The wrong value bug caused me to ship a 300 pp package that I was only able to get up to about 400 by digging around (I normally keep it above 500pp to minimize postage) so I always check for that now.
I actually had a similar thought about prizes. I'm not sure how much it would impact traffic, but anything that keeps the spice flowing is a step in the right direction. Lack of sends is a vicious cycle.
I was sitting on about 26k points and had gone for over a month without receiving a card. With all the talk, I was looking to panic dump my points, because I don't want to be the one holding the bag when it ends up going belly up. I upped my bounties to 20% and still nothing for about a week. Then, out of nowhere BLAM! My points get drained for all kinds of stuff. Cards I need for standard decks, a couple legacy staples (albeit from Conspiracy) and even some cards for Modern Kiki-chord.
I think I'm the one receiving the package that World Peace is talking about, lol.
I'm going to hold off on Puca Trade for a while to see if they can fix their problems. I think their biggest problem though is the one that they're not even working on, which is the declining value of the puca point. The pucashield insurance is not the way to address the issue, especially when they're screwing people that use it. I renewed my silver membership just for this month so that I can easily send off my tons of points that I will owe in bounties, but after that, they lose my money again.
The BIG issue here, and I know this because I have emailing bugs back n' forth w/ the team at Puca Trade, is exactly that, BUGS. They have thrown themselves into the PT dark ages (so to speak). I see a number of issues daily, i.e. - when trading packages, the amount shown in the upper left of the package differs from the actual amount of the package (call it unintentional false advertising). Also, the mobile version crashes, buttons don't work, and text becomes overlapped.
I'm not convinced, Pucatrade was slow even before the FS update in that people were barely sending.
FS certainly didn't help out the situation but its not like it was the turning point either.
I think the hope was that Future Site would stop or reverse the ongoing decline, by adding non-NM-condition, MTGO, and foreign language trading, bundle trading, and adding point sinks like profile page customization.
And we may never know if those alone would have turned things around, because we never got those alone - we got those at the same time as all the negative that came with the new interface (both in reduced customer appeal and outright malfunction). And in the presence of the bounty problem not being addressed, so nonpremium users were effectively out of the ecosystem because nobody would send to them when there was always a more profitable alternative from a bounty-offering premium member. The ecosystem needs participating nonpremium members to have all members sending and receiving to keep cards flowing. But tolerating bounties stopped nonpremium members' ability to receive (and them adding priority visibility options for premium members just made it worse) so they gave up sending.
More effective point sinks would solve the bounty problem because points would be a scarce resource again. You would occasionally see a 5% and rarely a 10% bounty in the site's heyday, but as the supply of points rose and their secondary market price dropped the bounties got bigger and more common.
Here's another idea for a point sink: lotteries. PT scrounges up some desirable cards, puts them in a pot, and users burn points on entries. Alternatively users make them and some percentage of the pp spent on entries gets incinerated with the rest going to the user once the winner(s) get their cards.
@Rondiggity
I think you're right. I use the same name on both sites and I recently sent a package to Idaho.
I've been sitting on just over 20K for almost 3 weeks. I'm losing faith that I can lose these points but if I do I am getting out because even if Pucatrade isn't completely dead it is so painfully slow to deliver that it has lost its utility for me. I'd rather buy singles than pray for rain in California.
I mean the evidence for Puca still going strong is a few select power senders that are very visible? That's not compelling.
I've looked to reddit and Puca's discord chat function to try and generate a few trades with generous bounties and a little self-promotion and its just been a lot of work for absolutely nothing. Well nothing except people actually asking me if when I say 10,500 for Force of Will (currently at approximately 9,400) I mean 10,500 in addition to its price. This is a real question? Hilariously enough a couple of the so called power-senders had the stones to try to scold me for questioning how someone could seriously ask this....God forbid I rely on people to have common sense.
So you're chasing staples like Force of Will only, I suppose?
Puca has always been about patience with staples like that. If you're expecting a FoW to drop in your lap within a fortnight, it will seem painfully slow. Always has. If Puca removes bounties (which I believe they should anyway), this will be even more the case.
My profile is linked in my signature so you can easily verify all the things I'm looking for.
Yes, I have Rishadan Port and Force of Will on there but I also have a lot of easier finds. Meloku, the Clouded Mirror (Foil), Spear of Heliod (Foil), Primal Command (Duel Deck), and several easily obtained cards from Kaladesh.
Also, I don't think bounties should be banned. They should be co-opted. They can be an amazing point sink for Pucatrade.
Wow... yeah, thought you'd at least get a sniff on the Kaladesh stuff you've got in there (like the Scrapheap Scrounger and the Skysovereign)...
