Trade sucks

[Archiplex]

Well, cant say that entire trading is fucked in the game.
Yes, there are some traders, who created trade topics just to farm tokens/rmt for their high quality stuff, and it's obviously that all prices are just a convention, and trading is possible only for tokens.
But there also a lot of people who trades with neighbors with ingame goods for normal prices, and probably markets will open too, where competition normalizes prices.
The only two problems leaves here:
1. People buy their product, so they keep prices on same level
2. There are no other way for competition rather than start your tread and sell for lower prices, which is pointless without market.

To chip into this, yeah this is what i'm feeling mostly as well; people seem to primarily be trading in local resources, endgame resources, or things you need a ton of to farm good food (i.e grey seal)

I barely see anyone even taking forageables that arent pearls (and after going through roughly 600-800 mussels so far, not a single one yet.... thanks global pools).

Yet, on the local scale- i'm finding tons to trade for. Wax in particular is high value for newer players or growing medium-small villages and i managed to secure a pretty nice quality hammer/anvil for myself by trading with some locals for like, 1/100th of what a public trader wants.

Trade is gonna be bad for a little bit until non-top dogs show up who are willing to take more than tokens, i'd wager. The travelling aspect of trading does suck a lot, though. I liked the hub idea as a solution to that, but the lack of charters is going to make things weird; I might just avoid trading entirely minus with locals. No reason to try and thingwall chain to a different continent just to trade a few things with all the risk it entails.

[Barbamaus]

Edit2: The other issue is specialization doesn't really exist. My village can produce everything it needs, and anything it wants (wax, gold, etc) every other even slightly established town wants as well. I don't know how to solve this outside some kind of "town specialization" system like realm buffs but much more specific and exclusive. This would likely make weird and unfun gameplay mechanics for skilled players though.

THIS is the real issue.
I strongly believe we would need some way to have players specialize in a specific field, and make some activities somewhat "group efforts" instead of a player being able do anything by themselves.
Credos could play a big role in it. Potter's clay is one of the few examples that comes to mind of items that not everyone gets to make. That's partially because of the materials it requires, but also because it's locked behind a credo.

Sure huge villages would have enough people to get "all the credos", and some hermit with bots would likely get many of them, but for all the smaller groups it would probably mean having to specialize.
I'd love to see villages with a set focus: a mining village that trades metal. A forestry village entirely focused on higher q wood and berries. A hunting village, selling hides and leather. And so on...

Another thing that would slightly help trade is durability. Equipment should wear down, food and plant materials should rotten, wood would eventually get moldy, and metal might corrode(?).
I usually trade a lot early game, and then slowly abandon trading because our supplies become close to endless. Food for weeks, enough metal to last ages, and I can use the same equipment for the entire world... other than getting that one item I can't normally get myself (let's say, troll stuff), I don't really have many reasons to trade; not even if all my villagers stopped playing.

[Sevenless]

MagicMan still has the worst takes of anyone on this forum. This is exactly what myself and plenty of other players strongly suggested would happen due to the impact of tokens (a real-world currency) on the in-game economy. The devs can either figure out a sink for players to use and get rid of tokens in some other meaningful way that does not involve trade getting screwed over, or they can continue to allow one small subset of the population to take advantage of the rest while at the same time causing trade to be ruined.

Tokens would be a lot less mandatory as a currency if new ones had an expiry date for example. I don't think anyone would be trading primarily tokens if they only lasted 2 months. I'm curious how much revenue is "stolen" from the devs when people buy tokens off big time traders to recycle them into trades with other big time traders. I know that RMT loop happens, and that means the devs are only getting paid for the first trade. After that all that revenue goes directly into a player's pocket instead. Question is, do timed tokens keep enough revenue stream? I'm sure less would be bought, but it would also bring some of the underground token economy to a stop forcing those players to pay full price to the devs instead of discounting to someone making a small paycheck off the game.

It makes me uncomfortable talking about this, given that there's probably at least one person paying rent through that RMT stuff.

[jock]

I made a post a while back about changes to exp, authority and village buffs.

