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sunsvortex

Trading System

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A BIG +1 to 'buy orders',  

+1 to mild/harsh winters affecting crops/livestock,

-1 to voting for buffs from taxation revenues (too much nitty gritty - and forces those who prefer solitary play to have to socialise with the rest of the local area to get their due benefits from the taxation)

 

Cross server trading is somewhat iffy... what happens when you have one server with very fast skill gains, and lots of high quality resources.. (I dont think we have that now, but yes, you would need to keep the skill gains across the board the same assuming a gradient pvp setup like I think your proposing there, EVEesk.)

 

I would also say -1 to needing to use crates or any form of packaging. Ideally it should allow anyone to buy any amount of a bulk sell order, and either directly keep the items for their own use, or sell them on, or use them to add towards an existing buy order. Forget crates, forget decay on said crates.. if you choose to package it yourself for the journey to help prevent decay, that's fine, but it should be your choice, not something enforced by the system. When you sell, you just select the buy order of your choice, and enter the amount you wish to sell, or split your stock between all existing buy orders, (Yeah I can see where your coming from, i had stated early on im not certain if the concept would even be needed, however we need a good way to track where those resources came from for local taxation. Its also just more efficient using packaged goods. Eve uses slots on top of individual items like your suggesting and they have all kinds of issues related to it, like complete market saturation,.01% margins ect ect ect, well thats bad wording, more like its a contributing factor to those issues. Its also a lot easier on the database side of things to call 1000 objects a single object.)

 

I also agree about getting rid of the existing merchants - the system of having to query each merchant in a market place to view individual lists of items is one of the things that makes the current marketplace so tedious and time consuming to use. One local hub, one place to look, one place to buy or sell.

 

However, comparing to a marketplace like in EVE, you are forgetting about 2 elements.

 

1. NPC sales and purchases - certain NPC planets have limited (periodically refreshing) stocks of some basic items. This is one way to help regulate prices to a certain extent (as least, minimum values) as well as providing newer players with guaranteed trade opportunities.(We only have trader and merchant NPC's though, and the ones we do have this particular system would mostly do away with (traders and maybe merchants) are you suggesting to put some in?)

 

2. A tariff depending on how long you want something to be on sale for, or length of time for a buy order to exist. The longer you want to keep it there, the more you pay, and is calculated as a % of the total sale or purchase order value.( Yes, this was discussed on up a bit, no reason not to have a listing fee)

 

This then gets round issues relating to decay and can simply allow 0 decay on items without it simply being considered free, safe storage. It also prevents over-valued sale orders sitting in the market for excessively long durations. It also helps keep the sale price low - as you want to shift it all before the sale expires - so as not to have wasted the tariff cost.

 

In the case of buy orders, it helps ensure that the buy order value is higher than average.. players will want to have their buy order fulfilled so as not to have simply wasted the spent tariff/tax.

 

After the time period has elapsed, items are removed from visible sale/purchase and are then subject to decay rules of a normal container until either collected or they have disintegrated,

 

Thus sale prices are encouraged to remain low, and buy prices are encouraged to be higher than average due to tariffs and time limits.

 

This then provides opportunity to players to transport items between trade hubs to fulfill buy orders for a profit.

 

Merchants can be given other uses or benefits (possibly required for larger maximum quantities in bulk orders, possibly for extra 'slots', possibly as the mechanism for expanding your 'market visibility' - seeing the information from more distant hubs, Traders could allow remote adjustment of your sale or buy orders, or somewhat similar to current functionality but with periodic randomised NPC buy/sell orders)( Perhaps...not quite sure on that, im actually maping this whole thing out and trying to walk through all the steps to look ahead to see what, if any, ramifications there would be by making merchants more competitive in ways other than just convenience.)

 

 

Actually, the more I think of it, a merchant could allow the checking of the markets (within 'r' radius of your position) without actually having to physically go to a hub yourself. It can be perceived as the merchant surveying them for you. Thus perhaps some players have an advantage living close to one hub for ease of access, but perhaps someone living midway between two hubs actually has better visibility (not needing to physically interact with hubs to view sales) and can spot profitable trades between hubs. (This is in the very first post, a UI that can check all the markets)

Edited by sunsvortex

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+1 to buy orders and an easier way to browse the local wares than searching through 50 merchants :/


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ah but see i dont mean an infinite amount of buy orders or as many slots as normal but 1 slot for buying that way someone could place a massive bulk order on their merchant somewhere it would help i think hence why i said it :3


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ah but see i dont mean an infinite amount of buy orders or as many slots as normal but 1 slot for buying that way someone could place a massive bulk order on their merchant somewhere it would help i think hence why i said it :3

Still can be some npc´s generated buy orders like missions

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Just some things to consider about trading systems from articles around the web with excerpts. Still adding them as I find them.

