Glyphscape/Markets

Markets
Glyphscape has a more developed market system than RuneScape's Grand Exchange, replacing it with more specialized systems. They are 1) the goods market, 2) the labor market, both accessible from any town forum; 3) the commodities market, 4) the stock market, both accessible from any brokerage; and 5) the real estate market, accessible only from certain government buildings.

Goods Market
This is Glyphscape's version of the Grand Exchange. All the non-common items, such as armor, weaponry, jewelry, furniture, clothes, mixtures, and scrolls, are traded in this market. Examples of items that would not be traded here are unmixed alum dye, air runes, wool, iron ore/bars, and oak logs, which are all the same and traded in quantity.

Offering/Ordering
All players can post an infinite number of buy and sell orders/offers simultaneously on this market. When a player looks up the goods market, a dialog box pops up with a great variety of search terms. Players first specify what class of item to search for, then what range of quality and magical enchantments, as well as sort/filter by color, style, trimmings, and even particular enchantment phrases. Aside from the results that turn up, a variety of similar items will also appear. Related sponsored results may also show up in a separate space. After finding an item, or specifying a range of item types (such as "all red-dyed, pinstriped, non-trimmed clothing with 2 enchantments"), the player will be able to see the recent traffic for an item or range of items, see everyone else's current sell orders for that item or range of items, to place a buy order for that item or range of items. The game then proceeds to fulfill that order whenever a suitable item is made available at that cost or less.

Committing
Players may also choose, when making a particular order, whether to commit to the order. A committed order cannot be backed out of until after a particular period of time has elapsed. This may be detrimental in certain cases, but useful in others. For example, let's say you wanted to buy a "red-trimmed infernal kiteshield with 4+ enchantments", and furthermore you already know what you want those 4 enchantments to be (because they work well together, for example). Even though many millions of items are being traded on the goods market, and most of them are the only kind being offered at the moment, that's but a tiny fraction of the possibilities of items available, so your chance of buying, at any price, the exact item you want is just about nothing. But by committing to a few hours of keeping the order in (and with a lucrative price), you encourage others to produce that particular item just so that they can sell it to you. They will in turn be given the opportunity to contract with you. A player who contracts to fulfill an order will be entitled to the right to fulfill that particular commitment to the exclusion of others who may have the good. This is another motivation for producing that good. However, failure to follow through with a commitment will result in a penalty, sent to the person placing the order, of 10% of the offered payment, so that everyone knows that people will follow through after contracting.

Advertising
Players may also advertise their own buy order or sell order for the token cost of 0.5% of the items' value or 1 gp per item that is successfully trade, whichever is higher. So if a player advertises a sell order for an item, other players will potentially see that offer in the sponsored results section when they search for similar products, which potentially increases the likelihood of their deciding to buy the item. This is only possible because all items for sale on the goods market are individually tailored, ie. you would have to spend a long while before finding an item of similar quality and the possible combinations of all the variables are endless. Think of it as a Glyphscape version of Ebay.

Auctioning
Alternatively, players may stage an auction for a particular, exceptional good. Since there are just so many variables, there is a nearly infinite variety of items. In such an arena, players with particularly good, valuable, uncommon items can show off the qualities of their goods to prospective buyers in auctions that can be set to be holistic or dutch, for highest price or for second highest price, tripwire or no tripwire, reserve or no reserve, with other restrictions or not, for a specific period of time lasting from a few minutes to a few weeks. At the end of the auctioning period the item is sold to the highest bidder at either the highest bid or the second highest bid. If the item is actually a set of identical items, they may be sold individually (dutch) or as that set (holistic). If the highest bid has not reached the (hidden) reserve price, the trade is not performed. The moment anyone hits the (obvious) tripwire price, the item is immediately sold to that bidder at the tripwire price (so people can get what they really want, but at a premium). With an auction, the use of advertising is important because of the intense interest it generates.

Commodities Market
While the goods market deals with items that are dramatically different from one another, the commodities market deals with high-volume, identical items. Buying in bulk, and rapidly, is key. Much like the real commodities market, the Glyphscape commodities market is heavily based on getting the high volume of commodities to where they're wanted the most at any moment and for those who believe that they can "play the market".

Leveraging
Players have the option of trading in the commodities market like they normally would, or trading on the margin. In order to do the latter, players will have to put in a margin - a sum of money that acts as a buffer against any shift in the value of the commodity. The first option is for those who actually want to trade the commodity; the latter is for speculators who want to arbitrage. The margin ratio is 20%, which means that a player with a 20,000 gp margin can invest in 100,000 gp worth of commodities. Since the maximum price fluctuation allowed in a time period (1 real day) is +/- 10%, a rise from 100% value to 110% value implies a gain of 10,000 gp, all of which goes to the speculator, who has just made a 50% profit. Alternatively, if the item falls from 110% value to 90% value, then the player has just lost 18,182 gp (a loss of 91%). As you can see, this process, called leverage, can greatly inflate a player's profits, but also inflates losses. Additionally, players can never lose more than their margin, unlike in the real world. At the end of the period, if there has been a loss, the margin must be restored or the commodities the player has been holding onto will immediately be resold to the next bidder (which prevents further losses). It is the responsibility of the speculator to keep checking in right before the next period begins to pay restore the buffer following a loss or, alternatively, to toggle-on "automatically pay margin upon next time period".

Shorting
Players can also short commodities. The margin ratio for shorting is 25%. In other words, a player with a 20,000 gp margin can "sell" 80,000 gp worth of commodities that the player doesn't own, bolstering the margin to 100,000 gp. This "bolstered margin" is locked-in; players cannot get out of it until they buy back the commodities that they have shorted. If the value has gone from 110% to 90%, the player only has to pay back 65,454 gp for a profit of 14,545 gp (a gain of 73%). If the value has gone from 90% to 110%, the player has to pay back 97,778 gp, for a loss of 17,778 gp (a loss of 89%). If, at the end of the period, there has been a loss, and the margin is not replenished, all of the shorted commodities are bought back immediately (and at a loss).