Vendor System

I'm going to take a decidedly old school approach.

I loved the bazaar for its simplicity, but hated what it did to the gameplay and to the player base. I was one of those newbies that traded 80 platinum (if I even had that) and 4 rusty daggers for crap, and I did it all the time. Bartering was important in the early days, at least as important as straight out selling.

Anyway, I don't think there should be browseable wares. I don't think there should be trader satchels viewable from banks. I don't think that trading should be easy, painless, and automated, because that changes it from a rather touchy art form into just more work and grinding. Trading ceases to become fun, in any way, if you make it "view my items, choose an item, and buy it." It becomes an irritating exchange between two people that don't want to have to meet up and lose out on their xp group, wherein they each waste 2 minutes and exchange money and items.

Frankly, if you're going to sell something, you might as well take some time to do it. Go out there, auction your item, see what people are willing to pay for it. There is nothing more irritating than coming across some high and mighty soul who prices his item just out of reach of the average population. Sure, he'll sell it to some twink at an exhorbitant price (might take a week longer than normal), but this doesn't bother him because he's automated the entire process. He doesn't care if he waits a week to sell something for an exhorbitant prices, whereas the lowbies who wander by and wish they could buy the item DO care, and since high and mighty trader doesn't want to hear any sob stories, there's no way any prices will be lowered. This leads to inflation and a fundamental disconnect between most traders and most newbies and consumers.


My vision is this. You want to sell, you put in some time, dammit. You put in some time and you leave your grinding for a few hours to make some cash in a different way. The real problem is that everyone wants to have their cake and eat it to; they want to xp, get loot, level, and sell all their stuff at the same time. Forcing sellers to put some time into selling items means that items will sell for less, the economy will self-insulate itself from rampant inflation, and there will be tons more player interaction.
 
My vision is this. You want to sell, you put in some time, dammit. You put in some time and you leave your grinding for a few hours to make some cash in a different way.
Click to expand...

There's one big problem with this, however:

Say, for example, that as a 53 necromancer, I can pull right around 200pp per hour just farming cash. That's 'par for the course' for me, so to speak. Now, if I'm going to take an hour and go sell stuff... I'd better be making more then 200pp, or I just wasted my time and my items, because I effectively lost money. Everyone's time is worth a different amount depending on what level and class they are, but the basic system holds true for everyone - this is basic economics.

Now, say I've been making that 200pp in some rather low level area - say, mid 30s, and as such, I have a lot of loot that would be attractive to the level 10-25 or so crowd (because any higher and they could camp it for themselves). By your system, it would not be worth it for me to bother trying to sell that - because the chances of selling 200pp worth of loot at 5-10pp per item in an hour are slim to none. So I don't bother. I leave it sitting in my bank, give it to friends' alts, my alts, vender it, whatever.

The result is that you don't get to haggle for my goods because, well, I'm not selling them. You don't even get to buy them for the otherwise reasonable prices I would charge, because... once again, they're not for sale. The people who would sell them at reasonable prices are the ones who are subsequently wasting their time to try and sell them, and as such, don't. If I do sell them, I'm going to be selling them at a higher price then I otherwise would - because I've got to meet my quota, and selling items for 5pp is not the way to do that.

So by requiring face to face meeting for trading, you're effectively shooting yourself in the foot, because the entire reason you're advocating it becomes null and void when the items you're trying to haggle for are just not for sale.
 
And, by his explanation, he is not offering you 5pp for the item, he is offering 2pp and some more crap to try to sell.

I really love the myth that it will take 2 minutes for the face to face exchange. That was the exception, not the rule.


First, you have 30 minutes of:

/auc sword 300pp
buyer: i'll give you 80pp
Seller: no
haggling
buyer: 280?
seller: FINE, I am at the second torch.

10 minutes

buyer: I got to go to the bank

10 minutes

buyer: friend is bringing me some money

10 minutes

buyer: brb

30 minutes

buyer: okie, I am coming, mom said I had to eat.

5 minutes

buyer: where are you?

5 minutes

Buyer has offered you 150pp, a rusty spear, and 3 pieces of black steel armor
seller: what the hell, you said 280
buyer: you can sell the black steel armor for 50pp each
seller: lop a zero off, if I am lucky!
buyer: d00d, just take it... I need the sword so I can kill dinglegiants... I have 18 quests that need dinglegiant berries.
buyer2 /auc wtb sword 300 pp
seller: screw you and your mother
seller /auc torch 2 buyer2

then, for the next 2 hours

buyer /ooc Seller is a jackass, he agreed to sell me SWORD then sold it to someone else after we had a deal, everyone blacklist him
over and over and over and over and over and over


For the record, seller could have vendored the sword for 60pp and made 100pp in cash drops every thirty minutes.

Completely automated, or completely /auc there is no in between. If you choose /auc, then we will make the choice to vendor it or try our luck on the market.
 
