The problem with player-controlled markets in Star Trek Online

[ThexLoneWolf]

The Exchange. A wonderful tool for trading in this game, and it would be better if it wasn't so inflated. Energy credits are so hard to come by in Star Trek Online, that most players use the exchange as a get-rich quick scheme, but what happens to the players who don't have a massive pile of money they can spend at random? They get frustrated and quit the game. I've stopped playing more than once because I couldn't get enough energy credits to buy something I wanted off the exchange. The exchange is an example of player-controlled market done poorly in a video game, and it's in desperate need of a revamp. So, what's a player-controlled market in a video game done right? Two words; Elite; Dangerous.

For those of you who play both games, you're probably thinking "What does he mean E;D has a PCM done right? If STO is the 'ugh, I just want it to be over' grind, then E;D is the 'ER mY GErD, i'M RoLLin mY FAcE oVER MY KeYBoaRD I'M rAgIN sO HaRD' grind." You're probably also thinking "But E;D and STO are about as different as two spaceship simulators can get." But, like STO, E;D features a player run commodities market, but unlike STO, it isn't inflated to the point of rage quitting. That's because the commodities market has multiple terminals each with their own specialization in areas like agriculture, refinery, high-tech, and so on. Each market produces and consumes different commodities, and prices are controlled by a background simulation weighing supply and demand rather than a player's greed. Let's compare this to the exchange. All terminals can access all commodities, and there's no simulation that says "this is priced too high or too low," leading to a market where players arbitrarily assign values to something, and hoping someone bites.

Already, we can see that E;D did a much better job with the commodities market than STO did with the exchange. But I have one more comparison to make. If you were to walk up to any other E;D player and ask them what the hardest thing to come by in this game is, aside from Thargoid and Guardian tech, they'd probably say "credits," so does that prove me wrong? No, actually, I think it does exactly the opposite. These people think credits are so hard to come by because they're constantly thinking of that dream Anaconda they want so badly. When it comes to the commodities market, this couldn't be further from the truth. That's because you get credits in E;D for doing everything. Be it killing that political agitator who kicked up some dirt last week, delivering goods to the next system over, or finding the missing data. What's your primary source of energy credits in STO? Clicking one button to recycle items in a replicator, which is neither very engaging nor very rewarding, as this only gives you about forty percent of an item's listed value.

So, what do you think we should do? Should the exchange adopt E;D's system, should we stick with what we have currently, or come up with something new altogether? I'd love to hear you thoughts, and if you do agree wwith my perspective, please be sure to raise awareness of this discussion to the STO community as a whole.

[ThexLoneWolf]

If you have a massive pile of energy credits, you don't get a say, as you aren't a victim of this problem.

[VoodooMike]

I think you're needlessly verbose, self-congratulatory, and desperately need a lesson on the differences between a colon and a semi-colon.

The exchange is an example of what players WANT in an auction house type system - they want the ability to put items up to be purchased at a price of their choosing. Inflation in such a system is not a result of the system itself, it is a side-effect of an uncontrolled economy in which new currency is constantly plucked out of thin air and thrown into circulation.

STO has attempted to (and continues to attempt to) combat this issue by carpet-bombing the community with alternative currencies. You have EC, lobi, Zen, fleet marks, fleet credits, reputation marks, unrefined dilithium, refined dilithium, GPL, etc.. etc.. which is the same model that games like WoW use, and MMOs have a tendency to follow its lead (whether that's wise or not).

The key to keeping prices low is scarcity of currency. STO is not going to revamp their entire system to create scarcity in the basic economy.

Elite's artificial value depression is not a long-term solution to inflation. If you simply refuse to allow people to sell things for a high price then the value of what they're selling will eventually diminish to the point that nobody will waste their time selling it.

An example of a fairly successful in-game economy (which many players still hate) is the one found in Warframe. You cannot trade the currency you receive easily in the game... instead, you are limited to trading the purchased currency (their equivalent of Zen). The fact that someone, somewhere has to pay real money to add currency to the game, and that the in-game shop eats that currency, creates the currency scarcity that is necessary.

Additionally, there is no "auction house" system - all buying and selling needs to be done by trading. Since you can't simply create an auction and log off, the system rewards patience on the part of buyers and sellers... something most gamers lack. Every deal can involve haggling, and the price of any given item can fluctuate wildly based on how desperate someone is to buy, or how desperate someone is to sell quickly.