Good point on making the bounties an official point sink (rather than a covert one). Though I suspect they probably need to put some limit on it (lest we start seeing "double or nothing" bounties and things like that, with the way it's headed).
My profile is linked in my signature so you can easily verify all the things I'm looking for.
Yes, I have Rishadan Port and Force of Will on there but I also have a lot of easier finds. Meloku, the Clouded Mirror (Foil), Spear of Heliod (Foil), Primal Command (Duel Deck), and several easily obtained cards from Kaladesh.
Also, I don't think bounties should be banned. They should be co-opted. They can be an amazing point sink for Pucatrade.
Wow... yeah, thought you'd at least get a sniff on the Kaladesh stuff you've got in there (like the Scrapheap Scrounger and the Skysovereign)...
Good point on making the bounties an official point sink (rather than a covert one). Though I suspect they probably need to put some limit on it (lest we start seeing "double or nothing" bounties and things like that, with the way it's headed).
Maybe they could allow Silver members to offer 5% and Gold members to offer 10%? Then puca takes 1% of the bounties from Silver and 2% of the bounties from gold? There should be an incentive to buy their premium memberships, so this could help.
My profile is linked in my signature so you can easily verify all the things I'm looking for.
Yes, I have Rishadan Port and Force of Will on there but I also have a lot of easier finds. Meloku, the Clouded Mirror (Foil), Spear of Heliod (Foil), Primal Command (Duel Deck), and several easily obtained cards from Kaladesh.
Also, I don't think bounties should be banned. They should be co-opted. They can be an amazing point sink for Pucatrade.
Wow... yeah, thought you'd at least get a sniff on the Kaladesh stuff you've got in there (like the Scrapheap Scrounger and the Skysovereign)...
Good point on making the bounties an official point sink (rather than a covert one). Though I suspect they probably need to put some limit on it (lest we start seeing "double or nothing" bounties and things like that, with the way it's headed).
Maybe they could allow Silver members to offer 5% and Gold members to offer 10%? Then puca takes 1% of the bounties from Silver and 2% of the bounties from gold? There should be an incentive to buy their premium memberships, so this could help.
Officially cutting the nonpremium members out of the ecosystem is even worse than their present unofficial cutting them out.
For the economy to work, they can't stifle the ability of nonpremium members to participate. Even if it serves their bank accounts well in the short term to convince more people to pay for premium memberships, the end result of wiping out the nonpremium members is what we're seeing now - not enough cards are moving because the nonpremium members have been shut out. Bounties make it such that the nonpremium people aren't receiving cards, so they've given up sending because they're beginning to realize that it only results in them getting points they can never spend.
Cards aren't moving. The site dies if that doesn't turn around. And that doesn't turn around by making changes that formally support the very problem that has gotten them to this place.
And on Kaldesh not moving - um, it hasn't even released yet. Unless your seeks are prerelease promos, the available cardpool just isn't there yet. Many players have opened none at all and many have opened just six boosters, maybe a couple prize packs. People who usually buy a box+ at expansions and have plenty of product they could move... haven't yet.
My profile is linked in my signature so you can easily verify all the things I'm looking for.
Yes, I have Rishadan Port and Force of Will on there but I also have a lot of easier finds. Meloku, the Clouded Mirror (Foil), Spear of Heliod (Foil), Primal Command (Duel Deck), and several easily obtained cards from Kaladesh.
Also, I don't think bounties should be banned. They should be co-opted. They can be an amazing point sink for Pucatrade.
Wow... yeah, thought you'd at least get a sniff on the Kaladesh stuff you've got in there (like the Scrapheap Scrounger and the Skysovereign)...
Good point on making the bounties an official point sink (rather than a covert one). Though I suspect they probably need to put some limit on it (lest we start seeing "double or nothing" bounties and things like that, with the way it's headed).
Maybe they could allow Silver members to offer 5% and Gold members to offer 10%? Then puca takes 1% of the bounties from Silver and 2% of the bounties from gold? There should be an incentive to buy their premium memberships, so this could help.
Officially cutting the nonpremium members out of the ecosystem is even worse than their present unofficial cutting them out.
For the economy to work, they can't stifle the ability of nonpremium members to participate. Even if it serves their bank accounts well in the short term to convince more people to pay for premium memberships, the end result of wiping out the nonpremium members is what we're seeing now - not enough cards are moving because the nonpremium members have been shut out. Bounties make it such that the nonpremium people aren't receiving cards, so they've given up sending because they're beginning to realize that it only results in them getting points they can never spend.
