Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Player Buying and Selling

    • 2 posts
    February 16, 2019 4:26 AM PST

    Just some thoughts on an auction house alternative...

    What if the NPC vendors start out with very little to sell.  Players sell to vendors of the appropriate veriety (thread to a tailor etc.) and these vendors then have the item in thier inventory to sell to players at a significant spread.  Players can sell to eachother directly for a better price.  Supply and demand as well as economic 'tweaking' can determin the price the NPC vendors offer as well as the spread between buy and sale price.

    Some items might only be sold to a ceartain vendor in a distant land, so a player might make money by moving goods.

    This would enable price controlling to discourage 'auctionhouse bandits' from buying everything then jacking up the price.

    Nothing like a little 'quantitative easing' to keep an handle on things.

    Prices could be different for those who engage in 'unhealthy commerce'.

    This might be a balance between a convenient auction house like WoW and the East Commons tunnel where you had to sit around all day to sell one item.

    It could be a somewhat free market but with enough control to prevent a runaway grief-fest.

    This might encourage traveling merchant players which would be cool.

    • 1479 posts
    February 16, 2019 7:08 AM PST

    Willam said:

    Just some thoughts on an auction house alternative...

    What if the NPC vendors start out with very little to sell.  Players sell to vendors of the appropriate veriety (thread to a tailor etc.) and these vendors then have the item in thier inventory to sell to players at a significant spread.  Players can sell to eachother directly for a better price.  Supply and demand as well as economic 'tweaking' can determin the price the NPC vendors offer as well as the spread between buy and sale price.

    Some items might only be sold to a ceartain vendor in a distant land, so a player might make money by moving goods.

    This would enable price controlling to discourage 'auctionhouse bandits' from buying everything then jacking up the price.

    Nothing like a little 'quantitative easing' to keep an handle on things.

    Prices could be different for those who engage in 'unhealthy commerce'.

    This might be a balance between a convenient auction house like WoW and the East Commons tunnel where you had to sit around all day to sell one item.

    It could be a somewhat free market but with enough control to prevent a runaway grief-fest.

    This might encourage traveling merchant players which would be cool.

     

    I can already see how it would quickly be exploited. Players buying every rare stock from NPC to sell back to players with a large fee. It just make things easier for traders...

    • 1281 posts
    February 16, 2019 5:02 PM PST

    I really don't like auction houses because it really removes the player-to-player interaction that this game is supposed to be composed of.

    When I started playing P1999 again, initially I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to having to sit in EC again after getting use to the Bazaar. However, when I reached the point where I had to start using EC again, I enjoyed it and didn’t miss Bazaar at all.


    This post was edited by bigdogchris at February 16, 2019 5:03 PM PST
    • 2 posts
    February 16, 2019 6:19 PM PST

    So for very rare items, whoever owns them will basically have a monoploy on those items regardless of any trade system in use.  If somebody tries to buy up all of a ceartain type of commodity merchendise, the vendoring program will detect a higher demand with lower availablity and close the spread buy raising the price that the vendor will pay (but not above the vendor sale price).  This increased demand price will encourage more people to aquire and sell this product to the vendor.  So people might sometimes hold on to their goods waiting for a spike in the price caused by somebody trying to buy up all of those items (sort of like stock market economics).  The more expensive and rare your item is, the more likely you would be to get full price by selling player to player.

    bigdogchris: I agree.  The social aspect is very important.  If NPC vendors had prices much worse than what you could achieve with other players, it would provide a tweakable system where player to player trade is encouraged and rewarded.  Even in EQ1 people would vendor loot for a fraction of what they could get by spending the day at EC tunnel.  So I am floating the idea of a vendor system that is not so different from EQ1.  The vendors would just be 'smarter' and only buy their own type of goods, keep a larger inventory of things that were sold to them and maybe be a little more fair with the buy/sell price than EQ1 vendors were.

    My hat is off to anybody trying to make a good game economy.  It is a tough thing to do.  Farmers, scammers, hackers...

