In the many moons since I have played a few em toys have come my way. Why cannot I ask 200 million for one of them on my vendor? Or 500 million? Or a plat? Why not? The auction safe items do not show up in VS. Are they going to? Did I miss that?
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New Vendor and current 175M cap
- Thread starter Alexey Kurkdjian
- Start date
- Watchers 8
It is still just a percentage, and players are already paying vendor fees on a daily basis. 5.25% is not that much, Yes it is 54.5 million on 1 plat, but 1 plat = 1000 million. I for one will happily use the new vendors, I would much rather stock my vendor and not worry if the stuff takes a day or a month to sell.
But, to the point of the thread, I think the 175mill cap should be eliminated.
all this bickering over what things should and shouldnt cost in game is hilarious. things cost what people are willing to pay for them. you dont have to buy them if you dont think its worth it. that doesnt mean you should demand that it be more difficult for people who do want to buy and sell them because you dont see the value in it. also, lol gypsies.
Alexey Kurkdjian
Journeyman
I agree, remove the vendor cap please, i will gladly pay the fees, i will load my vendor 1x time, with the price I want.
But this post here is useless , since the devs dont read anyway.
But this post here is useless , since the devs dont read anyway.
The point is with this Vendors will be happy to have overpriced crap sit there month after month without lowering the price as it can just sit there forever and never sell at stupidly high prices... On a regular vendor, the daily fees keep this from happening as it is not wise to have it sit forever overpriced so people will eventually lower the price of their overpriced crap to get rid of it and stop it from soaking up profit and bleeding fees.
I can only speak for myself, but I hate running a vendor. I do NOT fiddle with prices all the time and stock it and reprice, instead, my potentially "overpriced" crap sits in my house (still taking up storage) and not selling on a vendor.
If there are more people like me, then perhaps the new vendors will inspire them to dig out all the crap in their houses and run a vendor now, resulting in more items in the market and thus potentially more competition and lower prices.
Probably not with event rares, but that is a whole other subject, and a market I do not participate in.
If there are more people like me, then perhaps the new vendors will inspire them to dig out all the crap in their houses and run a vendor now, resulting in more items in the market and thus potentially more competition and lower prices.
Probably not with event rares, but that is a whole other subject, and a market I do not participate in.
You have daily fees now. Do you see any good effect on prices?
I also want the prices lower, but to achieve this you need more sellers competing, not fewer. When you have prohibitive fees, one of two things happen with expensive items: 1) Vendors sell them in chat or forums, 2) Vendors just sit on them because they don't want to throw money away. In either case you get higher prices, not lower.
Not only that, but for some reason you assume that someone who is selling a 100M item will price it at half price just so that they don't lose out on the fees. That does not happen. What does happen is that this item gets priced at 130M to cover the fees.
You can very well see this yourself right now. You have hourly fees and very high prices. Why jump on the same rake again?
Yep, I expect an avalanche of selling with the new vendors and lower prices as a result. I have not kept a vendor for something like 8 years, because the hourly fee model does not work on smaller shards. And I will be dumping everything I accumulated as soon as new vendors are up. I am sure there are many others like me.
Yes there are fees now and they should be there... what you all are proposing isn't going to help anything at all... Doesn't matter keep the caps... greedy will find ways to continue to be greedy no matter what... there is no reason at all to change the caps.
None. And you know I'm right. Stuff will continue to be priced ridiculously and people will continue to wonder why they crap sits on vendors for ages on end... it sits there because it's priced TOO HIGH... I tell people all the time that just because you see something on a vendor for a certain price it in no way means that's what it SELLS FOR... that's what some idiot wants to get. What it sells for is the price that someone ACTUALLY BUYS IT FOR... Which many times is a heck of a lot lower than you think.
People spam all day every day that they are selling crap.... they get probably 15 offers a day for it but they will spam over and over for a whole week trying to get their ridiculously high price for it and ignore all the offers given... certainly some lowball offers but many are more than sufficient and are quite reasonable... just the greedy person saw it priced on Atl for some preposterous amount and they think they should get at least that if not more...
Truth is most of the rest of us sit there and think how much time would I have to spend to get that item myself and go from there...
Personally, I'd rather get the stuff myself.
None. And you know I'm right. Stuff will continue to be priced ridiculously and people will continue to wonder why they crap sits on vendors for ages on end... it sits there because it's priced TOO HIGH... I tell people all the time that just because you see something on a vendor for a certain price it in no way means that's what it SELLS FOR... that's what some idiot wants to get. What it sells for is the price that someone ACTUALLY BUYS IT FOR... Which many times is a heck of a lot lower than you think.
