NPC price....

[Guest]

Ah yes. I see.
From the start, I've been meaning "when sorting things by quali/price" (i.e. clicking on the hyperlink labelled "quality").
And you have been meaning "When you sort by price" (i.e. clicking on the hyperlink labelled "price").

When I click on "price", I do get the NPC listed twice, indeed.

For water, power, and stone, I guess I could click price, since they only come in Q0.
But for any product I want sorted on the marketplace, I usualy want quality along. Out of habbit, it includes my sorting on raw materials. However, for steel, and even more particularly for wood & seeds, it is something I consider a good habbit, as it is common to find Q1 priced cheaper than Q0. You can makes expansions with Q1 mats, but you can't mix Q0 and Q1 of the same material. It has to be all Q0, or all Q1. If you buy some cheap Q1, and it's not enough to make a whole batch / upgrade, you're just stuck with it.
That's why I find the "Quality" link more relevant when shoping for the 3 raw materials above (and why "I'd really love to see the NPC's infinite supplies listed at their proper place when sorting things by quali/price" ).

-----

Glad you like the sig =) It's inspired from a funny warning you find here and there on the uncyclopedia, though, each time under a different form, and with variations. For example, the "Charlotte's Web" article mentions:
"Warning: The following text might contain spoilers. This makes the article more aerodynamic, and thus faster. On the other hand, it might not. Just take caution and carry a first-aid kit at all times. 911 is the emeregency telephone number. "
They go as long as:
"Warning: The following text might contain spoilers. This makes the article more aerodynamic, and thus more maneuverable at high speeds. Take caution and carry a first-aid kit at all times if you don't know that Snape kills Dumbledore, Sredni Vashtar kills Conradin's horrible cousin, Maxim kills Rebecca, Santa isn't real, Norman Bates is really the murderer, the prince chooses Cinderella, Riku lives, Maggie shot Mr. Burns, Spike Spiegel dies, Lord Cain's father was doing his sister, Hitler loses the war, Ocelot works for the Patriots, Mister Glass was the mad bomber to begin with, and Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!! "

They also all include a link to the very funny Spoilers article of the uncyclopedia, but honestly, just about all their articles are hilarious =)

[Guest]

For water, power, and stone, I guess I could click price, since they only come in Q0.
But for any product I want sorted on the marketplace, I usualy want quality along. Out of habbit, it includes my sorting on raw materials. However, for steel, and even more particularly for wood & seeds, it is something I consider a good habbit, as it is common to find Q1 priced cheaper than Q0. You can makes expansions with Q1 mats, but you can't mix Q0 and Q1 of the same material. It has to be all Q0, or all Q1. If you buy some cheap Q1, and it's not enough to make a whole batch / upgrade, you're just stuck with it.
That's why I find the "Quality" link more relevant when shoping for the 3 raw materials above (and why "I'd really love to see the NPC's infinite supplies listed at their proper place when sorting things by quali/price" ).

I just whent to the market to pick up a small amount of steel, and the cheapest price there were the NPC. In my oppinion the NPC shouldn't have competitive prices, the NPC's prices should follow the market, and then be just a little higher. It would stop the game from developing if the price for steel q0 is fixed below 135, beacuse other players can just buy then NPC's steel.

[Guest]

All I was saying in the post bit you quoted, is that I wish for the NPC row to be at its proper place, visually, when sorting by quality / price (i.e. clicking the hyperlink entitled "Quality"). For now, this isn't the case (it is when you click the "Price" hyperlink, but then you have all Qs mixed together).

The point you develop would rather be answered by an explanation of Knolls earlier in the thread, entitled Why the NPC prices don't move . The point is that NPCs aren't set to have competitive prices. They rather provide a hard limit on core products of the game (by becoming competitive, but only if prices of said products go through the roof).

-

It would stop the game from developing if the price for steel q0 is fixed below 135

I think it would be the opposite. If it's below 135, it's costing less money to expand, especially since steel represents the bulk of expansion costs. Hence, everyone would be expanding more easily, and companies would develop like crazy. The game would not stop developing; it would go fast forward like a VCR on steroids =)

[Guest]

Yeah, i see you point. Actualy i have to admit that i wasn't thinking further than, companies that produce steel cant raise their prices beyond 135 for q0, cause then every "smart" buisness man would just buy the NPC-steel. So in my limmited frame of mind i was actualy only thinking of the steel-production, and that their prices have reached a limit of wich it doesn't pay to raise prices any more, unlike most of the rawmaterials, where prices keep going up week for week.

