vjek said: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.
Make it to qhere you can't have a global chat and only zone wide, as for the whole AH thing, this is tough, there no real answer, but what you can achieve in the Auction house you can achieve in player to player interactions, so honestly ah just makes it easier to achieve but not impossible for player to player. Plus I'm sure their will be guilds that are alrdy planning of picking up tradeskills for gathering and giving it all to they're guild mule and badically power level someone tradeskill so they can try to control the market for a short period of time til other players catch up, and by than they will have a fortune and be able to ultimately launch themselves into later content. It happens basically every game, and sadly the ah wasn't he reason why it succeeded it succeeded becuase people want better gear in general
On the plus side, VRI did hire an economist already, so hopefully they will keep an eye on things like this from a macro level (like fed action of easing or tightening money supply) to a micro level where Supply and demand drive price with NPC's.
I think this would also fit in with Aradunes idea of players doing a "silk road" kind of thing where some daring newbies travel to Skar land, get faction enough to be tolerated so they can manually sift lava through their fingers (need to have high fire atmosphere thingy for hands!) for the ore/gem chunks in the lava, with which they can bring back to Amberfaet and sell to NPC's. And probably come back 3 levels higher lol.
Riahuf22 said:Make it to qhere you can't have a global chat and only zone wide, as for the whole AH thing, this is tough, there no real answer, but what you can achieve in the Auction house you can achieve in player to player interactions, so honestly ah just makes it easier to achieve but not impossible for player to player. Plus I'm sure their will be guilds that are alrdy planning of picking up tradeskills for gathering and giving it all to they're guild mule and badically power level someone tradeskill so they can try to control the market for a short period of time til other players catch up, and by than they will have a fortune and be able to ultimately launch themselves into later content. It happens basically every game, and sadly the ah wasn't he reason why it succeeded it succeeded becuase people want better gear in general
I think trying to hamstring trade by not having global chat channels is a bad idea, especially in a social game. Nothing wrong with an opt-in auction channel for players to manually buy/sell/trade as they would still need to meet up in the world and work it all out player to player.
Auction Houses, well, there have been plenty of topics on that beast already. In short my personal hope is: No AHs. Players can utilize personal/placeable NPC merchants (in specific areas and who take a fee/% cut) that are searchable regionally but items must be purchased by finding the individual NPC, also the NPC would only be visible/listed while the player is logged in. Basically no easily dominated/cornered markets (especially when it comes to crafting supplies) and item sniping that AHs bring about as buyers would only have limited scope of the market at any given moment due to regional markets + only listing items for players who are logged in.
In general, I don't think you should or could stop the player-to-player global search & trading aspect. Even if the game didn't have text chat or global channels, you could still facilitate it all via Discord, for example. So in that sense, the value that an AH provides will be there, regardless if AH's make it into the game or not.
What I outlined on page 1 of this thread was a system designed to facilitate an in-game system of selling and buying, but with mechanics that made it very challenging to turn into an HFT (high frequency trading) stock market simulator. The presumption being, some kind of escrow system would likely be in place, so what can you do to permit legit players from using it, but prevent egregious abuse, cartels, syndicates, and monopolies? With appropriate seller fees, listing time limits, and unavoidable delivery delays, it accomplishes that goal.
I understand the design goal of regionalization. I see what developers are trying to accomplish. Yet, again, with fast travel and/or instant communication via Discord or in-game, regionalization is impossible to enforce.
What do I mean? I mean, if I know Jute is selling for 10s each in Whitethaw, and someone is trying to sell it for 20s each in Reignfall.. I know it.
Either I ask my guildmate, or I relog to an alt, or I use my two-boxed druid and I take myself there and look, worst case. Never mind automated screen scraping, memory scanning or client log parsing web sites like tlpauctions and similar.
As long as Discord exists and/or fast travel is in game, then regionalization, in the arbitrage sense, can't logically co-exist with them.
So, I get your point about players having global chat via things like Discord whether it's in the game or not. I'm less sold on global search happening outside of the game though - in my experience usually the game itself has to provide some level of support for that, either be allowing UI add-ins that could call out to an extern service, or by publishing an API.
If it were up to me, I think we'd end up with a tiered sort of compromise solution. Not really in a position to go into a lot of detail but, in concept:
1) For commodity items (like jute) there would be some sort of regional AH/consignment-based system. It's a given that players would find ways to figure out what was selling in different regions and that's fine. As long as travel wasn't completely trivial, I think it would end up ok, since we're talking about things that are generally bought and sold in large quantities by many, many players, and subsequently, it's harder for market manipulation to occur (and relatively easy to detect when it does).
