34 replies to this topic

[higgs]

Why don't we live up to our name and be strong on the market. Or are you a market expert and just itching to use your knowledge? Well I'll make you an offer you can't refuse...

Joint venture:
There are a lot of ways to play the market, but some of the more profitable and dangerous ways need a huge pool of $. With enough $, a team of investors could make a noticeable influence on certain item prices and availability. Now, monopoly is a mean word and I don't support it in real life, but this is just a game with an interesting still-developing economy so why not screw around and make (or lose) a small fortune while we're at it?

I'm by no means the richest dude on Ebay, but I just thought it would be fun if we start something big like this. Don't get me wrong - I'm not taking leadership or whatever because (1) will there even be "leader(s)" (2) not many people know me and thus trust me (3) I don't have much time for Gold Wars 2 (4) I'm no market expert. So basically I'm just a messenger, looking for your 2 cents.

Obviously we'll need a restricted forum to discuss nuclear bomb targets and stuff, but here are the basics if you're interested (it's all common sense blahblah):
- Anyone is welcome. (For now, anyway, since it'll be dumb if all GW2 knows what we're up to.) Just be trustworthy, keep a low profile, etc.
- However much gold you choose to invest will be pooled together with everyone else's. Safety comes before profit. We'll need someone(s) well known and trusted here. I vote Apticus. We'll reach a consensus later.
- Some items buys probably won't need pooling and we can handle those individually. So it's to your advantage to be connected with what's going to happen so you can cash in!
- For pooled moves, your profits (and losses!) will be directly proportional to your percentage of the total pool. Duh.

So yeah. Let's see what we can do with like 10000 gold. WTB market experts.

[Tharickster]

I will say that is a good idea and works well. I have been doing this for people in my guild.

[higgs]

Good to hear. Wanna combine our powers? We shall be unstoppable.

[Tzenjin]

I did this with my guild. Jumped on certain events together and reap the rewards (Karka Event)

Have to say though, even though my experiences teaming together were small, its quite a lot of effort.

I've been making money saving up for Sunrise playing the TP and picking good future investments but its quite tiring. The person i was partnered with (he just made The Dreamer!) and i are just about spent and im still not done with Sunrise.

I'd say we'd need some very patient/knowledgeable people that dont mind the amount of energy and time spent into market analysis.

[Tharickster]

yes it does take time and patience indeed. Learning the market is the biggest thing. Also ensuring that with the bigger amounts of money you also don't stall the market and lose all revenue off your investments. I would join you but I am leaving soon to go home for 2 weeks then heading to afghanistan so my days are numbered right now

[Thuley]

I am curious about the practical implementation and limitations of this.

In EVE Online ventures like this were common, though always mislabeled as either IPO or bonds, players or player corporations would seek investment for either some sort of specified return or dividends of sorts.

The difference between EVE Online and GW2 is that GW2 is like the Fisher Price plastic cash register whereas EVE Online is the New York Stock Exchange when it comes to in-game methods and features to track and verify transactions and balances.

How is the Gold Wars 2 scheme going to prevent that one individual will just take the 1 million gold and run?

[Tharickster]

that is the thing, you have to know and trust the person. I work with people in my guild so I know them. I also get tipped fairly well for helping them out. you have no way to track how much the said person has at any given time or how much they're really making.

[Tzenjin]

A common goal needs to be achieved between the "Marketers". A mutual respect in order to establish a cohesive relationship. Clear division of priority between levels of investment (Meaning if you invest more, you get more, and you'll have more priority. But not too the point to create a division between more wealthy/less wealthy players in terms of equality.

Another thing that needs to be taken into account is if this is done on a per-individual basis or on a guild-to-guild basis.... meaning...

Should we organize on someones own individual lvl of invesment or their guilds total? Lets use FTF/DoA as an example.

If DoA has 3 members with an average of 33.3333g each (30gx3= 100g to be easy) but then 2 members from FTF have different amounts... lets say one FTF has 25g and the other has 75g.

