Trade sucks

[shubla]

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

Botting pearls was widespread in legacy and there were no pools, but people still bought them for good money.
Collecting mussels to boil pearls was very feasible for hermits and you could get good tools for just a few of them.

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

I think garden pots being a thing really diminishes this. For example, there is no need to buy blueberries because you can grow them in garden pots with large qualities and quantities.

Tokens would be a lot less mandatory as a currency if new ones had an expiry date for example.

I don't know exact numbers but tokens are probably making some money for devs so they are afraid to do changes into them. But they should not fear, they can always revert and changes could lead to great things.

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

Could replace that 1 person with 2 if token circulation could be reduced and turned into purchasing more new tokens

But 7$/month is overpriced for subs?

For maybe few billion people, yes it is, think of the sub costing 200$ / month, would you buy it?, but if we think about from which countries the game is played and that getting a computer internet connection etc. costs some money too I think its quite reasonable.

[Geliotropvimd]

Tokens would be a lot less mandatory as a currency if new ones had an expiry date for example.

Mass trading for dollars will begin

[Zampfeo]

The crux of the issue is there's nothing a lesser village or hermit could hope to trade with a more advanced village other than tokens and maybe a couple hard to obtain items like salt.

There needs to be more things even a hermit could obtain, that are difficult to bot, can't be produces en masse inside a village, and are useful to advanced villages based on quantity, not quality.

For the first couple weeks, candleberries are a great example since villages try to build mine holes ASAP. Maybe there could be infrastructure objects that act as a foraged resource sink for the entirety of the world. Cavebulbs were a great trade item as well until they became gardenable, but some key forage-only food items could be re-added.

[Zard]

Big villages will always be self sufficient. The addition of garden pots was a curse and a blessing. I have seen some suggestions of foraged and homegrown plants being different which I find to be a nice solution to that problem.
As a small time trader I feel like I have a bigger range of things I am able to buy from others. The big issue is bridging the gap between small timers and big villages. I think we smaller groups can also just live with smaller qualities. You don't always have to have the top quality tools to progress in whatever you are doing.
Overall I think trading has become much better since legacy. Feels safer and more comfortable once markets are up. I don't need to worry about being oath killed.

[MagicManICT]

@Kaios: go and set up a community oriented trade area for the local players and see what it does.

Overall: there's this rift in this community that has to be closed before trade can be considered "proper." That is a rift in what people want for "ease of play" "accessibility" and other seemingly meaningless factors to the subject of "trade." Can't fix the "lack of trade goods" without also fixing the ease of travel across the map, the locality of certain items, the ease to produce items in garden pots, the global availability of metals, etc etc etc etc. As long as half the vocal players want one thing and the other half wants another thing, nothing is going to get fixed. It feels like politics in the US right now--total lack of compromise, and developers that just aren't willing to say "this is how it is, if you don't like it, we're sorry, but executive decisions have to be made."

[Agrik]

Devs should in general work towards making trading more feasible. Not suggesting anything specific, but pointing out that they should in general give some thoughts while pondering mechanics to think what would make people trade more.

As I see it, the main thing that undercuts the trade is the absence of locality. Why trade anything if you can get everything yourself? Especially if you are the strongest group, you will be able to do most things better than any other player.

In order for a trade to flourish (for example, ore for flax), one shouldn't be able to obtain both goods single-handedly. Those ore-rich and flax-friendly regions should be distinct, and it should be problematic to cover both regions with one group of people. With all the alts and botting, I suppose, it boils down to the (im)possibility to defend both bases with the same army.

Which, in turn, means that one shouldn't be able to reach a distant and different (remember, resources to trade!) region in a time short enough to defend both starting point and destination. Even for a strongest and richest group. There should be limits, simply for the purpose that players do not subdue the whole game. I believe, that's how EVE works? Unfortunately, that's not how H&H works, with all the possibilities to cross half a world and back in a blink of a eye. I remember my feeling when it took many hours to reach a distant part of the game world (W8 or W9, not sure): "Wow, that's a really cool large game world!" Now I see, with all the teleportation the game has, the H&H world is quite small for most influential players.

What I suggest is to place really good resource regions ~1 day of fastest movement apart, while placing worse ones closer, of course. Then to get rid of all teleports, maybe except the most emergency one (with heavy downsides). Let players start in central region and then explore as they wish, or stick to this more populated region.

Why there is less demand for many goods is another question.

IMO, it's not that demand of goods is low. What is low is demand to exchange these goods.

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.

I'm afraid even credos won't help much, as they have not many requirements of a real personal skill and brain activity. And everything else would be either bought or grinded-botted the same way.

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've had an idea to return tokens to their original buyers at each wipe. Wouldn't it be better than an expiration?

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 want to note that any token that is bought but not yet used is like a price paid without the sold object being yet taken. Of course, it can be taken at any time then, but for some time the money is already there while nothing is gone. It's quite a favorable prepayment.

I believe localized resources were added to replace this aspect of the game

They are simply too close to each other and thus technically can be controlled by one group if it's strong enough.

I don't know exact numbers but tokens are probably making some money for devs so they are afraid to do changes into them.

The worst thing happening is the developers becoming dependent on people who do not care about the game, only about winning whatever they see and/or personal comfort.

I apologize in advance, though I wrote this wall of text, I don't know whether I will be able to answer any replies to it quick enough.

[Archiplex]

A suggestion for tokens:

Make it so that you can't conserve them over worlds; simply put, once you extract a token- it has to be used by the time the world expires, or it's lost. No storing it back in hearth fires and so forth.

[Geliotropvimd]

The developers' income will immediately drop dramatically. And merchants will start trading only for real money.

[Kaios]

The token wasn't designed as a way for devs to get cuts from the trades. If they wanted then they could introduce some paid safe trade feature.
It's just an alternative way to buy a sub. 1 token = 1 month of a sub.

I'm not sure what gave you that impression but one of the intentions behind them was most certainly to mitigate the overall RMT taking place. Without having something like tokens as an in-game currency that traders could request or be offered, there were traders that would simply trade for cash directly instead for their high quality goods or players that would make such an offer. In the case of tokens, Jorb and Loftar would at least get a cut out of this process when the trade happens via that method.

This is of course still a problem related to trade itself and not necessarily the use of subscription tokens in trade or the act of real money trading, but in my opinion one of the contributing factors towards this is not that there are a lack of goods to trade but rather like others have mentioned, that the large factions are entirely self sufficient with not only having better quality but greater access to all types of resources.

[jock]

I still think the best way to fix trade is to actually create a tax system for authority, realm buffs, and exp. Then let it be added to coins then realms will actually want people oathed/vassalised. People will buy/sell for goods, xp and tokens, plus with xp there is actually a continual sink via study, heath magic and realm buff (should be village buffs) upkeep.

Then again i also think the game requires a good morality system/ war system, to support the idea and general growth of the game.