Kobrashade said:I still really like the idea of trading person to person some way. I don't think I have the answer or suggestion but If there could be some sort of hybrid system implemented where you can sell maybe a certain amount of items through an auction house, but have to trade in person for additional sells.
The limited AH is a decent idea. Even when I had my AH bot running (main character before I got a second account) I'd use the chat chanel to advertise certain items. I found it useful as a seller and buyer to have links to gear in chat that you could click. Earlier on in the game and with each new xpac weapons and gear would show up in chat that I didn't know existed.
Feyshtey said:I just hit that /auc macro every time I entered a new zone while traveling
God bless you for not being one of the annoying people that used /ooc or /shout !
I would prefer a nice middle ground as well.
Perhaps a system where you can use a message board to know the name of the person selling and the item they are selling. That way the person who is selling can wake up in the morning before work and not see a successful auction in their mailbox but a letter asking for a time and place to meet for the sale to happen.
-Todd
tehtawd said:I would prefer a nice middle ground as well.
Perhaps a system where you can use a message board to know the name of the person selling and the item they are selling. That way the person who is selling can wake up in the morning before work and not see a successful auction in their mailbox but a letter asking for a time and place to meet for the sale to happen.
-Todd
Pretty cool idea.
Kobrashade said:tanwedar said:For those of us who leave a second account running and/or leaving your characters on overnight/during the day, how is that different than an offline AH? If you use a bot and you're at your computer or walking to the computer and checking on it occasionally you're doing barely anything in the end. Leaving it active (bot or not) while not at the computer is the exact same as an offline AH - you aren't having to do anything or be there for the sale.
This is an interesting point. I did not get to experience the Bazaar trading or person to person trading. When I first heard about it, it sounded really cool. But reading and thinking about it some more, I feel that if the end result is leaving my computer on and watching tv or tab out surf the web etc, I am not doing anything at all. I am trying to imagine playing the game and coming home from work and being faced with the decision 1) do I play with my friends and continue to adventure or 2) go to X location and afk to finally sell my wares.
I still really like the idea of trading person to person some way. I don't think I have the answer or suggestion but If there could be some sort of hybrid system implemented where you can sell maybe a certain amount of items through an auction house, but have to trade in person for additional sells.
The advantage of the Bazaar was that you didn't need to go AFK if you wanted to do deals with people in person. You set up your character as a trader and then still posted to /auction with the items you wanted to sell. People would then send you a tell and you could haggle if you wanted to. Of course with the Bazaar you also had the option of going AFK if you just wanted to sell at the prices that you had marked for all your items. So it was basically the best of both worlds. You could interact with people the same way as you would in EC tunnel if you wanted or you could go AFK and just let other people buy at the prices you had set.
It is basically a win win situation. You have the choice to do whatever you want.
Alexander said: But did that mean that anyone who didn't have their prices firmly set were expected to be ok with lowering them? Was haggling for a lower price a given if the merchant wasn't on afk auto sell mode? I never played in the bazaar.
There was no expectation to lower prices although people did ask if you would lower them from time to time. Or sometimes people would ask if you would be OK swapping an item with another item of similar value. Things like that really. Of course if you just went AFK then people could just buy from you based on the prices that you had set. Of course you could refuse to haggle if you were set on selling an item at a certain value just as you could if you were trading in EC tunnel.
The downside was that people could search the whole bazaar for an item, and run to the one person with the lowest price. That's great when you're buying but sucks when you're selling. And it meant that no one really had to invest any time or effort in any transactions. There was no value in player knowledge because there was no need to have any personal knowledge of the state of the market in regard to any particular item. Search for item and buy lowest, or search for item set lowest price. Maybe you'd really mix it up and go way out on a limb to set an average price hoping the lower-priced merchants would sell out and yours would still sell later in the day.
Feyshtey said:The downside was that people could search the whole bazaar for an item, and run to the one person with the lowest price. That's great when you're buying but sucks when you're selling. And it meant that no one really had to invest any time or effort in any transactions. There was no value in player knowledge because there was no need to have any personal knowledge of the state of the market in regard to any particular item. Search for item and buy lowest, or search for item set lowest price. Maybe you'd really mix it up and go way out on a limb to set an average price hoping the lower-priced merchants would sell out and yours would still sell later in the day.
