Best Trade System

[Shawk]

What do you think is the best trade system?

[yXXe]

Where you have to interact with other players, meet them, be nice, play nice, and making friends as well as making cash. Nuff said.

[Mpträ]

Originally Posted by yXXe

Where you have to interact with other players, meet them, be nice, play nice, and making friends as well as making cash. Nuff said.

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[Nevvier]

Ideally fully player controlled would be nice, but virtually no one wants to divert significant amounts of time finding a buyer for every item. Player owned npc's that sell items placed on them by their owner for the amount set by the player would be a nice compromise between fully player driven and auction house.

[Itza]

I have to agree with the previous poster. What if there is no crafter/merchant online where and when you want to buy stuff? Most people can't be online all the time.

I think it would be good if a crafter/merchant can hire a stationary NPC where they can place their wares for sale. Of course they have to pay a salary to the NPC. Maybe someone could have a trade empire with shops in many different towns, and has to travel between the towns constantly restocking the merchants. I think I'd like that. (Of course I'd rob him on route )

[Shinzon]

Player owned NPC's that act as perminant merchants are best. I don't have alot of patience, and often I end up poor in MMO's because I refuse to sit in town and scream "Selling Apples" all day long, and I don't want to leave the computer running over night so I can "AFK Sell".

Tie in the NPC merchant so even if the actual player is outside of town doing something else; the potential buyer can still talk to the owner PC. A combination of both worlds seems best...

[Shawk]

IMO, you lose all player interaction with NPC Player merchants,

Alot of people love that part of a MMORPG, trading interaction is a must for me, if you have experienced it yourself, you would know why.. Going to a merchant afk player, clicking buy, then leaving, it's so dry, you get no fealing of player interaction at all.

Player Interaction System:
Pros,
- You are trading with players face to face.
- Traders scattered around a trade area = less lag.
- Players seen sitting, standing, singing, dancing, really interacting with eachother, "wasting.." time in the trade areas.
Cons,
- More time wasted in the trading area.

Player AFK NPC merchants:
Pros,
- You can go afk while your not playing the game and sell your items, more time spent playing the game.
Cons,
- Absolutely no player interaction. No talking, no auctioning, just a bunch of people sitting around with huge sentences above their names.
- Servers overloaded with afk'ers lagging the server in one spot.

I'm not going to say you guys are wrong, But the pros outweigh the con in the Player Interaction system.. Not to mension you tie yourself down to another system that forces you to keep your computer on when you are afk so you can trade. Seeing a bunch of people sitting, afk, selling is nothing compared to seeing a flowing trading area where people are talking, setting up their trading areas, walking around..

I guess you have to experience it to have any idea what i'm talking about. But personally, I don't want another MMO that is made for casual players, again.. Casual players can play for 2 hours, then get off.. Systems that force afk make no sence.

[Shinzon]

I have experienced plenty of "AFK Selling", face to face selling and all other types of selling out there. As I said, I am not a patient person, most of the time I will just dump my stuff to an NPC merchant, because I simply cannot sit in one area screaming the same thing over and over again, it depresses me; I would rather be somewhere far away from the city blasting ghouls n goblins, but I need the gold; so I grudgengly sit and sell...

[Shawk]

Heres hoping we don't need gold that much and only merchants will need to sell their items then,

I love trading.. I'm very patient, just sell the stuff to me for 75% value and ill sell for a 25% markeup

[Rocky]

I enjoy the system EQ2 has. I read that Runescape also has a similiar system. They have one "grand" merchant where you can deposit items and set a price on them and go off doing whatever you like.

• Easy way of merchanting without wasting time
• Rewarding when you collect your money
• although there is no player interaction as mentioned above.

Then while you are off slaying that mighty one time event dragon (where you could have been spamming a macro instead(or simply logged off)) ;and someone who is interested in buying a sword you put up, will simply search under categories or by keyword and find, and buy your blade of uber destruction. Both the seller and buyer are rewarded with quick and easy buys.

Of course not everyone likes this

• No player interaction
• No methods of bargaining
• To generic and you don't get that feeling of keeping your money in the game and not deleted when sent into a vender.

