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Face to face trading vs. Auction House
Amathe
Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
I first experienced in person trading in EQ and mostly did not like it. Too many people would get mad at an offer, call you names, and put you on ignore. Maybe I just sucked at trading lol. But sometimes it was enjoyable. It definitely felt more like a community, dealing face to face.
In SWG, I loved in person negotiation - especially player shops. The craftsmen had reputations to uphold, and tended to treat you fairly. Plus they were often skilled players you could chat with and learn from.
Since then it has been mostly auction house trading. That is my personal preference. Item goes in. People buy or not, bid or not. I like the simplicity of the system. What I don't like is people buying all of something and then price gouging.
Which do you prefer?
In SWG, I loved in person negotiation - especially player shops. The craftsmen had reputations to uphold, and tended to treat you fairly. Plus they were often skilled players you could chat with and learn from.
Since then it has been mostly auction house trading. That is my personal preference. Item goes in. People buy or not, bid or not. I like the simplicity of the system. What I don't like is people buying all of something and then price gouging.
Which do you prefer?
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
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Trust is very hard to come by without personal interaction.
Player owned shops (houses) with player owned vendors is also a good one. You could often meet the player owner and work out deals, even long running "contracts."
This seems like the best for a game, to me, due to the time factor. It's a very good system.
Players know the names of who supplies what, where their shop is, and when they restock. If you meet that player, it's common that players tell them they shop there and thank them. They'll almost always ask you for your opinion and if there's anything they can do better. It's very "real."
I hate auction houses built into games. They lack contact of any kind. They are cold and dead feeling.
While I love player run auctions, in games that don't code them in, for their specialness.
Once upon a time....
I remember back in UO where sometimes you can search the player shops and scoop up a good deal because someone would put a junk bag together cheap with alot of items, but in there could be something good. As a seller, you could make a name for yourself by organizing items in reagent bags or potion bags where you could mark up the item some because you saved people time. So in that system being a vendor could be fun.
I think instant travel to vendor spots made UO system good.
However, with other games I felt player vendors just became really tedious running around everywhere trying to find stuff. So in todays MMO's I prefer Auction house as a buyer.
But the Auction house as a seller, it becomes just lowest price period. No crafter can really add value to an item, lowest price wins. So merchant in todays MMO's is boring with Auction house.
TLDR I am undecided.
I don't play MMOs so that I could spend hours trading. Imho the system needs to be fast so that I can do my trading quickly.
Early days when SRO was very popular over 15+ servers tons of player stalls i got to see it in full swing.What i found was a pain in the ass looking for a specific item.This is where gaming cannot pull off immersion anyhow because in real life you can easily see if someone is selling tomatoes or corn or meats there isn't this need to search every single stall.
Yes players will tend to put up a title you can see saying what they are selling but when you gets tons of stalls all crammed together the screen is just littered with titles and makes the game look bad.
On a more serious note i think removing player to player trading altogether would solve rmt issues.Only players on the same account could trade otherwise everything had to go through the auction house.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
In EQ people sold things to NPC merchants to lighten their load. Mostly junk. But sometimes it wasn't junk! Sometimes someone just didn't know the value of what they had, or didn't care.
I picked up quite a few very valuable items just glancing at what NPC merchants had in inventory from player sales.
EQ1, EQ2, SWG, SWTOR, GW, GW2 CoH, CoV, FFXI, WoW, CO, War,TSW and a slew of free trials and beta tests
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
Regional or local specific auction houses are my preference, and make people travel there to pick up their stuff just like EVE does.
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I loved UO's fast travel systems.
The Moongates to travel between the large cities.
The Runestones that you could "mark" (spell, or scroll for non-mages) at anywhere that you got to, and return at any time via either Gate or Recall spells.
I agree that's an important aspect to player owned shops at their houses.
Excellent point.
Once upon a time....
Shoppers can pay that price or go "down the street" for a better price.
It promotes a sense of business, and serious shop owners would often check the competition to make sure their prices are in line.
Serious shop owners also would often spend time at their shops to talk to buyers to see what they can do better, if there's a market for something they don't have, etc.
Sometimes they'd set up "contracts" with players for supply of common goods, like herbs or ores. Most of them had their own production characters with what they specialized in.
It's a much better game for economic play. And much more interesting for players who want more player interaction and interesting worldly content.
I imagine it sucks for players who want to be and do everything all on their own, requiring the ease of "instant gratification" in this aspect of an MMORPG.
But man oh man, I sure miss this sort of game, like in UO, where things felt alive.
I'd love to see this expanded into more of a street fair like atmosphere, alive and fun. There are things a game can do to accomplish that, in my opinion.
Unfortunately, that would put the "burden" of added game play on the Players.
Once upon a time....
In project entropia, auction house takes a small fee to put items on, whereas there are trade channels and shops too.
Also there are people who only trade and it is bwst way to guarantee profiting from the game.
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
Just overall, too many douchebags made that whole system suck, so much so that even when I play games that have player to play sales, I don't bother to use them.
Auction House, I think is also a scam where they take a % of the money and demand a listing fee. Like what the hell? But still a better option than person to person trading, because I don't need to deal with jerks when it comes to buying and selling on the Auction House.
Just my feelings on it.
I always just walked away. Mainly because I didn't have a clue what the value was for the items, in many cases. But I was aware that the seller was not going to sell for a reasonable price by that action. Or maybe they didn't have a clue to it's value either.
C'est la vie.
Once upon a time....
Sometimes, perfection isn't perfect for all, only those who control it.
I think the design needs to leave some wildness in it so that doesn't happen.
You're going to have some of that no matter what.
Without a public auction house, however, only player shops with vendors, it's possible for some skilled Crafts players to go unnoticed due to being out of the way, and known only to fewer players. They may not be interested in constantly maintaining a shop, but willing to produce on demand for those who know them.
Some form of notification, like a bulletin board on their house/shop, would be beneficial for that sort of player, too. Or maybe a "mail" system built into the game.
"Send them a pigeon."
Once upon a time....
Even in UO there was some of that going on around the big trade centers (around cities).
Myself, I took advantage of that with my popular black and white dyes that I made the runs for seeds, grew the plants in my conservatory, and produced the dyes. It was a way to make some good coin, even at slightly marked down prices. (My house was on a seldom visited island. A beautiful villa in a very quiet part of the world.)
I intentionally kept it quiet, I only wanted a small customer base, so after dropping runes marked for my place and getting it going, I stopped "advertising." I spent most of my time exploring and working on the deeper mysteries of the world.
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That's a big negative for AH's, but much harder to do in a world full of shops all spread out. That's one reason why I think the player house shops is the best way to go.
Once upon a time....
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR