Broken economy- Use the npc merchants to sell items for players!

spoqster

As a seller, I want to sell to the largest possible audience. As a buyer I want to find exactly what I am looking for - if I am looking for a new sword, then I want to see all the swords from my level range in one spot. Guild stores fail at both tasks miserably.

The new public store system will help a little with the first, but not with the second. Also it promises to be just another gold sink.

I have a better suggestion:

Use the existing npc merchants to sell items for players!

Details:

• Wasted npcs: There are so many merchants in the towns and nobody uses them because they sell overpriced goods. I personally miss the experience of being happy to find a merchant to buy cool items - in this game they are simply useless.
• Mimic guild store mechanics: Instead of selling their current goods, these merchants could do sale on commission for players - much like the current guild stores work.
• One merchant per item per zone: You can have one merchant per zone for one specific item class (blacksmithing tempers, healing staffs, daggers, etc.). That way, in order to buy or sell an item from that item class players need to go to that merchant.
• Limit level range: The merchant should only accept items from the zone's level range. (The mace trader in Auridon would only be selling VR1 maces.)
• Merchants should have item limits: If this limit is reached, players need to come back later (or destroy their item - apparently there is enough supply already). I have no idea how high this limit needs to be, but I am guessing if a trader has 1000 VR1 swords in stock he does not need to list another until demand picks up.
• Decrease the listing time: Many players have no idea how much items are worth and list their items for too much. There is no need to have a merchant's stock filled with overpriced items (like current guild stores). Make the listing time a few days, a week maximum.
• Suggest prices to the players: Help the players find the right price by suggesting an averaged sales price from previous sales or showing them previous sales. There are addons for this purpose anyway. It will greatly help the economy if you include this into the game.
• Cut in Line: If all vendor slots are filled for a specific items, allow players to underbid other players to "cut in line", bumping the highest priced item out of the store. This makes sure that there are no shelf warmers. Possibly allow for a minimum list time of 24h before an item can be underbid to introduce a fixed amount of stability. (as suggested by @Sord)

Benefits:

• It allows players to sell to the whole community.
• It allows buyers to find exactly what they are looking for without being overwhelmed.
• It gives the merchant npcs meaning and makes trading more fun and natural because it will be more integrated into the gameplay.

Conclusion:
I think overall the experience will be a lot better. It feels more natural to go to the right trader to buy a specific item than to filter a guild store (with a horrible interface, btw.) or to spam the chat with WTS/WTB, and it will give players a sense of achievement if they managed to find the right merchant in the right zone to buy and sell specific items.

I am interested to hear what other think about this idea!

Issan

That sounds alot like what is coming in Patch 1.3.0.
In the PTR Notes you will find a section where they explain the system in which guilds can hire NPCs to offer the guild shop to the whole audience.

spoqster

Issan wrote: »

That sounds alot like what is coming in Patch 1.3.0.
In the PTR Notes you will find a section where they explain the system in which guilds can hire NPCs to offer the guild shop to the whole audience.

I've read all that. Sorry, but it sounds nothing like what I am proposing.

ItsGlaive

I like the system we have now, yep I'm biased because I've spent a great deal of time and energy building a trading guild that works for our members. What you're proposing would wipe out trading guilds in a single swing.

Malpherian

spoqster wrote: »

As a seller, I want to sell to the largest possible audience. As a buyer I want to find exactly what I am looking for - if I am looking for a new sword, then I want to see all the swords from my level range in one spot. Guild stores fail at both tasks miserably.

The new public store system will help a little with the first, but not with the second. Also it promises to be just another gold sink.

I have a better suggestion:

Use the existing npc merchants to sell items for players!

Details:
- Wasted npcs: There are so many merchants in the towns and nobody uses them because they sell overpriced goods. I personally miss the experience of being happy to find a merchant to buy cool items - in this game they are simply useless.
- Mimic guild store mechanics: Instead of selling their current goods, these merchants could do sale on commission for players - much like the current guild stores work.
- One merchant per item per zone: You can have one merchant per zone for one specific item class (blacksmithing tempers, healing staffs, daggers, etc.). That way, in order to buy or sell an item from that item class players need to go to that merchant.
- Limit level range: The merchant should only accept items from the zone's level range. (The mace trader in Auridon would only be selling VR1 maces.)
- Merchants should have item limits: If this limit is reached, players need to come back later (or destroy their item - apparently there is enough supply already). I have no idea how high this limit needs to be, but I am guessing if a trader has 1000 VR1 swords in stock he does not need to list another until demand picks up.
- Decrease the listing time: Many players have no idea how much items are worth and list their items for too much. There is no need to have a merchant's stock filled with overpriced items (like current guild stores). Make the listing time a few days, a week maximum.
- Suggest prices to the players: Help the players find the right price by suggesting an averaged sales price from previous sales or showing them previous sales. There are addons for this purpose anyway. It will greatly help the economy if you include this into the game.

Benefits:
- It allows players to sell to the whole community.
- It allows buyers to find exactly what they are looking for without being overwhelmed.
- It gives the merchant npcs meaning and makes trading more fun and natural because it will be more integrated into the gameplay.

