Accepted [Community Discussion] Merchant Item Bundles

I think it's a good idea to remove item bundles. After spending 114m on 300 power elixirs I've now learned my lesson the hard way, but others shouldn't have to go through what I did. If what happened to me happened to a new player, I think many would have just quit ML right then and there. Thank you to the GM's for trying to address this. And a note to those who abuse TOS loopholes to steal people's money, y u try to ruin our mushroom game? :/

 

I clicked teh wrong button sorry

 

I think bundles are redundant. If you wanna buy 100 or a full stack, you can type out. Typing it out also makes you confirm that's how many you actually want to buy.

 

I don’t think I’ve ever purchased something in a bundle nor sold anything in a bundle.

 

Personally, I have been using the bundle sales a lot lately to get rid of stuff i have in big amounts. It allows me to sell stacks of my things for cheaper than 1x10 would cost without it affecting everyone elses price. If i was to put 10x1 no bundle but same price, it would just become a battle of undercutting. How would it affect me if I wasnt allowed to sell in bundles, I couldnt say, but I really enjoy bundle sales thats all

 

The practice of undercutting and the normalization of using Owls to navigate the FM has really made wholesaling in an oscillating market irrelevant. If your items are already at the lowest per-unit price, they have effectively undercut the market and will be bought out until someone else undercuts you. Then, there is no reason people should be buying your now more expensive and bundled product so long as there are others out there that are cheaper by unit.

You could say wholesaling is a means to circumvent the perpetual practice of undercutting by capturing a larger share of the market at once and leaving only crumbs to the next wave of undercutters.

However, most people aren't using bundles properly anyways.

 

Maybe I didnt have to mention undercut and so at all, I really only wanted to say its a feauture I use a lot and really enjoy, and I think its sad we need to take it away from everyone instead of punishing the actual abusers.

 

There is a time and place for bundles, I've used them and even bought from them before. But if the bundle isn't the right size, it makes it harder on both the buyer and seller. Personally, bundles are only useful when the seller does not wish to part with only half the stack (usually due to the item being significantly more difficult to sell at low quantities). Take an item like Gold Teeth (always used in quantities of 30). It's a perfect item to sell in a 30 bundle, and if a seller only has a 1 or 2 teeth because somebody else decided to only buy 28, it becomes more of a hassle to find that shop than another shop with enough teeth, even if it isn't the cheapest deal. Of course that is reversible too, and buyers may not always wish to buy a 30 stack, and seller risks losing that portion of a sale. Ultimately, I think bundles are neat, but if they are viewed as more harmful than helpful, the server should survive just fine without.

The bigger questions in my opinion are how much "buyer protection" is needed, and how much is needed to deem "scamming intent". In the above power elixir event, I actually do not believe the buyer is entitled to money back in the same way that a seller who underprices an item is not entitled to the money back (though some people do return it). It falls onto both buyers and sellers to make sure they read the numbers of items listed/bought properly; it is impossible to make enough safeguards to completely remove this. So I ask, what harm does enabling bundles actually cause? Have we finally found the rare "perfect storm" of a user listing suspiciously overpriced goods by a 100x factor and a buyer too careless to notice? Or does this happen more often, except this instance the user was more vocal about it? I don't know the answers to those, but I fear the bundle talk is a cover-up to a bigger issue of how to call out obvious scam attempts.

The current market is far too ripe for these types of scams as well as others. And a stance fully in the camp of "sellers can list for whatever they want" is only going to invite future scammed user and spark more controversy once it happens. Nobody seemed to have an issue (vocally at least) with single items listed at 100x until somebody took the bait. And understandably so, as the onus falls on the buyer to confirm the purchase (there *is* a confirmation window after all). My personal issue is that the take-home lesson to would-be scammers and potential chaos lovers is to simply not list the "scam items" next to any other items. I am free to list my power elixirs at 10x or 100x the price to hope to catch somebody, or list my 5 def cape at a 5 att cape prices, or list helmet def at helmet dex prices, or list weapon acc at weapon att prices (Still looking for availability of scroll of secrets locked Knuckle acc 30 tho btw). The point here is that we need to call these what they are: Maplelegends version of phishing scams. People do list their def capes as "haha funny meme item", but if one actually sold and the user complained, would we not be in the exact same situation as right now? If intent to deceive is not certain, at least claim that you'll hand out a warning to be careful about suspicious looking prices so that abiding users can adjust, and phishers can be justifiably booted.

Tl;dr Bundles arent pivotal in the grand scheme, but are bundles truly the problem here?

S>10 def pgc cheap

 

Only real use I have done personally with bundling in shops would be for quest/event items. Really helps to regulate what is being sold so seller isn't left over with extra stock.

It always annoyed me when trying to get 30 zombies golden tooth and finding a shop that had like 20 only.

But I can also see how people can take advantage and scam using it so I would be okay with having it removed to try and help prevent others from having a negative experience.

 

the only reason that its usefull is when u wanna sell with disconunt (1 item to 3m, 2 for 5) or quest item like some1 say above

 

Remove the bundle option.
Single items only.

 

I think if bundles were limited to etc only, where its only true argument lies, I think we'd be fine.

If a seller wants to sell at a discount they should just sell at a discount, or stand at the entrance and declare their prices(or smega). I think the argument is pretty weak to keep it in, especially when buyers can buy multiple by their choice. This isn't Costco, we're not all buying ws and cs in bulk at discount prices, we just buy what we need/can afford and leave.

 

I don't think bundles aren't really an issue its how people set their shops, If bundles were separated in its own tab people would be able to skim through without worrying about getting 'scammed'.

The problem lies when sellers are 'abusing' placements with bundles and singles in hopes that buyers would get tricked into what be a "bundle" which really isn't, because personally the color text is really hard to read unless I'm squinting (on my mac) or put my color vibrance (for windows) all the way up.

(Just quoting your post for better explanation, to what I'm trying to mention.)

Bundles are very important to MapleStory and in any game really, so removing them entirely wouldn't help at all, it would just make it a nuisance.

 

I don't personally use the feature, but yea, this. I know sometimes it's a case of this-is-why-we-can't-have-nice-things but it does feel sour to disable a game feature due to skeezeballs preying on people who don't carefully read each purchase.

 

The problem actually isn't bundled items at all - the problem is the unbundled items that are wedged amongst bundled items at a bundled price.
IMO, this should be a zero tolerance policy because using item bundling shows intent to cautiously price your items, so mispricing them can only really mean one thing.

Like Xiao has mentioned, purchasing a bundle should be by the bundle - you only buy one bundle of something at that price. This would eliminate the accidental purchase of 100 of a non-bundled item at a bundle price.

 

bump. hoping to see removal of bundles in the next update.

 

This isnt what they mean by bundles. They mean the ability to sell items in a specific quantity. so if you have 100 scrolls and put it so you could only buy the entire stack of 100 instead of just 1.

 

which is irrelevant anyways because it prompts you, asking how many you'd like to purchase anyways before submitting the transaction lol