(Proposal) Bell Tree Traders Guild

[Fey]

What if we could fix the forum economy, or even just try to improve it?

Our current market dynamics are discouraging, unfair—and above all—not very fun or rewarding for most members. This is a proposal for a system that allows everyone to participate in the marketplace without having to cheat, time-travel, or excessively grind

It's true that on an individual basis and without an organized effort, there is little we can do to change things. Nobody wants to offer cheaper prices and lose out on profits they might depend on for other trades. Nobody should have to give away items or offer services for free.
The idea is to come together and create reasonable guidelines that promote a healthy trading community

What do we do?

Two things, which should be decided by consensus of the Guild (aka everyone interested in the project)

1. set reasonable price ranges for individual goods and services: items, villagers etc.
2. choose a recognizable symbol to designate offers made by guild members

What can't we do?

Try to enforce these guidelines throughout the forum
Participation in the Guild is completely voluntary, and anyone should be free to choose whether (or when) they want to adhere to its recommendations or not.
The one rule to follow is that only threads following the guidelines can be advertised with the designated symbol

How to get started:

In order to make a difference, we need people willing to take a risk and make the first move
That primarily means making offers marked with our symbol, but ideally includes creating awareness for our Guild by linking back to an explanation of our intentions. Our goal is to get enough people joining to build a sustainable market, so we need the numbers to fill that market.


The first step is to gauge interest:

Who would be interested in participating in this experiment?

How could we go about deciding reasonable price ranges? (suggestions, voting)

What could our group's identifier be? (an acronym or symbol/emoji)


Keep in mind that for now this is just an experiment, and that there's no guarantee it'll come together in the end.
Anybody with ideas or suggestions is encouraged to add them, since this can only work as a group effort. I have no interest in being the price arbiter or leader of this Guild. Our guidelines need to be decided by the community as a whole, and adjusted accordingly.

I'm curious to hear your opinions and excited to see whether we can make this project a reality!

 

[LatenDale]

Curious, what would stop, or at least discourage, an outsider to the guide using said threads for favorable trades and not adhering to said guidelines for their own instigated threads? Would there be an understanding that guild members primarily only trade with other guild members?

It's certainly an interesting idea, but it feels like you'd basically need to heavily rely on an honor system and the integrity of each member to not use the group to profiteer.

 

[Raz]

Curious, what would stop, or at least discourage, an outsider to the guide using said threads for favorable trades and not adhering to said guidelines for their own instigated threads? Would there be an understanding that guild members primarily only trade with other guild members?

It's certainly an interesting idea, but it feels like you'd basically need to heavily rely on an honor system and the integrity of each member to not use the group to profiteer.

This is true, unfortunately.

But there's a solution. As @Fey said, it's only going to work if people are legitimately interested in building a healthy community. One possibility would be to use an external method to gather the members of the guild, like a discord server. One would only be able to enter the server when invited by one of the members of the guild, and the person who invites a new member should be responsible for that new member - should the newcomer act in bad faith, he's banned from the server and the person who invited him/her gets suspended for some time.

This would work because it's based on trust and there would be consequences for a screwing it up. Users with bad reputations and/or people who already tried to take advantage of the system should be blacklisted. Nobody would want to invite someone who would screw up the guild members because they would get penalized too.

 

[Squiddles]

Even as someone who time travels I find the prices to be insane. There are items or villagers I would like to get but because of the NMT prices it makes it almost impossible to even consider. I don't want to have to just grind nook miles constantly in order to get some of the more popular villagers. So I for one would be down for trying this. I think the forum could really benefit from having some price guidelines, especially for new users so that they can start out being exposed to reasonable prices rather than the extremely inflated prices they have been recently.

 

[Fey]

Curious, what would stop, or at least discourage, an outsider to the guide using said threads for favorable trades and not adhering to said guidelines for their own instigated threads? Would there be an understanding that guild members primarily only trade with other guild members?

It's certainly an interesting idea, but it feels like you'd basically need to heavily rely on an honor system and the integrity of each member to not use the group to profiteer.