2) For goods like equipment or adventuring consumables, I am really a fan of hireable/placable NPC vendors. As a crafter, the idea of setting up my own market stall or shop and hiring an NPC to stand there and sell my stuff is very appealing, especially if I can customize things a bit. I could go into a lot more detail here, but I need to get back to work soon.
3) Finally for very high-priced items such as very rare loot, or high-end crafted items, I actually think that things should be set up so that players are encouraged to trade directly for those. By that I mean, if I have Aradune's sword and want to sell it, trying to put that up on an NPC vendor or in the game's consignment system should result in prohibitively expensive fees. I should *have* to go to an auction channel or something to advertise it and find a buyer, or end up paying a lot of extra money just to be able to sell the item.
I will one day write about all of this in more detail. But for now, gotta go earn a living :(
Nephele said:So, I get your point about players having global chat via things like Discord whether it's in the game or not. I'm less sold on global search happening outside of the game though - in my experience usually the game itself has to provide some level of support for that, either be allowing UI add-ins that could call out to an extern service, or by publishing an API.
The way it's done on tlpauctions, P1999 EQ Auctions Logger, and similar sites is very simple. A single client /joins auction, and the parses every WTB and WTS line into a database, with time & date stamps. Then players come to the site and type in the name of the item, and are given the historical purchase and selling history of the item.
There's no API required. As long as a client log file exists, and someone is willing to run a single program to push it to the web server in real time, it's a done deal. A client log file has been confirmed, so it seems reasonable this will be in Pantheon. If you're reading this and are horrified, (not you Nephele, as you're not so easy to horrify.. ) it's been going on for more than 5 years on many, many EQ1 servers, both official and non-daybreak-hosted without issue. So, not a new thing, and now considered "normal". And possible without a client log file, without text chat, and without any support from the parent company whatsoever, if required.
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.
Unlike Tanix, I enjoy the player market.
Some consider the market bypassing content. I consider it another type of content that encourages player interdependence. There is not much point to crafting/harvesting if you only do it for yourselves and close friends. All that time and work deserves some reward, not too mention being able to help others and building a reputation as the go to guy for certain items.
Selling loot that I don’t want or need allows me to afford other items. I consider this content substitution. From selling my extra items, I can choose to concentrate on the content I enjoy, not just doing content because it’s required.
The best part is that you can choose to not participate. People like Tanix can still do it all themselves.
What about a message board type of system; kinda like posting an add on a post in the middle of town. This wouldn't be an AH, but would give a player the option to post an item for sale in a centralized location. The players could still spam General or Trade Chat as needed, but a posting of some sort would help alleviate the need to be online.
I'm pretty indiferent about an AH, but have seen the pitfalls in action, so even though I am indifferent, I would like to see something more social.
Something I'm not a fan of is the Guild Store system in ESO.
To be honest I'd be fine if all treasure was NO DROP, but that creates it own problems.
Crafted items would have to be considerably inferior else they would represent a content bypass. Not sure crafters would like that?
Also, assuming a lot of items are class specific it means I'd be spending a lot of my time in a group camping an area that has items I can't use and the rest of the time trying to pursuade a group to help me and camp for items they can't use. Or every location will need to have a boringly predictable spread of class items?
Being able to sell and buy items isn't really content avoidance, it just means whatever content you are doing is meaningful. Maybe I do get a regular group that will rove from area to area getting us equipped, but in those instances where I want something specific and my group has been camping with me for a loooong time, we can just move on and I'll simply try and trade for the item I wanted later on, selling my share of the loot.
As with everything, there is, of course, a middle ground. Say a lot of items are saleable, but items that are quest links or important quest end rewards are NO DROP. I would like to see that familiar system expanded such that some 'normal' treasure items are NO DROP. Maybe even 'special' or 'enhanced' versions of normal tresures are NO DROP, so that people will still prefer to get them for themselves, but *can* get the slightly lesser version with cash?
Assuming there is trading, there needs to be some kind of search/filter - the scrolling auction chat is eye-bleedingly tedious to most folks. Just a primitive 'notice board' style thing would be enough to put parties in touch and then the 1v1 comms can begin. I don't doubt that a lot of folks would use the auction channel in the same zone as the notice board - the option is there.
Maybe charge a small tax or charge for the notice board based sale.
Maybe offer consignment vendors so you don't need to be there for the sale. Bigger tax on sales and/or specific vendor service charges.
Anyway, this *has* all been discussed as noted above. I do agree that too much convenience could ruin the whole experience and economy, but some primitive and mundane improvements would make a massive difference to what a lot of players found prohibitively painful in games like EQ (classic)
Beefcake said:Unlike Tanix, I enjoy the player market.
