Forget Trade Reversals.

Forget the warning messages when you enter trade tables.

Ever wondered why trochus is being made the main 'currency' in the trade tables? I know many trades have been questioning it and after much thought I concluded - ITS A RESULT OF SELLABLES MANIPULATION.

I shall define the term of sellable manipulation - it is basically a bias over the use of one sellable over another, causing the sellable less used to be 'depreciated' in value. Huh?

You're confused. So here's an example (example 1):
Some player trade 2 aerolatas for 1 trochus. We know aeros and trochus have same value of 3 gralats each, but in such a context, the value of aeros have dropped to 1.5 gralats. That's the result of sellable manipulation.

Now here's how it all started
We know in trade tables there are dealers and also hoarders. The dealers buy items and then sell them off at a higher price , while the hoarders own many of the same items and then sell them off at a profit.

We also know trade gangs exist. Hoarder gangs? Maybe. But hoarders definitely do.

The thing is there are a few factors that may have caused the trade community to favour trochus and devaluate aeros.

We shall regard the hoarders and traders as one group and let's call it HTDs.

The majority of HTDs decided to use and accept trochus only, which also means that:
1. if you want their goods, you'd better give them the trochus
2. if you're trying to sell someone a good, its better to accept trochus - or else you'll probably not be trading any of the aerolatas away because HTDs won't accept.

So trochus are therefore made transferrable and validated in the community.

The act of collectively deciding to accept trochus is a form of unethical trade practice as it is sellable manipulation. Earlier I mentioned how it led to the devaluation of Aeros.

If its just HTDs, then why is it so widespread?
Here's the thing about this bad trade practice - it starts a vicious cycle.
The buyers (lets call him A) give trochus to get for example, a katana.
The buyer, A, then sells to B and decides to accept trochus because he/she wants the trochus to be reused for other trades and also to preserve the value of the katana.
B repeats this process to C.
And the cycle goes on and on until it reaches the hands of someone who doesn't want to sell the item of. In the process, though, everyone starts using trochus.

If you're wondering why trochus is used to preserve the value of the katana, then look back at example 1 - if A sells to be at 1000 aeros (3000 gralats) instead of 1000 trochus, A will have to exchange the aeros for only 500 trochus (1500 gralats). That's a loss of 1500 gralats!

That's why, forget the trade reversals. Forget the messages at trade tables. We haven't resolved this bad trade practice rotting at our tables!

What are the consequences?
1. We are reducing trade volumes
See, if we could use our Aeros at trade without having to exchange It for aeros at a loss, there would definitely be more players trading. Most players won't want to make a loss exchanging their aeros for trochus so they won't bother with using aeros at all.

If I have 5k trochus and 5k aeros, the 5k aeros is wasted and the total number of shells (same value each) could have been used to buy a 10k shells item - if only people accept aeros. But because they don't, I can't get that item, and I will have to work 2x harder to get it and by then I would have 10k aeros 10k trochus. Which, brings me to my next point.

2. the trade system rips people of their shells if they use aeros
Since I have 10k aeros, I could use them for trade by exchanging at a 2:1 trochus ratio for trochus. That means I'm essentially making a loss of 15k gralats!! (5k aeros) I'm pretty sure the existence of players offering to exchange trochus and aeros clearly shows that there are people taking such losses and I don't think that makes it worth their while. They probably wouldn't exchange had they not been desparate enough for some item.


So, here's my proposed solution:
1. Have a shell exchange kiosk at every trade tables for players to exchange trochus and aeros at 1:1 ratio.
They shouldn't fall victim to exchangers t 2:1 ratio! People will start to accept both shells knowing that they could exchange for trochus anyway.


2. Impose a maximum number of trochus that could be traded in one transaction, however, this restriction will be lifted once people add aeros to the tables and the aero:trochus hits a certain ratio.
For example, if the limit is 10k trochus. And I am buying a 20k trochus/aero item. If the ratio is 1 aero:5 trochus, I will have to minimally have 4000 aeros and 16000 trochus to be able to lift the restriction and buy the item.

With such a restriction, sellers and HTDs will no longer demand trochus only because they know there's a restriction of say, 10k trochus.