Finding reasonable pricing for weapon trades

[El Socko]

I've never been much into trading, the main reason being that I'm too lazy as it may require a lot of time to maintain your trade list(s) and to carry out trades due to both parties not always being available at the same time, often thanks to conflicting time zones. I had an account on Schthack for almost 8 years but in all my time there I only made 2-3 trade topics, and I don't think I've even had one here on Ultima. As a result I've accumulated tons of crap that I'd like to get rid of.

Anyway, there's something I wanted to discuss as the topic title suggests, please read carefully though. As I used to spend huge amounts of time hunting specific weapons on Schthack (and I do the same here), I ended up with quite many of them, just often not quite with the stats I desired. When I was making one of my trade topics, I came up with the idea of listing all I have of a certain weapon, calculating the PD price from a low base rate and the additional photon attributes - the premise being that these are weapons you'd want to sphere anyway, so rather than paying 20/99 PDs in Gallon's Shop for 5%/30%, you'd just pay 1 PD more for each 5 or 10% on the weapon which obviously is a lot cheaper than sphering.

This also saved me the hassle of negotiating for a price, which was quite a point for me.

Yes, you could always just hunt the weapon yourself but for some players it proved too difficult or they just couldn't be bothered, or you could end up with a drop that has bad or even no attributes at all (effectively equal to a BPD weapon), hence this was a viable option for them, as the following example will prove, taken from an old trade thread I had back on Schthack - Panzer Fausts. Note this is NOT a list of PFs I have here on Ultima, though I probably do in fact have a similar amount in my bank. Most of them sold in 2 or 3 days:

Price: 3 PD base + 1 PD per 5%

20/40/0/0 = 15 PD
0/30/0/0 = 9 PD
25/25/0/0 = 13 PD
0/25/30/0 = 14 PD
0/15/0/30 = 12 PD
0/35/15/0 = 13 PD
0/30/0/0 = 9 PD
0/30/30/0 = 15 PD
0/20/25/0 = 12 PD
0/30/25/0 = 14 PD
0/45/15/0 = 15 PD
0/0/35/0 = 10 PD
0/30/0/0 = 9 PD
25/25/0/0 = 13 PD
0/0/0/30 = 9 PD
0/35/30/0 = 16 PD

Obviously I won't apply the same pricing structure here, this was back on Schthack when it was in its prime so a lot of PDs were in circulation so you can't compare the value to what it is currently on Ultima. Let's not forget there also was no donation ticket option to "buy" 35% or 20 hit, hit wasn't required as much as on Ultima anyway, a hitless Iron Faust was fine - though I'm using a hitless one on here too and I find it works well enough for the most part.
Well, the Panzer Faust is a special case though as you'll inevitably spend another 50 PDs to make it into Iron Faust ... a few more PDs for additional % won't be a big deal I guess.

Finally, I believe pricing should also depend, to some extent, on how difficult it is to hunt a particular item. With the abundance of rare enemies (especially during green names), hunting something like Frozen Shooter or Vivienne is trivial compared to drops like Panzer Faust, Spread Needle or event-only weapons.

So, this is my general idea, what do you think? If you disagree that's fine as I'm well aware you can't please all the people. I'm merely testing the waters.

[Shoutgu]

Just make a new price guide and update it every time ppl agree/disagree

[tru]

I had a similar idea of like this. It would be a way of putting your weapons stats into a formula and calculating the price, because people ask for price checks all the time, and I pretty much have the same way of calculating how much a weapon is worth. It's hard to make a formula though cuz there's a lot of exceptions. And I thought about making an updated price guide, but prices fluctuate so much to where it would be a pain to keep up with. An example being POST which just sold for over 40 DTs I believe. During the event they were 40-50 pds. I saw one as low as 30 pds. The fact that prices can fluctuate that much is a problem. And trying to put a value on dark weapons where we've had people offer 250 dts is a pain as well. It gets even more insane trying to value unobtainable useful items like type/me mechguns and type/gu handgun or even weapons with more than 80 hit (which you use to be able to donate for), but I digress, in the end I think I'm just gonna stick to the way things are. I'll just answer people's price check questions as they come and not worry about the specifics.

[El Socko]

Thanks for the lengthy post, tru.

Yeah, I'm not overly concerned with really rare and uber stuff like DMs, more like stuff that I have multiples of like Panzer Faust, Rambling May, Ultima Reaper ... mostly weapons that add decent ATP so you'll want to use it for damage.

I see it like this: if someone buys a Spread Needle (preferably with hit but then you could still add to that with DTs) and it has decent %, they'll likely want to make it into Arrest Needle, which I think we can agree upon is a pretty solid DPS weapon when it has good %. So having those % in first place will save them a lot of PDs later on. If someone disagrees with the pricing they just don't have to buy, it's just like going into a store in real life ...

It's just about finding the right balance for each specific weapon.

[Fyrewolf5]

I think there is a lot of factors that goes into valuing an item, and while such a system may sometimes work for you, I think it is limited and breaks down eventually. For example, just because there is the same number of %s, doesn't mean the item is necessarily the same value; Certain attributes may be more desirable than others on certain weapons, such as ultima reaper being great with abeast and/or dark and not so much with native, or excal being great with abeast and/or native and not as useful with dark. The number of the %s is also not worth the same as it goes up, 70% in one attribute is worth more than a 35% in two attributes. Then there are the other factors like how many currently exist and are traded (part of Iron Faust's priceyness around here is how few people actually have), how useful the item is (viability), how usable the item is (practicality in combat, class restrictions, etc), how difficult the hunt is (baranz are difficult enemy to deal with, though one of the quests for spamming one or two ep 2 baranz isn't too hard, also bpd can be done for one), how difficult the drop is (the drop rate and average time needed, and again bpd can be done for one), how it compares to the alternative options in each of those respects, etc.

I'm sure I could think of more but it's happy hour and I'd rather not be wasting time here. But with so many different factors, people are bound to weigh and judge them differently, and have some slight variances in their pricing. Then on top of that is the issue of multiple currencies, bartering items, events (e.g. red ring only just now being really huntable again since triforce/anniversary/christmas changes the drop), and market fluctuations; someone may decide to trade x number of pds, y number of grinders, and z number of power materials for an item. While it would be nice to be able to say a set price, there will usually be some haggling done in most trades, and if you really need to, then as a seller you can choose to be firm on your listed prices.