In total your working with 200g worth of capital. Each Guild has contributed 50% of the total, which earns them (i would think) 50% of profit earnings after the inital investment. Or would you do it on a personal basis... Now the personal basis would differ in the sense of... EX: Since FTF #1 gave 25g but FTF #2 gave 75g. FTF #2 should receive more from the FTF Cut of Profts. Or you actually equally divde it up amongst the guild.

Of course if you've got 100g to invest, of course you wouldnt like someone taking part in your percentage profit. But this comes down too... This is a Game. This helps your guild as a whole, rather then just you. Easier math.

Basically its the level of detail. With it on a guild basis, the math and the distribution of profits would be easier on the marketers and left to the guilds/guild leaders to distribute it out either equally or by percentage.

I only think it'll be easier on a guild basis because its alot easier to the leaders to keep track of total amounts and contributing players. It might also help to advertise a guild collection average. Meaning an average amount of gold should be discerned from your guild mates.

Ex: FTF has 60 members who want to invest. (we have that many active usually...) but among the 60 not all of them have equal amounts of gold on hand. So an average is taken. The average could be (example) 5g. So 60 members all investing 5g = 300g to invest.

There are different ways to do these kinds of things. Some have more conservative/capitalistic undertones and methods. While others have more liberal and a equality/equal opportunity feeling to them.

Sorry for long winded msgs V____V i always end up typing alot...

[higgs]

Oh I didn't know the details can get so...detailed.
I was just thinking it can be an individual thing. And guilds can count as an "individual" if they chose, and let them handle the rest.
An online spreadsheet like on google can keep things simple and open to the public.

[Tzenjin]

I work at a software company that designs private/hard money lender loan/mortgage/investment servicing software.

Im no day trader but i know about how money needs to flow. And theres one thing that always ensured amongst Lenders and Investors. They will make things complicated, they will find ways to make things "detailed"

Guilds being considered as individuals basically turns it into a MIC Loan Pool. Basically puts detailed distribution in the hands of whoever is elected the "Guild Marketer". Which means it would be up to the guilds personal decision to either do a total-average investment basis or an individual earnings basis.

Things like losses also need to be taken into account. Who loses what, how much do they lose, is it lost on a personal basis or total-average? Soo many factors haha.

I love the idea tho! I think it could work, but it would take some very savvy people with some goooooood calculators. But again, its alot of work, these marketers would have to be compensated for their time.

Also! If they're is a team of Marketers then you run into a problem. There is no actual MIC. Its basically a bank account where the money is held for invest that allows multiple people to access it. But in Gw2 all gold would have to be managed by one person on one Account OR distributed among the Marketers equally for a more a widespread investment (also introduces new risk factors depending on choices of individual marketer ideas)

Have too many marketers, things could be good, but also very risky. Marketers could make profit while other come up in loss.

Have too little marketers, things take too long, people get impatient, people retract their investments in order to use instantly/other reasons.

Something that can be handled like "MONEY" is always compliacted.

[Tharickster]

and we ladies and gentlemen have opened pandora's box of the TP

[Tzenjin]

Tharickster, on 03 December 2012 - 07:00 PM, said:

and we ladies and gentlemen have opened pandora's box of the TP

Im too much of a realist

[Reya]

Just reading through this now - looks very interesting.

I have 2 small suggestions because whoever organizes this is going to be a trustworthy admin freak - but to simplify that admin side for them:

1) only accept investments by Guild Name+Tag with 1-2 officers/GM as contacts. Let them organize among themselves who is contributing what. You would need a clause stating what is involved with pulling out funds ahead of time also ...

2) set a specific amount per investment; eg 50g... this would mean you can only receive investments in 50g lots, so a guild could pool together and invest 1150g for a total of '23', a small guild of 2 people could contribute 50g for a total of '1'. forcing exact figures for investment 'limits' would simply mean easier calculations when doing returns?

...just adding my 2c 'cause i can see the value in a big venture in this but you definitely need to draw lines to make it happen easier from an administrative perspective or it will be too much work for the people who actually do the handling.

-Reya

[Flashwing]

Great posts!

I have been playing the TP with some limited success over the past couple of months. I have been using some of the great tools available for looking where in the market to invest and what my prices have to be in order to turn a profit.

