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How BallC made 2.3g in store sales last night
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Justin Drahl RJ: Mr Herb CO: Deez Nutz Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Joined: Apr 22, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Scott, we really need some more explanation of the fix and what the intended behavior is here for low demand. Not just "yes its fixed". Also, any plans to rectify the situation with the folks who exploited it.
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Ok, maybe I am missing something on the demand thing. I'll let go of that for now.
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Scott (Admin) RJ: Ratan Joyce CO: Ratan Joyce Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 1175 Karma: 5083 Joined: Jan 13, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Explanation of the fix:Basically this is what happened (with simplified equations): Original exploitable scenario: demand_met = max(0.15, demand_met) price_avg = price_avg demand_eq = (A * price_avg + B * price_base) * f(demand_met) n_sold = demand_eq * other_eq Fix: demand_met = demand_met (moved the 15% lower bound into the other equation) price_avg = min(price_avg, 50 * price_base) demand_eq = (A * price_avg * demand_met + B * price_base * (1 - demand_met)) * f(max(0.15,demand_met)) n_sold = demand_eq * other_eq Technically it is still possible to sell 1 unit at extremely high prices as before, but the effect of price_avg will be scaled by demand, and never above 50x base price. UPDATE: Figured no one should need to go above 50x even in extreme booms. |
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Bob Malone RJ: Bob Malone CO: Malone Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 341 Karma: 191 Joined: Apr 17, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Thanks for the info
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A J RJ: amanbearpig CO: aManBearPig Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 54 Karma: 18 Joined: Mar 30, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Yes thank you Scott, it is so good to hear from you again.
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Andrew Naples RJ: Clemen Salad CO: Clemen Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 214 Karma: 89 Joined: Apr 26, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Awesome!
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Hanford Chiu RJ: Chairman Mao CO: Avatar of Greed Post Rating: -4 + / - Total Posts: 6 Karma: 6 Joined: Jun 29, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 I don't see any problems with these game mechanics at all anyways. To call the formation of a monopoly an exploit would be to call capitalism itself an exploit, which would mean that this game designed to simulate capitalism is working as intended.Anyone with a basic understanding of early 20th century American history would know that monopolies tend to form in the absence of competition and that the first person to enter an unused market tends to enter it at the highest possible price scaled to supply for as much as demand can take it. The practice of selling at the highest possible price then scaling back the price to eventually capture every part of the market is known as price discrimination (i.e. selling a candy bar for $1 million dollars first to the one guy out of 300 million guys who would buy it at that price, and then selling it for 500,000 to the next guy, and so on...) and is the most ideal situation for a corporation but is only possible without competition. Therefore this game was accurate in allowing a monopolistic market to scale down to a demand pool of one at the highest possible price and then allowing further sales at lower prices to an expanding demand pool until it returns to its idle level. History would support this assessment of capitalism, as large companies like Standard Oil Trust or Vanderbilt Steel controlled markets by either increasing WASP high enough for maximal profit or by crashing WASP to destroy competitors by selling goods at a much lower price below even production costs until competitors had no choice but to leave the market, scenarios which could play out in this game. Even today, if you wanted to purchase a $1 production cost headlight for some obscure car or model it wouldn't be surprising to pay hundreds or thousand for it. Or some electronic component that is so specialized that one company makes it and to replace it would cost probably thousands of times its production costs. There's certainly nothing more exploitative or unfair about it than letting the first players on the servers set up a monopoly on the rest of the game and B2B merely because they got there first or been there longer. If someone wanted to prevent this, all they had to do was enter the market, even with imports, which is how it would play out in a real capitalistic market. But noone did, the only way these conditions existed in the first place was because nobody was in the market for 24 hours at least. At least unlike the rest of the game, which should probably be renamed monopolies-online, where larger companies bar entry into resource markets with much higher quality goods or bar entry into retail markets by flooding it with their superior production or buy selling raw materials for 10x production costs so that most of the profit of retailing would go to the raw materials supplier, all of which simply because they are the first players to have arrived on the server and had the time to set up and expand. If players get to be exploitative simply because they're old, why can't new players be innovative and exploit the markets themselves, because the older players are incompetent and leave gaps in market supply? Noone should be complaining anyways because this game is completely open-ended and has no goals, it's not even like in real life