It has been said many many times and it seems as though the prefered trading method for Pantheon is one with no automated trading. No Bazaar, No Auction House, No AFK selling of any kind. For the record, I agree.
But how should this be accomplished? A /trade channel that spans the entire server? A /trade channel separated by region or zone? In EQ1 most servers utilized the East Commons Tunnel and the zone wide /ooc channel.
Here is my idea. Some may like it and some may not. But here it is....
Every city, town, village could have an area designated for peddling wares with their own separate /trade channel. However, these channels should have a limited distance in which they can be heard. If youre on the other side of a giant city, you shouldnt be able to hear the people in the market yelling "WTS Sharpened Stone Mace". My thought is that as soon as a player roams into a "market" they autojoin that markets /trade channel. These markets do not need to be separate zones. Crossing an imaginary line should be enough to trigger the joining of the channel. This distance limit is just something I would prefer, not a make or break feature.
In every past MMO I have played, after a certain amount of times passes, some cities, towns, villages, become unused. To help combat this, and keep these places busy, you could limit the amount of people that can sell in one place. A major city would have the most spot available while a small village would have the least. Enforcing this limit would accomplish a number of things.
These stalls could be FCFS and free or FCFS and purchased. A time limit could also be imposed. A time limit would keep those people that can afford more than one account from creating a monopoly on "the best town".
Let me know what you guys think. Maybe we can expand on this idea and come up with something VR likes enough to consider.
I like the above.
I also think there should be a notice board or record book in each town or hub where you can list what you can craft and how much you would charge etc. That way, if I am looking for a certain item I can check the notice board and find someone who can make the item or is likely to have one to sell and then send them an in game mail or /w and sort out a deal.
A separate notice board for things that are for sale would also be good. While I suppose this would be similar to an auction house, you would not be able to conduct the transaction through the notice board, it would just list who is selling what (for a small fee of course) and then if you want the item you have to contact the player and arrange the deal...
Garper said:I like the above.
I also think there should be a notice board or record book in each town or hub where you can list what you can craft and how much you would charge etc. That way, if I am looking for a certain item I can check the notice board and find someone who can make the item or is likely to have one to sell and then send them an in game mail or /w and sort out a deal.
A separate notice board for things that are for sale would also be good. While I suppose this would be similar to an auction house, you would not be able to conduct the transaction through the notice board, it would just list who is selling what (for a small fee of course) and then if you want the item you have to contact the player and arrange the deal...
I think this would be a great idea, especially for those of us who will have limited flexibility in our play time or can only get on during 'slower' hours.
I am a bit two sided on all this trading stuff.
I like the human interaction, and the idea that not all wares are immediatly indexed and searchable.
On the other hand, I am not really a trades person. I often wont bother to try and get the most out of what I am selling, I just want to get rid of it and get my money. So in WoW or later EQ AH, I would simply underbid the cheapest guy and get it sold.
If I during a dungeon crawl end up with a lot of wares which is usable by other players but not me, I would hate to spend a lot of time trying to get rid of it. Maybe I would even sell it to an NPC for very little money. So I think we need some sort of system which is flexible enough to allow people who likes to bargin for their trades to do just that, but also for players less interested in the business of trade to sell their stuff with less effort and probably less value. I imagine resellers offering to buy various items cheap, selling at a higher rate.
If tradesman could be a profession, perhaps it would be OK to rent a booth at the local market if you reached a certain level. Selling stuff, even when the player is offline.
Garper said:I like the above.
I also think there should be a notice board or record book in each town or hub where you can list what you can craft and how much you would charge etc. That way, if I am looking for a certain item I can check the notice board and find someone who can make the item or is likely to have one to sell and then send them an in game mail or /w and sort out a deal.
A separate notice board for things that are for sale would also be good. While I suppose this would be similar to an auction house, you would not be able to conduct the transaction through the notice board, it would just list who is selling what (for a small fee of course) and then if you want the item you have to contact the player and arrange the deal...
Yep good idea. It could also be usefull to be able to know who can craft what. So people could list themself as master blacksmith willing to craft custom stuff.
That being said, I wonder if we couldn't come up with a system that allow people to talk to each other asynchronous. Think about crafter web site (such as etsy). I wouldn't mind having an "auction" house, but people actually have to log in and "mail" you the items to complet the trades. You still have the human factor in a way, since if you make deals with crafter / sellers that aren't on top of their things, the delivery time could be longer. So it's still give the chance to people to be unique in a way (such as quick delivery) or something like that.
Extend the idea slightly : these are 'ideas' which need massaging.
