1 Topic by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-11 01:36:58)

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Topic: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Two things:

* Do not exclude internal corporation markets from incurring a market trade TAX!
* Half the base TAX!

Trading volumes on the open market are too low for good price forming and the player base is too small a.t.m. to get it going with current mechanics. The internal corporation trades for the most common and for every corp available items just draws trade away from the open market for no other reason then the evasion of the market TAX.

Some will argue that corporations like to provide cheap PVP modules to their members, without benefiting their competition too. I would rebuff that it is still possible trough corp storage access and an internal market with subsidized prices levels. My view is that this subsidizing has to be funded from somewhere else then just evading the market TAX by using internal orders.

Personally I see no good reason not to create an equal playing field between public and internal orders, taxation wise. It is my hope that many low end modules and ores will end up being traded publicly instead of internally. There really is not much reason not to do so as not doing it will financially always hurt some part of the corporation population and the hurt corp as a whole.

Another benefit is that starting players, not in a corporation will not be forced to train the tax reduction extension just to participate in the market and it will speed up their development and involvement somewhat. Also buying in one oversupplied place and reselling where there is a shortage will also become a bit more attractive activity too.

Thus for common items that are on internal market for no other reason then TAX evasion, I think it is a shame those do not end up on open market where they compete with others. Prices for those items on the open market would be much lower if increased participation and competition happens, removing one more reason why internal trade is done today. The changes make arguments to provide cheap PVP gear to members a mood point for the most part.

And remember, subsidizing PVP modules internally can only happen if you penalize the miners and/or producers of the same corp by underpaying them OR trough increased corp taxes on mission activities and controlled outpost income. It is every corps free choice! The first option is kind of lame, but the second option seems more reasonable too me and will actually give corporations a good reason to try and hold an outpost.

In short these are easy changes with more upsides then downsides and when embraced by participants (that is a condition) will make this game a bit more immerse and fun to participate in, especially for new players (which is good).


Also read these quotes/replies in full before responding:

http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/55623/#p55623
http://forums.perpetuum-online.com/post/55624/#p55624

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Completely agree.

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

+100.

Relations/standings for transport assignments could lower taxes on market too, together with Extensions, another incentive to do them. Even combat could be put in the mix maybe.

RIP PERPETUUM

4 Reply by Joph (edited by Joph 2011-12-11 16:00:20)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Inspiration wrote:

Two things:

* Do not exclude internal corporation markets from incurring a market trade TAX!
* Half the base TAX!

Internal corp markets should have no tax, if they are taxed then we'll just stop using the market and do direct trade to corp members. 
The current tax systems works fine, you can lower it to 2% using tax reduction skill.

5 Reply by Lucius Marcellus (edited by Lucius Marcellus 2011-12-10 22:18:25)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

First of all, the minimum tax rate is 2% with tax extension at lvl 10.

So, why should the public markets have to pay more then? The ONLY people this hurts are the ones who currently sell internally only for tax reasons. Also, if you are so fine with a 2% public tax, why do you think all corps will all of a sudden abandon the internal market?

However, a key problem is really that that the basic tax rate starts at 12%, which is huge, and the people who are not willing to get a very high level in the tax extension simply avoids the public markets completely. The tax extension should still exist, but at the moment it plays too big of a role. If it was me I'd let the tax rate start at 4.5%, and then the extension would only reduce this by 0.25% per, so that the minimum rate would still be 2% (as I already have the extension at 10 here you really can't call this proposal biased).

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Removing the internal market isn't going to fix the open market, its only going to penalize corporations using the internal market as it was intended.

When PIE finished a run of Termis MK II's we put them up on the internal market at cost. Any member wanting to purchse one for personal use, or to resell, could do so.

There's absolutely no chance that we would have put those bots up on the public market at cost.

We built them for our members, our members shouldn't have to compete with the whole server population to purchase items.

With the internal market, I was able to put them up as soon as they were completed, and members took them at their leisure.

Without that market, someone would have to arrange to be online to manually make the exchange, which is what we used to do. And what we still do if we want to ensure a specific member gets an item.

Yes, some corps have alts from other corps that buy and sell internally. Lucius and I did a project with MK II's. It was a super pain in the ***, because of our time zones, we could only exhange items on weekends. Even without the internal market, if we had continued to do projects, we probably would have created alts and a specific corp access level folder to exchange goods in.

In other words, removing internal markets isn't going to have the effect of moving items to the open market, its just going to make players get more creative in how they bypass it, while penalizing corps actually using it for internal use.

More population will fix the market, nothing else.

