Player Vendor Options

Since vendors will be absolute necessities for the dedicated crafter, this seemed the most appropriate place to post this for discussion.

As the NPC vendor capabilities evolve, I'm acutely interested in the options we'll have for our player managed vendors. As someone that plans on having crafting as a major part of my “life” in SoTA, here are some things I would like to see as vendor capabilities with the reasons why.
I assume that vendors will offer the goods I produce for sale at whatever pricing I set. Any refinements for filtering the list of available things would be appreciated, especially if it would be possible to make the categories more granular than they are now … Armor, Weapons, Potions, etc instead of just Equipment.
The most critical improvement over the standard UO vendor would be the ability to set the vendor up to also buy specific items (primarily raw materials) at predetermined prices from anyone and possibly at pre-negotiated prices for specific players (well, one can always hope).
I plan on being a very active crafter. With finite time and somewhat limited mouse endurance, I doubt I'll be able to supply myself with all the ore, leather, wood, etc. I'll need to keep up with my desired production levels. Hence the need to purchase raw materials. I could certainly spend hours running around the various markets across Britannia looking for what I need, but I would much rather have suppliers know they could come to my shop 24 x 7 and sell their goods for a fair price. To that end, I would need to be able to deposit and store gold on the vendor or link it to my bank to buy the materials.
For simplicity, let's eliminate the predetermined contract option for the moment and simply look at what would be needed for the “buyer” option on a vendor.
Just as you now have the ability to tab select what part of inventory you want to see on a vendor, there could be tabs for each of the categories you want your vendor to purchase so a seller can see the current price list.
Raw Materials
Price you'll pay for ores, gems, hides, etc.
Refined Goods
Price you'll pay for bars, ingots, leather, etc.

I hope this is enough to generate some discussion on the topic because I'm interested to hear what others with similar interests have to say on the subject

 

You have the exact same hopes and dreams that i do.

 

Love this! @darkstarr!!!

 

The most critical improvement over the standard UO vendor would be the ability to set the vendor up to also buy specific items (primarily raw materials) at predetermined prices from anyone and possibly at pre-negotiated prices for specific players (well, one can always hope).

oh so you mean exactly like the wow auction house, mods, and addons? pass, thanks.

 

So why stop there? Why not have the NPC vendor convert the raw material to finished goods according to your programming and then sell them on the market? I mean, if your sole job in this equation is picking up materials from pile A, rubbing them on table B, and placing them in pile C, why not eliminate the mouse strain and streamline the process?

 

^^ Ooooooohhhhhhh I predict a big backlash of posts coming back on that one lol...

 

I grew up botting, so why not go even further and then have it so i can buy npc slaves and have an npc plantation of all risque black female barmaids that can all wield swords and bust up on dragons. And then sell them to your friends as house maids, car washes, "coconut washes" and then when it's done they auto-bank, auto-restock, then to help streamline the process we'll tell them in the job interview 40 hours a week, only to alleviate to them later it's 7 days a week, and those 8 hour days are 10's, with benefits. That way, there's almost "perfect" "full circle coverage" 24/7 for 10 of your employees, and those on 2nd shift as well, leaving 4 hours where your automatons must stop.

Then, just hard-code in Auctioneer, so they are like little data-mining bots, (which is exactly what data-mining WAS/IS) so you can have the most up to date pricing on your leather/ore/cotton/wood at approximately .00000000000000000000001 gold per unit.

resulting in a net profit of gold .00000000000000000000010 a day.

Then when your friends ask you why you stopped playing you can say because at the current rate of compounding interest of my slaves, my high taxes, and my insanely expensive cost: to benefit ratio, i needed to provide them vacation homes just to stay afloat.


that said, personally, I'm all for botting. I've been that guy, it's way fun to watch auto-cruise control. and I think in his original post he was inferring setting up quests on your vendors, which would be a smarter option for your own personal vendors to have a sort of turn in, so pledges can make mad loots on their common-law plots in Sosaria Novia to be honest, not even sure what the area that contain's owls head is called, maybe brittany?

But, continuing on here, the reason why botting works versus why it doesn't is typically in #'s this issue went away with recent hardware advancements, so now they pretty much consistently drive down any true player market. The benefit of the current design is nice, as far as having vendor "accepted quests" that you can advertise on forums, the location, etc, etc, effectively having your own world of warcraft war drive for war funds, I genuinely don't see why this wouldn't be at least a half decent idea for bigger guilds to kept "fed" so to speak.

Over-all, your biggest enemy is the frenemy angle, which was an angle in most games that preceded and out-dated most Guild on Guild conflict since I can't find a way to starve you out of resources, there by eliminating the true "thrill" of combat, that I can't obtain an "edge".

So what you'll get is maybe a hide leather turn in, and to be honest, you should be ecstatic about that. What you lose with any botting is simple, the cost of goods for everyone else turns into a mathematics project based on derivates and factors like supply, time, and effort, to achieve anything. And that effort with bots turns everyones loots into a huge, huge, huge, time commitment that as pledges most of you won't even like anyway.

but since you're already in about (1g) you'll probably have no hesitation in buying gold from "ni hao"

=]

 

I like the new public vendor where you can buy and sell items at your set price and you have to compete with other players price vice. I really hope this feature will be in the release version of the game since it more like a real market, tick all the boxes that crafter's need and give us a more realistic market than running in and out of every house to find what you are looking for.

I know my own vendor I got in the pledge will be less useful but I think it's better for the game.

 

Buy orders and sell orders, in EVE since 2003.

There will be a vicious race for the creation of trade hubs. Mark my words.

 

I'm all for a higher level of gameplay like how Eve tries to handle things, I just feel bad harping on the devs when they seem to have their hearts set on making a game that involves rubbing your face on trees for hours on end (and enjoying it, if the disturbing facial animation that arrived in R15 is any indication).

 

Buy orders and sell orders, in EVE since 2003.

There will be a vicious race for the creation of trade hubs. Mark my words.

ni hao

and lol harvest moon this patch m8

 

The moon is already split open. It'd be easy to setup a POS and harvest away.

o7

 

I dunno, I wouldn't bot an alpha release, as far as teh moon split open, harvest moon is an snes game, where you gather.

 

@gaylike21

OK ... I'll take the bait.
For purposes of this discussion, let's limit things to the 2 suggestions I actually proposed ... allowing player vendors to buy raw materials from other players and allowing bulk refining of raw materials.
Let the games begin.
So you don't like the idea of player vendors empowered to buy raw materials.
By extension, are you also opposed to NPCs buying things them from players? Since you seem to like arguments that expand a basic idea to an unintended and absurd conclusion, turnabout is fair play. To follow your argument to its conclusion, only player to player interactions should be sanctioned. So if you want to buy raw materials to craft things for your shop (or are you opposed to any aspect of a participatory player economy?) you should stand in from of your shop and spam "buying iron ore @3 each" all afternoon or find an NPC that has what you want for sale. Or are you demanding that only materials you have gathered yourself be allowed for use in you crafting efforts? It's kind of hard to tell what you're for since all you do is talk about what you're against. Is it OK for me to produce things for other players and be compensated for it or am I constrained to just making things for my own use? I'm really unclear on where you stand as far as role playing an artisan.
And now for the dreaded bulk conversion of raw materials.
Crafting skills don't really exist yet - just some recipes and the basic mechanics. We're getting a taste of how things will develop with the first release of gathering ... but just a taste. Things like failure rates, broken tools, inferior products, and material loss % based on producer skill level and point allocation are still in the future, but we (those of us that enjoy a crafting focus) are optimistic about where it's going.
That said, what I wanted to see was a bulk conversion capability to refine raw materials. It certainly needs to be subject to the same skill based limitations and penalties that would apply to refining things 1 at a time, and there could even be a time delay and a skill gain penalty compared with the 1 at a time method. If you want to argue that is should be limited to basic building blocks like iron bars, iron and copper ingots, cotton thread, maple and pine timber, and basic leather - fine .. I agree with that. My idea is limited to those sorts of items. I would strongly oppose being able to make multiple copies of finished goods as being highly detrimental to the game.

So, my bellicose friend, there's my counterpoint. I don't know if this is your only account, or if you've only been here for 2 weeks. Either way, this is supposed to be a tool for the community to exchange ideas, not just to attack them. I have no problem if your vision of how the world should work differs from mine. But how about sharing what that vision is.
I'm just sayin'
Sil

 

The difference between NPC vendors and Player owned vendors is that NPC vendors are a money sink where as Player vendors are not, especially if they are tax free vendors.

 

For the Nay crowd, head over to youtube, Portalarium Austin channel.
Check out the streamathon.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/?p=46412
specificly the "Crafting & Gathering" hour.

Then pop over to this
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/time-to-talk-about-economy.21848/
read the whole thing from Chris. Think about those "work orders" for a while.

The future of SotA is in the same ballpark as @Silvanus, arctis and @Themo Lock hope for.
They just want to flush out some details of that future.

If your vision of the future differs from that then you better come up with a better/more popular model than the one proposed by the designers of the game.

 

@Ravicus
Thanks for the clarification ... but I'm aware of that. What I'm trying to figure out is whether our former and potentially future scripter gaylike21 has anything positive to add to the discussion or just wants a soapbox to spout from.
I'll be happy to start a discussion on the pros and cons of Jatvardur's econometric model - I know you and he are engaging in a friendly debate, but I think that's best reserved for another thread.
I'm just sayin'
Sil

 

So you don't like the idea of player vendors empowered to buy raw materials.
part 1: No. Shut up.

And now for the dreaded bulk conversion of raw materials.
part 2: Also, I have plenty of mats i can put in timber, ingot, etc, that would be more profitable to me, but isn't worth my time sitting at a forge doing it. since it's 1) boring and 2) boring even for people who CAN BUY MATERIALS.

now for part 3

wall of text, wall of text, wall of text.

 

as far as future scripter, more like future botter, and even at that, it's not really your business what i do, or how i do it. so feel free to try to throw me into this caste system of the unworthy you pledge-obliging-oblique-god-of-titan-proportions-and-immense-logical-intensity.

 

I was merely replying to your statement Silvanus
: "So you don't like the idea of player vendors empowered to buy raw materials.
By extension, are you also opposed to NPCs buying things them from players? " You conveniently left out the point of the difference of the NPC and the Player owned vendors. I just put that there for clarification.