Future of trade ???

[Dzarren]

Hey guys, i am back and i heard poeple cry out they like more trade in this game.
So my question is, how would you like this in an open PVP game ?

I played Mortal Online recently, hey i am an fanboy of sandbox games, and i quit there because the game i completely focussed on PVP.
As trader/crafter you didnt have the skills/experience to defend yourself.
I got ganked at least once every day and stripped bare, the so called PVPérs preferred to destroy youre stuff rather then leave anything.
This left me with such an bad game experience that i left.
How does the community think about this kind of PVP and would we like to have this here too?
Also i like to know if there are any idears too make sure this doesnt happen in Xsyon too.
I have seen in MO that all non PVP players leave so you only keep an non productive PVP public who leave because of lack off players.
And to be honest i loved the crafting in that game and still do.
I hope we can have an mature discussion here, i am not anti PVP but i like too see an system where non pvp player and pvp players can enjoy the same game.
I have only seen this in one game till now and that was EVE-Online, i still play Eve after 4 years and i am non PVP mostly.

[Archangei]

MO isnt a Sandbox, its a huge FPS lobby trying to act as a Sandbox so it doesnt attract the true sandbox type of people.
While MO Attract alot more pvpers since thats the game was advertised

Trade is beneficial when multiple parties have raritys or regional goods such as metals, specific types of wood, fish, food or other resources such as tar?
Trade routes can be established and the same with Trade Outposts are a very vital point in this since they will serve as a network of hubs similar to station trading in Eve.

[banden]

Its a pickle, no doubt about it. Im not all for FFA PVP and full loot, especially in a game like Xsyon where we have trading with no markets or safe ways of transporting goods, the risks of trade far overshadow the benefits and thats a big problem. I dont think mortal online or darkfall is very balanced in this respect (cant rightly say, Ihve never tried it). I think an idea would be to port your cart with you, if you die. Lets say that if you leave your cart somewhere, the lock is pickable, which takes a little time, but if you die the cart is ported with you. Your corpse would still be lootable but you cart would be safe. This can of course only be done once the game has death penalties. Otherwise we get deathporting all over the place. I dunno, like i said, its a difficult area to balance.

[Kegan]

I think the moral of the story here is that there are crafting/PvE players here that want to be able to craft. build and trade in safety.

One way that might work is that you would broker a caravan of sorts to transport your goods across open lands where you were venerable to getting ganked and robbed of your stuff. I also think that leaving the neutral tribes a safe zone would allow the PvE players to build and craft in a relatively safe environment other then going out to get raw materials. Leave the Good vs Evil tribes to the tribal warfare and to fight over control of the trade routes and the tax/fees from the routes...IDK

[banden]

Well it might just be an idea to cut neutral players out completly and make them PVP-disabled and make their tribelands strictly non-PVP. Thats esentially fully consensual PVP and thats afaik what the devs want to do. If you are good or evil you are PVP enabled, if you are neutral you are free to build and trade. That way neutrals can trade with both evil and good tribes and be able to move goods around safely, that opens up some interesting interaction in the metagame where good and evil players could hire neutral players to be their couriers. If PVPers want to move their stuff around they should have escorts.

It should go without saying though, that PVP-enabled means that you get some hefty bonusses and advantages compared to PVP-disabled. The extra risk should be rewarded. I think a lot of PVEers actually have a problem with this. Which is pretty sad.

[MrDDT]

MO isnt a Sandbox, its a huge FPS lobby trying to act as a Sandbox so it doesnt attract the true sandbox type of people.
While MO Attract alot more pvpers since thats the game was advertised

Trade is beneficial when multiple parties have raritys or regional goods such as metals, specific types of wood, fish, food or other resources such as tar?
Trade routes can be established and the same with Trade Outposts are a very vital point in this since they will serve as a network of hubs similar to station trading in Eve.


I like this because I notice no talk about PVP or full looting issues.

I see regional resources that are WORTHWHILE to trade. Right now getting 5% better chance to find nails is not worthwhile of the time to figure out which areas those are. Bonuses on items are minor or broken.

Travel in this game is very hard, thus the rewards of the rare regional items should be much better, else no one will care to travel / trade.

Few things IMO to spark trade.

1) Regional resources. Not 5% better chance to find something, try like 1% chance to find it somewhere else.
2) Bonuses on items need to be balanced a lot more. All items should have bonuses on them. You already have varied bonus strength based on QL, but why would I use a Brass rivet? Plus the bonuses are so minor, or broken.
3) Some way to travel faster. 3a) Make roads use 90% less energy. 3b) Some type of energy regen buff (magic, potion, herbs, clothing, food etc). 3c) Mounts.
4) Contested resources outside of tribal areas. Example: Maybe a mine that has rare metal every 30mins. You have to take 1min to extract it based on resources skill. Cant be claimed.
5) Resources that are harder to get through harder PVE issues (Raid monsters where it takes 5+ people to kill, but yields good rewards) sorta like mutants only fix the water fighting issues, and make the bonuses more varied, and useful items.

