I am a fan of the old days where you have to actively work to sell / trade merchandise. If you look at the game as a whole, you really have to try and do everything to keep it immersive, interactive. Having automatic trade vendors takes away the ability to negotiate, which was a blast in EQ 1.
Now to avoid spam, I was thinking there could be general markets / tavern areas around the world that players could go hang out and spam sales / trades. So if you wanted to buy or sell something, you would have to venture to those locations. And be warned, there is usually a lot of brew drinking taking place at such times!! Are there going to be any custom brewers??
I am not a fan of making this part super easy or automated because it makes the economy saturated and impersonal. I know I could be odd man out here but...
What are some of your thoughts here?
I don't think the classical approach would work as well as it did back in the day. P99 is a good example of this.
The EC tunnel is just a spamfest. Negotiation occasionally happens but it's not really a big deal. There's even an auction channel parser you can watch when you're not logged in to the game that you can search for items you want to buy. It's a glorified auction house already, just another hoop to jump through to get similar functionality.
That said, I also think the system they added to EQ is overly convoluted. EQ2 style broker is what I would vote for, personally.
I really love the idea of interpersonal trades. Where a high level might see you actioning bone chips and trade you a great sword for them just out of kindness. You won't get that with a broker or afk bazaar feature like EQ1 had. But I am looking at the past through rose tinted glasses. I doubt it was as good as we remember. The amount of time wasted for one was insane.
I'm completely for a 100% player driven market. One of the coolest things about classic EQ to me was how East Common Lands tunnel became the trading hub of the world organically. The devs didn't program any infrastructure, or declare it as such. It just happened naturally as players explored and put their mark on the world.
Its just fascinating to me and something I'd rather see than any sort of system or area hard programmed into the game.
in my opinion, if you give players the opportunity to create and put their mark on the world instead of doing everything for them (this is the market area, this is where you do market things), it creates a deeper connection between players and the world that the devs have created.
Just my own crazy thoughts and opinions of course.
Sniggz said:I'm completely for a 100% player driven market. One of the coolest things about classic EQ to me was how East Common Lands tunnel became the trading hub of the world organically. The devs didn't program any infrastructure, or declare it as such. It just happened naturally as players explored and put their mark on the world.
Its just fascinating to me and something I'd rather see than any sort of system or area hard programmed into the game.
in my opinion, if you give players the opportunity to create and put their mark on the world instead of doing everything for them (this is the market area, this is where you do market things), it creates a deeper connection between players and the world that the devs have created.
Just my own crazy thoughts and opinions of course.
Like I said though, take Project 1999 for instance.
This is what buying things in Project 1999 (classic EC tunnel) has been reduced to: http://ahungry.com/eqauctions
Even if there is no hard-coded way to do it, someone is going to. Right now in P99, there is next to no communication between seller and buyer. You just use the searchable list to find stuff you want to buy, send a tell, and pick it up. It's not like there's some transcendental communication going on between players. Your average conversation looks like this:
"yo, I'll buy that X for 1.3k"
"k, meet me at t2"
Open trade, click accept, say "ty", go about your day.
Is the level of inconvenience involved in the auctioning process worth this extremely limited player interaction?
Personally, I hope they have something of a mix of styles in mind. I played EQ1 and traded in the tunnel. It was ok, but only because it was the only thing available. It does break immersion with all the spam so I am a big fan of designated trade areas. I do like the convenience of checking a databse to see what's listed, but don't mind running to a specific market place to go pick it up. I think a lot of how in game trading is handled will really come down to how the economy is set up; how player crafting, loot drop, and money sinks are brought into play will determine the best way to trade.
Sniggz said:I'm completely for a 100% player driven market. One of the coolest things about classic EQ to me was how East Common Lands tunnel became the trading hub of the world organically. The devs didn't program any infrastructure, or declare it as such. It just happened naturally as players explored and put their mark on the world.
Its just fascinating to me and something I'd rather see than any sort of system or area hard programmed into the game.
in my opinion, if you give players the opportunity to create and put their mark on the world instead of doing everything for them (this is the market area, this is where you do market things), it creates a deeper connection between players and the world that the devs have created.