Your thoughts?
Is this what the WoW auction house is?

[Shinzon]

Thats pretty much the WoW auction house; the idea in istelf is not a bad one, but I found it is very easy to exploit it, and very easy to inflate prices... In the late game, when I had nothing to do; I would buy all of the crafting materials in the Auction house, and then sell them back at higher prices, I made thousands of gold that way...

[Shawk]

Sometimes it's not a good thing when things are made easy, and it doesnt always mean it is better just because it's more convinient,

Like you said,

• No player interaction
• No methods of bargaining
• To generic and you don't get that feeling of keeping your money in the game and not deleted when sent into a vender.

Now why this is so serious is because it FORCES these things, you simply don't Bargain anymore and don't have trade interaction and that my friends, is no longer a sandbox.

Some games like WoW still allow that system to be used, but only the clueless still use it because the Auction house is so much easier and, "better."

I'm a firm believer that older was better, I don't think a better more effeciant and easier system makes a game more exciting at all, just makes it easier. MMORPG games should not be made for casual players, even a little. IMO.

[Shinzon]

Well like the real economy; the models we use for the virtual economy also has to evolve. Sure face to face trading is more "Human" and allows for interaction, but it is not efficient. The WoW marketplace would regulate itself; people would simply not buy items that were too expensive. So you either had to monopolize the entire market for the said item, and force your prive; or you lowered your price to stay competative.

To me that sounds very much similar to the way the modern day economy works. Companies selling their products don't know their customers personaly, and the only way you know them, is through carefully crafted "PR Personalities". In the modern day economy, the only true way a consumer can send a message, is by "Voting with his dollar", if you don't like something, don't buy it; the market is designed to adjust...

Also this article deals with politics; and ingame politics, but the model represinted in that article can be easily applied to the mass market as well...

