Vendor System

[Danku]

EC was a dump. You had to turn off auction (and OOC, because people were idiots) just to try to xp in the zone, before you gave it up. People did not kill Slate for fun, they killed him because people thought it was funny to train Slate to the tunnel, where he would happily slay the greater majority of the playerbase.




As for where to put the Arena, put it where it goes, off Starfall. Portal, no portal, the only people not able to get there from NP or Oggok are under level 20 and fairly unskilled, meaning the exact people with no PP and a boatload of rusty daggers to trade... the very people no one wants to deal with.

First off, that was your take on EC. Ok, you had to shut down a few channels and there was lag. This is not LIVE! We do not have overcrowded servers that steadily have 1,000 people on them. The main talk is about making a specific zone be the trading zone, not one where people are XPing.

Secondly, even if you don't want to see someone's 20 rusty daggers, they have as much right as you to try to sell them. The attitude you take towards them is a bit offensive from where I sit.

We have a damn fine player base with very few jerks. I think the average player on this server knows what manners are and uses them very well, regardless of their level. Whatever Wiz decides on will be fine and I am sure that it will be fair to all players.

 

[Lantaa]

One of the things I've read on MMO Game design is that inevitably game designers will put in elaborately designed social areas with lots of great things for PC to do or watch or interact with or whatever. However, unless there is a material benefit players would rarely stay. People congregated at EC tunnel because it had easy access to half the world, nearby good and evil cities, and merchants with plentiful trade skill supplies. There was no fancy quests or interesting NPCs or whatever.

In that line, I'd recommend something like a small free-standing zone. Give players a benefit in travel by having it be a Translocator destination. Maybe give wizards and druids a port to the zone? Give players a tradeskill benefit by having it well stocked with supplies and equipment. Put in a bank and vendors with desirable items (maybe spells?). Maybe have vendors pay more for items there, something closer to the vendor sell price, so people will be encouraged to come here to sell loot. Disable encumberance.

I'd reccomend making the auction channel zone specific if you really want to encourage this marketplace zone. Otherwise people will just /auc from anywhere like usual. Or if you want to be real smart about it, make auction only zone-wide, but if you're in the marketplace zone you can hear auctions from the entire server. So going there youre gauranteed to hear anybody auctioning anything at all.

I'm not sure what you have in mind for special commands or whatever, but something like that could help too.

 

[Joudas]

I'd reccomend making the auction channel zone specific if you really want to encourage this marketplace zone. Otherwise people will just /auc from anywhere like usual. Or if you want to be real smart about it, make auction only zone-wide, but if you're in the marketplace zone you can hear auctions from the entire server. So going there youre gauranteed to hear anybody auctioning anything at all.

I've got to disagree enormously with this. Nerfing the serverwide auction won't draw more people to the zone - it'll cause less stuff to get sold. Forcing people to go to a zone to sell things isn't the answer - there should be an incentive to go, not a detriment if you don't.

 

[Gaby]

I definitely think that the satchel thing would be pretty similar to the idea i mentioned prior about having a list of items a person might have for sale. What I did not like so much though its what Wiz said that you may leave a trader up and a person might be gone doing his/her own things while someone looking at its wares.

For example, buyer goes to the trader sees a cheap nice sword she would like to buy but would like to negotiate a little with the seller. Seller is exping in his/her regular char and tells the buyer "hey, I'm busy right now, contact me in about an hour."

The whole mechanics behind selling is that "the customer is always right and we, the sellers, are here to provide a service to you." Stores don't open up to clients to buy when the seller feels like selling rather when the customer is willing to go and visit a store.

Thus why I said that such list "or vendor with satchels" should be active only if the seller is available within the zone. Also places such as the EC tunnel and Gfay were pretty popular cuz they had banks and NPC vendors close by. Perhaps you could introduce a brand new recovered zone from Dalaya for example, Highold Keep, add its regular NPC vendors and bankers so people can go buy stuff to do tradeskills while being outside in Highhold Pass and having their items up for sale.

Selling/buying among players should be as important as doing tradeskills and exping cuz we are a community and they should all consume time to accomplish it, it is not just a 2 minute run to the gas station and get a coke, you're looking for what you like and worth the money you raised through exping.