    Fun to think about while we wait anyway :o)


    This post was edited by Willam at February 16, 2019 6:20 PM PST
    • 1921 posts
    February 16, 2019 8:09 PM PST

    Like it or not, tlpauctions (or a similar functioning site) and global chat channels are the features required to make it happen, regardless of how challenging it might be otherwise.  Global searchable historical prices, for everything.
    The days of being limited by the game itself are long gone.  People aren't going to stand by and be taken advantage of by collusion, monopolies, predatory pricing, price fixing, arbitrage, or similar anti-competitive practices.
    Keep that crap in the real world, not in my entertainment that I'm paying for.
    I'm aware that Visionary Realms philosophy on this is trying to guarantee arbitrage, but it won't work.  Shroud and PFO both tried it through very naive design along with restrictive mechanics, and neither worked. 
    The existence of in-game fast travel and instant communication outside the game world makes it impossible to sustain arbitrage.   The best you can do is thematically consistent temporal limits on delivery.
    For whatever reason, they're ignoring this logical hole in their design, but it doesn't matter.  Paying customers will simply ignore it and the result will be another attempt will fail, without learning from history.

    • 3852 posts
    February 16, 2019 8:28 PM PST

    vjek I can think of one sure way to keep monopolies, predatory pricing, price fixing etc. out of the game. Prevent humans from playing and promptly ban any that are caught trying. History shows that no other approach works.

    Game limitations are both necessary and sufficient to have an interesting economy if not a perfect one.

    Slow mail between most places perhaps even with risk that attachments will be stolen. Banks that do not magically teleport items you put in one vault to any other vault in the world instantly as you enter the branch. Brokers or auction houses that are regional and thus lend themselves to arbitrage by players. But with slow travel and no instant mail - arbitrage is harder, slower and riskier. As it should be. 

    Curse - just the hope that Pantheon will work even partly like that makes it harder to wait for alpha - curse!

    • 1921 posts
    February 16, 2019 8:40 PM PST

    Yet, the term 'regional' is an illusion, and it cannot (or will not) be enforced in Pantheon.  I agree with you on the value of slow mail delays, but there is going to be fast travel via druids and wizards, at minimum.
    When I can /join global_auction and WTS or WTB anything at any time, well.. the rest is history.
    I don't think VR is going to have the staff to protect the economy from the rest of the anti-competitive practices.  Especially given they've already said 24x7 in-game paid-employee GM's will be unlikely, post launch.

    • 1785 posts
    February 16, 2019 9:53 PM PST

    While I think it's important to recognize the potential pitfalls that can exist, I also think it's important that we don't overstate them.  Neither should we be making a lot of assumptions about what will be or could be in Pantheon.

    The truth right now is that we have NO idea of what VR is planning to do with regards to facilitating the in-game economy.  The only statement that has been made is that they want to try and support regional markets in-game, rather than a single global market - and even that statement was very vague.  So, I don't think any of us has the right to say that it's doomed to failure or not, since we don't know the specifics.

    One advantage VR has is that they have visibility into every current and past MMO in terms of what happened with the economies in those games.  They can see (just like we can) what systems were used, what the flaws were, and what players did in those systems, both good and bad.  Not only that, they have an incredibly dedicated set of testers (us) who will be ready and waiting to point out potential problems with whatever they do implement, before the game launches.

    So let's give them some credit, ok?

    Personally, I have my own ideas about what would potentially work well in Pantheon, and hopefully prevent too many abuses.  I don't mention them often, because most threads on the topic just amount to the auction house camp and the EC tunnel camp screaming at each other and refusing to actually try to come up with a better system that combines the best of both worlds.  Maybe when we get into Alpha I'll talk more about them.  Until then I'll just say three things I know to be true:

    1) If we do things "just like" any past game, we will inherit all the same problems those games had - and yes, they ALL had problems, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.  The right answer here will be to do something new.

    2) No system will ever be perfect.  Ideally, VR should be looking at what players do in other games and either finding ways to make that activity a good thing for everyone, or mitigate the problems that it causes.

    3) We should expect and accept that whatever is in Pantheon when it launches will one day need to change in some way to account for something that got missed or just wasn't expected.  It's the nature of the beast.


