Evoras said:Interdependence
The reality is that many game aspects are intertwined and related to each other in tighly knit ways. Any one of these strands could potentially unravel your INTENT through the law of 'unforseen circumstances'.
1. INSTANT/FAST TRAVEL (Risk = Severe) :
For a local economy to function there must be NO fast travel available. By this, I mean a simple, cheap, universally available method of instantly travelling from A to B where these two points are a distance apart. Global access to 'travel hubs' with city-to-city instant travel is an example. Clicky-portals, as per Planed of Power / Nexus is another example. In other words - you cannot have regional economies if you 'reduce travel time' to(wards) zero.
2. (MAIL) DELIVERY SYSTEMS (Risk = Low to Severe) :
Local economies will also fail if there is methods of delivery of good that 'ignore' the intervening distance. To do so would be no different than allowing you instant-travel to the sale point. If there are in-game delivery methods instead (such as PC/NPC wagon trains which need to traverse the intervening distance) with associated costs (which vary by distance) then you can reduce impact of this strand to low, down from severe.
NB: For local economies to thrive, transportation TIME and COST by be significant. Transporting 2 tons of iron ore across 300 miles of bad road will take 15-24 game-days. And the cost will be not insignificant. If, instead of iron ore, you were transporting a 400 Lb chest your time would reduce to 10-14 days ... but the cost would depend on the contents and YOUR decision as to how valuable it is. If it were 6 silver ingots, 200 emeralds, 2 High-Quality Sword moulds and a magical suit of armour you might want to hire a guard. Or two.
3. GLOBAL AH (Risk = High to Severe) :
Auction Houses collate the prices of good for comparison. The action described is not a bad one, and works to lower prices (** exception for price rigging through monopoly) through competition, but acts to destroy local economies unless transportation time and costs are significant and unavoidable.
4. ZERO RISK (Risk = Medium to Severe) :
Current MMOs take no account of item value, ease of theft and environmental dangers. Since none of these factors exists, it is perfectly fine to buy your chest full of gold ingots and have them delivered 2000 miles through bandit infested hills and through 3 cities known for high levels of corruption. Buying 3000 Oak logs is also fine since the transportation costs do not take into account the materials transported - in terms of bulk and hardship to transport. Unless down-river, the freighting costs alone would render it uneconomic to buy timber except in small quantities. Indeed, for almost any item bought/sold, the transportation costs are small compared to the reality of transporting the item by wagon, under guard, across a mountain range or two. Thus, as with the lucrative transportation of goods (silks, teas, opium and porcelain) to/from Hong Kong to Britain by clipper ship, there was a very real danger of complete loss at sea. This was a substantial risk and was only acceptible because of the high profit margins gained trading between two local markets.
All-in-All, a decision to have regional economies is a decision with consequences in other areas. This is not to say it is a bad idea, just that the 'effort to implement' must be predicated on inclusion of the other, needed components, thus making it more effort intensive unless these other strands are already 'part of the Vision'.
TL;DR :
If you want a Local/Regional Economy to work : DISTANCES MUST MATTER.
For day-to-day needs, players only NEED local markets to be searcheable.
For high-value/rare items, let the players figure out how to meet player WANTS.
Im so intune with what Evoras said here and completly agree with him.
But i'd love to elaborate with his second point.
The mail system / caravan system should actually but a caravan or even if its just mail the pony express type of deal. The sender can choose how to send their mails...
This would require everyone to choose a location to receive mail and only this location. But this location could be changed with fee's of transfer as you move forward in the game and so forth.
I'd love to see a heavy caravan leaving the city each day at a specific time. This Caravan could be subject to thievery and even total destruction. Not knowing the items that are sent or the materials that are sent. But of course it couldn't be easy to overtake a heavy guarded Caravan. A system should be put in place if a player tries to beat the caravan on the road if this players is killed then this player would have severe penalties and he could not attack another caravan for a week. The strenght of the caravan could also be insured with the total in money that the senders of that day are paying them to send the goods to their destination.
On the other hand thieves could infiltrate the caravan at night and could use their skills to swap some items out of the caravan too.
Of course anyone cought would then would receive reputation that would match their crimes. But a good thief that doesnt get caught would just grow in fame :-)
As for the pony express then this would be lighter items could be scrolls or rings or whatever they can carry without affecting their speed and they could move much faster and would be harder to catch althought should not be impossible but very hard.
thanks for inpsiring this idea Evoras!