What I'm seeing here looks to be discussions about a more condensed collaboration or even handing over your money to certain individuals who would then invest it. On the one hand, I could see this being a very lucrative opportunity for those people who have good experiences playing the market with the TP. You could even break down the investments into safer aspects like crafting materials or more risky investments such as exotic weapons. That said, if you think managing your own TP investments is time consuming, imagine having to be a broker for a whole host of people.

Frankly, I wouldn't mind taking a risk on investing a few gold with individuals who have the time and experience to obtain good returns on the TP.

Another idea would be more of a collective direction with investments. Using the power of individuals and their combined wealth, we would influence areas of the market to turn a profit. It might be tougher to perform since timing is very important, but it would probably be more accepted since people would still be in control of their gold. Hard to hold anyone responsible when you are making the decision, no?

[Grav]

Thuley, on 03 December 2012 - 05:13 PM, said:

In EVE Online ventures like this were common, though always mislabeled as either IPO or bonds, players or player corporations would seek investment for either some sort of specified return or dividends of sorts.

And they were almost always scams.

[higgs]

Ok sorry if the quoting thing looks weird, I dunno how the forum usually does this.

Tzenjin, on 03 December 2012 - 06:39 PM, said:

But again, its alot of work, these marketers would have to be compensated for their time.

For sure, I'd support some kind of pay/tips, but being able to play with so much resources is already a bonus.

Tzenjin, on 03 December 2012 - 06:39 PM, said:

Have too many marketers, things could be good, but also very risky. Marketers could make profit while other come up in loss.

So we can just deal with the net profit/loss across all marketers, if that makes it simpler.

Tzenjin, on 03 December 2012 - 06:39 PM, said:

Have too little marketers, things take too long, people get impatient, people retract their investments in order to use instantly/other reasons.

I thought having a single person who does all the TP transactions would work well. The market experts would tell him/her what to buy/sell. That person doesn't need to be an expert, just someone trustworthy and online frequently. Also it would make coordinated timing a ton easier, as opposed to getting 5 different people to buy at the same time.

Reya, on 03 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

1) only accept investments by Guild Name+Tag with 1-2 officers/GM as contacts. Let them organize among themselves who is contributing what. You would need a clause stating what is involved with pulling out funds ahead of time also ...

You mean make it exclusively guild-based? I agree that would make things easier for the admin. But we'll probably lose out on a lot of power we could have gotten from individuals too. In the end, it's only a few more columns on a spreadsheet...uh, I think.

Reya, on 03 December 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

2) set a specific amount per investment; eg 50g... this would mean you can only receive investments in 50g lots, so a guild could pool together and invest 1150g for a total of '23', a small guild of 2 people could contribute 50g for a total of '1'. forcing exact figures for investment 'limits' would simply mean easier calculations when doing returns?

We'll be missing out on all the people who don't fit into whatever regulation we make. Like, what about people who only want to invest 25g but can't find a partner with the other 25g? It's just a matter of a few decimal places more or less. But this does bring up a good point - we probably shouldn't accept people who only want to invest like 50s...or 50c. There's definitely a point where the added effort isn't worth it.

Flashwing, on 03 December 2012 - 10:51 PM, said:

Another idea would be more of a collective direction with investments. Using the power of individuals and their combined wealth, we would influence areas of the market to turn a profit. It might be tougher to perform since timing is very important, but it would probably be more accepted since people would still be in control of their gold. Hard to hold anyone responsible when you are making the decision, no?

Yeah, both pooling and coordinated "market zerging" have pros and cons. We could do both and it's up to each individual to choose which way(s). Either way, I think it's the individual's, not the marketers', responsibility in the end, since it's the individual who made the choice to trust in the marketers' expertise and/or the zerg's powah.

Here's a little example spreadsheet. Hopefully it can explain better than I can in words. (And hopefully it obeys the law of conservation of $$$.)  profit loss.png   257.11K   14 downloads
- At any one moment, the "total pool" is made up of the "core pool" (sum of all contributions) and the "profit/loss pool."
- The core pool is used to determine each individual's (or guild's) percentage of the P/L pool's change that they own at any one moment.

