Weekly Discussion 81: The Player-Market

[gameboy1234]

So I'm calling it a week, my haul is 54 million for one week's worth of marketeering, and not putting a ton of work in on it at that. Less than 20 recipes bought and sold.

 

Some things I think could be improved: right now there are search filters which I seldom use, such as the level or the rarity or the origin.  I think these could be moved to an "advanced search" box / pop-up, and some more common and useful filters added. 

 

For example I do often want to search for "Luck of the Gambler" but only in recipes, so a drop down to select "Enhancements, Salvage, Recipes, Inspirations" would be useful.  (Those four are the top four nodes of the tree menu that everyone uses to navigate the AH, so it's basically just that list.)  Then for each item, a context sensitive drop down could be use to select further what I'm looking for.  For example, under "Enhancements" there's a list of Attuned, Crafted, Normal, and Special that could be added to a context sensitive drop down, allowing me to further refine a search.  For each of the top four navigation items (the Enhancemets, Salvage, Recipes, Inspirations nav tree), each one has a separate sub menu that could just be added to a context sensitive drop down that could just be used to filter search results further.

 

[arthurh35353]

(Used the wrong term of bucketing instead of seeding, sorry)

 

But wow did people get upset fast at the idea of seeding the market with LotG+Recharge. It's like its somehow outsized effect on Def Sets and converters is supposed to be good.

 

Instead of warping an entire area of the market because it's the only (and unique) item that gives a flat +recharge.

[Hew]

It is an item that can be gotten with few merits and some creativity. There is no warping. I am very positive you have collected defense set recipes. Maybe try crafting it and converting. That is even way cheaper than buying something off the ah to do it. And you get the converter fodder for free. And a once a day hit on adamastor nets you 30 converters to mess with to get it, for less than 2 minutes time investment.

 

[arthurh35353]

At no point did you try to say it isn't warping the market because of its uniqueness.

[Rishidian]

Here's my 2 Inf:

 

Part of what I think is a problem is the sheer amount of the same items that are on the market.  For example, when purchasing some random common salvage piece, I'll see 14,584,156,009 for sale.  If this is even close to accurate, then it would make sense that this many of 1 item (times the number of common salvage items) would have some detrimental effect on the database.  Plus, there's no way that many would sell.  Would it be possible, feasible, or even a half-ass idea to put a time limit on selling items?  Something like an item would have 14 days on the market, then would revert back to the owners pocket, or go into a storage state where it's not listed in items for sale.  I've seen this concept in SWToR (oh, how I HATE comparing games!!  But sometimes there are some good ideas to be found).  The items could be moved to another database to keep the active one cleaner, which would shrink the active database and may help fix the recent sales issue that so many have mentioned.  Also, a smaller database may make it possible to be accessible in bases (don't shoot me for that idea, please) because the load would be lighter.  There may be other issues that would still prevent this that I am not aware of.

 

Isn't Wentworths and the Black Market actually the same entity?  They just have different faces for the environments they are in, but behind the scenes they are the same.  Ran by the same Evil Masters.  

 

 

[Hew]

1 hour ago, arthurh35353 said:

At no point did you try to say it isn't warping the market because of its uniqueness.

Pvp io procs  e.g. shield wall, panacea. Res/def + kb procs from steadfast, reactive sliding resistance, karma +tohit, miracle, numina, perf shift +end (and interestingly the +heal endmod as well).

 

There are LOTS of "unique" on the market that have massively outsize benefits that are, arguably, much better than lotg +rech, depending on your build, and worth much more than a lotg +rech.

 

So to be clear "It is not warping the market because of its uniqueness". 

[CrudeVileTerror]

I wanted to go MUCH deeper in depth with this post, but this week has been unkind to me (as anyone who has been trying to catch me in-game might attest), so I'm afraid I don't have time to get in to all the nitty-gritty I planned on.  I really wanted to speak more about Faultline's "good/bad" post and the apparent philosophy behind it.  I also won't be able to find much time this weekend to compose further thoughts since I have my spouse's birthday plans to attend to.

Given how some people feel about my opinions, though, I imagine this comes as a relief to those folks, heh heh.