Some consider the market bypassing content. I consider it another type of content that encourages player interdependence. There is not much point to crafting/harvesting if you only do it for yourselves and close friends. All that time and work deserves some reward, not too mention being able to help others and building a reputation as the go to guy for certain items.
Selling loot that I don’t want or need allows me to afford other items. I consider this content substitution. From selling my extra items, I can choose to concentrate on the content I enjoy, not just doing content because it’s required.
The best part is that you can choose to not participate. People like Tanix can still do it all themselves.
I agree. The argument for bypassing content could be made more in farming a mob like a hill giants for coin then purchasing items; however, even then, if it isn't as "challenging" as obtaining the item itself, most likely the individual put in much more time farming hill giants to obtain the item than if they actually were at the location themsleves. So, if challenge can be measured as a test of endurance, commitment, etc. then an argument could be made. I look at it as more of an alternative playstyle than content bypass.
Also, it doesn't bother me as much as the item already exists in the world and a player being able to buy it doesn't reduce it's rarity versus say a token based system where the item is available for purchase at an unlimited quantity on the vendors.
And, I like the statement you used regarding content substitution versus bypass. I sold old items or items I couldn't use to buy others. Or, I bought items that may have been from zones that I didn't level or had no interest in that were upgrades.
Tekzan said:What about a message board type of system; kinda like posting an add on a post in the middle of town. This wouldn't be an AH, but would give a player the option to post an item for sale in a centralized location. The players could still spam General or Trade Chat as needed, but a posting of some sort would help alleviate the need to be online.
I'm pretty indiferent about an AH, but have seen the pitfalls in action, so even though I am indifferent, I would like to see something more social.
Something I'm not a fan of is the Guild Store system in ESO.
When you have 2-3 hours to spare, read the linked Death to the Auction Hall thread on the first page. A lot of brain stormed ideas on that one, the craigslist style message board system being one of the proposals.
So not that I enjoy crafting..but I d enjoy farming for materials as well as dungeon crawls and raiding. If I invest 10 hours farming rocks, weeds and such and trade/sell this to a merchant and the merchant sells it to a crafter who then collaborates with other crafters to get the matterials necessary to make lets say a helmet; now consider all that time and effort from a multitude of people including fizzeld attempts to create, haggling, leveling up skills etc., Why not say that a helmet from an equivalent raid level value to the crafted lvl value should be much different? Afterall the effort is just as much to craft something epic as it is to get a drop that is epic from a raid, I wont say they should be equal but simply equal in desirabilty one may have a different AC the other may have a better stat on whatever.
Lets say I already have that helmet and all I want is the coin to save for the boots and have created a self event and contacts to achieve such goal started by my williness to do a 10 hour mind numing rock farming to get coin. The raid helmet can hav the cool status looks and graphics and the crafter can have a lesser look but with equal usefulnes non the less, some people love the haggle and some love to farm or trade just as some love to raid. One has to remember that once (EQ1 example or VSoH) you race to get the content that gets you lvl 50 loot from raids before everyone else, then all you do is log in at set time with the guild and spend x ammount of time in a raid and log off once the loot is distributed. My point is tha in the economy trivializing crafted gear will have a lot of players excluded from an mmo that needs such type of players that enjoy that type of social dependencies in the servers and most importantly pay a monthly fee. For the health of the future of this game you cannot ignore the people that will be paying monthly for that experience. If you raid and have your third sword of death, just maybe you may want to trade it with a crafter for a well haggled set of armor for an alt, so.... making everything no drop is taking away from someones game experience. I do like however the Idea of a trade degration system for gear crafted or by raid earning, that way you can earn it or craft it yourself should you want the actual top of the line version.
I enjoy raids, definitely a dungeon crawler with an occational like for farming mats, I do not like haggling (Damn EC shady vendors), crafting is not my thing nor remembering all the contacts to be succesful at that but I would not like to see others enjoyment of their montly fee payed be nerfed or taken away as a default. I did enjoy going to the market and getting to know and finding different vendors in a Saturday morning, it was an adventure in itself, I was more scared of handing out 1 pp in exchange for something that was possibly worth only half than going down in lower Guk whith a message that your invis was about to goooo!!
I oppose no drop, never liked it, yea I can live with it, there has to be a good way to control mudflation without making it a penalty to others. Just remember that when a law is passed someon elses rights are taken away :)
Raidan said:
Beefcake said:
Unlike Tanix, I enjoy the player market.