TOWN MARKETPLACE :
1. Stalls where players can sell goods.(can choose IMAGE above stalls, eg piccie of Sword or fish)
(a) May include some NPC stalls where you can put items in escrow for the NPC to sell (at a non-refundable cost) over the space of a few days. Trade channel limited to market area.
(b) otherwise you rent a stall for the day (stops them being perma-bought-out).
(c) some 'empty' spaces are for players who have their own stall.
2. At edges of the market area there are noticeboards.
(a) crafters can put up adverts/notices at a cost for Y number of days (or until it rains, hehe)
(b) near noticeboards are a LIMITED number of urchins. For a fee they will go round the stalls searching for item type you desire and coming back with the info for you. I.e. this is a method of a sort-of 'search-the-market', but limited to when urchins are free for use. This stops everyone all just searching. Plus the urchins charge cash. It may be easier to go look for yourself.
PLAYER VENDORS:
Players can have accessible 'vendor trade' window, only if they have a 'vendor' container on the ground. It allows them to sell even if AFK (at set price).
These come in different types/sizes :
1. Small blanket/rug thrown on floor : Capacity SMALL, can be put in backpack
(Optional: Trading skill of 20 needed, or crafting skill 30, say.)
Kind of thing used by travelling salesmen in far-out places: Eg merchant players who went to RatheMountains to buy steel weapons and trade cash, or merchants who did coin exchanging in South Karana. Also for crafters who only sell a few high-end items.
2. Hand-cart : Capacity MEDIUM, 1-2 Wheeled Wheelbarrow-ish size, towed like a pet.
(Optional: Trading skill of 80 needed, or crafting skill 120, say.)
Kind of thing you might take to easiy to get to places that are out of town. Good example would be a merchant in EC tunnel selling a fair few items. Also useful if selling heavier items or changing money.
3. Mule-Cart / Portable stall : Capacity LARGE, 2-4 wheeled, needs a Horse/Mule or 2 people to tow.
(Optional: Trading skill of 120 needed, or crafting skill 180, say.)
For bigger merchants who can use roads to get to places they want to setup shop. This is most likely either in Village Square or Town Market Stall Area. Find an empty stall space in either, pay the fee for the day and setup shop. Most likley for 'trader' types or Guilds to sell stuff on semi-permenent basis in certain towns/villages.
This setup ensures 'markets are where players decide to create them' or in villages Quares/Town Marketplaces. It allows organic growth of trading hubs and vendor locations. Wherever people congregate, so too could people thrown down rugs. As Hand-Carts become available to traders, the balance of safety and access vs where the players meet comes into the mix. The more adventurous merchants can go right up to the front lines and setup their carts ready to sell supplies to adventurers as they enter/leave the nearby dungeon.
You get the idea, i hope....
Don't force players merchants into going somewhere YOU want
.... just give them the tools and leave them to sort it out!
Garper said:I like the above.
I also think there should be a notice board or record book in each town or hub where you can list what you can craft and how much you would charge etc. That way, if I am looking for a certain item I can check the notice board and find someone who can make the item or is likely to have one to sell and then send them an in game mail or /w and sort out a deal.
A separate notice board for things that are for sale would also be good. While I suppose this would be similar to an auction house, you would not be able to conduct the transaction through the notice board, it would just list who is selling what (for a small fee of course) and then if you want the item you have to contact the player and arrange the deal...
As long as it was restricted to only a list and not to actually facilitate the transaction, I would probably be OK with that. I just dont want a system where you can list 20 items for sale, go to bed, and then come home from work to find most your stuff sold and 200 plat sitting in your mail. Thats not very "social".
@Evoras
I like how you put some thought into your ideas, and I like most of them. However, I am 100% against any form of transaction that can be completed while AFK or logged off. Having a message Board where you can see a list and then attampt to make in-game contact should be enough to help those players with less play time.
When I read that, I was thinking more along the lines of being able to make a WTB or WTS post, and there just be a button for an interested second party to contact you via ingame mail. Then you could strike a deal and arrange a meeting time/place to make the exchange. A great side benefit of this over a regular auction-house setup would be the ability to barter goods and not necessarily just use gold/plat/whatever as a basis for trade. Also, it could be used for services. "WTB the services of a grandmaster armorsmith to make the Shiny Breastplate of Uberiority. I have 2 of the rare Infused Mithiril Bars of Power needed, but it only requires one. The other one would be yours for your services."
@Koreno
Must admit I am ambivilant about the whole AFK thing. Not keen on it, but would rather AFK than off-line, and rather either than 'automated boards in my instanced (guild-)house'. I get that it is a pain to have to be on and sell stuff (which many will point out), but this must be weighed against the lack of social interaction cost. (Same reason I like the idea of my own house... but dont like creating instances to insulate the player-base from one another!)