 

 

I see a lot of market veterans chiming in here, and I do not want to dissuade anyone from sharing their opinions, experiences, or expertise . . . 

buuuuuuut . . . just like in that PvP thread from a little while ago (which appears to have been hidden/deleted, so I can't link to it), I would really like to remind anyone who this applies to: 

 

--- If you like the market the way it is, then you may have a distinct bias on this subject which is not necessarily shared by all players. ---

 

That doesn't mean your opinions, experiences, or expertise are wrong; but they aren't universal and aren't necessarily going to address the express problem of market accessibility.

If players are expressing problems with earning enough Inf to finish their builds, then I think we should trust them and accept their experiences as valid.  If players are saying that the market is scary, ugly, upsetting, unwelcoming, hostile, or otherwise a negative experience for them, then it would be most productive to find ways to address those concerns rather than disregard them.

There are two wholly unhelpful things to say:

- "I can do it, so anyone can."

and

- "You can always just spend Merits."

 

The former is patently false, and (from the research I've conducted) is generally also rather demoralizing and demotivating.  It actively undermines the sentiment I believe you may be trying to express, in fact.

I propose that instead you consider more constructive solutions, such as asking the players some probing questions and learning where you might need to adjust your existing personal strategies for success so they can be applied to different people.  What worked for you is not guaranteed to work for anyone else, particularly someone who has a very different outlook and understanding of the systems at play.

 

The latter is problematic due to the sheer ridiculous imbalance which presently exists, and which many players are actively trying to address when they talk about being unable to afford the prices for gameplay.  It's akin to saying "you can dig a hole with your kitchen spoon if you can't use this backhoe."

It really needs its own thread, though.   It's a very deeply rooted problem and tied to the other topics I originally wanted to dive in to with this weekly discussion.  Short version:  We need a "Why Do You Play This Game" poll, and we need to do it right.  It's a fundamental question which I believe many, many, MANY people are taking for granted (including certain members of the Homecoming Team).

 

Again, I don't mean to be antagonistic here, and I apologize if I am wording this poorly.  However, it's my understanding that a perspective along the lines of the market being a simple, easy thing may severely limit one from being able to comprehend how anyone could possibly see it any differently.   I believe the Devs are actively looking for ways to make the market more accessible, per @Faultline's post I linked earlier, and so I want to encourage the people who are comfortable with the current market to try to step outside their usual perspective.   (Hey!  Roleplay -is- useful for something!  How's about that, eh?)

 

 

 

The introduction of a tutorial would certainly be helpful, but I would like to suggest some fixes which I believe would be more intuitive for non-economically-minded players.
Disclaimer:   I'm coming at this problem from a game design background.  I understand many of you have backgrounds in economics which you've been able to leverage to your advantage on the player market.  I do not intend to undermine your fun or devalue your knowledge, but I think that if we're to make the market more accessible, then it needs to be changed in ways contrary to many of the suggestions which market experts are proposing.
Again, I also want to remind everyone of potential biases in this matter.  Making the market better for a marketeer doesn't necessarily make it better for everyone.  In fact, there's a chance that the market may have to be destabilized a little from their perspective for the long-term health of the game.

 

 

The seeding of Salvage has been a pretty solid addition, although I think the values are frankly too high.  I get that the Devs want Inf sinks, so I understand if this first suggestion is a non-starter for them for that reason alone, but . . . 

 

1)  I believe the market could use some seeded Bids.

 

For most everything, but especially for unpopular and abundant items, such as Inspirations and Common Inventions (both Enhancements and their Recipes, especially at lower levels).

The Enhancements especially are "newb traps" and sit on the market for months at a time.

As low level entry items, it would be a good "safe space" for new players to get their toes wet with predictable returns; maybe just enough to break-even on the cost of actually crafting the Enhancements.  Inspirations (including the Dual and Group types) could be costed out too.

If applied to ALL ITEMS (as I see as ideal) then this would also place a floor on prices.  A price where the player putting the item up for sale is protected from being absolutely preyed upon, which is one of the largest complaints I see from people who do not want to touch the market:   It's hostile.   It's PvP.  And they don't want to be taken advantage of.

Items which can be sold to vendors could be exempt from this, or provide slightly less than vendor (say 10% less).

 

This would be the simplest thing to do for the Devs, based on my limited understanding of the game code and the market's current functionality.  

If any economists see any glaring holes, then please feel free to give us an in depth breakdown of those concerns (again, please consider your bias and whether this idea might hurt you, while helping far more others).