Whenever an item becomes so rare and coveted that it starts fetching ridiculous prices, the company briefly brings it back into circulation, which pushes the prices down. Even STO does this to a limited extent. When keys start to flirt with the 5M mark, a series of key sales will pop up and the prices slide down closer to 4M.

So no, there's no easy solution to in-game economy problems.. and STO is far, far too deeply committed to its current system to fix it to anyone's satisfaction. Instead, we'll see more of the same... new reputations (with associated new marks) and lots of Zen-based RNG stuff... with a much lower amount of simply Zen-purchase stuff.

[Wisecasper]

It's supply and demand, the things that people want cost more for everyone to get. The things that cost a lot to make and have a quality gamble are never going to be cheaper unless you do the gamble yourself and risk winding up with something worthless for your ec. You can get adequate stuff for cheap and grind 'til you work out the mechanics of how to make piles of ec with less of a grind.

[Firewalk]

You won't ever see me buying a Connie for 1B+ EC but apparently some guys are willing to do so, hence why the exchange is what it is.

Apparently Trekkies have exorbitant amount of money, which doesn't surprise me.

[Fallaner, the Writer Eternal]

Supply & Demand of the playerbase. Jem'Hadar ships are 100+ million because of the value player's put on them. People buy them at those prices. People thus sell them at those prices. There's not a lot of them, and such they command a very high price.

[The Arkady]

Originally posted by ThexLoneWolf:

Energy credits are so hard to come by in Star Trek Online

False, rendering the rest of the pretentious blather quite meaningless.

[Tilarta]

I concur, the player markets are solely driven by individual greed of the resellers.
The price fixers decided because this item is super rare, we'll give it a super rare price.

Also, the Ego factor affects this problem.
For the reseller, they want to say, I have reached the cap in EC, bow before my virtual wealth.
For the purchasers, they want to say, I've got this uber rare ship and am flying it around, look how special I am.

Extreme example, there was this player in my first mmo who would buy up all the purple Gravitron armor (tank class armor) regardless of level and resell it for maximum level prices.
It actually got so bad that the players had to organize and sell the Gravitron armor via personal 1to1 sales to keep it out of the Exchange.

That makes me wonder if they do a similar thing in STO, if the super rare ship goes up for a cheap price, they buy it instantly and resell it for their price.

But honestly, I don't think this is a decision we can hold Cryptic responsible for, I think these random prize packs only came into the game when PWE added them as a subsidiary.
Makes me wonder how different it might have been if history had taken a different path, would Cryptic be offering these ships directly via C-Store instead?

Originally posted by Firewalk:

You won't ever see me buying a Connie for 1B+ EC but apparently some guys are willing to do so, hence why the exchange is what it is.

Apparently Trekkies have exorbitant amount of money, which doesn't surprise me.

Likewise, you won't see me buying the T6 Strike Ship for a massive amount.
I want it, but even if I was a millionaire and had the funds to do so, I'd refuse to on general principle.
I heard a maxim that self-made millionaires don't get to be millionaires by spending their money foolishly.

[necaradan666]

You guys don't seem to understand how much it costs to get those rare items and the work involved in getting an economy set up that can produce that kind of item regularly enough to make a profit from it. How many promo boxes do you think you have to open to get a promo ship? You'd be lucky to get a ship from 100 boxes and buying those at 17mil each will set you back 1.7 billion while the ships are selling for around 1.1 billion.. that means you have to spend multiples of billions on the boxes to break even or make a profit.

A lot of you are saying things get priced according to what people will pay for them, but in general things are priced according to the cost of producing them. Most often you'll find it's cheaper to buy from the exchange than it is trying to produce any given item yourself.

[Tilarta]

If they were doing so with EC earned ingame, then I might possibly respect that.
Granted, I'm not one of those people who approves of grinding any ingame resource to that level, but at least they are putting in effort to do so.

But the thought always occurs to me, what if it's someone buying the keys or R&D packs with actual money?
There is no effort or ingame EC expense for that, just spending lots of real world money to convert it into EC.

The reason that concerns me is I'm well aware of all the anedoctal cases where someone was obsessively spending money on a game and neglecting their basic living needs to do so, just to compensate for low self esteem by "being somebody ingame".

In any case, at some level, the keys have to be paid for somehow, they don't just appear out of nothing.
Even converting Dilithium to C-Points will require someone, somewhere to have purchased C-points and be selling them on the Dilithium exchange.
Assuming it's not Lifetimer Subscribers building up their reserves and selling them off.
We do get 500 free C-Points per month, after all.