People spam all day every day that they are selling crap.... they get probably 15 offers a day for it but they will spam over and over for a whole week trying to get their ridiculously high price for it and ignore all the offers given... certainly some lowball offers but many are more than sufficient and are quite reasonable... just the greedy person saw it priced on Atl for some preposterous amount and they think they should get at least that if not more...
Truth is most of the rest of us sit there and think how much time would I have to spend to get that item myself and go from there...
Personally, I'd rather get the stuff myself.
Are you saying that the price limits will stop people from being greedy? Or you realize that they won't but just want to be spiteful?
People will always sell for the market price. Greed has nothing to do with it. The only way to lower prices is to increase competition, i.e. remove boundaries to trade. What you are suggesting will make things more expensive.
Agree : As in the real life world two things will drive prices down : COMPETITION and EXPOSURE. I.E. if there are 20 people selling . on their vendor their 400 M or 1 plat item, another 400 people will have access to see these prices on VS easily, AND also the vendors themselves will be forced to lower their prices.
OPPOSITE to this is a monopoly, and technologically deprived system, where there are very few sellers, and/or there are very few sellers VISIBLE.
Look at the BEHEMOTH called Amazon.com? They sank many a company with antiquated technology, increased visibility of products, and fiercely competed with pricing.
Fair enough too say that it is easy to see that removing caps from the new vendors will increase circulation of items. Also why does one care if a seller wants to sell something for 1 plat and pay 52M in fees? How would that hurt the game? I don't buy the greed story also, just does not make sense to the argument here.
You will see A LOT more vendors pop up, looks like a sure bet, and even in low pop shards.
I'm right there with you. The fact that there is a 175mil cap is crazy...the fact that it's not high enough is insane. I can vouch for how discouraging this kind of thing is to new/returning players.
You realize that these prices do not happen because someone has a greedy moment and decides to start charging a gazillion dollars for some pixel art, right? You realize that these prices are created by market forces, namely supply and demand? And that putting these limits on the vendors will do nothing to protect the new players (both of them) from the high prices. They will see them either on the vendors or the chat or the forums. Except the prices will be higher on the forums.
You want lower prices? Get devs to increase the drop rate. Otherwise you are making the problem you are trying to fight worse.
Sometimes I wonder whether the "anti-greed" clan even plays this game. Where have you been last few years? Prices for some items have gone way over 200M. You cant bring the good old days back. By inhibiting/prohibiting easy sales of expensive goods you will not bring prices down. Go to the trades forum and rares forum, home/castles etc. sales forum and check things once in a while.
Should we keep the cap at 50 meg or even 20 meg so that we not scare the 20 new subscribers? I doubt that this makes any kind of sense.
Increasing the cap will serve to drive down some of these prices as there will be more of them readily available within the system. Right now if you want to purchase a high-end market, you have to do it in a vacuum. There is no competition - you find someone who has it and is selling it, they get to set the price with no consideration to anyone else selling it because there are none at that exact moment.
We can see this on a micro-scale with Powder of Fort. The more vendors that are carrying it, the lower the price starts to drop over time. The process can't happen with higher-end items with the daily vendor fees and the cap below the current fair market value of high-end items. Removing the cap would be a good thing.
We can see this on a micro-scale with Powder of Fort. The more vendors that are carrying it, the lower the price starts to drop over time. The process can't happen with higher-end items with the daily vendor fees and the cap below the current fair market value of high-end items. Removing the cap would be a good thing.
Increasing the limit on something that can sit for years at a stupid price will NOT bring the prices down and it will do little to nothing to help the newer and returning players...
There is NO reason at all to increase the limits. NONE...
No, let people lose money on the fees.... I'm fine with that. Maybe they will eventually get the idea that people who would buy that stuff can't afford it and those who won't pay that do like me and get it for themselves.
The rest who like to sell things insanely priced can continue to use the auction safes ... and spam all day every day for weeks on end trying to get your over inflated prices.
There is NO reason at all to increase the limits. NONE...
No, let people lose money on the fees.... I'm fine with that. Maybe they will eventually get the idea that people who would buy that stuff can't afford it and those who won't pay that do like me and get it for themselves.
The rest who like to sell things insanely priced can continue to use the auction safes ... and spam all day every day for weeks on end trying to get your over inflated prices.
It's not. It's actually good for the game to have items with ridiculous prices (items that don't even impact gameplay for the most part).