/agree Joudas

gothmog said:
Anyway, I don't think there should be browseable wares. I don't think there should be trader satchels viewable from banks. I don't think that trading should be easy, painless, and automated, because that changes it from a rather touchy art form into just more work and grinding. Trading ceases to become fun, in any way, if you make it "view my items, choose an item, and buy it."
Click to expand...

Only for those people who find Trading to be fun in the first place, and adventuring to be "work and grinding". I was never one of those people. I'd rather go fishing for the accomplishment of skill gain (even pre-upgrade) or clearing out a lower dungeon just to see what's there than stand around and /auc. Shopping just isn't my thing. I'd even rather go farm PP somewhere that I'm not making as much as I could be auctioning the equipment I have sitting in the bank so I didn't have to deal with people like "buyer" in moghedancarns' example (which is all too often the case in my experience).

Edit: Attributed "buyer" example to wrong person, sorry!
 
think i would agree with what has been said. without some sort of automation. we just dont have the player base to rely on /auc. in live it worked because there was tons of people selling things and sometimes they were just selling as they waited on a group. on live i played a massive trader. only hitting level 57 due to camping nfreeport, veeshen server buy/sell zone. we had no /auc wts 2 bags of stuff at torch 2=( but we had /auc wts 5 bags of crap behind jades!
anyhow! without a significantly larger player base, which would increase sales rate which would decrease time trying to sell... you really do need some way to show off items without having to spam /auc *link of staff of doom* *link of earring that will pwn you* + 25 other links..... i know that black steel armor is not even worth my time to LOOT it because it doesnt even sell well to merchants. and to sell them for 5pp is a waste of time to travel to the person much less /auc for 12 days. where on my vendor ive tossed a few black steel items on it.. and its sold. over a large period of time... but it did=/

what i would like to see.
i want to see something SIMILAR to what we have now. where you can display items and put prices and such. but i do think making the items unable to be sold directly from the vendor to buyer would increase interaction as well as give a possibility for viewing. either that or a bazaar like window which i really didnt like very much. made it to easy=/ i like the current way due to i have to travel around and check vendors. and it entertains me. but the simple fact is. i cannot talk to the person about price or anything because all the items are able to be bought directly at that time. and anyone can walk up and take it. and it severly lacks player interaction.

so yea.. i am tired and dont care to read over that to make sure it makes sense. to sum up what i hope i said though...
old way of just pure /auc will fail. prices could go either way. rich guys would be trying to drop crap for cheap. and people who want to make money would be hitting the higher ends on pricings. but the simple fact that many items just arent worth /aucing to sell...
a system with browsing items would allow a buyer to find a seller with an item they wanted. then could take action in buying it and there is where the player interraction is. without tons of hours of /auc someone buy my stuff plz.
and lastly. we hate no player interaction so the vendors are going to be put on an island and nuked 32 times.
 
To respond to the idea that we lack the player base.

I had suggested a ways back that we hold auctions at specific time. This time period would see higher #'s for people looking to buy and to sell. I think that would compensate for that.
 
Cannot agree with you Danku, by enticing /auc at a certain time you would intensify the level of /auc spam-per-time which in my view is a terrible way to try and present your items.

In my view /auc spamming sucked, if you dont believe me, post an email address on the internet (without spam protection) and get a reminder.

A buyer is only interested in things that are usefull to them, all the rest of /auc is spam to them, now tell everybody to spam at once and it becomes a very untidy inbox, very quickly.

QUESTION: what is the real reason for implementing a trading system?

A1) If it's to allow people to easily trade items then I suspect that a more automated selling sytem is the answer.

A2 If it's to force player interaction via another mechanism then I suspect that it will likely be limited in its popularity due to its limited practicality.

I dont think you can meld these two together, interaction is inheritently inefficient. An inefficient system will not be as popular.

I envisage that if we were to stay with the /auc system, then I would probably not become a seller at all, ever. I never bothered selling anything in live before the bazaar because it was not fun. (After bazaar I would leave a toon in occasionally when not playing)

I would never have used the old vendor system in SoD, because I would not have been able to afford it, and the system did not seem efficient enough to predict recouping my costs. Don't forget there are lots of us who do not have >50pp items for sale, but I would love to offer stacks of forraged food at a few plat each for those upcoming cooks among you.

All in my humble opinion of course ;)
 
I'd like to touch on a point that Joudas made:

Say, for example, that as a 53 necromancer, I can pull right around 200pp per hour just farming cash. That's 'par for the course' for me, so to speak. Now, if I'm going to take an hour and go sell stuff... I'd better be making more then 200pp, or I just wasted my time and my items, because I effectively lost money. Everyone's time is worth a different amount depending on what level and class they are, but the basic system holds true for everyone - this is basic economics.
Click to expand...

If Joudas is correct and I believe he is, what this will lead to is less low priced items getting to market, and more people not having something to spend money on. Unless my logic is flawed then this would lead to a marketplace where fewer items are sold at a higher price.

The level of market practicality will determine the range of viable saleable goods. In that respect again a more automated system is probably more ideal.

