What's the issue with /tp market?
The current market place is heavily biased. That's the intention. For more money, you can purchase a larger storefront, that's more central, ergo more people will buy from you. The less money you invest, the less ideal market stall you're given, the less money you make from it. Fair enough. However, you can rent the property in advanced, and there's a few issues this causes: 1) The likelihood of a richshop to be put on the market is minimal, unless the current operator chooses to sell it (especially with the reduction of price). 2) The shops are held onto by old players who already have significant fortunes. I've seen a richshop change ownership about four times over the three ish years I've been on massive. 3) A few of the owners are inactive (Having not logged on for 1-2 weeks, sometimes up to a month, and when they do log on it's very minimal.) In the markets current state, we have a few players with large amounts of money. Unless a player is really looking for a specific item, or is really trying to get the best bargain, they won't go out past the rich shops. It's time consuming to run around and check every shop, and it's easier to navigate if you stay within that main plaza. The market place is one of the laggiest spots on Massive, so player's don't really want to spend a lot of time there.
Now why is this bad news for the economy?
There's 24 richshops. Although the rent is 1000, to buy one off of a player, I've seen asking prices of upwards of 15k regals. If you go to every single rich shop and do a /seen on the owner, chances are they have 40k plus regals (with a few exceptions). If you factor in the material wealth stored in the rich shop, as well as the actual value of the property, 1000 regals a month seems ridiculously cheap. You have to realize, if you own a richshop, that's it. You're loaded. So now you essentially have 24 players with a total monopoly over the market. If you note, it's these players who set most of the prices. "Oh wow Gumee, that's how market economies work. Some float to the top and others sink to the bottom!" You'd be right. But that's not exactly great for an economy that's as volatile as massive's is. These players are the largest money sinks in the game, and with such a low flow of regals currently, they're slowly accumulating the majority of the money. Having watched the active owners of these shops, they usually use their wealth to pay for labor projects, such as schematica builds or other factions. Some use it to fund their properties in Regalia. With the amount of items that are sold to them as well (which is actually quite minimal I'd assume), the likelihood they need that money to buy survival items for themselves is minimal. They've got enough stocked. What are the players they pay for those aforementioned services doing with their money? Some of its going to faction tax, but those aren't usually the players who live out of regalia. It's ending back up at those richshops, buying more building supplies.
The point is, those players are most likely never going to give up those rich shops. This makes it much harder for any other player to even get near those player's wealth status and creates a class divide, making the economy less enjoyable for the average player to get into. It's hard to consistently sell items without a shop, therefore this tycoon-istic market is limiting the entire community's ability to earn regals in a trade environment.
What are some alternatives?
What a solution needs to do, is break up the stagnancy of /tp market. It needs to ensure, that all players have a somewhat chance to get into the very competitive market. Think of it like an McMMO skill wall. Players need to grind their PvP McMMO skills to 1000 to be consider the competitive standard. Now players need to come up with thousands of regals to be consider competitive within the market's standard.
Solution 1: Equalize /tp Market
If we were to redesign /tp market into a grid, make all the shops the same size/price and have the teleport warp you to a random spot in said grid, then the market would be about as fair as it gets. This would remove most bias selecting where to shop from, and if the area is color coded, it shouldn't be hard to navigate your way back to your favorite stalls.
Solution 2: Remove the Advanced Rent Feature
Prevent owners from renting shops in advanced, and if they became inactive, they wouldn't retain their shop indefinitely. Thus, giving players the power to more easily secure a rich shop. You'd have to raise the price of the rent, because I won't call out any players, but there's one specific owner who tends to be very inactive and has well over 40k regals. S/he could easily rent out the shop upfront for a year, if it stays at 1k a month. I'm aware that players would theoretically lose all the blocks in the shop, if they lose the shop. But usually players are given ample time to recover their items from locked chests.
In Summary
If we want to have a true "player run economy", that everyone feels they can participate in, we need to weaken monopolies. That being said, I'm not saying we should penalize the wealthier players, because good on them. But they control too much of the market for our economy to be active and healthy.