 

 

2)  Alternatively, "Fair Price Range Recommendations" for each item based on impartial, factual data (not supply and demand, but the game's likelihood of dropping/availability and cost of crafting, et cetera).

 

The bottom of this price would be based on the rarity of the item modified by its in-category drop chance and the equivalence to fixed-price items of its kind, and (in the case of Inventions) add the Crafting Cost.

The upper recommendation could be an average of what items in that category have sold for on market over the past year-and-a-half, or merely a value which the marketeer community agrees to be reasonable.  The latter option would require the periodic revaluation of that upper recommendation, though.

 

This idea would be more of a pain to implement.  The market UI is already not ideal as it is, so trying to squeeze in the Recommendations in some functional, legible, and intuitive way could be prohibitively complicated.

 

 

3)  Tax Brackets.

 

Yeah, I know . . . this one's probably going to be super unpopular, especially for the biggest marketeers.  But hey!  If you want a way to curtail rampant wealth growth in the richest, sink Inf, and provide opportunities for "the small guy" to break in to the market, then I think you can't get much more effective than this.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/12135-influence-sinks/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-122663

I made the post about this quite a while ago, so it probably needs to have a good, solid shakedown.  If I recall correctly, I wrote that particular post while heavily sleep deprived, so my math and language skills were probably shaky at best.

 

This would likely be even less feasible than the Recommendations, though, as it's essentially that idea PLUS the introduction of an automated system which would need to be programmed from scratch.

 

 

*)  Make crafting easier, quicker, and more rewarding.

 

@Jimmy said this one, so credit where it's due.  Was a long while back, I believe during that painful thread when the Double Influence feature was removed.  But the short of it is that there's presently a reliance on the market in the form of select few players doing tonnes of crafting which is providing the supply to the rest of the population, who may find it too confusing, too inconvenient, or too tedious to craft Inventions for themselves.  Rather than doubling down on the market, address this part of the problem at its root.

I would suggest a new button be added to every Recipe:  Craft with Brainstorms.

Make it cost more Inf (hey!  Look!   Inf Sink, Devs!  Inf Sink!) and a number of Brainstorms equal to the total Salvage cost plus 15% to 50%.  So a Rare Recipe would cost (for example) something like 35 Brainstorms, plus the appropriate Inf.

Get the Enhancement Recycling Programme underway ( https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/23882-new-recipe-idea-recycle-enhancement/ ) as well, so there's a steady supply of Brainstorms for players to call upon.  AND HEY!   Looksie look!  Suddenly all those worthless Inventions have substantial value, and we can get them flowing through the market at the same time!   Win-win-win-win-win!  

Hell!  Add a Recipe to convert unwanted Inspirations (again, including Dual and Group Inspirations) in to Brainstorms too!  Then it's:  Win-win-win-win-win-win-win!

 

This gives veteran marketeers something new to play with and explore.  You'd all like that, wouldn't you?

This also gives new players something relatively safe and not-bank-breaking to explore.

And, most significantly, it provides players completely disinterested in the market a more fruitful way to engage with the game under their own terms (which, I'll keep repeating until I'm thrown out on my ass:  The greatest strength of City of Heroes is in giving players choices and options on how they engage with the game.)

 

 

 

And remember:  Economics may not work like that  . . . in real life, but this is a game where we literally get to make up the rules!

Don't get mired down in simulating real world limitations of supply and demand.   Leave that sort of thing for EVE Online.  

Let's keep pushing for City of Heroes to maintain its crown of the Most Accessible MMO!

[thunderforce]

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

--- If you like the market the way it is, then you may have a distinct bias on this subject which is not necessarily shared by all players. ---

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

There are two wholly unhelpful things to say:

- "I can do it, so anyone can."

and

- "You can always just spend Merits."

Well, I don't like the market the way it is - indeed in the early days on Homecoming I got quite severely lambasted for suggesting the market interface showed more data, although I hope we're over that phase now - so:

Whether the first of these is unhelpful really depends on what "it" is. If "it" is convert Merits to Boosters and AH same, then yes, anyone can do that. It is not an operation too complex for anyone who can manage the rest of the City interface, and in and of itself it makes plenty of money.

