Petition against the Auction House approach. -- (Dev) Replied

Discussion in 'Crafting & Gathering' started by Mitch [MGT], Mar 14, 2013.

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  1. Mitch [MGT]

    Mitch [MGT] Avatar

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    Hi there everyone,

    I know it's awfully early to be jumping the gun on this but I just want to put myself out there as an ANTI-AH supporter. I was VERY successful at playing the AH "game" in WoW but it also ruined it for me, there was no community. I didn't ask people directly if they wanted to purchase my goods or if I could purchase goods from them. I didn't even look to my guild members for resources, although I would often offer mine to others.

    I think that an AH doesn't mesh with what they have planned in so far as effective real estate for shops and vendors. Who cares if you have a PRIME location for your Blacksmith shop, the AH (think Walmart) will undercut you and entice the lazy players to it like flies to honey. Forgive the metaphors but it's how I communicate. For this game to uphold the RP roots of Ultima, I say that a "Bazaar" of sorts is a much better idea, if people are concerned with vendor's inventory levels. Give players the ability to buy out a "stall" or section of a market square and sell their goods there.

    Just my 2 cents (if that expression even works anymore...)

    -Mitch, the Scribe.
     
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  2. Hightower

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    I totally agree, I would prefer to have a vendor in my house, than have a auction house. That also allows people to show off their creativity in their home layout.
    Could have a small foyer in the entrance of your home, allow people to see inside, if roof cuts away, but keeps most the house secure.
     
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  3. Cleome Arachnid

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    I'm not a fan of the auction house either. I did however enjoy running to the bank through all the squatters in UO.
     
  4. Urganite

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    Regarding the whole <abbr title="auction house">AH</abbr> issue, I think a big part of whether or not vendors are viable with an AH present depends not just on the scope of the AH's reach, but also other factors like the AH's "rake" (Listing fees, percentage fees, etc.), how the AH lists items (Does it have a good interface? I've seen plenty of terrible ones.), and the availability of buyers for small-time crafters.

    Before we argue about whether or not there should be an auction house, there are a few considerations I'd like you to think about. The first one is non-land owners. Without an AH or land, there is presumably just one way you can sell something in the game, and that is by directly trading with someone in your game instance. I won't bother to explain why this is bad from a design standpoint, just keep in mind that this is not an <abbr title="massively-multiplayer online role playing game">MMORPG</abbr>. While it may appear to you that this is an issue just for crafters, it's an issue for crafters and for the general player base, just like it would be in any other multiplayer game with tradable goods that are randomly found in the course of play. Without a viable AH (or else centralized purchase vendors...but I digress), it may be practically impossible to sell your tradable good for its worth. The result is destroying otherwise valuable items, hoarding, or worse, sale to non-player-controlled <abbr title="non-player character">NPC</abbr>'s which dispense in-game coin that depreciates dramatically in value over time as people accumulate it, to the point where dropped items even with assumed value are just left on the ground, like in Diablo-style games.

    Now, that said, an AH is a vendor-destroying machine. There is no added value for me or anyone else in wasting my time picking over vendor after vendor (often they are selling nothing, as was the case in UO) trying to find a specific good. With limited caveats, given the option, I will chose the AH every single time, and I would venture to guess so would about 9/10ths of the player base as a minimum.

    "Land is rare, so make a bazaar where it's just vendors!" is what I hear you shout once again from the rooftops in my head. Even if you pack the vendors in like sardines and rent them first come, first served, all of the same issues will apply. Vendors will be empty. Vendors will all be selling different items with no categorization. Even vendors that will buy things from other players will have the same problems (out of money, buying only items the player doesn't have). You're still effectively dividing a limited resource (vendors), and you're even diminishing the value of housing. It's very difficult to argue against an AH from a non-land owner's perspective. The only thing anyone reasonably gains from not having an AH is increasing the value of real estate.

