Feedback : Setting up as a player trader

[Tzael]

Edit : This suggestion does not change the fact that right now in Horizons a large group of players can set up shop in a busy area like Bristugo and all have macros announcing their shops on the market / local / whatever chat channels. The suggestion does not affect this functionality of the game in any way.

In Horizons we have the option to set the contents of a backpack pouch as visible when trading with other players. We can price individual items. We can set up a macro that every 20 minutes will inform people on the local chat channel that we are trading, come and browse.

We can't automate the process though.

I gave another game a quick go, and although it wasn't to my liking I did find that it was great fun to set up a stall with all my goods priced up, and I could then go do work for a couple of hours and come back every so often to find what was selling, who had bought what, and on some occasions my stall was empty. Every time I came back to the computer I found someone browsing my stall and I'd chat with them for a few minutes. I'd like to see this possibility in Horizons where a casual player does not need to be there 100% of the time to approve any trades. As far as I'm concerned, if I've set the contents of a pouch for sale, and priced them, then my part of the trade is concluded. From there, another player should be able to buy an item at the set price without having to wait on my approval since I have already agreed to the price when I set up shop.

Naturally this doesn't stop people from bartering, ie if I set up shop and am chatting to friends while waiting for things to sell then there's nothing stopping someone sending me a tell and asking if they can trade something for a particular item I have for sale. There's also nothing stopping players putting an item on show that doesn't have a price associated so that buyers can make offers.

Basic summary of feedback : allow the possibility of player shops that do not require the seller to approve trades if a price has been set. It benefits the casual player, and improves the social aspect of the game as players find good locations to set up shop and compete for business.

[AA0]

This is something that I've wanted for a long time, and it would really help with RP for people who like to be shop owners, or for people who don't want to have consigners taking their money in a chance something will sell.

The only negative is the promotion of spamming, and afk people selling... its not a bad thing necessarily for those that are sensible, but we all know that there are lots of people that aren't. They will afk macro a message every minute, to all the channels they can.
I've always found it curious why the ability to set up a shop on your player exists, but they just missed that one step of making it require your attention.

[Helcat]

I Concur.





* "I Concur" is TM & Copyright 2006, Helcat Wordlwide Enterprises. All Rights Reserved.

[Cloe]

I'm aware of one game that has quite a few macro type plugins that can be run.

I can just hear my Shopkeeper now.. "Bricks for the geologiclly challenged! Buy them by the disk full!" They could have thier own chat channel.

Great suggestion [Y][Y]

[imported_Robins]

We can set up a macro that every 20 minutes will inform people on the local chat channel that we are trading, come and browse.

We can't automate the process though.

People not playing the game spamming those who are in chat channels and in local textis not something i want ever. I could just see it now 20-30 AFK spammers in brustigo right by the pad, no thanks. This was happening the other day on Chaos marketplace all it did is lead to the person being put on ignore. AFK spamming is not a good way to attrack customers its just annoying.

The game has a good way to sell things now. List it on a connie if it wont sell there at your price its not going to sell the AFK way either.

[Tzael]

People not playing the game spamming those who are in chat channels and in local textis not something i want ever. I could just see it now 20-30 AFK spammers in brustigo right by the pad, no thanks. This was happening the other day on Chaos marketplace all it did is lead to the person being put on ignore. AFK spamming is not a good way to attrack customers its just annoying.

The game has a good way to sell things now. List it on a connie if it wont sell there at your price its not going to sell the AFK way either.

Ok first of all, don't go jumping on the one minor detail that you don't like and using it as a reason to dismiss the idea as a whole. Afterall you've said yourself if someone is performing excessive spammage, then the answer is to put them on ignore. More to the point and something you've overlooked is the fact that people who are not afk but set up shop will also be sending out messages on the local chat channel advertising their goods, whether with a 20 minute macro or by typing in a message manually.

The simple notion of not having to approve all trades is what I'm asking for.

I guess unless you've set up your own stall it's hard to appreciate what I'm getting at with this. Imagine you're set up with your stall, a potential customer comes by and wants to buy an item that you've got up for sale. You're on the phone / taking a dump / answering the front door, and you miss out on that sale because you weren't there to press the approve button. You've already approved the trade by setting the desired price ! You shouldn't need to have to approve it a second time.

As for consigners, if I set up a stall it's not to sell tech comps, formulas and techniques. It will be to set up a rare item stall, with items priced much higher than the bargain bin stuff currently found on consigners. I'm not sticking items like these on any consigner, no matter how trustworthy people might say Fellea of Kion is, or Hebur in Aughundell.

