Real Money Auction House RMAH for poe

There is a point: someone may acquire a unique item, then sell it for that he can sell to someone else for money.

Yeah, probably a slightly tricker version of RMAH.

I believe I was wrong in one point: I oppose both RMAH and trading involving game points. I stand corrected.

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Tagek wrote:

I have a feeling you aren't really reading what dave said, or at least don't understand it.
What you're describing here couldn't be farther from reality.. (about GGG coming out ahead, that is)

No, I find black market waiting for someone to make a loss rather absurd. Not like a real world where you could buy cheap cigarettes. Unlike the real world, the source of currency is fixed and is rather rigid and comes from GGG. But as I stated above, yes, someone may get a unique drop and sell it to someone else for points that he could convert to cash. But I believe using game points are the lesser of the two evils, just because of the fact that the currency had to be bought from GGG in the first place which means that GGG wins :-)

I'm going to state again: I oppose both RMAH and trading involving game points.

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leeho730 wrote:

Haha, I see, I can see where the confusion comes from.

Of course someone will sell the GGG points because they will desperately need money, but how often will it happen? And they are fully aware that they're making a loss.

And the beauty of this is, GGG wins :-)
The loss is generated by the player who has decided to sell the points for cheaper prices than he bought, and someone would sell it to someone else for a slight profit, say, 10%. No, I don't see someone earning millions of dollars a year or even $400 dollars per day. Because such "black market" depends on someone who're willing to make a loss in the first place. How thriving such black market will be!

Such thing may happen but know that GGG wins, because GGG sold 10 points per dollar. Someone might be happy he coud buy 10 points for 90 cents, but that means someone had to make a loss of 10-20 cents.

Stupidity, if you ask me.

Real life proves you wrong. It doesn't really matter if you think it would be dumb to do it, because people WILL do it. People DO do it, in systems where it is an option. And ultimately, it is the house (GGG) that loses out on sales.

People who never buy points (so it doesn't matter how much it "would" have cost them.) will sell points because they decide to quit the game (real life got complicated, they lost their job and need all the money they can get, they just got bored of the game, whatever...), and just because you "don't see" it happening, doesn't mean it hasn't happened for years and years and years. $400 a day? Man, because of currency conversion, gold farmers are ok making $4 a day, read your own links! You really think that if people could trade GGPoints, you couldn't farm 40 points worth of trade value in a day?

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AgentDave wrote:

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leeho730 wrote:

Haha, I see, I can see where the confusion comes from.

Of course someone will sell the GGG points because they will desperately need money, but how often will it happen? And they are fully aware that they're making a loss.

And the beauty of this is, GGG wins :-)
The loss is generated by the player who has decided to sell the points for cheaper prices than he bought, and someone would sell it to someone else for a slight profit, say, 10%. No, I don't see someone earning millions of dollars a year or even $400 dollars per day. Because such "black market" depends on someone who're willing to make a loss in the first place. How thriving such black market will be!

Such thing may happen but know that GGG wins, because GGG sold 10 points per dollar. Someone might be happy he coud buy 10 points for 90 cents, but that means someone had to make a loss of 10-20 cents.

Stupidity, if you ask me.

Real life proves you wrong. It doesn't really matter if you think it would be dumb to do it, because people WILL do it. People DO do it, in systems where it is an option. And ultimately, it is the house (GGG) that loses out on sales.

People who never buy points (so it doesn't matter how much it "would" have cost them.) will sell points because they decide to quit the game (real life got complicated, they lost their job and need all the money they can get, they just got bored of the game, whatever...), and just because you "don't see" it happening, doesn't mean it hasn't happened for years and years and years. $400 a day? Man, because of currency conversion, gold farmers are ok making $4 a day, read your own links! You really think that if people could trade GGPoints, you couldn't farm 40 points worth of trade value in a day?

I disagree with one point: those who sells points for less are the one that loses, not GGG :-)

However, you're correct in that people can farm items worth certain amount of points. Yeah, RMAH and trading involving game points are both considered NOT ethical microtransactions described by GGG. Thanks for opening my eyes up! +1 rep for you.

GGG does lose.

People sell the points they don't need / want / whatever to gold farmers. They then sell them for cheaper than GGG.
The bigger it gets, the more people will buy from goldfarmers, which means GGG gets less profit.

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leeho730 wrote:

I disagree with one point: those who sells points for less are the one that loses, not GGG :-)

However, you're correct in that people can farm items worth certain amount of points. Yeah, RMAH and trading involving game points are both considered NOT ethical microtransactions described by GGG. Thanks for opening my eyes up! +1 rep for you.

Well, I'm glad you're open minded enough to admit that you've changed your stance on the over-all question you raised, although it boggles my mind how you could think GGG wouldn't lose *a lot* of money in that scenario.

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Tagek wrote:

GGG does lose.

People sell the points they don't need / want / whatever to gold farmers. They then sell them for cheaper than GGG, the bigger it gets, the more people will buy from goldfarmers, which means GGG gets less profit.