But that is how things work in the real world. People just search on Google and find the lowest price for the item that they want and will normally go for the best deal. This is why so many physical bricks and mortor shops are closing because they can't compete with online prices.
It sounds like you are disappointed you wouldn't be able to sell items for ridiculous prices any more to people who don't know any better.
I was on Xev with Tanwedar where our ad hoc auctioning was in Gfay.
The difference between offline AH and unattended playing is, in my opinion, a sense of realism and immersion.
As soon as you have an offline auction house, you list your items and sell them they are 100% disconnected from your character's life in the virtual world. You can sell everything and its "disconnected" and no longer part of the game play.
I remember advertising in an auction chat channel and making a huge sale while I was in Illomen. I had to pause my group, travel and meet the buyer to make my sale. It was part of my gameplay experience. Similarly, having a character "go to work" and sell is part of gameplay - they can't sell their stuff while dungeon crawling.
Part of our immersive gameplay is interacting directly (not indirectly) with the economy as part of our gameplay. AH's separate us from that.
Offline auction houses break immersion but they are easy and quick - instant gratification tools.
An action house is not a game breaker for me. I have made good experiences with it in World of Warcraft classic. TESO had not something similar in my active time and trading with other players was much much much more difficult and nasty. You had to spam your goods in the chat and join many trade guilds.
Greetings
Cromulent said:Kobrashade said:tanwedar said:For those of us who leave a second account running and/or leaving your characters on overnight/during the day, how is that different than an offline AH? If you use a bot and you're at your computer or walking to the computer and checking on it occasionally you're doing barely anything in the end. Leaving it active (bot or not) while not at the computer is the exact same as an offline AH - you aren't having to do anything or be there for the sale.
This is an interesting point. I did not get to experience the Bazaar trading or person to person trading. When I first heard about it, it sounded really cool. But reading and thinking about it some more, I feel that if the end result is leaving my computer on and watching tv or tab out surf the web etc, I am not doing anything at all. I am trying to imagine playing the game and coming home from work and being faced with the decision 1) do I play with my friends and continue to adventure or 2) go to X location and afk to finally sell my wares.
I still really like the idea of trading person to person some way. I don't think I have the answer or suggestion but If there could be some sort of hybrid system implemented where you can sell maybe a certain amount of items through an auction house, but have to trade in person for additional sells.
The advantage of the Bazaar was that you didn't need to go AFK if you wanted to do deals with people in person. You set up your character as a trader and then still posted to /auction with the items you wanted to sell. People would then send you a tell and you could haggle if you wanted to. Of course with the Bazaar you also had the option of going AFK if you just wanted to sell at the prices that you had marked for all your items. So it was basically the best of both worlds. You could interact with people the same way as you would in EC tunnel if you wanted or you could go AFK and just let other people buy at the prices you had set.
It is basically a win win situation. You have the choice to do whatever you want.
As I responded to Kobrashade stating how people still did /auc channel in the Bazaar in EQ, people also used it in WoW and Rift when I played. Just because you used the AH it didn't prevent you from advertising in chat and then taking down an item if you found a buyer via chat or not using the AH all together and only using chat.
Cromulent said:But that is how things work in the real world. People just search on Google and find the lowest price for the item that they want and will normally go for the best deal. This is why so many physical bricks and mortor shops are closing because they can't compete with online prices.
It sounds like you are disappointed you wouldn't be able to sell items for ridiculous prices any more to people who don't know any better.
/auc PC Lammy - I used that sort of chat all the time. Usually more than a couple people would respond so you could trust it and typically I would get price ranges too which helped for buying and selling.
In terms of haggling with either bots or offline AHs - just as people can still use chat to help sell, we can send messages for buying. All the time in all three games I listed I got tells asking about prices (and item trades occasionally) so the fact that there was an offline AH didn't hurt that capability at all.
In case it feels this way - I'm not trying to attack your posts specifically Crom. You've simply been making more posts than others lately and consolidating some of the others' points or posting a quote of a full post of quotes.
fazool said:I remember advertising in an auction chat channel and making a huge sale while I was in Illomen.