It was simply a redesign to specialise villages down to their own biffs on each specific aspect, add authority/exp to currency and an actual tax on players, villaged and realms then allow this to be stored in coins and traded.

With each villages building in to their specialty, growth in cost higher for additional rather than increased strength of buffs. Adding to this a good sytem of realms with villages oathing or being vassilized. It would create a more dynamic game.

With layers of dipolmacy, pvp, economy and world progression.

Plus i had a credo rework also made that expanded on thia further to specialise players more.

Currently in my mind haven is a game that doesn't yet work for an mmo in any long term system. Hence the world resets required.

[jock]

MagicMan still has the worst takes of anyone on this forum. This is exactly what myself and plenty of other players strongly suggested would happen due to the impact of tokens (a real-world currency) on the in-game economy. The devs can either figure out a sink for players to use and get rid of tokens in some other meaningful way that does not involve trade getting screwed over, or they can continue to allow one small subset of the population to take advantage of the rest while at the same time causing trade to be ruined.

F2P monetization does warp gameplay. Given how much of an impact on trade it has, tokens seem like they're a notable chunk of revenue stream. And I'm sure there are some people who only play because their token rich friend subs them during character development phases at least

I can't think of any solution that wouldn't ruin the revenue stream. And devs gotta eat if we want new content.

Ive traded many many worlds as a seller and honestly i never want tokens. I'll take them as a means to secure some value but i would rather the other things on my list, as would most traders.

The issue is that eventually that list shrinks or pushes most players out of being able to do it.

We really need more foragables, gem types, curio/ hard to attain craftables.

While most hate the global pools they do work in this regard slightly. E.g. pearls

[VDZ]

I'd love to see villages with a set focus: a mining village that trades metal. A forestry village entirely focused on higher q wood and berries. A hunting village, selling hides and leather. And so on...

Even if people can specialize, with trade in its current state it simply won't happen. You need most industries to progress well; you can't just forego the metal industry or hunting products. Importing that in large quantities would require a much smoother trading system.

Having a centralized currency (like how everybody has some amount of gold they can spend anywhere in generic fantasy MMOs) would go a long way for this (entirely eliminating the 'but what do you have that I need' problem of trade negotiations), but it doesn't really feel like Haven.

[VDZ]

We really need more foragables, gem types, curio/ hard to attain craftables.

We have plenty of those. The big traders just aren't buying them (except for a couple, at very unreasonable prices - 40 Rock Crystals for a pickaxe??).

[Kaios]

I'm curious how much revenue is "stolen" from the devs when people buy tokens off big time traders to recycle them into trades with other big time traders. I know that RMT loop happens, and that means the devs are only getting paid for the first trade. After that all that revenue goes directly into a player's pocket instead.

Exactly, funnily enough one of the original arguments in favour of such a system was that it was intended to put more money in to the dev's pockets. I really wonder at this point how many new tokens are actually being introduced to the in-game economy and how many of the same tokens are changing hands between players.

[Procne]

Huh? Did I miss something? I thought token are created only by being bought in the shop. Is there some other way? How exactly the devs would be losing the money?

[Zampfeo]

It used to be that villages were specialized simply due to the nature of resource nodes. One village may have access to a good soil node, another access to water, and someone else clay. It was important to cooperate with your neighbors simply for that reason. With addition of mulch, dig deeper, and bone clay, all of these things are much less important and most villages can be self-sufficient with their basic resources. I believe localized resources were added to replace this aspect of the game, but more often than not it becomes a point of contention between local villages rather than a reason to cooperate because the villages end up fighting over these resources thanks to their timer mechanic.

The combination of gardening, more craftable curios, and global pools has made buying foraged curios (and some food items like cavebulbs) other than pearls pointless as well. When curios were first introduced, this was a great way for hermits to trade with villages because the villages had the infrastructure to produce good crafts and there were enough hermits foraging to keep the villages supplied with flotsams.

So, I have to agree that beyond maybe a couple weeks of high wax demand, there's really nothing an established village needs to trade for these days.