Cards aren't moving. The site dies if that doesn't turn around. And that doesn't turn around by making changes that formally support the very problem that has gotten them to this place.
And on Kaldesh not moving - um, it hasn't even released yet. Unless your seeks are prerelease promos, the available cardpool just isn't there yet. Many players have opened none at all and many have opened just six boosters, maybe a couple prize packs. People who usually buy a box+ at expansions and have plenty of product they could move... haven't yet.
Setting a fixed limit on the bounties would be far better on the non-paying members than the current system.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
I think a very large part of what hurt people's confidence in the site was the decision to hammer point sellers. Now that I can't sell my points, is there really any tangible value in a stockpile of points? If there isn't, then why would I send out a bunch of highly sought after cards? I used to get on eBay, find deals on cards that were selling for less than their value in pucapoints (adjusting for the current value of the pucapoint), buy them and immediately ship them so that I could profit on the points that I acquired. People like me were a large part of the reason that good cards used to flow on puca. Now I have ZERO reason to pick up dual lands and other highly desirable legacy staples to ship on puca. I skyped with Eric Freytag and Vinny Ballisteri and personally told them this before the decision to hammer the point sellers. Eric personally said to me that point sellers never bothered him because he understood that it doesn't detract from his site selling points. He told me that he understands that the sale only ever took place to begin with because of the reduced rate that people can purchase them for from private sellers. Then they made that decision.
I also suggested that they should sanction the selling of points and potentially take a piece of them for facilitating the transactions. They could take, say, 2% of each transaction to ensure that point sellers aren't cutting into their profits. That way, there could be recourse to prevent people from getting screwed over (although I've NEVER heard of people having a problem with buying/selling points). I also suggested that point selling could be a feature only offered to Rare members, since I never really saw the incentive of getting rare membership over silver.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
But the ability to send points and use bounties is a feature exclusive to the premium membership. So the currency may be devalued to the point of requiring more of it to achieve trades between the premium members - but it's devalued to the point of being absolutely worthless to the nonpremium members (they can't get cards sent to them at all anymore, in a market where for every card that a nonpremium member wants, there exists a premium member who is willing to pay bounty for it). And without the nonpremium members moving cards, things get worse for the currency, because the volume of trading required to sustain the economy is greatly diminished.
Bounties (those 5% bonuses people were offering occasionally a year or two ago) didn't start because people lost faith in the value of the pucapoint, so much as they started because people wanted to jump the queue - they didn't want to have an equal chance waiting along with 200 other people hoping they'd be chosen when someone has their card to send, they wanted to give people reason to prefer them over the 199 others, and were willing to take an incremental hit and pay a premium to be the preferred receiver. It was only once that caught on (and was not nipped in the bud as the cancerous problem it was) that more and more premium members started using it and one-upping one another (because they had to to not fall behind and become ignored themselves), and the nonpremiums were left with unredeemable points. And THAT'S when and why the economy went in the crapper - because the movable card supply dried up once the nonpremiums were out of the running.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
But the ability to send points and use bounties is a feature exclusive to the premium membership. So the currency may be devalued to the point of requiring more of it to achieve trades between the premium members - but it's devalued to the point of being absolutely worthless to the nonpremium members (they can't get cards sent to them at all anymore, in a market where for every card that a nonpremium member wants, there exists a premium member who is willing to pay bounty for it). And without the nonpremium members moving cards, things get worse for the currency, because the volume of trading required to sustain the economy is greatly diminished.
Bounties (those 5% bonuses people were offering occasionally a year or two ago) didn't start because people lost faith in the value of the pucapoint, so much as they started because people wanted to jump the queue - they didn't want to have an equal chance waiting along with 200 other people hoping they'd be chosen when someone has their card to send, they wanted to give people reason to prefer them over the 199 others, and were willing to take an incremental hit and pay a premium to be the preferred receiver. It was only once that caught on (and was not nipped in the bud as the cancerous problem it was) that more and more premium members started using it and one-upping one another (because they had to to not fall behind and become ignored themselves), and the nonpremiums were left with unredeemable points. And THAT'S when and why the economy went in the crapper - because the movable card supply dried up once the nonpremiums were out of the running.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
Who says non-premium members can't give bounties? When I let my membership lapse a few months ago before reupping it this month, I still gave out bounties as a non-premium member. It's just more difficult and cumbersome. You just identify a card with the value that is the same as the bounty that you would give and have the sender "send" that card to you. There are other ways as well, such as accepting cards of a lesser condition for NM value. So I see paying for the membership as paying for the convenience to be able to do your bounties much easier, but in no way does being a basic member exclude you from the bounty system.
