GuildWiki talk:Suggestions/Pricing guide

Rikroll can help with prices :p. Mercher ftw. &mdash; Warw/Wick 18:55, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * "Rikroll" refers to Prog. Anyhow, I think weapon prices are too differentiating to list. Tomes vary greatly between Profession (normal assa = 100 gold, normal monk = 800, normal ele = 600), but are static, nontheless. Noone in the whole wide world has Rit tomes, and thus there aint a real price for it, tho. Anyhow, I could see this working for static prices. --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  19:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Rather than just copy/pasting my original text from the suggestions I will just post my suggestions of possibilities for this section to function. First off, it would need to be a protected section.  Hands down, that is the only way to prevent the worst kind of abuse.  We would need a set of individuals trusted by the community to be authorized to make any pricing adjustments necessary.  Any users that want to contribute a pricing change could then do so on the talk page, similar to how Guildwars Guru does their pricing sections.  If this is something that the community wants, I feel that this is the only way it could function in a wiki environment.  -- [[Image:Isk8.png]]   I~sk8   (T/C) 19:03, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * What are your thoughts on the fluctuating and non-static prices of things that aren't rare drops, but noone has for sale, and things like Crystallines, Obsid Edges and the other high end, rare uber weapons? Not to mention rare weapons noone wants... --- [[Image:VipermagiSig.JPG|Ohaider!]]-- (s)talkpage  19:06, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Would this have any functionality regarding historical prices? like a graph showing the price changes and notable events (release of new chapters) would be very useful. Also, it would help in identifying vandals/anamalies.  --JonTheMon 19:08, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Historical information would an interesting curiousity. For example, could we add something to Elemental Sword saying, "This sword used to be highly sought after and was priced in excess of 100k+. However overfarming have dropped the price to less than 30k on average". This is both true and common knowledge. Additionally, pricing rules such as "non-elite tomes rarely exceed 1k because the skill can be obtained by a skill trader for the same price." Or "lockpicks can be obtained from a discount merchant for 1200 and many people therefore sell them for 1.25k". Such things would be easy to document and are generally easily confirmed. My hope is that this kind of thing would draw enough new traffic that it would be self regulating with interested new users on hand to catch errors and revert vandalism. Additionally, I'm hoping that some of you can also help provide information on how we can implement even something close to this&mdash;♥ Jedi ♥ Rogue ♥ 19:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)


 * For items where the price is tied to vendors, one could perhaps give an explanation of how the prices are tied to vendors. One can readily check the vendor sell prices on various items, and from the sell price, one can get a good approximation of the vendor buy price, without having to have one in stock to check directly.  How to do this may well not be obvious to new players.  This can analogously be done for items such as craftable consumables, where the price is more loosely tied to that of vendors, with an intermediate crafting step.


 * For lightly traded items, I think it would be a mistake to try to list prices here. The prices tend to change with time, and unlike the prices from vendors, there isn't an in-game way to check the changes.  In addition, prices depend considerably on how averse both the buyer and the seller are to spamming the chat endlessly waiting for someone willing to accept their respective prices.  One could maybe get ballpark estimates on some relatively common such items, such as tomes, collector items, or weapons obtained in exchange for collector items.


 * But trying to price most skins (including greens) is a different matter entirely. Demand for those is a vanity thing, not driven by any notion of in-game utility.  If it were, it would be very rare that any such item would be worth more than several platinum, the cost of getting a functionally identical (or superior) item from a collector weapon with custom mods.  Instead, a weapon is expensive because lots of people want it, which is, in turn, because it's expensive.  Even apart from vandalism, the only people with meaningful information on what a skin is worth are the people who heavily farm that particular skin--and asking only the sellers of an item what it ought to sell for creates an obvious conflict of interest.  Quizzical 19:37, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, if there is a problem reconciling buy/sell prices, you could only accept actual sell prices not "what people want it to be worth". Another option is to track both buy and sell prices, so you'd have a range.

Even if prices are skewed towards sellers, I think having trading prices for lightly-traded items is good: those items most of us have the least idea about. One thing we could implement is some sort of "feedback" system. Like, a (at most) weekly poll of whether the price was within 1k/10% of the wiki price. Just throwing some ideas into the ring. --JonTheMon 20:02, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

The solution
The problem is that "I think item X is worth 10k" is not meaningful information. Someone else might think item X is worth 100k or 2k. On the other hand, "I will buy item X for 10k" is meaningful information. If I can sell item X to you for 10k, then at this moment in time, it must be worth at least 10k.

The solution is to use the wiki to accumulate such buy and sell offers. Create a new Trade namespace to have pages for the various items that people can buy and sell. Exclude items that are both bought and sold at vendors, as those give plenty of guidance on prices. If someone wants item X and is willing to pay 10k for it, they can go to Trade:Item X and add a line saying they'll pay 10k and leaving a time/date stamp and user name. From one in-game character name, you can find all characters on the account via the friends list.

One major problem would be people posting false prices. This is, of course, also a problem in-game. A partial solution would be to semi-protect the page so that only registered users could make edits. An established user who has made a number of previous trades through the wiki and wants to make another will reliably stand by his offer. Vandals and scammers can be caught and banned.

Another major problem would be people who intend to make a trade trying to find each other online. That's a problem with quite a number of games, and partially solvable via the friends list to search for each other. If someone posts a price and is then offline for quite a while, having it stamped with the time and date will eventually make it clear that the price is probably obsolete.

My experience with A Tale in the Desert in the first telling of it was that letting people post prices on a bunch of items they'll buy or sell, and then letting others peruse those prices, works pretty well as a way to facilitate trades, provided that the prices are organized in such a way that people can find the prices they're looking for. People tending to be on at different times of the day was something that people can work around, perhaps leaving messages on each other's talk pages to arrange a meeting. Auctions there tended not to work so well, as it was much harder to find what you were looking for.

Besides, if people are worried that the wiki will die, making it the active gathering place for buying and selling items would keep it plenty active for a long time to come. Quizzical 20:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)