Consigner Fees

[Dhalin]

I don't know if the Devs have been following my rant thread over in the Rants about Nadia...

But a very good point has been raised, and I'd like to make a suggestion.

Consigners are the best way for people to sell things. It is present in nearly any other MMORPG in some shape, form, or manner. The ability to sell things without real-time interaction, without both parties of the transaction being online at the same time, and without any prior communication.

We have something like that in Istaria, the Consigners.

The problem is, people don't want to consign things, and lose lots of money if what they listed didn't sell.

What I propose, is a tweak to how the Consigner system works. Right now, a 10% up-front fee for even listing an item is much too high. You could easily blow 100s+ in listing items that might not even sell at all. I propose a better system:

Make it so that you pay 1% up front when you list. Listing an item for 100 silver would cost you 1 silver. When the item sells, an additional 9% is subtracted from the proceeds (in this case, 9 silver).

Each consign still costs 10 silver for 100 silver item, but with my method, the risk of listing isn't anywhere near as high. Then, maybe players won't be so adverse to list things again.

[Shian]

I don't know if the Devs have been following my rant thread over in the Rants about Nadia...

But a very good point has been raised, and I'd like to make a suggestion.

Consigners are the best way for people to sell things. It is present in nearly any other MMORPG in some shape, form, or manner. The ability to sell things without real-time interaction, without both parties of the transaction being online at the same time, and without any prior communication.

We have something like that in Istaria, the Consigners.

The problem is, people don't want to consign things, and lose lots of money if what they listed didn't sell.

What I propose, is a tweak to how the Consigner system works. Right now, a 10% up-front fee for even listing an item is much too high. You could easily blow 100s+ in listing items that might not even sell at all. I propose a better system:

Make it so that you pay 1% up front when you list. Listing an item for 100 silver would cost you 1 silver. When the item sells, an additional 9% is subtracted from the proceeds (in this case, 9 silver).

Each consign still costs 10 silver for 100 silver item, but with my method, the risk of listing isn't anywhere near as high. Then, maybe players won't be so adverse to list things again.

Yes please I'd love to sell things but it costs my little ones too much money up front to do so.

[Thicklesip]

That'd be fantastic, actually-- hits you with the full fee when whatever you're listing sells, but doesn't penalize people who are blindly listing things and hoping that some of their supply will overlap somebody's demand. I know on Order that many items people could sell simply won't have any demand one week and then be a cash cow the next, and there's no easy way to track whether it's an "on" week or an "off" week for whatever you want to peddle.

And before you say "check in Marketplace", that doesn't account for the entire server population being spread evenly across a 24-hour range, or close to it. (There's also an element of "if Marketplace worked like that everyone would be directly selling through there already!")

[Nahdian]

Bumping and adding my two cents. One of the most basic necessitys of a mmo rpg where all the things you need to survive your days in the virtual world are produced and sold by other players, Is a good way to market such items. There shouldnt be any upfront cost for posting items. You already limit us on how many items we can post.. so flooding the market cant hapen.. drop the consignment cost altogether.

Whats more, the consigners need to get together and work out a network so that all items for sale on the server are accessable from any consignment store in the land. Traveling endlessly from one place to another praying and hopeing that you might find what you need is tiresum and pointless.. This sort of thing bores casual players and push's them away.

[Nahdian]

Consignment:

This is a big one. This one will make or break our ecconomy. This is the one that will either bring in new players or continue to drive off anyone less then dedicated.

They are broken. Heres my two cents on how to fix them.

1: remove initial consignment fees. Stupid and unnecessary. They prevent people from puting items up for sale, for fear that they wont and they will lose 10 percent on there investment. You dont need to have fees there to prevent us from flooding the market. You limit how much we can post already. So remove the fees.

2: Something that very nearly chased me away. (returning veteran) is going all over gods creation to different connies hopeing that this or that one will have this or that for sale. Stop this rubbish. Get the connies working together to form a network. One stop shoping from any place in istaria.. Worldwide conviniance. A level 10 toon is not going to want to travel all the way to bristago to get a piece of armor.. ( of course if you dont fix 1, he need not worry nobody will ever have any up for sale anyway.)

Crafting:

This is the gold nugget in istaria. I think the crafting system is lovely. Its unique and intricate difficult but fun none the less for it. Not only does it make a community necessary. But it makes it a nicer one at that.

Heres my two cents on the problems chasing everyone but the hardcore away.

1: Travel time. Your going to find this is a big deal in an mmo. Too much travel time will guarentee failure every single time. And travel time is nothing istaria lacks. The process of gathering resources, running to the machines to produce goods and then from the machines to whatever venue you choose is ridiculous. The reason why is bulk. We cannot make efficient use of our time because everything weighs insane amounts. 10 bulk for a resource which takes between 2-5 to make a raw. And then takes up to 30 raws to process into a finished product. Is silly when everything weighs 10-120 bulk.

