Idea, Shop prices should fluctuate

quoting post

A second possibility would be to create a true market where prices increase or decrease based on how much they are purchased across all of the online games. This would be even more exciting than the first option as it should balance purchased items automatically.

Very good idea

I find the market system to be an insanely good idea.

Take, for instance, the infamous Heart of Life. I admit that I purchase one as soon as I can afford it - they're just that good. Once I get my HoL, I never have to return to regen my health / mana ever again. Now, if a market system was implimented, the HoL's price would rise rather dramatically, causing less players to using, causing the price to drop slightly...

ahh.. it would be good times.

As a further reason to stay in a losing game they could also drop the price of items for the team that is being rolled. If you get some good items you might be able to turn the game around.

A second possibility would be to create a true market where prices increase or decrease based on how much they are purchased across all of the online games. This would be even more exciting than the first option as it should balance purchased items automatically.

This would be so great.

"True markets" don't have the price of a good increase as more people buy them, especially when there's a large supply of them.

This is a good idea in theory...but only in theory. Not trying to slam the OP at all...this is my personal experience. They tried this in Counter Strike for a few weeks...it was a disaster. Common items end up skyrocketing to ridiculous prices, which does nothing to add to the fun of the game...expect teleport scrolls/combat health potions to be in the multiple thousands of gold instantly if this happened.

I'm getting a flashback of CounterStrike's "Dynamic Weapon Pricing". I think all but the most popular items ended up super cheap.

Granted, the items in DG are all of varying effects but I wonders about certain powerful items becoming cheaper than they should - or even cheap low-effective items becoming out of reach.

Also, I feel what a DG buys is already changing dependant on who the opponents are and how they are built. I've never bought the same things for my Oak in every game.

'true markets' or 'real world markets' have their own share of problems. In many cases even when a product has a surplus, the supply will be artificially limited in order to keep the price for said products at a premium. Diamonds are a prime example of this. Markets are finicky creatures, and can go in every imaginable direction.

Nevertheless, I think that what we want is a simple supply and demand market

You'd need to have limits for any kind of a market thing to prevent things from going crazy like that. Such as can go X% above or below set price. If something is constantly at the minimum or maximum, it might need to be looked at.

Quoting line0042,

reply 6

This is a good idea in theory...but only in theory. Not trying to slam the OP at all...this is my personal experience. They tried this in Counter Strike for a few weeks...it was a disaster. Common items end up skyrocketing to ridiculous prices, which does nothing to add to the fun of the game...expect teleport scrolls/combat health potions to be in the multiple thousands of gold instantly if this happened.

actually it wasn't that bad, it's just that the counter strike community is incapable of handling changes. The money system actually forced you to adapt other strategies instead of the usual AK47/M4 everyone seems to go by and made the game a lot more interesting for me.

I'd rather see a flag that decreases the cost of all items by a % for whoever owns it.

The market approach to balance is actually kind of interesting. I'd like to see that tried, but it should be a host option and would need to be regulated. Otherwise we'll have a teleport scroll bubble and you know what happens when that bubble pops? Everyone who invested their hard earned gold in teleport scrolls finds their scrolls depreciating in value. It's just not cool you know? No but seriously, some items are designed to be essential(especially your standard consumables) and it's a bad idea to apply the market principle to these.

As mentioned already, I too have bad memories of Counter-Strikes attempt to implement this into their game. The main rifles in the game, the M4 and the AK-47, became so over-priced that the game stopped being fun. Yes, the lesser used guns finally got some attention - but they were lesser used for a reason and we were all reminded of those reasons until the system was shutdown.

Not to shoot you down OP, but I just don't think this kind of idea is suited to this kind of game.

Why not have it fluctuate within a certain percent of the original price. Like no item can double in price or become less than 50% off.

Quoting Doggiedoodle,

reply 12

No but seriously, some items are designed to be essential(especially your standard consumables) and it's a bad idea to apply the market principle to these.

I would imagine that consumables would be on a different marketing system that the rest of the items, like they can't go more that 10-15% above or below the base price. I would like to see how this would affect the other items.

It's fun to dream

As much as I'm intrigued by the idea, this would break the game balance very quickly. Ideally every item is priced in such a way that its marginal utility / marginal cost is equal to all other items (taken as a whole. Obviously certain builds will value certain stats more), and this would prevent that from being the case.

So.....

Potions, teleport scrolls, and banded armor are gonna be expensive as hell? Idols too I guess?

Great in theory, but I think it would be too much numbers and calculation, because a lot of those items are bought because they are cheap. Which often makes them the first item.

I think this idea has a great initial theory of trying to figure out how much each item should cost based on demand and frequency of use, but then again is putting in large complex tracking system like this really neccessary when it can just be decided by the developers?

Quoting HueyFreeman,

reply 5

"True markets" don't have the price of a good increase as more people buy them, especially when there's a large supply of them.

yeah...

...well, even if the price is sensitive to demand, how is the "supply" going to be determined anyway?

i think the store is fine as it is.

I dont understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea. makeing something more expensive because its used a lot just doesnt make sense, it doesnt add anything to the game but anoyance.

I don't think idols or consumables could work with this system. They don't work like other kinds of items, and because there isn't much alternative selection to begin with this would just drive up their prices needlessly. On the other hand, I think some items like Heart of Life could really benefit from this. There are lots of clearly underpriced and overpriced items, and something needs to be done to bring them into line. Heart of Life is just a steal for 4250; it could be priced at double that amount and it would sell like a hotcake.

It's a cool idea but I really don't think it would work that well... costs need to be static to be balanced.

Agreed this might imbalance certain items -- also how would a real-market system be implemented? This would create a ton of extra work for GPG which is why this idea is likely to never come to fruition

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