How to Negotiate in the Marketplace?

[LawStudent]

I'm a law student (never played an on-line game) researching how gamers negotiate the virtual sale of goods. How do you determine how to value something? Is there an established price for most goods or is there room to negotiate? Do you have a preference for negotiating with certain players over others? How do gamers enforce truthful and fair negotiating? What do you do if you negotiate for the purchase of a good and then the seller never delivers? Is negotiating the sale of a virtual good the same as negotiating the sale of goods or services in the real world? How much money do you spend a month on virtual goods?

Any information you can provide me with is much appreciated. I find it fascinating how much buying and selling goes on in the virtual world.

[Scuzz Zilla]

It is generally highly frowned upon to purchase good in Everquest with real currency, considered obtaining something within the game without working for it within the game.
That said let the folks who can explain game negotiations better than I have the first crack

[LawStudent]

Do you frown on the sellers of goods as much of the purchasers? What steps does the player community take to curb the sale of virtual goods and to encourage players to acquire the skills/goods through hard work?

[andyhre]

There is a lot of academic study on this subject. A good spot to start is

http://terranova.blogs.com/

Another good spot to start (patting myself on the back) is with a paper a colleague and I co-authored in the USF IP Law Bulletin:

http://home.pacbell.net/andyhre/copy...d_eq_final.doc


But remember what people are saying is frowned upon is The sale of Virtual Goods for Real World Currency (what academics call RMT or Real-Money Transfers). (Almost) everyone agrees that a thriving virtual-good-for-virtual-currency economy is a good thing for a game -- and so perhaps folks can answer THAT question -- how do we set prices (in PLAT not $$$) for goods? How do we negotiate, etc.?

Searching these threads, you'll see some of the answers. People ask other people, they base it on the cost of supplies, a sense of a "fair" return for their efforts to acquire the skill. Sometimes some items are on a "skill up path" meaning they are used to gain skill and so they tend to be produced in greater quantities than pure demand for the item would indicate -- these can then be driven down in price to the point of not being even worth selling (I made so many of one bracer that I sold the first one for 14K and by the end I was dropping them on the ground b/c even transferring them to my seller was not worth the few plat I might hope to recoup).

A very new, best-of-game item can sell for hundreds of thousands of platinum. As the next expansion comes out, commonly the item ceases to be THE BEST and it rapidly will lose value b/c the few very rich people who desire to have the best items platinum can buy move on to the next hot thing. So an item like a Velium Gemmed Morninstar, which was for a while one of the the best buyable weapons, lost favor in the market when the Omens expansion came out and items could be gotten in a zone (WoS) that were comparable and came into the world much more quickly. The difficult player-made item was, naturally, devalued b/c it now had a close "dropped" (ie from a monster) substitute that was (fairly) easily gotten.

A source I often use if I am new to a given market is www.eqecon.com which is a very good historical database of prices..

Feel free to PM me if you want to chat more about this, but there are some thread where some people claim the EQ economy is irrational and prices are cited that don;t make sense. I disagree -- I think individual people price stupidly but that the market, taking into account such things as skill-paths and such, is quite rational. That doesn't mean I don;t sometimes see a seller offering to sell an item less than my buyer is offering to pay for it -- they could have just walked over and sold to me for more than they are offering, but we all need to go to bed sometimes and that little run across the bazaar can be a killer.

[Baldary]

Personally, I hate negotiating prices. Whether it is buying a car, a house, a television or a piece of armor in EQ, I dislike the whole process immensely. I am very glad that Bazaar, with its fixed price while AFK capability, went live shortly after I started playing EQ. I would have hated haggling over prices and trades in the EC tunnel.

Baldary

[Maevenniia]

This thread, What is an acceptable donation? has someuseful commentary related to what you are asking, and a thread over at EQlive, while started as a rant about over-pricing in teh bazaar, has some useful info in it as well.

Particularly these posts:

Depending on the gear, some lower-level stuff still sells quite well to players making twinks. This is especially true for non-recommended, non-required level gear. As a result, paying $20k for an item might seem like an unbelievable amount several years ago, but in today's game, $20k is pretty easy to come by. Especially if you you've been playing for several years, are 70+, and have nothing else on which to spend your plat.

Item worth is an interesting topic to me. I've come to learn that an item's worth is determined by what people are willing to pay, not by what a loud, vocal majority thinks it is worth. Take for example, a Blade of the Night Sky, which evolves into Blade of the Eclipse. When DoDH first came out, some friends and I farmed these. The best price we got was $500k. When I put it up in the bazaar, I got so many people shouting how it was crap and it wasn’t worth 500k. It is no longer worth that much because folks can look up the weapon, lookup the mob that drops it, where the mob spawns, and they can read about how easy he is to kill. I still see people selling this for $150k because people are willing to pay the price.