B
Obviously, we need a tunnel remniscent to East Commonlands in EQ1. Problem solved. I remember there even being a secondary "auction zone" in Greater Faydark because of the travel between continents. One could buy low/sell high between the two if they desired. This is the key undertone to Brad's vision of a decentralized economy and I fully support it. Just advertise your own items, yourself, wherever the "auction zone" happens to be, while you're online. Keep it simple.
(Yes I know North Freeport was another one.)
I've read up a lot of the "Death to the Auction House" thread from yesterday, and Evoras above has written some really good stuff about other game systems strongly effecting the viability of local trading. On the other hand, I think you also need a certain "ease of use" with trading: I've played enough FFXIV 1.0 to know that sifting through 15 large rooms filled with player stalls is not "fun" to many players. I think it is possible to make a middle ground between the "old" and the "new", add functionnality to good but clunky concepts of old MMOs.
A good solution I've read here is a local board that collects all player shop info in the current trade region and allows searching and sorting, but it's only informative and all transactions are made face-to-face. The system is tied to the item itself : you right-click on an item and set your price, then wait for a player to contact you. If you use, destroy or sell the item to the merchant, the sell offer immediately disappears from the local board, since the item instance is gone. This is necessary to keep the board clean and up to date. Your sale entries are also cleared from the board if your character steps outside of the delimited trade region (add a 10 seconds prompt to give a chance to turn around or prompt when "zoning"). For convenience, the prices you've set are kept in memory, and if you enter another market zone you don't have to input everything over again, everything pops up on this second local board automatically.
This way, you have a very organic local trade experience with face-to-face interactions, but it happens as you stroll through town to your next adventure and you don't have to burn time sitting/searching in a designated room. If you have something very niche and interesting you can always hawk your wares if you want. But Archer McGee can see at a glance that Serrated Arrows are real cheap around here and grab some before he leaves with his group. And that's beneficial for everyone involved, really.
When designing your trade system, please heed Evoras' words! If other game features like teleportation and transports are too accessible, this will all fall apart!
Ashvaild said: You try to implement all these rules and regs and local this, shippong time that....you know What's going to happen? The EC tunnel. Why? Because it's simple, easy and works. Wts, wtb, wtt. Everybody in the same zone can see what's for sale and what people want. There's no waiting dor your item to get to you. No wasted time running between zones to see what people in other areas have for sale. It just works. Some people don't like having to manually sell their wares, that's on them. Don't want to waste time? Dump it for cheap
Good lord I hope you're right.
Whatever devs decide is 'best' for the economy I hopeit doesn't result in an EQ East Commons style market.
You HAD to go to one place in the whole world to sell stuff because local auctions just didn't happen. This made being from foreign lands a massive disadvantage (and a huge pain) - you would just have a 'mule' character in EC. What a brilliant social aspect of the game.
Stuff from distant lands was NOT worth more because it's all about the stats and the price. If something is +5 and cheap because there's loads locally sourced, noone wants to pay more for something +6 just because it's 'rare'. Foreign/rare stuff would just get vendored out in foreign zone.
Depending on your time zone, you might have 10% of the buyers that other folks got.
There is a middle ground between no system whatsoever and a global auto auction house.
Maximis said:I just want a pantheon version of Craig's List. I would like to see if there is a left handed spudwrench in Dinklethorpe. It is then up to me to decide if I want to travel for 2 hours to get there.
I second this idea. I am fine with the idea of hoofing it to wherever I need to go to get an item, as long as I know there is an item there that is waiting for me to pickup. Let me have the ability to perhaps talk to a representative of that marketplace in my home city and see what they have with the price and seller's name. I am not asking to able to buy it then and there...but just to be able to see what is offered and for what price.
So, then what options do I have? I can either gamble and take a chance to run all the way there and hope it is still available, OR, I can send them a tell and beg them to take it off the broker.
If they do take it off their broker for me, then I can go there to pick it up (avoiding the shipping cost BUT paying a tariff since it is not my home town). Alternatively, if i dont want to run there, i could have them mail me the item(s) via COD with tariffs and shipping costs added in, as well as a wait of a few hours/days (depending on the distance). They would then get the amount they are owed in their mailbox, even though it may take a few hours. Maybe stick it on a caravan headed for my home town. I am OK to wait for my items, but I want to at least know what's available.