    It's true that a global AH will destroy the value of specific goods in specific markets where scarcity is causing the price to rise. Yes, this is called "globalization", and it's happening right now, everywhere, in real life, as we speak! Yes, the cost of ocean perch in the mountains would be higher than on the beach, provided someone has to physically transport it to that market, and is the only person doing so. There are a lot of traders that think this is important, and it would be in a segmented market where goods are bound to localities. It's a good design argument against an AH, so there may be good reasons to localize the AH itself. That said, it's still not an argument in favor of the vendor mechanic.

    Having heard the argument, my fiance suggested that general goods and commodities be traded in an AH and items like equipment be sold on vendors. I think there's a sound argument in favor of that, but I won't make it.

    I personally would suggest that barring an AH, there be a place where you can see lists of buy orders and items for sale in the town, both with quantities and prices, and a static town map viewable at the, "brokerage", let's call it, to help you find where the vendor doing the buying or selling is without those infernal head-pointing-arrows that a certain Lord British so despises. I think this is the best hybrid approach to avoid having a single generic place where trade takes place, but I still think it places non-land owners at an extreme disadvantage.

    Your thoughts?
     
  5. Mitch [MGT]

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    Urganite, your thoughts on the matter are very intriguing to me, I suppose I am making a lot of assumptions based on how the communities are going to work. That being said the time is now for assumptions because if enough people in this community assume the game to be one way, the developers will look to that and make it so.

    You stated in your piece that elements of the AH will determine the viability of vendors, things like the cost to place items in the AH, the "rake" so to speak. My question would be where does this AH cut go? You called a sale to a non-player-controlled NPCs as the worst possible situation where our money simply flutters away but isn't the AH's "rake" the exact same thing, sure in a smaller case but still in-game money being thrown away. I'm proposing 100% of an item's value going toward the player who owns that vendor, whether it be a crafted item or a looted item.

    Now I can't say for sure whether these vendors will remain stocked but it's a good case study of how the game is going. If people WANT to play the game they will WANT to keep their vendor's stocked. I know they've been toying around with the idea of either real money or in-game money taxes on your houses, so it makes sense that a well stocked vendor allows considerably more income to pay for those taxes, if they deem them necessary, and to avoid ghost towns they probably will.

    "The only thing anyone reasonably gains from not having an AH is increasing the value of real estate" you shout up at me from the dirt, and that's a pretty significant gain, even from the kickstarter perspective. The largest pledges have real estate attached and TAX-FREE real estate at that, so I'd say that's a VERY important point for the people who are making the largest financial contributions to our game and it is OUR game, we are as much a part of this as any one, as RG said it's FOR us, using ideas FROM us.

    The Bazaar is still the best way for people who don't own a house to get in on the local markets, I believe that realistically speaking and keeping true to the RP roots, markets should not allow players in Trinsic (just an example) to *magically* send ingots to a player in Britain, unless they wanted to introduce some wait period for that which we BOTH know wouldn't sit well with people who HATE facebook games. You want a sword, go to the blacksmith, you want a unique sword search out a player vendor.

    I think your fiancee is on to something there, IF an AH was to be used it could be more like a "commodity market" of sorts, leave weapons and armour to the crafters but raw materials which anyone could stumble across could be sold in a Bazaar. It could even be used to RP better, there will be Miners in game as well as Blacksmiths, they don't have to be one in the same. Maybe gathering raw materials is more lucrative than the manufacturing process.

    Realistically speaking non-land owners ARE at an extreme disadvantage, that's the nature of this historical timeline, there were beggars in the mud trying to survive and there were lordly land owners who would spit on them as they past, it's life, it's real and I want that level of immersion to fully enjoy this game. No infernal head-pointing-arrows, you want to buy something, go to the market.
     
  6. Duke Ironman

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    I'm a Lord contributor and I plan on being very active in the developer blogs because I'm paying for it. One of my number one goals I want to push is against and Auction House. I like the vendor-centric approach because it requires more interaction in community. Real role-playing is gone the minute there is an auction house. The people should be more important than the items.
     