It adds a ton of travel time. Discs are inefficient as well. A simple solution and one that should be seriously concidered. Is reduceing the bulk weight on all resources including construction resources. the speed at which we can travel is not so bad. Its the riduclous number of times during the crafting process that we need to travel that is the problem. Reduceing bulk requirements will not only make current players happier but will stop pushing away new casual players.

The Ecconomy.

Well heres a problem that is very directly dependant on the above changes. If you want a working ecconomy fix consignment. And adjust crafting. But too theres other things that should be done.

1: The top end players of the game need a place to dump there coin. It has no value to them. And because it has no value to them, they dont make or sell items at the consigners.. Because they dont make anything for the lower levels, everyone is forced to craft, or they quit because they cant find gear to use.

1a: I sugest adding things at the top end of the game that are difficult to resist paying hard earned coin to the server gods for. Put epic end game armor venders in, And spell venders, and epic end game food and other consumables into the game. The more coin the end gamers spend on trinkets and doo dads the beter. And at no cost to the playability of the game. It gives the end gamers something to look forward to , something to work torward and a reason to keep producing goods for the newbies to purchase.

The ecconomy starts at the top in an mmorpg just like it does in the real world. If the money isnt changing hands at the top end it wont be changing hands at the low end.

I dont need to explain how bad that is for new players do i ? If i was a new player starting today and found that I could not purchase a single solitary item anywhere on any conny that i needed.. That i would have to beg in chanels or craft my own. It wouldnt take me long to find the exit game comand i assure you. Fix this problem and youll be well on the way to creating an enjoyable sustainable game that everyone would enjoy playing and not just the diehards and the hardcore.


Now there are a great deal many things that could be beter in the world of istaria im sure. But the minor bugs and imperfections are not what makes the game less playable in my opinion. Its the lack of services , lack of working worldwide trade, and pointless endless travel time which make this game fall short of greatness. I hope someone reads this and takes what i say to heart.

Istaria is a great game and has so much potential. I hope to continue to play for many years

Nahdia of the Chaos Server.

[Dhalin]

Bumping and adding my two cents. One of the most basic necessitys of a mmo rpg where all the things you need to survive your days in the virtual world are produced and sold by other players, Is a good way to market such items. There shouldnt be any upfront cost for posting items. You already limit us on how many items we can post.. so flooding the market cant hapen.. drop the consignment cost altogether.

There needs to be some sort of limiting factor, some risk to listing things, though. If there is no risk, no cost of listing items, then people will list them for the maximum amount possible that they think they have a remote chance it will sell. It will be a "if it doesn't sell I'll just relist until it does" mentality. This drives prices through the roof.

Currently, the risk is far too great, and pushes things the opposite way. If a player doesn't have enough faith the item will sell, then they don't want to risk listing it. Hence, my idea was to reduce the costs. We still want some risk involved, to encourage people to list things for reasonable prices, but yet we don't want to punish people too harshly for listing something that fails to sell.

Whats more, the consigners need to get together and work out a network so that all items for sale on the server are accessable from any consignment store in the land. Traveling endlessly from one place to another praying and hopeing that you might find what you need is tiresum and pointless.. This sort of thing bores casual players and push's them away.

The thing about this, though, is that there are limits to data flow, etc. That's why we have a limit on the number of items we can consign at any given time. Putting _all_ items on the same consignment pool is going to make it worse. On Order, there are usually anywhere between 600-900 items on the New Trismus consigner, and 200-700 on the Aughundell consigner. This means that if we merged just those two, you would have 800-1600 items that have to be downloaded every time a player wanted to check the consigner, not to mention how long the lists would be, to scroll through them all.

I'm in favor of making sure there are only 3 consigners in the entire world (except for those that are player-built): New Trismus for Tier 1-2 items, and Aughundell for Tier 3-5 items and also the Technique Component Consigner in Aughundell. I think we should get rid of the rest, except for player-built ones.

[Dhalin]

Hmm... some thoughts:

I already voiced my thoughts about glomping all of the consigners into one (They recently removed some consigners. Usually, on Order, only 2 consigners are really used: NT and Aughundell).

I already voiced my thoughts in the other thread about removing the listing fees altogether.

Now, my thoughts about the rest:

The crafting system is OK where it is: Most areas are reasonable for travel time, until you get up to Tier 5. I can sit here and name right off the top of my head places that you can easily gather materials, and process them right there at the fields. Many of these places are unguarded. There are a few, however, that I think could use improvement though:

Tier 4 gems: There's quite a few places scattered around Dralk for Tier 4 gems, but yet, there's no gemcutters (or jewelers' table for that matter) except for within Dralk itself, unless there's a player-built lair out there somewhere, and even that would lack a Jeweler's Table. There should be at the very least, a gemcutter added somewhere (my vote, would be the lair right near the small cobalt/gem/platinum spawn with that dragon that gives you the spell to kill Reklar). Adding a gemcutter to that lair would make T4 gems a lot less hassle.