[Hodo]

DDT is mostly right the only thing I would add is animal drawn carts or wagons. Other than that everything else is spot on.

[Brennak]

I don't believe that anyone who comes to a game like MO or Xyson want safety in their sandbox crafting. That would defeat the purpose of the genre. I think, more accurately, people want tools to help them mitigate the losses or risk, to varying degrees.

Eve is not the end all be all of sandboxyness but they do have that concept going for them, you are never completely safe but there are endless skills, player interactions, mods etc... to actively mitigate either the danger or losses with varying play-styles in mind.

MO on, the other hand, is on to two things in it's crafting system. The metagame of being a crafter also becomes about hunting rare materials and testing them for their qualities and uses without a rigid mat1+mat2=great bow of swiftness kinda thing.

I would suggest looking at the current player habits in xyson as an example of what DDT is talking about. Notice the abundance of tribes popping up in the one resource type that has any level of persistent rarity... the junk pile.

[ceej389]

Greetngs,

Starting out Id like to say even though Ive only been in game a week Im greatly impressed with the players and dev community here. I think the game overall has huge potential and can fill a niche sorely empty in the mmo world. That being said, since I have been here Ive seen a large amount of discussion about trade and economy. Most frequent being how the trading is going to be done and how much things are worth. It seems to me, more important than thise questions, is WHAT are you going to trade. Without a set medium of currency all the other discussion is kind of putting the cart before the horse imo.

For example I saw in game yestersay that the going rate for a cart is 3200 nails. So for cart makers nails is an acceptable form of currency (not going to address the type and quality issue here). But lets say I dont make carts, I make bone armor so nails are useless to me because I already have a dozen carts sitting around. I want bones. But Joe next door makes water bags and wants tar so nails and bones are worthless to him.

My point is everyone has a different idea of what is worth something to them peraonaly. The problem with that scenario is people dont want to spend all their time in game trying to figure out who to trade nails to to get bones so they can trade them to someone else to get nails so they can trade them to get tar so they can get that water bag they so desperatly need. Not to mention that noone wants to haul a cart of tar for a hour to get that waterbag. Thats why we all dont still carry beaver pelts to the grocery store

This of course leads to the question of what to use and how to introduce it to the game. Most games use NPC traders or mission rewards to inject currency into the game. We dont have that here. The other thing we dont have here is a currency sink. So even if everyone decided bottlecaps were an acceptable form of currency, since we can all go and just dig them up to inject them into the game but have nothing to take them OUT of the game, over a short period of time they will be worthless and that beginners crafting knife will cost you a fortune in bottlecaps.

Sorry for the length of post, and Im not saying I know everything about the game because as Ive said Ive only been here a week, but Ive played mmo's since MUD's and more than pvp, pve, or any other mechanics of a game, a proper or improper economy can make or break a game.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Chris

[MrDDT]

Greetngs,

Starting out Id like to say even though Ive only been in game a week Im greatly impressed with the players and dev community here. I think the game overall has huge potential and can fill a niche sorely empty in the mmo world. That being said, since I have been here Ive seen a large amount of discussion about trade and economy. Most frequent being how the trading is going to be done and how much things are worth. It seems to me, more important than thise questions, is WHAT are you going to trade. Without a set medium of currency all the other discussion is kind of putting the cart before the horse imo.

For example I saw in game yestersay that the going rate for a cart is 3200 nails. So for cart makers nails is an acceptable form of currency (not going to address the type and quality issue here). But lets say I dont make carts, I make bone armor so nails are useless to me because I already have a dozen carts sitting around. I want bones. But Joe next door makes water bags and wants tar so nails and bones are worthless to him.

My point is everyone has a different idea of what is worth something to them peraonaly. The problem with that scenario is people dont want to spend all their time in game trying to figure out who to trade nails to to get bones so they can trade them to someone else to get nails so they can trade them to get tar so they can get that water bag they so desperatly need. Not to mention that noone wants to haul a cart of tar for a hour to get that waterbag. Thats why we all dont still carry beaver pelts to the grocery store

This of course leads to the question of what to use and how to introduce it to the game. Most games use NPC traders or mission rewards to inject currency into the game. We dont have that here. The other thing we dont have here is a currency sink. So even if everyone decided bottlecaps were an acceptable form of currency, since we can all go and just dig them up to inject them into the game but have nothing to take them OUT of the game, over a short period of time they will be worthless and that beginners crafting knife will cost you a fortune in bottlecaps.