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  7. Jyskall

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    The "new" kind of Auction House is a community killer, and still Vendors have some bad influences in an MMORPG. But since this game is a more pseudo-MMO they should work with some restrictions.

    House-Vendor
    - As an house owner you have to pay your vendor.
    - He has a limited number of items/stacks to sale.
    - Install a bill-board on your house to advertise more of your services.
    -- tailoring/forging special items etc.
    -- Contact options

    Public-Vendor
    - Give your item to public Vendor on a bazaar/marketplace.
    - He will try to sell it in a specified timespan. (You have to pay him for that)
    - You have to go back to him to get your money or the item back.

    Public-Billboard
    - papyrus and ink isn't really cheap.
    - also the timespan the notice appears is specified in payed gold.
     
  8. Urganite

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    Now, there are really so many issues linked to how the economy works or will work, and I'll try to cover as many as I can, but I'm only human.

    <b>Regarding Vendors</b>

    Well, you guys think an AH will kill roleplay; personally I find UO-style vendor malls to be an immersion killing blight, and the difference is the footprint of vendor "bazaars", "malls", or really any other collection of NPC vendors is much bigger and more likely to stick out when actually playing. Nothing is worse than a "shopkeeper" that isn't in a shop, standing around hawking wares when he/she doesn't actually have anything. This happened in UO <em>A LOT</em>. Saying it would be a good indication of how the game is doing doesn't suddenly make it a good idea to "wait and see". First of all, presuming that vendors will be owned, whether in a bazaar or in houses, and most/all the starting ones will be tax free, <em>some people will still quit the game after they're done playing it</em> and those places will become UO's empty houses. Maybe they'll look better than vacant dirt plots with steps, but realistically it'll still be just as annoying to try and figure out where to buy a normal shortsword, whether vendors are stocked or not.

    <b>Regarding Monetary Valuation/Rake</b>

    When you look at how money operates in a video game, whether it's single-player or multiplayer, it's a pretty simple formula: The game gives you gold, sometimes in lieu of or in addition to items or from the sale of items. You in turn give the game gold for some type of game function, like healing or skill acquisition, for items you can't otherwise get, etc. The flow of currency looks basically like this:

    Game -&gt; Player -&gt; Game

    In a single-player game, this model works by definition because there are no repercussions to consider. The goal presumably is not to accumulate wealth, it's to achieve the goal at the end of the story, so how much gold is dumped out and what the player can conceivably get with it isn't especially relevant unless it significantly alters the difficulty of the game.

    In multiplayer, especially MMO, the issue is the fact that while there is still some "Game-&gt;Player-&gt;Game" exchange going on, the degree of Player-to-Player exchange will just bury any in-game functions in terms of economic activity. Designing an economic model for a multiplayer video game and intending for in-game money to pass as a medium of exchange, the value of the currency has to be at least somewhat stable. UO had issues with this as well, inflationary pressure resulted in people even publicly displaying stacks of ridiculously valued bank cheques.

    There are good and bad examples of video game currencies everywhere, and currency valuation changes in video games for the same reasons it changes in real life. If you dump lots of money into the game world (or even the real world!) with nothing to spend it on, the price of items relative to money goes up. In a very large number of multiplayer games, the in-game currency devalues so quickly that the medium of exchange reverts to bartering. A good example is how in Diablo 2, gold quickly becomes just worthless filler you just make sure doesn't get too low so you can keep repairing, and high-end items were traded for and priced relative to quantities of equipable items like <abbr title="Stone of Jordan">SoJ</abbr>'s, or specific high-demand runes like Jah, Ber, or Zod. Some games like Path of Exile have forsaken an in-game currency altogether and instead have purpose-made a set of progressively "valuable" fungible items with useful properties.

    In contrast to the hyper-inflationary style of game that is Diablo, there are games like Puzzle Pirates. In PP, you gain in-game currency by playing the game and defeating other pirates, you use the money to buy piratey equipment that degrades over time, the shop keeper then uses that money to fund buy orders, labor costs (you pay people to play puzzles to make the stuff...), and to purchase bulk raw materials at auction that is run by the game server. The game server regulates the scarcity of goods on the basis of the number of people actually playing the game, and when shop owners buy auctioned goods, the in-game currency vanishes. That last part is what's critically important about that game's economic model, it regulates the valuation of the in-game currency by sucking the currency back out of the market from the opposite end of the finished goods supply chain.