 

[Knur]

I recently stopped by Aralia in Newport and bought some bait. Not that I intend to bait anyone, but I did find myself with a can of worms in my possession that I'd like to share with some of you.

First up I will put forward a suggestion on the location for a trading zone/area. Seeing as there are many gypsy camps scattered around the world, I would suggest making use of them in a rather nomadic, and interesting in my opinion, manner. We could create a band(what's a bunch of gypsies called?) of Trading Gypsies that travel from one gypsy camp to the next.

The gypsies would setup the trading facility (whatever is decided on) for one full (game)day, then break camp before sunrise and walk to the next camp of their choosing(could be random). Serious traders could actually walk with them from one camp to another! The gypsies (and peoples traders) should probably be non kos to everything so that their progress does not get hampered. If characters are going to be required for people to sell their wares then those characters flagged as traders should automatically walk to the next camp along with the gypsies. Characters flagged as traders should be non kos for the duration of the flagging.

There should be a Gypsy that can be hailed at empty gypsy camps that will inform characters what zone the Trading Gypsies are currently in. The Trading Gypsies should include a means of banking and at least a couple generic vendors for support purposes such as food and whatnot.

You could despawn the zone that the gypsies are currently in, for the duration of them being in the zone. This would elegantly remove kos issues and issues of lag affecting fighting players as there would be no fighting going on in the zones that the trading gypsies are in.

Benefits as I see them:
+ Forces players to goto new zones that they otherwise might not go to
+ Adds to the whole day-night/seasonal thing we have going
+ New gypsy camp trading areas could be added in the future

Another non-fleshed out idea:
If you allow non interactive trading via a vendor bot (that does not use up a character), you could try to introduce a benefit to actually being there as a seller. One idea is; if you allow haggling(off the top of my head) a purchaser can haggle your price down to X% of your asking price, if you are there to counter-haggle you can protect yourself from it. (Maybe you just have to be in the zone)
This would attract people trying to get a bargain, and provide a benefit to sellers to being there as well.

Other (random)points/opinions about trading as I see them:
+ I enjoy window-shopping for items for my toons, but I do/did not use the the spread out all over the world vendor system as it is wastefull of time.
+ I would hate to have to leave a character logged in 100% of the time (to catch busy timezones) in order to sell my loot. (cannot do it even if i wanted to)
+ Unfortunately I would prefer a system that allows you to search for items (like live bazaar) as it can be beyond tedious trying to find an upgrade for a race/class, left middle finger item with STR+5 otherwise.
+ I dont think having non-interactive trading is such a bad thing, so long as its compensated by some other form of interaction.
+ I hate tryig to find something in /auction, it hurts your eyes and is ultimately limited in the number of people that it can accomodate.

Thats enough from me for now - go ahead shoot me down!

 

[Hasrett]

The key points are highlighted for ease of skimming, since there's a lot of information in this thread.

Traveling traders are probably too complex, and if you made it so haggling with an AFK vendor bot could lower the price, sellers would just up their prices to make the low end the price they really want.

I favor the trader satchel idea. The one thing I would suggest changing is requiring that the seller be online for his goods to be viewable. If they were viewable offline (perhaps via Wanelo, per Zhak's suggestion), that would level the playing field between those with lots of play time and those with less. It would promote the use of the forums here for communication with offline players to set up meeting times, and wouldn't in any way reduce player interactions--since you'd still need to interact to set up a price and to make the actual exchange.

The downside I see to this is that, in the suggested form, it leaves no way of pre-establishing a price. For sellers with a lot of items in their trader satchels, that would likely mean getting a lot of queries on price. When I auction my better items with /auc, I generally get at least 4 or 5 (sometimes 10+) tells from people who are just checking on the price, or who are offering a small fraction of the item's value. At times, when I haven't stopped by SNP for a while, I'll have half a dozen good items and sometimes 10-20 lower end items to add to my vendor. I can only imagine how many tells I'd be getting from people who weren't really potential buyers because they didn't know my price range.

In light of this problem, I'd say that if there were a way to attach an "asking price" to the items in the trader satchels that is displayed with the items themselves, that would be ideal. I imagine that would be hard to implement, though.