Possibly even have a special NPC postmaster/broker to whom the seller could leave the merchandise with (attached to my name), and I would pay that NPC the appropriate amount owed, including local tariffs/sales taxes etc (if eligible). Since the seller is a member of that city, they could then just pick up the money from that NPC that they are holding for you, minus the tariffs etc that were paid on top of it. And thinking about it, if you are KOS to that city, there could even be a black market version of that NPC who would then add on a "convenience fee" or something along those lines since it's "under the table" as it were, and they probably won't be paying sales taxes or tariffs on those goods...
Ashvaild said: You try to implement all these rules and regs and local this, shippong time that....you know What's going to happen? The EC tunnel. Why? Because it's simple, easy and works. Wts, wtb, wtt. Everybody in the same zone can see what's for sale and what people want. There's no waiting dor your item to get to you. No wasted time running between zones to see what people in other areas have for sale. It just works. Some people don't like having to manually sell their wares, that's on them. Don't want to waste time? Dump it for cheap
I think this could be one of the scenarios that arise Ash; that is why we need a search function to search one word, then all of the lines of text with that word in it will come up in a separate box. Reading the lines of auction text flying past will be eliminated. This has been mentioned before so it may already be on some list of features someplace.
disposalist said:Whatever devs decide is 'best' for the economy I hopeit doesn't result in an EQ East Commons style market.
You HAD to go to one place in the whole world to sell stuff because local auctions just didn't happen. This made being from foreign lands a massive disadvantage (and a huge pain) - you would just have a 'mule' character in EC. What a brilliant social aspect of the game.
Stuff from distant lands was NOT worth more because it's all about the stats and the price. If something is +5 and cheap because there's loads locally sourced, noone wants to pay more for something +6 just because it's 'rare'. Foreign/rare stuff would just get vendored out in foreign zone.
This is just not true. I sold items locally all the time on both EQlive and P1999. I always had a /WTS macro created that I would auction as I would run through the zones, on corpse runs, waiting for groups, etc. Nothing in the game said you "had" to go to EC and just permanently semi-afk /auction your wares.
For example, if I had gotten a few Savant Cap's from a good dungeon run in Unrest, I often sold them right in Unrest - typically discounted as they were from the zone, or a bit more if I was selling in Gfay when I went back to bank/sell, or even higher if I had traveled to EC and offloaded a lot of goods at once, or wanted to travel to EC to look for items to buy myself. Although, I usually sold them locally as it was quicker for me to sell items locally at a discount and get back to adventuring - I knew I could offload the items quick and obtain more and ultimately make more coin as well from not losing the opportunity cost of more adventuring and obtaining more loot/coin.
And, this could be server specific, but on the three servers I had played on - Xegony, Rodcet Nife, and Firionia Vie both Gfay and East commons were vibrant trading hubs. The only reason EC typically had larger crowds was due to the proximity for the evil races to bank.
Where I'd argue people who don't enjoy the "trader gameplay" bash their heads aganist the wall is if they feel that they "have" to get the going rate for the item and will /auction for days to try to get what they feel is 100% of the value where they wouldn't do the same if they saw an AH listing. The people using an AH would see that an item is listed for 100 pp and then would sell it for 99 pp.
If you sell low and get back to adventuring, you'll make up the profit lost (with the exception of majorly rare items) just by going back to adventuring. And, typically, for the the items that are ultra rare and valuable, they usually are that way because there's not a lot of items on the market - so unless you're charging an outlandish price, you should get a buyer there as well.
With that said, I made several long posts in the Death to the Auction Hall thread that could be used as a "compromise" without losing the integrity of the trader gameplay, which would include the Craigslist Classified ads.
@ Evoras...
I really like your considerations overall. You really put a lot of thought and attention into your posts. I appreciate that. I'm vetting for something that you describe implemented in game; if not exactly then in most of it's application if it's possible. I think there must be some way to create an effective regional system. If there is no perfect solution either way, there should be a best solution of the most ideal. And TESO's system is a time sink, I think it was just incredibly diluted and not focused enough.
I do have a question or a problem somewhat related to what Amasi has mentioned; but I'm not sure I'm considering everything you've laid out. I'll use an example to illustrate.
/|\ There will be fast travel in game as I understand though it will be limited. Am I to believe that the fast travel points will be from major city to major city? If this is so then the regional concept fails?
/|\ What if the fast travel points are some 'meaningful' distance from cities? Will those travel points then become the EC Tunnel equivalent? And thus, creating near instant global marketing?
And we better be able to /random and gamble :)
As I recall Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) back in its prime anyway(Pre-NGE), had a fairly good regional economy working.
When it started out you could only search the local area and that was pretty limiting, but they experimented with it and the next step was to allow searching a planet; and at the right locations(cities) even across planets. In SWG each planet was just one huge zone.