*Casting* LvL 99 Spell: Great Wall of Text

The Man Behind the Curtain
Most of our citizens actually lay eyes on their officeholders and the hopefuls thereto about as often as they see circus elephants and with the same lack of intimate contact. A man behind the footlights on a platform is a little bit unreal; he might as well be a movie.
But the people... are still interested... to have one show up at the front door is as delightful a novelty to most of them as would be a chance to ride that circus elephant. That unreality, the candidate on the platform, on the billboard, or in the newspaper, suddenly becomes warmly human and a little more than life size.
In addition to being a novelty... [it] is a flattering compliment... the idea will be kicking around in the back of [the voter's] mind. "Here is a man who really seems interested in us ordinary citizens..."
Ask any old Usenet hand: things have gotten worse. There's more people. And they are ruder. They are cruder. They flame more. The signal-to-noise level has been falling for years now. And it's all your fault.
"Yours," that is, assuming that (as is statistically likely), you're not one of the old Usenet hands yourself. Chances are you aren't--the explosive growth of the Internet has meant a shattering of the old sense of community that used to exist. Once upon a time, the Internet was the playground of the few who had the technological savvy to reach it, the fortune to be somewhere that offered access, and the knowledge of its mere existence. In other words, an audience that was extremely selective: generally highly educated, and working in either academic or high tech fields.
These days of course, these folks are feeling very much pushed out of their old playground. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the Internet is forever changed. Many of them are looking forward to Internet 2 as a salvation, but the fact is that the sense of small, insular, familiar community that those people knew is forever gone, simply because people will know about Internet 2. Cyberspace is no longer a well-kept secret. And that means really fundamental changes in how the Internet community evolves.
Back when Robert Heinlein wrote today's opening quotation in Take Back Your Government!, his manual on practical politicking, he probably had no idea that someday they would be quoted in a discussion of virtual communities. On the other hand, he probably would have been tickled to see the book used thus. Old hands in cyberspace have been quoting Heinlein for a long time; his libertarian politics found a friendly reception among the well-read science-fiction readers who populated the early Internet, and it's not uncommon to see quotations from his writings as Unix messages of the day or the like.
The thing that led to the frustration many old-time Net hands had with the arrival of the mass-market Internet is exactly what Heinlein is describing: the personal touch. In general, human beings tend to react better to personal contact than to impersonal interactions. We'd rather talk to a real person over the phone than to a machine. We'd rather get a personal letter than a form letter, and failing that, we'd prefer a form letter that at least pretended to know who we are. And when we are not known, we are psychologically disinhibited, and act out more freely. To maintain tight community, everyone must be known.
This, of course, flies in the face of the inevitable anonymity that the Internet provides. Distrust is therefore rampant. And it creates a real problem for the administrators of a virtual community as well, because they are in a position worse than "might as well be a movie," as Heinlein puts it. You see, they are supernaturally powerful. And if there's something that we tend to fear and distrust more than someone we don't know, it's someone we don't know who has power over us.
This dilemma isn't going to go away ever; when it boils right down to it, we're always going to have someone out there who has the power to turn our virtual world (which we may well have come to value deeply) off. And that's assuming that no in-game administration is required. But of course, it is.
But it does mean that the in-game admin faces a bizarre problem. He is exercising power that the ordinary virtual citizen cannot. And he is looked to in many ways to provide a certain atmosphere and level of civility in the environment. Yet the fact remains that no matter how scrupulously honest he is, no matter how just he shows himself to be, no matter how committed to the welfare of the virtual space he may prove himself, people will hate his guts. They will mistrust him precisely because he has power, and they can never know him. There will be false accusations galore, many insinuations of nefarious motives, and former friends will turn against him. It may be that the old saying about power and absolute power is just too ingrained in the psyche of most people; whatever the reasons, there has never been an online game whose admins could say with a straight face that all their players really trusted them (and by the way, it gets worse once you take money!).
There isn't very much that can be done about this, particularly as your virtual world grows. Many a mud has found that the feelings of intimacy and of trust faded as the playerbase grew, just as those early Netters found their once-civil newsgroups devolving into endless flamewars. But it does mean that admins must at some point relinquish the role that they once held among the playerbase. When the game is small, they are able to talk one-on-one, soothe hurt feelings, resolve problems using personal judgement, and adjudicate delicate issues such as one player's accusation of cheating against another. But as all large companies know, as government knows, and as online worlds are coming to learn: the bigger you get, the harder it is to know your audience that well, and the less trust they will give you. And the problem becomes exponentially worse over time. The only solution is to not put your admins in the position of judging unverifiable facts, or else they will abdicate all pretense of fairness. They will, in fact, be acting unfairly, because there is no way of knowing the circumstances.
What does this have to do with practical matters? Well, let us consider this list of possible actions that a Killer might take against another player in UO if it had no combat system at all, or did not allow player versus player combat.
