Re: Things that make you go hmmm... aka Sim Econ100.9

Yeah, in my other city I'm at level 10 and farming keys right now. I have about 200, and have already bought 5 universities and 6 heliports, more than enough to cover my 18 residential zones.

There is so much more to say about the way trade works, and the 'remedies' implemented so far, but that has its own thread so I decided not to delve that deeply, though I definitely had it in mind when I titled the original post.

There are price controls, which are known to cause shortages. If prices had no upper limit, those who desperately needed one item might be able to find one at a price that wards off the opportunistic buyers.

As you already mentioned, being better able to find what you're looking for probably would result in less of that opportunistic impulse buying.

It happens to be great to be a seller tho, however rough it may be to be a buyer. You can set the price of anything at the max limit and it is guaranteed to sell, sooner or later. Nothing I advertise remains unsold for long. Of course, we can only sell things for coin, not for keys or sim cash, and not for real cash.

I have no problem with them trying to profit from their creation. I've bought every SimCity game since SC3000. If some things cost more simcash than I'll ever earn in the game, oh well. If they want to offer 'pay to cheat' conveniences, I don't care as long as I can still get there. But it would be unconscionable, imho, to nerf vital aspects of gameplay to try to raise some extra cash off of people's impatience. I hope they're not actually doing that, tho the evidence seems to indicate that they might. I'm more likely to spend money on games that stay fun to play, tho.

More than a couple times, I've gone to a city to find the advertised item gone, but upon reloading the city's trade depot find it there. If I were a suspicious gamer with dev experience, I might suspect a glitch in the algorithm that prevents me from shopping successfully too often. 😉

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@UncleSim69 wrote:

More than a couple times, I've gone to a city to find the advertised item gone, but upon reloading the city's trade depot find it there. If I were a suspicious gamer with dev experience, I might suspect a glitch in the algorithm that prevents me from shopping successfully too often. 😉

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It may be that the player is posting additional items for sale.  When I try to buy things and find empty trade depots, I often refresh to see what else the player might be listing, and it is not uncommon for the player to list additional sales items within a few moments.  Since they advertised the item that I came there for, these additional items will usually go unadvertised for at least 5 min, giving me an almost exclusive chance to purchase them.  It's important to remember that rare items are selling almost instantly, but it takes time for players to put each item up for sale.  In other posts around here someplace, I've told newer players to list all of their items, then use the free advertisement on only the best one, thus ensuring that everyone who responds to the ad will see all of their stuff, and increase their chance at a quick sale on those items they don't advertise.

I do that a lot too, reloading the city's depot to see what they're still adding. But it's been unusual numbers of rather common things, like 7 glass, not 10 common items or a small few rare items.

I also wait until I've listed all my items before advertising any, but usually advertise the least desirable items first, since the popular items will get picked up more easily by the opportunistic buyers, and that usually works well. If I list multiple sets of similar items, I usually don't advertise the first one, but the second or last one, hoping people will buy the similar but unadvertised items first. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.