I propose a new rule be added for the entire site: the business of purchasing up multiples of an item for cheap to then false-inflate, or "flip", the price to a higher unreasonable mark-up. Cornering any market, be it CWs or weapons, in an attempt to get rich quick should result in severe punishment. It is an unethical, unfair strategy, especially when it comes to limited amounts of items.

I don't see how this would be monitored.

Yeah. Can't be monitored. And besides, it almost always fixes itself when people refuse to pay the inflated prices and more of X becomes available and shows up in the shops.

Um, the model for Subeta's toy economy is a capitalist one? Changing it over to a socialist one is possible considering that price supports have been a thing for awhile now, but it's still a major change and is not a trivial Suggestion to implement.

It's true it's not an official Rule, but staff does indeed monitor the economy for this. Stuff that gets seriously over inflated without the corresponding demand that would make it so, these items mysteriously start to get dropped 'back into' the economy.

Here's the reason I really hate this Suggestion though. I hoarded Holiday Items and HI items only on purpose, because normal site function results in them gradually being destroyed/used up and I didn't want users to not have access to these items in the future. I priced them higher than they were worth for questing/fragging etc so that only users who wanted the item to have the item would ever pay this. Jerky McJerkpantses who thought they were entitled to my items, which i paid for to use as I saw fit and which they themselves sold to me for waaaay less than their actual value, started making multiple Suggestions similar to the OP that somehow I and other high-priced vendors were deliberately raising the price of these items. And that this price was not related in any way to the ridiculously high demand they placed on them. No, we weren't. Nopity No Nopers. Our prices were already high. All the cheaper, seriously underpriced items they were using to frag/quest (that is to say, they didn't WANT the items) were already used up. By them.

Neither I nor anyone else is responsible for their short-sighted economic behavior and we do not deserve to be called "false inflators". We should not be compelled to sell them our items at the price they want, which is a 'use the item up' price instead of an 'own this cool item' price.

I'd rather have the Item Pricing item be more useful for price checks. This would help business a lot more, and would help into fighting False Inflation much better.

Right now, it's useless, since we can only price items who are not in shop search. However, pricing is more than shop search value - it's about market tendencies and knowing past purchases and stuff.

This way, if people go and try to false-inflate something with no reason, people would be allowed to go and discuss how much they paid for it in previous weeks/months.

Thankfully, we have this thread too: Items to put back into circulation

It's unethical in the real world when people can't survive, sure, but subeta is a virtual pet site and it's inconsequential to anyone's survival. No one is entitled to anything, let alone to a certain price, and if no one wants to buy it at that price it'll either drop over time or new items will "magically appear"/have new or more accessibility.

So there are two ways people do this. One is with expensive items. This is usually a high risk investment given subeta's rule about nothing being retired forever. So you buy something from someone who was willing to sell it, assume some amount of risk with the possibility of losing money or being stuck with a near unsellable item you presumably don't actually care to keep. The seller walks away with currency they can use as they please and must necessarily be satisfied if they went through with the sale, there's always the option not to sell and when selling a high priced item some research should always be done on pricing. Some people just genuinely don't care if the number is somewhat lower than normal if they're happy with the number they got. The same goes when you resell. Some people don't care how much they're paying for an item if they really want it. People overpay for things all the time to buy it right away. Even as someone who does resell sometimes, I'm also one who when I really want an item will pay a hefty mark up above what I think the price should be, even knowing the seller paid much less and is making a profit. As long as in the end I'm happy with the exchange, I go through with it. Anyone who buys an item must agree to the price or they wouldn't go through with the sale. There is no way to force someone to buy something. Next is buying up bulk copies of less expensive, even very cheap items. Lots of people do this just to collect particular items, lots do it specifically hoping that for some reason the price will rise and they'll make a nice profit. The risk is in the fact that usually if there are hundreds/thousands of an item available at a price, it's because there's a much higher supply of it than demand and so it will continue to tend to decrease in price. So you're exchanging currency to a bunch of sellers who must have been satisfied with the prices they set their items at or they wouldn't have set it at such. If the price does rise, you still have to sell of a high volume which is unlikely to happen without prices dropping. When one or two shops have a much higher number of a particular item stocked, they tend to get undercut constantly, which is fine and to be expected given that again, supply was likely to be high if the price was low to begin with. So you end up just selling a little here and there as the price goers up. Contrary to popular belief, you really can't just continually buy up every single copy that's sold for less than your own selling price, you'll never end up profiting, just hoarding more and more of the item. If that's you're actual goal, if you're collecting them, that works I spose. But generally, you're relying on other random people buying anyone with a lower price than you naturally as they would if you were completely not involved in the item. So you're still assuming a lot of risk. And of course, anyone that buys from you is doing it because they are willing to buy at that price, if they weren't they wouldn't, there is always the choice not to buy, regardless of the circumstances it is never not an option to not buy. In fact lots of people who don't agree with these practices will specifically avoid shops that look like resellers shops even if it means paying more. I see this basically the same as people who'd rather support the local grocery rather than the big chain store (even though technically the local grocery is more the high mark up reseller). Then I suppose there are also the type who buy up all the cheap everything in hopes it becomes a recycle beast item, which is great for people who want bulk recycle points to just have to refresh one page.

