User blog:Blupo/Market Value Aggregation

Oh boy. Here we go.

We've got the Value Devs from the trade server defending the prices.  These prices are correct. We use all types of factors when calculating, and we get thsee prices from the community. Any "expensive" item on here is easy to get. There's no such thing as inaccurate when there weren't even values in the first place. You can't go back and say that you didn't set the prices.

And we've got people saying they're inaccurate.  I think a few people need to go through this to get the true average prices, right now they're way too high or low.

And we've got less civil comments.  This garbage ruins trading, values shouldn't be simply fixed for this game, otherwise everything is a stale piece of shit whose value is dictated by a bunch of editors. This is the same reason why MM2 became a large turd for trading. Also I'd like to point out that no one has to listen to these values.

The Value Devs say they use "all types of factors when calculating" and "we get [these] prices from the community". We don't, however know these methods, and we can't know how reliable they are, and we don't know how large this pool "from the community" is. If they could write a blog post explaining their methods in detail, I'd appreciate it.

My suggesstion is Price Aggregation.

Outline
 * Discussion is Key: Discussions are the core for creating proper pricing.
 * Prices will never be 100% agreed upon: You can't please everyone who want a specific price.
 * Aggregation: Prices shall be curated by the community, or a very large subset of it.
 * Open Forum: Price aggregation will be accompanied by an open forum where the community can discuss their curation.
 * Public Consultancy: Prices shall be reviewed by experts in trading in a publicly-accessible forum.

Technical This is where details matter.


 * Real-time updating is impossible. MediaWiki does not provide the technology to have prices that automatically update.
 * Real-time updating is not how prices should be adjusted. Prices should be periodically updated, instead of changed in real-time. This would allow actual discussion to take place as well.
 * Records-keeping is critical. Prices shouldn't be changed and the discussions thrown away. There at least needs to be a record of when prices are adjusted and the discussions that led to their adjustment.
 * Moderation is critical. An open forum means that moderation will need to be increased whenever prices are being adjusted.
 * Discussions should be on the wiki. The Market page is on the wiki, so I think that the discussion should be on the wiki. Also, anything put on the wiki can't be "deleted" in the sense that it's gone forever, because you can also undelete on the wiki (at least, until you delete the archive, which no one on this wiki can do).

Your Suggestions Do you think this is a good way to set prices? Do you think that the Value Devs are doing just fine? Do you think that we don't need to be setting prices at all?

You can use the comments to hammer out the details of this suggestion, or suggest different ways of setting these prices. But please don't complain about the prices here. Complaining isn't going to help get the prices to where the community thinks they should be at.

External Links
 * The price list by the Value Devs can be found here.
 * The SB2 Wiki Discord can be found here.
 * The SB2 Trade Server Discord can be found here.

References