When it's so inconvenient that it requires a lot of coordination and a pinch of fraud to make work, it's not viable for enough people to keep the economy afloat, even if some intrepid users are willing to put in the effort it's not enough to stop the site's bleeding for most of the nonpremiums.
Most nonpremium members would just as soon fluff up their list and just hope they can pass the bottle imp to the next sucker, than change their profile name to something that would convey the exact nature of the fraud they intend to organize and hope the site management doesn't notice and cancel their account.
The good side of less people sending is now I can mark bigger packages to send. Just like the early years when pucatrade just started.
I realise I could potentially get burnt if no one sends me stuff on my want list but those cards were eating dust anyway.
Bounties make it such that the nonpremium people aren't receiving cards, so they've given up sending because they're beginning to realize that it only results in them getting points they can never spend.
Cards aren't moving. The site dies if that doesn't turn around. And that doesn't turn around by making changes that formally support the very problem that has gotten them to this place.
I am a common member, and this is not true for me ATM. I've had ~7Kpts worth of cards committed to be sent to me this week, without bounties needed. Don't ask me what the secret is... I dunno either.
So I see cards moving, and I am a common member not needing bounties to receive (for the record).
And on Kaldesh not moving - um, it hasn't even released yet. Unless your seeks are prerelease promos, the available cardpool just isn't there yet. Many players have opened none at all and many have opened just six boosters, maybe a couple prize packs. People who usually buy a box+ at expansions and have plenty of product they could move... haven't yet.
True dat. The 7K of cards I'm receiving contains two KLD cards, and given that's a Panharmonicon and a Cultivator's Caravan, it's pretty much in the "stuff I pulled at pre-release that I didn't want to keep" category. I doubt there are many Gearhulks moving yet. Let's see what happens after this weekend.
I think a very large part of what hurt people's confidence in the site was the decision to hammer point sellers. Now that I can't sell my points, is there really any tangible value in a stockpile of points?
As a paper-only player, I have no concept of the MTGO bots and what you can do with them... but is it possible to sink your points into MTGO Tix with the new site? That's at least a somewhat reliable means of sinking your points it it's possible.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
Have to agree with that. If you leave bounties unmanaged, they'll just keep climbing and climbing - demand for the hard-to-get stuff begets inflation begets ever-increasing bounties. That's what they need to reign in.
The good side of less people sending is now I can mark bigger packages to send. Just like the early years when pucatrade just started.
I realise I could potentially get burnt if no one sends me stuff on my want list but those cards were eating dust anyway.
Exactly this for me ATM. It's good fun to receive monster packages too, let me tell you!
MTGO tix are literally impossible to get without bounties. It's apparently common to get +50-100% on them. I'm common and I haven't gotten a single one yet.
So... as new problems on Future Site are fixed, new ones come up. Can't figure out what caused this strange cascading packages error. It's almost comical... until I realize it could be just one of the culprits slowing down the trades.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
But the ability to send points and use bounties is a feature exclusive to the premium membership. So the currency may be devalued to the point of requiring more of it to achieve trades between the premium members - but it's devalued to the point of being absolutely worthless to the nonpremium members (they can't get cards sent to them at all anymore, in a market where for every card that a nonpremium member wants, there exists a premium member who is willing to pay bounty for it). And without the nonpremium members moving cards, things get worse for the currency, because the volume of trading required to sustain the economy is greatly diminished.
Bounties (those 5% bonuses people were offering occasionally a year or two ago) didn't start because people lost faith in the value of the pucapoint, so much as they started because people wanted to jump the queue - they didn't want to have an equal chance waiting along with 200 other people hoping they'd be chosen when someone has their card to send, they wanted to give people reason to prefer them over the 199 others, and were willing to take an incremental hit and pay a premium to be the preferred receiver. It was only once that caught on (and was not nipped in the bud as the cancerous problem it was) that more and more premium members started using it and one-upping one another (because they had to to not fall behind and become ignored themselves), and the nonpremiums were left with unredeemable points. And THAT'S when and why the economy went in the crapper - because the movable card supply dried up once the nonpremiums were out of the running.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
You're basically describing free-market trade. Completely eliminate whatever Dr. Seuss algorithm they use or use it as a "suggested" point value, and allow ALL users the ability to set prices. Eventually it would become a free market where card values are dependent on buyer/sellers; they'd have to stop selling points for real currency, but god forbid they earn less revenue rather than being forced to shut down.
You're basically describing free-market trade. Completely eliminate whatever Dr. Seuss algorithm they use or use it as a "suggested" point value, and allow ALL users the ability to set prices. Eventually it would become a free market where card values are dependent on buyer/sellers; they'd have to stop selling points for real currency, but god forbid they earn less revenue rather than being forced to shut down.