I remember people like you! It's part of why I almost always left /auc on outside of the bazaar :)
Interesting topic with lots of opinions, so I’ll throw mine into the hat… When I started off with EQ on the XEV server we didn’t sell items in the EC Tunnel, but rather everyone sold their items/wares in Gfay (no idea why, it just was the place…). I found the shouting and SPAM that flew through my chat window intoxicating and it made the zone feel alive as I level up in Gfay; I loved that there were so many different classes and levels of players in the zone that I could beg a buff from. The social interactions were so new to me back then that I couldn’t imagine selling/trading any other way that is until the Bazaar opened up in Luclin.
The Bazaar was a good concept for its time by allowing players to sell their items/wares while not playing with the downside being they had to leave their character logged in. I personally thought it was a great concept at first, but then I noticed the social aspect of haggling/dealing/trading/negotiating/swapping was dead because nobody had to interact with one another anymore. If you were lucky a player would sometimes be monitoring his sale mule and would offer you a discount, but those times were rare and far between. Due to the Bazaar IMO caused a lack of socialization and increased the ease to which players could find other items they wanted for sale killed one aspect of the “MMO” experience that to me was very important “Socialization Amongst Players” that didn’t know one another. Back before the bazaar I met many great friends and trade partners through socializing while trying to sell/buy stuff, and to this day I still communicate with many of them.
Though I enjoyed using the Bazaar in EQ to my advantage of finding the best price for the items I needed; I still missed the old ways even though it was a pain in the arse at times… The chat windows would scroll by so fast you would miss half of the /Auction / Shouts / OOC or you couldn’t find the seller in the midst’s of hundreds of people running around, it was truly chaotic at times… But I would welcome it back in a minute…
Rint
Cromulent said:But that is how things work in the real world. People just search on Google and find the lowest price for the item that they want and will normally go for the best deal. This is why so many physical bricks and mortor shops are closing because they can't compete with online prices.
It sounds like you are disappointed you wouldn't be able to sell items for ridiculous prices any more to people who don't know any better.
No, thats not really how it works. There's no global search function that shows you a list of everyone selling that 50" Panasonic TV so that you can pick the cheapest one. You can go to any number of sellers' websites and see what the prices are, and you can eventually have a high degree of confidence that you're not getting screwed. But there's no comparison system that's going to ensure that for you without your investment of time.
Thanks for trying to attribute greed to me in order to dismiss my opinion. But I rarely used the bazaar. I found it to be rather annoying. I also rarely sat in EC tunnel to buy, or to sell. As I said in an earlier post, I used /auc as I entered new areas and generally got lower than average prices for those goods I sold. Sometimes higher, but generally lower. Maximum profit was not a consideration.
Rint said:When I started off with EQ on the XEV server we didn’t sell items in the EC Tunnel, but rather everyone sold their items/wares in Gfay (no idea why, it just was the place…).
We used Faymart so that people would die trying to get to the bank/trade area, thus helping me get donations for finding bodies with the bard song ;)
For people who say they like doing "person-to-person" transactions. I'm sure there are a good bit of you who share that same sentiment. There will be folks in game who prefer that method but forcing people who may not like that or have time for it as the only method of participating in the game's economy is just silly. I'm all for immersion, but this is one of the things I feel the novelty will wear off weeks/months down the road, hell even days.
All I need is a board that I can go to when I need 8 stacks of uber health potions search for them and see a list of people that are selling them and where they are. I can handle pickup after that. Butstanding in one zone while trying to read Auction spam is stupid and would waste to much of my limited time when the mighty Kalgore the crusader should be saving the people in trouble.
Do you really want to be responsible because Kalgore couldnt save those poor children from the evil orcs. I mean Orcs eat children and dont even get me started about the poor family dog
Raive said:For people who say they like doing "person-to-person" transactions. I'm sure there are a good bit of you who share that same sentiment. There will be folks in game who prefer that method but forcing people who may not like that or have time for it as the only method of participating in the game's economy is just silly. I'm all for immersion, but this is one of the things I feel the novelty will wear off weeks/months down the road, hell even days.
See, that was part of my first post in this thread. You can't say that if there is no AH/Bazaar, then people must go sit in EC tunnel. That's a false equivalency. The 3rd option is to use /auc as you run thru zones while traveling. A 4th option is to use /auc occiasionally while you're in an xp area while you're medding. A 5th option is to see if there's a person in your guild that would like to go to the EC Tunnel-like area of the gameworld and have what is effectively a guild-wide garage sale for a cut of the profits. And this discounts another half dozen options I'm sure the creative people here can come up with.