    This post was edited by Nephele at February 17, 2019 1:48 AM PST
    • 264 posts
    February 16, 2019 10:17 PM PST

     The AH concept is dead to me. If Pantheon goes with that model it will certainly be a mark against it in my book, one I can overlook as I am not primarily a trader in MMORPGs but I don't enjoy the automated trading systems in any MMO to date. It's rather trivial to play the market in such systems. It's not fun or interesting and it doesn't provoke any player interaction. Frankly I have more fun trading stocks at least there is some corporate intrigue, PR disasters, etc. that make it exciting. No such luck for video game auction houses though...the products are all listed at around the same price and occassionally a supply glut or shortage occurs for a little price fluctuation, that's it. No haggling with player traders, no making friends with crafters, none of the trade spam in the trading zone, in fact no trading zone at all just an NPC named "auctioneer" who has everything I'll ever need.

    • 1618 posts
    • 413 posts
    February 17, 2019 6:50 AM PST

    bigdogchris said:

    I really don't like auction houses because it really removes the player-to-player interaction that this game is supposed to be composed of.

    When I started playing P1999 again, initially I wasn’t sure how I was going to react to having to sit in EC again after getting use to the Bazaar. However, when I reached the point where I had to start using EC again, I enjoyed it and didn’t miss Bazaar at all.

    I agree.  Sometimes as you interact with players you get a great deal, or find something that better than you were looking for.

     
    I believe can combine two game mechanics together that compliment each other. if travel is to be meaningful and market will be more or less localized, have "some" NPC vendors on merchant ships that travel between continents.  Have a percentage of "goods" propagate out to vendors in coastal cities from the vendors on ships.  The farther away "goods" travel from their original place, the more they cost. This will give players an incentive to travel. Obviously ordinary goods would not be subjected fluctuations of price based on distance, but a rare flower would.
     
    The idea is merchant ships become the "EC" tunnels.  You want a better deal?  Get to the coast board a merchant ship, to buy/sell/interact and haggle with fellow players.  If you can't sell a piece to a player, well at least you will get more gold for it by selling it on another continent.
     
    Again 80/20 rule here.  You balance the mechanics.
     
    • 223 posts
    February 17, 2019 10:10 AM PST

    I amtotally agains a bazaar style system, I met so many people in the EC Bazaar, the reputable people, the scammers , the haggling and all those great crafters that would trade for their needs. Yes any system has pros and cons.

    Personally I would love to see a system where the actual in game currency would also be dynamic in areas or as a general integrated developer tool to control mudflation.

    • 1033 posts
    February 17, 2019 10:17 AM PST

    Yaladan said:

    I amtotally agains a bazaar style system, I met so many people in the EC Bazaar, the reputable people, the scammers , the haggling and all those great crafters that would trade for their needs. Yes any system has pros and cons.

    Personally I would love to see a system where the actual in game currency would also be dynamic in areas or as a general integrated developer tool to control mudflation.

    I would love to see dynamic currency as well. Take for instance people selling goods with one faction, and then... there is a random dispute with an opposing faction and through various concepts of tarriffs, banned goods, etc... one players goods are worth less because of it (you could make these all dynamic systems). The player could remove their goods (at a penalty to lose greatly) or they could ride it out, etc....

    The point is, trading would be a game rather than a player driven cheat market and lets be honest, this is all player trade is in games these days, a means for players to "legally" within the game cheat systems without the controls of the game. 

    • 627 posts
    February 17, 2019 10:52 AM PST
    In terms of auction house I think the regional auctions sounds great, varies of item drops would be found more often on some areas and if you ship these items to another area they could be more "rare". Same goes for materials special herbs, or rare ores could be more profitable if shipped to another area.

    When talking materials I hope low level mats can be usefull later on, and not only in early mats. This way ppl will trade and finde use of material for a longer time period. And not just ignored by players.
    • 1033 posts
    February 17, 2019 11:58 AM PST

    BamBam said: In terms of auction house I think the regional auctions sounds great, varies of item drops would be found more often on some areas and if you ship these items to another area they could be more "rare". Same goes for materials special herbs, or rare ores could be more profitable if shipped to another area. When talking materials I hope low level mats can be usefull later on, and not only in early mats. This way ppl will trade and finde use of material for a longer time period. And not just ignored by players.