    Anyway, how does that relate to SotA? Well, the game is presumably going to have a resource acquisition mechanic that does not have an effective cost to the person doing the mining/gathering/etc. such that it would stablize prices in the economy, so unless there's some other thing missing, we're looking at an economic model that is going to spiral endlessly upward like in UO/WoW/Diablo at the rate which the game supplies gold to the player base in the various ways which it inevitably will. So, things like AH rake, taxes, and in-game services will become the only inflationary stabilizing forces.

    It would be <b>*extremely*</b> interesting if the game did not supply gold or other coins to people playing the game, and instead players had to mint their own coins as part of a crafting process, but the game still expected to receive coins for basic services like resurrection, repair, taxes, vendor wages, etc. This would close the loop between resource gathering and in-game services that will then syphon the resources back out of the economy to keep values stable. It does have some caveats in that you'll need an elegant system of resource gathering that supplies a "baby bear" amount of material and puts the onus on non-crafters to do the gathering (both from nodes and from enemies, presumably) so exchange will be necessary and will go smoothly enough that no one group will be held back due to lack of availability.

    That little prayer aside, I mean, that's my expectation for the in-game economy, it's going to spiral up endlessly. So, from a design perspective, you want as little money entering the game economy as possible so inflation can be kept at a relatively mild pace.

    <b>Regarding Land Valuation &amp; Kickstarter</b>

    The maximum contribution (presently) that can be made by land owners through Kickstarter is $1,380,000; presently as I write this it is actually about $313,500 of $904,771, and of that total, I'm fairly certain that at least $100,000 of that money is <em>significantly more interested in the original copy of Akalabeth and touring Britannia Manor</em> than exploiting the masses. That said, you do realize you're suggesting -and- advocating a blatant pay-to-win mechanic, right? Pay-to-win at the cost of the majority of the actual players and without even the majority of the funds generated, as though that even makes a difference. Real estate needs no increased value, it will have implicit value even if it's not used for trading, so, no it's not actually a very important point, in fact I said the line you quoted to show how miniscule the value gain was, not as a valid point in favor of stacking the deck against people who aren't willing to pay to win. Lastly, if having a vendor is required to sell merchandise and having a vendor also requires land/money, then crafting is logically not a viable gameplay style.

    <b>Regarding Regional Market Segmentation</b>

    Regional market segmentation is something I think is pretty good, but won't really make a big impact in this game because travel will be fast. 96 hexes and gates connecting regions? Market segmentation will mostly be based on whether anyone wants to even bother providing support services in small towns, and trying to exploit segmentation will come at the cost of lower traffic. As a medieval market simulation, this game does not promise to really deliver the kind of regional market segmentation you're probably looking for.

    <b>Regarding Market Segmentation by Item Type</b>

    Well, it would cut down on clutter. It does not however make it easier for me to find anything on a vendor, nor does it allow a small-time crafter to do appreciable business. There are other kinds of market segmentation mechanics that could make this more viable, but I hesitate to suggest anything that I don't want to actually see. I would like to see a market for bulk items purchased via buy orders, since it prevents casual players from selling their items below market value, and it unclutters a retail AH of junk items that only crafters would otherwise care about, but that's another thread. That said, I think that craftspeople shouldn't have to find themselves braving skeletons and whatever else for materials, I think Dr. Garriott said as much several times anyway. It comes as no surprise to me that the locations of materials pose their own dangers, crafting on the other hand is decidedly not something that is directly related, and that could be effectively its own market, no reason to mix retail with commodoties and muck the two up just to make things harder.
     
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  9. Ahjian

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    As a citizen of SotA I am against AH. It is probably the worst development in the MMO space because it allows players to push up the prices very quickly by a few rich individuals.

