Player's vendor , old MMORPG player , free tax and AFK all day long
AH , the modern fast and quick , there is no need to meet with other , have tax and you don't need to login to sell stuff .
So the question is if a game have 2 system at same time , will you still open vendor to sell stuff ?
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My guess is that about 33% is the right amount but you need to play test it and adjust until you get about 50-50.
Another trick is to limit or skip the preview function at the AH but allow player shops to display stuff on manequins and in display cases. I think stores should have those in any case so players can go window shopping, MMOs missed that point so far.
However, if I'm selling a 10,000+ gold item such as high tier weapons and armor even the posting fees run me the risk of losing hundreds of gold if the item doesn't sell. These are high ticket, low volume sold items. Usually high tier crafters get known by name and have people coming directly to them in order to buy their wares. I know I had a guy I purchased most of my armor from.
So if it were an option I would likely own a vendor through which I sold those wares provided there is no posting fee, and certainly own one if it removed the tax as well.
Stalls are impractical and bad design, altough they can make a place lively.
If you just want player owned shops as a small RP feature it is easy to add but if you want them to be as popular as buying stuff from the AH you need advantages to get the people to bother.
There are a few ways to accomplish that:
* High AH tax
* No preview in AH but in store (actually pretty logical, you can try on a pair of jeans at the store)
* Limit on how many items people can list on the AH
* The possibility to custom order items with specific stats and skin from crafters
Stuff like that makes it worth peoples time to actually go shop instead of just use the AH since it is the fastest way to get what you want. Player owned shops do add some fun in a game with a good crafting system but if the only point of your game is to speed run quests and kill things I don't think it is worth the effort.
They had the option to list them on the auction house which were limited to 1 per housing zone.
A buyer would go to the AH and search for an item, and be able to compare prices for it on all player merchants and see where the merchant physically located to determine how long the travel time would be.
Now, there was a strategic element to housing, horse routes winding through them, with some houses being located near them, as well as some houses being close to the AH in each zone.
This meant some house merchants took much less time to get to and lots located near AH, on nearby horse routes, or in zones closest to housing zone entrance being far more valuable for selling one's wares.
Back to the buyer, they find several listings for the desired item, and have to make a choice.
Option one, buy it right at the AH, instant delivery but there was a 20% fee tacked on which was paid by the buyer and was an in game gold sink.
Or the could choose to travel to a player merchant in the housing "zone", which really was a group of 9 fairly large zone, some quite far from the housing zones entrance.
Shops which were more convenient to get to generally could ask for a higher price due to the convenience factor.
It could easily take 20 minutes to reach a particular house, with the challenge of having to regularly press a houseface macro to adjust your course to get to the correct house.
Meanwhile, someone else might already be on the way there to scoop up the great deal you found, or even buy it directly from the AH while you are traveling.
Now imagine you are trying to buy multiple items for your lower level alt, paying the 20% was usually worth it, while that one Platinum (1000 gold) necklace for your template was usually worth the travel time to save 200 gold.
So many additional nuances, if you had a high level speeder alt, their 105% run speed bonus was a big factor in the decision. So was travel time, item 1 might cost more, but be 2 or 3 minutes away, while cheaper item 2 might be 25 minutes distant and not worth the time.
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You could purchase items from a different planet if listed on the bazaar. However you'd still have to got to that planet to pick it up.
Because of the way crafting worked in SWG, very unique items being crafted due to different materials used and skill points invested you could open up your own player run shop and get people to use it over an AH.
How is that bad game design? The more options a game have the better it is.
And I do push for sligthly higher broker fee then most MMOs have today, 30% instead of the standard 20% but frankly would that just help a little against the hyper inflation MMOs get.
Yep, my bad, I keep forgetting that on these boards common sense and reason has no place...
As to why stalls were abandoned, I would think system resources and more control over the game economy (transaction taxes and other money sinks) had as much of a hand in the change as people who wanted a less custom, more streamlined experience.
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You will pay broker fee in any case, and without the option to walk to a store and skip the fee for expensive stuff.
That sure sounds like common sense and reason, right?
If you're trying to create a lively economy in the game, options are certainly better. I like having to weigh the options to attempt to discern the best deal for my time/gold. I think the system used in DAoC is an excellent one; you have the option to use in-game currency to prevent you from spending the extra time running to the shop you wanna buy from. Otherwise known as a shipping and handling charge.
I'd make a couple changes to the shop system:
1. Have a board somewhere in a central location in towns. People have the ability to post descriptions of their shop on this board. That at way you have some idea what shops you are looking for before you run around town stopping at every shop to see they have 3 nails and a rusty pair of scissors.
2. Have a special order system. Say you go to a blacksmith shop and he has nothing you want. But there is a neato little tool where you can see what items are creatable with that blacksmith's skills and materials, select one of those items, and place an order for it.
The blacksmith then comes back to see the orders. He can respond by sending you a ticket with the price he's willing to give on that item, and how long he will give himself to fulfil the order / how long you will have to pick it up when it's finished. It may also include a request for a downpayment. Once/if you accept his terms, the contract begins and he goes to work on the item, then CODs (A mail that requires payment upon delivery) it to you when finished.
I see that being a system wildly more popular than traditional vendors because let's face it. Half the time we shop at traditional vendors all they have is junk. But if we can put in custom orders, then there is a much higher chance that if we don't find what we are looking for, we can at least find someone who will make it.
I liked the idea of utilizing an order system. I would enjoy a system where this is rolled into the DAoC one mentioned, where you can choose to pay the shipping charge to a centralized location or travel to pick it up yourself and save that gold.
The nuances of such a system would provide an avenue where both player made shops and a centralized auction house are useful; it's up to the player to decide which is more useful to him or her: the extra time, or the extra gold.
The restriction was also a nice way to try and keep prices in check because if a player can't free up new space to sell stuff they will make no gil aside from the personal afk vendor.
The idea of the vendor in FFXi for example was that to get around the restrictive AH,you have to give and take.So you could load up on items on your player but far less people would see those and often people don't want to sift all players wares,so yeah give and take as the AH was much easier and compact for players to use.
BTW ...yet again the ffxi community had an online Ah site http://www.ffxiah.com/ that would also show all the players and what players would be selling a certain item.So then it was as simple as checking to see WHERE,so a /sea all command for say Joan Jett and you would get a return of what zone that player was in and if online,so you could either message or if afk go to that zone and click the player.
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But for instance in Mortal Online there are multiple components to every type of item, and countless material options for all those components. Some builds require a very specific type of gear made from very specific materials but the stores where players can post items are pretty regular and you probably won't find what you are looking for. The items stocked are really best for newbs who are just desperate for any weapon.
This pretty much requires some players to find crafters who can make what they need the way they want it. In such a crafting system, the system I'm describing would allow people with very specialized equipment needs to more easily find sellers who can meet those needs. In other words, in a highly complex crafting system a good ordering system is better than an auction house for any finished goods.
This is why I've said in other topics if I ever built my ideal MMO I would have localized auction houses for bulk goods such as lumber and ingots, and vendors for finished goods such as swords.
That sort of hybrid system certainly seems the most interesting for an MMORPG.
Good example: everquest bazaar.
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