Games Without AH
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I've been playing Path of Exile and I wanted to give some feedback on that game not having an Auction House.
The game has an API for public stash space. There you place a price per item (or per tab, I assume). This allows the API to cache it on the website. You open the website (or 3rd party site) and search for the item you want.
On the one hand it's pretty neat that you are still required to PM someone (oddly enough there's a PM button that will copy a predefined message for the seller) but the problem is when someone is AFK or uses an item to 'price fix'. For items this isn't an issue however for currency it's a huge problem.
PoE doesn't have gold as a currency, it has 100 types of currency. The same API that is used to sell items is also used to sell currency. One big complaint from players is people are using bots (although not against ToS for PoE trading of currency) so they don't need to be at that screen for trades. The next complaint is people will price fix (as mentioned above) so that certain currency pairs look cheaper than they are. The next complaint is a request for the PoE developers to add a currency AH (or Exchange) so that the trading can be done without bots or people needing to be online and not afk. But really people not wanting to trade is a thing.
I know people want to chat with others to trade but the reality is that many people want to play the game while trades happen. We have the carpenter, so I'll suggest a Barker (or Broker) that can sit at someone's house or at a trade district in a town/city. This allows the player to list items, and they get to play the game. When they come home they can check to see which items are sold. This system was in Dark Ages of Camelot back when and it was pretty neat, annoying at times but still pretty neat. The Barker/Broker API can be used so we can access it in game or out of game.
The Barker/Broker is a currency sink too!
This still makes people run into the world (at least the Barkers not in a city) for goods to be traded.
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Another way I found interesting and only seen it in 2 games thus far.
You can set up a little stall yourself and you get put into a shop mode. You can place up to a several amount of items into your stall and set prices for them.
Other players can walk around and look at each shop and buy items directly.
This is fun for the shop owner as they need to do research about the prices other people are selling the items for. And as buying, it feels like walking over a market, searching for the best deal.Perhaps an idea for Fractured to have it that you will be invulnerable when in shop mode. Also have it take a little bit of time to set up shop mode, or that you can only set up shop in certain places in a city, so it can't be used as a way to avoid combat.
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@evolgrinz As far as I know there are supposed to be merchant NPCs where you can leave your stuff to be sold and somebody else might buy it. I haven't found any info though if you will be able to select a price. I'm also not sure if you sell your stuff to NPC and he resells it, or you can use him as a "middle man" in transaction.
Still, a market is pretty fun idea for me, but there are a few things thing that I hate about it. I know this solution from Kinght Online and what I hated the most was that I had to stay on-line and rooted in one place to sell my stuff. Either I had to resign from actually playing while I'm logged in or I had to be able to leave the game always on, even when I'm afk.
Additionally, such markets tend to get really crowded. People set up stalls almost on one another. It will be hard to find a good place to trade in a big, popular city. Especially since its size is somewhat limited.In my opinion it would be better, if you could set up a stall with a remote NPC on the market. This way you can still go beast-hunting or just log off and the stall would be still available for other players for a given set of time.
Of course such stalls should be limited to only one active at a time per person and there should be some cost of using them (NPC has to earn something too
). Paying a fee for the stall as a tax to the city could be also a nice solution. The money won't go puff into the void, but could be used for expansion of the city.
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On UO you can pay an NPC with a monthly fee to stay into a common market and sell your items (you chose the prices ofc). Other players can just speak to it and see everything it got.
The market is a physical place in town where everybody can go there and manage their merchants while going around and see what the others are selling.You'll just need to restock your merchants and go in to retrive your gold, but nothing more in terms of management.
Not too invasive nor "outside" of the game itself, like an AH conneted world wide or a forum. I would strongly like something like that instead of a WoW-like AH.
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@lightspoon said in Games Without AH:
you can pay an NPC with a monthly fee to stay into a common market and sell your items (you chose the prices ofc). Other players can just speak to it and see everything it got.
The market is a physical place in town where everybody can go there and manage their merchants while going around and see what the others are selling.
You'll just need to restock your merchants and go in the retrive your gold, but nothing more in terms of management.This is exactly what I was thinking about and what I would like to see in-game
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I hope for something like UO player vendors in Fractured
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I don't see Fractured's economy focusing so much on trade between individuals but between individuals and towns. Because of the way Fractured emphasizes the logistics of resource transportation, I think your example of a third party auction house that connects individuals is extremely unlikely. What's more realistic is a third party site that will list the average price of goods for each town's market that individuals can use to figure out where they want to trade.
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Wurm Online also uses merchant NPCs that you need to visit locally, and it seems to work well for selling gear.
One PvP exploit, however, is to put valuable items on a merchant at exorbitant prices, and use it as safe storage (since merchants can't be attacked).
At least on the PvP worlds here, I'd consider making merchant NPC inventories lootable.
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I really like the idea of the NPC vendors being paid a wage.. I just hope that whatever the implementation there is an API that allows us to pull data and compare without manually walking to each stall. If not, we just need some sort of information in game.. Where to find what type of items or something.
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I think you should be able to make your character stand in a AH while you are offline and sell your goods. With this option you get 100% of the revenue but you have to pay the auction house a flat daily fee for stall rent. You could also hire a npc to sell your wares but they would take a % of each sale as well as having to pay for a stall rental.
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I support personal stall space, with NPC vendor. Stall rental, and NPC wage make sense. If you don't want to pay NPC wage, stand at the stall yourself.
Perhaps player could decide if he wants to pay NPC vendor a flat daily fee, or percentage of sold goods.
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NPC wage is only needed if you need a currencies sink. in any other way, no need to create a complicated system that people will not enjoy.
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Npc vendors are only gona be a good idea if it doesn't make doing the trading yourself pointless.