That pretty much defeats the point of PucaTrade completely. Now you would have just another trade site where everyone else's cards are worth more than yours, and everyone is a 'dealer'...exactly what PucaTrade aimed to do away with. You were not supposed to have to haggle over card values.
Of course, bounties already go against that premise anyways, so yeah...
What they need to do is get rid of bounties altogether. Members should not have the ability to send points. That was really only an option to deal with lesser condition cards before they were supported to my knowledge, and should no longer be needed.
To address the value of the PucaPoint in the long run what they really need to do is tightly control the creation of new points. Just like how the U.S. Mint can't just print money on demand, PucaTrade should not just allow new points to flood the system...we've already seen how that has devalued the PucaPoint currently. Obviously, they would need to introduce some new points occasionally, but they should do away with allowing the purchase of point for money and eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the point bonus for signing up. Advertising could help pay for the developer's time and server hosting and would take the place of revenue from the sale of points. Premium member benefits could include being ad free to encourage sign up.
I'm not done with PucaTrade yet, since I believe that it is still can be saved. For now, I am going to just keep my points under 3,000 or so and hope they figure it out.
*EDITED for length - Sorry World_Peace, I typed this one on my mobile and didn't really realize how long it would be.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
But the ability to send points and use bounties is a feature exclusive to the premium membership. So the currency may be devalued to the point of requiring more of it to achieve trades between the premium members - but it's devalued to the point of being absolutely worthless to the nonpremium members (they can't get cards sent to them at all anymore, in a market where for every card that a nonpremium member wants, there exists a premium member who is willing to pay bounty for it). And without the nonpremium members moving cards, things get worse for the currency, because the volume of trading required to sustain the economy is greatly diminished.
Bounties (those 5% bonuses people were offering occasionally a year or two ago) didn't start because people lost faith in the value of the pucapoint, so much as they started because people wanted to jump the queue - they didn't want to have an equal chance waiting along with 200 other people hoping they'd be chosen when someone has their card to send, they wanted to give people reason to prefer them over the 199 others, and were willing to take an incremental hit and pay a premium to be the preferred receiver. It was only once that caught on (and was not nipped in the bud as the cancerous problem it was) that more and more premium members started using it and one-upping one another (because they had to to not fall behind and become ignored themselves), and the nonpremiums were left with unredeemable points. And THAT'S when and why the economy went in the crapper - because the movable card supply dried up once the nonpremiums were out of the running.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
You're basically describing free-market trade. Completely eliminate whatever Dr. Seuss algorithm they use or use it as a "suggested" point value, and allow ALL users the ability to set prices. Eventually it would become a free market where card values are dependent on buyer/sellers; they'd have to stop selling points for real currency, but god forbid they earn less revenue rather than being forced to shut down.
That pretty much defeats the point of PucaTrade completely. Now you would have just another trade site where everyone else's cards are worth more than yours, and everyone is a 'dealer'...exactly what PucaTrade aimed to do away with. You were not supposed to have to haggle over card values.
Of course, bounties already go against that premise anyways, so yeah...
What they need to do is get rid of bounties altogether. Members should not have the ability to send points. That was really only an option to deal with lesser condition cards before they were supported to my knowledge, and should no longer be needed.
To address the value of the PucaPoint in the long run what they really need to do is tightly control the creation of new points. Just like how the U.S. Mint can't just print money on demand, PucaTrade should not just allow new points to flood the system...we've already seen how that has devalued the PucaPoint currently. Obviously, they would need to introduce some new points occasionally, but they should do away with allowing the purchase of point for money and eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the point bonus for signing up. Advertising could help pay for the developer's time and server hosting and would take the place of revenue from the sale of points. Premium member benefits could include being ad free to encourage sign up.
I'm not done with PucaTrade yet, since I believe that it is still can be saved. For now, I am going to just keep my points under 3,000 or so and hope they figure it out.
What's wrong with that? That's how free-market competition works. Dealers want solid profit margins, so say Timmy undercuts said dealer and the dealer doesn't get the sale/trade. I couldn't imagine it being a wild west free-for-all with no set standards, but pricing guidelines and the ability to change that price by +/-X% would encourage competitive pricing IMO.
I doubt there are many Gearhulks moving yet. Let's see what happens after this weekend.
I wanted to send out my 2x green gearhulks the other day (my loot from the prerelease), but yes no one had them up yet. Then out of no where I finally got a bite from japan. Hope that gets the ball rolling
What's wrong with that? That's how free-market competition works. Dealers want solid profit margins, so say Timmy undercuts said dealer and the dealer doesn't get the sale/trade. I couldn't imagine it being a wild west free-for-all with no set standards, but pricing guidelines and the ability to change that price by +/-X% would encourage competitive pricing IMO.