7 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-10 22:37:28)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Arga wrote:

Removing the internal market isn't going to fix the open market, its only going to penalize corporations using the internal market as it was intended.

Where exactly do you read the removal of the internal market here?

Arga wrote:

When PIE finished a run of Termis MK II's we put them up on the internal market at cost. Any member wanting to purchse one for personal use, or to resell, could do so.

I am sure most corporations will not permit reselling subsidized items, for obvious enough reasons.

Arga wrote:

There's absolutely no chance that we would have put those bots up on the public market at cost.

You do not have to, nor is it wise! And do you realize that build materials and/or ores you acquire will get cheaper if there is competition on an open market to get them from? Would you not rather lower the build cost to begin with instead of selling at zero profit?

Arga wrote:

In other words, removing internal markets isn't going to have the effect of moving items to the open market, its just going to make players get more creative in how they bypass it, while penalizing corps actually using it for internal use.

Again this is not what I wrote!

Arga wrote:

More population will fix the market, nothing else.[

More population won't fix anything if they do not participate in the market and all hide in their own corp. You would need a very serious population boom in every corp for things to work smoother and with good timezone coverage. This optimum is much easier to reach with interactions on one market then on one market for every moderately sized corporation.

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Arga, well, if you do not put it on the internal market for tax reasons, this will change nothing. It is further suggested to reduce the tax rate, so that the penalty is far lower.

9 Reply by Alexander (edited by Alexander 2011-12-10 22:47:34)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

OKAY HERE COMES ANOTHER IDEA STRAIGHT FROM MY BUTT TO THE FORUMS:

When you sell something on the market you set a sell price and then an OPTIONAL corp price. The corp price (If sold) is done so without tax. You still pay a listing fee to put the item on the market as you should when selling to the public or just the corporation but only pay tax if someone from the public market buys your item.

This way all items on the market will be buy-able if you have enough NIC but we will see a lot of very expensive items (That can be easily undercut) but the market will at least LOOK active.

If the idea is to create an Illusion of activity (Because there is simple NO way to attract people to sell on the public market when they can direct trade cheaper anyway to their own corporation members) then this will do what you asked. Prices will seem high but also seem easily undercut encouraging more market and price wars.

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Alexander wrote:

OKAY HERE COMES ANOTHER IDEA STRAIGHT FROM MY BUTT TO THE FORUMS:

When you sell something on the market you set a sell price and then an OPTIONAL corp price. The corp price (If sold) is done so without tax. You still pay a listing fee to put the item on the market as you should when selling to the public or just the corporation but only pay tax if someone from the public market buys your item.

This way all items on the market will be buy-able if you have enough NIC but we will see a lot of very expensive items (That can be easily undercut) but the market will at least LOOK active.

If the idea is to create an Illusion of activity (Because there is simple NO way to attract people to sell on the public market when they can direct trade cheaper anyway to their own corporation members) then this will do what you asked. Prices will seem high but also seem easily undercut encouraging more market and price wars.

So why exclude internal orders from tax?

I do like the idea of setting internal and external price on the same stack of items though.

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

In theory, if someone can manage to absorb all corps on alpha in one mega corp. Then tell me, if internal market is balanced.

RIP PERPETUUM

12 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-10 23:56:07)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Alexander wrote:

OKAY HERE COMES ANOTHER IDEA STRAIGHT FROM MY BUTT TO THE FORUMS:

When you sell something on the market you set a sell price and then an OPTIONAL corp price. The corp price (If sold) is done so without tax. You still pay a listing fee to put the item on the market as you should when selling to the public or just the corporation but only pay tax if someone from the public market buys your item.

This way all items on the market will be buy-able if you have enough NIC but we will see a lot of very expensive items (That can be easily undercut) but the market will at least LOOK active.

If the idea is to create an Illusion of activity (Because there is simple NO way to attract people to sell on the public market when they can direct trade cheaper anyway to their own corporation members) then this will do what you asked. Prices will seem high but also seem easily undercut encouraging more market and price wars.


This has merit, and it very much depends on the details if it will work positive or negative (I explain shortly).


The positive:

It will work very well if it is based on a rebate system instead of dual pricing. Sell order fees for example must be based on the public price and the buyer should be able to pay the public price in order for a transaction to take place just as is today. After the transaction the rebate system cam take over and deposit the rebate back.

Sales tax (which i feel should still be there in the lowered form) should be applied on the public price too. In this form, your proposal would go further then what I asked for in this thread and it will make the market a lot better then with the changes I proposed alone.


The negative:

This will implicitly explain why I made the above tweaks to your idea. The danger is that public prices will be set to insane levels just to make them NOT publicly sell. While at the same time the corporation only prices are set to a very affordable. The insane prices will NOT improve competition, not give any indication of what items really trade for and you end up with a market looking sick, full with scams!