     

    While some of these implementations will create some interesting mechanics at release, the fact is that Player trade (as is implemented without a controlled system like the adventure system) will end up as yet another means for content circumvention and one that drives the entire games design over time. 

    • 264 posts
    February 17, 2019 12:46 PM PST

     Tanix I find that an interesting perspective, player trade is indeed a form a content circumvention. When games make items NO DROP etc. it is done for the express purpose of keeping that content relevant. But when discussing a topic such as this couldn't the players take a max level character to trivialize the content to get their items? The only difference would be paying the high lvl player for their time instead of paying them for the item directly. At the end of the day players do not get to circumvent content without gaining enough game currency to do so...or making friends with the right people. If Pantheon is a group focused game the "endgame" group content should not have tradable drops...for exactly the reason you mention here. The NO DROP items should not be strictly relegated to raid content. When all is said and done a game must be very restrictive indeed if it wants to prevent players from circumventing content.

    • 1921 posts
    February 17, 2019 2:23 PM PST

    Here's the theorycrafted trading system I came up with in september 2018 after quite a lot of discussion on these forums:

    --

    At launch, there are at least 5 escrow agents per continent.  There are three continents.  In each continent, there is at least one agent per tier.  First agent is level 1-9, second agent level 10-19, third agent level 20-29, fourth agent level 30-39, fifth agent level 40-49.  Sellers/Adventurers come to these tier locations after adventuring to offload their items and get back to the dungeons/fighting.

    All the escrow agents do is accept items for sale and hold them until the buyer (or seller, if they don't sell) picks them up.  The seller interacts with the escrow agent, sets a price, and 25% of the selling price is immediately withdrawn from the seller, non-refundable.  The seller can remove the for-sale item at any time prior to the expiration of the sale, from the escrow agent, and they pay an additional 25% of the selling price, as a penalty to do so.  Items are available for sale for up to 7 RL days, after which the seller can obtain the item from the escrow agent for free.

    Each seller can sell many commodities.  Possibly without concurrency limit, but still limited by duration (7 days or similar, as above).  Concurrency limits here would be a tuneable value.
    Each seller can sell a limited number of items, which are explicitly not commodities.  These are also limited by duration, as above.  Start with something like 1 item for sale per tier, (1 item at level 1, 5 items at level 41) and expand based on quests, faction, prestige, diplomacy, whatever other thing you'd want to use to encourage whatever behavior is a design goal. (Note: for the three paragraphs below, the term 'item' covers both items and commodities).  Multiple items for sale, per tier, could be a tuning value. (10, 15, 20 at level 41, etc, if 5 is not enough.)

    So now what?  Buyers want to buy.  They go to some other NPC/interactable somewhere and they can search.  All they can do is search.  They can't buy.  They can't have items delivered via mail.  Search only.  No buy. No delivery.  No buy, no delivery, only search.

    Initially, the search results tell the buyer how much it costs.  Once the buyer marks an item for purchase, the location where the item may be obtained (which continent and which escrow agent has it) is revealed.  A buyer may only have one item marked for purchase at a time, and if they log off for more than 'x' minutes (something like 5-10), that purchase mark is lost.  However, they can cancel/clear a purchase mark themselves at any time.

    The buyer then travels to that revealed escrow agent and buys it.  Buyers only see items they have marked for purchase, but this doesn't reserve the item, it just makes it visible at the escrow agent for purchase by them (the buyer).  Any number of buyers can mark an item for purchase, concurrently.  Without marking an item for purchase no items are visible for purchase at an escrow agent.  Only a buyer/searcher/purchaser who has marked the item for purchase can actually get the item from the escrow agent.  If another player arrives at the location first, either a real-time update message clears the purchase mark, or the competing buyer is only and finally informed the item was sold upon arrival.