When I price items, I consider the following things:

Rarity - If something is rare because it no longer drops, comes from a difficult event/mob, or comes from mobs that nobody does any more, then I'll charge a premium for the item.

Availability - If I check the bazaar and see 10 for sell, then I'll charge a lower price just to move it. If I see none for sell, I'll set a higher price.

Comparable items - If I have an item that nobody else is selling, I'll look up comparable items and price up or down from there. For example, if I have a piece of armor with 100 HP, and I find comparable items with 85HP, then I'll price mine higher.

Niche pricing - If an item is usable by multiple classes, I sometimes will target one specific class and charge a premium. For example, let's say there is a plate item that has a bard instrument mod. While a cleric, warrior, shadow knight, and paladin might not consider the item that great, the instrument mod makes it very attractive to a bard. As a result, I'll charge a premium and target that audience.

Supply - If I have several of the same items because I farmed a mob over and over trying to get a rare drop, then I'll price the item lower just to move it. As mentioned above, I love it when a reseller comes along and taps into an item that I happen to have several stashed.

Twink fodder - If I get an old world item, I look to see if there are recommended and required levels. If the answer is on, then I'll charge a premium. For example, a shoulder item with 50 HP is junk to a level 70 player, but to a level 1 twink, 50 HP is huge. The same is true of mana regen and health regen. Since you can no longer get KEI at level 1, having a big chunk of mana regen is a bit impact for a caster twink.

Resellable - I hate it when I price an item, and some reseller comes along and marks it up. I would like to sell things at what I think is a fair price, but if an item is too attractive, some reseller will come along and mark it up. Therefore, I will sometimes price things a little higher. This hurts some players that are short on cash, but it insulates me from resellers by cutting into any profit they might make on an item. I still lose stuff to resellers, but I look at it as I got the price I asked for the item.

Tradeskill item - Having a 300 smith, tailor, and alchemist, I have a good idea of what things tradeskillers want. I know some items are for making high-end items, and some are for skillups only. I try to price accordingly.
These are the kinds of things I consider when pricing stuff. People that don't know, or don't care, will simply look up the item in the bazaar and price it a little less than the next guy.


Brio -- 70 Bard -- Bristlebane Server -- Master Half Elf Smith
Royr -- 70 Beastlord -- Bristlebane Server -- Master Vah Shir Tailor
Ryce -- 70 Ranger -- Bristlebane Server

I'm really starting to enjoy playing the Bazaar game. IMO, to make good money there, it simply takes some understanding that the Bazaar is a buyer's market. When an item is placed on my trader, it is there with the intention of moving it and rather quickly at that. Items have to be priced to sell, I don't want to wait 3-4 weeks to sell an item.

One of my most lucrative ventures as of late has become spell research components. This kind of came about by accident. When farming areas like Inner Acrylia, Siren's Groto, Cazic Thule, etc, a lot of the mobs drop words, runes, pages, etc. It used to just rot thinking it was trash that used up valuable inventory space. Then, I decided to try putting it in the bazaar and see what happens.

Well, it kind of turned into a market, in and of itself. Some components sell for 5 plat, some for 15, 40, a few hundred, even a 1000+ plat. Over time this all adds up. Sure, I get my hands on trinkets like a blackened acrylia blade, a spiked seahorse hide belt, boots of flowing slime, etc. However, I have now made thousands upon thousands of plat from research components. The trick for the most part, is just knowing how to price it.

The process I use is to first look up in /bazaar and see what others are selling a component at. Unfortunately, many times I might have a component that nobody else has. If that's the case, I look up in eqtraders.com to see the spell recipes the item is used in. I then look up again the going prices for the spells. I price my components so that a researcher can buy them, make the combine and still make a nice profit for themselves. It seems I almost have a loyal customer base now, with plenty of repeat business.

Vilehate

The reason prices are that there are two actual goals in making combines:

make money
skill up
Interestingly enough, people are willing to lose money if they can skill up. They consider it the price of building their skill. The more combines they make, the more likely they are to reach their goal. If they can actually make money while skilling up, that's fine. However, if they want to push the process and skill up quickly, they can do that by purchasing raw materials for more and selling their products for less. That improves the number of combines they can make.

In your example above, if the raw materials are available for 2k and under, and a person who is skilling up comes along, He may well purchase all of the components below 2k, leaving only those for you to purchase. In fact, there may be multiple people purchasing them. The prices aren't set that way because someone is gouging. They are set that way because people are buying out all the lower cost items, leaving only the higher priced ones.