Some consider the market bypassing content. I consider it another type of content that encourages player interdependence. There is not much point to crafting/harvesting if you only do it for yourselves and close friends. All that time and work deserves some reward, not too mention being able to help others and building a reputation as the go to guy for certain items.
Selling loot that I don’t want or need allows me to afford other items. I consider this content substitution. From selling my extra items, I can choose to concentrate on the content I enjoy, not just doing content because it’s required.
The best part is that you can choose to not participate. People like Tanix can still do it all themselves.
I agree. The argument for bypassing content could be made more in farming a mob like a hill giants for coin then purchasing items; however, even then, if it isn't as "challenging" as obtaining the item itself, most likely the individual put in much more time farming hill giants to obtain the item than if they actually were at the location themsleves. So, if challenge can be measured as a test of endurance, commitment, etc. then an argument could be made. I look at it as more of an alternative playstyle than content bypass.
Also, it doesn't bother me as much as the item already exists in the world and a player being able to buy it doesn't reduce it's rarity versus say a token based system where the item is available for purchase at an unlimited quantity on the vendors.
And, I like the statement you used regarding content substitution versus bypass. I sold old items or items I couldn't use to buy others. Or, I bought items that may have been from zones that I didn't level or had no interest in that were upgrades.
Endurance challenges in EQ weren't simply that of "time", it is the management of the difficult situation for that period of time (modern MMOs apply mundane low difficulty endurance to many designs, in fact they are quite common in RMT designs to encourage players to purchase aids to speed up their low risk endurance play). Mundane low difficulty solo tasks (which is what hill giant farming became for kiting classes) are not equivalent to the difficulty and endurance of entering a specific dungeon and through group reliance, taking the risk to obtain a given item. Also, in such a solo example the player is not only circumventing the risk/reward balance as the content was designed, but they are also obtaining an item contrary to the basic games goals of group reliance. So then, the economic system becomes a means for players specifically to invalidate the basic tenant of "With greater risk, comes greater reward".
Now I am specifically basing this on such an example in EQ where for instance a druid becomes of a level where the hill giants are no longer difficult and the mundane time spent is all that is required. This level of play is no longer risk, it is merely that of reward through time to which imbalances the concept of risk vs reward.
What I find interesting is how such content bypassing is considered acceptable by many when it is the result of people obtaining group content, but not acceptable when it is raid content the player is bypassing on the market (many arguments have made exceptions on how raid gear should be no drop, but group gear allowed to be traded).
As for the harm an economic system of this nature provides, it encourages not only plat selling/buying practices and all that comes with it, but it also saturates the game with players/businesses permanently camping items in the game, blocking content from players who choose specifically to play the content as designed to obtain their item over purchasing it on the market.
I understand some people enjoy the trade market, and there is nothing wrong with such an opinion, but there are cons to such and the reality to what it actually produces. The fact is, at the end of the day, the practice allows a player to circumvent content that they would otherwise be required to complete according to the developers balance of risk/reward for that specific content.
Iksar said:Players can utilize personal/placeable NPC merchants (in specific areas and who take a fee/% cut)
That part sounds great. Player owned merchant NPC's who sell goods for players while players are out playing and enjoying the game.
Searching for the right merchant with the right goods can be an social adventure in itself, (if there is no automated search feature)
It would also make merchant location very important, just like in RL. So higher rent could be charged for the better spots, that in turn drives the merchant owner to ether raise prices or sell a lot of items quickly to make enough money to make a profit from their high traffic, high rent merchant location.
Those looking for a deal on goods would have to be willing to go away from the main commerce area's and find the low rent merchants that perhaps have better prices. ( low rent = less overhead=lower price for consumers)
Regarding having players manually search through vendor stalls / player merchant inventories..
Project Gorgon tried this exact mechanic in 2018. It proved so tedious, players simply didn't do it. They added in searching golem NPCs to assist in finding items. They didn't allow you to purchase from them, just find where the item was being sold.
Of course, the in-game or out-of-game tlpauctions style global historical price search (from EQ1/P1999) will also exist, regardless of what VR does, so that will satisfy players looking for that. Of course, even in project Gorgon, today, there's nothing stopping players from manually searching, if that's their desire.
vjek said:Regarding having players manually search through vendor stalls / player merchant inventories..
Project Gorgon tried this exact mechanic in 2018. It proved so tedious, players simply didn't do it. They added in searching golem NPCs to assist in finding items. They didn't allow you to purchase from them, just find where the item was being sold.
Of course, the in-game or out-of-game tlpauctions style global historical price search (from EQ1/P1999) will also exist, regardless of what VR does, so that will satisfy players looking for that. Of course, even in project Gorgon, today, there's nothing stopping players from manually searching, if that's their desire.