    More punitive options:
    Optionally, escrow agents may be provided by thematically consistent and regionally appropriate NPC guilds, if desired, that the player must align and maintain faction with to permit use.
    Optionally, it may be desirable to have different rules apply to the purchase of commodities.
    Optionally, capped buying and selling frequency limits, per hour or RL day, account wide.
    Optionally, punitive selling concurrency limits for both items and commodities, account wide.
    Optionally, you could also set up something like additional fees for additional sale duration days, if you wanted to, but there should be a reasonable limit, erring on the short/less side.
    Optionally, increasing punitive fees and/or temporal delays (see below) for high frequency buying or selling, tracked and imposed account wide.
    Optionally, search boards/npcs are always at least 'x' minutes/distance/travel time from the nearest escrow agent.  Not next to druid/wizard portals.
    Optionally, search could be done from anywhere, but purchase marks and location reveals must be done via NPCs at fixed locations.
    Optionally, when the item location is revealed when a purchase mark is made, it's to an always-distant or random escrow agent, perhaps never on the same continent as the buyer, if desired.  What escrow agent is chosen could be based on the buyers current tier and any below, or the item or commodity tier.  This revealed location after purchase mark could be unique per buyer, or set when the first buyer applies a purchase mark, depending on design goals.
    Optionally, an unavoidable delay of 'x' RL hours is imposed after purchase, where the item is then delivered from the escrow agent to the nearest bank from the agent.  This could also only be after certain above limits are reached as well.  Or with every purchase, if you really want to be sure. (the purpose of this would be to impose an additional punitive delay after purchase.)
    Optionally, you could charge a convenience fee to the buyer of sufficient quantity that only guaranteed on-continent pickup, but it would start at 400% of the value of the item minimum, was required at the time a purchase mark was made, was non-refundable, and still contained an unavoidable initial delay of 'x' RL hours.

    The only thing you need to do to prevent abuse is to impose sufficient temporal delay in purchases and sufficient punitive fees in sales.  If travel time isn't enough, add more delay.  If 25% or 50% of the selling price isn't enough, add more fees.

    -- EDIT: Typos


    This post was edited by vjek at February 17, 2019 3:08 PM PST
    • 1033 posts
    February 17, 2019 7:24 PM PST

    Ziegfried said:

     Tanix I find that an interesting perspective, player trade is indeed a form a content circumvention. When games make items NO DROP etc. it is done for the express purpose of keeping that content relevant. But when discussing a topic such as this couldn't the players take a max level character to trivialize the content to get their items? The only difference would be paying the high lvl player for their time instead of paying them for the item directly. At the end of the day players do not get to circumvent content without gaining enough game currency to do so...or making friends with the right people. If Pantheon is a group focused game the "endgame" group content should not have tradable drops...for exactly the reason you mention here. The NO DROP items should not be strictly relegated to raid content. When all is said and done a game must be very restrictive indeed if it wants to prevent players from circumventing content.

    Yes, I don't see why raid gear gets special treatment, but not the rest of the game. I think if you are going to go no-drop (I am not advocating this, just discussing it), then all items should be. I never liked the special treatment the raiders got over this. In fact, what bugged me about this was you would get raiders with all this no-drop very powerful gear, then... they would head in and solo the group content to farm for selling items on the market. So either all is dropable, or all is not, no special treatment. 

    Also, in the example where a high level heads in, kills the content and then allows another to loot, keep in mind the time requirement here. If the person who needs the item has to be present, then this greatly reduces the flow of items into the game. So even the work around for no-drop still has an impediment that can not be short cut. 

    Fact is, I really don't know the best solution here, I just know that player trade introduces an enormous amount of problems into a game system (content circumvention, plat selling/buying, mass content duping, mass inflation and game economics imbalance, etc...).

     

    I have toyed with different ideas, but I am not sure what would even work to be honest. 

    If you could make player trade more of a game, with actual elements of risk/reward and consequence, it might help some. Right now, it is a 100% content circumvention. Remember how expensive vendor items were in EQ? I mean, buying plate armor was very expensive and took an enormous amount of saving. Buying potions were ridiculously expensive as well. The items were priced in a manner to keep players from overpowering the design balance of the game. The player trade economy quickly allowed some players to amass far more money than was designed to be had by a single player (or even guild for that matter) in the game. Players then were using things like potions and other magic consumables to overpower content, which caused the prices to be adjusted and further skewed the market to be controlled by the players who manipulated the market (ie plat sellers) and then the game had to be designed around that to compensate. If you were a player who did not partake in the player trade market, you were at a serious disadvantage as everyone began using the market as a means to keep up. 