[Guest]

small idea about this
dunno if some1 suggested this before but still.

maybe there can be 1 list of min price of products here on the forum,
that way if some1 buys anything from the market and he isnt sure if the price is ok or not he can simply log here and see the price, if he bought it for lower price than its stated on the list than he should send it to "newspaper"
i think that that way no NPC will be needed but on other hand ppl will know about the product.
for exp.

power = 0.03
water = 0.04
woods = 30
steel = 75
etc......
that will be only 1 post( sticky ) i suppose but ppl can always see if the price of the product they bought is ok or not
p.s. + i think this wont take much time to be done:P

[Guest]

The thoughts in this thread revolved more around putting a maximum limit on player market sales (i.e. limit at NPC price, so the game would prevent players selling Q0 more expensive than NPCs' on the market), or making NPC prices flutuate, or, very generally, NPCs and their wares' price.

-----

What you are suggesting, is publically advertising, for each product in the game, the threshold used by admins and their monitoring programs to catch cheaters. The obvious consequence of this, is that cheaters would sell just one cent above the limit, and admins wouldn't catch them (as easily) anymore.

From my undersanding of the game rules, there is already a min list of what you can sell stuff for: their "normal" / average value on the player market. Anything a little below that, makes room for good fun and gives you a negotiation / good deal / loyal customer margin. Anything extremely (that's the exact word in the rules) below that, is against the rules.

[Guest]

It might be just me, but I can't get these kind of "english" sentences. Do all you above mean that Q0 can't be sold for more then the NPC price ?

Because then it would be logical, and I say, just do it,
Just like prices that are way to high, asking 1M for just a Q4 steel or some stupid thing like that.

[Guest]

I like this idea a lot

[Guest]

Just like prices that are way to high, asking 1M for just a Q4 steel or some stupid thing like that.

It's not stupid at all. I found out from some other threads, that creative people are using this option to "expand" their warehouse. As you know, a non-premium warehouse can only store 60 "lines" of products. Some people reach that max, and don't want to expand to premium for the warehouse service alone. So they "store" products on the marketplace.
Because it's products they'll want back later, they don't want other players to buy them, so they price it accordingly.

Given the fact they loose the 10% market fee in the process, you can consider that it acts as their "storage fee" in their case. In other words, this use of the marketplace does not give them a "free" storage, which would be an unfair advantage.
Since it overlaps premium benefits, it's obviously not a practice that should be encouraged. But it's something that should not automatically be considered as cheating either.

[Guest]

Why are they using the market place with the 10% cost? I find it much cheaper sending contracts to yourself but now that I think about it, it brings up another problem of a lot of contracts. I personally don't have a problem until I reach a very large number of contracts where it is difficult to find the right contract to cancel/sign. Just like books in a bookshelf/library, if there are only a few books, it is easier to memorize where everything is. As the collection grows, it takes more time to remember and/or find a certain one (unless your like me and remember chronologically by remembering a near exact order everything should be in which is how the contracts are sorted).

[Zbombe]

Greetings.

As reason of this subject was already discussed there is the following information on the thread "Refused suggestions **READ THIS FIRST**",

Remove/change/restrict the NPC
They are there for a reason, to provide balance and make sure that bigger players don't dominate smaller ones by buying everything up.

will I close this thread.

I think we don't have to discuss about this subject again.

I just wanted to say my personal statement on the end of this discussion.

"Kapilands is a game which want that the players are trading with each other. That they are helping each other. As reason that there are some products that everyone need decided the developer of the game to put in a NPC which protect all players from getting to high prices on raw materials and therefrom that the "new" players can't develop themselves.
Additional I have to say that this limit of being independent at a fix price you can start this game with more emotions. Also like you can see on the german version that the people are happy that there are this NPCs."


So now there are coming my last words.

Thread closed



Sincerely,
Zbombe

PS: If you want to suggest to lock the prices which are over the NPC prices so suggest this in a separate thread.