I'm still a proponent of NPC vendors (hired, placed, and maintained by players) as a mechanism for selling items.
I don't mind the idea of allowing people to search to find out where things are being sold. So for example, someone should be able to see that Nephele has a Weaponsmith vendor located in Faerthale. And possibly even that the vendor has Coldark Steel Longswords in stock.
I do not support an in-game way for people to easily compare prices between multiple vendors. I get that someone will probably build an out-of-game way to do it, or run a "price check" channel in game, or whatever. That's fine, it can't be prevented (but can be mitigated - more on that in a moment). I feel like NPC vendors are a "halfway" solution between the EC tunnel style of face to face trading and the market board style of completely anonymous buying and selling. I want both buyers and sellers alike to at least feel like they own part of that interaction - the buyer, because they half to travel to the NPC vendor, and the seller, because they have to set up and maintain the vendor (and hopefully the stall where the vendor sits).
History tells me that no matter what we do, there will be situations where supply outstrips demand for items in the economy. This is true whether we're talking about loot, or crafted items, or whatever. I want sellers to be able to compete based on price, selection, and location, as a way to insure that people who want to participate in the economy aren't shut out from doing so. This is why regional markets are importnat - they allow for sellers to compete based on location. Yeah, my price might be a little higher than someone else's, but you can buy it here, now, and you don't have to travel two cities over to get it.
The other aspect of this however is selection. For commodity items, such as crafting resources, there's not much you can do to improve selection (at least, not without going with SWG-style resources that have stats of their own, which is something I don't think Pantheon will do). However, if itemization is set up well enough, you *can* make selection matter for finished goods. Instead of Nephele and Iksar competing to sell those Coldark Steel Longswords, Nephele is selling Fire-hardened Coldark Steel Longswords of Strength, and Iksar is selling Cold-forged Coldark Steel Longswords of Brutality. This allows our prices to vary more, because we're no longer selling the same exact thing.
So the trick to mitigating the impact of global price search is to have a very large variety in the items that can be produced and sold. That way even if you have 20 people selling the same general class of item, the fact that they all have different variations allows them to all (hopefully) participate in the economy without triggering a massive price war.
@Nephele
I’ve got a few changes to your market idea I’d like your feeling on.
1) No global search tool even to find locations of specific items. Force people to send friends out to check different markets. Actually against global channels only zone channels and guild channels.
2) Known location specific NPC bazaars. Rent a booth and hire an NPC then stock your booth. Your highest priced items become visible decorating the stall just for coolness factor. Each bazaar will have a search function that lists the items and the address of the stall (maybe with a player set stall name). In the same bazaar I think it would be fair though to have the prices listed in the search tool, that does not mean you will the first one to make it to the stall before the item is nabbed. The booth size and vendor rank you hire will limit your maximum offering price and your tax rate.
A cross between the live shelves and a searchable system would be the Consignment shop system.
1) Again specific locations will have a set of shops with item listing price ranges.
2) These shops will have actual shelves with one copy of each item for sale visible on the shelves. Sorted by type and item level for shopping convenience.
3) The lowest priced one is aways sold first.
4) Players can set the starting price, the incremental price reductions, the time increments and the time they want the shop to hold the item which will in turn effect both the listing cost and the final cut.
I have long been a fan of a commodities exchange for raw goods but one with a fluctuating price:
1) Each localized exchange has a target inventory of each different raw good in the game.
2) If the exchange is below the target inventory the buy and sell price will go up until they reach the target inventory.
3) If the inventory is higher than the target then the sell and buy price will begin to lower and eventually reach a maximum inventory.
4) The target inventories will change over time based on how many of each resource passed through the exchange (heavy math involved)
5) There is a possibility to make the payout for selling to the exchange an Exchange Credit rather than cash.
6) In addition to cash prices on player vendors there could also be Exchange Credit prices.
7) Players can buy exchange credits with gold or receive them from other players as a tradeable item.
8) This way the exchange never adds new gold to the economy only takes it away.
As others have pointed out, any limitations to the trading system implemented by VR will be added via a 3rd party, be it Discord or a Forum. As other have mentioned p99 already does this. People will create a forum or subreddit for selling items on a specific server and utilize that. Creating artificial restrictions on the trading system in game only hamstrings those who don't know where else to look.
As for the tradable vs no drop agrument. I hated when no drop items became more and more prevelant. In raids if someone with a good item got an upgrade, they would often pass their old item on to someone else. I remember when I got a Necro only upgrade I was able to pass on my old robe to another caster. This allowed for multiple people to receive upgrades off a single drop. Once no drop became more and more prevelant that stopped. During Luclin we only had 1 Beastlord in our guild... so made one and brought them to raids and sat them afk. That beastlord had full no drop level 60 raid gear before he was level 20. Had those items been tradable we would have sold them and used the money to buy people spells.
