Hygelac
Body Count Inc. Mercenary Coalition
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Posted - 2006.08.23 15:04:00 -
[2]
When I got my packs I was a little disappointed to find that I had a large amount of some ships and none of any others. So I've been putting some serious thought into the trading of cards and how to go about it.
There doesn't seem to be any word on this on the forums yet, but IÆve seen some different takes on the issue. The purpose of this post is to get some discussion about different ways to trade cards electronically and consider the pros and cons of each.
Note the 'electronic' part of this equation, I have no problem swapping cards with a mate in RL because quite frankly, he's sitting in front of you and you can see the goods. If he refuses to hand over the card whilst keeping yours, you just reach for the nearest blunt instrument and ensure he appreciates the depth of his mistake.
I see two component problems in electronic trading:
1. Payment 2. Trust
Payment ISK So far on these forums I've seen people offering ISK for cards. Personally I disagree with that for the following reasons:
1. Not all CCG players will end up playing Eve. This restricts the trading base to only people who play both the CCG and Eve, effectively penalising people who only play the CCG.
2. Swapping ISK for cards is almost as big a Can-O-Worms as time cards. For example IÆm one of those people who is always poor in game but I have a good job. This means I could use my RL cash to generate Eve ISK, something which IÆm firmly against.
RL Cash This is the first proper CCG I've played, but I've heard tell of the 'Magic the Gathering' 'Black Lotus' card, which apparently sold for hundreds of pounds on Ebay. Quite frankly, though Eve has been dead against all forms of Ebaying. I believe that the CCG should be considered as a separately and because you pay RL cash for RL development of cards (Booster packs), RL cash should be allowed for trading.
Because of this, I believe we might see businesses setup to sell rare cards, maybe an Ebay shop where you can order certain rare cards. After all if it only costs 50 pounds for a back of boosters and say you get 2-3 battleships and 2-3 rare foils. Then you'd only need to sell each one for 10 pounds to make a profit. Not sure if I'd spend 10 pounds for a rare card, but I'm not in that position yet!!
On top of this, I don't see how anyone could stop this happening.
Barter This will probably be the more common one, swapping cards with friends or trading duplicate rare cards for other people's duplicates or 'swapsies'. I'm not entirely sure of the logistics of bartering cards electronically though. After all there are issues of trust and delivery here that go beyond the normal problems of sending off cash for something which never arrives in that itÆs a two-way operation.
For example, you wouldn't be able to use the eBay site to facilitate a trade of cards. How is this handled in other CCG realms?
Trust So we've established that we can pay for cards without much effort, this brings us to the issue of trust. As a society we've been developing the mechanisms to trade Money for Goods electronically for the past decade. This has left us with house-hold names such as eBay who have their own mechanisms for ensuring trust via Paypal etc and ways of dealing with breach of trust.
This means that trust can only really be a big issue with ISK and Barter sales.
I wish I had an answer for how to do this properly. Obviously some kind of reputation system would help for people to identify scammers and fraudsters. But should this be CCP managed? Could CCP hold the cards in escrow for people to barter? Would it be profitable in the business sense?
/Cont ... ---
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