Just my own crazy thoughts and opinions of course.
Wow, great answer :) I totally agree
In the EC tunnel days, you had to be in the trading game for a while to understand what items were sold for, what items were desired. It was learned knowledge that took time and effort to aquire. I like this aspect and think it adds a level of investment and pride to the game. These two things can keep people playing well beyond the games expiration date. I also enjoyed the organic creation the the EC tunnel trading area. People were proud of that, and pride drives time investment which keeps players playing.
That said, the addition of tools (auction house, etc) allows ALL players to function with the same data, regardless of investment or effort. It levels the playing field acrossed the playerbase and allows all people to engage in the trading system with little effort to knowledge. This is good for item availability, crafters looking for mats, and driving prices down (or up... cornering the market on spider silk for example), or filling a void in the market. It allows for a more robust although less personal system. Think: stock exchange vs trading bazaar.
One version of myself wants an auction house so I can dump my goods, hope to make some coin, and get back to adventuring. The other version of me wants to take the long road, which requires a time investment to sell goods, but satisfies my craving for more personal interaction and the ability to barter.
As Azotate mentioned above, the kind of trading system used will need to match the kind of game being made. If we're going to have more of a fast-paced themepark, the auction house should probably be used. In a slower-paced group-centric game like EQ, the EC tunnel method would fit in well. If the EC tunnel method is adopted, I would like to see this in a centralized pre-determined location, similar to the bazaar in EQ with a dedicated trade channel.
Dekaden said:As Azotate mentioned above, the kind of trading system used will need to match the kind of game being made. If we're going to have more of a fast-paced themepark, the auction house should probably be used. In a slower-paced group-centric game like EQ, the EC tunnel method would fit in well. If the EC tunnel method is adopted, I would like to see this in a centralized pre-determined location, similar to the bazaar in EQ with a dedicated trade channel.
I'm looking for a "slower-paced, group-centric game like EQ".
Thus, I want the old style trading, players only, no auction houses or anything of that sort. Players can determine where to trade - the EC tunnel was not designed as a trading spot by Verant/SOE.
Personal touch >> all, even if there is just a small amount of it.
IMO this is one of the things we are looking at with rose collor glasses. I can honestly say I hated trying to trade in Freeport for example. There was so much spam and if you guys remember back in the day when you could not even link an item? People had to give out the stats and then you had to walk up to them so they could open a trade window and you could see what they had. That was not fun... It got better when items were linkable but I thought the Bazaar was a categorically better system. I have to be honest I hate haggling in RL why would I want to spend my game time that I should be enjoying doing that? I recall those trading areas as nasty places where everyone was spamming and being asses, especially if you were low level because then they ,often rightly, assumed you did not have the PP and it was a waste of time to show you the items.
No matter what we do there will be some organic selling going on in any given zone but I would rather have most major cities have an individual Bazaar. That way as long as travel means something you can still have different prices in different locations and in some cities things will be plentiful and others they won't.
I would suggest putting in a market but give it fees. The further the item is from you, the higher percentage of the sale the auction house takes. I would make the base Auction House cut something like 10%, if you are 1 city away, 15%...getting higher the further you are away. This means if you are a lazy seller you can dump things on the auction house but you won't get the best price for it. If you aren't lazy you can use interpersonal communication and make some good money.
I'm actually not sure on the rules of linking threads from other forums, so please correct/edit my posts if need be Kilsin, but we had some good discussion regarding EC player trading on MMORPG forums, and Brad had commented several times in the thread as well. The discussion really picks up at page 3ish. It might spark some further discussion here.
http://forums.mmorpg.com/discussion/441137/environment-based-character-development/p1
And Liav, I see your point on P1999 and trading is poor there, but you can't use that server as a comparison to EQlaunch. Itemization is ruined on P1999 due to expansion content being locked for years. And, again, I would argue that player trading is a necessary inconvenience (to those who wouldn't enjoy trading) - and another element that makes a game world feel alive.