A game economy is very much part of a game and should never be overlooked or added on at the last second. Every aspect of the game needs to be designed with "how will this impact the player driven economy".
Trasak, see my feedback to your post in-line below :)
Trasak said:@Nephele
I’ve got a few changes to your market idea I’d like your feeling on.
1) No global search tool even to find locations of specific items. Force people to send friends out to check different markets. Actually against global channels only zone channels and guild channels.
Neph says: I don't think this would work. vjek would point out (and he'd be right) that even if you can't make a global chat channel in game, someone would just set up a discord to do it. Plus, there are so many potential community benefits from allowing players to set up custom global chat channels that it doesn't feel right to not allow global chats to happen. For example, back in EQ on my server we had a custom /rescue911 channel for people to ask for help with corpse retrievals in dungeons. I'm ok with channels like /shout and /auction being regional or zone-only just to cut down on spam. But we should still allow people to set up something like /globalpricecheck if they want to.
2) Known location specific NPC bazaars. Rent a booth and hire an NPC then stock your booth. Your highest priced items become visible decorating the stall just for coolness factor. Each bazaar will have a search function that lists the items and the address of the stall (maybe with a player set stall name). In the same bazaar I think it would be fair though to have the prices listed in the search tool, that does not mean you will the first one to make it to the stall before the item is nabbed. The booth size and vendor rank you hire will limit your maximum offering price and your tax rate.
You've got a few things here - let me unpack.
1) Vendor locations: I feel like if there's an NPC town or city on the map (or even just a big camp of friendly NPCs), then there should be some limited number of vendor spaces in that location. The bigger the location, the more vendors it can support, but the more expensive it is as well for the player hiring the vendor. So for example, big cities like Thronefast can support something like 50 vendors, at a rate of 1 gold coin per week, plus whatever they charge as fees on your inventory. Go out into Avendyr's Pass and maybe there's a town out there that can support 20 vendors, at a rate of 65 silver coins per week. Go further out into the deep wilderness - say, in the Silent Plains - and maybe there's a hunter's camp that can only support 10 vendors, but at a rate of 30 silver coins per week. So, as a seller, if you want to sell in the bigger markets it's going to cost you more. However, if you're willing to sell in more out of the way places, it's cheaper - and you might be able to capitalize on buyers that are already in those locations.
2) Decorating/customizing vendor stalls/booths - Absolutely. Especially in a big market, you want to make your vendor stand out.
3) Price search within the local marketplace - this seems fine. After all, the vendors are all right next to each other.
4) Restrictions on sale prices and "vendor rank" - this gets into detail that I think should be fleshed out separately from this thread. I'm down the idea of a seller shelling out more cash for a bigger storefront, more (vendor) inventory space, and so on. As for prices, I don't think you should allow players to pay more for a higher price ceiling - and the reason for that is that I feel that players should be pushed to do face-to-face trading for very valuable items, rather than putting them on a vendor. If something is truly worth 10k platinum, I should have to go meet the seller somewhere to get it.
A cross between the live shelves and a searchable system would be the Consignment shop system.
1) Again specific locations will have a set of shops with item listing price ranges.
2) These shops will have actual shelves with one copy of each item for sale visible on the shelves. Sorted by type and item level for shopping convenience.
3) The lowest priced one is aways sold first.
4) Players can set the starting price, the incremental price reductions, the time increments and the time they want the shop to hold the item which will in turn effect both the listing cost and the final cut.
It's an interesting idea, but I worry that this would just generate price wars between players. One of the great truths about game economies is that for every seller that takes the the time to try and price at what they feel the item is worth, there's another seller who just looks at whatver the lowest price is and prices below that because they want to sell fast. This is actually one of the reasons that I don't like market board systems sometimes, because people get downright silly about price wars - and then that enables people like ME to do nasty things like intentionally drive the price down so I can buy up all their stock and then relist it at the price I really wanted to sell for. And while that may be great for ME, it turns the economy into a PvP game and that can damage the experience of people who really just want to make/obtain and sell stuff for reasonable prices. So, allowing players to sell multiple finished goods via the same "storefront" feels like it might push people towards some of the player behavior we see with market board style systems.
