03/24/2015 - Trading Post Feedback - Test Server

[Peanuts]

this guys do not even play anymore and the prices are not really a basement. even if most of them was (imo) fair.

why are blueprints the currency? i think ppl expect to build in this game and the part of surviving is not even there. you can startve, you can die of thirst, you can be killed by a critter, but thats all. you should have more options whit the stuff we already have ( animals do not close to campfires, campfires hurt players if they cross them, wandering revenants who attack player during night, or simply stuff which is left in the apocolypse like mines, traps, radioactive zones ( not just ourside the world ), there are lots which can be used to increase the survival aspect.

BP's are "not" hard to find. i was spending about 5h with 2 mates in 1 junkpile, we figured there are "at least" 32 diffrent BPs, 6 of them are new BPs. we found over 50 in this time which is not a low rate for 5h*3.

about the leaving player.. i think currently for a new player its "way to much" in the beginning. he want to craft something and recognize he need 3 tools, 1st a hammer, not to hard to make but for a new player already a effort of 15minutes maybe to figure where to get everything. 2nd a saw, he maybe give up after 1h searching for components, 3rd nvm anymore.

the current Tutorial is useless, nobody buy a microweaver and read the book about it, everyone just conect the cable and check how it works. same in the game, nobody want to read this tutorial, a tutorial with a reward system where you really have to do things, and get the items a starter have in the backpack step by step, also learn how to use them would help a lot! i cant tell if this would be even possible in this game to script, but founders island would offer enough space to build such a free running.
most players who use global will get recruit offers, join a tribe, get a role in new players tribe they maybe dont like or wont be part of the community in a vet players tribe couz there is a group of ppl who do stuff together and a newb is not able to go for this. ( doesnt mean i'm doing that with any new player, i just saw it a lot in another place name i wont call here ).

the tradepost is not neccesairy imo, but whenever jordi decides to implement something he will do, its his game and nobody will change this. in a world where we have to start at zero with gathering and crafting, a npc which puts items to the game is not really a good idea, doesnt matter what he sells.

as i always said, i rather see stuff fixed and working which we already have, instead of new stuff which cause new issues and time to get it running perfect. i understand that the arc stuff was needed to fix the animal behavour, but right now i would like to see combat and mobs are working well, maybe even perfect - couz this is something 90% of the players are interested in new same as old.

[wastelandstoic]

BP's are "not" hard to find. i was spending about 5h with 2 mates in 1 junkpile, we figured there are "at least" 32 diffrent BPs, 6 of them are new BPs. we found over 50 in this time which is not a low rate for 5h*3.

As far a BP's and their acquisition/ rarity in game goes I think that mileage certainly varies.

I have only ever spent 5-6 hours scavenging once in the whole time I've played. As a casual player I have played in groups of 1-3 hours at a time. On the weekends I might be in game for 3-6 hours. My experience scavenging has been mixed. I have never gotten the BP's I wanted from scavenging. I have had to rely on tribe members and trading with others to collect the BP's I wanted to build with. Certainly not from grinding arch either (super low inspiration and very poor selection). I had a second account for a good while which was my primary scavenging account but scavenging is so random-- when all I really wanted was select BP's, cash and a few other items -- I gave up on acquiring them through scavenging and closed the account. I will certainly use the trading post feature (If it populates enough) to attempt to pick up those new and few remaining BP's that I'd like to have.

you should have more options whit the stuff we already have ( animals do not close to campfires, campfires hurt players if they cross them, wandering revenants who attack player during night, or simply stuff which is left in the apocolypse like mines, traps, radioactive zones ( not just ourside the world ), there are lots which can be used to increase the survival aspect.

I'm all for these kinds of additions but since it's primarily a one man show we wait and take what we can get.

[znaiika]

" Xsyon,
6) ‘Why not tie trade totems together?’ This is something I have considered before. However, this gives players even less incentive to come together and encourages them to sit at their homesteads and deal with everything remotely."

Unless, people can see what is for sale and where, and maybe even could reserve an item/s then travel to that location and make a trade.

As for blueprints as a currency, it's going to be same thing as it was with nails, and will change to some kind other resource as a currency later on, but will not change a thing only will limit something else.
Separate currency has to be in, other then resources, could be copper coins, silver coins, gold coins, dollars etc...
The thing is people collect resources then have no way to get rid of them in order to get what they need, this is a biggest problem with this economy.