Nothing is wrong with that at all. Free market competition is not a bad thing. I just think it is worth noting though that what made PucaTrade desirable to begin with is that it dealt away with all the haggling over card values.
I know that's why I initially joined PucaTrade - too many articles out there proclaiming about how much money you can make through MtG trading was producing a group of traders who were increasingly lowballing on offers, nickle and diming, and generally acting like they were doing me a favor trading for my cards. It kind of drove me off online trading at other sites. Yeah, there are some great traders out there, and I had some good experiences, but it also seemed like the good ones were increasingly being outnumbered by the bad.
I think that PucaTrade might be a bit better with a free-market operation like you suggest since their auto matching feature would help eliminate lowball offers (since you can see who is giving the best price), but I still think it would lose a lot of the appeal if it became just another trading site.
I doubt there are many Gearhulks moving yet. Let's see what happens after this weekend.
I wanted to send out my 2x green gearhulks the other day (my loot from the prerelease), but yes no one had them up yet. Then out of no where I finally got a bite from japan. Hope that gets the ball rolling
I am guessing that there are more issues than we think, tip of the iceberg. I have 3 on my list, been there since the day before the prerelease. Now a bit ticked... I would have taken mthem off of you. Might be 1 of the reasons my wants from Kaladesh aren't being grabbed... cards on package lists aren't fully visible.
Did anyone see the release notes article from yesterday where they said that they're creating a "sweepstakes" that is intended to serve as a permanent point sink? Wasn't that just mentioned in this thread a few days ago? LOL!
I actually had a similar thought about prizes. I'm not sure how much it would impact traffic, but anything that keeps the spice flowing is a step in the right direction. Lack of sends is a vicious cycle.
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
I think I'm the one receiving the package that World Peace is talking about, lol.
I'm going to hold off on Puca Trade for a while to see if they can fix their problems. I think their biggest problem though is the one that they're not even working on, which is the declining value of the puca point. The pucashield insurance is not the way to address the issue, especially when they're screwing people that use it. I renewed my silver membership just for this month so that I can easily send off my tons of points that I will owe in bounties, but after that, they lose my money again.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
I'm not convinced, Pucatrade was slow even before the FS update in that people were barely sending.
FS certainly didn't help out the situation but its not like it was the turning point either.
And we may never know if those alone would have turned things around, because we never got those alone - we got those at the same time as all the negative that came with the new interface (both in reduced customer appeal and outright malfunction). And in the presence of the bounty problem not being addressed, so nonpremium users were effectively out of the ecosystem because nobody would send to them when there was always a more profitable alternative from a bounty-offering premium member. The ecosystem needs participating nonpremium members to have all members sending and receiving to keep cards flowing. But tolerating bounties stopped nonpremium members' ability to receive (and them adding priority visibility options for premium members just made it worse) so they gave up sending.
It's like they shorted their own economy.
Here's another idea for a point sink: lotteries. PT scrounges up some desirable cards, puts them in a pot, and users burn points on entries. Alternatively users make them and some percentage of the pp spent on entries gets incinerated with the rest going to the user once the winner(s) get their cards.
@Rondiggity
I think you're right. I use the same name on both sites and I recently sent a package to Idaho.
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
So you're chasing staples like Force of Will only, I suppose?
Puca has always been about patience with staples like that. If you're expecting a FoW to drop in your lap within a fortnight, it will seem painfully slow. Always has. If Puca removes bounties (which I believe they should anyway), this will be even more the case.
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Wow... yeah, thought you'd at least get a sniff on the Kaladesh stuff you've got in there (like the Scrapheap Scrounger and the Skysovereign)...
Good point on making the bounties an official point sink (rather than a covert one). Though I suspect they probably need to put some limit on it (lest we start seeing "double or nothing" bounties and things like that, with the way it's headed).
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Maybe they could allow Silver members to offer 5% and Gold members to offer 10%? Then puca takes 1% of the bounties from Silver and 2% of the bounties from gold? There should be an incentive to buy their premium memberships, so this could help.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
Officially cutting the nonpremium members out of the ecosystem is even worse than their present unofficial cutting them out.
For the economy to work, they can't stifle the ability of nonpremium members to participate. Even if it serves their bank accounts well in the short term to convince more people to pay for premium memberships, the end result of wiping out the nonpremium members is what we're seeing now - not enough cards are moving because the nonpremium members have been shut out. Bounties make it such that the nonpremium people aren't receiving cards, so they've given up sending because they're beginning to realize that it only results in them getting points they can never spend.