Truth be told - the post I made was the 'tip of the huge iceberg' that is a 'dynamic economy' I envisaged:
NPC vendors have limited funds to buy stuff. They only buy certain items based on markets and their own 'appraisal' skills. They get extra funds daily, and some of the goods purchased from PCs are either sold locally or sent to the next trade hub (either bigger village, town or eventually City). This network of NPCs have their own economies wheich PC merely feed into. Sell too many bat-wings and the vendor will pay less for them. Eventually he wont buy them - not until he has shipped them off to a place where demand is higher.
Thus the world will have an economy of its own running before the first player sets foot into Terminus. The PCs will, of course, distort it. But the NPC vendors will make the most of it. Local pricing will be key - with regional markets having their own price for goods. Distance IS a factor in price etc.
Hey, go the whole hog and have 'local' banks!!
EDIT: typos hate me!
There are some really great ideas in this thread. I totally agree that shouts should only affect a small area, like a marketplace within a town. I hesitate on the limiting the number of player merchants in an area however, I will elaborate.
1) If there are limits to the number of merchants in an area that could be exploited with bots or a handful of players who are always occupying the static trades 'stalls' and not allowing other players to do the same. Perhaps if there are realistic limits this still might be workable but would have to be done right to not alienate people who want to sell.
2) I think if the merchant system requires players to engage in some sort of real time dialogue in an area or town, there would be built in mechanisms of dealing with too many tradesmen because their shout dialogue will get watered down at a certain point with the sheer amount of other players doing the same thing. At a certain point a savvy merchant will probably relocate to an area where their goods are in more demand or there is less competition, possibly without the need for a hard cap on those wanting to hock their goods.
3) Maybe some kind of interval control on shouts in addition to range control on the messages -- keep it less spammy. I still really like the idea of people being required to bring life into the game and town economy by being visible within towns and engaging players actively. No other MMO has gotten this right since the CL tunnel in EQ. Players who can just park their auto merchant in a spot waters down an economy at a certain point when everybody and their dog is doing this.
4) Keep bots out of it. If I can just park an alt in a merchant area while I'm out adventuring its going to water down the amount of stuff trying to be sold. Require players to make up their mind, do they want to be in town tradeskilling and being available to sell wares? Or do they want to be out adventuring and getting loot? This will help make things slightly more scarce, which will keep the economy healthy and will give those who enjoy tradeskilling in town more access to people actively seeking goods from those types of players, and giving players who are seeking a 'merchant' type of experience more rewarding game play.
I love these ideas here is what i will add
someone said renting, how about buying a license to sell for 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 hours or put it gametime if 1 life hour is 1 day then you can buy 1 day to 1 week in game time . This allows you to sell your wares.
someone mentionned the listing board. well how about when a crafter puts in a notice boards and you know how these papers have usually slits of papers with numbers to contact the crafter. well with this they could have a location in map where to find the crafter where he crafts but just a limited until the crafter returns and puts a new notice of course this would cost ingame money to put down and once depleted he needs to put a new notice with a certain amount of :charges: per say.
I loved the idea of course if you want to do the WTS **** well you cant go outside a radius of a /yell would do. Let the players decide where to congregate hehe.
The urchin i love but not just in a smal area but you can ask the urchin find me this list of items with prices and you pay the urchin he returns with the list of prices and the locations this would be for the searcher. Cant just say im looking for a sword find me where the swords are.. the urchin should at that point say something funny and refuse the request from the player heheh
Good ideas folks!
Arcuda said:2) I think if the merchant system requires players to engage in some sort of real time dialogue in an area or town, there would be built in mechanisms of dealing with too many tradesmen because their shout dialogue will get watered down at a certain point with the sheer amount of other players doing the same thing. At a certain point a savvy merchant will probably relocate to an area where their goods are in more demand or there is less competition, possibly without the need for a hard cap on those wanting to hock their goods.
3) Maybe some kind of interval control on shouts in addition to range control on the messages -- keep it less spammy. I still really like the idea of people being required to bring life into the game and town economy by being visible within towns and engaging players actively. No other MMO has gotten this right since the CL tunnel in EQ. Players who can just park their auto merchant in a spot waters down an economy at a certain point when everybody and their dog is doing this.
Maybe a system for this could be different trade districts/areas. For instance a jewlery area, weapon area etc. This mechanic would be much like real world. So if I were to buy something like a weapon, I would go to a certain announced area where I would find the highest concentration of weapon sellers. The areas should not be enforced, and neither should the content you are selling, but it would be in the interest of buyer and seller to easily be able to find one another.