It is my opinion that the developers intended consigners to be a short-term stop gap solution until enough players were up and running with their own shops. Because of issues with the current implementation of player-run shops, this initial vision has not materialised, but has become a major feature of many other games out there. If we don't address the fundamental flaw with the current implementation, then Horizons is missing out on a feature that brings other games to life.

Other games have players gathering in areas, socialising, being part of a larger community. In Horizons we have very little need to congregate and it's sad. I want that to change, unfortunately the majority of ideas I put forward get overlooked or rejected by other players because they don't want a reason to stop and socialise. That's depressing, but it's also the root cause of why Horizons is not as desirable a destination for gamers as it could be.

[Snowdonia Honeythorn]

Tzael,

People have asked for this sort of change before, several times throughout the course of HZs 2+ years (even during beta). AE/TGs reply has always been the same, if you want to sell your good unattended, then use the Consigner system. So no, it wasn't a stop-gag solution, it was and is fully intentional. What is different this time that they will feel compelled to change their tune?

I can't and won't offer an alternative suggestion to your OP because of several reasons.
1) I see no problem really with the system we have now.
2) I will not like nor could I tolerate the massive amounts of lag AFK selling in one popular area would cause, a la EQ bazaar only worse since HZ already has a huge lag issue.
and 3) It's just not something I feel is necessary given the consigner system makes selling items carefree.

[Tzael]

Do we get that personal touch when selling through the consigner ? Occasionally I'll be online when something I've consigned sells, and I'll send a quick 'thankyou' via tell to the buyer. Most of the time though I don't have a clue who bought what because I wasn't around.

I see consigners as 'offline vendors', their selling point is they sell stuff for us while we're not online. While we're logged into the game, why forego the personal and social elements of trading just because consigners exist ?

Encouraging personal vendors would improve the socialisation, and add a personal touch between buyer and seller.

I can appreciate your comments about graphics lag, yes, there's no denying that for many folks the client performance is not great. Nothing wrong with me setting up shop at my plot though, and occasionally letting people on the market channel know where I am, and as stocks change I can inform them of those changes to stocks and prices.

Once they're at my plot (or wherever I happen to set up shop), I can then take the opportunity to socialise with them, chat about prices or alternative trade options, and on the off-chance I need a bathroom break or get distracted by a long phonecall, potential customers won't have to wait for me to get back if they want to buy something here and now.

[Seranthor]

AFK macro spamming got at least one person banned in Chaos Marketplace by DB. Something to think about.

[Doombreak]

Using consigners is all well and good but for example say near the eastern wastes you could set up a shop where u can offer a variet of foods, potions and weapons for all the adventures that go into there..setting upa shop turns a wide open space into something worthwhile

[Tzael]

Well I guess I can see what people are trying to get at with afk macroing and the likes, but player conduct policies address such matters so for all intents and purposes those concerns are not relevant. I have never heard of anyone being banned for responsible use of hotkey macros on any of the shards I have played on (Energy, Chaos, Order and Unity) although I could imagine someone being banned for spamming. I and many others I know use chat macros occasionaly when advertising products or services and I'm not likely to change that behaviour unless the player policies are altered to categorically state that they are not permissable.

Certainly afk macroing is not what I was on about with my original post, have another read through it because although I tend to go for long-winded methods of describing what I'm talking about, the core part of the feedback could be summarised on one line (a summaryis inevitablysupplied at the end of most of my suggestion posts because of my inability to stick to short sentences).

Back to the original topic, I like the idea of being able to travel across Istaria and find players with their own shop set up at convenient places. As Doombreak mentioned, the entrances to regular hunting grounds are good spots, and by encouraging player vending it does indeed fill what was previously an empty location [:)]

[Doombreak]

This is one of the best idea ive seen in a whle..have an option where u can construct ur stall say 1 fabric bolt of each type and 1 timber of each type or similar then set ur goods up say 40 strength V potions, 20 Bass jerkies etc etc etc and their price then leave the stallss ther and if ppl need the services of what u are offering they'll come up and buy it..make the stall appear on the map at x amount of coords away with a red cross or something

[Snowdonia Honeythorn]

You never actually answered my question Tzael. What's different now that is gonna make the Devs change their tune about this?

[Tzael]

You never actually answered my question Tzael. What's different now that is gonna make the Devs change their tune about this?

Clarify, extrapolate, and expand upon the question so that it isn't generic, and I could give an answer.

