So many awesome ideas floating around!!
I’ve got my own to add to the mix. (and i’ve never seen it done on ANY game)
What if the bazaar acted like an AI middleman that bought items for a price from players based on rarity, level and modifiers and then set the price itself to sell it based on those same factors (+10%) and sold everything anonymously.
For example - Player A has 3 items he wants to sell. A low level 2 mod item, a high level 4 mod item and a unique.
When he sells the 2 mod item, the Bazaar checks its current stores. It sees that this particular low level item have a base value of 100 gold, but there are lots of items in stock with those same modifiers, and two mods are pretty common. So it offers 75 gold.
The 4 mod item is checked against stores, and the bazaar sees that it has a “rare” (that is rare in the bazaars stocks) modifier on it.
The base price for that level item is 500 gold, but that rare modifier in addition to it having 3 other mods makes a big difference so it offers 900 gold.
Finally the unique. Its the only one on the market! This particular unique has a base value of 2000, but because its the only one in the bazaar, and it also has an amazing roll, the bazaar offers 4000.
Player B rocks up and buys all three, at 83 gold, 990 gold and 4400 gold respectively, and upon sale, player A receives his money.
Market saturation drives common items down, which deters sellers, resulting in either a natural plateau or natural fluctuation.
Market scarcity drives prices up, attracting sellers.
At the same time, buyer demand can mean that, maybe you do have a relatively rare modifier on a 4 mod item, but if its something no-one wants, it’ll just gather dust at the bazaar until you give up and vendor it.
Clearly thats a VERY indepth, math heavy retroactive system that also relies on developers setting appropriate base values (which i guess would reflect chance to drop) and modifier values (e.g. number of mods, rarity of those mods, rarity of that item type, rarity of those mods being together, rarity of THAT item having THOSE mods etc etc.)
But FULLY achieves all three main concerns.
Gold will always have value, and new players are actually at an advantage when buying in a busy market, but rare drops for anyone of any level can still be traded for a good price.
The absolute low point of an item would be set by the vendor sell price.
Also completely screws RMTs. They have no-way of selling directly to a player, and if they tried to co-ordinate sales with a player, the rarity of the item would mean they cant even set the ingame price or who actually buys it.
The only issue i see is gold creep.
Maybe my idea in this thread of breaking down items to get components could be the big gold sink. Maybe shattering for components costs more as you level up, so end game you’re having to sink alot of gold in to get the huge amount of components you need.
I guess also rich players could also drive up certain mod prices on a rare item by buying out all the cheap items with that mod. But i doubt it would be worth it.