A couple of possible, related solutions:
A) NPC auctioneers who have a dialog system that allows you to request a list of the items being sold by a certain person. I would imagine that a list of linked items, each paired with the asking price (I'm not quite sure how it would be set--either in the bank in the trader satchels, or by talking to the auctioneer), would be the easiest to implement. If there was a way for the buyer to view the items in the bags themselves, though, that would be great too. Auctioneers could be placed either in one single zone, or in several city zones. They could give access either to all sellers' items, or only to those sellers who are non-KOS to the auctioneer (if they're placed in different cities). The latter would add an additional element of roleplaying.

B) A command to call up a window listing the items. Obviously this is reminiscent of the Bazaar on Live, which may rule it out. To develop the idea, though: The command could be limited to certain zones, such as city zones. It would show a list of players (or, should the devs choose, could also be sorted in other ways, such as by item slot, to borrow more from the Bazaar), or possibly the letters A through Z, on which you could click to view players whose names begin with that letter (to prevent a ginormous list). When you select the player, it would show the items (or links thereof?) he has for sale, and the desired price. Obviously, unlike the bazaar, it would require the players to interact in order to finalize the price and meet up. For players who are offline, there could be a couple of extra postmasters placed conveniently--perhaps in or near the banks--for the sending of offers etc. Not to mention private messages on the forums here.

Both of these are geared at creating an interface for viewing the items and the attached asking price. I'm not especially attached to these methods; they're just the only things that came to mind.


Just throwing a few more ideas into the pot. My apologies if any of this duplicates what others have said. It's late and I skimmed a few of the posts (hence my formatting).

 

[hassan]

NPC auctioneer's are a nifty idea, but I'd like to be able to search for items with certain stats vs a specific name

 

[jshank]

Having read the thread, it seems the main concerns are:

Another nice thing (on a similar note) would be a way to sell items via mail - example, give an item to the postmaster, and say "I wish to sell to soandso for 150 0 0 0 Here's the sword you wanted. <-- Would send a letter saying "here's the sword you wanted", and when the person received the mail, would be told that the item was available, but would cost them 150 platinum, and be prompted to accept or reject... accepting would deduct the money from their character, add it to the person's who sent it (or send it to them via mail? something), so you could trade with someone who's not online during the same times you are.

Please, please, please implement a way to mail items for money. As a starting jewelcrafter I am pleased with the number of people who want to buy my items but the cost and or time to meet with them is prohibitive. I spend 2pp on a translocator or take 2 boats and 25 minutes to meet up with someone to sell a 5pp item is extrememly prohibitive. I think the mail-order system would handle time zone issues, leave in player interactivity and take some of the travel hassle out, you should still have to go to a post-master, just not all the way across the world to sell one item.

 

[Joudas]

A) NPC auctioneers who have a dialog system that allows you to request a list of the items being sold by a certain person. I would imagine that a list of linked items, each paired with the asking price (I'm not quite sure how it would be set--either in the bank in the trader satchels, or by talking to the auctioneer), would be the easiest to implement. If there was a way for the buyer to view the items in the bags themselves, though, that would be great too. Auctioneers could be placed either in one single zone, or in several city zones. They could give access either to all sellers' items, or only to those sellers who are non-KOS to the auctioneer (if they're placed in different cities). The latter would add an additional element of roleplaying.

Perhaps you could set up items in your satchel in your bank, then talk to the auctioneer and use commands similar to the current vender commands to set the prices of each item. Then, someone could either ask the auctioneer for a list of everything a certain person is selling, or for a list of everyone selling a certain item - and be able to see at a glance who had the cheapest price. This would be an enormous improvement over the current system in and of itself, as currently, there's no way to see if the price you're paying for an item is for sale on a vender 10 feet away for half that price without checking every vender in every zone for that item and comparing.

 

[Maros]

I for one often log in to see maybe 100 people online somtimes. Trying to find specific items on /auc at times like this would be murder. I prefer buying and selling items face to face with people but that isn't always possible given different time zones and play times or whathaveyou.

An example of not being able to compare prices would be in Newport (I can't remember for the life of me the names of either of these vendors><) just outside Lions before the docks. There are two vedors on oposite sides of a tree, both were selling Dragonskin sashs (15% haste +5 SV Fire). On the left it was going for 750 and on the right, 250. Needless to say I promptly snapped up the 250 one and laughed my ass off over the 750.