I don't think anyone is saying the second thing; what people are saying is the related (but true) observation that the Merit Vendor does provide an upper bound on AH prices.

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

The seeding of Salvage has been a pretty solid addition, although I think the values are frankly too high.

The seed prices haven't been relevant for months and will never be relevant again absent some major change, so who cares?

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

The Enhancements especially are "newb traps" and sit on the market for months at a time.

To have a lot of them to sell you have to be doing Field Crafter, in which case you're hardly new. Simply checking the price history would tell anyone they're worthless (and in the department of "I can do it, so anyone can", I don't think it is unreasonable to expect someone who wants to sell something to see what it's worth, especially if the price display bug is fixed); and matters would be further improved if the AH interface showed more data (eg if you know there was one of something sold in the last month, it's a safe bet it'll take a while to shift).

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Alternatively, "Fair Price Range Recommendations" for each item based on impartial, factual data (not supply and demand, but the game's likelihood of dropping/availability and cost of crafting, et cetera).

This is a complex proposal - "impartial, factual data" is a handwave over the fact that choosing the right data to present is itself a loaded question (eg "400% increase in revenue" can be a true fact presented by a RL startup, but it still can be masking the fact that in Q1 it was $1 and in Q2 it was $4) - and seems to have little merit compared to just giving more information about price history and buy and sell offers.

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Yeah, I know . . . this one's probably going to be super unpopular, especially for the biggest marketeers.

The linked proposal is a bad idea for two reasons. First of all, any increase in transaction fees encourages off-market sales. This is awkward, makes price history even less accessible (worse for the novice than for the experienced trader), and means that to buy or sell expensive stuff at all you have to know where to ask.

Secondly, it's a solution in search of a problem. There was a real problem on live inasmuch as the most expensive enhancements commanded huge prices, sometimes in the billions; and part of that was down to the fact that old players had billions accumulated (from the pre-AH years with almost no inf sinks) and could outbid any new player. That isn't the case here - there are rich players, but the disparity is not as great, converter roulette means supply can increase to the point where the most expensive enhancements cost 20 million not 2 billion, and factors like selling converters mean that it is relatively easy for poor players to get some of the money from rich marketeers who need those converters for their own operations.

10 hours ago, CrudeVileTerror said:

Let's keep pushing for City of Heroes to maintain its crown of the Most Accessible MMO!

City of Heroes doesn't have that crown. If nothing else, "City of Heroes but without inventions" used to exist and was considerably more accessible.

 

ETA: Converter roulette is the key insight here.

 

On live, a lot of money was made by flipping. From the point of view of a producer (someone who gets drops and wants money) or a consumer (someone who has money and wants enhancements), a flipper is a middleman who extracts money and adds no value. In game as in RL, producers and consumers have no use for such middlemen and would like to eliminate them. Hence the adversarial relationship between "ebil" marketeers and other players who wanted to limit their time in the AH.

 

But on HC, the equivalent is converter roulette. Now the middleman _does_ add value; I sell my useless IO and they use their specialised knowledge to turn it into a useful one, which I or someone like me will be happy to buy. The middlemen compete with each other - if LOTG Recharges command a high price, they all want to produce more and to price them relatively low so their stock will sell. This is a far healthier situation for everyone - including the player who wants to have as little as practical to do with the AH - and does not need to be changed radically.

 

I proposed some pretty radical approaches on live - the most obvious being that you could only, by price, sell a proportion of the items you had bought on the AH. I would not propose those now because the situation on HC doesn't need or want them.

Edited December 19, 2020 by thunderforce

[Ukase]

On 12/16/2020 at 7:23 PM, gameboy1234 said:

We really need to reconsider it completely imo.  What I think is fun: I like doing arcs, so arcs after level 25 or so should drop a "super merit" that is good for one attuned IO of your choice.  Below 25 arcs can drop a merit which can be used for an SO of your choice.  We'll need a few more drops like those because players will rocket past arcs and not have enough super merits, but the general idea is to reward players with something significant and useful for doing fun stuff, not farming the AE or fiddling about with the market.  After that everything about the invention system can basically be removed: all drops, recipes and regular IOs which differ only slightly by level can just go away, they're not needed.  That would simplify things a lot and make it easier on players who want to play the game and not a spreadsheet.