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@roccandil said in Games Without AH:
At least on the PvP worlds here, I'd consider making merchant NPC inventories lootable.
Well, the merchants can always go into hiding during sieges. That seems like a quite normal thing to do in a real world anyway.
I think it would be enough to have to pay for trying to sell your stuff with NPC merchants. Then keeping stuff forever on sale would be expensive.
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There are many games out there whithout an AH.
An AH can work well in a Themepark MMO, but i don't like them for Sandbox-Games.
I think the most important thing in a sandbox game is to get in contact with other player, it has to feel playerdriven and not just to go to a global NPC and never meet other players or their environment.As i was understanding Prometheus right in his Q&As, he said, we are able to setup a kind of shop in our towns, that means, others can come to our towns and buy stuff from these Merchants.
I would like to see, if these are not connected to each other, so that people who want to buy something either have to travel to your town or you meet up with them and do trading directly.
That would make the Sandbox Element of the game much more worth than any kind of easy trading AH like thing.Beside this the direct trade, i even would suggest not to trade in a safe way, like Inventory to Inventory (Tradewindow), better would be if it would be possible, that you either can just drop items to the ground and someone else take it or if you can use public Barrels and Chests to trade at public places.
Yes i know, the danger that someone else is standing beside you and steal your stuff this way is high, but it would give us a much more realistic gameplay. I mean not realistic in case of real life, i am pointing more the realismus of sandbox gaming.
Also this kind of unsafe trading can get balanced with possibilities of safer trading, like trading at your own townspace, where Barrels and Chests are semi public or even locked and you can temporary unlock them for the trading partner.
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@kralith said in Games Without AH:
As i was understanding Prometheus right in his Q&As, he said, we are able to setup a kind of shop in our towns, that means, others can come to our towns and buy stuff from these Merchants.
I cannot seem to find it, but when I read it I had a feeling that setting up merchants was a decision made by the Governor. I do not think each player living in a town can set up a stand-alone, only his/her shop. That would create a lot of shops in a town.
In addition if only citizens would be able to set up a NPC merchant in a town, any travelling merchant will have really big trouble with selling their stuff in towns they visit.@kralith said in Games Without AH:
I would like to see, if these are not connected to each other, so that people who want to buy something either have to travel to your town or you meet up with them and do trading
It was mentioned that there won't be any remote connection between shops. They sell stuff only locally.
@kralith said in Games Without AH:
Beside this the direct trade, i even would suggest not to trade in a safe way, like Inventory to Inventory (Tradewindow), better would be if it would be possible, that you either can just drop items to the ground and someone else take it or if you can use public Barrels and Chests to trade at public places.
Well, if you think about it, have you ever seen a merchant throw a beautiful dress to the ground while the buyer throws gold coins to the ground? That seems not so much realistic
Most of the trade is done from hand-to-hand.If you want to raise the dangers of trading, then I think a pick-pocket/steal skill could be more useful
The results of steal could be divided to:- Unsuccessful - The "stuff" remains with the rightful owner and everyone around you is alerted that you tried to steal it. Guards and other players can try to punish you.
- Successful but detected - You managed to take the "stuff", but everyone around you is alerted that you stole it. You receive "Thief" status. You can be stunned by everyone and looted by rightful owner without karma penalty.
- Successful and undetected - You managed to steal the "stuff" undetected and can leave the place quietly.
That would be fun thing to do
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@dybuk said in Games Without AH:
Well, if you think about it, have you ever seen a merchant throw a beautiful dress to the ground while the buyer throws gold coins to the ground? That seems not so much realistic Most of the trade is done from hand-to-hand.
Hehe, well, yes, dropping money on ground is indeed very silly.
I was just thinking at my previous Hardcore Sandbox game "Salem the Game".
You could drop some things on ground and other could pick them up, but some things just disappeared, like sand, money and such, when you was dropping it at ground.
But for trading there was Barrels in the Maintown. If you wanted to trade safe at them, then you needed a barrel that was blocked, either by 3 characters or structures that surrounded the Barrel.But yeah, if we don't have these kind of trading, but hand to hand trading, a steal skill would be cool to get some more fear factor into it
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@dybuk said in Games Without AH:
buyer throws gold coins to the ground
I've seen plenty of movies where some gangster (or douchebag) throws money on the ground and says "here is your money a***ole."
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@Jetah No.
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@althalus
why?I've played asian games where players are stalls. and it's pretty laggy and needing to open each one is horrible player experience. I've played DAOC where there were searches you could do then pick it up. I've played with Exchanges where it was simple to place a stack of a resource for gold, the player could buy the stack or an individual item from said stack (which i hate). I've played games where there were markets in each area (eve online). I've played games with Auctions.
I like the AH/Exchange and npc stall with search better than the rest. Fractured already has the Carpenter so having an NPC at the house fits the game style.
@Kralith
I don't mean an AH specifically. Although auctions can work if you're trying to get the best price for an item. Many theme parks have no-trading on certain tiers of gear so it doesn't make sense for them.I'm pretty sure someone will make a 3rd party website where a player can list their items, cost and region (semi area) and people will use it instead of any in game means. People love the "omg i want to interact with people" but you'll get plenty of people AFK or just ignore PMs for trades.
i've played Diablo where dropping items happened and it's too prone to scams. Unless DS wants scams then I doubt it'll be that way.
@lovechildbell
problem is do you want to play the game or do you want to sit around waiting for PMs to trade? A player to player trade only entises alt accounts specifically for trading.@grofire
every game needs currency sinks. you can't keep all the currency in the game all the time. it causes inflation which is bad. Besides paying an NPC to sell your goods is the 'rp' way to do it. Even the Carpenter isn't free!