The current market place is heavily biased. That's the intention. For more money, you can purchase a larger storefront, that's more central, ergo more people will buy from you. The less money you invest, the less ideal market stall you're given, the less money you make from it. Fair enough. However, you can rent the property in advanced, and there's a few issues this causes: 1) The likelihood of a richshop to be put on the market is minimal, unless the current operator chooses to sell it (especially with the reduction of price). 2) The shops are held onto by old players who already have significant fortunes. I've seen a richshop change ownership about four times over the three ish years I've been on massive. 3) A few of the owners are inactive (Having not logged on for 1-2 weeks, sometimes up to a month, and when they do log on it's very minimal.) In the markets current state, we have a few players with large amounts of money. Unless a player is really looking for a specific item, or is really trying to get the best bargain, they won't go out past the rich shops. It's time consuming to run around and check every shop, and it's easier to navigate if you stay within that main plaza. The market place is one of the laggiest spots on Massive, so player's don't really want to spend a lot of time there.
Now why is this bad news for the economy?
There's 24 richshops. Although the rent is 1000, to buy one off of a player, I've seen asking prices of upwards of 15k regals. If you go to every single rich shop and do a /seen on the owner, chances are they have 40k plus regals (with a few exceptions). If you factor in the material wealth stored in the rich shop, as well as the actual value of the property, 1000 regals a month seems ridiculously cheap. You have to realize, if you own a richshop, that's it. You're loaded. So now you essentially have 24 players with a total monopoly over the market. If you note, it's these players who set most of the prices. "Oh wow Gumee, that's how market economies work. Some float to the top and others sink to the bottom!" You'd be right. But that's not exactly great for an economy that's as volatile as massive's is. These players are the largest money sinks in the game, and with such a low flow of regals currently, they're slowly accumulating the majority of the money. Having watched the active owners of these shops, they usually use their wealth to pay for labor projects, such as schematica builds or other factions. Some use it to fund their properties in Regalia. With the amount of items that are sold to them as well (which is actually quite minimal I'd assume), the likelihood they need that money to buy survival items for themselves is minimal. They've got enough stocked. What are the players they pay for those aforementioned services doing with their money? Some of its going to faction tax, but those aren't usually the players who live out of regalia. It's ending back up at those richshops, buying more building supplies.
The point is, those players are most likely never going to give up those rich shops. This makes it much harder for any other player to even get near those player's wealth status and creates a class divide, making the economy less enjoyable for the average player to get into. It's hard to consistently sell items without a shop, therefore this tycoon-istic market is limiting the entire community's ability to earn regals in a trade environment.
What are some alternatives?
What a solution needs to do, is break up the stagnancy of /tp market. It needs to ensure, that all players have a somewhat chance to get into the very competitive market. Think of it like an McMMO skill wall. Players need to grind their PvP McMMO skills to 1000 to be consider the competitive standard. Now players need to come up with thousands of regals to be consider competitive within the market's standard.
Solution 1: Equalize /tp Market
If we were to redesign /tp market into a grid, make all the shops the same size/price and have the teleport warp you to a random spot in said grid, then the market would be about as fair as it gets. This would remove most bias selecting where to shop from, and if the area is color coded, it shouldn't be hard to navigate your way back to your favorite stalls.
Solution 2: Remove the Advanced Rent Feature
Prevent owners from renting shops in advanced, and if they became inactive, they wouldn't retain their shop indefinitely. Thus, giving players the power to more easily secure a rich shop. You'd have to raise the price of the rent, because I won't call out any players, but there's one specific owner who tends to be very inactive and has well over 40k regals. S/he could easily rent out the shop upfront for a year, if it stays at 1k a month. I'm aware that players would theoretically lose all the blocks in the shop, if they lose the shop. But usually players are given ample time to recover their items from locked chests.
In Summary
If we want to have a true "player run economy", that everyone feels they can participate in, we need to weaken monopolies. That being said, I'm not saying we should penalize the wealthier players, because good on them. But they control too much of the market for our economy to be active and healthy.
