Allow traders on Xanadu

[polarbear 289]

Pros:

1. Rolf gets more money = possiblility more paid devs to improve game from trader contracts
2. Players are happy to have their own traders
3. Players drain traders every month get to stimulate wurm eco. (keyensian eco. or something like that) 
4. More deeds = 1. as above

 

Cons:

1. short imbalance of trader ratio in between number of traders on server to the amount of silvers on the server like every other time when a new server opened, and traders put down. 

 

 

Pretty much straight forward with title: thoughts? 

[Roushi 23]

There was a reason traders were disabled for Xanadu for its release, I can't recall what it was but I'd suppose they're sticking to that reason.

[Wurmhole 3665]

-1.  -1 to all player owned traders.  -1 to trader draining.  Stick with rare coin bonuses and token selling.  Turn traders into sellers and remove the buy option they currently have.  They are terrible for the health of the game.

[Greyfox 427]

-1.   I used to own traders, before Xan.   They really where an exploit.  -1 to all traders, on all on servers.

[rixk 831]

So getting "free" money from foraging/burying/token selling etc is good, but getting it from traders is bad? Only problem with the trader system was, that when the owners deed disbanded, traders were still left in game. So there are/were too many traders around.

[Sila 339]

if you could not make atlast 10s per month out of 1 trader ... no

[Wurmhole 3665]

someone with high JS making rings in 5 min to rip 15s out of a trader, vs a new player grinding away at forage for a day to make 1s... yeah, no to traders.

[Steveleeb 1070]

A few people still manage to milk traders. I believe there's a methodology that keeps changing. Must be a pastebin page somewhere that i know nothing about.
Even tho i have a trader i would vote +1 to removing their buy option. and quite gladly too.

so, -1 for this suggestion

Why they still cost 50 silver is bewildering.
 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Steveleeb

[rixk 831]

Just now, Wurmhole said:

someone with high JS making rings in 5 min to rip 15s out of a trader, vs a new player grinding away at forage for a day to make 1s... yeah, no to traders.

So? You think that someone, who just joins the game, should be as effective as someone, who has been playing for a while (and lets not forget, foraging has no initial investment)?

[Wurmhole 3665]

Do you want to play Amway or a sandbox adventure game?  Amway is where the old players feed off the new players to grow their fortunes and all the new players just end up quitting.

 

Traders are a plague on this game.

[rixk 831]

35 minutes ago, Wurmhole said:

Do you want to play Amway or a sandbox adventure game?  Amway is where the old players feed off the new players to grow their fortunes and all the new players just end up quitting.

 

Traders are a plague on this game.

But Xanadu doesn't have traders, yet the player retention rate is the same as on servers with traders. Maybe traders aren't the reason people are quitting after all.

[Simyaci 443]

If the current starter towns in xanadu are already using kingdom coffers just like forage/hunting,  yes for private traders. If the current starter towns are not getting anything from kingdom coffers in xanadu and coffers are only linked to forage/hunting, then no to private traders.

 

Because if few smart opportunist people are already able to benefit from kingdom coffers through camping starter towns without paying a dime, people who are willing to pay a lot of silver and buy a trader should also be able to benefit. Besides, having a private trader that you can buy stuff from whenever you need to instead of visiting starter towns would be cool, even if you will never make the silver you paid for it

 

A complete overhaul of the trader system or a new npc that can be bought and have a different use would be much better of course, imo.

Edited December 6, 2016 by Simyaci

[Ecrir 888]

I haven't voted as I disagree with all three options, but as proposed in the OP I would lean towards No.

 

I'd love to have traders on Xanadu, but only if they never received money from the coffers. Instead they'd just be NPCs where you could buy useful stuff, possibly saving yourself and your neighbours some time travelling to starter town on this really huge server. Perhaps traders like this could come for free once your deed exceeds a certain size, and would leave if the deed disbands or shrinks to below the required size. Perhaps a small percentage of any sales from the trader could go directly to deed upkeep (if that isn't already the case now).

 

Thus there could be traders, without the garbage draining system. Rolf still gets more money as the trader items become more accessible to the players (less travel time) and it encourages players to make their trader accessible to all.

[Ayes 3715]

Sure, but only if Traders are modified to *sell* items only and Not to buy anything from others. Then their price could be reduced to 10 silver like Merchants. The problem with this though is that it would effect all Traders in the game, so those that currently own and drain them for profits would be quite unhappy, putting it mildly.

 

The reason Traders were not put on Xanadu is because they were too easily taken advantage of to drain out huge amounts of coins from them upon server opening due to the large number of deeds placed. This same process was repeated upon all server openings by those who "enjoyed" using this system. So now it is nice to see at least one server where it has not been taken over with numerous "Trader Deeds" at every interval opening.

 

Keep them off Xanadu unless a way is found to make them *sell* only there.

