TCG card shop simulator - A Simple Guide To The Pricing Market

This guide will go over everything to do with how the market works.

This Guide

You've probably seen that your item's market prices have gone up and down randomly. Well, the dev has in fact added a market which randomly sets the price to emulate a real world market system of supply and demand! Luckily, you don't need a business degree to understand this guide! Here's everything you need to know.

How Much Does The Price of an Item Change?

On the start of every day, there's a 40% chance for each and every item to individually change their market price. From there, it's a 50/50 whether or not the price will go up or down.

The standard amount that any item can change is between 0.8% to 2%, up or down.

The game will keep track of how much percentage an item has changed and has fail safes to make sure an item doesn't become super cheap or super expensive for no reason. Those hard limits are -80% and +200% from the set price an item starts off at.

Also, I just want to clarify from here on out, whenever I mention a change in percentage, I am referring to the actual percent that the current market price is away from the initial price. For example, say an item initially costs $100 and is currently sitting at $50. That is obviously a -50% decrease from initial price. Now say we increase it by 20%. Some people may thing that we are increasing $50 by 20% ($60) when that's not true in this case. We are increasing the percentage by 20% (aka -50% + 20% = -30%). That -30% from the original price will now be the new market price, or $70 in this example.

I hope that makes sense, but basically "a change in percent" is not from what the current market price is at.

What About Cards?

Cards also go through a similar process with the standard range being 0.8% to 2% increase/decrease if they succeed the 40% check.

The only difference with cards is that Table Events are a thing. You may have noticed if you set up a table event, it'll say something like "(+) Common pack and card price might increase. (-) Rare, Epic or Legendary pack and card price might decrease." And it's exactly as it says. Any card that says the price might increase will increase between 0.2% to 5% and the negatively affected cards will decrease between those same amounts.

However, I do want to note that this will happen before the 40% chance of doing a random amount. This can lead to the exact opposite of what the effects say if the chances roll in that favour.

What is the Initial Market Price?

I know I've been saying things about "initial price" because all the percentage changes do happen from that. Unfortunately, the initial price for every item won't be the same across saves. They are randomised upon starting a new game.

One thing that is definite across every game is the Base Cost of every item. This is the "Cost Price" that you see when you're purchasing a box for the items. In this example, we're gonna use Basic Card Packs. They have a set Base Cost of $1.5.

The first thing that'll happen is calculating the random Cost Price. It's simply:

Cost Price = Base Cost * Random(1, 1.3)

So the Cost Price will be anywhere between 1x to 1.3x the Base Cost, or $1.50 to $1.95.

The only difference are card boxes, in which it's:

Cost Price = Cost Price Of Card Pack * 8 * Random(1, 1.15)

So for example, the cost price of the Basic Card Boxes are whatever the above Cost Price is for that respective Card Pack, multiplied by 8, then multiplied between 1x to 1.15x, or $12 to $17.94.

Next, the Market Price will be calculated. Each item has their own minimum and maximum market price multiplier, for which the Basic Pack's minimum and maximum are 1.5x to 2x. This will generate a market price between $2.25 to $3.90. (Same thing for Card Boxes)

See Table Below Under "Starting Price Details Per Item" for all the calculated starting prices!

From there, the market plays out as normal! The save file will keep track of all changes that do happen so it's possible to view what the initial market price was, however I don't currently have the tools to do that.

Price Crashes!

You may also notice that sometimes there is just a massive drop in price randomly! Yes, in this game there are some times where a "market crash" will happen. This can happen for any item or card (despite any table event going on).

For a market crash to happen though, there are a few checks that take place. Firstly, the item will need to be at least 25% more than it's original market price. If it passes that, then it needs to beat a random percentage check equal to the price percentage change. Basically, if your item/card initially costs $100, and the price goes to $150, it's currently 50% more than the market price so it now has a 50% chance of causing a market crash on that item. The amount that it can crash by is between 5% and the percentage change divided by 2.1. In our example, that means it can crash up to about 24%.

A similar thing can also happen to items that are -25% from the market price. It's also labelled as a market crash but it's more of a market explosion. It's the exact same process as the market crash except the other way around. For example, your $100 item now has a market price of $50. So if it passes the 50% check, it'll shoot up between 5% and 24% in price.

Also, market crashes/explosions will always happen at the beginning of the day right after going through the normal market randomness process. So you may have an item that is slightly below 25% above market price but if the initial randomness process brings it over, then it very well can crash.

Starting Price Details Per Item

Starting Price Details Per Item (Part 2)

Source

This guide is based on information from the original source: Steam Community Guide.