That said, I think the reason you're thinking along these lines is that you want to give people a way to sell items if they don't have a vendor. Is that accurate? If that's the case, then what might be worth considering is a blind reverse-auction system like FFXI - where you can put your item up and specify the minimum price you're willing to sell for, but the buyer has to enter the price they're willing to pay - which could be higher than your minimum. What that system tends to lead to, behavior-wise, is that players tend to settle around the "going rate" for an item, with some sellers pricing lower or higher, but it avoids outright price wars and market manipulation (at least, to a large degree)
I have long been a fan of a commodities exchange for raw goods but one with a fluctuating price:
1) Each localized exchange has a target inventory of each different raw good in the game.
2) If the exchange is below the target inventory the buy and sell price will go up until they reach the target inventory.
3) If the inventory is higher than the target then the sell and buy price will begin to lower and eventually reach a maximum inventory.
4) The target inventories will change over time based on how many of each resource passed through the exchange (heavy math involved)
5) There is a possibility to make the payout for selling to the exchange an Exchange Credit rather than cash.
6) In addition to cash prices on player vendors there could also be Exchange Credit prices.
7) Players can buy exchange credits with gold or receive them from other players as a tradeable item.
8) This way the exchange never adds new gold to the economy only takes it away.
Don't take this the wrong way, but at first glance this seems a bit unnecessarily complicated. If the point of a commodities exchange is to allow players to buy and sell commodity-type items (like crafting materials) to each other... why would you need targets or exchange credits? Just allow them to put their stuff up for sale in bulk and let supply/demand do the rest. I could see the other stuff mattering if you wanted NPCs to buy from the exchange as well. For example, the Thronefast guards put up an order for 10,000 bear pelts to make new cloaks for the troops. But that would violate your point number 8 where you say it shouldn't add gold to the economy. I might be missing what you're really trying to accomplish here, so apologies if that's the case.
@Nephele
Purpose of the Commodities exchange:
The main purpose I see for the commodities exchange is to have an NPC that will buy raw commodities a little bellow Local Market price and sell them for a little higher.
Purposes
Harvesters will always have a place to go to dump their inventory for a quick return rather than needing to wait for someone to buy it.
Crafters will always have a place to go to get the raw materials they need for leveling crafting. (This value will significantly drop if VR chooses to make leveling crafting time intensive rather than material intensive because a lot less material will be needed. Then again they may make resources a lot rarer so having a way for harvesters and crafters to meet up will be even more important)
Commodities Trader play stile. Knowing the market values of different locations may give players the opportunity to buy from one vendor cheaply and carry it to another vendor very far away to sell for a quick profit to expand their trading empire. This of course assumes that fast travel will not really be usable for this nor would sticking in one bank and pulling it out of another.
Ease of trading I hope will help keep prices of raw materials down low enough that making and item is a value added process.
The target inventory is a tool used to generate the market value. If the inventory is full but no one is buying then its priced too high. The price will keep falling until the inventory drops bellow the target inventory. Likewise if no one is willing to sell for the price the vendor is offering then the actual market price is higher and therefor the vendor needs to raise its price. There will also be a bonus payout per 10% bellow target inventory and a penalty to sell for every 10% above inventory so that someone cannot dump everything at once for a huge profit.
(It is complicated as I'm sorta trying to duplicate the commodities stock exchange but within a game)
Purpose of the Exchange Credit:
There is a chance that players could find a way to manipulate the exchange and create a ton of gold which could crash the economy. If there was a buffer currency involved in the exchange then the risk would be more limited.
Crafting quests could award a crafter Exchange Credits equal to the local material costs for the item in order to fund their craft without adding cash to the game through quests.
Need to find a good thing that harvesters can spend the credits on and the intent is for them to spend it on crafters vendors to help full the cycle.
(some people see dead people, I see the world as math)
Thanks Trasak, now I understand where you were coming from better.
My (raw) thoughts are:
- It's been my experience in most games that harvesters *always* end up with a market to sell to, because many crafters don't really have a desire to go invest a lot of time in also doing harvesting. This is especially true if the crafted items made with those resources are still marketable themselves, So, I don't really know that giving harvesters an "easy source of quick cash" is really needed. I just don't see them having much trouble selling their stuff to live players.
- I will caveat that a LOT depends on how resources are used by players and in what quantities, so this might be an area where we should see how things work during Alpha before saying it's needed or not. I mean, no one really knows what Ceythos is planning except for Ceythos. I try to read his and the other devs' minds, but usually my trusty magic 8-ball tells me that the answer is hazy and I need to try again.