Let me give you an example. I am a smith and I make bazu armor. I buy the bazu blood on the market for anything under 2k and make bazu armor for a profit. I put a price of 3.5k on my bazu blood on my vendor. I'm not really planning to sell it at that price, but if someone wants to pay that, then I'll be more than happy to sell it to them for a profit. I'm not the cheapest bazu blood on the market. In fact, the price is somewhat high. It sits there over time as I collect up bazu blood and haven't made any combines in a while. At least four times, someone has come into the bazaar and purchased all the bazu blood , including all my bazu blood. They are obviously skilling up, and I have made a profit I didn't expect. I don't consider this gouging. I am reserving the raw materials for my use, but offering them in the meantime to others who are willing to pay my asking price for them. I do the same with blue diamonds, metallic drake scales, glossy drake hides, murkglider blood, feran blood, etc. Sometimes this slows my skill up rate, but that is a price I am willing to pay.

Leana Soulwarden ~ Blacksmith ~ Inevitable Storm ~ The Seventh Hammer

[Flatley]

in addition to the above, I find it helps to consider the level at which some items can be provided. Enchanted metals go up in price based on the cost the metal as well as an additional profit if the spell to enchant them is higher level. The same with Manas and enchanted stones.


Donations for services rendered will vary with the availability of a service provider as well as how desperate someone is to acquire that service. I have seen combines (very High trivial combines) done for tens of thousand of plat and I have seen people offer several hundred plat for a high level rez in an out of the way zone.

Flatley Riverdancer
Druid 65th level

[Quichon]

I would also like to add that the sale of virtual goods for real currency is frowned upon on both sides... both the selling and the purchasing of virtual goods for real currency is a breach of the End User License Agreement and, if caught, carries a perma-ban penalty linked to the credit card used to pay for the account.

There are websites where you can go to buy and sell virtual goods for real currency, this is not one of them. This website is devoted soley to virtual currency, and virtual goods, in a virtual free economy.

If you are wanting to see how a virtual currency system works, then I suggest you purchase an everquest account and take your level 1 character to the Bazaar, where people buy and sell virtual goods for virtual currency nonstop. Thousands of vendors sell their wares, and there are many comments made about pricing and such which might be of interest to you.

If you are looking into the legal issues of purchasing virtual items with hard currency (such as the ebay-ing of accounts with high-level characters, which is also considered a breach of the EULA and HIGHLY frowned upon), then I would suggest you google for 'buy platinum EQ' which should bring up any number of websites which sell virtual goods for real currency.

This website is devoted to tradeskilling, which is a purely 'In Game' concept of finding virtual goods, and combining them in virtual containers to make better virtual goods. There is a virtual economy in effect which is actually quite facinating, and determines which 'skillup routes' are best to increase one's skill in the trade of your choice based on expense or difficulty to obtain the needed components to make the items you want.

Just as an aside, to give you an idea as to how frowned upon these tactics are...

A person known to have purchased his Everquest account on ebay to get a high-level character with zero in game effort or any knowledge of how to correctly play that character is called an 'E-baby', and is universally shunned by anyone who is aware of this. His lack of skill at playing the character at his high level is considered a detriment to his fellow players at that level, and likely he is reported to the proper authorities simply to remove him from the player base.

[Aldier]

How do you determine how to value something? Is there an established price for most goods or is there room to negotiate? Do you have a preference for negotiating with certain players over others? How do gamers enforce truthful and fair negotiating? What do you do if you negotiate for the purchase of a good and then the seller never delivers? Is negotiating the sale of a virtual good the same as negotiating the sale of goods or services in the real world? How much money do you spend a month on virtual goods?

Any information you can provide me with is much appreciated. I find it fascinating how much buying and selling goes on in the virtual world.

I try and set the value of my bazaar items to be slightly lower than other people because I want to move my wares and make some platinum pieces. I think it has been fairly well explained on how prices are set already. In the game, are guilds. In addition to my guild members, my friends that I have made in the game will more likely receive a favorable price from me. I have even gone as far as to just give things to guild members if they can make use of the item and only take what they offer me for it. Normally, for them, I do a 50% discount on whatever the going bazaar rate is for some of my tradeskilled wares (I bake and brew items in large quantities.) Reputations exist just like in the real world and can also affect pricing. I know that sometimes, people who annoy me in the game or have a reputation as a player who is less than curteous, will receive higher prices or no service at all. Guild reputations also affect this. Petty on my part, maybe, but it is my choice to sell or not. The interface to buy/sell things depend on the item and the money being present at the same time and both parties agreeing to the trade before it goes through. It is all faith based if you give someone money for a service prior to receiving the good/service. There are GameMasters (GMs) and guides, that work for Sony to regulate disputes, and they can return items if given just cause to. I do not know all they can and cannot do but they are able to remove/refund items if given proper reason.