Conclusion:
I think overall the experience will be a lot better. It feels more natural to go to the right trader to buy a specific item than to filter a guild store (with a horrible interface, btw.) or to spam the chat with WTS/WTB, and it will give players a sense of achievement if they managed to find the right merchant in the right zone to buy and sell specific items.

I am interested to hear what other think about this idea!

No- this is complete contradictory to what you said you desire. And also I don;t want to have to go to every single zone in game to try and find a weapon or armor for a trait I might need.

I want to be able to go to a "Single" merchant in one of the large cities and See EVERYTHING for sale by EVERYONE. and find exactly what I need without have to waste 6 hours looking for a "specific" guild store or merchant.

spoqster

Malpherian wrote: »

As a seller, I want to
No- this is complete contradictory to what you said you desire. And also I don;t want to have to go to every single zone in game to try and find a weapon or armor for a trait I might need.

I want to be able to go to a "Single" merchant in one of the large cities and See EVERYTHING for sale by EVERYONE. and find exactly what I need without have to waste 6 hours looking for a "specific" guild store or merchant.

I expect that in the system I am proposing every merchant will carry so many items that he'll have all traits covered.

I agree with you in that one single store would be even more convenient. However, I anticipate technical problems and usability issues when it comes to this large number of items in a single store. If there are no technical issues and the usability issues are overcome in a better way, then I am all for it.

spoqster

Xabien wrote: »

I like the system we have now, yep I'm biased because I've spent a great deal of time and energy building a trading guild that works for our members. What you're proposing would wipe out trading guilds in a single swing.

I have a trading guild as well and am a member of two more. All of them are great guilds, but my experience is different from yours.

First, you can only sell to 500 players max. Second, items of all levels are mixed together filling up the store and the player's slots, but the only items which I am interested in are those from my level range (except the tempers of course).

Trading guilds only offer a good experience if they have a lot of members and all members are in the same level range and progress at the same speed. But come on, that is far from realistic.

Logan9a

I like the kind of crappy way they are doing it currently. I've made hundreds of thousands of gold from this system and am happy with it.

ItsGlaive

spoqster wrote: »

Xabien wrote: »

I like the system we have now, yep I'm biased because I've spent a great deal of time and energy building a trading guild that works for our members. What you're proposing would wipe out trading guilds in a single swing.

I have a trading guild as well and am a member of two more. All of them are great guilds, but my experience is different from yours.

First, you can only sell to 500 players max. Second, items of all levels are mixed together filling up the store and the player's slots, but the only items which I am interested in are those from my level range (except the tempers of course).

Trading guilds only offer a good experience if they have a lot of members and all members are in the same level range and progress at the same speed. But come on, that is far from realistic.

I've never wanted for anything in the current system,

I also quite like the ability to browse through the different stores.

And yeah customer base is small, but it's due to grow with Update 3.

Sord

*Updated to reflect some new ideas posted here*
I like the idea of using the npc merchants becoming a sell point based on the idea from @spoqster from his link here but I also agree with another poster on his thread that states that it would wipe out trading guilds which bring a lot of people together. But I think there is a middle ground. What if the only way to post stuff would be through your guild merchant who would then post the item to the proper vendors in the world, this way people didn't have to go all over the place and could just use the guild store/vendor to post stuff to the world npc vendors. I also like the idea of a limit to the number of types of items shown based on price.

Also there could still be a guild internal store so if you wanted to give guild members a deal or just wanted to sell/buy stuff from guild members you could still have that option and not worry about the limits as I state below.

World npc vendors: we all know some people in other games put stuff on the AH at ridiculous prices and leave it there so they can retrieve it later for a small fee, this way it doesn't take up bank space. And we all know we will only buy the item we are looking for, for the cheapest price. So what if each specific item (Sword of Death's Wind Lvl 25, this would also be limited to that leveling zone) had a limit (5) of how many things can be sold in the store like @spoqster said above but if someone underbids the item (which always happen) the item that was #5 in on the list (being the highest priced) gets sent back to the seller because it was undercut (no money lost or maybe they loose some?). Now for materials such as Ingots they would have a higher number of how many can be sold cause most likely people will be looking for those in large quantities so the 50 cheapest (based on chunks) and can only be sold in chunks of 10,20,50,100 (example only) would be in the store for their level).

If someone is not in a guild then they can't sell stuff. The merchants are all in place for everything except they have crap items on them, just fill their inventory with stuff from players, I know I would be way more inclined to shop at the npc as I level to get the items and stuff I need and it leaves guilds being a very important part of selling and trading.

Also of note players would be able to still access and see what they have for sale through the guild store/vendor and maybe if someone wants to be a heavy seller they have to buy slots for the npc world vendors to be able to hold how many items they can have up for sale, kind of like bags but it would be auction selling slots. This way not everyone can just list a ton of stuff but can still list some things (starting point 5 items and increase in 5 slots up to a max of 25 items, just an example)unless they have paid for those addition slots that hold the stuff for sale (this would also help prevent one person being the guild seller because they would be limited so the farming / money selling people would be limited. I think levels would play a roll in how many things you could sell because the higher the level you are the more potential slots you could get and the more experienced of a merchant you become (RP purposes), so every 10 levels opens up the option to buy 5 more slots, this would really prevent low level auctioneers bots first 5 open at lvl 10). I hope that makes sense.