My conclusion:

The modifications to your quite ingenious idea will keep prices and access to items reasonable. Because implicitly there will be a penalty if some corp still wants ridiculous public pricing and it will be in the form of the public sales fee, public sales tax and a higher purchase threshold for the corporation buyer as he needs to be able to cover that higher public price too.

In the end sellers will find it much easier to sell their items without hurting the corporation and at the same time, buyers will find it much easier to find what they seek. And after all is the very reason a big market needs to exist, it will make us all better off!


So what do you think?

13 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-11 00:26:11)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Expanding further

In my previous reply I suggested a variation based on your idea Alexander and I want to describe and evolve it a step further,  so everyone can see to what marvel it leads!


A rebate system

A rebate system implicitly enables corporation and standing based rebating! A rebate is configurable and adjustable after you put up the order the normal way. Looking at the market orders, next to the price column there will be a rebate price column which shows how much you really pay with the corporation/standing based rebate taken into account.


Managing fine grained rebates in a changing political landscape

An option to make setting up order rebates easier and enable a corporation policy would be to use standings based rebate percentage settings as part of a policy. The rebate links to the policy the user chooses to when setting up a order and this includes policies made available by the corporation too. Changing the policy changes also changes the rebates of all order using said policy. This can accommodate changes in the political landscape easily. Removing the policy undoes the rebates and the orders stay on market with their public price as they were before.


Final word

I think it would be an awesome system, quite easy to use and better then any I seen anywhere before!  All market transactions happen in one big market, accessible to everyone willing and able to pay the public price. It is a great staring point for market forces to ignite competition and start doing their work while offering easy fine grained price differentiation based on standings. It would certainly evolve how we do business in this game.

To make sure we still don't see outrage exploitations, we could impose a limit to the rebate percentages listed in policies managed by corporations. It would be a bummer if a corporation exec changes all rebates to 100% rebate and buys up everything for him self and then leaves.

And I have to say it Alexander, you got quite an ingenious BUTT if that is where it came from wink

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

you still want to force corps to put their assets onto the open market. why?

transfer this to real world:
The American Armed forces set up a Tank Factory to produce the best tank of the world, and any American military base can order the Tanks they need to accomplish their job for free of production costs.

Now an intelligent guy comes and tells you that you have to place those Tanks on the public market, because the world market for best tanks lacks offers and the world market for Tanks would fall apart because you deliver them to your own country for free or production costs.

Thes special thing about those tanks is, that the Factory doesn't need to buy ANY material for it from the worldmarket because they can gather and reprocess anything they need from their sourroundings. They dont even need Oil from Terror-countries, or electronics from asian market. The Factory is fully self sufficient and has no use for this thing called "Dollar" except for paying their workers... and this they get from the US Gouverment.

i wonder how many guys now can see the connection of that story with perpetuum....

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
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15 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-11 00:51:49)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Annihilator wrote:

you still want to force corps to put their assets onto the open market. why?

My original post did not call for forced trade in one open market, it merely stated changes in the TAX system.
Please read my first post again to make sure you understood what I wrote.

Annihilator wrote:

transfer this to real world:
The American Armed forces set up a Tank Factory to produce the best tank of the world, and any American military base can order the Tanks they need to accomplish their job for free of production costs.

Now an intelligent guy comes and tells you that you have to place those Tanks on the public market, because the world market for best tanks lacks offers and the world market for Tanks would fall apart because you deliver them to your own country for free or production costs.

Thes special thing about those tanks is, that the Factory doesn't need to buy ANY material for it from the worldmarket because they can gather and reprocess anything they need from their sourroundings. They dont even need Oil from Terror-countries, or electronics from asian market. The Factory is fully self sufficient and has no use for this thing called "Dollar" except for paying their workers... and this they get from the US Gouverment.

i wonder how many guys now can see the connection of that story with perpetuum....

However unrealistic your example is, I will play along smile and will answer in spirit.

Who is the US government in this, the sold plasma (only thing that hands NIC besides missions)? And is all plasma to be donated to the American forces?  If so, then there is no need for a market at all, just a shared corporation folder will do for both buys and sells!

This however is not how individuals, even as part of a corporation, will like to play. Sure all is nice when there is a stash you can draw from and never did any work for, but there is a flip side for that situation too.

Wouldn't you like to see an active market with realistic prices due to improved competition and many more participants then is possible with corporation only market? Don't you see how the market fragmentation is hurting nearly everyone and is wasteful playtime wise?