    I prefer the UO way of selling items on a player owned vendor. Heck I think 50% of my UO game time was spent on windows shopping and I really enjoyed it.

    The economy model is something which really needs a lot of careful planning but I have faith in RG's team to create a world where inflation will be in control. Hyper inflation only really began when Trammel was introduced. In a world where people can earn gold from the system risk free, it adds up really quickly, too fast for that much gold to leave the system.

    Having open world pvp with full loot is one possible way to add risk into the system to slow the inflow of gold and best of all, we get to kill gold farmer!
     
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  10. Duke Ironman

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    Urganite - While you bring up some well thought-up points I don't agree that Kickstarter elite contributing is a Pay-to-Win mechanic. The only way that is the case is for people whose goal it is to own the home. For some of us, $1500 is less than a week of work. This isn't a competition to see who can get a house first. I also like the perk of being a Lord in the game because there will be so few. Everyone has the same opportunity now to donate to these levels. Just because you don't quit whining.
     
  11. Malfeit

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    I've read all of these posts and I'm still not convinced that an auction house would be a good fit for a game like this. Nor do I believe it fits in well with the direction they are trying to go with the game. For all of those players who do not own land, or a vendor spot in a bazaar(myself included), I say too bad. Save money, buy land, and work hard so you can have those kinds of things. So to the OP, you can count me in on the no Auction house list. I've seen what it does to players. Not good.
     
  12. Minoc

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    Interesting read.
    I'm of the opinion that Auction Houses do remove much of the joy and excitement from a game, as 99% of items can be bought from the AH at an often reasonable price (due to the thousands of that one item being sold at cheaper and cheaper prices over time).
    This removes the need to go adventuring, hunting and gathering for items and just means you can grind a bit of gold and then buy the item you want.

    I would much prefer to hunt and explore for components to make the items I want to use.
    When I do find a player / NPC vendor that sells the particular item I want, it will be an exciting time trying to get enough gold together to but it before someone else does, and I have to start my vendor search again (or I get the skills to make it myself) !
     
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  13. Ned888

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    I like the AH approach or a combo of AH and limited vendors. Nothing was more hideous in UO than the line after line of poorly dressed vendors that cluttered up the scenery along with all the housing. Let's keep our new world clean and uncluttered! My two bits!
     
  14. Illesac

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    I think there is a simple approach to the auction house that fixes all of the 'usual' problems of an MMO auction house but first you need to remember they aren't AN AUCTION HOUSE in the true sense of the word but glorified automated bidding networks. I love how in most of Richard's interviews he takes it to a real world example so let's do the same thing here and look at what is different about a virtual auction house.

    Virtual
    1. Hundreds of ongoing auctions at any one given moment
    2. No entry cost for bidder or seller
    3. No sense of bidding competition (I'm looking at you Diablo and your countdown timer)

    Real Life
    1. Auctioneer is handling ONE auction at a time
    2. Entry costs for bidders and seller listing/service fees
    3. Bidders bid against each other until no one wants to pay more

    Once again having an economy where people must pay for a service quickly gets rid of the junk. Say the auction house has an auction every 5 minutes. This causes the auctions that happen during 'prime-time' will demand a higher entry price thus leading to a natural selection of quality items being sold at the best times. How do you know what is being sold? Fo you subscribe to the auctioneer's newsletter to see what the daily/weekly auctions are going to be? There are so many layers you can add to make the auction house be an exciting activity, efficiency mechanism, and still add economy to the land so let's not be so quick to write it off completely.
     
  15. marthos

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    The typical auction house system will destroy the importance of geography in locating your business. From a business perspective, owning a house in the cities with the most foot traffic won't be any more desirable than the most obscure out of the way village. Either way your customer simply pulls up a UI element, finds the lowest price, clicks buy, and picks it up at the nearest mailbox. That style of AH will kill the real estate market.

