Shroud 2020 Vision

Well I have played MMOs for many years now. I am almost exclusively an MMO player. I would agree a central auction house just creates some negative issues in the easy way some sellers can mass buy too fast on automation. WoW is a classic example of this kind of economy and the game was king of the hill fir years. So I have a hard time thinking having an area search is a bad thing. I am willing to try it your way of course.
Some suggestions though, if no prices then we need a bigger search area than just go in town and pull up a search at the banker. Smaller vendors that aren't in major crafting towns won’t get listed. Add a player star rating to the vendor system that is listed on the search and only voted in by an actual sale. Yeah that can be taken advantage of (maybe once a day per sale per player account per vendor). This gives you guys a plus and gives buyers a little more information on where to try first. I suggest regional searches like the old areas isolated by control points. Running to every town in the game won’t speed up searching for buyers.
I am sure players can create some interface for vendor marketing in-game as well. Something more UI looking that can be toggled on and off that is strictly advertising sales or orders.

 

I can’t pretend to argue about exactly how to do a more global listing. In other words, if hiding prices is the make or break difference, fine. I did play WoW and SWG and frankly both were fine to me. I could search for and find what I wanted, quickly. The undercutting you mention in an auction house neglects to mention that prices stabilize quickly, otherwise prices would hit zero...

There is also the factor that people in SotA game the system, now. They do nothing but go from town to town, buy up underpriced goods and go resell them at a markup. No different than someone gaming an auction house and cornering a market- it just takes more time in SotA.

Meanwhile, it adds the effect of it sometimes taking hours of searching to find what you want on vendors. It took me a bit to get tired of it, but I got there. I imagine most casual players see what we do and immediately go “WTF?”.

Spending literal hours trying to find an item to buy sucks, period. Making shopping a shitty, painful experience so that no one might resell others good is a really poor idea. SotA’s current system is like trying to buy a TV before the internet existed - you had to drive from store to store and 1) hope they had the TV you wanted, and 2) hope it was at a price you wanted.

You what I don’t miss - spending a whole day shopping for a TV. Thank you internet and ease of information! I don’t want that pain in my games either.

 

@Dhanas

Lua is simply a language that allows for doing various things, depending on what the API allows. The ability to make "mods" (modules) is wide spread in the MMO world. For example, World Of Warcraft allows the use of Lua for all sorts of MODs. I suggest going to a site like curseforge.com and seeing the thousands of MODs available for World of Warcraft and what they add to the game for players. Other games that allow MODs you might be familiar with are all the recent Elder Scroll series (Oblivion, Skyrim, etc), Starcraft (I & II), The Witcher 3, Minecraft, World of Tanks, etc. Just look at all the numerous MODs available at curseforge or nexusmods.com

There is no expectation that everyone needs to understand Lua. The entire point of Lua is to allow for people who are interested in writing MODs for a game to do so and then make them available to everyone else as well. Thus, just because you have no clue about Lua doesn't mean you can't benefit from it. There's an entire section of the forum dedicated to Lua, with MODs already written by interested players, that *you* can download and install, without needing to know Lua, and make use of *now*.

Lua support is an amazing thing and probably what I'd rate #1 for this game as done by @Chris and the rest of the Port/Catnip developers last year. It opens the door for the game to be improved in ways the devs never even thought of. One reason for this is quite frankly, players know what they want in a game better than the developers do. That's why so many thousands of MODs exist for many games.

The simple fact is, you get to reap the benefits of Lua, whether you know anything about it or not. And everyone's game can become better because it's available.

 

How much can be fixed on questing, vendor, and crafting UI's? It sounds like Chris is only going to open up us exporting and importing our vendor, which isn't super helpful in many many cases.

In that vein, is someone going to be able to make a completely revamped Dialog and Journal UI? Crafting UI? Is that really on the horizon or are we more looking at little widgets for showing stats and such?

 

This type of approach is very concerning to me. It seems like the philosophy is "rather than fixing the clunky, user-unfriendly systems, we hope that players find a LUA script that replaces the functionality of these clunky systems." It seems to me that a better approach would be "we will fix the clunky user-unfriendly systems, and players can use LUA to further enhance these systems."

 

It is EXTREMELY concerning. Not only because the game's development should not be handed in part to modders but because...

Listing prices in an Auction House type database will cause extreme damage to this game's economy.

But then to only give the data to people willing to install mods will create a sector of players that have a real advantage over other players that do not wish to install mods or do not know how. This is a MAJOR fairness issue as well.