 

[shebearcub]

A) NPC auctioneers who have a dialog system that allows you to request a list of the items being sold by a certain person. I would imagine that a list of linked items, each paired with the asking price (I'm not quite sure how it would be set--either in the bank in the trader satchels, or by talking to the auctioneer), would be the easiest to implement. If there was a way for the buyer to view the items in the bags themselves, though, that would be great too. Auctioneers could be placed either in one single zone, or in several city zones. They could give access either to all sellers' items, or only to those sellers who are non-KOS to the auctioneer (if they're placed in different cities). The latter would add an additional element of roleplaying.

I really like this sort of an idea, and as far as the browsing goes, You could have different types of auctioneers. Jewel Jewelcrafter could be used to list jewelry and so on, nearby could be the NPC vendors selling gems and jewelry making items to encourage those who have the time and want to... to practice their craft right there, where they may make extra sales for being available.

Then, If I'd looted a few gems in my hunting, I would also know where to find the people that might be interested in buying them, who were available to do so at the time.

I also like the idea of being able to sell items COD through the postmaster - But just because this is a good idea, doesn't - to me at least - make it a good idea to be able to bypass the postmaster. If you're high level and don't want to leave your group, to sell, then don't!!

Someone not wanting to wait to buy the perfect item they've been saving for, may find it somewhere else. The trade off?? Maybe not so fair but I think if you want to sell, then you have to make the efforts as well. Listing them as links in an auction with asking prices is a good solution to spam and attention wasted while you're busy... but I don't think it's to much to ask, that at the end of the day when you're done with your group and you want to sell something, to get your butt to a postmaster for the transaction.

Having the items listed as tags when you hail jewel jewelcrafter also would speed your searches for items you wanted, by not having to search through weasley's weapons when you're looking for jewelry...without making it as automated as a bazaar. Each name for tradeskills-type auctioneers could be as cheesy and recognizable - along with the weird outfits to make things a little more fun... and keep the interaction for those who want it.

.. and for those to busy to be bothered... well they just might not be as bothered as often... when the sales are going to people more available. But they to, could list their links and prices for those willing to wait for a more rare item - or to be able to check on friends or guildmates wares, as preferred sellers.

Also, a *firm* tag on the auctioneers list - and/or *OBO* could keep the haggeling from interfering with those who won't... and allow the fun and games or just plain flexability for those who want to.

I sold some bat blood once to someone auctioning wanting to buy it... for 49 platnium, 8 gold, 7 silver, 6 copper and a hug.
I see the benifits of an easier way to do things without taking away all the social aspects. Adding the postmaster idea to the NPC auctioneer idea seems to make a good balance, and centering it all in a neutral and accessible zone will encourage more on the side social interactions.

Adding Dru/Wiz portals there would keep it possible for someone to leave a group and come back... as well as making it easier to get there from somewhere other than a city. A bank, and a Postmaster along with the easily recognized names would make it easier on the buyer without handing out items on a platter, also requiring the seller to sort through and organize items for sale as they are listing it, so it's no free ride there either.

Just my 2cp on the ideas presented already. =)

 

[Knur]

The only thing I was really suggesting was that if there is to be a static vendor NPC type system, then it could be made mobile. The fact that quest makers can (de)spawn NPCs and path them should indicate that making a mobile trade caravan is technically feasible.

Initially it could be dumbed down and just have them despawn then respawn in the next (trading) zone/gypsy camp. (They should be up almost around the clock. I was thinking one game hour before sunrise for travelling.)

If the actual how-do-we-trade mechanism is going to be bazaar like, ie all people must come to one zone to trade, then the above is feasible. About the only add-on code relating to the "mobileness" would be keeping track of what zone the caravan has moved to so that people hailing the where-is-the-caravan-now NPC would ge tthe correct answer.

I think one of the things we need to decide is how much we are willing to trade off in immersion.