Cards aren't moving. The site dies if that doesn't turn around. And that doesn't turn around by making changes that formally support the very problem that has gotten them to this place.
And on Kaldesh not moving - um, it hasn't even released yet. Unless your seeks are prerelease promos, the available cardpool just isn't there yet. Many players have opened none at all and many have opened just six boosters, maybe a couple prize packs. People who usually buy a box+ at expansions and have plenty of product they could move... haven't yet.
Setting a fixed limit on the bounties would be far better on the non-paying members than the current system.
And bounties are NOT the problem that has led to people not sending cards. A loss of faith in the site largely in part due to the devaluation of the pucapoint is the problem. The bounties are a symptom of the problem. What happens when a currency is devalued? It requires more of that currency to attain the goods that you're looking for, therefore bounties.
I think a very large part of what hurt people's confidence in the site was the decision to hammer point sellers. Now that I can't sell my points, is there really any tangible value in a stockpile of points? If there isn't, then why would I send out a bunch of highly sought after cards? I used to get on eBay, find deals on cards that were selling for less than their value in pucapoints (adjusting for the current value of the pucapoint), buy them and immediately ship them so that I could profit on the points that I acquired. People like me were a large part of the reason that good cards used to flow on puca. Now I have ZERO reason to pick up dual lands and other highly desirable legacy staples to ship on puca. I skyped with Eric Freytag and Vinny Ballisteri and personally told them this before the decision to hammer the point sellers. Eric personally said to me that point sellers never bothered him because he understood that it doesn't detract from his site selling points. He told me that he understands that the sale only ever took place to begin with because of the reduced rate that people can purchase them for from private sellers. Then they made that decision.
I also suggested that they should sanction the selling of points and potentially take a piece of them for facilitating the transactions. They could take, say, 2% of each transaction to ensure that point sellers aren't cutting into their profits. That way, there could be recourse to prevent people from getting screwed over (although I've NEVER heard of people having a problem with buying/selling points). I also suggested that point selling could be a feature only offered to Rare members, since I never really saw the incentive of getting rare membership over silver.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
But the ability to send points and use bounties is a feature exclusive to the premium membership. So the currency may be devalued to the point of requiring more of it to achieve trades between the premium members - but it's devalued to the point of being absolutely worthless to the nonpremium members (they can't get cards sent to them at all anymore, in a market where for every card that a nonpremium member wants, there exists a premium member who is willing to pay bounty for it). And without the nonpremium members moving cards, things get worse for the currency, because the volume of trading required to sustain the economy is greatly diminished.
Bounties (those 5% bonuses people were offering occasionally a year or two ago) didn't start because people lost faith in the value of the pucapoint, so much as they started because people wanted to jump the queue - they didn't want to have an equal chance waiting along with 200 other people hoping they'd be chosen when someone has their card to send, they wanted to give people reason to prefer them over the 199 others, and were willing to take an incremental hit and pay a premium to be the preferred receiver. It was only once that caught on (and was not nipped in the bud as the cancerous problem it was) that more and more premium members started using it and one-upping one another (because they had to to not fall behind and become ignored themselves), and the nonpremiums were left with unredeemable points. And THAT'S when and why the economy went in the crapper - because the movable card supply dried up once the nonpremiums were out of the running.
Bounties aren't just a symptom of the failing pucapoint. They're the catalyst for it.
Who says non-premium members can't give bounties? When I let my membership lapse a few months ago before reupping it this month, I still gave out bounties as a non-premium member. It's just more difficult and cumbersome. You just identify a card with the value that is the same as the bounty that you would give and have the sender "send" that card to you. There are other ways as well, such as accepting cards of a lesser condition for NM value. So I see paying for the membership as paying for the convenience to be able to do your bounties much easier, but in no way does being a basic member exclude you from the bounty system.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.
Most nonpremium members would just as soon fluff up their list and just hope they can pass the bottle imp to the next sucker, than change their profile name to something that would convey the exact nature of the fraud they intend to organize and hope the site management doesn't notice and cancel their account.
I realise I could potentially get burnt if no one sends me stuff on my want list but those cards were eating dust anyway.
I am a common member, and this is not true for me ATM. I've had ~7Kpts worth of cards committed to be sent to me this week, without bounties needed. Don't ask me what the secret is... I dunno either.
So I see cards moving, and I am a common member not needing bounties to receive (for the record).
True dat. The 7K of cards I'm receiving contains two KLD cards, and given that's a Panharmonicon and a Cultivator's Caravan, it's pretty much in the "stuff I pulled at pre-release that I didn't want to keep" category. I doubt there are many Gearhulks moving yet. Let's see what happens after this weekend.