Absence of an AH/Bazar does not equal EC Tunnel+massive time investment. Arguing that is like saying that if there are no microwave ovens for convenient meals, everyone will starve.
Kalgore said:All I need is a board that I can go to when I need 8 stacks of uber health potions search for them and see a list of people that are selling them and where they are. I can handle pickup after that. Butstanding in one zone while trying to read Auction spam is stupid and would waste to much of my limited time when the mighty Kalgore the crusader should be saving the people in trouble.
Do you really want to be responsible because Kalgore couldnt save those poor children from the evil orcs. I mean Orcs eat children and dont even get me started about the poor family dog
With only the board you run in to the possibility of all of them being offline. That's unlikely I admit, but it could happen easier near launch when there are fewer players at high level and the TS high level. Base level ingrediants are similar, but since they ignore needing to have a TS leveled as well it's different. I know from personally being an ass sometimes that when I was the only one or one of a few people selling potions or TS items I'd bump up the price when other's AH bots weren't online or just buy out others when there were not many so I was the only vendor. That might be more 'how business is' than being an ass, but regardless if it was an offline AH this sort of thing isn't as common.
PS I don't want to invoke the wrath of Kalgore.
Feyshtey said:Absence of an AH/Bazar does not equal EC Tunnel+massive time investment. Arguing that is like saying that if there are no microwave ovens for convenient meals, everyone will starve.
While somewhat true at the same time it's harder to sell items when you need a character in the market zone/area especially since there will be no fast travel to get you there, even if there was fast travel you'd lose the ability to do LFG messages in a zone. If there's some sort of LFG tool added to the game (haven't searched for this in forums) then it would also take your main off the list if you choose to log over to an alt kept in the market area. So it really would involve Faymart time. How much involvement would depend on how many sales you want to make (I know time vs money is not an explicit function) and how much you want to wait/search for an item you want to buy. Regardless of all that, I like your microwave example!
Kalgore said:All I need is a board that I can go to when I need 8 stacks of uber health potions search for them and see a list of people that are selling them and where they are. I can handle pickup after that. Butstanding in one zone while trying to read Auction spam is stupid and would waste to much of my limited time when the mighty Kalgore the crusader should be saving the people in trouble.
What prevents you from going to a zone where many people sell things and typing, "/auc WTB Uber Health Potions" ? You don't have to read a single line of text in the /auc channel, and can simply reply to direct /tell.
Feyshtey said:Raive said:For people who say they like doing "person-to-person" transactions. I'm sure there are a good bit of you who share that same sentiment. There will be folks in game who prefer that method but forcing people who may not like that or have time for it as the only method of participating in the game's economy is just silly. I'm all for immersion, but this is one of the things I feel the novelty will wear off weeks/months down the road, hell even days.
See, that was part of my first post in this thread. You can't say that if there is no AH/Bazaar, then people must go sit in EC tunnel. That's a false equivalency. The 3rd option is to use /auc as you run thru zones while traveling. A 4th option is to use /auc occiasionally while you're in an xp area while you're medding. A 5th option is to see if there's a person in your guild that would like to go to the EC Tunnel-like area of the gameworld and have what is effectively a guild-wide garage sale for a cut of the profits. And this discounts another half dozen options I'm sure the creative people here can come up with.
Absence of an AH/Bazar does not equal EC Tunnel+massive time investment. Arguing that is like saying that if there are no microwave ovens for convenient meals, everyone will starve.
Who is to say all of those things already do not occur with or without an AH/Bazaar. What I am saying is again, no one is stopping you or should force you into one method of participating in the game's economy. Personally I take both routes, however I simply see a much more flourishing economy if players had the option of conducting business using both methods or either/or however they so desire. Having only 1 channel I feel takes this game a step back. This, similar to travel, are areas that have to be modernized a bit with flexibility.