All that being said this certainly does not excuse people who purposefully lie or make up information about items availability and transaction history, which would be actual scamming. Nor should any other sort of dishonest/scamming conduct be allowed, and it isn't. Reselling should always be done honestly, not necessarily saying how much profit you're making, that's your own business, but certainly not lying about it. Speculation is one thing so long as it's presented clearly as such.

No one should prevented from making investments so long as there is not any ACTUAL scamming going on throughout the process, and in general anyone who is actually scamming, is dealt with accordingly by staff.

I flip items all the time so I am a bit biased on this, but I think there is a right and a wrong way to get the ethics on this.

The wrong way to go about it would be if I were to go buy out some r99 beanbag for about 20mil and then go and try to sell a single copy of that beanbag for 50mil. Through research I know that even the newest rarest beanbags will drop below 200K within about 4 months. So this is both a bad business move on my part, and a really scumbag move on my part since I would basically create an artificial scarcity to screw someone over - thats bad.

However, there are other items that I think I have very ethically bought out in the past, because they were severely undervalued. The one that I would be willing to publicly discuss would be the Acorn Bomb. When Acorn bomb was first released it was in shops for 1-7mil. I bought 50 copies of it for about 100mil total investment. It was/is one of the strongest bombs in the game, and it was supposedly not being rereleased by the battle admins. I have been selling them for about 20mil each ever since. The difference here being that there was an actual scarcity of these items, vs something being actively rereleased. In this case the value that I saw in the item held over time.

There are other ethical flips that you can make right now too, I just don't really want to discuss them in a public forum so I don't face competition on them. For example, you can occasionally find something like a BHH minion that there are only 5 of priced around 500K before the price jumps to 50mil. If you make an index of the other BHH minions you can find that they usually sell for about 5mil each. So if you were to buy those 5 BHH minions for a total of 2.5mil, and sell single copies for 5mil each, that also seems like an ethical way to flip items.

I think the way that I also try to stay on the ethical side of things is that I almost never advertise items that I buyout, I only go for organic shop search sales. I think thats when the lines start to get blurry. I have done a little bit of advertising when it is a really big ticket item that was undervalued like back when you could still buy God weapons, I talked up Oracles Staff a TON before I sold it for 1.1bil profit, but that was completely undervalued, not creating an artificial scarcity. Maelstrom scroll was the same thing. I bought that for 350mil and sold it for 1.8bil after talking it up for a year and a half. Joke was on me for that one though. I bet I couldn't buy back a maelstrom scroll for 5bil today.

People really don't quest enough (aside from during quest-a-thons) to keep r70s and up at a reasonable price. Many of them are cheaper than the official store price, which is problematic for someone who likes to restock. For Supers (R90+), this happens gradually over time between quest-a-thons. I know I've bought large amounts of cheap Supers just because they were... well... too cheap. Not just for me, but anyone else who loves the thrill they get when they restock a Super, then the crushing defeat when they realize it's worth peanuts. I don't always make my money back, let alone profit, but prohibiting that? It seems misguided.

I have an issue with the opposite. When people (I've noticed a lot lately) undercut every single item in their shop. And I certainly have bought out every single item multiple times, along with the ones that were already caught by an autopricer. I work hard to rs and quest every day despite working 60 some hours a week irl. I hate seeing that I have to hand price half of my shop over again because someone is looking for a quick sale... on every day items. I can understand if its a SR or retired item that is expensive and just not selling. But I bought some usable items that had a 15k-40k difference between average price and their price.