They could kill the victim's pet. They could kill the victim's intended target mere seconds before the victim gets to. They could steal all the loot off of the corpse of the victim's target before the victim gets to. They could release a tame dragon near the victim. They could stand in front of the victim's desired destination, blocking access. They could do all of this without even saying a word, so that the issue of verbal harassment never arises.
You see, it is axiomatic that as your virtual world becomes more malleable and more versatile, that players will find more and more ways to, well, screw each other over. What's more, there are thousands of them for every one of you. You will not be able to keep up with their ingenuity. (A designer should never underestimate the amazing ability of players to come up with new means to do each other harm). UO happens to have features that because of their newness and uniqueness, open up more ways for players to do harm to one another via indirect means. And as virtual worlds develop, matters will only grow worse--consider the day when you get the ability to dig trenches
In a world without any playerkilling, you as the victim actually have no recourse whatsoever except an admin. Who is someone you don't trust, cannot know if you made up the situation (consider how most of the above actions are extremely difficult to detect via automated means), and who is going to have to take one person's word over the other.
This is not a situation in which admins are likely to become more trusted. And it effectively renders admins useless as judges of human behavior as the game grows.
Growth is never an easy thing to cope with. And the new breed of virtual spaces are facing issues with scale that are new, and often new solutions are required. In yesterday's essay I spoke of the traditional administrative model for a virtual space as essentially paternalistic; this isn't meant to serve as an insult against those who inhabit the space, but rather to describe a system whereby groups are essentially governed via the charismatic personal contact of an authority figure. Just as in the real world, this system falls apart once larger bodies of people need to be governed or administered or taken care of. There is a reason why we evolved away from a tribal structure in the real world as our cultures grew; the same will--and must, really--happen in virtual spaces like Ultima Online.
At the last player lunch, a fellow told me that he was fascinated by how UO had recapitulated European history from 800AD to 1200AD in six months of existence. He commented on the parallels between marauding bandit gangs, the enclaves of feudal systems building secure spaces and leaving the wilderness to the less civilized people, the eventual overcrowding as villages covered the available building space. He also shrewdly guessed the character of our next set of changes based on historical precedent: house ownership and limits.
We, as humans, have been here before, over and over and over again. Just as the Internet grew and Usenet habitues no longer knew every poster; just as tribal leadership gave way to more organized and (yes) less personal forms of government; and just as Heinlein's book on politics is now sadly dated (when was the last time a precinct worker rang your doorbell?), virtual worlds are now getting large enough that older solutions to administration no longer function. The importance of personal contact has not diminished in the least; but the difficulty of providing it has grown, and will continue to do so. Many of the choices made in UO regarding playerkilling toggles, safe worlds, and the like were made in light of this fact.
This doesn't mean, of course, that players cannot start ringing doorbells themselves. As the overall administration grows more distant, the local one becomes more important. And, in many ways, more powerful, as it understands its local circumstances and may obtain the power to modify its local laws. This was the point of Heinlein's book--that politics that matter are actually at the local level, and this is where you can make a difference. You do not expect your nation's leader to fix your streets or solve the local bank robbery--that is what the City Council is for. And in UO we are embarking on the experiment of exactly that: providing local empowerment to the playerbase. Perhaps Enshu Ponfar's City of Yew does not see itself as a symptom of the sweep of history--but by these lights, it is.
In the end, it boils down to the fact that the best government is the one that you can trust, which will be the one you know personally: the people close to you in your virtual community, who are held accountable precisely because of community ties. Your best government is going to be each other, because the man behind the curtain isn't going to know you any more than you know him. Consider what Heinlein said:
An adult is a person who no longer depends on his parents. By the same token a person who refers to or thinks of the government as "They" is not yet grown up...
There is more cynicism in this country than there are things to be cynical about. The debunking exceeds the phoniness. There is more skepticism than mendacity... [The skeptics] are around us, busy belittling and sneering and grinning at every effort to make of this country what it can be. What it will be.
For you there is the joy of being in the know, of understanding the political life of your country, the greater joy of striving for the things you believe in, and the greatest joy of all, the joy of public service freely given... there are no words with which to describe nor any way to convince you of its superiority to other joys; it is possible only to assure you that it is so.
There have been many skeptics on Usenet about these essays; Heinlein also says, "Don't argue with a hard case." But for those now posting about townstone systems and methods for player militias to jail offenders and the like--hang in there. If we keep recapitulating European history at this rate, we'll be at the Magna Charta soon--and won't that be interesting!
In the meantime, consider a quotation by a different author, Heinlein's longtime colleague in science-fiction, Isaac Asimov. It may as well apply to playerkillers, who are as we've discussed those who "don't get it," those who fail to see it as Real. "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." And who else are playerkillers but those who are socially incompetent in this new virtual community?
-Designer Dragon