I would suggest to add all resources to decay system much like food, that includes blueprints as well, "trade fresh with fresh" type of system.

[Mactavendish]

Ok...

After reading everyone's posts I think I will weigh in here.

Let's define a few terms really quick to start.

Player Interaction: Different players being in close proximity, or physically near by. ( Jordi repeatedly said he wants this )

Player Driven Content: Player made quests, player run trade hubs, crafting for money/items/gear, etc...

Player Economy: Players interacting with each other to provide or seek to have needs fulfilled, by means of currency or barter.


Now the problems are what Jordi outlined, but let me add that most players don't want to go through all the effort to make quests, or run events, or even run around to other tribes, because they have been trained by other games to expect their hands held, or items be easily gained, or to be able to "corner" a market. This game was not designed to be liek the other games out there and to me that's a very good thing.

The economy must be driven by needs and wants to continue functioning. What Our Dev is doing is working towards that goal and trying to help us learn to cooperate to create that economy. We as players need to work with what he is doing.

The survival aspect of this game is minimal atm that's true, mostly just food and drink, and the occasional animal you may need to avoid. Bringing in better animal AI to allow for them to attack your homestead, or shoot, even eat up your food, can only happen with him working on the AI and pathing issue like he is right now. What he is planning with the trade hubs and tribes beyond the mist is just part of a grander plan that we need to work with him on to make it happen.

SO, so May I suggest that we move beyond the bickering over our personal desires and look to the overall scheme, and give things a try, give constructive feedback, and see what we as the players can do to drive the content forward, rather then complain its not like some other game.

Btw tying the trade totems together does nothing to help bring us together or develop an economy. Allowing us to see on our trade totem that XYZ tribe has an item we need, so that we could go to that tribes location to buy or trade for it would in my mind encourage more players moving around the map to interact with players. But letting you buy from your local totem any item ( ie auction house style ) would destroy what Jordi is trying to do here.

[znaiika]

Btw tying the trade totems together does nothing to help bring us together or develop an economy. Allowing us to see on our trade totem that XYZ tribe has an item we need, so that we could go to that tribes location to buy or trade for it would in my mind encourage more players moving around the map to interact with players. But letting you buy from your local totem any item ( ie auction house style ) would destroy what Jordi is trying to do here.

I agree here.

[mush]

2) One main goal of the Trading Post is to give players a way to obtain recipes they want in a less tedious and random manner than scavenging. You will still not be guaranteed that traders will bring specific recipes, but there will be a much better chance than random scavenging.

Why not alter scavanging, so scavenged items populate the bar similar to when you run under a tree and get branches,leaves, flint etc, this would allow you to select more of the items you are specifically looking for rather than constantly picking up items you dont want.
A different number of items could populate the bar depending on you scav level say 1 or 2 at low levels up to 5 at high levels but you can only select 1 item to pick up before moving on to next spot.

[GuideXaphan]

I like the idea Jordi, if we have these mist trade totems I think people will be more apt to browse the tribe totem while they are there and spend some money on something the tribe is selling that they might need.

I would personally keep it to large tribes as someone mentioned why would a trader plop a totem down at a homestead or hundreds of homesteads?

I know some people are saying they don't have large enough tribes nearby to make this something they would use but you would rather make the trip to founders if it was setup as a global trade center? That's a even longer trip and for most a good swim.

I would personally put tools and other small needed things on my trade totem if people came out of their way to my mist trade totem because I know they would at least browse my wares when they stopped by, currently I don't think they have much of a incentive to visit me no matter what I have for sell because it may be a little out of the way, or they have someone closer to do trades with. Growing communities is always a plus.

I think personally on my play account through the years of playing the game counting my tribes baskets of cash they have as well, all total we have nearly if not over 1 million dollars bills saved up that we don't burn on the totem or other things because they are not really worth while to really drop the cash on. The totem will get 2k bills dropped on it from time to time but not really that often unless I'm in the grinding mood.

I think it'll drop some money off players like myself buying bp's, schemes, and the like that I would want but I can also recoup some back from selling needed useful items players want or excess schemes/bp's I have no use for or have a massive surplus of and would like to sell for some more cash because money makes the world go round and I would need to offset spending on a mist trade totem as, yeah that is a lot of cash to have but we've had no reason to burn it. We also spent countless hours over years and years hording cash as it had no value but we knew it may one day as with a few other things people consider useless yet you never know when it will have a use. I say keep anything you scavenge for that very reason and sell off the excess to those that need or have a use for it.

