Alpinesun

Hehe best post I've read for ages GK ??

This is awesome! Thank you. I'll get my stat hat on tomorrow and get sifting through it ?

Hey NQ! Read this! It's spot on ?

Until someone under cuts the market and floods it with lower cost items at high volume, thus market change activity, thus invoking equilibrium. This will only happen in a free market. Parties require the resource that the other has and hence a considerable incentive to engage in an exchange and thus kick starting the market and equilibrium within it and generating a market clearing price. The act of 'price discovery' is required to make that happen and will take time to occur and needs a free market format for it to occur. Price fixing is not allowing the market clearing to occur and thus the underlying problem with the industry and the knee-jerk reaction patch that was 0.23.

Actually that's devaluation and one of the major factor that causes inflation along with increased money supply (which is also unnaturally occurring). That's supply and demand and is a natural occurrence in finding the equilibrium within a market and is healthy as long as the market isn't fixed or influenced (which it currently is).

Extremely unlikely as cost drives consumption and not the other way around. It's also generally undesirable, especially as a new player as the cost of the base items dictates the price of the finished and everything in the supply of that item thus a false inflation and overstatement of value.

100% This. It is ruined. I've posted several times on the forums this week that it's price fixing and that's illegal in the real world for a reason. There's no need for bots in the market place and they need to be removed for the market to find its true equilibrium, supply and demand profile. Bots and price fixing are not allowing industry to breathe in the way that it was intended.

A welcome start but actually not the root of the industry issues. The reason why people are being seen to 'solo' or 'self sufficient' is that the fundamental backbone of the markets is broken, absolutely broken and removing the desire to collaborate. The reason? Bots. Bots are placing buy items in the market place and poisonings the market flow down. To make it worse, its being done at the source with ore which is amazingly overvalued. Ore is key as its the starting block of the supply chain and an artificial high in value then creates no desire for anyone to refine, create and then sell their items into the supply chain. Generating a real supply and demand equilibrium will never take hold, and the desire to build industry and actually sell items to other players, or build consortiums to provide goods and services will never materialise. Right now the ore is at a price that's too good to miss and selling it back into the system is the easiest and quickest way to break the recession that 0.23 placed on the community. Remove the bots, let the true supply and demand take a hold, watch the markets grow and stabilise and watch industry grow in the way it was intended, to sustain the wider community and provide a genuine game mechanic. "The great virtue of a free market system is that...it is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another" - Milton Friedman

Snap. Enjoy CP ? Hopefully when/if we come back industry is fixed and market bots have been removed.

So this is how broken the market is because of bot pricing. I ran a simple numbers scenario last night on coal. Again its artificial bot price is 25q per litre. If you sold 65l you would make 1625q. 65l also makes 45l of Carbon which would cost around 815-825q to buy off the market. So you can quickly double your output on the refined version of the ore quickly and simply! That should absolutely not be the case. A refined product should be source elements + process cost + transport cost + desired margin. Bots are killing the market full stop. With them there is no way the market will ever reach player sustained equilibrium with a true supply and demand balance. Its so short sighted and frustrating. Industry is so pointless unless you want to build things for yourself and your wider organisation but even that's been killed by the 0.23 patch. Sigh.

100% this. Fixing markets is illegal in real life for a reason. Basically the river is poisoned at source and everyone down stream is either ill or not wanting to drink the water any more.

I ran some numbers last night against two finished items. The general finding is that ore at its fixed pricing bot market value of 25q is about four times too high of what it should be and is crippling player market activity and a micro supply chain environment. That didn't include the current insane cost of the schematic to make the final item either. In a nutshell, it's not allowing players the ability to sell second, third, fourth or finished goods into the market as there is no economic sense to do so. Ore price is king and its killing free market trading. NQ are using the high price to help dig them out of the recession 0.23 created and its having a crippling effect on everything in the market.

I've just posted this very issue under a bot/price fixing thread I started last night. High priced Bot placed ore orders are creating a broken supply and demand chain that's stopping the community actually having a competitive and complete market engine. The artificial ore price is there to off set depression that the 0.23 patch brought with it which in turn wanted to generate player driven markets. Go figure ? Economists NQ are not.

