No More SotA Item Price List...

Let's try to keep things civil guys. Yes, these global market discussions are always hot topics, but do please keep in mind there are a wide variety of opinions on this topic, and all shared opinions should be respected, and all opinion sharing should be done in a respectful manner.

 

I've been keeping my price list stored in my Google drive since I first started playing, every time I go shopping I add to it.

I've been thinking for a little while about publishing price sheets in game and selling them on the public vendors.

Now that there is an actual need for data like this, due to the 3rd party solution being gone, I may consider it this weekend.

 

any data is super helpful data at this point, i wish you luck for us all!

 

Could we meet in the middle and have an item search and it could list all the vendors with a specific item for sale without the price so you could check all the vendors until you find the best deal? I know this sort of goes against the RP of go out and search but lets be honest, if you were to search every city and every vendor this could take RL days to find what you want and grinding in this game is already brutal at times. The marketplace on the forums was a great place but tbh it seems dead since RMT died there. I know Discord is an option as well but even there I see days go by with no postings or replies.

My ideas aren't always the best but I just wanted to throw that out there. Thanks for reading

 

I should link in my forum signature the reason why vendor global research is a very bad idea, im kinda tired to repeat myself over and over..
PS: caps isnt an argument

 

Hey! what about an item like "Announcer scroll" which allow people to list 1 item publically ? (town crier, billboard, wathever the media)
That will do the job for something valuable that you want to sell without involving a global price war for every single items..

I think it's a good compromise vOv

 

Global listing would be nice. A place to visit or news paper to view it, essentially thou you still need to travel far and wide to collect the item in person. I've been away for awhile but my spin on the opinion.

 

I would be interested to hear from where such data for an ingame news paper would come from, and how often it would be published. Immediate information in news paper style would be an interest for everyone.

I couldn't see our game actually hiring anyone for this purpose, or taking up our current staff of developer's time publishing or updating it. It would have to be something "automatic".



I like the idea of it, but I also think there could possibly be a way where a player could create a website of their own where game harvested data could accomplish this good idea.
~Time Lord~

 

Meaning it will be rewarding for the players spending the most time in game. Having the time to check the current value of a specific item via global search and lowering his/her prices under the lowest value found there.

I honestly think people would rather use a teleport scroll to another town than just roaming a town where they were to buy a needed item in search for others. Especially if the price is higher, and especially if they're not long-time player and/or wealthy.
Also, impulse buying might not be for new players but for wealthier ones. And not all of us succumb to impulse buying.

Maybe at first for POT, but it will probably pass. To be an active trading town a POT would need to have most of its residents spending large amounts of time setting prices over and over again in order to be competitive (and regarding the current system it would be painfully long). People won't bother coming in a POT because it was one of the best before, they'll go for the cheaper.

This change would surely be nice for people playing SotA for years, but won't be that good for new players trying to fit in. Some new players' fortune relies essentially on what they're selling on their shop, their prices might not be the cheapest but people are buying. If you add a global search system it's pretty sure they gonna lose customers as soon as those find where to get the cheapest items. And since some don't want/can't invest much time in the game (or maybe don't want to play a selling simulation game), they might lose a steady income and lose interest in the game.
It might also open the market to the richest players, buying all rare cheap items reselling them at way higher prices.

Clearly, I see a minority of wealthy players spending a lot of time in game controlling the market (selling mostly to other wealthy long-time players), excluding newcomers from it unless they want to play as full-time traders.
Also don't forget the impact time zones could have on a global search system, we don't all live in USA.

Yeah, it could be better.

it wouldn't have been such an issue if a global search was there from the beginning, but changing the current system to a complete opposite, I don't see how it could be done properly.
I also don't mind roaming around Novia to find a specific item, whenever I find something I might need in the future I just write down the location and the name of the vendor on a sticky note. The trader chan is very useful too.

 

Yeah, I don’t have the hours needed to go from town to town to find what I’m looking for. Not to mention when I finally do find something and pay out the yin yang for it, just to find another one for half the price…

even crafter town and the markets by Brit, are kind of falling off and horribly priced. Also, why am I forced to by reagent in bulks of 1k? Who buys that much mandrake?…oh yeah crafters. Anyway, as it is now it’s too much. Also, from a “build the player base” perspective, it is very much a turn off for new players. I think those who have invested heavily in “el premo” spots could easily adapt or use a vendor listing to their advantage. I will say I can see why the change would seem pretty icky if I were in those shoes, but I don’t see it completely undoing all your work, since a lot of the vendors on the global listing would be yours. I see the frustration, but it is worse than a chore to “shop around” and worse if your go to spots are empty or not selling what you’re looking for…

 

You get a lot of mandrake growing it. Are you interested in doing that? Just curious. It's easy.