I don't want any kind of built-in auction house or trading hub or even trade channels. Let us figure it out organically. If the world is sprawling enough and travel isn't a breeze, individual markets could develop. There could be a few trading hubs where items from far away could be worth more to players there. If social interaction is the goal, automation of any kind (not only trade) should be kept to the absolute minimum or not implemented at all.
Everyone who is for an auction house system usually looks at this from the perspective of "I want an easy way to offload my goods and get paid", when in fact this is exactly the opposite thing I think we're trying to achieve with Pantheon. We want a slower paced game, much like EQ. Mudflation is a serious and epic problem in today's MMO's that has been caused mostly by instancing, and auction houses.
Keeping items out of market because you can't be bothered to sell them manually is actually incredibly useful to the world as a whole, obviously we don't want 0 goods entering the market, but we don't want too many either, auction house = too many. I can't remember how many times in Everquest I vendored something I could have gotten twice as much for if i spent an hour in the tunnel, but you know what, I don't enjoy that aspect of the game. This is just fine with me, because that's my choice.
If there were to be an auction house (regional) and it could not be avoided, it had better have at least a 30-40% market cut to strongly dissuade players from using it for anything pricy.
I still agree it should be less automated.
So special open world areas for selling / trading / drinking / story telling / socializing. These so called markets could have a small message board, allowing you 5 entries for selling and 5 for buying. You could check back at your message board for messages and make sales that way or an interested party could reach out for you directly. This way you can create contacts while offline yet it still keeps the social concept.
Pyye
cram9030 said:IMO this is one of the things we are looking at with rose collor glasses. I can honestly say I hated trying to trade in Freeport for example. There was so much spam and if you guys remember back in the day when you could not even link an item? People had to give out the stats and then you had to walk up to them so they could open a trade window and you could see what they had. That was not fun... It got better when items were linkable but I thought the Bazaar was a categorically better system. I have to be honest I hate haggling in RL why would I want to spend my game time that I should be enjoying doing that? I recall those trading areas as nasty places where everyone was spamming and being asses, especially if you were low level because then they ,often rightly, assumed you did not have the PP and it was a waste of time to show you the items.
That's exactly how I feel about "personal" trading. Its annoying and a decidedly un-fun activity for me. I just don't like to deal with the greed that often comes with these dealings.
I would rather like to see a kind of automated system. Not an auction house, but instead specialised NPC brokers. Lets look at how normal NPC vendors work:
- vendor always pays the same (usually low) price for items, and items always cost the same when buying (no supply/demand, the vendor always "magically" refills the stock)
- you usually cannot buy items back from a vendor (although it would be cool if Pantheon took that feature from EQ)
- items sold to the vendor are usually lost on server restart (was so in EQ)
Now the broker NPC:
- only buys items if he doesn't have much of the item in stock already (if the broker doesn't want to buy, you can still sell to a regular vendor)
- adjusts buying/selling prices based on the supply (if a broker has a lot of a specific item, its "buy value" could fall below the normal vendor price)
- keeps all items in its stock even over server restarts (unlike the normal vendors)
- there could be different broker NPCs for different wares (like, weapon broker, armor broker, instead of a filterable auction house window), for different level ranges etc.
And if you think that the item you want to sell is so rare/special that it deserves special treatment, you can still auction it yourself. This would probably be the case for most rare or sought after items, since its certainly hard to determine a "reasonable" price that the broker should use as base. But for common stuff...why not a broker NPC? This would also give the devs a fair bit of control over the economy, so it would be harder for players to manipulate or destabilize the economy.
Rallyd said:Everyone who is for an auction house system usually looks at this from the perspective of "I want an easy way to offload my goods and get paid", when in fact this is exactly the opposite thing I think we're trying to achieve with Pantheon. We want a slower paced game, much like EQ. Mudflation is a serious and epic problem in today's MMO's that has been caused mostly by instancing, and auction houses.
Keeping items out of market because you can't be bothered to sell them manually is actually incredibly useful to the world as a whole, obviously we don't want 0 goods entering the market, but we don't want too many either, auction house = too many. I can't remember how many times in Everquest I vendored something I could have gotten twice as much for if i spent an hour in the tunnel, but you know what, I don't enjoy that aspect of the game. This is just fine with me, because that's my choice.
