This question is inspired by a recent thread where a player was asking for the establishment of a market cartel of sorts. Though, I don’t think he truly understood what he was asking for and the ramifications of it. And I’ve seen conversations on the Discord whereby players are wondering if it’s feasable to control the prices of certain goods or raw materials… a shadow cartel of sorts.
So the question is; Is it feasible, within current game mechanics, to establish a market cartel in niche areas? Conversely, is it possible for other players to establish a consumer consortium whereby they demand “fair” prices and put pressure on the shop keepers?
Before players chime in, I want to be clear that this isn’t a discussion about whether it’s right or wrong for either side. But a discussion as to whether it’s feasable and how would it play out?
It depends largely how the owner of the portal hubs act in it and how many portal hubs exist in game.
This assumption is based on the idea that portal hubs direct the traffic and player flow for a majority of players. If a portal hubs severs all ties with the other hubs or works together with the other hubs it can dictate what players will see when they travel from world to world. If they can control what they can see they can also control who is allowed to open shop portals to their hubs.
This two measures would allow them to only let players see shops with prices set to an agreed price by the people controlling the portal hubs, you don’t agree with the pricing policy no portal no traffic no costumers for you.
Now to the holes in that theory, controlling what players can and cannot see is really difficult in boundless cause if you build a successful portal hub you want people to claim the surrounding plots so you get traffic and have shops stocked with wares as well as get people from a to b. If certain mats get either under or overpriced all that is needed is a post in the forum or discord to state i have a shop with reasonable priced item X on planet Y with coords such and such and if you run from the portal on planet Y straight north you get to my shop portal. And if things go to much out of whack, people can bond together and construct their own new portal network with different rules, yes running and maintaining a network is hard work and not easy but it is doable and can be done by a medium group of players, that don’t want to bow down to the cartel.
And since any active methods to stop the new portal network or sabotage it, by buying plots or similiar things would fall really fast into the grieving territory there is nothing in that comes to my mind that the cartel can do to stop the new portal network to rise up.
Of course. If the people buying the items refused to buy them and worked together to make their own, the people charging the big prices either sit with stock that doesn’t move or follow the market trends.
If you’re able to sustainably provide a product or service at a lower price point and higher quality than your competition, it most definitely means you can.
Except in this case for a video game, quality would be the reliability of how well you’re able to keep your prices down and keep inventory stock full. It’s possible to do this solo so long as your shop isn’t trying to sell everything under the sun for items.
I dont think cartels could exist. Maybe if you had someone spend thousands and wall off gem hotspots completely? But even then youre talking some plenty massive financial backing in real world dollars. At the same time, if that were even possible, would the devs hen decide that that type of gameplay was allowed any longer? Already having a neutered player base, would that feature enhance or discourage continued player growth. For a video game that aims to keep its forums rated for young ages i cant really believe that would be their game plan long term as the people youre marketing to via the rules are not children.
Thats the only way I see a cartel being viable in this game. Using a stupid amount of actual dollars and cents. The same with any other resource in this game.
If you had unlimited money resources you could control a resource like shimmering orbs to an extent by just buying out every shop stand you see so that nobody else can buy them.
But it’s probably easier to flood the market and drive prices down.
It’s all about the exotic earthyams and shimmering orbs because those get consumed for everything.
@OmniUno did a cartel already in beta. Once he won the first-to-max-level lottery, it made it that much easier to maintain. But, of course, there is no multi-million dollar prize for first to level 50 (and it’s already been done anyway).
@OmniUno and the omnishop pretty well had the EA market locked down. Competition with the Gemporium kept prices so low, that nobody else could really get a foothold on the market. Between the two super shops, prices were pretty soundly stable and there was little reason to shop any place else.
No, the supply of items is unlimited, not enough coins to support the theory
Spooky seeds maybe since it’s the only item in-game with limited supply
You could have an “illusion” of control by having X number of popular shops in compliance of prices of items, it will only work on the buyers/sellers that visit the shops and don’t go out of there way to find the best values outside of the shops.
Cartel’s aren’t just about limiting supply, though. They are about price fixing with other competitors, which controls where customers get their goods. This can either be directly (an actual arranged agreement between competitors) or indirectly (competition between two or more massive shops/organizations keeps prices so low, nobody else can compete without millions $ worth of stock/inventory). Sure, people can always buy from outside the cartel - some small shop with 50 shimmering orbs for sale - but once those little guys run out of worthwhile stock, they’re out of business until they can restock, and that restocking is the part they can’t compete with the cartels, who always have stock, and always have workers cheaply working for them, and always sell for the price they want. In large part, consumers will have to buy at the price they set.
very true, and then the cartels can also have workers running round buying out the little shops stock, then reselling at a larger price, this is getting me thinking… (lol JK i have like 10k haha)
I don’t think there is an easy way to control specific item prices on the open market. Not without an insane amount of effort from a lot of people.
On the flip side, a consumer consortium wouldn’t have any weight to it as there is nothing that can be enforced from forming such a thing. Both seem like a nearly impossible task to accomplish.
I mostly agree with you, Munkeylord. One of main problems with EA was there was a very small population of players (mostly dedicated), fewer types of resources, but super plentiful and easy means of gathering those resources. It was an eventuality that one or two mega shops would dominate that island of players. Restocking gems was a lazy affair, and building coils took only slightly more effort, even for moderately well-to-do players. Mega shops could sell the highest tier items - and all items below - with little to no real effort indefinitely. And they would do it for pennies.
Today, it is much harder as there is a larger population of players, both dedicated and casual/transient, and resources are more varied and rare ones are much harder to gather reliably.
The funny thing is, the EA cartel was the opposite of that. They sold for pennies. Smaller shops would try to buy them out, and resell at a higher price! Prices were so low, a normal shopkeeper couldn’t stay in business.
Yep, most here would know the in demand stuff, hopper cores, feathers, shimmering orbs etc… If a group had enough coin and dedication they could really target one or two of these no problems