Not saying it doesn't happen, my god it happens everywhere and in every market we interact in. Energy pricing for example is something we all have to live with IRL. It is however illegal

So firstly I'm new to the game so a lot of the in-game market activity and dynamics are new to me. So you're telling me that most of the supply and demand factors are artificial and price fixed? IRL its illegal across all the free nation markets and people go to prison for it and for good reason. The most important function or concept of 'free pricing' (a fixed price not regulated) is its ability to serve as an indicator of the scarcity of a commodity, and more importantly then ration or offer to the highest demander. As long as the price of an item is allowed to fluctuate and match the supply demand there will be neither surpluses nor shortages and market equilibrium is met. This factor is important to Dual Universe as a game concept to allow industry and the market place to be truly gamer driven and dynamic. Fixed/artificial pricing removes the equilibrium for the game and creates supply chain issues. This is even more critical to DU as the complexity of sourcing items to create and supply items is actually very simple compared to real life. IRL if one item isn't available or over priced, then an alternative can generally be sourced to replace it (this happened globally in the 1970's when copper became scarce and aluminum was used in electronic items instead), in DU that cannot occur. What's even more alarming is that the fixing is done on the very first element of the supply chain, ore. The above example is Bauxite (sorry I should of been clearer on my OP). Price fixing the first initial element in the supply change sets a dangerous precedence for the following matrix of goods and items that follow it. It generates a false market recession in later supply chain items due to the mismatching in component costs. So if bauxite is set artificially high/low then aluminum should follow suit as a refined product of bauxite, as should Al-Fe Alloy as it's directly related to Aluminum and so the chain of price precedence continues. Now that's 100% not happening and killing market freedom and player interaction. The fixing is allowing ore to be sold at a high price (IMHO). More people are mining their way out of the current depression, so ore supply should be high which should drive a lower cost to allow other people to then cost effectively create the follow on elements such as metals and finished alloys in order to make the follow on items such as pipes into hydraulics and so on at the correct and competitive cost point. Right now the system (bot) is buying up that ore and not allowing the real players take advantage of the market balance. As an example, Al-FE Alloy is pretty much being demanded at 1Q. Bauxite is 25Q per liter as per the fixed/artificial bot price, however the demand for a third stage follow on item is insanely low! That everyone is broken game economics on a massive level that will never stabilise unless either: (a) Fixed/artificial pricing is introduced at a considered price point for all items with the consideration of it's base components. A horrible horrible concept that removes any chance to generate a true player economy and any form of 1-2-1 or 1-2-many trading situations (which I'm guessing NQ wants right?!) but generates a fair market price structure in the supply chain end to end. Still horrible though! (b) Allow free market activity. Remove the bots and let the market self-regulate, driving player supply/demand elements and allowing everyone to make the right levels or margins across the supply chain for the real economy to breathe and flourish! This could also introduce more advanced market elements such as futures trading based on known or predicted events in the game. Sorry for the long and (potentially) boring post. It's something that's close to my heart, and something that's been bothering me about this game and the future of it. I really really like this game but the recent patch has in essence destroyed any chance of new players getting ahead (I've stopped playing and instead just logging in to collect my daily bonus until my sub runs out). This attached with the price/market fixing has absolutely removed any chance of getting ahead and making any form of player profiting unless you want to spend all day underground mining. "We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down" - Ronald Reagan.

Looks very uniform and so I'm guessing these are all bot placings on the market? So not only did the industry paralyse the new players, it looks like an artificial pricing structure is now in place, thus killing any natural market movement and novation and once again crippling the ability for a true supply and demand situation between players? Honestly you can't make this up if this is the case! You've broken it already, let the natural order occur!

Wow. Difficult to leave a planet without a ship. Not sure the noobie speeder is going to cut it. Older, richer players roll on, new players die quickly. Game over man. Game over.

Oh dear...thats that then.

This. Absolutely this. I've not been this addicted to a game for over 10 years and now I really don't want to play it. It's a huge shame.

I've been monitoring ore prices this morning. Hematite on Alioth went from on average 24q per unit to just under 19q in four hours. The market is flooding as everyone is underground grinding to have any hope of pulling themselves out of the industry hole they find themselves in. I expect that price to plummet even further by this evening as more and more ore floods in. Its a basic economic concept based on the Wyckoff methodology that the rich will get richer and the poorer work hard to maintain a basic standard of living. As a poor noobie it's really not fun.

I described it as being 'paralysed'. It sucks that I can't play a game the way I want to play it and actually spend the limited game time I have having fun especially as there are many other games that I could spend time playing and enjoy.

As a new player it's soul destroying. Such a great game that is now genuinely to difficult to play with any ounce of fun. Gutted.

That would be the best situation. Level the field and make people truly collaborate at the same level. The economy gulf between the rich (older players) and the poor (new players) is too wide for the economy to work.

I have. I just unsubbed. No you can't have my stuff!

I'm a week into the game, super enjoying it, addicted even. New patch has arrived, I like the concept of a harder path to mega industry, get it, understand it. However for a new player it's completely killed it, gutted. It's impossible for me to afford just the basic of industry items. I have 90k quants. Answer is to go mine, sell, mine, sell etc. I get it, go earn it but that's not fun. Games are meant to be fun. I already have a job, I don't want two. The other issue is current wealth. The older, richer players can just buy their way out of this and be up and running in days/weeks, for me it would take months/years. Again no fun and massively unfair. Fun has been removed, sorry guys it sucks. There must be a better fairer/more balanced way to achieve the industry goals? Yes I've unsubbed. No you can't have my stuff. Have fun folks.