Going to a global search(can search everyting for sale by anyone - aka live bazaar) trades off a lot of "reality", but is probably needed in order to properly facilitate reasonably efficient trading.
If you allow global searching, *from any zone* then it will be worse than live bazaar, probably interrupting groups as key members find that bargain and accidentally go LD to grab another toon to snap it up.
If you allow the complete search only while within the designated trading zone, then at least buying becomes like a shopping trip. In live I kinda enjoyed taking some time out now and then from XPing, and making a trip to the bazaar for the purpose of spending my hard earned money!

Using a sell via postmaster system would be very convenient(moreso than live bazaar) but i feel it actually removes a lot of "quality" interaction, replacing it with 2 toons walk to a postmaster then click trade. I liked the hustle of EC tunnel in that it was full of people, but I did not like the /auc spam and lag.

So for me a postmaster-to-trade system, though convenient, is out.

I agree that a sachel type system(preferably in the bank) to show your saleable items is a good idea.
I prefer the idea of not having to use a character as a vendor.

What about using the shared bank area to show items that are for sale? Then you dont have to create special bags, and its account wide, not tying up a char for trading. Also money from the sale of goods could go into the shared money spot so you can see how much you made.

As for the haggle idea, the purpose was to give incentive for people to come together and create a market atmosphere. (It was labeled not fleshed out)

Haggle could be implemented in another manner. If both the buyer and seller are in zone, they could both have a haggle and the result would be that the item sells for x +- y%. The buyer and seller can agree to a x% haggle before clicking trade.

 

[Joudas]

As for the haggle idea, the purpose was to give incentive for people to come together and create a market atmosphere. (It was labeled not fleshed out)

Haggle could be implemented in another manner. If both the buyer and seller are in zone, they could both have a haggle and the result would be that the item sells for x +- y%. The buyer and seller can agree to a x% haggle before clicking trade.

What incentive is there then, in this case, for the seller to be in the zone? None, in fact, negative incentive, because they're then going to get their prices haggled down to a lower number then they wanted to sell for. The haggle idea, while original, is fairly impractical.

So for me a postmaster-to-trade system, though convenient, is out.

In a world where you can talk to someone who's on a seperate continent from you, what is the point of requiring face to face meeting for trading? It does nothing but severely reduce the number of items that get sold. Sure, you can say "But people who want to sell enough to wait around and do it should be rewarded by more sales!", but who's going to wait around to sell a set of 3-5pp newbie equipment? Nobody, which means there's no newbie equipment for sale, which means newbies get screwed. This favors the level 65 person selling the 20k item over the level 10 person with 3pp worth of Blackburrow loot, which is bollocks, in my humble opinion.

There's still interaction, as the two people have to talk to make the deal, they jsut don't have to spend 20 minutes finding each other to complete the sale.

 

[Tydarius]

Ok, I have read through all the posts, and I’ve tried to work on an overall idea that was inspired by numerous posts in this thread. I read a great many ideas, just decided to put my spin on it. I apologize for the lengthy post in advance.

I’ll post the different areas and ideas that I would suggest be placed within the game, and then try to make sense of it all with examples afterwards.

First off, here are the areas I see being added to the game:

The Marketplace
The Server-wide Marketplace
Trader Satchels in the Bank
Trader’s Journal window added to the UI
Contacting a player/trader – Trader IM's


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The Marketplace:

What I envision is a marketplace in each starting city. Now, this marketplace WILL NOT operate like the Bazaar we all love to hate from LIVE, nor will it contain 500+ vendors that players can rent for a very short time period. This marketplace would allow players who wish to trade items a place to sell and players looking for items or services a place to find them, while still requiring players to interact with one another to complete any transaction.

Within each marketplace will be 4 types of NPC’s for players and traders to interact with – Trade Merchant NPC’s, Trade Assistant NPC’s, Trade Broker NPC’s and the Trade Master NPC. Here’s a breakdown of what each NPC will be for:

Trade Merchant NPC – Players will go to these NPC’s to browse the server-wide marketplace and see what is being sold and by whom. Since this type of NPC will be used the most, each marketplace will have at least 5 of these NPC’s. They would use a search window that would open up when interacting with this NPC (see info on this below in the server-wide marketplace section).

Trade Assistant NPC – Players who wish to post their Trader Info, Trade skill Info and Services that they can provide will need to interact with these NPC’s. Each marketplace would have at least 3 of these NPC’s. Traders who would like to post information about themselves would fill out the info they want to provide with the Trade Assistant, pay a fee (1pp for example), and have this information available for players to search for a 1-2 week period.