Tier 3 Stone (Granite): Dragons find this especially painful, as there are no scaleforges or anvils near any unguarded Granite I'm aware of. This means, that unless a player-made machine can be found (a Stonecutter AND Anvil/S.Forge), dragons are forced to level through their Tier 3 process purely on making Steel Bars (a royal PITA, I might add) or Gems. I suppose Stone Bricks -> Spell Shards could work, but the exp gained from doing that is simply pitiful.

[Nahdian]

I disagree that crafting is fine where it is. The adverage player does not want to spend 80% of there time crafting on the road between resource a and machine b. The system needs to be looked at.

And as for consignment.There is already limits on what people can post. Flooding of the market is not likely to drive prices up at all. Concidering the fact that in an open market there is competition.. if you post an item at 10 silver and i think i could make a profit by posting at 5 silver.. i think you can see where im heading with that. You can always put a high price on a item.. but if someone else is willing to make it cheaper.. they will.

Besides as the system is coin is still virtualy valueless at the end game. So all removeing consignment fees will do is encourage people to use consignment more then the pawnbroker. Its good for the ecconomy and its a good welcomeing sight for anyone whos just joining us. Like i said the last thing anyone wants to do is play a game where they are forced to do all there own crafting, and or, are forced to spend time in chanels looking for tradeskillers who will make them things. And the reverse is true. Crafters shouldnt have to go out and hunt comps.. and if the consignment system wasnt borked.. they would not have to. Adventurers hunt.. sell the comps.. crafters buy the comps and sell the gear. A good market.

As is. these are tremendous hurdles that will keep casual players from subscribing. And like it or not , its the casual players who make up the majority of the market. Not the dedicated or the hardcore.

[LOVWYRM]

so who is that average player who does not like to craft- or does not like the craft system?
What does he/she want?

What is borked with the consis?

[Nahdian]

The adverage player would be the types who join and dont stay. The people who are potentialy willing to be paying customers but never get off the kion/slanis isle due to frustration..

What is wrong with the connies.. is that nobody use's them.. what is the solution? well thats what needs to be worked out.

[Dracaena]

Whats more, the consigners need to get together and work out a network so that all items for sale on the server are accessable from any consignment store in the land. Traveling endlessly from one place to another praying and hopeing that you might find what you need is tiresum and pointless.. This sort of thing bores casual players and push's them away.

They did that already. There used to be consigners in every racial city. Now there are only 3 imperial consigners in the entire land. New Trismus, Bristugo, and Aughundell.

On Order Bristugo is abandoned, none list there and Chaos rarely has items at Bristugo. On Chaos Aughundell is largely abandoned while it is popular on Order. On Blight they ream you if you list anything for over 10c so they make sure not much of anything shows up.

Generally you don't find much beginning gear anywhere outside of New Trismus so really not good odds porting around. High end stuff is at Aughundell on Order and what tiny bit shows up at Chaos lands on the Crimson Dawn public connie at Clearport, with some at the player public connie at Bristugo. I find less selection of high end good on Chaos then I do Order.

You really want to make New Trismus the only connie in the land?


Dracaena

[Thicklesip]

I watched the Augh connie on Order climb up to over 1150 items yesterday... mind, this is when the New Tris connie has to have at least as many, if not more. We have of late apparently had a couple people hunting great swathes of something, because we're packed to the gills with expert forms and techs, and with a good selection of journeyman too! Woohoo!

The issue is that with those kinds of numbers, if you wanted to link up the consigners you'd have to change the way we interact with them, because frankly I have a respectable computer but if it had to download 2400 item stacks and then load them into the trade window it'd turn my computer into a brick for two minutes every time I went to trade with them. So you'd need to find a way to not download the entire contents of every consigner at once, maybe by strong-arming people into using the "change filters" window every time the looked somehow, but even that likely wouldn't be perfect, assuming it's even possible.

Anyways. From the POV over here... there's problems with the current system, yes. However, while I couldn't mind bringing initial fees down a little by making it so you pay a pittance when you post the item and the rest of the fee when it sells, a blanket statement of "connie fees are too high and it means nobody does anything with them" just feels... inaccurate? I don't think 10% is wildly unfair. I also see a lot of goods for sale here, and having watched how many items get returned to my vault unsold, stuff is definitely selling. Maybe not like hotcakes every day, but the majority of items I don't have a ton of competition selling don't return to me.


I did a rundown once for some friends trying to list why I think new players trial and go "oh this is great!!" and then don't stay... maybe I'll post it, because I still think it's not the unassailable truth but probably true for at least a decent portion of the nomads we have wandering through. I will say, though, that the consignment system was NOT on said list. (Could have arguably rolled it into another point, but... well I guess I'll just go write it up again.)