[necaradan666]

So now it's not the player controlled market but a protest against RL money? STO isn't even a p2w game, but real life is. If someone has the cash to spend on game items they've won at the true game. If they're buying ingame items beyond their RL means that's a serious personal problem not a market problem. If random Joe blows his entire disability cheque on keys it's on him. Cryptic however does have a limit on how much zen you can buy in a day, and to go over that amount you have to call the company to proceed.

It's not some secretive cabal of greedy price fixers dictating the price of a promo ship, it's Cryptic who are playing the RL money game, with the assosiated RL risks involved. They are the ones that made the promo ships cost hundreds of gambled RL dollars. The fact that you can get a strike ship for ingame currency rather than hundreds of RL dollars isn't something you should ♥♥♥♥♥ about in regards to your fellow players. You might also want to consider that Cryptic allows that ingame market to exist. STO has a better f2p model than many other games.

I can't even believe your comment about Ego. How about this one;
For the Entitled, they want to say, even through I refuse to put in the effort to reach the EC cap I deserve the virtual wealth that others will bow before.
Even though I won't pay for it my virtuous principles mean I deserve an uber rare ship to fly around in because I'm already special.

You should be happy that someone is willing to pay for the rest of us to play for free.

[Sandormen]

Its a free market. Use it. Prosper.
Ignore it, and be in eternal dismay.
Its nothing wrong with the player market in that sense.
Pretty much like real life. Keep on the lookout for good offers, buy low, sell high.
I still don't see anything wrong with the players market.
If I want to buy a brand spanking new Ferrarri, I'd better tool up, and get my savings straight, not blow the cash on kebaps and beer.
Same goes for this game.

[VoodooMike]

Originally posted by "Tilarta":

I heard a maxim that self-made millionaires don't get to be millionaires by spending their money foolishly.

As a self-made millionaire (which, I might add, is not really that much money in today's world) I'd like to suggest that "maxim" was thought up by a poor person. What I've found is that what constitutes a frivolous expense is determined heavily by how much money you have.

In short... "expensive" and "trivial" costs are relative to your disposable income. I've known people who think eating at restaurants is an expensive waste of money, and people who can't be bothered to refer to the last three digits of an amount (anything under a thousand) as anything but "..and change". Which one is right?

Both.

The real issue, I feel, is that middle class people are convinced their values are universally normative - that they set the standard by which everyone must view the world. So much so, in fact, that they can't even fathom things like people thinking starbucks coffee is an unaffordable luxury, or that flying to europe first class in order to go skiing with some buddies on less than 24 hours notice is a completely worthwhile thing to do. Instead they sneer and go "pfft.. poor people are lazy and pitiable" and "pfft... rich people are arrogantly ruining the world!". People are just being people and living according to their means.

[Zacharius Sneed]

I made 10mil EC in one day just by looking for good deals on the exchange for about thirty minutes and then buying, reposting at a higher price and making profit. Its kinda like real life man.

[Zacharius Sneed]

Originally posted by n3mes1s:

Originally posted by Alpharius:

I made 10mil EC in one day just by looking for good deals on the exchange for about thirty minutes and then buying, reposting at a higher price and making profit. Its kinda like real life man.

Thats what i do sometimes. When im bored lol. REALLY bored...

Hell if bordem gets you money then you must be really good at it.

[Azimeir]

People are overthinking this and simultaneously deflecting one simple fact.

There are certain items that are incredibly rare that are controlled by high-end resellers, monopolized, in truth. There are some items - ships, mostly - that if you want, it probably is more cost effective to gamble for them because of these high-end resellers, but the problem with gambling is that odds only really work with large sample sizes. Basically, to get the ship you want you might only have to open ten lockboxes... but you also may have to open 500, even if the odds will levy, say, 1/100.

For the high end reseller, this isn't a problem. For the individual who just wants one item and can only reasonably budget 10 boxes, it's usually a crash course in the perils of probability. Now, none of this is "a problem", other than what keeps high-end resellers in check in a real world economy is there being other high-end resellers - competition; at some point they're going to undercut each other to move units. However, I do not have confidence that such competition exists within the Exchange, and that tips the scales towards the resellers, and hurts the market, the individual players, and ultimately the solvency of the game.

So, I agree with open market theory... so long as the markets are, in fact, open on both ends. There needs to be just as much competition to sell as there is competition to buy for it to function. Otherwise it's just one butthole holding all the cards, setting the price more or less wherever he or she wants and buying up the 'ma and pop' competitors.