I played EQ for many years, and I absolutely hated having to afk to sell my stuff. I perfectly understand that some people like it, but many others do not and I for one thought the invention of the Auction House was a blessing. It would be ideal, from my perspective, to have a middle ground. Allow people to sell their own wares in a way similar to the Bazaar, but also allow people to hire a broker. Even if that broker is a real person's character, that's fine with me... However, there should be a way to ensure they don't steal your money/items. I'd happily take that monetary hit to not have to keep my character in one spot for a ridiculous amount of time just to sell garbage in my inventory.
There's nothing I hated more in EQ than filling up all my bag space with items that were useless to me and would just sit there until I got tired enough of them to actually afk at the Bazaar for a week (and be unable to play the game during that time, which was silly). It got to a point where one of my friends bought another computer and another account to keep a mule permanantly logged in to sell stuff for all of us and we just shared the money. This should not be a thing anymore.
Raive said:Who is to say all of those things already do not occur with or without an AH/Bazaar. What I am saying is again, no one is stopping you or should force you into one method of participating in the game's economy. Personally I take both routes, however I simply see a much more flourishing economy if players had the option of conducting business using both methods or either/or however they so desire. Having only 1 channel I feel takes this game a step back. This, similar to travel, are areas that have to be modernized a bit with flexibility.
Actually, when an AH/Bazaar exists, many (most?) people will have everything they want to sell on their merchant mule in the AH/Bazaar, or the items will be otherwise tied up in the AH/Bazaar system. You get replies to your WTB /auc request saying "I have that. My merchant's name is XYZ. Go look him up in the Bazaar.". IF you get replies to your WTS /auc, they are often things like, "Bet I can get that in the AH for cheaper". There's no need to take advantage of that spontaneous oppurtunity to get an item because you know you can pretty much go get it any time you want, even if you have to pay slightly more and more than likely will get the item for less. So if an AH/Bazaar exists, players are in reality forced to use the AH/Bazaar in order to buy or sell more of the things you're attempting to buy or sell, unless they are rare enough that they are not commonly found in the AH/Bazaar.
Feyshtey said:Kalgore said:All I need is a board that I can go to when I need 8 stacks of uber health potions search for them and see a list of people that are selling them and where they are. I can handle pickup after that. Butstanding in one zone while trying to read Auction spam is stupid and would waste to much of my limited time when the mighty Kalgore the crusader should be saving the people in trouble.
What prevents you from going to a zone where many people sell things and typing, "/auc WTB Uber Health Potions" ? You don't have to read a single line of text in the /auc channel, and can simply reply to direct /tell.
It requires someone in that zone being willing to part with potions and/or always having that extra weight on their character to be a mobile vendor. Also in a dungeon situation (like the most recent twitch) you can't always get to the person who has the potions without training or expecting one of the groups to travel to the other, which is especially bad considering that someone could take your camp. Even if that wasn't an issue, in a pug group you'd run into players getting pissed because their tank or cc or healer ran off for a sale/purchase when they already commited to a group.
edit:
Feyshtey said:Actually, when an AH/Bazaar exists, many (most?) people will have everything they want to sell on their merchant mule in the AH/Bazaar, or the items will be otherwise tied up in the AH/Bazaar system. You get replies to your WTB /auc request saying "I have that. My merchant's name is XYZ. Go look him up in the Bazaar.".
In your example you're assuming that most people will have an AH account running in addition to their main account. The devs can't design a game expecting that most/all people will be buying two copies of the game and two subs - two computers possibly depending on their main computer's specs. If it happens or not, that's still designing a game based around charging double.
tanwedar said:It requires someone in that zone being willing to part with potions and/or always having that extra weight on their character to be a mobile vendor. Also in a dungeon situation (like the most recent twitch) you can't always get to the person who has the potions without training or expecting one of the groups to travel to the other, which is especially bad considering that someone could take your camp. Even if that wasn't an issue, in a pug group you'd run into players getting pissed because their tank or cc or healer ran off for a sale/purchase when they already commited to a group.
If you're in an xp group, yes. But that's not what that specific post was addressing at all. Kalgore was commenting on not wanting to go into a trade zone and read /auc lines from other people.
Ive done the EC tunnel as well and shouting out what you need could take hours for a real response sometimes. I shouldnt have to spend a day of my play time only to stock up.
What about rarer items should I stand there for 5 hours shooouting I need the spellbook of master taunts hoping someone has it?? Or just go to the board and find out Jimmy Bob Ray has the book for sale but he is 6 zones away.