amount/price, you can only see seller after you buy, which is kinda lame

 

That's what I'm saying wizardelo. A need for some concept of activities for those who have reached considerable developement level in their building and upgrading. I'm level 25 now, and the game is already slowing down. It has been fun so far, but really, a few levels up, I don't see myself playing on unless they add something to do. As you say, just boring in the current state of affairs. Looks like the game needs some fresh wind, a new producer, somebody creative enough to turn it into a real fun.