Which brings us squarely onto the reason for my post. If I see nothing to indicate that a subject has been touched on in the past and I feel that a change is worthwhile, I will present my ideas and feedback for everyone to read and consider. Maybe a developer has shot the idea down in flames in the past (certainly couldn't find anything in the Tazoon.com developer post archive I still maintain) however that's not going to stop me presenting constructive feedback on why I support or am against any particular proposal that is presented on the forums.

It is only through discussion of both positive and negative elements of concepts that the developers can make informed decisions on game mechanics, features, and content that may or may not better the community as a whole.

If those last two paragraphs don't answer your question then please consider clarification, extrapolation of your main points, and expansion upon the intended request for response so that I can answer clearly and concisely [:)]

[Snowdonia Honeythorn]

Tzael,

People have asked for this sort of change before, several times throughout the course of HZs 2+ years (even during beta). AE/TGs reply has always been the same, if you want to sell your good unattended, then use the Consigner system. So no, it wasn't a stop-gag solution, it was and is fully intentional. What is different this time that they will feel compelled to change their tune?

Guess you didn't bother to read my entire post before then I suppose.

[Tzael]

Guess I did answer your question in my previous post then [:)]

Now that little bit of ambiguity is out of the way, I'd like to address the one concern that people are jumping on, by proposing means of reducing the potential for it to occur. Of course the vast majority of people who would set up as player vendors are not going to abuse the system.Nevertheless since there are concerns from individuals that the player conduct policies are not going to prevent what they truly fear, I feel obliged to take the additional step of adding ideas that will not only improve the overall player vendor setup but will help alleviate the need for advertising when a player is in such a role.

Ideas to prevent the need to advertise player vendors :

Include a 'selling' flag for players, similar to AFK and LFG this can be toggled with a command such as /sell. It can alternatively be set on or off in the window defined by UISystemListWindow.def where the current AFK and LFG checkboxes exist.

When enabled, the following can occur :

The player search feature can show players who are currently in 'selling' mode.
The player who is selling can have a short description of what they are selling above their name, something like 32 characters in length that they can edit, for example "Selling potions& food" or "Suits of armour".
A small pedestal or visible cargo disk appears in front of the player to indicate their seller status to other players.

These are fairly simple ideas that take my initial feedback much further than I originally desired, however I cannot ignore a point raised by others despite my own opinion of the point being irrelevant thanks to player conduct policies that as Seranthor points out, do get enforced. Nevertheless, despite Seranthor reassuring me that I am right in thinking that player conduct policies are enforced, some people do not want a player advertising their goods on a market channel so I hope my additional feedback provides a means to help reduce the overall concerns of what might come to be should player vending become popular.

I sure hope it becomes popular, I'm addicted to it in the game that caused me to post here in the first place. It's safe to say I detest the rest of that game, but if player vending has got me so hooked, I can only imagine how much fun it would be to enjoy this pastime in Horizons. Getting to meet all sorts of people who wander up to window-shop, having a chat with them, it's a great way to get to know new people !

[Doombreak]

Doing this could possibly boost the economy on all shards and make the game more interactive.

[Seranthor]

Perhaps, and it could also do nothing at all... there is nothing now that stops you from setting yourself up as a trader in those locations in which you mentioned... it isn't advised because there is nothing to stop a mob from strolling up and giving you a DP pillow for a dirt nap either.

[LaughingOtter]

AFK sales are already possible through the consigners. I don't like any suggestion that increases the number of AFK macroers, combat-related or not. AFK macroers are not playing, by definition. There is no increase in social interaction with an AFK macroer; all that is increased is server load and lag.

If you want to rent a stall in the Tazoon dome and stand there all day selling things, great! If you don't want to actually be standing there the whole time & would rather be doing something else, then you can put stuff on a consigner. I would expect this change to result in large numbers of people parking around the consigners and spamming endlessly because they're too cheap to pay the connie fee.

[safaia]

I don't like the idea of AFK spamming macros but they are allready implemented.

In my opinion the suggestion of autoselling when the price is set is a good suggestion.

On theold Earth shard there had been several vendors. They were twinks, standing at the kion vault for example while the main character was crafting/hunting/whatever. Today on Unity shard I don't know anybody doing this.
One reason is that you have to keep an eye on the twink if anybody wants to trade with you.
Another reason is that you still have to calculate yourself if the buyer offers the right amount of money, even if you set prices for every item. Someone can offer 5c for items that you priced with 5s. If you hit OK, you have accidently sold them. There should be a warning about the money differing the price. You should still be able to accept this trade manually, but if the money matches the price, the trade should be accepted automatically.

That's my opinion.