If there were to be an auction house (regional) and it could not be avoided, it had better have at least a 30-40% market cut to strongly dissuade players from using it for anything pricy.
I couldnt agree more with this entire post. A 30-40% cut in the auction house wouldnt be enough, or wouldnt have the same effect you're looking for. Players as a collective are like water running down a hill... they will take the path of least resistance. One drop starts down one path, and the rest tend to follow in the same path. Having an auction house system will invariably crush open world trading.
I tend to get very involved in trading, especially if there is an auction house involved, and frankly I abuse the crap out of it. Im one of those MMO venture capitalists who will "play" the auction house, attempting to corner the market on certain fast moving goods, usually trying to hold prices unreasonably high for a few days at a time on select items. As soon as something new comes up that undercuts me, I buy it up, and relist it with the rest those items at my higher price. You can make inordinate amounts of money doing this, especially on goods that are essential, and its nearly universal across most MMO's with an auction house. Its good for me, but bad for you. And here is the best part: You'll pay the price because you have no alternative. In an MMO world without player interaction, accountability, reputation, or interdependance, does your satisfaction affect me as a successful trader? No, not one bit. Is the auction house system being used as intended? Yes, it is merely facilitating the sale and purchase of goods.
Now, lets look at the EC tunnel method of trading. Can these tactics be employed here? Maybe, but with limited effectiveness to the point where it's not worth it. I would need to trade 24/7 to keep this up, where the auction house does the work for me. Not to mention this requires player interaction, which brings about accountability, reputation, interdependance etc, which is exactly in line with the tenants of Pantheon. Even if someone is advertising an item lower than me in /trade or /ooc, they dont HAVE to sell it to me. In the auction house scenario, you don't have a choice.
Two thumbs up Rallyd and Dekaden. Both are spot on posts. I'll add a few more positives to the player auctions as well. Supply is not only controlled due to being unable to sell 24/7, but it is also controlled even further by restricting how many of your characters are able to sell. Most AH's in current MMOs allow you to sell X number of items on any characters on your account. So you may have 8 player characters selling 50+ items each. And, then it is just continual undercuts until you appropriately stated Dekaden that someone decides to corner the market and purchase all the undercuts. Whereas, when a player has to physically sell the items, they are restricted to that one player, and not everyone that's on their account, and there's a far less likelihood that a trader can corner the market. I also agree that a tax system would be meaningless, and I'd wager it would most likely removed after years of player complaints/uselessness. If everyone's receiving a set % tax, then, there's less plat on the market/players, which in turn would reduce the prices on the AH, so ultimately it would end in a wash. And, as Dekaden stated appropriately again - players will take the path of least resistance regardless - AH.
Another positive is regional player auctions form as well. If I looted an item from Unrest, I'm not going to sell it in Butcherblock, I'm going to travel to EC to sell it or further and vise versa. I often made a signicant bump in plat by saving my items to sell overseas when I traveled.
Also, I think another aspect that's continually ignored is that player trading is another one of the elements that forms the overall vision. It is an inconvenience versus an AH no doubt, but the overall positives significantly outweigh the negatives. It is the combination of the organic and necessary timesinks in EQ like player trading, meaningful travel, inventory management, etc. that made the world feel more real, larger, and significantly slowed the leveling curve. I've stated it in many threads, but, it just boils down to expectations again. Players that only have the 2-3 hour chunks (me) have to change their outlook and realize that it won't be a race to end-game like current MMOs, and embrace the world to recapture the EQ experience (or trust me on it if you didn't play EQ). When I first played EQ, I didn't immediately think where do I need to go to obtain 50 the fastest - I went where my friends were and where I heard stories of great loot - I went on an adventure.
Plenty of EQ could/should be updated or removed for Pantheon, but removing all the "inconveniences" would be wrong - it's what made the experience meaningful.
I don't really agree that the extreme inconveniences of original EQ are what made the game meaningful. Everyone's first MMO is their most memorable experience, generally speaking. EQ was the trendsetter for the genre in a lot of ways, and recapturing the "old magic" is probably going to be an impossibility until someone makes a memory destroying drug.