[Koragan]

FYI I pay about 350s-480s every 2 weeks stocking connies on Chaos. Primarily the Clearport T6 connie due to the lower fee.

[Frith-Rae]

Yea and that's more money than I even have... so for "poorer" players the connie fees definitely make a difference in what I vendor and what I even ATTEMPT to try and sell once in a blue moon. Because most of the time most of it does NOT sell (even if its the cheapest on the market) so...its just money lost.

Is there still a complete list of all connie stuff on the official website. I seem to remember that being in place at one point in time. Where you coudl search all connies in game from the official site - sure its not IN game but would make hunting around easier. THis was of course back when there was a connie in every single city - as opposed to the Three Main Ones now.

[Dhalin]

RE:Thicklesip

Boasting 1150 items on the Augh Connie doesn't really prove that the consigner fee _isn't_ hurting the economy (or what little of it exists).

And you said it yourself, Expert Forms make up a vast majority of the Augh Connie's inventory, anybody on Order knows that. What do most of these sell for? One single silver piece. That's 100c in listing fee.

We rarely see anyone consigning, say, jewelry, weapons, armor, etc. Yes, the whole "with so many techs, it is hard to predict what is wanted" argument exists, however there are certain things that many people are bound to want. Things like Miner's Boon/Blessing earrings for example. I feel extremely lucky I found my set (and it was only a T3, but it beats anything else I could wear on my ears for quite some time) on the connie, I haven't seen a set since.

And then there's technique resource components. Anyone remember when Dracaena stuck up that huge load? She said it cost her over one hundred silver just to list that stuff. It is a good thing yours truly bought at least 50s worth of those; I would hate to see her lose that much money due to stuff not selling, as it would discourage her and others from listing more in the future. I hope she at least got the listing fee back out of her stuff, that's a pretty good chunk of change just to list some stuff that might or might not sell.

[Aaelefein]

It is not the consigner fees that is the problem IMO...it is finding the stuff dumped back in your vault.

I'll admit I have used this as well albeit infrequently, and I'll probably get flamed from those that still do, but either Eliminate the 'dump-to-vault' timer or increase it to a month or more.

I'm also a big player of EVE and imo what makes the system there work:

1) Players, 25k-50k almost all the time...not something we can really do about;
2) Except for Stargates (think porting from one city to another); everything has a cost...evening refining your harvested materials;
3) Things can break and if not outright destroyed, can be fixed...again for a cost;
4) Except for Skills (best comparison might be class skills or maybe unteched spells)...everything is player made and sold;
5) Every mob/mission is worth something whether it's coin or special loot and with few rare exceptions nothing is bought by NPCs.


I totally realize not even half of this can be mimicked in Istaria, some wouldn't even fit considering the player base and play style. I'm also aware that being a big game they can afford to have a financial expert on the development team.

Still...there are things that can be learned from it and real-life to enhance gameplay/economy. Unfortunately, as past experiences have revelaed, it can't be done piecemeal as it just throws things farther out of balance.

Things that would have to be done 'at-once' (IMO):

1) Connies tweaked (charges reduced, timers extended) (See Note 3);
2) Eliminate Porting costs period (I would think the time and effort is payment enough);
3) Pawnbrokers (Other than Trophy Hunters) restricted and or eliminated;
4) All Mobs deliver something of value whether coin, loot, comps, combination , etc (See Note 1)
5) Wear/Tear on Armor, weapons, etcetera and whether by an NPC or player-made items...always repairable to full use. (See Note 2)

I am sure there are many more things, and I'm sorry if I've rambled on or gotten off the main topic but I got on a roll and felt it should be presented. Again, many things, but doing just one will put things out of balance even more than they already are.

Again...sorry for rambling, but hope it gives people some ideas

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Note 1: Coin c/should be from nearly every mob, but with an associated decrease in forms. Comp rate drops seem fine, there never seems to be enough anyways, but as pointed out there are tons of forms on the connie, and the rest are either trashed or dumped on a PB...reduce the form drop-rate and the prices will go up

Note 2: Added Techniques are unaffected in that they do not need to be repaired. Using a piece of armor w/ 3 techs as an example, if it is broke (ideally unwearable), not only does it no longer offer armor protection until repaired, but until repaired the techniques have no affect either.

Note 3: An idea here...eliminate the percentage charged based on tier of consigner. Make it a questable 'skill' with 6 tiers (0-19; 20-39; 40-59; 60-79; 80-99; 100) based on level? For every upgrade you get to deduct an extra 10% of the consignment fee? The more I think about this I think it should be something other than level based...something someone of any level (at least 20) can do, but takes significantly more time. Casual traders will do what they see fit and heavy traders will do the whole thing.