Please consider my suggestion here to enact regional Vendor Search capabilities to ALL players with no pricing.

Please don't join other games in a "Race to the Bottom."

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I also want to add that some people may not understand the caliber of Vendors we're talking about here. There are players here that have spent 5 years amassing huge collections of stuff.

There is an entire Guild, that will remain nameless here, that is hoarding gold to BUY everything and monopolize the market. There are real-money spenders here that have done the same.

If you enact price-listing you are HANDING the economy to them. Very few of us will be able to compete with that.

Please don't.

 

I'm not sure it would even matter at that point. Sure, monopolies would get richer, but in a game that just blew it's last foot off by doing a coup de grace on the main reason to own property. At that point it's just a generic MMO with housing that is cool to futz around and have events in, but has no interactivity or purpose beyond that (and agriculture).

Honestly I wish we'd see a lot more expanding on and advertising of the housing system, as it is the primary competitive advantage of the game. Every MMO in existence has combat and adventure*, so competing in that field is a fools errand.

*almost

And at some point some completion of EP1 systems, and the mythical "polish" that was going to happen in 2018.

 

If price masking addresses your concern, great, do it.

But keeping the system as is, completely painful and frustrating for so many, to stop a guild from trying go to corner the market, or keep “5 years worth of amassing stuff” protected? No thanks.

what makes you think this nameless guild isn’t already doing what you worry about, just in a more time consuming manner? Because they are, they raided my vendors for any mispriced goods. Going to happen no matter what. Don’t inflict pain on 95%+ of the players to stop the outliers. That’s how you get the tiny population SotA has now - sorry, but if people like this type of “immersive” shopping experience, surely more would be signing up.

And if some player’s have to adjust this change?
I spent years doing certain things in this game that the devs destroyed on a whim - get used to it, welcome to SotA.

 

If I'm completely honest, I don't see the doom and gloom that you're seeing.
I agree that making searching "only for people who install the add-ons" is a bad direction, it would need to be a core feature for even footing.
Being able to search will cause prices to normalize, yes. Undercutting will happen, yes. Buy order offer prices will also go up to inch out the next guy.
The benefits of such a system (being able to actually find something, saving hours of painful clicking, or actually getting the huge number of players who just refuse to deal with it anymore to actually participate in the economy again) far outweigh the downsides.

I'm not saying there aren't downsides, I acknowledge that there are players who don't want to see their "have a vendor in every market town" empires become less relevant, or who want to continue to benefit from pricing obfuscation so they don't have to price things fairly or keep abreast of competition, but these elements stifle our economy rather than help it thrive. I don't think we should ever eliminate the need to physically travel to a vendor, building up a shop with an attractive storefront, cooperating with neighbouring shops to create a shopping district for 'window shoppers' etc. are all elements we'd want to retain, and players will still window-shop - when they have time to do it. The difference would be that when a player isn't interested in spending half a day loading up hundreds of irrelevant vendor inventories they can simply buy what they need.

I kind of feel like the arguments against adding a search feature are kinda like arguing against implementing electricity because its going to ruin the candle-making industry. Its not wrong, and I can see the concern, but intentionally stifling progress/improvement is detrimental to the game's growth on the whole.

How? If they buy up stuff and list it cheaper, you lower your price to adjust. Once prices get to a certain low point, it will no longer be lucrative for 'big traders' to continue to trade in that commodity. They move on to something else, and the price creeps up as supply diminishes. Once the price creeps up enough, more people might look at selling that item again. These normal economic activities happen very, very slowly in Sota, because nobody knew what everyone else was selling stuff for, unless they spent hours running around checking. And even then, seeing an item listed for sale is no fair indication if they're actually selling at that price. Its extremely difficult for players new and old to evaluate what is a fair price for anything. When the discarded-mail sales database website went up, finally we had something resembling a price list. This already exists and has for quite a while. I don't think it has broken the game, if anything, its made shopping a little bit less painful, because you can see the history of what an item sold for and have an indication of reasonableness, and can sometimes identify repeat sellers of the stuff you want. The only problem is that site only shows historical sales, not current listings, so if you're a customer looking to buy, it doesn't help you know what's available. Having that next step of functionality is a pretty small step. Having it in game without having to resort to external websites / addons is even better. Because when LUA comes, people are going to build a pricing database anyway, because so many people want Electricity.