I like the way your Talking about the whole Trading Camps and having it to where you can make all the other cities alive by not being able to overpopulate an area. To make it Easier on selling items i was thinking you Talk to a person that gives you a bag and in this bag you want to sell. and you can click a button and such and it would link the items you want to sell. now i know in most games you can do this as well but if you have a lot of items and have a bunch of interested in your wares and the memory of the messages could exceed beyond where you had all your items listed and you'll have to link them again manually, this bag idea would pretent that entirely........and to make it to where you cant afk sell your wares you can make it to where if you gone for too long id sy like 15 minutes you automatically log in these trading areas, and you also cant macro to cuase you to click the link in the bag to link all the items in the bag itself.
Some of my fondest memories are from CL in EQ, remember coming there with a 2-3 bags with stuff i wanted to trade and spent an evening selling and trading, ended up changing out all i was wearing and have 2 bags with new stuff for sale :)
i do hope to experince something simmilar in Pantheon.
As long as people use the /auc channel and not the /ooc channel I'd be happy. I hate when traders try and sell their wares in /ooc. I have all the trade spam going to another window I can hide if I want. If they use /ooc then it just spams up my main chat window.
I'm on the fence about this whole lack of an auction house thing. On the one hand it would be cool to talk to people and have a chance to chat while you are selling and stuff on the other hand I don't want to spend all my game time trying to sell my items. I do actually want to spend my time playing the game.
I guess I'll go along with whatever the community wants but if their is no automated trading you can be sure some people will make some nice money by offering to sell other peoples gear so they don't have to for a percentage cut of the profits.
The fewer mechanisms there are for trading, the more the general chat channels will be spammed with offers to buy or sell. Dedicated trade channels tend to be severely under-utilized and all it takes are a few people that don't give a rat's hindquarters about the rules to make things miserable for the rest of us.
Thus my preference for a broker or auction house. Given how many people seem to like the bazaar approach even though this seems bizarre to me (just a pun I actually do understand the reasons) I think a blend may be ideal though it wouldn't be my own first choice. A good compromise has been said to be one that all parties dislike but none actually hates.
Thus a broker or AH could have some combination of:
(1) High listing or transaction fees.
(2) Limited listings e.g. 10 items per account.
(3) Maximum limit on price e.g. no item can list for over 10 gold.
(4) Short listing period e.g. no item can be listed for over 8 hours.
(5) No ability to list items in certain categories such as gear with attributes over a specified amount.
The stricter the limits the better for the bazaar fans and the worse for the rest of us. But limits can easily be changed in-game by VR if they don't work well.
This would preserve an important role for the bazaar traders while allowing others not to have to waste their time trading in-person if they do not want to do so.
To reuse an example from other threads - if copper is the lowest level metal used by crafters to make weapons, armor etc. why would even the most dedicated bazaar fan insist that a broke starting harvester with 20 pieces of copper go to "the tunnel" to sell the almost worthless things that some equally broke starting armorsmith desperately needs?
Extend the idea slightly : these are 'ideas' which need massaging.
(b) near noticeboards are a LIMITED number of urchins. For a fee they will go round the stalls searching for item type you desire and coming back with the info for you. I.e. this is a method of a sort-of 'search-the-market', but limited to when urchins are free for use. This stops everyone all just searching. Plus the urchins charge cash. It may be easier to go look for yourself.
I like this idea, and would replace "urchins" with "newbies"- often newbies know everything about the city, including who is selling what and where.
Looks like a lot of good ideas here. Just my quick two cents before I head back to work...
what about this (just came up with it just now so not fully fleshed out). What if there was an interface of sorts where you could list items you want to sell. You could set a price or flag such items as make offer. The items could be inspected to see their stats much like a traditional auction house. But you couldn't buy or bid on anything in it.
The items you have in it are not viewable or searchable by other players UNTIL your logged in character enters any of several areas that are flagged as a marketplace or area of commerce. If you want to sell, you just go to one of these areas and upon arrival your stuff shows up on searches.
In these common areas would be a bank, trade skill "benches", trainers, whatever so that you could be doing other non-adventuring things while at the same time being available and close by to execute in person bartering or selling.
This maintains most people's desire for in person, online trading, regionalized markets, buying without having to stand spamming repetitive text in an auction channel (unless you wanted to) but still being able to take care of "housekeeping" type things like trade skills or organizing your stash, etc. and keeping that selling time productive in other ways.
like I said, this idea isn't fully baked even in my mind but it seems to have some positives going for it. Maybe there are problems with it too that I haven't thought of.
thoughts?....
This topic has actually been discussed in quite some detail on a few occasions, one of the biggest threads is 34 pages and now locked: http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2594/death-to-the-auction-house
Therefore I will have to close this one down and ask that you please join in on the already existing discussions around this topic or read through the information in the thread linked about to get your official replies.