It is hard to sell what you do not have. However I would say that you can barter/bargain for a price. Most people have a set asking price, and a price they would settle for. Not to mention if you ask people the price of an item will vary slightly depending on whether you are buying or selling. I do not spend any money in real life other than the monthly fee for the game. I do not like people who buy/sell platinum. I think it is wrong, but I play this game for enjoyment, others play to make money/run a business.

[LawStudent]

Negotiating v. Set Prices

Thanks to everyone who has responded, I really appreciate all of your insight. Do most people favor using the bazzar where there are fixed prices (thereby avoiding negotiating all together) or do most people tend to try to negotiate a price with other players. In addition, have certain sellers and buyers devloped a positive or negative reputation based on the prices and quality of the virtual goods they sell? (Have you ever heard of someone over charging for something and that having an effect on the willingness of future buyers to work with them)?

[Elyssanda]

if you take a look at this thread http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/show...147#post180147
you'll see how we feel about certain practices of the bazaar.

Given that, I sell more in the bazaar, but do more trades out of it. I can make anywhere from 2-10k in the bazaar while my Baz mule is up, but I do alot of trades for goods while I'm playing.
I do get asked to make things for ingame money sometimes, usually friends or guildees, whom I would make the items for free anyway, I hate donations even from these people.. but will on occassion take them if what I am making is a HIGH end item and they may have the main parts for it, but I need to go get other parts (storebought parts only).

I am not a person that will sit and bark my wares at anytime, so I might make more if I did, but if I'm on and playing I want to be PLAYING and that isn't my idea of fun.

[Cerrena]

The vast majority of sales are done in the bazaar. This does not necessarily mean that no negotiation takes place. Many of the people set up to sell (or buy) in the bazaar are AFK (away from keyboard) which makes negotiation difficult if not impossible. But at any time in the bazaar, you will find people calling out that they are looking to sell this that or the other thing. These people are generally looking to make their platinum quickly and are willing to take a lower price for their item in order to get the platinum now. Sometimes these sellers are open to negotiation and or trades.

Another phenomenon you find in the bazaar is the player who will actively try and corner a specific market buy buying up all available supplies of one item and then selling it for a significantly increased price. This generally upsets people but can be an effective technique. I have heard of boycotts of specific users trying this, but I've never heard of one that was effective. However, it is hard to keep this cornering of the market up over the long haul as eventually, the increase in price will encourage more people to supply the item in question.

As for how I set my prices, I normally search to see what others are selling the item for and then match the lowest price. While I tend to wish to see my products move, I feel it's best for the health of the market as a whole not to play the "I can sell it for 2 coppers less then you can" game, as it will slowly decay the price for everyone.

[Melinia]

You mentioned you don't play EQ. It may not hurt to pick up a copy of the game just to wander threw the Bazaar, PoK, and the world in general and strike up a conversation in game, maybe interview someone in game. EQ normally offers 1 month free.
Many of the posts have given you much to ponder/consider. Then again you are reading from alot of Tradeskillers. There are more items that can be bought/sold/traded in game.

just my 2 cp.

[LawStudent]

For those of you who play other games in addition to EQ, does trading/seliing/purchasing of goods and skills operate the same way in other on-line games or do the norms vary by game?

[Ti Giel]

Every game has its own selling areas. EQ was nice enough to add the bazaar for us so a more free economy could develop. Other games have a few similar ideas, but not the same game mechanic.

BTW, for reference, there are three major players on the free market sceene in EQ. Traders -- PC's who are set up to sell items. Buyers -- PC's who are set up to purchase items. Vendors -- NPC's set up in the game to purchase and sell items.

As for price setting, I have a few rules as well. Normally they hinge on the buy low / sell high price marks set on the NPC in-game vendors. Those items that the vendors won't purchase follow a more free form of pricing. Vendors have (generally) fixed prices, and therefore provide guidelines for the lowest prices I'll set.

The next rule I use is: I do NOT sell items in the bazaar. I sell convenience, and that's all. It's a (small) lie to say we sell (virtual) items in the game, because anyone can go out and farm / acquire / work for any item I have. As a matter of fact, I'll even sell items that vendors sell in unlimited quantities, and even mark it up, so my buyers can have the convenience of not having to search for it themselves. (Fuzzlecutter, anyone?)

If anyone complains about a price I have, without offering a counter price, I'll not negotiate. If anyone wishes to negotiate, I'll work with them. I enjoy negotiations, and believe a true free market economy thrives on that.

Other then that, I'll look in the bazaar tool. I'll rarely set my price to the lowest, since negotiation normally takes place trying to beat the lowest prices. It's difficult to convince the lowest priced trader to lower the prices more so you can get a "fair deal" when they believe their lowest price IS the "fair deal!"

Hope this helps. This is mainly how I wish to deal with others, and be dealt with myself!