 

global search != action house

Most people who are asking for a global search function are not asking to list prices. Please stop using that as an argument against a global search.

 

I know what LUA is just i don't know and don't like to use it. I have the same approach with addons in wow, i use just the few couple necessary because spending time managing something that you don't know how to use instead to play isn't something realy fun.
I am not saying we shouldn't have the possibility to use LUA i am just saying that giving a feature ( vendor research) available only for the ones using LUA isn't great and it is better not having it at all because it is basicaly forcing anyone to use LUA.

 

Yes, it is more complex than a simple auction. House and I think for most of us we are not advocating for an auction house. In eve though you can search for and check prices easily for items without doing a vendor hopping, hours of eye gouging pain thing and THAT is what we are advocating for. Eves economy works and maybe we should take a page from their book.

 

It does actually. Economies that promote competition in the market place to give reasonably priced products to consumers with few hoops for the consumers to jump through and make it possible for small newer sellers to advance, profit, and grow in the markets actually Do work.

 

You will never get large amounts of buyers into the current system population aside and you wont grow population if the current status quo remains

 

Can’t wait to hear if this will be a premium service to list your vendor in the global search or not.
:thinking:

 

You are aware that that's a skill you have to train. And the skill starts with the bases in the system going up to a full constellation at max. but never the whole galaxy and that the skilling takes a huge amount of time and exp so hardly anybody that isn't a trader or doing market PvP isn't even skilling that skillset? And that just because you can see the stuff doesn't mean you can order it because that's another separate skillset? And that, in the end, you still have to collect your purchase or contract a hauler to deliver it?
Yes eve's economy works fine. Also due to the fact that they had university support.
Don't get me wrong, I would love a eve style economy in sota. I just can't see it working. Because too many things tie into it. Regional ressources for example. Player corporation owned space. Transportation distance. Transportation costs. Transportation risk. Mining costs and risks. Wars. And so on and on and on.

 

You're not reading everything I'm writing, though. I am completely for Regional Searches without prices. I've even cited Star Wars Galaxies, that had planetary Vendor Search Kiosks in every Star Port for exactly that purpose.

Star Wars Galaxies had Planetary (there were 8 planets, iirc) Vendor listings with no prices and people were happy. We had our vendors, our stuff was listed, people found places to shop for exactly what they wanted on each planet when landing and out they came on shuttles, landspeeder or rancor (lol) or whatever to our cities and bought stuff. I mean, if anything it encourages players to explore the game too, if Regional is made so that one has to be in a Region to search its vendors.

Does it make it easier for wholesalers to look for stuff? Sure, but we can't hide people's vendors either. Not everyone is gonna advertise their stuff. This isn't a game full of marketing majors.

I still don't think this function should be relegated to modders, however. It should be in-game and accessible in the vanilla (non modded or lua) version of the game. Please don't release vendor prices anywhere.

It also should not cost anything for someone to list on Regional search kiosks. You put something on a vendor, it's automatically searchable.

 

Not true, anyone can see AND BUY from anywhere in the region. You only need the skill to set up automatic buy orders, ie be a trader, a consumer can buy from the sell orders.

As said earlier Eve central has had a full galaxy search for like since year 3 of the game (Crowd sourced). The game exposes global prices via the crest API came later.

The ONLY reason a race to bottom scenario happens is when supply outstrips demand. Welcome to a free market economy. Guess what selling stuff everyone already has enough of is not profitable. Who knew......

If an items sell value drops to the NPC price that tells you that game needs a mechanic to consume more if those items. Like when artifact combining was added.

Regards
Spung

 

I am well aware of eve online. I am an avid eve player with experiences ranging from hi sec, low sec, null sec, all class of worm hole and ships all the way up to dreads and carriers. Never did titans. I had one character that I dabbled in the markets with and most important point, I never had a problem finding what I needed to buy in a timely manner. The point was not that we have to do it exactly like them. The point was there are systems in place in other games that are NOT auction houses that work great and I am confident that if we get serious and committed, we to can have one here in this game that greatly benefits all and not just the select few..

 

So you do not want to use Discord, Don't use Discord or any other app and do wait for @Chris to serve you what you want on a silver platter. It is your choice and I offered a way to "Adapt, Improvise and Overcome". In my view and years in and around the Military I learned that you do that or don't survive. Mind you this is only a game and pastime but I wont wait for things to be handed to me. I go out and find the solution and earn it.

R/Boris/El Pirata