Alternative to an Auction House

SadisticSavior

Developers:

I understand you want to decentralize the market, which is why you do not want an auction house.

Might I suggest local markets? Each town could have it's own player market area. You could incentivize sellers to sell in more remote markets by charging lower AH fees. You could make ti so that (like a real market) you have to be physically present to do trade with it. You could even incorporate persuasion skills into it to lower the AH fees maybe, or make it race dependent so that certain races or guilds in a certain area get charges higher or lower fees.

This would have the added effect of dispersing the player population instead of having everyone clustered around the major cities.

We definitely need another solution...the current one is just not going to cut it. The current system makes player-trade really awkward.

Brennan

Prior to the Bazaar coming out in EverQuest, people would just congregate in a tunnel between the Western Commonlands and South Ro near Freeport and sell their stuff. It was actually kind of cool, a gathering of traders and ne'er-do-wells. Cool thing about a sandbox game is to have a real and lasting impact on the game world in which you play.

So for those of you playing Dominion, what do you say we all get together in Skywatch or Haven (Somewhere besides Elder Root) and spam Zone with Trade chatter?

Opioid

While this is an interesting idea, it would just evolve into everyone picking one specific city and the vast majority of trade would all get funneled to that market. At that point, you might as well just have a centralized auction house/market anyway.

PapaOscar90

Isn't the guild store enough? I buy and sell constantly through that. Just join a merchant guild.

circilion

Sweet idea! but I suspect Opioid is right...

I would like to see it in action though, because if several separate economies were established over time that would be an incredible world building element.

lupusrex

Final Fantasy XI had this in its early years. People would just create mules for each city to increase their sale slots and to check each city's AH. If I remember correctly, they ended up combining most of the auction houses anyway.

I don't think the guild stores are going to be around for the life of this game. Successful MMOs adapt, and almost everyone is clamoring for a regular AH.

SadisticSavior

PapaOscar90 wrote: »

Isn't the guild store enough? I buy and sell constantly through that. Just join a merchant guild.

Why do I need to actually join a guild just to buy stuff from other players? That makes no sense.

Aside from that, guilds have a limit of 300 players. But guilds seems like a bandaid fix anyway...this needs to be something intrinsic to the game.

SadisticSavior

lupusrex wrote: »

Final Fantasy XI had this in its early years. People would just create mules for each city to increase their sale slots and to check each city's AH. If I remember correctly, they ended up combining most of the auction houses anyway.

I don't think the guild stores are going to be around for the life of this game. Successful MMOs adapt, and almost everyone is clamoring for a regular AH.

The fact that players need to use workarounds like that at all is evidence that the system is broken and needs fixing.

Mules would largely be irrelevant IMO...what with Fast Travel being so cheap and easy in this game. It would take longer to actually log in with a mule than it would just to go there yourself.