Shopkeepers in BatMUD are deliberately made to treat high-end items with
disrespect. Yes, they buy them for laughably low amounts, and yes, they charge
ridiculously high amounts for them. If that wasn't intentional, it should have
been. High-valued items should be either traded to other players, donated to
Damoran, offered to racial shrine, sacced for spider demons, or otherwise used
by players.

Why is this? Shops, unlike players, create money out of thin air when they buy
things from players. Money-making in the game is already a lot faster than it
has been. We don't need to add fuel to the fire by having shopkeepers pay a
fair price for eq-items.
As much as I dislike it when higher-level players make low-level eq and sell
it to low-level players, I would hate it if they could get the same, or
roughly the same, amount by selling it to the shop. Then, the newbies can't
make OR buy the items.
As for the horribly high selling price, well, while that is a relic of old
code, it still serves a purpose. Shops do not make any distinction in their
inventory between items they stock themselves, and those they purchased. It
they starting selling items for less than their sac value, there would be
plenty of ways to take advantage of that. I suppose it is possible for shops
to keep track of which items they bought and which they stock themselves, but
shop code is pretty crowded as it is. I'll worry about that later.

Shinarae Lluminus

P.S. A year and a half ago, I tried to make code to keep track of
player-to-player sales by items, to find out what they were actually worth. It
was a disaster, and not because prices change so quickly. The ways of
buying/selling items were so many that the code needed to keep track of such
things bordered on permasnoop of all players at all times. Eventually the
logging of players actions hit an unusable length of logfiles and lagbursts
started showing up. The project was scrapped. Making code to assing "fair
market value" to items is impossible.

*sigh I shouldn't respond to this, but...

Mithrand's original post was "Why don't shop values pay me more money, closer
to what the players would pay?" I tried to explain it, but he (and, judging
from the votes, quite a few others) didn't seem to get it, so I'll try again.

BatMUD shops are deliberately biased against large value items. Such are not
supposed to be sold for a realistic value. Why? Because you can sell an item
to the shop at any time, no matter who is online, and no matter if anyone
would ever buy the item. It is instant, convenient cash. The price of that
convenience is that you have to take a lowball offer. The few stores in real
life that do that sort of thing (pawn shops, for example) do almost exactly
the same. Now it is true that they turn around and try to sell it for a huge
amount. For the record, just about nobody buys them. When was the last time
you looked for a Torso maker at the general weapon store? Or an eckma at the
lux armour shop? They aren't there. Nobody would sell them at the low shop buy
price. That's intentional.

I am not going to edit shop buy/sell prices to make it easier for you to rape
"cash eq" that you know nobody wants to buy from you. If the item is worth
what you think it is, you should have no problem selling it. Sales channel not
responding? Don't despair. Contact a friendly merchant for a cube slot. Or use
the auction house coded for just this reason that nobody ever uses. Either
way, you'll get a large chunk of the profits if the items sells at the price
you ask (just like the mineral exchange) and have the luxury of offline sales.
But they will take some time, and you do need an intersted party. If you need
the money now now NOW, or of you can't be bothered to find an interested
buyer, or if you know that nobody wants the eq you find, you'll either have to
settle for the shop's lowball price, or get some extra chest slots for the
items you'll be stockpiling.

Now there was some attempt to "bash" one of my points by saying a few things:
-- if players were able to sell items for sacval to shop,
then newbies would be able to buy the items from shop for
2x sacval
Yes, but they can buy it for 2x sacvalue _now_ and they don't. Why should
shops pay _more_ money for items they can't move? Who would do that? Nobody,
that's who.

-- Furthermore the economy has a tendency to adapt to
even most moronic laws and rules.
Yes, but I will not force them to adapt unnecessarily. Especially when it
involves you selling things the way you want to, regardless of how the rest of
the MUD would be affected.
-- The fact that shops can create money out of thin air is NOT AN ISSUE
Yes, yes it is. You are asking the MUD to create more money out of thin air
for items that nobody wants to buy. All that would do is increase the money
made by players in the same time and same effort. The word for that is
"inflation". Look at the last few years in the MUD and eq prices. Do they
really need to go up more?
-- So, when a player A sells an item to shop, and then
player B buys it, then its a clear case of trade between players, with a proxy
that should charge a reasonable fee.
We have a place or two in the MUD that can do that. They are not shops. They
do not pay up front. If the money is to be paid by the MUD, upfront, when
there is no guarantee of a sale at the other side, then you have to expect the
shopkeeper to set prices according to the risk they take, just like anywhere
else. If the risk of "no sale" was really that small, you'd sell it yourself.
Don't push your inability to sell low-level eq onto us and then complain when
our price is too low for your tastes. At least we're open 24-7.
-- atm players trade ALL eq directly and only fee paid is 100gp at bank
if no coins used
Good! With actual usable eq, that is exactly what is supposed to happen! We
have a viable, stable (more or less) BatMUD player-to-player economy. I'm not
going to shake things up because you want to move a few more spider sabres per
boot.

Shinarae Lluminus