However, since travel could mean somone else got to purchase before you could arrive, some items might be harder to aquire. Which led to a wasted trip.
Eventually they settled on allowing purchase of goods at remote locations, so you could hold the item until you arrived to purchase it. This version seems to be what made it work in the end.
One of the more inventive aspects were crafted vendors you could place in your crafted home/building/city hall etc and it would conduct trade on your behalf. That vendor then became searchable and the owner of the vendor/their friends could place items on it.
So I know this can work as I exited that game with millions of credits, and it was perhaps the best example of a game economy I have participated in to date.
I am fairly interested to see how Pantheon handles this, the bits of information we have thus far seem fairly interesting :)
-Az
OakKnower said:... /|\ There will be fast travel in game as I understand though it will be limited. Am I to believe that the fast travel points will be from major city to major city? If this is so then the regional concept fails?
If a system of major-city links exists, offerring 'fast travel' between some of them, this *will* distort the regional markets. Ultimately there is a 'time spent travelling' that people are happy to spend. If the market with your item is further away, then they will look for it closer to home. Even if there were links between the big cities, this would still mean, if the world is big enough, that a few regional markets would exists in whichever of the cities were 'most interlinked' or most 'hub-like'.
When we consider that PTF dev's seem to imply that any 'so called' fast travel is likely to only be possible aftfer 'discovery' this will affect/distort the map based on where players tend to congregate.
But yes, overall : If you have fast travel between cities, those cities have an effective distance of 'zero'.
OakKnower said:/|\ What if the fast travel points are some 'meaningful' distance from cities? Will those travel points then become the EC Tunnel equivalent? And thus, creating near instant global marketing?
I guess the answer is 'yes, sort of'. If these fast travel points are away from the cities and are only intermittent - like the ones linked to the dreadlands in EQ1 - they it would be likely that there would be markets clustered next to a few of them - which ones being dependent on geography. If they are 'instant use' then this just means the 'global' market will be on the outskirts of one of these cities near the 'portal' rather than in it.
But this is not the real defining factor: it is more about 'amenity'.
1. If cities have a 'search' function for markets and out-of-town player trader clusters do not, this will favour town market growth.
2. If movable, or pre-placed, 'market boards' that allow searching exist outside of towns/cities then, even if towns also have them, player-chosen market clusters will likely be preferred unless the amenities in cities are open to all! I.e. Even though Freeport had a bank, the market was in the EC tunnel as 'evils' could not enter town to trade let alone use the bank.
TLDR :
When looking at the shape of the world, do not look at the map as it is. Instead look at the map from the perspective of 'how long it takes to travel' to a place. Without fast travel (or movement speed changes based on terrain, for that matter) these are virtually the same. With fast travel, this changes the topography massively. Linked cities are now 1 minute apart, instead of the (perhaps) 3 hours travel it used to take. Thus a town 10 minutes from a linked city is only 11 mins travel away instead of (say) 3 hours 10 mins away. This will have a major effect on markets, perhaps even ensuring a single regional one. The final say of how this will affect the markets will be defined by player access to amenities (banks etc).
But, in short, the more fast travel in the game - the less chance there can be regional markets.
...snip
Evoras said:...snip
But this is not the real defining factor: it is more about 'amenity'.
1. If cities have a 'search' function for markets and out-of-town player trader clusters do not, this will favour town market growth.
2. If movable, or pre-placed, 'market boards' that allow searching exist outside of towns/cities then, even if towns also have them, player-chosen market clusters will likely be preferred unless the amenities in cities are open to all! I.e. Even though Freeport had a bank, the market was in the EC tunnel as 'evils' could not enter town to trade let alone use the bank.
I never even considered point number one. That would change things up some. In that case, then items that sell frequently and on a regular basis would likely be seen in that situation (potions, food, crafting items, etc).
And point two obviously makes sense as well.
Thanks for adding to my understanding there Evoras.
Great discussions. I respectfully remind you guys about the idea vs implementation dichotomy that is really important to keep in mind. Just as some of you pointed to games where the local economies had issues, others of you pointed to games where it's worked fine. Pointing to a failure in implementation does not necessarily invalidate an idea. That said, pointing out examples of where it's worked and where it hasn't and *why* this was true is very helpful and healthy discussion.
Being able to easily search for an item in a zone, regionally, in the continent you are in, or globally? Probably something we will experiment with.
Bottom line we are comitted to local shops/vendors/people selling wares but also very aware that we will need to experiment with it during beta and may need to implement some 'helpers'.