Consider them chase items - some players continue playing because they just have to save up enough to get that item. Now, consider we didn't have any items like that. How much more quickly would those people get bored with the game and move on.
Just because YOU can't afford these items doesn't make them obscene. UO knows their playerbase is built on addictive, completionist, personalities. I just can't believe they never implemented an achievement system!...
Lowering the prices is not a good enough reason for you to increase the limit? Because the way I read your arguments is: "I don't care if new players are inundated by high priced chat spam. I don't care if they need to look on the forums to buy the same high priced stuff. As long as these greedy pancakes are prevented from selling on the vendors, I am happy. They did not do it my way for 20 years, so surely they will learn their lesson now!" Do I understand you correctly?
It will not in any way shape or form lower the prices... they will remain as stupid as they are... won't change a thing... Raising the amounts will only help people continue to price stuff stupidly high... and for years it can stay that way because it won't cost them a dime. So no I don't see it helping in one tiny little bit. There is no reason for the DEVs to waste their time increasing something like that... It should be a serious inconvenience for you all to sell crap at stupid high prices.
It will NOT lower the prices of anything. The only thing that lowers prices in UO is Scripters farming it for cheap 24/7 .... flooding the market and for people to quit paying stupid prices for things so the price goes down.... UO is NOT like the real world you can't use real-world economics to figure out how it will be .... You know as well as I that if the cap were 1P people would try to get 1P for things that shouldn't be worth 1P... so no there is no reason at all to raise the cap. Especially when these items can sit on the new vendors FOREVER... without fees not selling...
I don't care if there is a cap or not. My point was that it's insane that the current cap isn't high enough for the items out there and that it does discourage new and returning players. If you want to raise the cap to 10 platinum...I don't care. What I do care about is all of the new or returning players who come to these forums with a lot of excitement to be back and then get told that they need to by and sell EM items just to survive. "You're going to need a 100% LRC suit, a castle, some major artifact weapons, a few platinum, etc. to get in the game!" It's just not true but since that's how so many choose to live, it gives the impression that players starting out fresh have no chance. I returned to this game with 11 million in gold and was very quickly made to feel like I'd be out of that in a day or two. Believe it or not, it is still entirely possible to have a great experience in this game starting with nearly nothing and living off of creature loot/gold. I do it every day. Coming to these forums and seeing what many people write doesn't help new players feel like they have a chance. It's just frustrating to then see that a 175 million cap on vendor items isn't enough for some players.
Are we pretending that the current player base is all UO should be striving for? It doesn't seem to be working for the game.
What is frustrating to me is to see articulate, seemingly intelligent people blame "some players" for the high prices. We pretty much have a free market in UO. And the prices that we see are determined by three things: 1) amount of gold in the game, 2) amount of "stuff" in the game, 3) desirability of the "stuff." That's it. Dreams and desires of individual players, their greed or generosity have zero effect on the prices in the game. The prices are not high. And they are not low. They are exactly what they are supposed to be given the state of ##1-3 above. And being frustrated with those prices makes as much sense as being frustrated with the hot summer temperature outside your house. Fighting them through price controls or by selling at "fair" prices is about as effective as using your A/C to try and cool the outside, and about just as smart.
Oh and all the lamentations about the poor new players not being able to deal with inflation are equally laughable. Any MMO that is older than a few years has inflation. It never stopped anyone from joining. New players by definition do not have a frame of reference. Something that costs 100 Million, might as well cost 100 gazillion as far as they are concerned. How are they to know what is too much? And inflation works both ways. A new player can become insta rich by just tagging along on a hunt with their guildies and getting a single drop.
TL;DR: Inflation is normal and harmless. Fighting high prices is useless and futile. Price controls make things worse.
I didn’t blame “some players” for the high prices. I just said that the cap is too low for “some players”.
New players do not have a frame of reference? They start with 1,000 gold and a dropped demon might give them 600 gold (after a lot of character development). Then they decide to look for a house or, god forbid, good armor and see the millions or tens or hundreds of millions necessary. I think they have a perfectly good frame of reference.
Again, I couldn’t care less if there is a price cap. I don’t see any purpose in capping it because as others have pointed out, life finds a way. My point was just that it’s insane how crazy the player economy has gotten and that new/returning players coming here to see people complain that they can’t sell their $200 million item on a vendor get discouraged that they’ll ever be able to enjoy the game. I don’t blame this problem on the players. I blame it on the developers allowing it to get this bad.