 

Article

Once we have a crafting system which requires some effort, time and skill-wise, we need an economic system to trade the raw materials and crafted goods. At least for a US/Euro market, a system with a public auction house or similar market is preferable, where players can post their goods and be offline while they are sold. Adding bells and whistles to that system is much appreciated by players. An auction house should not only enable you to find the goods you are looking for, but also provide you with some price history of past sales, so players don't need to use addons for that purpose. Having the option of buy orders, and not just sell orders, is a big bonus for crafters.

But probably the biggest design question on creating an economy is whether you want a localized economy, or one that is uniform throughout the virtual world. The uniform system, where players can put an item on the auction house in one city, and other players can buy that item in another city, is obviously easier. It fits well with virtual worlds in which traveling by teleport is common. If however you have a world in which traveling is an important part of gameplay, and teleporting isn't possible, then localized economies can be used to enhance that. For example a typical crafted good could need two resources, A and B. In one part of the world A is common, and B is rare, while in another part of the world A is rare and B is common. Thus buying common raw materials in one location and transporting them to where they are rare and thus more expensive becomes an important part of economic gameplay. The catch of that is that you then need to make traveling interesting, and there appears to be a lack of ideas in that field, beyond having traders robbed by other players in PvP while traveling.

 

Article2

Good. First thing, the objective: satisfactory experience of the economy (that is, it must be enjoyable to be able to trade, buy and sell items). The foundation of this must your first goal: achieve stability.

 

 

Article3

 

In my experience designing an economy is as important as designing the game mechanics - the two go hand in hand. Without a well designed economy even a great game won't make money.

 

Article4

MMOs are social games, that’s why you use economics. It helps analyze current phenomena and argue with marketing. And it helps you make design decisions, worldbuilding decisions. it isn’t the only lens to look at things, but it’s a useful one.

[shows a graph of the prices of components to build a spaceship in Eve]. Nice and flat, then suddenly there’s a demand spike and prices go through the roof. What do you think happened? More players got qualified to fly that ship, so the demand curve went thru the roof.

Edited by sunsvortex

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Not having an Auction House is the biggest hole in this otherwise enjoyable PvE game.


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On 12/18/2014 at 5:28 PM, sunsvortex said:

5 Foster and Support Cross Server Trade ( While players can go to other servers to buy goods, there are rarely any cases where this becomes feasable. This should be a daily occurance with large profit margins.)

 
2

Could you explain how cross-server trade is not feasable? I see plenty of people advertising stuff and then not wanting to sell to a different server, and I don't understand why, the cross-server mailing fees have been reduced to match same-server fee years ago (not sure when exactly, but long enough...), and with the new "Plot Course" feature, going anywhere except Xanadu isn't a big deal at all. And just like irl, people can make a living out of delivering stuff for other people.

 

That being said I'm with you on most of the other stuff you said. Although I did not find words in your post that explicitely describe how the delivery process would work with your auction house, I get the feeling that you're talking about items teleporting, just like in a mailbox. I think that would be very bad and unrealistic.

 

I also think your suggestions involves too much hand-holding by the game, and that kinda goes against your 2nd point: "Be Player Driven - not Player Dependent", so I'd like to propose this concept:
 

Spoiler

There was an auction house in a game I used to play (not sure if I am allowed to name it, so I won't), where auction houses had warehouses, and you could put anything up for sale, for the price you want (you could see the lowest, highest and average selling price at that particular auction house before posting). The items would then be transferred to the warehouse until they were bought.

 

When you wanted to buy something, you would see the price and stock of each warehouse and you could make your choice based on the price, distance, and availability. Once you bought the items (paid upfront), they would be reserved at that warehouse and you had a certain amount of time (let's say a week) to travel there and pick them up. If you picked them up too late, you'd be charged a storage fee, and if you didn't pick them up after another couple of weeks, they would be forfeited (in Wurm's case, they could be automatically auctioned off and the proceeds could go in the coffers, idk). That way, prices would depend on local availability of resources, etc.

 

You could also make a buy order, for a price discussed with the supplier (usually under average), then the supplier could fill the order and get the money, which was removed from your account at the time you placed the order.

3

 

With that system, the mail system we have now would still be relevant, and there would be a way to trade bulk stuff even if both parties are not online at the same time.

 

I think that would boost the economy, people wouldn't have to stare at/spam at the trade chat all day to sell their bulk stuff (IMO more people would consider buying and selling bulk), players who have less time to play would be less disadvantaged, and no magic delivery. Also, new players could enter the market sooner because they could sell dirt/bricks/whatever more easily before getting a suitable boat.

 

That post turned out to be a lot longer than I expected...

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