You’re absolutely right that this is a possibility. It’s one of the risks early members would have to take.

However, the idea is that if there are enough members following the guidelines and charging fair prices, there will be less people willing to pay higher prices. Thus, somebody trying to profit that way would eventually run out of customers because the Guild’s offers would be better.

 

[Khaelis]

So far I've been forcing people who are trading with me to strictly purchase what I'm selling for IGB. It's been going well so far. Whether these Bells are legitimate or not is another question, but whatever.

Personally, I think the 'current' price of NMT should be about half of what they are currently worth; so about 100-125k and I've been trying to price my items I sell with this pricing. With that in mind, if an item was to sell for 2 NMT, it would be worth around 200-250k.

Admittedly, I've taken offers that were really high in a few cases. But in the end, the NMT trading just needs to be toned down HEAVILY. The community has become too reliant on them. IGB is almost invisible to most people at this rate.

 

[John Wick]

I wouldn't ever charge anyone absurd prices for anything.

In fact, I don't think I've ever accepted any payment of any kind.
I used to give things away.

I won't be going by any pricing guides.
I would be fair and honest and expect the same.

If I want something, I'll ask for it, and hopefully some like-minded people out there will offer up the item(s) for a decent price.

 

[Khaelis]

As for gauging prices, one suggestion I have is something a lot of MMORPGs do, which is "price checking/status" threads.

What they basically do is when they sell a highly desired item, or a high-value item, they comment on what the item is sold for and either the average of the reported prices for the day is listed, or the highest value is listed and it changes day by day, or by week.

So let's say six people report prices on large star fragments with the following prices:

- 100,000; 105,000, 105,000; 110,000; 150,000; 95,000.

The average would be 110,000 and the highest would be 150,000.

 

[Raz]

As for gauging prices, one suggestion I have is something a lot of MMORPGs do, which is "price checking/status" threads.

What they basically do is when they sell a highly desired item, or a high-value item, they comment on what the item is sold for and either the average of the reported prices for the day is listed, or the highest value is listed and it changes day by day, or by week.

So let's say six people report prices on large star fragments with the following prices:

- 100,000; 105,000, 105,000; 110,000; 150,000; 95,000.

The average would be 110,000 and the highest would be 150,000.

I don't know if it would work very well because some people could still inflate the prices by saying they sold item X for Y amount of bells, when Y has a higher value than the real amount of money the item was sold for. Also, there's people who make a lot of trades daily, and most peoe wouldn't bother to track all the values of individual items they've traded. The amount of people trading daily would also make tracking these prices a lot harder than it's feasible.

 

[Fey]

This is true, unfortunately.

But there's a solution. As @Fey said, it's only going to work if people are legitimately interested in building a healthy community. One possibility would be to use an external method to gather the members of the guild, like a discord server. One would only be able to enter the server when invited by one of the members of the guild, and the person who invites a new member should be responsible for that new member - should the newcomer act in bad faith, he's banned from the server and the person who invited him/her gets suspended for some time.

This would work because it's based on trust and there would be consequences for a screwing it up. Users with bad reputations and/or people who already tried to take advantage of the system should be blacklisted. Nobody would want to invite someone who would screw up the guild members because they would get penalized too.

While it might solve some potential issues and provide security within the Guild, I think a restrictive approach like this would bring its own problems (and might go against forum rules)

People can individually keep their eye on suspicious activity and base their decisions on that when making trades, but blacklisting gets into problematic territory imo

If anything, we could promote those who have proven themselves by listing them as reliable Guild members.

 

[Khaelis]

I don't know if it would work very well because some people could still inflate the prices by saying they sold item X for Y amount of bells, when Y has a higher value than the real amount of money the item was sold for. Also, there's people who make a lot of trades daily, and most peoe wouldn't bother to track all the values of individual items they've traded. The amount of people trading daily would also make tracking these prices a lot harder than it's feasible.

Yeah, this is true. Many MMORPGs try to prevent this, with some success. Luckily the Switch literally has a screen capture built into it, but sadly it can still be 'faked' to inflate prices artificially. These methods take time and effort to make work effectively.