I do the same thing and I am with you and in the same ballpark gold wise. Give time and commitment, a new person can make lots of millions of gold not too hard nowdays. The ways of getting into plats are many in this game. They have been listed elegantly by many people in the forum. It just takes time and commitment. I made a ton of money as a tamer taming pets with good desirable stats and colors and selling them. Some rare colors. I sold a neon or strong green lesser hiryu for 80 M about 1-2 years ago. These are absolutely rare. Took many months of spawning. Also Cus white, black with high stats etc. There are people in the game making a mint just making and selling armor they make. A good Samurai fully functional top luck suit will fetch you 100 M, depending. Treasure hunting now as it is, will fetch you a few mils at least per day, in gold and gear. etc.
A blaze Cu will make 3-5 plats for you, to the right buyer. etc.
But so what? So you have 20-50 plats? So? Key thing is are you enjoying the game?
I don't need plats to enjoy the game, and many others do not. I tend to play 1-2 hours per day to 2-3 hours per week and that is cool. The game is different things to different people. For me it is fun, and I enjoy the little time I spend in it, goofing off and theory crafting and exploring. I also have a real life that has priority.
One thing I disagree, is that if the "new players" (all 15 of them!) will see items on vendors for 90 M, or 1-10 Plt, and they will get spooked away. I doubt that this is correct anyway. It may work the opposite way : They will see items that are high price, 1 plat or more, and this will inspire them to try to do more with the game if they want that item for some reason. There is really no need for them to be jealous of the Platimum Clan. They don't need Plats to play the game by any stretch of the imagination.
Also : Did you check other games? Will not name any but lots have "consignment" vendors and the prices there also seem gargantuan and unreachable to new folk. That includes some UO spinoff games with prices that will make you sit down, not to mention the in-game RMT there where you can buy and island for $7,000 USD etc.
Finally by having a cap in the new vendors we are inhibiting freedom of trade, and increase the difficulty of conducting trade. And, if you look in this forum you will see that there are items being sold and traded in forum with prices as high as 500 M, and 1-2 Plats, and even more for pets etc.
You took what I was saying a bit out of context. I purposely didn't include anything about "new/returning players", because everyone here knows Krampus isn't real.
The way I see it is if we are going to have a cap for vendor, get rid of vendor fees all together. If you want to raise the cap, then ask for you vendor fees.
Thank you for your well-thought and cohesive rebuttal.
The whole point is to make a gold sink... not make it easier for people to be greedy. It was a concession to daily fees for smaller shards ... nothing more.
It would still be a gold sink. Raise the cap above 175 and allow people to put higher priced items on there. Doing a 5.25% fee after 150M or more would net 100's of millions a week. So what if the lower end items are not being taxed. That gold would just be used to purchase higher priced items, getting the 5.25% anyways. They need to get people to start using vendors instead of chat. This would help quite a bit.
If you want a gold sink, why are you trying to drive the most expensive items (ones that cost more than 175M) towards chat and forum sales where there is no tax?
There is no reason at all to raise the cap. The cap is reasonable and fine. Asking for higher caps is just begging for more greed. Higher the cap is the more people will charge... Keeping the cap means you have to work that much harder to get all your gold... so continue to have to spam in chat... till you all realize that not everyone has ridiculous amounts of gold... just the same 20 people passing billions about between one another... The rest of us have FAR less gold... and we are just fine with the cap.
So no reason other than resentment for those who either sell or buy stuff that costs more than 175M? I gave you plenty of reasons to raise the cap - lower prices, increased gold sink, increased item availability, and all you can say in response is "greed." We have a cap with current vendors. Does that prompt anyone to lower their prices? Nope. Maybe people got less greedy over the years of having a 175M cap? Nope.
But hey, just because you don't buy or sell anything expensive, nobody else should be allowed too, right? Way to stick it to those greedy pancakes.
Raising the cap will NOT lower prices... it will only give an incentive to raise them... UO does NOT work like the real world..... Keeping the cap makes it harder to sell things at stupid high prices... makes you work for it and you should... Does not increase availability to anyone but rich people who have ridiculous amounts of money who honestly will buy it when they want to ..... for any price because they want it.... changing the cap won't change that and won't do anything at all but allow people to have stuff sit for years and years at stupidly high prices NOT SELLING.
And of course everyone should play according to your rules. I get it.
I'm glad I'm on a different shard.
Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
Alexey Kurkdjian
Journeyman
She is never happy with anything, all her posts are negative, all about what she wants and not about what everyone said, no one here see any negative in raising the cap.
Oh yes it does. At least in this regard. And so do other MMOs where players are free to trade stuff. EVE online had a professional economist on staff or years to manage supply-demand based pricing. In UO price of powerscrolls went through the roof when they increased demand in the pet revamp. With the exception of things sold in UO store, prices in UO are most certainly formed according suply and demand principles.
Why is this a good thing? If prices are stupid, no one will buy the item. If someone will buy the item, then the price is not stupid.
Suppose I am a new-ish player who, with my guild, got a cameo drop on the Roof. But I want a different one. Last I checked they sell for about 230M. So, thanks to you, now I need to either sell it for 175M minus tax and then work however long to make up the difference, and then scour the forums and religiously watch chat until I see one for sale? Is this honestly what you are trying to accomplish here?
And why do you hate "rich" players so much anyway? I am putting "rich" in quotes because in a 20+ year old game most players are worth a lot more than 175M.
And this is your business how? They want to price it so it won't sell, that's their decision. I assure you, the ones growing rich from trade, price their wares to sell.
Every point, spot on.
Restricting open trade can never be a good thing. Will not bring prices down. Only ease of access and availability will do that. Look at RL examples with Amazon, eBay etc, resulting in closing down major outlet behemoths like Sears etc. I know this is RL stuff, but similar mechanisms work here, in this very game, also as in other games.
The things are just as available as they ever will be since there is a limited amount of drops for most EM things that do command those stupid prices... there is a limited amount of crap people get and put on vendors... you aren't making any more stuff appear... you are just wanting to make it easier to ask more for things... and let them sit forever at a high price.... that is all...
Vendors don't manufacture the crap to sell on them....
Vendors don't manufacture the crap to sell on them....
With your suggestion, people will not be putting anything on vendors that is worth more than 175M. Some will try to sell it through forums are chat. Most will just let stuff sit in their chests. Congratulations, the cap is doing exactly what you are supposedly trying to fight - having stuff sit indefinitely without being sold. Supply limitations can be made in numerous ways. Impediments to trade is one of them.
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That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard... it doesn't change a damn thing with leaving the cap as is... there is zero reason to waste DEV time on changing something that has been hard wired into the game for ages on end... there is ZERO reason to have them change it... save to make it easier for people to stick something on a Vendor priced ridiculously so it's stored on there as a display.... It's like I could go and put a feather on a vendor for 175M and no one in their right mind would ever buy it but I'd have it stored there... Just dumb.
Your argument is just not cutting it... People will still do what they have always done... it changes nothing. Putting it on a vendor with a 5% going to the game would only increase the "cost" by 5%.... it won't make it better for anyone but the seller who is just being greedy let them work for getting that sort of money.... And yes... I have something against people wanting to sell crap for ridiculous amounts of gold...
whoopee... the fact is there is ZERO need to change the cap... stuff people wanted to put on the new vendors on smaller shards isn't priced stupid high... they aren't priced that insane at all and the new vendors are just fine as is. It will do exactly what it was intended which was to allow people on smaller shards to put stuff on vendors for "new/returning" players and leave it there not selling until one of those rare people shows up coming back to game... and can actually find stuff for sale on a "semi" dead shard...
The cap never needed changed.
I gave plenty of reasons to remove the cap. What I have not seen is a single supported reason for keeping them apart from: "I resent rich people and I want them to have a hard time selling and buying things." You claim you want lower prices, yet let your spite drive you in the opposite way. You casually dismiss a pretty much undisputed economic theory of how prices are form, because you "know better." You dismiss past experience from UO where price caps did nothing good, and evidence from other MMOs.
I am not a trader. I have not had a vendor in many years. But I want to be able to buy and sell drops many of which cost more than the cap without going outside the game. Why is this a bad thing? And no, I will not sell things below their market price because of an arbitrary cap. And neither will anyone else.
Speaking of "ridiculous amounts of gold", can you define the cut off between ridiculous and OK? Since we are using your judgement on this, maybe the Devs should know too.
One should be able to sell any item in game using the vendor system. Having this cap in place is outdated at least. One of the main purpose of the caps on vendors when they came out was to prevent gold hoarding to a limited extent as they did not people storing 1 plat worth of gold on each vendor. With rate of inflation, which has been unavoidable in a game with not many viable gold sink options, it would be wise to at least raise the cap to allow those who currently are not rich to farm and sell drops at market value. If you can sell drops at market value the gap decreases allowing a player to get full value of their efforts. No need for a cap as players decide the price. To high and they will not buy. By saying there should even be a cap you are saying you and you alone should decide what a player pays, which last I checked players each have minds of their own.