 

While you seem to want all characters to be able to complete a story arc for a great award. Which is fine. But if you take away the invention system, you take away a lot of options and make the game far more dull, every AT with the same powersets would be more cookie-cutter than they are now. It would be a bad, bad move and most people would leave the game if you took away the Invention system. At least, that's what I think. I could certainly be wrong. 

These arcs that would award these "super-merits"...how many alts does the average player have? How many times do you expect folks to run these arcs for all those characters? No, I don't think a super merit is the way to go. But - when I think back to live, they introduced the hero merit, which was awarded at the end of SSA arcs if you chose, or when you finished a morality alignment mission. So, we have that in game already. It's just the merit vendor is asking for too many merits. Simply reduce those merit requirements, and problem solved...maybe. 

[Onlyasandwich]

20 hours ago, gameboy1234 said:

example I do often want to search for "Luck of the Gambler" but only in recipes, so a drop down to select "Enhancements, Salvage, Recipes, Inspirations" would be useful.  (Those four are the top four nodes of the tree menu that everyone uses to navigate the AH, so it's basically just that list.)  Then for each item, a context sensitive drop down could be use to select further what I'm looking for. 

This is an outstanding suggestion! 

[Yomo Kimyata]

Part VI:  Closing thoughts and opinions

 

-  I think the AH should be for player-to-player transactions, not for dumping for fixed prices what people consider to be their trash.  There are vendors almost everywhere, and they are happy to take your salvage, enhancements, recipes.  As such, I'm going to revise my suggestion that the fixed price items from the P2W should be moved to the AH.  Instead, I'm going to suggest that the devs create a command similar to /AH where you can access a vendor or the P2W vendor (or even the merit vendor) from any non-instanced location.  Also, I'm going to suggest that somehow you make it possible to sell IOs to a vendor for a pittance if you *really* want to -- this would need some sort of bullet-proof "are you really sure* protection, because someone somewhere is going to sell a purple by accident and we will never hear the end of it.

 

-  I don't really see how adding more information on trading history really adds value to either a buyer or a seller.  The trading log only records what the last buy price was -- this may have little relationship to where current bids or offers are.  I really enjoy the uncertainty of knowing exactly where things are bid or offered, and frankly it's not very difficult to find out exactly where things are bid or offered. I reiterate, however, that the time stamp would be really useful.

 

- I don't want HC to become the equivalent of going onto Test and insta-leveling and insta-equipping your character for free.  That's a philosophical opinion of mine, and your opinion may differ.

 

- I don't think you need to revolve the system around the "top hat and monocle crowd", but you do need to take them into account.  There are a very large number of net consumers, and a small number of net suppliers.  The suppliers may be few in number, but they do have an outsized impact on the player driven market.

 

- There needs to be incentive to keep up both demand and supply for long-term vitality of the player-driven market.  One way to keep demand high is to encourage new players to join and (more importantly) encourage current players to create and equip new alts.  One way to keep supply high is to create a large scale influence sink so people will want to continue to make a profit.

 

- I think that concerns about market manipulation are mostly (entirely?) unfounded, and trust me, I'm champing at the bit hoping someone tries to drive prices up significantly because I will make a lot of inf out of it.  There are a lot of safeguards, some of which haven't even been mentioned yet.  Not all caps are hard caps.  Market PvP LOL is not prevalent, but I'd love to get some going!

 

- I don't think it is a good idea to have devs set prices on items in general, and I always find it interesting to hear people say something is too expensive.  That generally means they just don't have enough influence for it right now.  I just ran two near-identical clear-all council paper missions at level 50, one at +0/x1 and one at +4/x8, and vendored every drop including IO recipes.  They netted 701,930 and 1,911,878 inf respectively, and would be worth a few mm more if the yellow and orange recipes were crafted and converted.  It might be difficult to self-fund a single character as it levels, but I find it unconvincing that prices as they stand right now are so high that making a million inf a mission on a 50 isn't enough to buy whatever you want in a relatively brisk fashion.  You may not agree, and that's cool.  Not everyone has a 50, but there is nothing prohibiting anyone from having one.

 

- There are no gates.  I hear you that people think it is not helpful to say anyone can do it, but there really are no gates other than education and effort.  As @gameboy1234 demonstrated, you can make about 2-3mm in profit per IO once you figure things out.  If you want to do 1 IO in a week or 1000 in a day, it's up to you and your tolerance for tedium.