Sorry for the length of post, and Im not saying I know everything about the game because as Ive said Ive only been here a week, but Ive played mmo's since MUD's and more than pvp, pve, or any other mechanics of a game, a proper or improper economy can make or break a game.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Chris


You do have part of the idea, however, the idea behind this trading system is that tribes will set up their own currency. Which some have. Its starting to make its way more and more into the world of Xsyon as tribes are setting up currency of their own.

If you would have said this 2 months ago I might have agreed with you. But I've seen more people agreeing on currency than anything.

I think to solve this they should allow items to broken down a bit more. Like metal could break down to ore. Losing some of its QL (or weight). People will start to value the ore based on its weight in KG, and the type of ore it is. Chrome likely being the highest.

Because of the QL factor, I dont see anything becoming a currency though because that wont be fixed. Using my idea of metal being melted down. You could base it on weight, and QL rating is how much the ore is worth.

1QL nail could melt down to .1 ore. While 100QL nail would melt down to 10ore. (Whatever type that is).
Same goes for if you looking to make a 100QL nail again you would need say 10 ore.

You could even go further with this and make it take more to remake the nail. Say 10% more. So you might not want to just metal everything down.

[ceej389]

I dont mean to hijack the thread but if what you say is happening MrDDT, then great. And it may work right now with a few dozen (maybe) actively trading tribes with a few hundred(maybe) active members, but dont we want a few HUNDRED active tribes with a few THOUSAND players? Remember that this needs to work a year down the road, not just right now and if you have that many players all using different currencies, new players will be so confused they'll quit. Everyone is looking at it from an experienced players point of view, which is to be expected, but from a NEW players point of view thats confusing as hell lol. Im all for immersion and a player driven economy (played eve for 7 years lol) but that economy NEEDS a standard form of currency.

I like your idea of breaking things down excpet for the transportation issue (like loading up a truck to go buy a gallon of milk lol) and again you'll have dozens of different things used as currency with a different value set on them by different groups.

For example right now in game I need a recipe for shears. Whats the going rate for that? Nails? Rivets? Leather? What if I dont have enough of one? Will you take nails AND rivets? Oh wait....I dont have enough pack space to bring you nails AND rivets and since Im new I dont have a cart....crap, now what do I do......melt it all down...crap thats more WEIGHT than I can carry and still no cart.......And right now the community is awesome and Im sure I could work something out with someone, but that tight knit group wont last forever cause the devs want and need thousands of players here, not just us.

Again sorry to hijack the thread and I apologize if in my newness Im not "getting" it. Im just going from what I see as a new player......and Im at work and cant do anything but prowl the forums lol

Chris

[MrDDT]

I dont mean to hijack the thread but if what you say is happening MrDDT, then great. And it may work right now with a few dozen (maybe) actively trading tribes with a few hundred(maybe) active members, but dont we want a few HUNDRED active tribes with a few THOUSAND players? Remember that this needs to work a year down the road, not just right now and if you have that many players all using different currencies, new players will be so confused they'll quit. Everyone is looking at it from an experienced players point of view, which is to be expected, but from a NEW players point of view thats confusing as hell lol. Im all for immersion and a player driven economy (played eve for 7 years lol) but that economy NEEDS a standard form of currency.

I like your idea of breaking things down excpet for the transportation issue (like loading up a truck to go buy a gallon of milk lol) and again you'll have dozens of different things used as currency with a different value set on them by different groups.

For example right now in game I need a recipe for shears. Whats the going rate for that? Nails? Rivets? Leather? What if I dont have enough of one? Will you take nails AND rivets? Oh wait....I dont have enough pack space to bring you nails AND rivets and since Im new I dont have a cart....crap, now what do I do......melt it all down...crap thats more WEIGHT than I can carry and still no cart.......And right now the community is awesome and Im sure I could work something out with someone, but that tight knit group wont last forever cause the devs want and need thousands of players here, not just us.

Again sorry to hijack the thread and I apologize if in my newness Im not "getting" it. Im just going from what I see as a new player......and Im at work and cant do anything but prowl the forums lol

Chris


http://www.industrialstrengthbootcamp.com/page.php?15

This is a link to what our tribe does for trade. Its not hard for other large trading tribes to do this, and guess what? You now have a currency in game in that area. It only takes 1 or 2 tribes to set up a currency in an area for it to work.

More people, means they wont need to trade far away, so local currencies (Like the real world) will start to pop up.

Then people can do longer trades to improve their local currencies exchange rates.

Added after 7 minutes:

I wanted to also add that more tools to promote trade would fix a lot of this. Like merchant options, and able to trade or price items better IN GAME.

New players have problem because the tools are not there for them to see it, you could set the price at any amount but they still need to find where to buy the items. Plus how are you going to value items?