Raidan said:disposalist said:Whatever devs decide is 'best' for the economy I hope it doesn't result in an EQ East Commons style market.
You HAD to go to one place in the whole world to sell stuff because local auctions just didn't happen. This made being from foreign lands a massive disadvantage (and a huge pain) - you would just have a 'mule' character in EC. What a brilliant social aspect of the game.
Stuff from distant lands was NOT worth more because it's all about the stats and the price. If something is +5 and cheap because there's loads locally sourced, noone wants to pay more for something +6 just because it's 'rare'. Foreign/rare stuff would just get vendored out in foreign zone.
This is just not true. I sold items locally all the time on both EQlive and P1999. I always had a /WTS macro created that I would auction as I would run through the zones, on corpse runs, waiting for groups, etc. Nothing in the game said you "had" to go to EC and just permanently semi-afk /auction your wares...
Saying "this is just not true" is rather off. It's my experience and my opinion.
EC became the de facto auction zone for many solid reasons. Auctioning locally was near pointless. I did do it and it almost never got any response or I would actually get moaned at "go to EC for that".
@Disposalist
I can see how my comment came off a bit brash, so I apologize about that, but when you make the statement with "You HAD" in capitals, it reads as much more than an "in my opinion or experience" claim especially when combined with statements being dismissive and derogatory to an opposing perspective.
In my experience, I sold locally often and received worse prices if I sold locally than in foreign lands as did others and in my opinion trader gameplay is a large part of the overall social dynamics of the game for much more reasons other than just the WTS spam. There are a lot more reasons to not want a global AH other than to remove convenience and I also realize it's not 1999 anymore and there can be compromises or room for innovation as well - see my posts in the Death to AH thread.
Aradune said:Great discussions. I respectfully remind you guys about the idea vs implementation dichotomy that is really important to keep in mind. Just as some of you pointed to games where the local economies had issues, others of you pointed to games where it's worked fine. Pointing to a failure in implementation does not necessarily invalidate an idea. That said, pointing out examples of where it's worked and where it hasn't and *why* this was true is very helpful and healthy discussion.
Being able to easily search for an item in a zone, regionally, in the continent you are in, or globally? Probably something we will experiment with.
Bottom line we are comitted to local shops/vendors/people selling wares but also very aware that we will need to experiment with it during beta and may need to implement some 'helpers'.
Thanks for the input Brad. I feel certain that there is a good compromise amongst all the ideas proposed here as well was in other threads. Personally, I just want a solution that allows me to utilize the one commodity I rarely have enough of, my time, to enjoy all the game has to offer. If I only have 2-3 hours to spend in the game it would be sad if I had to use most of it simply to participate in trading. Instant gratification isn't necessary, but neither are unnecessary time sinks. Again, thanks for the input. It is refreshing to see devs that actually listen to the players, and I have every confidence that VR will come up with a satisfactory solution to the problem.
Grymmlocke said: Thanks for the input Brad.
This thread (and the other on 'Death to the AH') epitomises why I am more than happy to fashion a (inevitably overly long) considered (occassionally outlandish) opinion after reading input from others in the thread. I do feel that the DEVs keep a weather eye on what transpires, whether to check our temperature or merely looking for a wide range of opinions on a given topic. In addition, it does seem that the closest to rancour seen on these forums is the odd blunt or overly passionate statement made in haste.
My only peeve with this particular thread is that I cannot for the life of me come to a definite answer as to whether I should add any opinion to this thread, or the other AH one!
Perhaps they can be merged? Failing that, I will roll dice!
Evoras, Ambivilant on which thread to post my answer in.
Evoras said:Grymmlocke said: Thanks for the input Brad.This thread (and the other on 'Death to the AH') epitomises why I am more than happy to fashion a (inevitably overly long) considered (occassionally outlandish) opinion after reading input from others in the thread. I do feel that the DEVs keep a weather eye on what transpires, whether to check our temperature or merely looking for a wide range of opinions on a given topic. In addition, it does seem that the closest to rancour seen on these forums is the odd blunt or overly passionate statement made in haste.
My only peeve with this particular thread is that I cannot for the life of me come to a definite answer as to whether I should add any opinion to this thread, or the other AH one!
Perhaps they can be merged? Failing that, I will roll dice!
Evoras, Ambivilant on which thread to post my answer in.
Hmm... rolling 1D12. 1-6 here or 7-12 Death to AH. And the result is... 11. There ya go ;)