Talk:Trading/@comment-122.60.165.28-20170904141348/@comment-5346549-20180107104016

I don't find anything about the market that is dishonest or mistrustful. It's simply a free market style economy, where prices are based on what each player feels the value of said item is. If you feel an item is priced too off, you can either barter with the person to try and get them to adjust the price to something more reasonable, or you can find someone else who will. This is the very definition of a market based on supply and demand, as items in higher supply than there is demand, (ie: common mods, easily obtained parts, ect), will be incredibly low priced because there are more people with it to sell than there are buyers, and the ones unwilling to meet the reasonable price point won't ever sell. Conversly, items in low supply and high demand, (full prime sets, rare mods, limited time items, ect), will be highly priced, as the lack of sellers means that the ones who are selling are less pressured to give the items away for what they feel is an unreasonably low price......

What it ultimately comes down to, is whether or not both players feel they are getting a fair trade, which is ultimately down to both of them to decide. If they don't feel like they're getting their platinum's worth out of it, then they should find someone else to trade with or not make the trade. It's the same way with most economies in the real world. The first seller for a new game you want to get may be charging $500 for it, but that doesn't mean that is the price you have to pay, as there may be other sellers offering a price that is closer to what you value the product at. If your fellow buyers don't feel like the product is valued appropriately, then prices will either go down to meet that value, or the product won't sell, leaving sellers with stock that is essentially money going to waste. More so, in most situations sellers will attempt to go down to meet a more "reasonable" price soon instead of waiting, as it means that the sale won't go to someone else, and that they will sell the product at a better value to them, rather than waiting for the average price of the item to be even lower, resulting in less profit.....

What it sounds like you're wanting is a "government", (DE in this case), run pricing system that highly regulates the values of items to ensure that players can't sell items for "more than they're worth". It's not impossible for such a market to work, though it does have its own problems. Namely, that it essentially eliminates supply and demand from the equation. This could theoretically benefit both buyers or sellers depending on the item in question, but in most situations it would only serve to hurt the market. For items that are mandated at a price higher than what people value them, buyers would be unwillng to buy the item, resulting in sellers making little to no profit on said item. Conversely, if an item is valued as being worth more than what the regulation sets it at, sellers will be less willing to put said item up for sale, as the effort/cost of getting said item in the first place wouldn't be worth it. This in turn, would result in a shortage of said item for buyers, and in many cases would end with no one being able to buy said item because it was "out of stock", only further raising the value of the item and causing even less people to be willing to say it at the undervalued mandatory pricing.....

Of course, none of this takes into account the possibility of an item being priced "just right", though that would be highly difficult to achieve, as even if supply and demand couldn't affect the market prices in a regulated system, it would still exist and affect people's willingness to buy and sell said items. In order to maintain a "proper" price, the government would have to continually monitor the supply and demand of items themselves, for every single item, rather than letting the market do so on its own. From the perspective of DE, this would require paying people to frequently watch the markets, with three seperate ecosystems, (PS4, PC, XB One), in order to keep the market from essentially dying off. This would result in essentially the same effect as a free market, (without the potential to over price or under price), but at a much higher operating cost, resulting in little real benefit for anyone involved.....

In addition, if we're looking at the market system in relation to Warframe itself, having a mandated price for individual items would cause problems for many members of the playerbase in general, as it would prevent players from giving gifts to friends, whether it be platinum, mods, prime blueprints, ect, without a hefty tax of having to go through the mandatoy prices. If the game allowed such items to be traded without going through said market, then the market system would be ignored and players would simply create a sort of "black market" by directly trading with one another, resulting in the exact same market system we currently use.......

The only way to prevent this in that situation would be to eliminate the ability to trade platinum directly, which would greatly hurt DE's platinum sales as players couldn't give platinum to their friends directly. Preventing direct platinum trades could potentially also have the effect of causing a player based currency to appear, in the form of trading items that have reached a balance in the regulated system in terms of supply and demand, (ie: an item that consistently sells for a fixed amount, such as an item that always sells for 1 plat on the market and has a near endless demand). Again, this would end with the market ultimately behaving the same as it currently does, but in a way that results in more annoyances for everyone involved........

TL;DR - I go on a long rambling explanation for why the market system we currently have is ultimately the best when it comes to being either a buyer, a seller, or DE......