...and I thought the hardest part of all this was just finding the right item to merch...

[Reya]

@ point 1: the power of individuals isn't necessarily lost for 2 reasons. 1: if a large guild has in it only 2-3 people that want to participate they can still 'enter a guild account' so long as only one of them is nominated as the contact. for those who aren't in guilds you would treat them the same and just leave [NoGuild] for that field or something ... the purpose of this point was to force/encourage collective groups that want to put in to organize among themselves first, not to exclude individuals. guilds seem to exist already for that reason in name and principle, so why not use them?

@ point 2 : absolutely see your point, i was just pulling 50g as a random figure for 'roundness' ... if you determine that 25g investments or 10g investments are a better figure to allow more participation, but with the same simplicity, then do that instead! 10g would work fine and anyone could participate, if you can't invest 10g you need to play more - simple as that.

....one other element to this is how you are going to return their investment profits? if they only made a small % profit off the latest market deal and you let them invest 1g at a time that means you are going to mail individuals tiny tiny amounts of money. it's the same administrative time as a large amount of money, but that's seriously going to feel like a waste of time and de-value/de-motivate the whole thing. i think this would be my primary reason for putting to your consideration a rule of 'we take investments in 10g lots, no less - round it up or down'.

hope this clears up my thoughts

[Reya]

one other thought that comes to mind is the timing on returning profits. just as an idea anyways, i know there's a few possible ways you could do this but for 'simplicity's sake' on one point (at the end) hear me out:

since you're dealing with a pool of money and not managing lots of individual accounts like a bank ... treat it like a pool. accept X amount of investments by cutoffdate Day1Fortnight1.

any investments given after Day1Fortnight1 are not used until the next period which is Day1Fornight2.

that way you have a fixed pool of money to work with for a fortnight, at the end of that fortnight you can easily calculate exactly how much profit was made, and pay that profit back. If people want to re-invest, pull out or just roll-over the existing investment they can nominate to do so in the few days leading up to Day1Fortnight2. default option if nothing is heard from the player is that existing investment is rolled over.

if someone wants to pull out their money at any point they simply lose a shot at the profit that is handed out at the end of that fortnight. for example someone wants to pull G out to buy T3 or something.

naturally if a fortnight is too long, do it by week? but not less than that imo.

the advantage: i think would be that you're not trying to track 'ok X investments made Y profit by Day3Fortnight1, now we've got 6 more investments + additions to existing X investments and need to track the differences dated from here on till ...*braindead*'. it also communicates quite clearly to those involved that they won't get returns till a fixed date, etc etc.
the more you manage involved parties' expectations the simpler and more drama-free the whole process would be.
*in my mind i'm comparing this against not returning profits until the investor asks OR returning profits at the end of each investment transaction*

-Reya

[higgs]

1 - Ok now I agree with you, if you mean encourage people to organize themselves so the admin will have less entries to juggle. I don't think it'll be constructive to force anyone, but encourage yeah definitely.

2 - A minimum investment makes sense. I have no idea how much other people usually have banked so we'll need more feedback. 10g does sounds reasonable.

3 - I can attest that, after working on that example spreadsheet, having people withdraw at random times will be a huge headache. However, I didn't use formula cells and if you use them, then it's actually a piece of cake since Excel will do everything for you. So I think either way works. (Personally, I'm leaning toward your idea of regular pay days, though) Again, it all depends on more feedback from the general populace, since this is all to serve them in the first place.

[Reya]

mmm - 'serve' the general populace, yes.
ultimately you would want to see a decent (but small) % off the profits go to the admin who's doing all the work though. community-appointed 'market wizards' who help in the decision making process too. then the large % of profits that is left is distributed to the community who invested. really, it's 'serving' both groups, not just the investors.

on the 2-minimum investment, my idea wasn't just minimum investment but also set amounts of investment. so if you want to put in it has to be rounded up or down to a 10g x figure. you could always mod that and say '10g minimum entry, anything higher must be rounded up/down to 5g*'.  avoid the people who want to dump 17g 33s 52c.

STILL to get this going you need a pool of investors, market analysts and at least one admin ... and all we seem to have are interested investors!