    Now that won't stop players from trying to sell the loot rights to items, that will always be an issue, but... you might be able to implement subtle design features that make sitting around farming gear over and over in a dungeon less productive. I personally dislike blatant in your face mechanics (ie the "invisible wall" mechanics). If the mechanic has some form of reasoned implementation that makes sense, or if it is a background subtle element that takes on a gradual effect, that too is more ideal I think.

    For instance, you could put in design elements that can test the level of the player and dynamically change the encounter in a way that makes the high level player less likely to easily over power the content? Possible, but not "easy" (scaling, additional encounters, additional spells, etc...). This would make the high level have to earn the fight. Also you could even do things on the loot side.

    For instance, I always thought that instead of BoP, or BoE, etc... you put in a attribute/effect decay system on to the gear which degrades the items stats with each trade. With that system in place, you could in a way put in a trivial loot code  that checks the players level who is attacking or helping the player (healing/actively helping/buffing a player) and immediately decays the item by a certain amount when it drops.

     

    So, lets say the item normally is a 10 AC item with 20% haste. If you are of the level range the encounter was designed around, if the item drops, you get that full power 10 AC/20% haste, but lets say you go back when the mob is far below you and you kill it. The item still drops (chance that is, rarity of drop won't change, you will still have to earn the time like any other), but because it is outside of its intended design, the item only provides a 6 AC/13% haste item. Also, if you decide to trade that item, it drops by a certain amount each time it is traded. So you get it and then sell it to another player, once that trade happens, the item drops to 4 AC/8% haste (this would likely be displayed to the player who views it so they know what it will degrade to), so on and so forth slowly degrading each trade until it is at 0%. 

    Now, what does this do? Well... 

    1) It protects the concept of "earning" your reward as it was intended by the developer. That is, those who go in and slay the dragon will get the full benefit of the reward. Those who buy the item will get a reduced less powerful item (use a explanation like magic in the item binds itself to the owner and this slowly eats up the power of the item as new owners obtain it). Also, because of the check for a higher level player helping, the position of loot rights selling, is less effective. 

    2) It still gives the player trade market what they want, a means to trade goods.

     

    You could make it where the first to loot, even if it is trivial content has a less reduction than a traded one (maybe 8 AC and 17% haste), which would provide people who later went back to get an item they still have use for the oppurtunity, but also it gives more reward to those who did the content at its range due to the increased risk. 

     

    If I had to implement a system, I would do something along those lines. It won't stop the "looting rights" players, but it will discourage it as if people have to go through the hassle of getting to the dungeon to get the item at its peak is likely to be less desirable than just buying a lesser item on the market. 

    Those who care about getting they peak stat gear will go to the dungeons and those who just want to buy their way up, will use the market. Risk and reward are better applied I think in such a system. It isn't perfect, but I think it is better than most TLC implementations as it doesn't punish the player, it merely doesn't reward them as well as they would have been if they did the content in its prime. This also would give people some pride in their accomplishments AND it would make those who "buy" their gear a bit more obvious. 

    Anyway, food for thought. 

     Edit:

    I wanted to add to this ideas well and expand on it a bit that I think would even ehance the idea as well.

     

    EQ also had the concept that you could tell what someone had by how they looked. So how you look was earned, and considered a sign of your achievements. Lets continue the idea I explained and expand it to not only the stats, but maybe even the name and the graphic of the item.

    So lets take the haste item I used. Lets call it a Flowing Black Silk Sash, it has 10 AC and 20% haste (not exactly the FBSS) and it has red/black shimmering look to it. So, if you earn the loot AT its intended range (lets say the code checks up to 5-8 levels above the content as this in many cases still required a group), you get the item exactly as that, stats, name and graphic.

    Now, you go to loot that item past the intended level design (you solo it for instance at 20+ levels later). The name changes to Torn black Silk Sash, the stats degrade to 8 AC and 17% haste and the graphic is a shiny torn sash  black/red sash with frayed ends. 