- I support the idea of people buying low and selling high if they enjoy that sort of gameplay, but I think you can still do that with a straight up buyer/seller transaction - no NPC warehousing service required. In actuality, what I would like to see for bulk resources really IS a market board type setup, where players have the ability to place "buy" orders as well as "sell" orders (similar to how EVE online does it). That way, if I need wolf pelts, I can go to Faerthale and set up a buy order for 100 wolf pelts at 5 silver each. Someone else could come set up a buy order for wolf pelts at 6 silver each - theirs would get filled first. The sellers could also say "your price is nuts" and list their stacks of wolf pelts for 10 silver each. As long as there's ongoing demand for wolf pelts, things sort themselves out pretty quickly. And I don't believe it's a bad thing if people need to wait a day or two for their stuff to sell, either. They can always reprice lower (or higher in the case of buy orders)
- I think the key for me is that all money involved in these transactions should ultimately come from players. If we do that, there's no need to worry about a buffer currency or anything like that. Yes, that does mean that occasionally, someone might come through and buy up every single wolf pelt in a particular market - but I don't actually think local market shocks like that are a terrible thing. That might encourage people to move around a bit more, or hunt their own wolf pelts, or even just to switch focus and go work on that fishing they've been meaning to do while they wait for more wolf pelts to appear on the market.
I don't think your idea is bad at all - I just think that there's probably a simpler way to handle commodity-style transactions for Pantheon.
I really don't have a problem with market boards. While the EC tunnel was fun and exhilirating, it was also frustrating. If the same tyle of buy/sell was implemented today we'd just set up forums for the high value items and arrange purchases there. When Luclin came out with the Bazaar it was a lazy fix to this. You still needed to leave your character logged in.
I like FF14 system. You have a retainer, NPC, that can hold 20 items. Once the retainer is full you can't sell more items. You can obtain more retainers but it still puts a way of caping the market from someone flooding it. You have to decide what you want to list if you have lots of items.
In Aion I played the market game. It was the first MMO I really tried. I would log on twice a day and buy every potion listed for less than what I was selling them for and relist them. These people made money, I made money, and it created sort of a market competition. This does lead into the possibility of someone dominating a market, but if you implement something similiar to FF14 by caping the amount of items listed I think this would help.
To me the manner in which goods are exchanged is less important that what goods are able to be exchanged. A healthy crafting community is crucial to a player driven economy or a surplus of tradeable items. I hated when EQ started implementing no drop items, it wrecked the economy.
Another way to look at the auction house, strictly from a game economy point of view is that it makes selling items much easier. You could make a point and I believe could show with evidence that requiring players to manually sell items may actually reduce mudflation because there would be a certain percentage of players that wouldn't want to take the time to sell items. Those items may just die with characters as accounts are closed.
Of course, I don't have the ability to pull analytics for this but a game that added an auction house at some point after release should be able to look at this.
One thing that has been pointed out and I believe is completely true for this (and other) aspects of the game is that if VR don't provide something that is useful and usable then it will be done for them and will almost certainly *not* be in a way that is ideal or even good for the game.
The example for trade is that if there is no filterable, searchable, global trade, then we will end up with a discord channel becoming popular that logs every trade and makes a global database which can be searched and filtered and everything but the very final exchange is uncontrolled and for even that I wouldn't be surprised if a trader guild appears to make a paid delivery service. The result of that is no one will need to trade within the game at all and the economy and trading gameplay is utterly at the mercy of an outside system.
The much better way is for VR to develop a system that is in game and is effective and usable enough that the majority will want to use it and external systems can't gain enough of a following.
I would say the same applies to things like mapping, beastiaries, player reputation and policing, etc.
VR seem to currently have the attitude that there will be 3rd party tools, so why do thier own? And that 'player-evolved' systems are even a good thing. This is one of the few things where I think they are being naive and I disagree with their approach. To me it's obvious that 3rd party tools will not be in-keeping with the game design, will have uncontrolled consequences for the game and will likely include a whole load of stuff (ads, spoilers, exploits, whatever) that no one really wants, but will be unavoidable.
ENJ Blockchain could be used to defend against 3rd party sites. They just launched an SDK for Unity. From what I read VR could mint their own ERC-1155 tokens called Plat, then prevent 3rd market trading. Only have player to player trading.
Blockchain tech is coming soon enough to social media, banking. autonomous vehicles, logistics. etc. I don't propose that VR allow the melting of items that could be sent to another game or turned into real cash. But you could melt down an item into ERC-1155 "VR Plat". That could be spent in Pantheon/VR for ..something. Or use it to take money out of the game economy.
it's just another tool in the arsenal to control the game economy. I wish I new more about the Unity/ERC-1155 backend.
Not saying it would be this awesome thing. But don't ignore blockchain technology, because it may become a valuable way to solve complex problems in the future.