 

=Ayes=

[Roushi 23]

5 hours ago, Wurmhole said:

Do you want to play Amway or a sandbox adventure game?  Amway is where the old players feed off the new players to grow their fortunes and all the new players just end up quitting.

 

Traders are a plague on this game.

 

Sounds like real life.

 

Look, like I have said in other threads, don't completely disable a games features, redesign them to be useful and functional! People are putting up good suggestions, like removing the buy option, how about just making it so that nobody can drain one? 1s per player per week, or something. Obviously, you need everything to be mathematically equivalent (so that people can survive off of a trader) so you wouldn't want to be giving too low of wages and charging too much, once again, just like the real world, because that doesn't work! (unless of course, much like the US govt you are a foreign entity who's purpose is to hurt and enfeeble the population as much as possible, then its a great tactic...of war! This is known as War of Attrition.).

Edited December 6, 2016 by Roushi

[Cecci 1631]

-1

I played several years and still nobody wants to brief me on how they make a rl income on them traders, cause then us "newbies" would compete with them.

Remove them on all servers instead.

 

[Wurmhole 3665]

Cecci, as I understand it, there is a pool of "kings" silver, which fill up every month, from all in-game transactions, like buying deeds and upkeep.  Every month, there is a trader silver pool reset, where the traders are restocked with silvers, so players can sell their high QL goods, like gems, jewelry, etc for silver.  As I understand, on private traders, any purchases you make, will also add to your trader silver pool, at 25% of the purchase value.  That is why people offer trader purchased goods at up to 25% less than the actual trader listed prices.  The big mystery around them is the ratio system.  You need to make sure you are actually spending something like 10% of the amount you are draining with them, to keep the ratio healthy, or when the reset happens, the king won't restock the trader that month.  To read the ratios, you need PoK skills - I think level 4 on PoK is enough.

 

The fewer deeds being purchased and upkeep being added, means less silver in the pool for the server.  Small servers are getting really bad monthly drains now.  Maybe 3-4s a month, vs the old days of as much as 15s a month.  Xanadu is the server that is constantly getting new deeds.  If traders were added there, the few would buy them up, drop 1s deeds all over and start the same old corruption all over again out there. 

 

This system temporarily puts income in the hands of Code Club, litters the server with tiny deeds and in the long run, greatly reduces the income for Code Club.  The benefit is the few players that are willing to drop 50s a pop (or 37, since they are likely buying traders from their own traders) and now they get to play for free off of the money you spend on your deed each month.

 

So a big -1 for me.

[Lisabet 1019]

the 25% counts on starter deed traders as well; if you buy a trader item from a starter deed trader, make sure you have a bit to sell back to get your 25% back  (otherwise one of the folk that drain the starter traders will get it instead)

Edited December 6, 2016 by Lisabet

[Arvid 64]

If traders would do nothing but offer items that can't be had in any other way (magical chests, settlement forms, merchant contracts etc), then yes. Otherwise NO!

Ever since I first witnessed the practice of "draining" a trader, I have considered their functionality so far seriously bad design.

I'll support mechanics that would encourage all sorts of players to create/collect/offer items that other players would actually want to buy.

But not one that encourages us to create artificially priced items only to be able sell them to some vapourus entity called the "King", race to a public trader hoping that no one else drained it before you, camp traders or even keep your own private trader blocked off from the public to ensure that you are the only one able to "milk" it? I guess it was OK as a temporary solution, but for a game like Wurm (which I always hoped would support the building of communities through it's mechanics) traders in their current form is just plain bad design.

 

I made an attempt at suggesting changing merchants in a way that would adress my concerns in http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/139651-change-merchants-to-hold-their-goods-in-a-designated-warehouse. It may not be perfect nor would it be "low hanging fruit" codingwise, but I think it would still be a lot better, so I hope at some point something like this will be implemented (I'm not a coder myself, so I can only hope).

Edited December 6, 2016 by Arvid
Clarify

[Etherdrifter 2525]

I'd rather just see a simple mechanic that gives a trader owner a % from every cash shop purchase made.

 

It acts as a discount for large villages (10% off if you shell out 50 silver and pay the upkeep which is fair enough really) and encourages traders to be put in public places

 

-1 if traders are as they are at the moment though, wurm has enough mechanics that rewards whales.

[NeeNee 855]

The draining/plopping down trader deeds thing would be a blight on Xanadu. I'd rather see the ability to buy trader goods from merchants, or traders with no sell option/limited option like the tokens. 

[Makarus 458]

Yeah ###### off with your traders.

 

Modify them and i would even buy one. I like my twigs and stones.

[Damascus 400]

Xanadu gets enough messages of ...the kings coffer are empty....so no thanks to traders there.

[Simyaci 443]

Would be nice if the private ones gave a percentage of the money earned to the trader owner, starter town ones gave that same percentage directly to kingdom coffers, while still able to get same percentage of your money back like now on both of them when you buy something and none of them got any money from kingdom coffers.

Edited December 7, 2016 by Simyaci