Suggestion : public billboard for crafter requests

With the very high degree of customization, I think one point that is difficult right now is to connect supply with demand when it comes to personalized gear. Right now we can post buy orders for various consumables on vendors, and that's great.

But what about a billboard at the local crafting pavillion (or some other public system) where you could put up a note demanding certain caracteristics on a piece of gear (item type, materials, potency of masterworks/enchantments) with an amount of money.

Then comes along various crafters who can respond with an item offer for the current price put up. Finally, the buyer comes back and approves/rejects the propositions. If he accepts, the money/items are transfered to the local bank and the demand is taken off the billboard.

Just wondering what the current opinion would be on a system like that (I know it would probably be complicated on the technical/programming side of things). As a crafter, fulfilling these types of demands would be really fun!

 

In general, just having town billboards would be fantastic and has been a highly requested feature. I know for really busy towns like my own... It would be reallllllllly useful.

 

IMO there's too many towns for the game's population. Merchants need to caravan around the world to reach a larger customer base since many players stick to their own home town for town services.

Furthermore, the message board idea is great and works on the NWN server I play on presently. However, since SotAs population is spread so thinly across such a large world the message boards would need some form of global access.

 

As with many things, population is always the issue. I think most of the people playing this game right now are really hopping that more people start playing this game at release and I think a lot of people are really worried if that will happen.

 

IMO the game world shoudve been started small and grown to needed not started absolutely humongous and then dependent on an optimistic growth of population.

How many active players do we have at any given time? What's the ratio of player:town, player:scene. There's no way it's going to look good. Maybe one day, but when?

 

Nah -- here's the beauty of it -- noticeboards (I call them noticeboards, got a problem with that?) would create tighter regional economies and regional communities. If I run a shop in Wizard's Rest, which is just north of Owl's Head, I could easily advertise in Owl's Head, and possibly put up a second advertisement in Kingsport. In the end, the major NPC towns would be *hubs* to find out what's going on in the region -- what shops there are, what events are being held, what guilds are recruiting, what jobs and tasks people need to be done. How many major NPC towns are there? Just a few. So you only need a few hubs.

People could, of course, also choose to travel to the opposite side of Novia to advertise, and spread news more globally, by putting an ad in every single community hub. A guild would be able to do this quicker and easier, since it might have many members in different regions of Novia.

However, the fact that this whole thing starts out from a regional level, then grows globally, is a good thing IMO. An idea on top of that might be to incentivize local / regional listings by giving either discounts to postings, or prioritizing their postings, by moving them to the top. So, if I live in Owl's Head, I get priority. If I live in the Hidden Vale, I get second priority. If I live in Aerie, I'm third. Maybe fees can allow you to bypass these priorities. And by live, maybe that can include just bind-points somehow, for people who don't have homes, though, thinking a little bit about that, I see that as exploitable.

 

The problems I see w/ your suggestion is that it can have the detrimental effect of having 10 plus different crafters getting the orders together only to find out later that someone else's goods were chosen. That is merchandise on hold which is time. energy and effort lost. Now, can you imagine if the goods were not already on hand and available and had to be created? Only to compete w/ 10 plus other crafters? More time, energy and effort wasted. Not very attractive for a crafter or merchant keen on not suffering losses.

Bulletin boards to help facilitate communication would be a great option. These can be a default vendor option (message system accessed via vendor; found a vendor whose wares you admire? a message can be left, communication begun and possible requests made) and also a placeable item in homes and anywhere else items may be placed. For either of the above to work ideally, any bulletin board/ message system will also have to have an alert system to let interested parties know when they have been updated.

As @majoria70 has mentioned in various threads re communication, many persons do not use the forums and are not online when those they would like to communicate w/ are online. Bulletin boards would relieve these issues and fill the current communication gap, connecting avatars across distances and time.

"Noticeboards" would be a great auxiliary to bulletin boards; Noticeboards to facilitate advertisements and bulletin boards to facilitate back and forth communication.

 

Well, hopefully we'll get a mail system, too, which will help on top of this.

 

Nested POTS within NPC towns or overland POTS should be able to reflect their requests or orders on the master billboard - wherever it is.

 

How about public boards on the overworld map? It could be an item you interact with on the map, or a scene you go into. And the public boards would have a "circumference of influence", like an AOE spell. You could buy / sell on this message board but they would be regional. I haven't thought this out all the way, but it's just an idea.

If it was a scene, it could be a good place of socializing too (think Brittany bank).

 

Good idea!

 

They could put messages boards in the larger towns - Ardoris, Harvest, Owl's Head, Brittany, etc - and that could encourage people to spend more time in the major hub cities.

 

Yeah I like filling bulk orders for resources. Something to do while waiting on focus regen.

 

hahaha nice

 

If we could have letter boxes so people could do pamphlet drops advertising their services, that could be fun. And a recycling bin to dispose of them =P

 

I get enough junk mail already lol. Having a place to go look and find vendors advertising would be welcome though.