[Dzarren]

The discussion is not taking the direction i expected to take, but still i think its very relevant.
I actually like the possibility of setting currency for tribe, but then i should be able to create my own currency item, for axample an doucument that says this has the value of so many wonderland credits( wonderland is my tribe :))
what i then like to see is that we make trade union so that i make agreements with for example IS that we accept each others currency at an certain exchange rate.
Or that we start accpting the same currency for example.
This would also be the way to create trade posts and even alliances.
If i would join an traade union i would like te give certain rights to its member on my tribal land.
That are things i like te see
Also i would like to be able to set buy and or sell orders on a kind of advertising bulletin.
for example i want too buy 1000 stone where i pay 1 wonderland credit each i post that on a board and poeple just sell me the stone till the order is filled.
Then i for example sell saws for 500 wonderland and this without any human interaction.
But this way beyond where we are atm but still love the idear

Added after 5 mins of thinking :)
What will happen is that the trustworthy tribes will esthablish them self and a lot of the small tribes nearby will start use that currency( because it is an stable and trustworthy currency)
And after a while we end up with a few currency's that will rule Xsyon.

[ceej389]

I think the buy and sell orders would be a great idea, except the whole traveling bit of it. but the idea of "creating" your own currency wouldn't work. If you have an easily made, unlimited supply of currency, eventually it will start to lose its value. Its why governments dont let us set up printing presses in our basements to make money and why they dont just print more to pay of national debts.

The only plus about using a crafting mat is it has its own built in sink...the mat itself is taken out of circulation when an item is crafted.

[Archangei]

None of this is sustainble until decay come into play.

For a Currency to work you need stuff to go out and in.. they need to go both ways, even if nails can be gotten from scavanging junkpiles.. well then you are atleast working for em and they'll be used in constructions to counter act decay?

[Hodo]

I am a bit confused ceej389, what exactly are you asking for? I mean currently the game is set on a very simple barter based economy. Like Industrial Strength uses Nails as their currency, but I personally dont use nails, I use screws, as I can find nails all day long, even gold nails, but have yet to find ONE DAMNED SCREW!!!! I have even considered taking in things like leather, and bones, because I use them but again dont need nails. So if someone wanted to trade with me, and they have nails as their currency, then we wont have much of a problem. I will pay them in nails they will give me leather, bones and screws at a agreed uppon rate.

I can remember in Roma Victor when I used to sell long swords of 99ql for 3-5 high ql goat skins. Even though there was a currency in game. But the Sestarce used in game was actually useless for anything you really needed, and based off of real life money, you bought sestarce with real Euros, which would make the game very expensive. But you would be left with thousands of game currency, but no items you use or need. And with no way to exchange those ses back to EUD, there was no point in getting them. So most of the tribes in the northern part of the game used goat skins as currency. As they were rarer, and everything used some form of leather.

On to another topic seen here... Transporting and protection of goods.

Well look at history in the real world. Trading was not a safe life style. It was frought with danger, you had bandits, robbers, thieves, murderers, highwaymen, raiding armies, pirates, privateers, buccaneers, actual military units, and the enviornment to deal with. There is a story of some Turkoman merchant during the crusades who would trade with Christian crusaders, and turn around and trade with the Saracens. He did this for many years till he was finally cought in the middle of a clash between Crusaders and Saracens, and he was trampled to death by the horses of both armies.

If you want safety in tradeing, you should travel in groups, hire protection, or avoid heavily populated routes. Right now that is difficult due to the lack of mounts or a faster form of travel. But it wont get safer if you have mounts, it will just get faster, for you and the attackers.

The "Silk Road" trading route to the orient, was rarely traveled by loan individuals, it was often traveled by caravans of people who were all headed in generally the same direction. This wasnt a social thing, it was a protection thing. This is why the most powerful animal on land, the Elephant travels in herds from one water hole to the next. Not because they like to hold hands and sing koombiya, but because they are protecting the weaker older, or younger ones who may not otherwise survive the trip. Even the smallest creatures on land do this, ants work as colonies to move, fight, and build.

So if you want to live alone, fine, but if you want to trade, I suggest making friends and working in teams. Trust me, I used to be a guy who thrived on raiding the solo trader in route to market in UO. It is harder for a attacker, to pick off a group than it is for a attacker to kill a single person.


Last part, I promise.

If we ever get wagons or animal drawn carts, I see a huge rise in trade, as it will be more economical to actually trade for things that you want or need, then it would be to attack and kill. This with a stiffer death penalty, you will see some curbing of the random suicide attack. (One vs MANY defenders).

Right now its just a wait and see game, work on your projects, build your toon, make friends, make enemies, now is the time to figure out who you can trust, and who you want to destroy.