The first and last ones become difficult to balance. We try to let the free market determine what items are actually worth, and for the most part it works.

The problem with bid-only is that it doesn't stop someone from buying low and selling high -- it just slows it down. Also, when people want items, they usually want them right away, so not allowing buy-now would frustrate users. It would also not work very well for negotiating item trades instead of aurum-based purchases.

I think the system as it stands right now actually does do a pretty good job of managing prices. It just suffers from an extreme lack of discoverability. A tool that would let someone put items up for sale, and then negotiate prices in a thread or in PM, would solve the problem we're having.

Very valid points.

Hm. I don't know. It's tough to try and come up with an alternative to a market place.
I mean, it does create mass inflation, but at the same time, it's really hard to have a successful economy without one.
People are having a hard time "questing" because they don't know how much they need to complete their goal.
That was one of my favorite things to do on Gaia back in the day.
Find an item I wanted, figure out how much it was going for, and questing the hell out of it in my beautiful quest threads I made.
It's hard to do when there aren't enough of that item being sold to validate a generally price of what someone might give it up for.

It's such a fragile situation. I mean, you don't want to mess up the economy, but at the same time, there really isn't one right now to mess up in my opinion.

That's why I'm proposing, essentially, Craigslist. It IS a marketplace, just not one with an automated purchase system. You can still offer items for sale; the server just won't run the transaction for you. And this would also allow us to support a list of "searching for item" requests; if you have an item you want to put up for sale you could look for people who have expressed interest in buying them.

I've toyed off and on with thoughts on how I might track historical prices but I haven't thought of a good way.

In all honesty, to not be like Gaia and have a few ways of earning currency besides posting. I don't live in the States like most of the active users on here so when they are active, I'm in bed and which means I have to scroll through tons of pages to catch up which leaves me not being interested in staying in the conversion at all.

I wish we had a better way to accommodate you, Chloe, but making it to where you could sustain aurum income without posting would have a negative effect on overall posting habits, regardless of time zone. We've intentionally chosen not to give too many aurum rewards because encouraging people to be socially active is our highest priority. If people aren't socially active, then the site won't be able to sustain itself. (We could, theoretically, convert to some sort of freemium games site, but that's not what our mission is.)

But I'm always interested in ideas that might support posting activity -- is there something that would help you with the way you use the site that would make it easier for you to be active?

i wasnt saying the clickable pets made zanny flop
i said the clickable pets idea flopped haha
but yea
i adore clickable pets. and would love the feature.
but if we do it. we need to do it right.

Coda; Yeah, I think like a Craiglist thing could work. I was thinking something like that, but I couldn't find a way to explain it.

Chloe; I understand where you're coming from. I work third shift in the states and my nights off are usually when I'm able to post the most. So usually there's not really anyone online then.

Annie, I'm interested in your feedback as well -- is there some way we could make it easier for you?

Hm. I mean, honestly, there's not much I can think of. I just deal with it and talk to the few other night owls that are on. xD
The site isn't busy enough at the moment where I can't just go back and read quickly what I missed and respond. So it's not really a huge problem.
If the site grew a bit more and got a bit more active than it is, and therefore had the possibility of more night owls that would be cool.

I think that's really the only way that could be different. owo