    With the limited amount of houses available, players may want an AH so that more can participate in the economy. A marketplace/bazaar in the big cities could be a solution, where dozens/hundreds of people could rent out a small booth and a vendor to sell some wares. There would have to be a limit on these vendors to still put a premium on actually owning land. Possibly, have home-businesses sell unlimited inventor, and bazaar vendors only able to sell a few items at a time, requiring far more upkeep. Some balance would be needed to keep real estate valuable and allowing many players to participate in selling things to each other.
     
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  16. tekkamansoul

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    Just to throw down my two cents--

    I don't think an Auction House will necessarily destroy player to player trade. It all depends on how its implemented. In most modern MMOs, it functions basically like eBay, except a thousand times faster. You see what you want, you pick the one with the lowest price, you click buy, and in half a second its in your mailbox.

    That is precisely what destroys player trade. Auction houses are simply too _convenient_ to not use. It takes a few seconds to find exactly what you're looking for (if it exists). Let's think real auctions for a second. In the case of eBay, these are basically silent auctions.

    Items are on display, and you bid on them during a specific period of time, and you don't get an item simply by paying the "buy-it-now" price, you have to think about what you're buying and make an investment.

    In the case of eBay, you have to wait somewhere usually between 1-7 days for the auction to end, and if you're the winner, you have to wait another few days for your package to arrive.

    You don't want to do this for absolutely everything you own. If you need milk, you're gonna go buy it from the store (in this analogy, this would be in-game another player or NPC). Resources, like herbs or ore, tend to be traded player to player in a system like this, since they're consumable and needed immediately.

    In this sense, the auction house is a minor convenience, but player to player trading is still better. If an AH is implemented, it needs some kind of checks and balances, I suggest 1) tax on items placed in the AH, 2) an unavoidable time limit for auctions (1-7 days) and 3) requires a certain amount of time for delivery (probably another 24h).

    Nobody wants a magic vending machine in this universe anyway, right?
     
  17. Andrew Vawter

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    I have no interest in an auction house. Plenty of gold sinks can be put into the game. Item's should be destroyable, Taxes should be levied, and homes should have some kind of attached gold sink similar to housing customization in UO.

    Market segmentation occurred all the time in UO. I frequently bought an item at Brit bank and placed it on my Luna vendor and instantly cleared 100 - 500k in gold. Despite the fact you could easily mark &amp; recall between the two places. A well timed purchase and a little haggling would always net you a better price at West Brit Bank than a static Luna vendor.

    You will INSTANTLY kill the player run vendors and the ability to haggle over a price when you introduce an auction house.

    If people want an Auction House then let them HAVE an auction at a house. I ran one in UO for a while and it was great fun. Depending on the audience items would either go cheap or go expensive and it was always exciting to watch. I do worry that by limiting the numbers of players on a map you will run into people being unable to get into your auction.

    Anyway I'm against the WoW auction house. I'd also be against any "magic" mechanism that allows players to see all items listed for sale in a city/village/town in a centralized location. Nothing was like hunting for the perfect piece of armor in UO and after hours or days of searching finding it.
     
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  18. Gumpo

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    I'm not fond of the WoW style auction house, personally. As others have said, it depreciates the value of homes and eliminates price fluctuations based on location. Seems like the biggest argument to have an auction house is to allow everyone some access to the market to sell things they've found or harvested, so, the idea of a town bazaar seems like a good meeting ground.

    If there was a bazaar in each region with vendors to rent, anyone could sell their goods. Because of the instanced design, vendors could be set up to only show up to players if they had goods to sell, so there would be a bit less sifting through empty inventories.
     
  19. Mugly Wumple

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    I suggest that NPC vendors become consignment shops. You visit him, you check his prices, drop your stuff on him and set a price. For your convenience, he's set up for digital funds transfer to your favorite bank.
     
  20. Illesac

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    I'm OK with NPC vendors for basic materials but not anything unique as this completely destroys the purpose of having vendors at your house thus decreasing property values. I think some of the charm in UO was the lack of this feature because you learned who were the best stocked vendors quickly and went there first even if they charged a few more gold.
     
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