I know I keep heading towards an automated market system, and I do not want you guys to think that I cannot see the other side of the equation. But I am trying to look at the whole picture:

A practical automated system that efficiently exposes a massive percentage of the games items to *all* players(not just high end players) [My gamestyle would probably give me access to >50% of item content]

vs

An interactive(because it adds "something") yet inefficient system which drastically reduces the trade of saleable goods. And hence reduces the availability of content(items) to the playerbase. [My gamestyle would probably give me access to <10% of item content]

As a programmer and a player I lean towards the former, but acknowledge that there is something missing from the trading aspect, which I believe is compensated for by enriching my game experience considerably with "uber gear"(studded leather is uber over plain leather!).

On live my experience pre-bazaar was painfull and progress really stalled around mid-30s. The game had gotten tough because I was poorly equipped, and as a consequence my interest in playing waned. Once the bazaar came about I was able to better equip my characters who then had a new lease on life and zoomed(well not really but it sounds good) up to their final resting places around level 50.

SoD, like eq is a gear dependent game. The trading system is a vital aspect to distributing the much needed gear to the players, hence increasing the quality of the game itself.

Even if we miss that "something" while trading, in my view the game is enriched tremendously by making item content that much more available.
 
To Knur =D

I do not see anything wrong with making a specific auction channel for the bazzar-time-area itself.

As for using the old vendor system, I am totally with you. most of the stuff I do sell is under 50p and using a 100p a week vendor just pushes prices higher. It also keeps out the lowbies that would be selling items to other lowbies, which the whole system needs them in it too.

I honestly think that my suggestion (original one last page or so) would cover most concerns.

I do also agree that some minor form of automation is needed. Maybe the suggestion of an auctioneer could be implemented somehow. I can see real value in that.
 
Wiz, might I suggest making a list of the main concerns with the current vendor system, and with a prospective new system? If folks could see exactly what you're trying to address, it would make it easier to evaluate the various suggestions, and people could also raise any other concerns that they think should be added to the list.
 
Ok, I've read a vast majority of the posts and thought up a few idea's. Some I have tossed out mostly because they really weren't that good. No real improvements. The idea of set trading times is a good one, Just set it up like the NPC merchants, from 6am to 6 pm. Its not a bad way to do business. Another thought that I had come up with was more or less a variation of the vendor system we have now. Instead of disabling it completely, couldn't we move all the Vendors to one zone, say Felwithe, and have them run on a 12 hour (In Game) shift, Like the merchants do now? Each morning they are hireable for that day at a low rate? Or perhaps, they make 10% of your days sales or something? Then when its time to close up shop, all non sold items are sent to the sellers bank with the porfits minus the Vendors share? Only real problem I am seeing with that is people camping vendors. LOL. I like the idea behind a specific zone being designated for trading, and the Shop Hours idea that wiz was talking about before is a good one.

I heard a lot of people talking about the fact that they lose money by sitting in a zone and /auctioning their wares. Yes, this can happen... if we go with a non-automated way of doing things. And granted, as someone who lived through the EC era, I can understand the downside to that, but in a way, it is what made things more interesting. I hated EC, despised it to be more accurate. But we can only have it one of two ways, either face to face trading, or automated. i'm really undecided which is the better way of doing things. My opinion, try both for a little while and see which generates the best responses.

Just my 2cp worth.
 
Automation won't make prices artifiically high. More automation and reduction of barriers to entry to trading markets will make prices approach market equilibrium more quickly. This is how unrestricted free markets work.
 
StefanProdan said:
Automation won't make prices artifiically high. More automation and reduction of barriers to entry to trading markets will make prices approach market equilibrium more quickly. This is how unrestricted free markets work.
Click to expand...

We don't want automation for exactly that reason.
 
zodium said:
StefanProdan said:
Automation won't make prices artifiically high. More automation and reduction of barriers to entry to trading markets will make prices approach market equilibrium more quickly. This is how unrestricted free markets work.
Click to expand...

We don't want automation for exactly that reason.
Click to expand...

Could you explain a little more? We want artificially high prices due to high barriers to entry (time and effort to /auc)? As pointed out earlier, this will mostly affect lower end goods (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). Is the goal to limit twinking by drying up the lower end market?

Just trying to understand what the goals of the change are besides the fairness and asthetics issues...
 
This wouldn't elminiate twinking - the people who're twinking are the only ones who would be able to afford the lower end goods, not the people who legitimately want to buy them. It would in effect generate exactly the opposite result of that which is desired.
 
If selling 10-20pp items is a hassle, I'd rather just give them away for free rather than destroy them. I don't want them junking up my bank, but at the same time I realize they would be useful to a lower level, and don't want them to go to waste.

If the goal is to prevent items from being underpriced, this may be an unintended side-effect as many other people might do the same. At any rate, since I don't have a vendor I'm only stuck with /auction at the moment, so I'm certain that any change to the commerce system the devs make will be an upgrade for me.
 
I have a suggestion/request and I hope its not construed as changing the old NPC vendor system. Could you retool the current PC-purchased NPC vendors into guild banks where stuff is given for free for a given guild?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom