The Grand Bazaar (Universal Vendor Search)

This happens in MMO's with auction houses already. I am not making anything up and this is not hypothetical.

Again, at a maximum, I suggest Regional vendor houses with no price listings. This is exactly how Star Wars Galaxies operated and it was optimal.

But go ahead and have your auction house with prices listed and see how much money you make as a small seller. Good luck!

 

The issue I see with your argument is your only focus is on the seller and screw the buyer. That's wrong. the seller operates at the buyers discretion. markets should be set up to support and help the buyer first and foremost. Go ahead and try to sell your wares if there are no buyers willing to jump through all your hoops to get them. I can not stress enough. I and others I know quite literally do not use this vendor system unless we are forced into a corner on something we literally can not get somewhere else. Now tell me, how are all of you going to make money when people are quite literally avoiding your system because its so terrible??? just saying but sure, focus only on the seller and grind your heal into the throat of the buyer if you wish.....

 

Star Wars Galaxies the prices are listed!

 

It tends to happen in pay-to-win oriented MMOs with a lot of casual players, not games like SoTA where even the best gear only gives a small advantage without the skill level to use it and most players are there for the community.

I just don't see anyone using Wal-Mart Strategy in SoTA. This isn't Star Wars Galaxies, Star Trek Online or Elite Dangerous. You can't just buy your way to the top.

The only price-fixing attempts we've seen are inflationary attempts, by those who owned a massive chunk of the market. There have been no attempts at deflation to dominance.

I could see another inflation-based attempt, especially using buy orders. With such a tool, someone with enough gold could easily increase mat prices by flooding the market with buy orders. They wouldn't even buy the lower priced sell orders themselves and horde the market, as such sell orders would run dry quickly as those who mine and farm to sell would sell to the highest bidder.

That said, I don't think such a thing would be too bad to the market, and there is a limit to the viability of such plans. You can only push the market so far in one direction or another before reduction in supply or reduction in purchases start slowing down the ability to alter the market. This is furthered by the fact that few people play solely for the economy full time.

Players can always take a break from the economy until it cools down, like when an investor in stocks pulls their money into more stable investments for a period to avoid market volatility. They nearly always resume trading once the volatility is done.

I'm sorry for not giving my full analysis and presuming everyone would reach the same conclusions as me without a full explanation. That was very arrogant of me and I apologize.

 

Would a global, searchable BUY ORDER index (not sales) raise the same objections?
If not, I suggest we start there, and race to the top as Spungwa said.

One of the most repeatedly asked questions I get from new and even not so new players is 'how much does xx sell for'. An index of what folks are willing to pay would serve that function, and someone paying more than others would (presumably) have the items delivered and their order fulfilled - unless a seller would rather price it higher and try their luck at someone wandering by their vendor, or use trade chat/discord/forums and other existing methods to promote its location. It seems a bit of a half measure and a little bit silly, but it would still improve things considerably as I'd absolutely be willing to pay a bit more for something if I didn't have to fool with shopping.

 

@Alleine Dragonfyre

Before I comment on your post here, let me first say that I have a great deal of respect for your many efforts over the years to make SotA both enjoyable for all and a success !
Well done, woman !

Having said that, and while I understand your reservations - I need to make sure we're on the same page here.
When you referred, at the beginning of your lengthy post, to an "Auction House type database" -

I don't know what an Auction House type database is , and want to understand exactly what you mean by that.
Please explain, if you would...... so we can move this conversation forward...

 

This phrase is being used as red meat for those opposed to any type of globalized type search system because it tends to have a negative connotation. What is actually being proposed by many of use is some type of vendor buy/sell order search function either as a globalized type or regions or something like that list prices, details on item, and where we need to go to buy/sell the item in question. We are not requesting to be able to sit in a "auction house" and just search for stuff and then buy on the spot and have it delivered to our inventory. We are willing to have to travel to the town that has the vendor selling the item In question and actually interact with said vendor. That is basically what is being proposed which is reasonable to me. Basically we just want a better way to find what we need/want without hours upon hours of vendor hopping and load screen after load screen....

 

Auction Houses *are* awful for sellers.

Firstly, you pay to list everything on it, and the longer your listing stays on it, the more it costs, and you pay whether your item sells or not which due to the shorter timer window, its quite likely that it doesn't sell at all. The only positive here is that you -have- to price things to move otherwise you're just wasting money on listings.
Secondly, you set things up as "auctions" that run for a certain period and can set a buyout price. Therefore some people can get things for your minimum starting price if nobody else bids.
And obviously the undercutting happens and you have to go pay to re-list expired unsold items ad nauseum.

In this system, the 'little guy' really can't compete with the Power Seller who has the time/inclination to buy up all lower priced listings of one commodity and re-list it at a higher price to try and 'control' things. For example, if someone could afford to buy all the silver ore on the market priced 100 or less and re-list it for 200 each they are able to make money from people who go to the global database, search, and find that's now the lowest listing and overpay. When new sellers come to list items, they'll try to undercut the lowest price (say, list for 180) but the powerseller can just buy those up too, or take their massive stockpile and set it at 175, causing all those little guys at 180-190 to have their listings expire and eat the costs. Its a high risk shark game for the powerseller, but the powerseller isn't doing anything else, they are "playing the market." This is an extremely frustrating system for everyone who is not a powerseller trying to move their goods, and as Alle explained, your best course of action is wholesaling to the powerseller. There's also no 'soul' in this sort of system, no customer service, no window shopping or bargain hunting, it is cold and efficient.

This is not what we are asking for with an index.
There are several KEY differences.

• The most important difference is that you're not listing things on an auction house, you're listing things on your personal vendor as always which has no listing cost if you're using a commission free, which almost everyone does. I exclude public vendors from this because they are extremely under-utilised due to listing costs and being too segregated to be efficient places to shop (there's just too many towns. A global public vendor might fare better).

• The second important difference is with personal vendors, items never expire.

• The third important difference is there is no click-and-buy, it is a listing only, requiring the buyer to travel to your vendor at your house to make their purchase.

A powerseller trying to monopolize this market would have to work significantly harder to do so, requiring extensive time consuming travel from place to place on a regular basis to buy up cheaper items, rather than being able to simply conduct all their business from a global interface. They'd have to tediously re-list everything on their own vendor and they'd have to do this constantly to capture any lower priced items that cropped up. Because vendors can exist in dozens/hundreds of locations in SotA, this is not an easy undertaking. Yes, they can still do it, and yes, powersellers offer the buyer 'convenience at higher cost' - but that's exactly what is happening now.

Because the buyer has to travel to your shop, making your shop appealing, adding other items to your vendor at good deals that perhaps the buyer didn't search for but might 'impulse buy', promoting your vendor, advertising your vendor, roleplaying the shopkeeper, etc. are all still possible. Players quickly learn who has fair prices and who is a rip off and tend to naturally support the vendors that they know. Location is still important, proximity is still important - for example, there's a guy in my town who sells reagents slightly more expensively than someone across Novia, if I'm topping up my supply, I'll just buy from him at say, 1.6 ea rather than burning a scroll and two load screens/travel time to go pay 1.5 somewhere else from a stranger. if I'm looking for a piece of furniture, I know three good places to check before I grumble and go craft it myself - a couple of people in my guild and, I'm going to pick on Vladamir here...S-mart Factorium. Why do I go there? Is he the cheapest? I have no idea. But I do know that he's got a fairly complete listing, well organized vendors instead of 'random hodgepodge crap', and well presented storefronts making my shopping experience easier. I also end up buying a whole bunch of crap that I wasn't looking for because its on his vendor and the price is good. If there's a global listing, I'll check it to see if he has the one thing I need in stock, yeah, but I'm still going to shop from him because he's a good seller instead of going somewhere I've never heard of to save 50 gold. I've gotten 'thank you for your business' notes from some sellers, and coupons in my mail, and I'll absolutely go there first even if they cost a bit more because there is still absolutely a service element and that is important to me. Its not important to everyone? And that's fine, to each their own. This system serves all types.

A global listing lets you promote your shop by selling high demand items at a good price and put fancy things in your "shop window" (on your vendor) to try and entice buyers who maybe weren't even looking for that. Coordination between residents of a town can help promote a town as a great place to shop, if search after search is putting vendors in that town at the top of the list.

In the end, I understand why some powersellers would be against global listings - at the moment, because there is no listing, they don't have to buy up the whole market because most players don't have the time or patience to search the entire market, its too tedious. The biggest problem we have right now is nobody can find anything and a lot of the 'little guys' end up being unreliable, and you're back to the house by house searching trying to find crap. Sota does not have a 'small number of commodities' - there are literally thousands of items and while a few very organized market towns have ameliorated this somewhat, its still very much a case of most vendors are personal and have a huge variety of random crap for sale. When I open a vendor and see its got everything from artifacts to random gear failures to resources to crafted furniture on it....that vendor has about 3 seconds to 'catch my eye' with something cheap before I close it and move on to the next. And after a while you start remembering the names of the ones that never have stock, that are abandoned, that are never organized, etc. and you don't even look. A listing gives these another chance to have a buyer come click them.

Yes, some of this we could achieve without pricing, but without pricing, the whole thing gets abused and my time gets wasted. The stack of items listed at a million each to make sure they come up in the search is a thing, I've seen it in other economies that mask pricing, and it is an extremely frustrating waste of one's time to go 8 places and find that nobody's actually got any that they really want to sell but their vendor is clogged up with a bunch of 'search bait'. No, thanks.

I also add that in order to implement any sort of index its likely we'ed have to first streamline the way items are listed on the vendor, no more tons of separate little stacks, we'd need item, quantity, buyer chooses how many (as with npc vendors) for practicality purposes. This would also enable the implementation of several other good player suggestions for the Vendor UI, relisting new items at same price as old item with a click, etc.

 

I am 100% for a global search that allows you to see what is available on vendors. I would love to see it implemented so that you would have to travel to the vendor to purchase the items.

My concern is I can't see how it could possibly work well the way vendor ui is set up and how long it takes to load items into a list. Like many have mentioned already, the ability to buy/sell partial stacks MUST be implemented before this would work well enough to be useful.

For example if you searched for cotos on a global search right now, do you know how many individual items would have to be searched? Filters are fine, but the game would still need to search every single coto listing first. If I'm comparing the load times for my bank and mail when they have lots of items in them - this would take forever. Sure it's better than no search, but the waiting would get old very quickly. The ability to buy/sell partial stacks would make a HUGE difference for this. It would probably help load times in general too since all stackable items currently on vendors could be consolidated to just one listing per item/vendor.

As for non stackable items, I think with the right filters a global search would work much better then the system we have now. You could actually check prices on items without having to spend hours and hours searching around.

I'm not worried about competition or Novia Market becoming obsolete at all. If anything this will help the economy thrive. Its a win for the small guys as they finally can sell items in non market town areas and a win for the big traders since they should be able to easily find low priced items to keep their inventories stocked by reselling.

I agree a bit with Vlad in that it is tough to continuously list items with the current vendor ui. But I'm not fatigued and still going strong and have an average 25-75 new pieces of mail each day. I relist my orders at least every couple days in Novia Market and Soltown and my sales reflect that. As for current sellers getting screwed with a change like this, I don't see it that way. The good sellers will find ways to adapt and succeed with any setup.

If a global search like this is implemented before they give some love to the vendor ui, hopefully those of you that don't think it's a problem will finally see how big a pain in the ass it is to continuously keep vendors stocked. Maybe then we will finally get an update to one of the most vital parts of the game and the economy.

 

This is what I expect to happen. Global search gets implemented first then a lot of people complain. Vendor UI gets fixed after.

 

There's something wrong with the banks now, it takes forever to load even when I have only 3 things in it.

Agreed with everything else you say.

 

In my opinion, vendor search should be added to the Town Criers.

Let players browse all items for sale in the town, sort prices, and then set a Compass Destination marker to the vendor they want to buy from.
This would have the added benefit of providing natural spots for players to congregate in towns.

If universal vendor search is needed as well, a Master Crier could be added to the main city in each region.

 

@Wilfred

You do realize that there are over 200 towns, right ?

How many "regions" are there in SotA ?

 

3

Novia
Hidden Vale
Mistrendur

 

the vale is one region. we don't know what mistrendur will be, perhaps one per island. novia has eleven. the region is built into the long-version scene names.

Novia_R11_Hills01_ElysiumMines

 

Listing prices is touchy but some will pay whatever to get the items. As mentioned cut throat undercutting should be considered. Consider a safeguard for it. vendor ratings ? A global search with item name and location would add so much to this game. It would allow opportunities for all players to get included in the market place. As it stands now many are left out. What we need is choices and competition. Also as I have mentioned so many times please give us the ability to lists bags on goods on our vendors such as 'full set of meteoric armor+15, 5 pc living room set, 4 pc blue ball gown set, 6 part song set Dreamers ball. This gives us a chance to compete and have our vendors more interesting. If we just get the search it will add so much. Something like this:

Search: maple wood
Results: 20 hits
location: wizards rest/hidden vale, vendor name: majorias wood, qty: 10 stacks of 5000, buy orders: yes or no, buy items to send to mail,zone to: yes or no?
location: central brittany, vendor name curious george, qty: 20 stacks of 250, zone to: yes or no?
etc

So just some first thoughts on this. Option to zone to could come at a cost of a zone scroll. Also ability to requests items by mail from the vendor would help. More descriptions could be included even a dot on the map to show vendor locations you selected afterwards.

Or after researching perhaps we could have option to place a bid but that is debatable

 

I'm not really sure why my suggestion of having a Vendor Listing without prices is screwing the buyer.

I'm more protecting the economy so that you still have vendors to buy from at reasonable prices accordingly and usually quite a bit higher because they have no competition. Once someone controls an item or commodity, you're paying the price they choose. This is how monopolies work and an actual plan of a few powerful guilds and PvP-style Auction players.

It's simple capitalism, which can work, but like in RL must be regulated so everyone plays fair.

 

Some guilds in sota already Price Fixing =)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pricefixing.asp

 

Amen to that brother!

Seems like this whole idea of trying to force people to sell things as cheap as possible is just a Grand and Bazaar Scheme …just someone's effort to install themselves as the moral police and head economic advisor of SOTA land for the umpteenth time in the last 5 years.