[Shawk]

WoW and Lineage 2 both have a Monopoly right now, farmers completely own an item and then leave it in their banks for weeks sometimes months untill that item is almost exstinct, and as long as they keep those spawns camped, keep getting those items, they can sell that item for whatever the hell they want.. even if it's something a level 40 could get.

I didnt even open that box yet, but if you want me to I will.. The ONLY way for Bots/Farmers to make a profit in this game, is if the system is set up as a non-face-to-face kind of trade system. A face to face system completely gets rid of Farmers, for good, the only thing left is bots, and in a FPS game like this, I doubt there will even be those.

These are games, games don't need to evolve like real life, that's why we are playing fantasy games, they can stay as old as we want them to.

I didnt read the article yet, I will tommorow, im in a rush to get off.

[Shinzon]

That point is null here. Open PvP; have a bunch of farmers camping a spawn? or a mine? Kill them... Claim the area as your own; make a guild to regulate areas from farmers. Take the power into your own hands; it is possible, take the liberty placed upon you.

The system doesn't allow them to do that, it is the basic gathering mechanic that will do this. Modify the harvesting mechanic, introduce possobilities of loosing everything you have gathered, and you reduce farmers.

And the moment gold farmers have to consider defending their farming spots from other players, they have lost, they are playing the game, they are part of it's politics. The only way to win against farmers is to make them stop farming, and forcing them to play the game, that means putting down the plough and taking up the sword.

In order for video games to mature as a medium; at some point it has to stop being "Just a game" and provide new patterns to explore. That is why I am looking foward to this game, because it offers something beyong simply a "Game", with the new evolved rule set, it creates new patterns to be observed and studied. Each game has it's own ebb and flow, and to me, it is very interesting to disect that...

[Shawk]

It isnt Null at all, you seem to think this game is going to be all about PvP, But it won't just be about PvP, there will be an economy, a huge one, one that needs Armor, Weapons, Spells and Money. Farmers are people that get payed in real life to go out and loot items and armor and sell them for ingame money, this game will have a profit for that, no matter what the devs do to stop that.. Specially with a non-player interaction trade system.

You basicly want them to make 20 systems so that it will be possible for you to be able to go to bed at night and keep your lame afk bot up so people will buy your items, and that in the end is what we were talking about, I don't really honestly know what else you are rambling on about.. Because I'm talking about a game system that does not need to be in teh game..

This has nothing to do with this being a game or something more then a game, the fact is, that this is a game, a game that I want to enjoy, and the things I enjoy are player interaction trade systems and good pvp, I don't care about going to bed and knowing that my items are being traded for me so I dont have to do it myself.

Lets get this strait though, dont be coy, dont be nieve, there will be farmers in this game, there will be people that try to destroy this game with a monopoly for their own profit, now if you want to go down that road, lets weigh the pros and cons of my system over your system and a player interaction ALSO comes out on top on that list.

You have a player interaction system, where people have to either trade face to face or for example /auc wts, Farmers don't survive in that kind of atmosphere.. Now what system did the devs have to impliment for this to be possible? absolutely none, the ONLY downfall to this system is you may actually have to work to sell your items.. sad, I know.

Now, we take your system and the possibilities for farmers is endless, they can monopolize the entire server by selling their wares on multiple accounts, they can set up merchants everywhere with prices 20-50% lower then everyone else, who wouldnt buy off them.. And to stop this from happending the devs will have to impliment a bunch of different systems to stop this from happending, there are about 20 systems they will have to impliment JUST so you can be lazy and have your auctioneer up at night.

First, they have to get rid of the possibility that there can be items farmed to the point that people cant, "camp," them alone, making only them able to get that item, Farmers are ruthless, they will spend days and days trading people off on one account just to make sure ONLY they get that type of item, so they can go out and sell it because there simply is no one else with that item anymore.

Second, they will need to get rid of the possibility that there will be any profit from this type of act bye players, which leads into another 10 different systems they got to put into the game..... So on and so on.. you get my point. Why do this when 1 system can make all these things completely impossible. Everyone knows what a farmer looks like when you trade with them. Farmer: Buy sword now? pz? buy sword? Shawk: Um.. are you a farmer.. Farmer: No, sword, now buy? cheap.. Shawk: Uh... No thanks...

Then you got their lame attempt at /auc..

/Auc SELL SWORD LOW PRICE><<<< OFFER!!
/Auc SELL SWORD LOW PRICE><<<< OFFER!!
/Auc SELL SWORD LOW PRICE><<<< OFFER!!
/BAN!

But think about it in the long run, make up your own list of pros and cons of your system and mine, and if you don't have a biast opinion, you will know that a Player Interaction Trade system comes on top of every category EXCEPT the lazy category.

As for this being an, "old," ruleset, sure, it's but it's better then an Overdone ruleset that has flaws comming out of its every god damn hole.

If you want to NULL anything, Null your opinion because Player Interaction > Anything that forces a player to play a certain way, and my system doesnt force you to do anything but log off when you go to bed instead.

[Stump]

Player controled.
I like it because its more interactive with other players and.... All that what Shawk sayed.

[yXXe]

Originally Posted by Mpträ

.