Pantheon is going to be a race to the endgame just like any other game (for a lot of people), and the people who want to make a more casual experience out of it will have the ability too, just like any other game. As I've stated in other threads, this is pretty much an inevitability.
Let's take Project 1999 for instance. Pretty much all of the inconveniences of classic EQ exist now and existed when the server launched. That didn't hinder the game from becoming a rush to the endgame, and it still doesn't. Before anyone says it, the fact that the game was locked to the Kunark era for several years is irrelevant to the point I'm making.
Unless the physical retail copy of Pantheon contains some mind altering drugs, it isn't going to influence player behavior and completely change our mentality on gaming. The same can be said of these antiquated mechanics that I truly believe only a vocal minority even really want.
This forum needs a poll feature asap. Or is there one?
Aldie said:Regional Auction Houses with high taxes and player run shops with no taxes in certain areas dictated by the players. That's what i prefer.
Regional auction houses with taxes varying depending on region could work.
Let's say you have 5 regions for the sake of example (North, East, Central, West, South) - Taxes increase 10% depending on how far removed you are from the region the item was listed at. EQ2 had a fun take on it by allowing you to avoid commissions if you go to the player's in-game house to buy the item directly from their sales crate(s).
Taxes at that point end up being a convenience fee, which can be worthwhile for preventing economic inflation.
There will always be players that are on the fast track in any game, none of us can question that. Nevertheless, I do believe some of the extremes in EQ are exactly what players looking to play Pantheon are wanting, including me. I can care less about being top player Pantheon. I am the kind of player that wants to see / experience it all at the pace my new friends and guild will take us. I will help, learn, coach, whatever it takes and keep it fun! Yep, keep it fun, that is something that often comes down to getting like-minded people together. That will be my first goal, find new friends that have a mature sense of humor and makes the most of any situation. Same type of relationships that lasted so long in EQ. (although I doubt I will lead or officer a guild this time around) hehe
Liav, what has been your ideal MMO to date and why? I have not figured out what you are really looking for in an MMO based on your Pantheon forum posts...
Pyye
Pyye said:Liav, what has been your ideal MMO to date and why? I have not figured out what you are really looking for in an MMO based on your Pantheon forum posts...
I don't think my ideal MMO has been made yet. Every game I've ever played I've found to be flawed, some more than others.
It'd have to be a mix of several games probably:
Combat: Depends on a lot. Dark Age of Camelot has the best tab-target based combat system ever (in PvP, in PvE the system falls flat on its ass). In PvE, Vanguard hands down within the tab-target genre. Outside of the tab-target genre, TERA easily wins. Overall I'd say Vanguard is my favorite. Best Bard class in any game ever, and every class had a very unique flavor that a lot of games tend to miss.
World/Feel: EQ. In terms of world size, design, diversity, tone, etc. this game probably nailed it, and they even managed to do it with 1999-era graphics. I'm sure it could be done as well or better in a modern engine. Lack of seamless world sucked though, and the plethora or invisible walls everywhere that prevented a lot of exploration.
Graphics: Guild Wars 2, hands down, is the most visually compelling MMO I've played so far. It's beautiful, and incredibly well optimized. 60 FPS with some relatively minor engine features disabled on 5 year old hardware.
UI: I haven't played a game with a default UI that I've liked so far. They're always bloated, ugly, and missing vital functionality with a bunch of unneccessary crap nobody cares about piled on top.
Player commerce: EQ2 wins. Broker/Auction House system with % based commission, with the option to pick up some items from the player's house and avoid the commission. It's a flawless system.
Player communication: EQOA. Same basic chat window functionality as other games, but the easy-access emote menu was fun to screw around with. Relying on /command based emotes is pretty archaic. ****, /command based anything is pretty archaic in 2015. We should be wayyyyyy past this by now.
The closest overall game to my ideal so far would have to be Vanguard. Despite its issues it still stands out to me, and could possibly have been the best MMORPG ever made had it not been a bug-riddled cesspool upon release.