    Now if you trade this item, it degrades again, the name changes to something generic worn silk sash, the stats degrade again, and the graphic goes to a generic dirty belt look. 

     

    I understand that this could get very cumbersome for the graphic artist, so maybe you just do one transition from the main drop to all downgrades. That is, the original graphic for the original drop and all other down grades are a basic place holder like belt that can't be distiguished from other down graded belts. That means you only have to make one graphic for the downgrade according to type (plate, chain, leather, cloth) and the graphic for the original item. 

     

    What this would do is fully provide a nice addition to the risk/reward system. Players who went into and defeated the content as intended would (right level and looted it first) would have a special graphic, name and stats to show for it while all those who purchased it, or looted it after the level range would have a simple reduced and generic looking item. 

     

     


    This post was edited by Tanix at February 17, 2019 8:05 PM PST
    • 1785 posts
    February 18, 2019 12:08 PM PST

    @vjek, I like elements of your approach.  I would do some things differently if I were designing the different systems, but I wanted to give you some actual (and hopefully constructive) feedback on your idea.

    I like the concept of separating out the market for commodities, which I am assuming would be things like crafting materials, from the market for finished items, and having those two things behave differently.

    I also like the concept of a scaling penalty based on concurrency.  If I'm just selling one sword, it shouldn't be a big deal.  But if I'm unloading 30 swords, that should be tougher on me as a seller to act as a disincentive towards flooding the market.

    One aspect of your initial design that I think might be too harsh is the 7-day limit.  We should not forget that there are many players out there in the world who may only get to enjoy Pantheon once or twice a week.  By applying a 7-day limit, you're forcing them to make a hard choice between doing economic things on some of those valuable play hours each week, or experience the rest of the game.  I think it might be worth further discussion around what such a limit really achieves and whether there might be a better way to achieve that goal that's not as hard on time-limited players who still want to buy and sell from time to time.

    Again, just some constructive feedback for you.  I'll probably do an editorial on Pantheon Crafters at some point about what I think would work well and then I hope that you and others will provide constructive feedback for me there :)

     

    • 696 posts
    February 18, 2019 1:14 PM PST

    I am honestly fine with some no drops and some tradeable throughout the content. I don't get why it matters. Raid gear is obviously suppose to be stronger than group gear, like POS, but there were also really nice tradeable pieces in raid also, like White Dragonscale Cloak and the flame cloak. I think regardless if everything is tradeable people will still farm group content for pieces to sell regardless. If everything is no drop and crafting gear is the only tradeable gear...then people who dungeon crawl and level instead of crafting will be broke, while crafters will be making bank. So that will force people to craft to earn money even though dungeon gear could be better. But if reagents drop off the mobs then I guess dungeon crawlers can make money to by selling the reagents. So if reagents are off of mobs, then that will force crafters to dungeon crawl also for a certain period of time until they can become self sufficient and buy the reagents and make gear. 

     

    Anyhoo, I think a mix of no drop and tradeable gear is fine. We can also think about unique items. This will limit the amount you can have on one account. So if there are 8 characters on your account, then you can only have 8 unique pieces to sell. Anyhoo make bottle neck pieces unique and everything else, a spread of tradeable, no drop, and unique.

    • 1033 posts
    February 18, 2019 1:24 PM PST

    Watemper said:

    I am honestly fine with some no drops and some tradeable throughout the content. I don't get why it matters. Raid gear is obviously suppose to be stronger than group gear, like POS, but there were also really nice tradeable pieces in raid also, like White Dragonscale Cloak and the flame cloak. I think regardless if everything is tradeable people will still farm group content for pieces to sell regardless. If everything is no drop and crafting gear is the only tradeable gear...then people who dungeon crawl and level instead of crafting will be broke, while crafters will be making bank. So that will force people to craft to earn money even though dungeon gear could be better. But if reagents drop off the mobs then I guess dungeon crawlers can make money to by selling the reagents. So if reagents are off of mobs, then that will force crafters to dungeon crawl also for a certain period of time until they can become self sufficient and buy the reagents and make gear. 

     

    Anyhoo, I think a mix of no drop and tradeable gear is fine. We can also think about unique items. This will limit the amount you can have on one account. So if there are 8 characters on your account, then you can only have 8 unique pieces to sell. Anyhoo make bottle neck pieces unique and everything else, a spread of tradeable, no drop, and unique.

    Fine with me, I don't care about the player trade market and likely will avoid it unless forced (please VR, don't make players reliant on it). I was always the player who went and got everything through play. I hated buying things as it cheapend the whole experience, it was in my opinion a blatant cheat. 

    • 1033 posts
    February 18, 2019 1:43 PM PST

    Vjek, 

    Think more balance to your implementation. Rather than looking at trade as a list of abuses you need to stop and penalize, make trade a game where there is risk and reward, failure, consequence, and various other means of dynamic controls. That way trade seems more natural rather than invisible wall mehhanics or triggers trying to catch some misdeed. 

    If you develop your system from the core of such, you may find that abuses are less common due to your systems design. If you approach it as a list of behaviors you are trying to stop, that list will never be finished and the result will end up with a game that punishes many non-intended targets. 

    • 696 posts
    February 18, 2019 1:53 PM PST

    Tanix said:

    Fine with me, I don't care about the player trade market and likely will avoid it unless forced (please VR, don't make players reliant on it). I was always the player who went and got everything through play. I hated buying things as it cheapend the whole experience, it was in my opinion a blatant cheat. 

     

    I agree. I was never a trader either. I did beg for a certain period of time, but karma got me and I stopped lol. I was a kid afterall playing EQ. I do remember when I was a lvl 25 paladin starting my ghoulbane quest and at 30 completing it. Very memorable and tough, and fun. But yea, I like earning my gear, but I also like twinking my alts with the gear I earned to :P, or selling it to buy a raid piece gear piece from a raid boss I already downed, or from a boss that i've killed several hundred times and if I see that boss again I will smash my computer type of situation lol.


    This post was edited by Watemper at February 18, 2019 1:54 PM PST
    • 1921 posts
    February 18, 2019 2:39 PM PST

    Nephele said:... One aspect of your initial design that I think might be too harsh is the 7-day limit.  We should not forget that there are many players out there in the world who may only get to enjoy Pantheon once or twice a week.  By applying a 7-day limit, you're forcing them to make a hard choice between doing economic things on some of those valuable play hours each week, or experience the rest of the game.  I think it might be worth further discussion around what such a limit really achieves and whether there might be a better way to achieve that goal that's not as hard on time-limited players who still want to buy and sell from time to time.

    Again, just some constructive feedback for you.  I'll probably do an editorial on Pantheon Crafters at some point about what I think would work well and then I hope that you and others will provide constructive feedback for me there :)

    I put it in there just so there wasn't the plague of infinite sales time that was in EQ and other games.  If there's no cost to sell, then people just put the item up forever, and there's no incentive to compete on prices.  If there's no time limit, people don't care what the prices is, they'll wait forever.  To be clear, for the seller, this would be a fire and forget scenario.  Normally, they put the item on there, they walk away, go do whatever they want, and they get paid sometime in the next 7 days, or they go pick up their unsold item at the end.  That's pretty much it.

    Making it 10 or 14 days wouldn't be too bad, I don't think, but longer than that, and prices wouldn't be as competitive as they could be otherwise.  Nothing (or, at least, less things) prevent that same player from selling or buying other items and/or commodities.   It's true, selling would be limited, but say someone was level 31 , and you went with 5 sold items per tier, they could have 20 items for sale.  somewhere between 1 and 5 items per tier might be a reasonable starting point, depending on how many items you want players to be selling, versus commodities.  Personally I'd start at 1 and see how it went, and then increase it slowly after testing.

    I'll send you a pdf of the idea/implementation outline as it is (I updated it a bit after reviewing it yesterday) via PM.

    • 264 posts
    February 18, 2019 4:57 PM PST

     Just wanted to say I really like some of the ideas offered here, item decay on trade sounds like a good mechanic and I like Vjeks ideas on escrow agents. Making trade less convenient and making it less trivializing of the content really would go a long way to preserving the integrity of the game imo.