Good sir, did you just give me a rep point? My User CP says so!

[Nox Vortem]

The economy as a whole can proceed as long as there are struggle between the local sellers. This can be encouraged by the introduction of different local monetary systems and resources. The forces of curiosity and the non-stop demanding for new and/or better product will drive people to keep trading. Thus, it push the social economy forward.

[Shinzon]

I have never "AFK" sold, most of the time, I sit infront of the screen, and I chat to friends that are ingame. Many MMO's I have played offer a chat screen within the "Store" window, and I would often talk to them. So please don't accuse me of anything, I didn't accuse you of anything.

"Bot" Selling (This means that a player sets an NPC store where they want, throw in an option to chat to the owner through the bot, and you don't tie down the player to anything, but still give the option of interaction). Sure this might give a boost to famrers, but it also liberates regular players.

"Chat" Selling implies that you are stuck in one area and don't do anything but "Interact" with players. Call it a personal prefrence, but I don't want to waste my time talking to people about their items, I want brutal efficency where I can quickly look at what they are selling, and quickly decide. If I think their price is unreasonalbe, I will simply walk away. But granted, there have been times where the item is priced unreasonably, but I needed it; what I would do, is exactly what you want; haggle and talk with the player, usualy it works, but it is delayed, the said player didn't have to be there.

That is also the only thing I liked about WoW's auction house, brutal efficency.

Neither of the systems is bullet proof against farmers. If they want to monopolize and item, they will do so, regardless of system. You are chatting to make a sale at the end of the day, and they want every single item to infalte the price, they will buy it from you regardless of what system is used to distribute those items.

By simply changing the style of trade you do not suddenly get rid of farmers. You have to look deeply at how to get rid of farmers. Though it is entierly possibile that farmers cannot be gotten rid of; real money aside, they are nothing but an extreamly efficient guild, but because they can do this 24/7 as a job, they will always have an advantage over regular players, because we play the game to have fun, not to churn profit. So in essense, you have to make a style of play where consecutive hours logged in, don't really matter much, but then that would be against the whole MMO thing. Farmers aren't just as simple as changing the trade system.

Also; let's define exactly what we mean by each system, I will write down my interpritation:

"Store Selling" - Sold items are displayed in a "Store" window, with price and item statistics displayed for anyone interested. I have seen MMO's add a chat window as well to this, so you can talk to the seller, and if you want; haggle the price; though most of the time the seller will be AFK, and you will have to get a hold of him later in order to haggle the price, if someone else didn't buy the item already. This type of selling can be either be done through the actual Toon, or through an "NPC" merchant that you have to pay a royalty or something to that effect to. The extreme of this system is WoW's auction house, impersonal, but brutaly efficient.

Haggle System - No "Store" mechanics of any kind, the only way to initiate a sell is to endlessly spam what ever form of a chat system there is, and the only way to trade is to actualy initiate a private trade window with the said party. Would give rise to multiple RP behaviours, and more player interaction as the two parties have to communicate through chat only. Highly inefficient, and would end up clogging what ever local chat there is with trade messages...

Did I interprit both correct?

[Anemos]

No matter how much you enjoy interaction, especially when there is bargaining involved, and no matter how hardcore player you are, if that is the only way to sell stuff, then you will be very soon, bored to hell. Try being rational. I mean think about it, philosophy is nice, but there should be some automization on the whole process as well.

And it could still be fun and innovating. It's the way you make it. For example through NPCs.
There could be NPCs that actually... buy you items and sell them for them selfs, so you instantly get money, and players buy second handed items cheaper from those NPCs.
Or if you are a devoted crafted, you could have your own shop, and this time it is you who hires the NPCs and you who gets the extra money from selling items. But you have to pay those NPCs.
Also there could even be NPCs to hire, in big cities, that go around shouting for your new products and offers...
And on top of that, there is nothing stopping the actuall players to seek out a crafter with a nice shop and try to make a deal with him, providing him what he needs with a fixed price.

Not so much player interaction, but sounds nice at least to me. It is the way you dress something. Anyhow companies go for the casual gamers, so they should have some functionality at least in things like selling, auctioning stuff.