Yes but the game points have to be bought in the first place, right? Unlike WoW where gold can be farmed. For example, in Australia, you can buy 10K gold for 9 bucks (http://www.kwowgold.com/), whereas GGG game points has to be bought for 10 points per dollar. As the transactions increase, people will either buy from black market or from GGG but as the economy of PoE grows, which means that the total game points within the economy of PoE grows, people will have to buy points from GGG, since GGG is the only source of the such currency. In the long run, as long as economy within PoE grows, that means the total game points within PoE world increases, GGG will benefit.

I can definitey see people selling uniques for the points and then selling the points for the real dollars, but where do points comes from originally? People will either have to buy the points from black market or GGG, you assume that most of the people will buy it from the black market. Moreover, selling game points for cheaper prices will cause inflation because game points will lose the value, thus black market will either have to put the value of game points value up or people will buy increasingly more points to buy uniques for sale.

And how many people do you think are willing to sell their points for less, knnowing that they are going to make a loss? And ss inflation grows, more people are less likely to sell their points to black market since black market willl give them less. It's catch 22 situation, really.

But I can see RMAH and trading using game points are both evil, and shouldn't be in the PoE. Boy, have I learnt some important things here, thank you guys!

Ofcourse, people will still buy from GGG, that was never up for discussion. What we meant was that GGG loses a very large amount of profit due to the black market, because points never go away. There's no 'point-sink'. So there will be plenty of people who want to get rid of their points eventually.

And then about people 'selling their points for less'.
They aren't selling them for less, at all.
As you said, there's no way to refund points.
So any money they get out of selling points they already have is EXTRA money, plenty of people will do it.

(This is all uber-hypothetical ofcourse, as such a system would suffer too much public outrage to ever exist in the first place)

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leeho730 wrote:

Yes but the game points have to be bought in the first place, right?

You continue to miss the point.

Even if everything is on the level, consider the following:

Joe and Tom both want the Dead Baby vanity pet. The pet costs 50 points.

Does GGG make more money if:
A) Joe and Tom buy the smallest pack from them, buy the pet, and have 50 points laying around tempting them to buy that etra stash tab, because it would be "nice", even though they don't "really need it" (And then have 20 points laying around, tempting them to buy more points, because you can't get anything with 20 points.)

OR

B) Joe buys the smallest pack, buys the pet, and trades the other 50 points to Tom for a Regal Orb. Then Tom buys the pet. No points laying around to tempt anyone to further purchases.

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Tagek wrote:

Ofcourse, people will still buy from GGG, that was never up for discussion. What we meant was that GGG loses a very large amount of profit due to the black market, because points never go away. There's no 'point-sink'. So there will be plenty of people who want to get rid of their points eventually.

And then about people 'selling their points for less'.
They aren't selling them for less, at all.
As you said, there's no way to refund points.
So any money they get out of selling points they already have is EXTRA money, plenty of people will do it.

That's false economy, I'm afraid. For example, a player initially spends $100 for 1000 points and then later sells 500 for $30 bucks to the black market. Black market thrives because they could sell 1000 points for $40 bucks, thus making profit. GGG thrives since they could sell 1000 points for $50 bucks. The player, who sold the points for $30 bucks in the first place, loses.

And if the black market thrives, and there are more game points in the black market, it will drive the inflation.

Let's say 6 months ago you could buy a unique two handed sword for 200 points, which equaled $20 in real currency. As Black market thrives, the value of the point will go down due to competition, that means now the unique sword you could have bought for 200 points six months ago now cost 250 points, since the market is saturated with cheaper game points which on average costs 8 cents.

And where do 50 extra points, after all, come from?

And as the inflation grows, more and more points are needed to buy unique items. And who is the only real source of the game points, who can create game points out of thin air?

As black market thrives, it drive the inflation and will eventually increase the total amount of game points in the economy, and that GGG is the only source of the game points and GGG sell it at fixed ratio.

Of course, as long as black market is stabilized with no further inflation, things are different, but then again, as more gold farmers emerge, they will compete with each other for cheaper points, or less points for uniques.
If they sell points cheaper, that will drive the inflation which will overally benefit GGG since GGG will have to sell more points, and if uniques are sold for less, then it will make black market less viable and this may put the prices of the points for sale up, which impacts black market negatively. Of couse, they can do both: sell cheaper points and charge less points for uniques, which aren't that profitable.

As I said, it's a catch 22 situation but the underlying theme is that either way economy will grow and total points in the PoE economy will increase as the result GGG profits.

But then again, we don't have to concern ourselves with this since both RMAH and trading using points won't happen. Thank God.

Seriously, stop it.

Are you REALLY argueing that a black market improves GGG's profits?

Yeah, sure, every company in the world loves for their products to be sold on black markets, after all, they only benefit from it, right? -.-

The real world proves anything you say 100% wrong.