Allowing tribes to take people in for crafting projects like architecture builds and the like could be another way to sink money to those that don't have enough. I've worked on other games for people gathering or building for the game currency. I wouldn't mind paying a player some determined amount to help on a project or gather a set amount of resources for me, and I've done trades for said resources before because I didn't have the time or the want to do it myself. The players that did gather things for me or mats always made out good but this was on the pvp server when we only had one server, so we had to be cautious with business dealings.

[Whorlok]

i aggree to Guide Xaphan,
This trade Totem is nice!...but:

Why not make this Tradetotem as a house/chest/totem for important Events or Points of Interest? Player must doing anything to come to those Tradetotems.
Tradetotem: random schemes and Random highend resources and only as a GM Item(chest) where only the GM can place. If Player wanted doing a Event it was perfect as a Goal to reach! (GM have also not so many work)
or POINTS OF INTEREST on the middle of the POI is this Totem!...Again...Player must doing Action to reach this.

in my head are thousand ideas for Player Event with those trade totem as a reward

[wastelandstoic]

Why not alter scavanging, so scavenged items populate the bar similar to when you run under a tree and get branches,leaves, flint etc, this would allow you to select more of the items you are specifically looking for rather than constantly picking up items you dont want.
A different number of items could populate the bar depending on you scav level say 1 or 2 at low levels up to 5 at high levels but you can only select 1 item to pick up before moving on to next spot.

Something along this line is what scavenging needs.

My thought was to link it with other skills where a player had reached high skill achievement status (at say 70, 80, or 90). For example if a player decided he wanted to be a bone crafter and has raised his bone craft to say 90. Then, when he goes scavenging a second scavenging button or menu would be available for use and the types of items that he could find would be skewed (by whatever percentage) to items useable in bone crafting. The same type of 'better chance' to find the items associated with said specialized skill could be available for ANY skill that player had raised to the determined skill level trigger (again, 70, 80, or 90).

In realistic terms someone who is a specialized (bone) crafter digging through a scrap pile will ignore all the random stuff --metal poles, BP’s and even dollar bills to concentrate on rubber soles, bones and rubber grips, etc. An architect; building mats and BP’s. A tailor; cloth, feathers and cloth patterns. A leatherworker; leather, leather patterns and soles…

Being able to find the things you want/need from scavenging would make it much more rewarding.

[MrDDT]

My belief is that first off, the mist trade totems should cost money for the tribe hosting them. More items you want listed from them, and more refreshes, the more money it will cost.
Then large or small tribes can host them and build up a trader location.
So build a "mist trade totem" and pay to have it updated and pay to have more items listed per update. Tribes will want this, to draw more people to their tribe area, and themselves.

Dollars do need a sink, massively. Currently the only sink is the tribal bonus totem, which needs to be increased by about 10x its so cheap.

Not sure why a guide is posting their opinions of their player feed back on their guide account but pretty much anything a guide posts saying how much xyz they have or how hard it is, goes out the window when as a guide you can port or spawn any item, and they have done.

Next major step needs to be done is remove death porting items around the map, along with reviewing the weight of items.

Next is all trade totems need to DISPLAY all items for sale at all trade totems and their locations. (Maybe with an option to opt out of displaying your totem).
It is way to hard for people to find the items or the relative prices of items they want. Many people I'm sure would sell common goods like, wooden handles or granite on a trade totem if they knew that people would see them. This doesnt hurt local trading, it promotes it. Because the items are still going to be valued at the cost vs distance. Knowing you can buy 1000 granite for 3$ each 1000m away or 1000 granite for 2$ 5000m away, will give people choices of which to buy based on distance and effort to get them. Yet still allow them to see relative pricing around the map.

Totem search options need to be better also, it's very hard to use the current trade totem.

Mist traders selling BPs is a good way to get many players involved in the trade market of them, but don't forget that it will not take long for new players and vets to no longer care about BPs because they will be pretty common. You must thing of ways of keeping vets also focused on these mist traders. I would say high end crafting mats. But again it poses another problem of why do people need to craft high end items.

These mist traders are a good idea, but after this I would start to think long term goals of players in game and what they are focusing on and why.
Survival is currently the newbie issue, but after a few days in game, players can survive very easy. Next would be what are their goals for playing the game. How do they effect the game as a whole?
Building wondrous building projects are currently the core to the game, but those do not take much of anything else other than BPs and some basic materials. What are people's goals after that or if they don't care much about just building?