As a paper-only player, I have no concept of the MTGO bots and what you can do with them... but is it possible to sink your points into MTGO Tix with the new site? That's at least a somewhat reliable means of sinking your points it it's possible.
Have to agree with that. If you leave bounties unmanaged, they'll just keep climbing and climbing - demand for the hard-to-get stuff begets inflation begets ever-increasing bounties. That's what they need to reign in.
Exactly this for me ATM. It's good fun to receive monster packages too, let me tell you!
My Stupidly Large Number of Current Decks
PucaTrade with me!
The Multiplayer Power Rankings
Cube: the Gittening (My Multiplayer Cube) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
The N00b Cube (Peasant cube for new players) - MTGS Cube List | @ CubeTutor
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
You're basically describing free-market trade. Completely eliminate whatever Dr. Seuss algorithm they use or use it as a "suggested" point value, and allow ALL users the ability to set prices. Eventually it would become a free market where card values are dependent on buyer/sellers; they'd have to stop selling points for real currency, but god forbid they earn less revenue rather than being forced to shut down.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
That pretty much defeats the point of PucaTrade completely. Now you would have just another trade site where everyone else's cards are worth more than yours, and everyone is a 'dealer'...exactly what PucaTrade aimed to do away with. You were not supposed to have to haggle over card values.
Of course, bounties already go against that premise anyways, so yeah...
What they need to do is get rid of bounties altogether. Members should not have the ability to send points. That was really only an option to deal with lesser condition cards before they were supported to my knowledge, and should no longer be needed.
To address the value of the PucaPoint in the long run what they really need to do is tightly control the creation of new points. Just like how the U.S. Mint can't just print money on demand, PucaTrade should not just allow new points to flood the system...we've already seen how that has devalued the PucaPoint currently. Obviously, they would need to introduce some new points occasionally, but they should do away with allowing the purchase of point for money and eliminate (or at least drastically reduce) the point bonus for signing up. Advertising could help pay for the developer's time and server hosting and would take the place of revenue from the sale of points. Premium member benefits could include being ad free to encourage sign up.
I'm not done with PucaTrade yet, since I believe that it is still can be saved. For now, I am going to just keep my points under 3,000 or so and hope they figure it out.
*EDITED for length - Sorry World_Peace, I typed this one on my mobile and didn't really realize how long it would be.
What's wrong with that? That's how free-market competition works. Dealers want solid profit margins, so say Timmy undercuts said dealer and the dealer doesn't get the sale/trade. I couldn't imagine it being a wild west free-for-all with no set standards, but pricing guidelines and the ability to change that price by +/-X% would encourage competitive pricing IMO.
Link to Discord server where anybody from MTGS can keep up with thread topics while everything is being sorted out with the new site.
Pauper: Burn
Modern: Burn
Legacy: Burn
EDH: Marath, Will of the Wild - Ramp/Combo | Anafenza the Foremost - French | Uril, the Miststalker - Voltron | Freyalise, Llanowar's Fury - Goodstuff
Ghost Council of Orzhov - Tokens | Lazav, Dimir Mastermind - Control | Isamaru, Hound of Konda - Tiny Leaders
I wanted to send out my 2x green gearhulks the other day (my loot from the prerelease), but yes no one had them up yet. Then out of no where I finally got a bite from japan. Hope that gets the ball rolling
Nothing is wrong with that at all. Free market competition is not a bad thing. I just think it is worth noting though that what made PucaTrade desirable to begin with is that it dealt away with all the haggling over card values.
I know that's why I initially joined PucaTrade - too many articles out there proclaiming about how much money you can make through MtG trading was producing a group of traders who were increasingly lowballing on offers, nickle and diming, and generally acting like they were doing me a favor trading for my cards. It kind of drove me off online trading at other sites. Yeah, there are some great traders out there, and I had some good experiences, but it also seemed like the good ones were increasingly being outnumbered by the bad.
I think that PucaTrade might be a bit better with a free-market operation like you suggest since their auto matching feature would help eliminate lowball offers (since you can see who is giving the best price), but I still think it would lose a lot of the appeal if it became just another trading site.
I am guessing that there are more issues than we think, tip of the iceberg. I have 3 on my list, been there since the day before the prerelease. Now a bit ticked... I would have taken mthem off of you. Might be 1 of the reasons my wants from Kaladesh aren't being grabbed... cards on package lists aren't fully visible.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?p=11439737#post11439737
Reality is only what man allows it to be. Few shape it so that many may accept it.