 

- There needs to be more education, and better distribution of that education, in order for the benefits of using the player-driven markets to be used by anyone with the need or desire.  There are a lot of well-written guides on these forums (some of which were even written by me!), and everyone I know in the "top hat and monocle" clan is extremely open and friendly in sharing their knowledge.  That said, if you don't know those guides are there, or you don't read them, or you don't understand them, or if you are just plain not on the forums, then they aren't helping you.  In game resources would help a LOT.

 

Happy hunting to all!  May your fingers never get fat and accidentally bid too much for converters!

 

Yomo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Parabola]

37 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I don't really see how adding more information on trading history really adds value to either a buyer or a seller.

I've been following this thread with interest and this is a point I'm genuinely curious about. I'm wondering what effect more detailed information about sale prices would have on a market that uses blind bidding. I'm struggling to game it out in my head, whether it would significantly affect buyer/seller behaviour or not...

 

Knowing every sale price there has ever been for a lotg for example doesn't tell you anything about either the supply or the demand at the time of each sale. When setting your buy or sale price you would still have to base your descision on where the market seems to be right now, not where it was in the past. For a while back at the start of homecoming I tracked the prices of a selection of big ticket items to see if I could find opportunities. I quickly discovered it was largely a waste of effort and converting things and getting them sold was far more important than 'what's this thing really worth'.

[thunderforce]

38 minutes ago, parabola said:

I've been following this thread with interest and this is a point I'm genuinely curious about. I'm wondering what effect more detailed information about sale prices would have on a market that uses blind bidding.

The market should not use blind bidding. Inching up bids to find the sale price is the worst downside, but not the only one. Let players who want to buy or sell now - or to post the best offer for a quicker transaction - just see the other bids.

39 minutes ago, parabola said:

Knowing every sale price there has ever been for a lotg for example doesn't tell you anything about either the supply or the demand at the time of each sale. When setting your buy or sale price you would still have to base your descision on where the market seems to be right now, not where it was in the past.

I think "right now" can reasonably be thought of as more than five transactions, though. The eyeblink we get may just reflect someone fatfingering a bid or sell offer, or dumping something in a hurry. I think "now" covers a week, given the way prices naturally change at the weekend as people have more time to play.

[Grouchybeast]

20 minutes ago, thunderforce said:

The market should not use blind bidding. Inching up bids to find the sale price is the worst downside, but not the only one. Let players who want to buy or sell now - or to post the best offer for a quicker transaction - just see the other bids.

If everyone can see offer prices, then the only way to get bargains on the market is either a) sit on /ah and refresh for hours or b) use bots.  And 'b' will very quickly take over the whole market.  The advantage of the blind bid set-up is that anyone can use it to get a bargain with a little patience, while still playing the rest of the game.

[wjrasmussen]

19 hours ago, Rishidian said:

Here's my 2 Inf:

 

Part of what I think is a problem is the sheer amount of the same items that are on the market.  For example, when purchasing some random common salvage piece, I'll see 14,584,156,009 for sale.  If this is even close to accurate, then it would make sense that this many of 1 item (times the number of common salvage items) would have some detrimental effect on the database.  Plus, there's no way that many would sell.  Would it be possible, feasible, or even a half-ass idea to put a time limit on selling items?  Something like an item would have 14 days on the market, then would revert back to the owners pocket, or go into a storage state where it's not listed in items for sale.  I've seen this concept in SWToR (oh, how I HATE comparing games!!  But sometimes there are some good ideas to be found).  The items could be moved to another database to keep the active one cleaner, which would shrink the active database and may help fix the recent sales issue that so many have mentioned.  Also, a smaller database may make it possible to be accessible in bases (don't shoot me for that idea, please) because the load would be lighter.  There may be other issues that would still prevent this that I am not aware of.

 

Isn't Wentworths and the Black Market actually the same entity?  They just have different faces for the environments they are in, but behind the scenes they are the same.  Ran by the same Evil Masters.  

 

 

I hate this idea.  It would become another form of storage. Plus, having too many items for sale helps the consumer not the profiteer who can got to Hades for all I care.

[GM ColdSpark]

Thanks all for your contributions. Some really in depth views there from folks but some excellent suggestions too - write-up is on the way...