Trade Broker NPC – Players who wish to sell items that they are currently storing in their “Trader Satchels” that they have in the bank (See Trader Satchel section below) would need to interact with these NPC’s. Each marketplace will have at least 3 of these NPC’s. To be listed on the server-wide marketplace, traders would be required to pay a fee (1pp for example) to have their wares listed for a 24-hour period.

Trade Master NPC – This NPC is the equivalent of an Information desk – to help answer any questions players may have on what to do within the marketplace. This NPC would sell Trader satchels as well (see Trader Satchel section below).

None of these NPC’s will sell any items for any player. All they do is provide information to potential buyers about what traders have items to sell, or services to provide. After that, it’s up to the player to contact the trader (thru the trader IM system – see the Trader IM's section below) about making a purchase.


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The Server-wide Marketplace:

This is the data of all the players who have trader info, and what they have to sell. Players who wish to find an item would only need to interact with the Trade Merchant NPC in the Marketplace to open up the search window (very similar to the search feature for the Bazaar on LIVE). So, a new search interface window would be needed.

Personally, I could care less if players want to search by neck item, STA+ bonuses or by class, the only data I feel is important to track would be the Item_Name / Item_Price / Item_Quantity / Trader_Name. It would keep the searches short and simple (search by item name or trader name only) – may require some players to scroll, but most players will know what they are looking for most of the times. If it would be easy enough to design a fully searchable real time database (like on LIVE) that would allow players the ability to search by item slot or item stat, then good, but I don’t think it would be that great of a loss if it wasn’t set up for it – that’s more of a perk I think (my opinion - flame away)

Searches of partial names would yield results as well, for those players that forgot the full item name. The Item_Name field should allow for right clicking to view stats on each item. Selecting an item would allow a “Contact Trader” button on the interface to become active. Players would click on this to contact a trader to tell them they are interested in purchasing some of their wares (more on this in the Trader IM's section below). If a player is currently offline, their trader and information will still be listed, but when a player tries to make contact, they will receive a message detailing that this trader is currently offline, and would you like to send a message for the trader to receive the next time they are on?

Basically, it would be a search interface very similar to the one found on LIVE, but made to be much simpler – as long as anything like this would not be a clear violation of anything Sony might get pissed off about.


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Trader Satchels in the bank:

Most posts on this seem like a great idea to me, but I’m going to try and detail a few changes and my reasons why. I have 2 possible types of setups in mind.

Setup 1 –

The Bank interface would need to be revamped a bit, so as to change the shared bank slots into “Trader Only” slots. In these 2 slots, players will place “Trader Satchels” that would be purchased from the Trade Master NPC. Players will only be allowed 2 “Trader Satchels” PER ACCOUNT. Each satchel will allow you to set the price for any item (just like trader mode from LIVE) you keep within it.

After the player has set the pricing for items in the satchels, they head over to the Marketplace and meet with a Trade Broker NPC. By paying a small fee (1 pp for example), the player is paying the Trade Broker NPC to post all the items they have in the their trader satchels onto the server-wide marketplace.


Setup 2 –

This setup would require serious revamping of the bank interface. Change the 2 shared bank slots into “Trader Storage Chests” – unmovable storage containers, bolted to the bank, they can’t go anywhere, don’t even think about trying to lift one of these babies! Each storage chest would allow 20-slots of space (just like the satchels), possibly more (up to you WIZ…). Because of this, no need to purchase satchels.

Players would use the interface that would be set up in the revamped bank window to set pricing info (again, similar to trader mode from LIVE), then they would head over and meet with a Trade Broker NPC in the Marketplace, pay the fee, and have the items they want to sell posted onto the server-wide marketplace.

Also, players would be limited to setting up 1 player character as the trader for that account (this does not mean that that character needs to sit in trader mode – this is just for the sake of server-wide searches). Players will be able to designate a different character if they wish. The purpose of designating a trader character is for when a player searches for items to buy, the name of the designated trader character will show up even if that player is currently playing on a different character. Then the player who wishes to make a purchase will send a trader tell to the trader character name (see Trader IM's section below). The player will receive the page within a new UI window (see Trader’s Journal Window section below) that will work across all characters on 1 account. This way, no matter what character a player is on, he will always receive a message that was sent to his trader (I do not know if this is even possible, I’m making an assumption here that it is).