Here is a real current example:

Today I wanted to to buy a mkII bot for which I gathered enough EP and there exists only one (scam priced) on the whole world market, with none in corporation either. Not that it is a rare bot or something, but it is just that supply and demand can't find each other efficiently with the fragmented markets we have now. On the other side of the coin is  a seller wondering why he can't get rid of this one bot as fast as he expected as he knows there must be demand for it.

With it I would spend more NIC for fitting it out, all transactions not happening because of the same problem. The system is quite frozen and that needs changing desperately! If anything in this game needs to improve, it is exactly this!

16 Reply by Annihilator (edited by Annihilator 2011-12-11 01:09:05)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

your assuming that the price is a scam price.

please more details about that please.

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17 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-11 01:14:01)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Annihilator wrote:

your assuming that the price is a scam price.

please more details about that please.

Current market offer: 22m
Sell prices of transactions in the last two months 14-16m
Price six months ago: 17m
Quote from a producer (that does not have the item in stock at this moment): 12m

And all the above prices are for low transaction volumes as most has been direct trade and corporation internal only trades. My expected price in an unified open market right now would be closer to that 12m then 15m, so 22m is clearly overpriced (knowingly or unknowingly, likely the later).

Prices in this market are close to random and it is due to lack of volume and participants!

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

that 12m is based on what? market price of raw ores? buy or sell orders?

im sure i could go even lower with the price if i only calculate the mining ammo... or even lower if i only calculate the artifact scan charges + factory fees...

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19 Reply by Inspiration (edited by Inspiration 2011-12-11 01:48:57)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Annihilator wrote:

that 12m is based on what? market price of raw ores? buy or sell orders?

im sure i could go even lower with the price if i only calculate the mining ammo... or even lower if i only calculate the artifact scan charges + factory fees...

Open market producers don't give their products away, there will be a large enough margin in there!

20 Reply by Gremrod (edited by Gremrod 2011-12-11 03:06:35)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Lucius Marcellus wrote:

I do like the idea of setting internal and external price on the same stack of items though.

I like that idea too. A public price and an internal price. Would be neat if it could be worked in a way that it dynamically lowered the internal price buy a certain % when an item sold to the public. Of course if they all sold to the public then the internal guys are out of luck.

But say a corp puts a stack of 20 mechs up for sale and set the public price to N and the internal price to N. In most case we know the public price is going to be more then the internal. But with the added feature to set a % of reduction on internal price for each item that sells to the public the corp members can end up getting them for even cheaper. The corp still wins because they are making the same amount of nic assuming the public prices would be higher. Of course this would be optional to see this % decrease in price based on sales to the public.

I hope I am explaining this correctly.

John 3:16 - Timothy 2:23

21 Reply by Lucius Marcellus (edited by Lucius Marcellus 2011-12-11 03:07:34)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Corporations should not be forced to set a public price or make it available for the public. However, I think having the option to enter such a price seems like a good idea. To clarify this, both setting an internal and external price are both optional. A corporation can choose to make it purely internal or external, or can allow both at different prices if wanted (these options should of course be available in an advanced tab to avoid confusion).


Now, let's focus on what the initial proposal was about... 1) Internal orders should not be exempt from tax, 2) The tax base rate should be reduced.

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

1) Internal orders should not be exempt from tax

I agree taxes should be paid accross the board public or internal.

2) The tax base rate should be reduced.

I think the base tax rate is fine. Like you said it can be reduced down to 2% with extensions.

John 3:16 - Timothy 2:23
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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Gremrod wrote:

Like you said it can be reduced down to 2% with extensions.

I highlighted the problem. The 2% final rate is fine, but the initial 12% rate either forces people to take the extension, or avoid using the market as much as possible. Sadly a lot of people choose the latter. To clarify, I'm not saying that the final rate (2%) should be reduced, but only that the initial rate (12%) should be reduced.

24 Reply by Celebro (edited by Celebro 2011-12-11 03:39:00)

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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Lucius Marcellus wrote:
Gremrod wrote:

Like you said it can be reduced down to 2% with extensions.

I highlighted the problem. The 2% final rate is fine, but the initial 12% rate either forces people to take the extension, or avoid using the market as much as possible. Sadly a lot of people choose the latter. To clarify, I'm not saying that the final rate (2%) should be reduced, but only that the initial rate (12%) should be reduced.


Agree 12% is too much for new player who have little EP and really is when the open market is more in need to them. Forcing people to use market is not the idea, but the High tax rate forces players to join corps and avoid public market altogether.

RIP PERPETUUM
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Re: Changes to improve the open market and price forming

Right, I didn't even think about the 12% rate affect on those with out the exts.

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