"Black Friday Stampede" style trading system - COMPLETELY broken

That would be great indeed.

The way it is now, it's quite annoying. I call it "farming", but you have to keep clicking on the HQ so the list of items refreshes and get lucky to have your item there you can arrive at the city. It's not the end of the world, but it could be better indeed.

I believe that the huge trading volume which causes the "click-race" for auctions could be alleviated by removing the price cap which would balance out supply/demand. Most - if not all - items are currently selling well below their market value due to the cap, causing this huge demand. I believe this change is good because of it’s minimal impact on the system programatically. Less code/design changes are better and more likely to be considered anyway.


Effect of removing price cap: Prices will increase and balance equal to the time cost of producing an item and divided by demand for an item. This demand includes both consuming the item itself for direct use or in production of a derivative item. Lower demand for items means less activity on the overall marketplace, significantly increasing the chances of actually getting an item you are buying on the market.

Where things go bad...

Effect on on perceived value of Simoleons: A dollar doesn't go as far as it used to anymore. Inflation will have a profoundly positive effect on fixed price cost of infrastructure. The down side of this is the removal of the money management aspect of saving to invest in infrastructure.

Effect on city growth: Cheap infrastructure means lower resistance to growth. Faster growth means higher demand for items. Higher demand for items pushes prices higher on the marketplace once again. Price inflation for items continues to depreciate the value of infrastructure.


The fix? Infrastructure cost should be based on market value of set items (but converted to Simoleons) and allowed to fluctuate. Why not take it a step further and allow the purchase and trade of infrastructure buildings on the marketplace?


Effect on development: removal of upper and and lower cap should be trivial programmatically. Pairing infrastructure prices against market value of items would be more leg work but still all back end.

Getting down to brass tax...

Effect of purchases of SimCash: A higher cost for goods can only have a positive (from an business standpoint) impact on the purchase of SimCash. A higher Simoleon cost means more SimCash required (converted to Simoleons) for those who are too impatient to wait for tax income or item production.

Changes to the game cost money and dev hours. Show EA the value and they will deliver. I believe there is a way for us to get a better game and have EA make more money at the same time! :D

I believe that selling above the max cap is not so good as it would take too long until someone is despaired enough to buy your stuff.

I always sell my stuff at default price.

If I understand the system right we are supposed to be able to buy from anyone who is selling stuff no matter where they are at in the world. AKA a global trading system. But no in an auction house style where people bid but simply we list the stuff at the price we want to sell the stuff at up to a defined cap. I like the idea of the cap in regards to the games design. It is kind of like having a system that could have been AI buying the stuff at a variable rate based on supply and demand but instead it is the players buying the stuff. However this is probably the worst implementation of a global trading system I have every seen. The best global trading system I have seen and would be willing to bet there is no better system in a game at this time, is in guild wars 2.

I have played guild wars 2 since it launched at the trading system has worked very well. It is completely searchable and filterable to find a specific item or type of item. In simcity here there probably aren't enough items to need a filter system for type of item lists. Searching for a specific item might be of use if there is enough items to not want to scroll through a list. However EA could take direction from guild wars 2 system in overhauling the system for this game. Everyone that is selling seeds for example would all show up in a seed entry in the system. So when one is shopping for seeds they are all seen there. This allows both buyers and sellers to get a value of the items being traded. And sellers are able to make judgement calls on how they price their items based on the current supply and demand. By being able to see the count of an item for sale at the time and the prices they are listed at, buyers and sellers can see the prices go up and down as supply and demand changes in a live state.

In addition to this there is also a offer to buy list that works just like the sell listings except the prices are what those making offers to buy are willing to pay. And sellers can decide if they would like to sell items to those or list them for sale. But this could be something concidered after overhauling the trade system to better server the both buyer and seller by getting rid of the flaws the current system has that aggravate both buyers and sellers. In it's current state buying stuff is a chore to say the least as has been pointed out in you have to visit the persons town before you can even make the purchase. Which results in coming up empty handed most of the time and a lot of time wasted to come up empty handed.

Selling isn't as bad but is problematic due to the poor design of the buying system. Sellers don't even really know if buyers are seeing their stuff and sellers have to do a lot of work to determine what to sell the stuff at if they are looking for fast income. The seller is unable to determine if a item is taking a long time to sell if it is due to people not seeing it or due to others constantly selling at a better price until your item happens to be an item the buyer sees with no others also with the item in the UI at the time. This is precisely why having a list of all of the specific item together is important. Instead of a random list of stuff that is for sale at the time.

i'm having issues with trading too. I advertise my items and they sit ... for two days now. My prices are the same if not less the current average on same items, but they still sit collecting dust. I cannot sell anything else cause all of my slots are full. I cannot erase sales as I dont have simcash to cancel... help me out here

I had the same problem two days ago. All my items sat for 2 days without selling. In the end I put one item in at a very reduced price - that brought the customers in I think lol. Everything sold in a few seconds.

I don't like how we can't remove items which don't sell either. I want to be able to take items out of the Trading Centre and use them instead sometimes.

The hardwares I use to play are

Pantech Vega LTE-A IM-A880S (2.3 GHz quad core Snapdragon 800)

Cube talk 9x (1.8 GHz octa core MTK8392)

They are by no means low end devices. There shouldn't be any reason I should be getting beaten 95 percent of the time and running into empty inventories unless

1. Global trade HQ is dominated by small handful of people with crazy overclocked devices (unlikely)

2. This piece of junk trade system is BROKEN and advertising items even after they are sold

But at least make it so that WE DON'T HAVE TO VISIT OTHER PLAYERS CITIES TO MAKE PURCHASES. My GOD!

that is what I do

This is exactly what i do when i need stuff like storage parts and dozer parts. I look for a lock if i need a grill and sometimes they wil have a lock too.