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Trader’s Journal window added to the UI


A new window would be needed for the UI – for now I’ll call it the Trader’s Journal window. This window will allow a trader to interact with potential buyers no matter where they are, or what character they are currently playing.

Basically, when a player has items up for sale, they would have this window open on the screen (it can be minimized or opened/closed at any time). If and when another player tries to contact the trader about purchasing an item, the tell will show up inside this window. From that, the trader can decide on whether to respond with one of several “AFK-like” auto-replies, or send off a typed response right away.

This window would be similar to an IM window, allowing the trader the choice of responding right away, or letting the auto-reply to answer. This would be ideal for the trader who is currently on a raid, in the middle of an XP group, or is trying to play on an alt.

The Auto-replies can be set up to inform potential buyers as to what you are currently doing, or when you’ll be back in the city for them to meet with you – whatever the trader wants to say.

What is there to stop players from sending direct tells to a trader? Nothing. But if a player sets up a character that they rarely use as the trader, or switches the trader status to a different character that they have, then it would force potential buyers to use the Trader Tell feature from the Marketplace to ensure that they will get in touch with the trader that they want to buy wares from.


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Contacting a player/trader – Trader IM’s

So, as a potential buyer, you’ve searched the server-wide marketplace, and found a few different traders selling stuff you want. You start sending tells, but none of them are online – absolute pisser.

Well, instead of sending direct tells, you could use the “Contact Trader” button on the search window in the marketplace. By doing this, it guarantees that any trader you contact will get your tell, even if they are playing on a different character at that moment. Clicking this button will open up a “Trader IM” window for you to type your message in to send to that trader. Just type your message, hit send, and wait for the reply. (I’m sure everyone knows how to IM, but I’m just explaining for the sake of flushing out my overall ideas – so don’t flame me too hard). Any reply you receive from the trader will show up here. This window will act like an IM window we all know and love, so any message that the trader wants to broadcast to you will appear here, be it an auto-reply or a tell informing you of where to meet to make the transaction.

If you try to contact a trader who is now offline, you will be asked in this window to leave a message for the trader to get the next time they are logged in.


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A few things I feel the need to mention or clarify (just my bloated opinions):

Trader Satchels – I feel that each account should be restricted to only 2 trader satchels (meaning 2 satchels PER ACCOUNT, not per character), and that each trader satchel shouldn’t have more than 20-slots. My reason for the restriction is it will keep players from having multiple traders set up on one account. If the suggestions I made were to be implemented, allowing multiple trader characters per account seems to be a logistical nightmare to sort out, while restricting it seems to keep it easier to maintain, not to mention easier to implement the Trader IM’s.

Trader Chests – Same as above, but in this situation, their wouldn’t be a need to restrict players to a set number of satchels PER ACCOUNT – it’s already implemented. Again, this is dependent upon IF it can be done, but I think I like this idea the best – and WIZ could always determine the total number of trader slots allowed per account. Something tells me that this would be a bit of a programming nightmare though – would love to be proven wrong!

The Marketplace – I’m sure some of you are saying “It’s the same as the Bazaar on LIVE”, or “Why not just let the Merchant’s in the marketplace sell the stuff for us?” Well, it's not the same, some parts are similar though. The whole point that I’m striving for is a way that allows any player to search server-wide, but still requires the player-to-player interaction to complete any transaction. To allow the Marketplace to take care of everything would be sort of what WIZ does not want. I feel limiting the length of time that your trader information in the marketplace will push a trader to stay within the market, and stay current with market prices as well b/c of the daily changes.

I also feel that limiting the number of slots available to traders to sell wares is a good thing. I just can’t imagine what the database would be like if you had 300 traders trying to fill 100-slots – just seems like too much data to maintain (I’m sure WIZ would be the best judge of something like that being implemented). I know tradeskillers would want a lot of slots for the items they make, and believe me, I’m very into tradeskills as well, I just think it leaves too many items in the market for too long, with bloated prices. These items would be sold off faster if people knew they had to turn the items over fast or suffer the hardship of too much stock. I just think fewer trader slots will require more competitive pricing (ok, all you accounting majors and tradeskillers, flame away).