where you can maybe spend the money on anything besides making more money. It's ironic that the older players complain when a victimless crime is committed, literally victimless because the only way to pull off price discrimination is in empty markets, when they are they are the ones charging exorbitant B2B prices for everything while at the same time dominating the retail markets with an average demand % of 50 or more in most markets so that a new player who comes in has little chance to do anything at all. In other forums, people complain about the lack of players. This shortage is completely understandable because after a few weeks this game becomes nothing more than a pyramid scheme where the older players pass their goods along to newer players while keeping most of the profits so that they can scratch little to nothing in retail which is mostly saturated already. In other words newer players have few to no opportunities other than reselling already expensive B2B stuff for higher than WASP because the older players already dominate the retail markets. The solution to this, instead of closing further ways for new players to exploit empty markets that the old players are too lazy or incompetent to, is to play this game in rounds, and reset it periodically so that everyone starts off on the same foot and then this game could actually be more like capitalism rather than making minimum wage under a monopoly. Nevertheless, this game, especially EoS with the stock markets implemented, is a very educational experience regarding finance, supply chains, and accounting and is very enjoyable if just for watching the interactions unfold. I only regret I didn't find it earlier so I could be the old money. |
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Cian Kemp RJ: Cian Kemp CO: Cian Kemp Post Rating: 2 + / - Total Posts: 183 Karma: 58 Joined: Apr 9, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Except, in this case, it wasn't just monopolistic behavior (which can still net you a fortune even after the fix, just not to such a ridiculous level) - it was a bad design in the demand equation and an exploit of a system that wasn't functioning properly allowing you to sell more product than the market was supposed to have demand for. Hence the demand met numbers going way up into the thousands of percent. Take for example the leather gloves you sold - at that price, the demand was 409. So basically you had 409 people willing to pay your exorbitant price, with the potential for a few more customers trickling in over time (past 100% sales slow down). But due to the poor design of the demand system, you were able to sell 34000 of them all at once - over 83 times what the demand should have been. It will likely still be quite exploitable with the 50x price using the same priming the market with 1 unit then selling for a lower price behavior, but hopefully it won't be quite as ridiculous. |
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 1 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 5, 2012 Comparing anything in this game to history is kinda ridiculous. without even getting into the fact that all those "historical" citations ended up causing changes in law to "level the playing field," it is just comparing apples to hedgehogs. It is also true that many of those historical examples included everything from simple graft and political corruption to out and out murder and slave-labor to maintain. All things considered, looking through history "as through a glass and darkly."As Cian points out, it isn't even real "demand" we are talking about. In fact, I would go further to suggest that the "demand" issue is even more absurd than Cian states, and is still not sufficient to allow for the kind of simulation he is working on...but then again, I did say I would leave that for a while. While Mr. Chiu's post was a good read, and it is a good read, I have to agree with Cian (scarey thought) that it misses the point of the recent exploitations. And for my money (all irony intended,) is only "very educational" in its ability to point out the levels to which greed and ego can damage any attempt at a "free market" (using that term quite loosely here) capitalist system of economics. I have played some round-based games, and don't like them. there is still an old-player vs. new-player dynamic that makes competing very difficult for newbies. And once one gets good at the games, they get just as boring just as quickly. I strongly agree that there needs to be some secondary pay-off for players here, or it will reduce itself to repetitious boredom for everyone except the newest players. I know Scott plans on various "events" to happen to add some spice, but we will need more than that to truly make this the spectacular sim he wants it to eventually be. |
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A J RJ: amanbearpig CO: aManBearPig Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 54 Karma: 18 Joined: Mar 30, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 6, 2012 So is it "legal" to do this now? Since it only goes to 50x base price? Or was it always "legal" and there will be no punishments? I have 100% market share in several items I could easily do this in. I don't want to be so gamey, but if everyone else is going to I will have to. What's the prognosis?
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Moe Jack RJ: Moejack CO: Moe Jack Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 128 Karma: 74 Joined: Apr 7, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 6, 2012 I hope if people start printing money, they will tolerate higher prices on the B2B.
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Brent Goode RJ: BB Goode CO: BB Goode Post Rating: 0 + / - Total Posts: 506 Karma: 180 Joined: Apr 5, 2012 |
Posted on Jul 6, 2012 Moe: Yep. What's fair is fair. ROFLMAO
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