The credit market would function better if it accepted offers to buy as well as offers to sell. Instead of just seeing the supply side we'd get to see the demand side too. This is NOT about raising credit prices or lowering credit prices. This helps both buyers and sellers. It matches up buyers with sellers much more efficiently so more people get the best deal they could get.

A potential buyer could CREDITS BID 20 AT 6000 and the offer would appear in the credit market, listed in CFS. Anyone who wanted to sell credits at that amount would use the usual CREDITS SELL syntax and he'd get his gold immediately.

Advantages to sellers:
* You get to see what the actual demand is and price your credits accordingly.
* If you want quick gold you can sell your credits immediately, no waiting.
* If you want quick gold, you get the best price available without having to pick some lowball number.
* Your market is broadened to people not currrent online.

Advantages to buyers:
* You can see what other people are willing to pay and set your price point based on the actual demand.
* You don't have to be online to take advantage of credits for sale.
* When online you don't have to compulsively type CFS every few minutes to see if new credits have come available.
* You don't have to log in every once in a while just to check the credit prices.


New commands:

CREDITS BID AT
This will put in an offer to buy the specified number of credits, while not spending more than a given amount on each. So, for example, if you do not wish to spend more than 5000 gold per credit but would like to buy up to 10, you could do: CREDITS BID 10 AT 5000. If there are credits available in the market at the desired price, your bid will go through immediately just as if you had used the CREDITS BUY command. If there are any for sale for less than your price, it will buy those first. However if there are no (or not enough) credits at the price you want, your bid stays in the market until it can be fulfilled. NOTE: You must have the gold for purchases in your inventory (not in a pack) and if you run out of gold, you'll only purchase as many as you can afford. If your bid stays in the market, the gold for it cannot be used for other things. When buying credits, it will skip any that you may have for sale (it'd be awfully silly to buy them from yourself wouldn't it?). To cancel a bid to buy (and recover the gold for use elsewhere), use CREDITS BID NONE. You can only bid on one batch of credits at a time, if you change the price, it will nullify your previous buy offer and create a new one at the new price.

CREDITS BID NONE
This will remove your offer to buy and make available any remaining gold you have from the bid.

Changes to existing commands:

CREDITS FOR SALE
Display the main board listing how many credits are available to be purchased and at what price, as well as credit bids and their prices.

CREDITS SELL AT
If there is currently a bid in the market at the desired price, your credits will sell immediately. Instant gratification!

I like it but it needs a toggle to just see the sales too, because seeing the 100+ bids would be annoying.

I'm sure if this ever were added (not real likely, in my personal opinion), I'm sure there'd be syntax to see one or the other. Plus, you wouldn't see 100 different offers, just like you don't see them on the current CFS.

I have a feeling this would just make the market more scarce than it already is.

Its a glorious idea and definitely would help those who aren't online -all- the time. However you'll probably always have that bully who 1g up's you and has a ton of friggin gold, still playing the market (which I support)

I really like this idea. But it should definitly be two different screens.

I don't see this as altering either the supply of credits or the demand for credits. What it will tend to do will be to cut down on the transactions that are substantially above or below the real market value. Sellers won't sell too low because they can see the real demand, and buyers won't buy too high (unless they are impatient) because they can put in a fair bid and sellers from the entire weave have a chance to accept it.

I'm fine with the bids being shown in a CFB (credits for bid) command or some such. I will always want to see both CFS and CFB at the same time, to see the spread, but I can see that not everyone would.

Let's not make the credit market more complicated than it has to be. We don't have the kind of market volume to create the efficiencies you're looking for.

Also:

* You don't have to be online to take advantage of credits for sale.

I find this a disadvantage. If there are stacked bid orders for a total of 10,000 @ 5k, then I'd have to wait a long time to get to buy them at that price. It turns the credit market into a queue and that's something I'm unwilling to deal with.

Just make it take the gold from their inventory when they place the bid.

Doesn't eliminate the queue issue at all.

Scenario:

So I'm player #100 who wants to buy credits at 5000 gold per. Player #50-80 don't even play anymore. Why do I have to wait for their bids to get through to get my credits when I'm online? The fact that they paid upfront doesn't make it any more appealing.

Even if they were active, I'm online right now and willing to pay. Why shouldn't I have the opportunity to buy?

Maybe have the bids have a time limit? Like if your bid didn't win you any credits in three (completely random number!) RL days then, it's automatically removed and the gold placed back into your inventory. That way, people can't bid and then vanish, leading to the situation you described.

The queue can get pretty significant with all the gold people are hoarding (including myself). It wouldn't be fair to others if I queued up 6 million gold worth of credits and you had to wait behind me. Now think of all the rich players and we're talking about hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion gold worth of credits that you'd have to wait behind in a queue.

As I mentioned earlier, there isn't enough market volume for this type of system to work efficiently. However, I applaud Zallafar's interest in stocks.

This issue already exists in the reverse; people who put credits at a specific price have to wait to have their credits sold after previous credits for sale at the same price. Is it a problem now for credit sellers?

As for buy bids, you can just raise your price slightly to get past the billions of gold already bid. Just like a credit seller who doesn't want to wait can lower their price a bit.

The gold supply (near infinite) far outweighs the credit supply. So yes, it is a problem if the situation is reversed by several magnitudes. The backlog of bids will far exceed the asks, which is the queuing problem I've identified.



So we have to pay a premium now to get credits on-demand? How does this improve anybody's situation? That's the current status quo and you can save the admins some coding time.

As it stands, I prefer the system already in place over your proposal. People already pay for what they want on the market and those that want to wait for a better price can do so without having to fight through a queue.

credit market idea

Given the awful state of the credit market and the talk about triggers to buy credits being forbidden, it seems time to revisit this idea. You wouldn't need to be watching the market constantly for decently priced credits or try to slam in a credit buy command when someone announces new credits on Market.

I didn't see this the first time around! Good idea.

I'm sure someone somewhere has triggers to buy credits, as the least several times I've sold them they've been gone barely a second after I've said 'credits up'