 

[Raz]

While it might solve some potential issues and provide security within the Guild, I think a restrictive approach like this would bring its own problems (and might go against forum rules)

People can individually keep their eye on suspicious activity and base their decisions on that when making trades, but blacklisting gets into problematic territory imo

If anything, we could promote those who have proven themselves by listing them as reliable Guild members.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't TBT has a reputation system? Like, when you trade with someone, you give positive feedback if all goes well? It could be used as a way to protect the guild without resorting to external tools or platforms, and would also not restrict anyone.

We could have a sticky thread that would track trade activity between members of the guild, and a list of members on the first post (or possibly the first two posts, given the number of people on this site), and that list would contain the user's name and reputation/feedback.

Negative feedback would then be helpful, as we would let everyone know who they're dealing with, as members' reputations would be available to anyone to check before trading.

 

[CJ8080]

I would so be in if the guild has a really sick name haha and ill help with the first step

 

[Fey]

As far as pricing goes, I think that deciding on an upper limit per item/service for both Bells and tickets is more important than figuring out the exact conversion rate between them.

Some people have an easier time earning miles and others money, so it’s hard to set a fixed comparison for their value.

 

[Khaelis]

I'm starting to wonder if something like this is even allowed, lol. Feels like kinda thin ice??? e-e

 

[Raz]

As far as pricing goes, I think that deciding on an upper limit per item/service for both Bells and tickets is more important than figuring out the exact conversion rate between them.

Some people have an easier time earning miles and others money, so it’s hard to set a fixed comparison for their value.

Yeah, I agree. There's a thread by another user who sells Bait, and i think he decided on a price after considering how the market was paying for bait (as he found out that he was undercharging for his services). I think a lot of people will probably stick to some activity they find it either more fun, lucrative or that they can do with relative ease, so there's a possibility that specialized sellers will be a thing, which would make it easier to gauge the prices.

 

[John Wick]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't TBT has a reputation system? Like, when you trade with someone, you give positive feedback if all goes well? It could be used as a way to protect the guild without resorting to external tools or platforms, and would also not restrict anyone.

We could have a sticky thread that would track trade activity between members of the guild, and a list of members on the first post (or possibly the first two posts, given the number of people on this site), and that list would contain the user's name and reputation/feedback.

Negative feedback would then be helpful, as we would let everyone know who they're dealing with, as members' reputations would be available to anyone to check before trading.

That system doesn't make it fact though.

Some people are just nasty, unfortunately.

 

[mattu]

I think its a great idea and despite the issues raised over time with some experimentation could work.

I wonder if a way to create "price bands" would be to take the price nooks cranny buys an item for and then multiple that by a percentage and set a band around that.

Rather than trying to have dynamic process based off daily trades.

Then rather than as a rule a microsite/doc could act as a guide for players as to what they should be paying.

Edit -

Another thought is you could setup a discord server just for trading...have mods there and use that as a way to award titles / kick people not following the rules. Upon signing up you could agree to the guild memorandum and be giving a provisional title.

I know a lot of the discord servers have trading channels but this way specific channels could exsist for say turnips crafting / specific player shops etc.

 

[Raz]

That system doesn't make it fact though.

Some people are just nasty, unfortunately.

Yeah, there will always have someone who will act in bad faith, unfortunately.

The reason I proposed this was because there's another forum where I post (it's a general gaming forum) where we do have a section that works as a marketplace, where people sell their games, consoles, TV's, etc, and to help people to avoid headaches while dealing with other members, a reputation thread was created. Those involved on a trade will post the outcome of the trade after it's conclusion, and people who try to scam others are added to a public list where everyone can see their names and avoid trading with them.

 

[Fey]

I'm starting to wonder if something like this is even allowed, lol. Feels like kinda thin ice??? e-e

If staff disapproves, I’m sure we’ll hear about it before anything even has a chance to take off.

As it is now, I don’t think the proposal itself goes against any rules, but I do agree that we need to be careful not to step into iffy territory. Talk of blacklisting is one of those things, and not something I’d want the Guild associated with.