 

No, I was just in the market for some, to cast spells and make some potions but couldn’t find a stack less than 1k, which I didn’t want to buy that much at the time, because I needed other reagents as well. But, maybe in the future yes, for now I appreciate the offer.
I’ll look you up in game when I change my mind.

 

As a "new" player let me weigh in on this vendor listing conversation. By "new" I mean I purchased the game pre-sale back in the day and tried it a couple hours back in the early release days and never gave it a chance. A friend of mine talked me into coming back a week or so ago with "It's like 3d UO mixed with the best Ultima games" and I have sunk well over 100 hours in since then (I can't get enough).

After I got my lot deed from Kinsey's Solace Outskirts quest line and placed my row house I decided to go get me some decorations and such. I sold my COTOs from a beta reward or something that was in my inventory and got some quick riches. Lucky for me the first COTO vendor I stumbled upon was offering 34,500 each 100 (which I now know to be pretty dang good). I then went off in search of vendors. Now, I don't mind vendor browsing, and used to do it for hours in UO, but it is very time consuming.
I headed off overland visiting town after town, if they didn't have "vendor" area or "market" on quick travel sign I would check around docks and head to next. I am sure I missed many good vendors that were tucked away. I soon realized the white sailed boats linked to other towns and eventually found my way to Craft Town, Brit Market, Novia Market, and many other excellent vendor towns but the searching took HOURS and unless you keep notes you can never remember where you saw something in the past. I also quickly learned that
many were price gouges of npc sold items and easy to gain loot drops (nothing wrong with convenience mark up.. but tricking the new is another thing). I also discovered terribly named and many times empty vendors which made it more time consuming.

Finally I learned that (especially) in the larger markets the price control was the in game value of a COTO, which seems to be 350 each. Most items in these areas were based on this. I applaud SotA for allowing in-game gold purchase to protect players from external trading but it also creates new "gold farming" it is just internal now. I am not saying it is bad but you have to take it into account when dealing with this topic. When you factor in the need to limit in game gold production via grinding mobs, adventuring, and resource gathering to avoid players being able to simply buy store stuff without spending RL money simply by spending time it creates a terrible inflation on new players who don't have RL cash and are spending an hour or more gathering resources for 10k or so if they find a vendor with buy orders.

Now I will sum up this rambling madness: What I would assume all this means to a real new player not versed in the monotony and perils of player vendor hopping is confusion and aggravation at a time when we need them to stick around and learn why SotA is so great. We want them to enjoy the game enough that they eventually find ways to support their in game play with RL money and keep SotA being developed for years more. While I understand the vendor dynasties arguments and I also hate auction markets, there is a broader issue at stake. Would we rather have a sprawling landscape of unused vendors and a dying server population full of "I was here first" vendor owners or a growing or steady influx of new players that don't quit in frustration. Neither option is "good" current state or vendor listing tool, but one is needed unfortunately and that is the ability to find stuff at a fair price and travel to go get it. The best vendor owners will still thrive and if done correctly market towns will still be popular to us vendor browsers.

This is my 2c and take it with a grain of curing salt.

 

I think everyone is forgetting how absurdly long a global vendor listing would take to load. The entire list would have to load every item from every vendor from every continent before you can scroll through it (due to game/engine mechanics).
My 2 cents, not worth it.

 

I continue to buy or barter whatever I want from friends regardless of the cost, and if they are a market playing friend, I still pay the price, because those friends can usually cut my searching short, through knowing where to get what I need, which like a finders fee, is a great "tip" to tip them for their marketing gamesmanship ~Time Lord~ aka "The Buyer of the Stuff"

 

That is because the current approach to vendor search is bass-ackward !

What I mean by that is this:
Instead of downloading an entire town's vendor wares to us as a big download and then for us to search through the entire thing, the actual item search should be ON THEIR END (their data, their search engine), NOT OURS.

At any given moment, their vendor data for ALL vendors is ON THEIR SERVER.
There is NO NEED for them (or us) to have every vendor item shown or downloaded to US.
A search is a SEARCH - for something SPECIFIC.
When we initiate a "search", we are NOT INTERESTED in EVERY ITEM on a vendor or vendors, we are only interested in a specific item and don't need to see EVERY ITEM - ONLY the actual item that matches our "search".
We still have to GO TO THAT VENDOR and see all their listings, so all their listings will be exposed to us when we get there. Which is FINE, no problem.
And by doing so, we'll still see everything in that physical area for those who wish us to see their deco, or whatever.

Let US initiate a search for a specific item and let THEIR search engine go thru their all-encompassing list and only download to us the result of that search.

THAT is the way a search should be handled, with ONLY the actual search query RESULTS downloaded to us.
THAT is how a GLOBAL vendor search should/could be handled - and it would get our beloved SotA back on track to be what it could be.

Refudiate that if you can.......
IMO

 

THIS ! ^^
+1