Now whether they are looking to drive the price down to buy them up and resell for a profit, I'm not sure. Maybe they truly are just trying to move items. But it pisses me off, and I've taken to just hoarding my daily stock in my vault hoping this just blows over. What good is a GA if I cant trust the AP? :/

I like the idea of item pricing being more useful for price checks, too, and hopefully not limited to Gold Accounts. O.O

As much as I agree with METROID to a degree (some things are highly overpriced even when there are tons of them available, mainly because of Recycle Beast and quest requests), I also have to say there's a point where you can't call it false inflation. When there is only 1, say, Blacklight Potion available for sP, rather than 10, is it wrong for the seller to sell it for 60mil? Maybe not so much, because it's extremely rare unless you have real world money to drop into Subeta (or want to wait until you get enough CSC from the Bathhouse). Because Subeta is currently based on capitalism, it's actually perfectly legal (in-game and in real life) to buy someone's junk for cheap and re-sell it for what you think it's worth.

: Also, as much as I almost hate to say this...Subeta is supposed to be a game for fun. It's one thing to get frustrated and comment about specific items which are way overpriced (the prices usually do start dropping then, as my sister told me once), but this sounds a bit like you're taking it too personally. I get annoyed too, but it's short-lived, because--what's the point in getting so mad over a GAME? There are worse things happening in real life, you know? Please, relax, have fun...just don't buy if you don't like the prices.

My problem is more when users are pricing on purpose expensive items for cheap during the "hot" hours of autopricing and then they buy many of that item for cheap (sometimes it can get for like 100sp!) and then sell it for the real price.. it's a bit of cheating in my opinion..

I'm also supporting this suggestion, this method effecting achievement items, RB items and many other things and mostly our economy.. it's not healthy that an item stays for a few months in the same shop because of this method..

What really annoys me is user shops selling items which are available 24/7 at inflated prices. Shop Search now says where these items can be obtained at the correct price so nobody in their right mind will pay 500K for something they can get for 50K.

Yeah, no. This is completely unrealistic and unenforceable. And how far would you take it anyways? If flipping items is against the rules it would set a dangerous precedent. Could I get in trouble for buying out hundreds of a single item for TCs, inflating their price to a crazy amount, because its "unfair" to have the price jump by millions in an hour? I have single handedly inflated the price of a few items because I bought out their entire stock to use. Only one has fully recovered and another dips back down from time to time, but I buy them all out every time that happens because I still need them.

has a point as some of us buy up an entire item because we are collecting them which raises the price of said item due to a limited supply but we aren't selling them for a higher profit instead keeping the item for galleries, treasure chests of pets etc.

I agree with and others that have stated there isn't a way to monitor or enforce this. I don't buy items in bulk and then try to flip them, tried that once and didn't do well. It's high risk and I only see it happen with items that have a limited number released or newly released items. If it happened with anything else, the price will eventually drop down as other users put up the item for sale. But I do buy up all the super cheap (1000 sP or less) items and frag them, 100's of items at time. Shop owners get the sP from the sales, I get the item and then eventually crystals, but I could easily buy everything and throw in my shop to sell, I just chose not too. I've also been buying un-carved pumpkins to carve later. If a system was put in place, would I then be punished because I might be trying to corner the market?

How would this be monitored or enforced? Programming that tracks how many of the same item a user had bought in a short amount of time and then blocks them from buying more? This is only going to anger the users who buy for collections or fragging, And what would that limit be? If someone is buying high-priced items for a collection and there are only 10 in user shops, would they get blocked from buying all that they could afford?

This is very murky water to tread into because it would be putting limits on how people play.

just because you don't understand a virtual economy doesn't mean that you should take it away from everyone else.

Sorry if that sounded harsh, but supply/demand. For example, right now there is an abundance of ears that no one wants. It would not be unethical (ugh, talking about a virtual game being ethical) to buy everyone's ears when the demand is low and the supply is simply too much, then later selling them in a year or so when people actually want them. Subeta's economy really isn't that hard to figure out . No one is forcing you to buy over priced stuff. its not something important or that you actually need.

I don't know how to say enough that this is a virtual game and no one is starving or literally poor so socialism wouldn't be a good idea let alone a fun one.