Global auction/market search discussion

Here's my wild fever-dream for how a regional system would work:

In-scene, you get a list of local vendors and you can compass tag 'em. Pop out to the Overworld and the UI changes to Regional. This is paged results of all vendors in a region (i.e. Drachvald), it is searchable and potentially tabbed. To get the vendor list from the Desolis, Ardoris or Britanny regions, I have to legit run to that general area and pop the UI again. I imagine you can define an Overworld radius pretty easily.

This is the cray-cray part:
Then, you make a skill tree for merchants. Skills would look something like this maybe:

- Mercantile Knowledge (the regional radius increases so you can consult it sooner, i.e. not have to run as far, at 0 skill you pretty much have to be on top of Britanny to see it for example...)
- Tradecraft (Vendor prices are "fuzzy", at 0 skill, the prices are more or less than the actual listed price by a factor or 50%.)
- Bartering (You earn a small discount on... Something... Haven't really thought this out lots )
- Entrepreneur (More results are returned, at 0 Skill everyone gets a randomized 10% of actual listings with a minimum of 1 if it exists in the region - 100% at GM, you may also now list the two closest regions to you in the UI)
- Etc...

I guess you'd earn skills via buying and selling to other players? You'd obviously need some controls around abuse of the system etc...

I'm sure there's a silver bullet that kills this idea dead but I'd find a system like this extremely engaging.

 

Yes...

Oh Hell Yes, but it needs to be regional... Like go to the Town Crier and they show you the Trade window, gives you directions for that area... Walking vendor to vendor is so Old it kreaks, eliminates competition and feeds price fixing...

 

This makes no sense at all...

If you can't "find" what you're looking for, then you need to go get it yourself or do without or "Trust" that others will keep you fed and housed and supplied at all times, in other words "dependent" on them for everything you have, everything you do...

I don't want other ppls charity, what I want is a Fair Market place, where prices are reasonable... I want to be able to purchase materials, so that I can craft things of "Value" to others and NOT go broke training skills... It's not worth crafting, if the finished product has less value than the material costs...

The players have done this to themselves by "price checking" everything according to a few "recommendations", that's NOT an open market, it's price fixing... The players have no clue as to what "price" to sell for, if there was a World market, they could readily see what others are selling their materials for and either undercut, or post at market price, when they find out, nothing is selling for that price, then they can choose a cheaper price to sell at, the Key to any market is to "Get SALES", no sales means, NO PROFIT... Pricing really has nothing to do with it, supply/demand will take care of Pricing...

 

Well if skills would be an option for keeping track of vendor offers…well I guess this could be a fitting possibility for a cartographer skill tree to increase the benefit of using the map. Of course to let this combination work they would need a lot of additional feature for the map but it would be even thinkable that this way skills could be used outside of the game. E.g. by opening https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/map/ while you are logged in the website you also can see the by your ingame skills gained information.
If the combination with the dynamic map is too difficult maybe the normal maps we can e.g. find sometimes as loot could be used for this skill tree.
Part of the cartographer skill tree could be…

A scouting skill
Basically the range you have to pass a vendor and other POI to add them to your map and you are just adding/updating the positions with this skill. (e.g. skill 0 = 0.5m…skill 100 = 10m)

A comment skill
A sub skill of the scouting skill and basically this skill is adding notes to the vendors and POIs. E.g. at level 10 you are adding for all visited vendors their names. At level 40 you are adding their current type of goods (just swords = gear, just recipes and books = scrolls, different kinds of goods = mixed). At level 80 the descriptions get more detailed (just swords = gear (swords), just recipes and books = scrolls(recipes, books),…). At level 100 you are adding a rough description about the number of offers (e.g. 1-10 offered swords = gear ( few swords), 11-40 offered swords = gear (some swords), 41-80 offered swords = gear (many swords), 81+ offered swords = gear (a lot of swords)).
For POI this skill will add additional information e.g. what the NPCs are offering, if the NPC is a master trainer, if this NPC is paying more than other NPCs for a special goods, what kind of monsters/resources can be found in the connected scene, additional background information about the POI,…

A memory skill
By visiting a vendor and looking at his offers you can keep e.g. 1h this information visible on your map and with this skill this timeframe enlarges. (e.g. skill 0 = 1h…skill 100 = 5h)
For POI e.g. the positions of within scouting skill-range seen enemies/resources/treasures stay active for a while.

A connection skill
A sub skill of the memory skill and defines the number of vendors you can be actively connected to. If you tell the vendor “I will remember” the prices of this vendor will stay active in your map while the prices of not connected vendors will vanish after some time. (e.g. skill 0 = 5 vendors….skill 100 = 20 vendors)
For POI maybe also usable e.g. if there are NPC who are regularly offering new quest you can connect to them to see what kind of quest they currently offer…maybe especially interesting if there would be NPCs offering e.g. headhunter quests.

 

This is called: Competition...

Hey, dude... If there are 30 others selling the same thing and demand is very low, then no one will be making any "sales" at any price because this item is not rare, so how can you justify selling it for even 50k? IMO, if you DO sell it for 50k, I would walk away a happy man and never create one of those ever again... In fact if I only crafted a +1, I would sell it to a Merchant vendor knowing the demand for it is so low...

 

I can see why you're afraid of a "World" market, because when everyone sees what your doing, no one will be selling at even 10% under your price... In the real world this is called a : Monopoly and there are Law's against it.... Besides, most ppl aren't that stupid as to undercut the Market price by more than 10%, unless there is absolutely NO demand for that item, then your welcome to buy as many as you like... Try and resell them...

Keeping things limited to a "Trade" channel is not a viable solution when playing a game, IMO... Most ppl like to play the game, not bark out things they need on a channel, hoping someone will respond, in real time... Posting to a message board is dumb too, then you need to make other arrangements to meet later... I don't know about you, but I'm not in-game 24/7, I have a life outside of this game...

 

the game needs content, not nerfing what is already there to send away the few who still play.

 

I have played MMOs with auction houses/global search. I played SWG from the beginning till the end. They did the same transition as what is being asked for by some.
I will tell you it is a little late in the game to do this. We have players who have invested thousands, if not tens of thousands into crafting towns and vendoring as their way of enjoying the game. It becomes fast travel, anyone, anywhere.
You will also eliminate advertising for most items as the global AH replaces this.
It is a fundamental change that will not do anything to promote “fair” pricing. It will actually do the opposite.
Pricing will be driven down as a whole especially on common items and resources in the short term until people do not participate in gathering. The prices will then increase, and people will buyout the market globally to keep prices a certain level.
You are only allowing a way to lookup items quickly. Not much other benefit.
Prices will be easier manipulated by those who are wealthy. It becomes more of global manipulation than regional/local.
I did this in SWG, and was one of the wealthiest on any sever.
This will promote people to move vendors inside buildings which might be a nice change, since it doesn’t matter if they are seen in the street.
Again, this does not matter to me. It is just a report on what has happened in the past.
The AH will also allow people to do exactly what is angering people about buying all the cheap items.
Is fast search worth it?

~Cristiano

 

An auction house will only kill player towns if you can purchase item through it. If you can't but can just look up where the vendor who has the item is then need to go buy it then logically it will be better for those towns.

There seems to be a real fear that prices will just drop through the floor. People will still only sell at prices they are prepared to sell at and buyers will still only buy at what they are prepared to sell at. You're no going to get everyone selling at below profitable levels for any real period of time.

There are virtually no barrier's to market entry for any product. That makes long term undercutting of the market pointless. It also stops those who like prices to remain high when global prices are known.

There is no real justification in economic terms not to do this.

 

My suggestion which I think would be a happy medium is to Implement a NPC to a POT similar to the town crier. With this Market NPC you can search everything listed for sale inside that specific player owned town. Once you find the Item you want to buy. You can click it and it will put a green waypoint on your compass (Similar to the Town Crier) leading you to the player vendor that is selling this specific item. This way you still have to travel around to each market specific town and still go to the individual vendor to buy the item. I don't know anyone that think its fun walking around aimlessly in hopes of finding a very specific item you are looking for without getting ripped off.

 

If one of you mega merchants can please come buy out all my cheaply priced stuff that never sells? That would be awesome. My vendor is so lonely she is talking to the lamp post. Bramble, main entrance, down the hill and to the left.

 

So my opinion is clear

Pro

Search across vendors for sell AND buy orders.
Filterable by slot, type etc across vendors for sell AND buy orders.
Filterable by town, as I may prefer not to run all over the place.

Stats at an aggregated level of transactions. Probably not real-time, generate and cache hourly, daily, whatever for performance.

Against

Delivery, even if delayed and/or has cost. Go and get it, this is good for POTs. Also the buy outs everyone is talking about would take hours considering most sell orders never expire, so buying out all vendors in world would take a while.

Edit: should of said no remote buying or selling. As delivery may still allow that. Make it take player time to buy and sell stuff, but less player time to FIND stuff.


Don't care if it is global or regional, but would not want it down to individual town level. This is still too much running and searching for my liking. But limited to the map regions would be ok.

Must be buy orders as well as sell orders, as remember the undercutting of sell orders works in reverse for buy orders. They tick up while the sell orders tick down.


Regards
Spung

 

For people griping about those in high traffic locations, who want an auction house because they don't have their own location:

Go get a high traffic location.

It is part of the game, one of the big "Dungeons" of selling.

If you want to be a merchant, go get a high traffic location. Don't complain if you don't have one, just go get one.




This is not impossible, heck look at @CICI, getting high traffic locations and then throwing them away like it's cool.

I suggest looking at the several in Aerie right across from the Public Vendor. You can probably acquire then with a chunk of gold, considering that several are sitting down. I have a vendor in Aerie and it does get good traffic, but would love to have some of you as neighbors!

If you do want to be in a remote location then you are doing it to yourself, by happy with your solitude.




If locations were armor: "I don't want to pay for armor, and I don't want to take the time to gather and craft it, so lets remove armor totally!"



For people trying to find items, yes, I feel for all of us on that. Hours of shopping is fun while you are discovering what items exist, but after that it is not. At the moment asking in trade is the best option. I wouldn't even mind a search function on the world map, as you stand next to each town, "reading the directory" as it were.

I also like the idea of the "Ping" light being put over any vendor with the item you are looking for, so you can see them from a distance.



The real problem with an auction house is that it basically wipes out half of the game. All of the game for me. Anyone wanting to run a store, board it up and find something else to do with your time. Merchants not wanted here anymore.

(Not talking at you @ErikRulez, I just happened to write this behind your post. If my internet will stay on for more than two minutes I'll go check your vendor.)

 

My vote is for at least a regional vendor search, if not a global search, to locate items for sale--definitely no auction house. I too support the search of both buy orders and sell orders.

While some players may seek out the lowest price of every item they are looking for and spend the time running between them, I'm betting that many players will seek out the lowest price of specific items and settle for convenience for the rest.

 

So this is a difference. No sharding here. You have to compete with the full supply and demand of everyone. No big fish in small ponds. Also SWG, at least when I played, had no buy orders to keep the current minimum price. When you see the lowest sell order is 50 percent more than the highest buy order, you know not to buy that sell order.

As I said earlier, buying all and selling higher is a very risky speculation and huge amount of work going to all vendors. Even if you have the gold AND time to buy all supply in all Novia and hidden vale (think how many load screens that would be).

Then you still have no idea the supply that exists NOT on the market. You better be sure you can offload about 50 percent before your price increase leads to more supply hitting the market and you don't end up with huge amounts of gold stuck in slow selling stock. Because you keep doing that you have no liquid gold to continue untill you sell your stock. Can be done, but not the I win button everyone thinks.
Non expiring sell orders. Having buy orders. Single market for whole game without currency changing due to character server transfers make this not like wow auction houses.

Regards
Spung

 

Or they could implement something that gets people into other towns too.

 

Well an auction house will do the opposite.

 

This is where it gets weird. I realize there's different people saying different things... but I'm talking about, as a buyer, being able to find things... and it's the high-traffic sellers who seem to insist on making it as difficult as possible for the buyers to find things. They're the ones standing in the way. What's next, the vendors running and hiding when buyers show up? Having the market town phase out of the spacetime continuum?

On multiple occasions, I visited market towns trying to find something specific... and ended up going from vendor to vendor to vendor to vendor - then switch towns - to more vendors after vendors after vendors. Eventually, after an hour or so, I give up, and just make something myself, or try to load it myself.

People seem to want the landscape to be a scattering of disconnected flee markets...which is about as far from an "economy" as you can get while still being able to debatably hold that title... because people who invested vast sums of money into that system have to maintain a punishing new-player and buyer experience.

 

"Quality of life" improvements didn't stop us from invalidating peoples' investments before.

 

My vendor and her lamp post thank you for stopping by