There is an underlying issue with the Vendor caps of 175 mill.
The real problem is the gold supply. As mentioned above, there are not sufficient gold sinks. What do you think would happen to item prices, if the Dev team, in a future publish, Deleted 99% of everyone's Gold, just took the existing balances to 1% of what each player has right then? Then reduced all gold dropped as loot, to 10% of existing levels?
What would that event item drop or Demon Cameo sell for in that economy? All I know is that no one would have 175 mill. So, the vendor caps of 175 mill would work fine, for a while.
However, since that has not happened...
The real problem is the gold supply. As mentioned above, there are not sufficient gold sinks. What do you think would happen to item prices, if the Dev team, in a future publish, Deleted 99% of everyone's Gold, just took the existing balances to 1% of what each player has right then? Then reduced all gold dropped as loot, to 10% of existing levels?
What would that event item drop or Demon Cameo sell for in that economy? All I know is that no one would have 175 mill. So, the vendor caps of 175 mill would work fine, for a while.
However, since that has not happened...
Agree. Should not have a cap. There is no reason.
Charging high amounts is not greed - its the market. The market will determine prices - you can't artificially bring prices down by limiting the vendor cap - it will just frustrate players that won't be able to use a vendor and other players who want an offline secure way to buy these items.
Even if they did that, how would a 175M cap "work fine?" If nobody is willing to pay >175M, then cap is doing absolutely nothing. If people are willing to pay >175M, then the cap is doing bad things (driving players away from a gold sink).
All of the above is fine. You have the option to obtain things with work. You will also have sellers trying to exploit the top end of the market and usually charging a premium for convenience. The vendor search has really leveled the playing field on price gouging because you are free to search for items. The problem is many people don't want to put things on vendors because unless they price them lower than market to sell very quickly they get eaten by vendor fees. This new vendor will SOLVE that at all price levels. People can price appropriately and if they don't sell they don't sell. The market will set the price but not every item will be sold at that exact price.
Have you ever taken even a basic course in economics? The demand line is NOT flat. Its an angled line. Meaning at low prices you have lots of buyers and high prices you have a few buyers still willing to pay. That person selling a transfer token can sell it to anyone for 1m gold. He can only sell it to a few people willing to pay 110m gold. But there ARE People willing to pay that esp for convenience (like i need it right now). The price of it is probably around 80-90m. When he spams it for 110m you do NOT have to buy. He's investing time and effort trying to get the best price for the item. Just because if you put all the buyers and sellers in the room and 85m is the price that all sellers would sell it for and all buyers at 85 would get one is the perfect market price - but markets are NEVER perfect. This is how capitalism and the world works.
If markets were perfect you would never pay $5 for bottled water at a ball game when a case of 32 costs $4 at the grocery store. There is a price premium for convenience. I go to a ball game and say 'pfft, not paying $5'. But enough people do that they make a nice profit so they sell them at $5. They are exploiting the top end of the demand curve. IF they sold at $1 they would sell out every game and the people paying $5 wouldn't get some.
IF you are on the low end of the demand curve (50m for a token) you are going to not see many for sale but you might find someone desparate for cash and be able to to buy one but again thats how the market works.
Any artificial restriction on prices is against market economics. So vendor limits are essentially price limits. Ala socialism.
End of your economics lesson for the day.
What I am getting at here is, would any of us care about a 175mill cap, if the average UO player only had 1 million gold, and the richest UO player had 20 million gold?
Having said that, I personally think there should be no cap for vendors.
The game needs real gold sinks to suck $$ out of the game in large chunks. There are plenty of ways to do so.
Consider EM drops. When they drop say 8-10 items they end up being worth 100m or more each.
Ok, drop 8 - and then sell 8 on vendors for 100m gold. That would take 800m gold out of the economy every EM drop. The rarity would only go from 8 to 16 and the gold would simply be deleted. Still a way to obtain it for free (8 of them) and 8 more for the rare collectors that want to part with their cash.
You could do the same with plenty of other items - sell a version at a marked up price for convenience. The person aquiring it can still get it and sell it for a reasonable amount - but if someone wants to overpay to buy one - so be it. If the price is set appropriately - it would not undercut the market for the item. IE - If Cintures go for 30m - the vendor can sell for 40m. If someone gets a drop - they can still sell pretty easily for 30m as its less than the vendor cost.
Everyone bought would drop the gold in game by 40m as its deleted.