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Ok, that’s enough for now and I hope some of these ideas are helpful.


- Tydarius

 

[Knur]

I just want to touch on searching capabilities for vendoring mkII.

For me, stat and class/race searchability is very important as I would not have the slightest clue what items I should be buying for all my characters classes at various level ranges.

Some of you might know 100s of items by name, but I can barely fill my fingers with named items.
I know cloth, leather armour and rusty weapons quite well though!

So if you cull the search feature to item names then you are doing myself and any (game)newbies a bit of a disservice.

Pre-bazaar there was no non-painfull way of learning what items existed. No way I was going to trace /auc and /tell every seller to link me his items. Once the bazaar hit it really opened the door to gaining accessibility to the massive amount of items in the game. It was such an eye opener let me tell you.

On live I have played 5 or so chars to ~50 to give you some perspective.

 

[Knur]

Sorry to reply to my own post but this trading thing has been going around the bananas in my head this last day.
(This post does not touch on searching, just about the selling mechanism)

In my mind the trading situation is looking for ideals that are just not possible. (Please prove me wrong)

We want to introduce interaction.
The only real way to do that is to force a player to be involved in the selling.
(The buying player is always interacting so we can effectively forget about them for the purposes of this discussion.)

Forcing a player to be involved in the selling(for interactive purposes), forces a player to sit through many hours(even days) of non-interaction during the majority of the time that nobody is buying anything from him or her. Let face it, a high percentage of a sellers time is spent getting fat eating gnome crunchies.

So by trying to force interaction, you are forcing long periods of boredom (non-interaction) upon the selling half of the equation.

Forcing a character-based way of selling/vendoring will lead to vendorbot alts who just veg though the downtime, while the mains are off galavanting around with their segsy troll mistresses.

When a sale does go though, the alt trying to make a sale is probably going to be poorly monitored and may sit unresponsive for a while before the bad-human notices that someone wants to buy something. I envisage a gruff, click trade then "ty" before attention is back on the main.

So in my mind, using a character to sell stuff does not add to gameplay. Following on from that it then makes sense to use a non-char (NPC). At least this will work out better for the buying side of the equation.

Please prove me wrong.

ps. Its awesome being able to (hopefully)contribute in some small way to SoD.

 

[khador]

ill admit that i didnt read much in this thread. but i read ur last msg. and it almost sounded like u proved urself wrong=/ even with the bot. there is interaction between buyer and seller. where with an npc like our current vendor. interaction CAN occur. but usually doesnt. its hard to haggle for an item when its on vendor as it can sell at any time. waiting for someone to log in sux=/
but yea. i dont believe i really have any set way to improve trading unless you made our current vendors unable to actually sell an item. but just display items. inwhich sounds nifty to me. in other words id like to have the current vendors exactly as they are... without a buy button for anyone besides the owner. dont know if thats possible. but it would a. give player interaction and b. allow others to view AND see a price of what a person has. and no i have no clue if this was previously posted. its just what sounds convienent and simple.

a bazaar type search thing was nice and easy also... but i hated the bazaar with a passion on live.

hope this all gets solved=)

 

[Knur]

I think you missed the bit that yes you get interaction as a seller for that 30seconds per x hours, but it causes no-interaction for the remains time over that same timeperiod.

cheers

 

[Joudas]

In regards to the suggestions that involve seperate UI panels for various things:

Wiz and co cannot change the UI. They can't add any UI panels that don't already exist, and can't change the ones that do, beyond what a custom UI can manage (that is to say, they can change the aesthetics but not the function). These are all client side (obviously), and there's just nothing that can be done about that.

 

[khador]

so who hooked up those 2? someone has to be auctioning. and in a trade... there cant be someone always sitting there ready to sell while exping. but to have things viewable so one is capable of contacting another about a trade and working out a price and all is enough interaction. and this is the interaction i believe the admins want. they dont seem to want a bunch of bots. and dont want npcs doing the work. but a combonation of both. which what i have said, is. what i dont know is if that is possible.

about the ui, what i was going for was that the buy key would stay shaded.. as if u didnt have enough money to buy it.