Trade Idea: Packaging

[LadyGoo]

The traders are currently facing a huge problem: they have to deliver the enormous amount of materials to the market in order to sell them. As a result, they would have to make the trip several times. Even with the portico compromise, the teleportation, and tradable goods management is quite painful for the noobs.

Imagine the situation:
Someone is buying 10 blueberries for 1 coin on the market. You would like to buy a tree planter's pot that cost 15 coins. Actually, you would like to buy 4 of them. That is 600 blueberries to deliver to the market. Your max capacity for 1-time travel is around 165 (your inventory, 2 large chests in a boat that you risk to be stolen at the theft-zone). Even if you would bring 2 bulls with you with packed stuff in them, it is still painful to get that 60 coins. Imagine, if you need more items, like herbalist tables, seeds, water and etc. You would have to spend a lot of time on travelling, packing, risking your items, waiting for your character to restore travel weariness (probably you can do only 1 travel at a time), and you do not have that much free time to spend on trading. Your crops are already grown, cattle is starving, characters need to be fed with curios. Oh! You have made all the way down to the market just to find out, that some other f... fella just sold a bunch of blueberries and the barterstand cannot receive any more blueberries. The day is ruined.

Now, you're the trader who wants to deliver goods to the market. You would sell some stuff like raw meat, hides and etc. for really cheap prices. You have a lot of rubbish in your village piling up and being thrown away, although you could have sold them and make some profit. However, the travel and the effort just kills your motivation to move. Better to sell something that costs very high (jewelery, clothing and etc.) than make 4-5 trips for the same amount of coins by selling some stuff like boards. Consequently, the prices on the market are very high. The poor noobs also have to make more travels to get their items.

Imho, we should be able to package the stuff we would like to deliver, so we could transport more items per travel. Maybe even the packages could be sold to the barters, making both the trader's and the noob's life easier.
You should be able to package your items at a packaging workstation. The packaging consumes hides and allows you to compress 5 or more slots in 1. Unpacking leads to the hide being destroyed (item sink!) and the items unpacking to your empty slots or dropping on the ground. Consequently, you could save a lot of travel weariness and sell 600 berries within 1 travel. Everyone is happy! Improving the travels and item transportation would help the trades a lot, making the prices more affordable, higher range of items being sold and etc.

[zebratul]

Selling food en masse is impossible now - you cannot move cupboards via boats/pack animals, and nobody will bother crafting that many chests to move foodstuffs around.
I'd love to see some sort of a single-use wrapping or a burlap bag that would allow you to tuck in 30-60 food items into a liftable sack

It would decay very fast and require materials like cloth and ropes to craft, creating more resource sink, boosting the economy.

[iamahh]

Connect a barter stand to a charter stone, so anyone who visited that charter could trade from a distance.

Or build a Market structure in you village, and add kin for trade, if they have a Market in their village too.

Could involve NPC carriers for added crime drama.

[vatas]

This idea is potential. Some infrastructure and materials (consumed/destroyed when unpacking) to create liftable package that holds hundreds of items doesn't seem too unreasonable to me.

Idea would be that you cant just walk into forest, collect hundred berries into a package and hearth back to your base.

[maze]

We had this idea before- I forgot who said it~ j or L.
but anyhow they said it would be to easy to exploit.
What if you think about it for a moment, is true~ but with a few systems in place think the idea can be made now a days.

The idea would need refinement an a way it cant be exploited (super storage).

you go to stall
see it's buying <item>.
you click on a package in your inventory and the package would be set to <package for item>.

you can then go back to your village and fill the package up with <item> till it's full [insert number of items the stall willing to buy].
you can then take the package back to the trade stall and sell the package.
the package would break apart and fill w/e inventory the stall was set to.

the package should have a time limit of an hour before the package splits from weight. to prevent people from trying to super storage items.

if a package is used with items that are stolen. the package should be reduced in time to 15min.

if a package expires /splits open all the items are dump to the ground.

a package can only have 1 type at a time & items in the package can not be removed till item is sold. to prevent people from using super inventors.

[ven]

My initial thought reading this was that it would encourage huge trading centers instead of local barter. The only advantage of trading locally is that it's easier for minor stuff and this feature would take that away.

Instead of changing game mechanics for convenience, I think this problem is one of the cases that could be solved by the players. If a large trade center is having issues with customer logistics, they could create intermediate posts/caravanserai/village attachments/exchange and delivery shops at different points of the map, and offer to do the service themselves from there or something.

And as maze says, I think that, if done wrongly, this could make raiding and alt vaulting much worse than it already is.

[LadyGoo]

Instead of changing game mechanics for convenience, I think this problem is one of the cases that could be solved by the players. If a large trade center is having issues with customer logistics, they could create intermediate posts/caravanserai/village attachments/exchange and delivery shops at different points of the map, and offer to do the service themselves from there or something.

The logistics will not help the issue, though. The key problem is the barterstands being limited greatly / transportation of bunch of objects in the fewest number of trips as possible / or the travel weariness being a big issue (explained why in the feedback for gildings). Different points for the exchange and etc. will still be problematic for the currency-supporting village itself since then we would have to transport the items across the map on several trips. Provided that the barterstands are severely limited in the payment types that can be set, we will put ourselves into worse position: not only buying the stuff we do not really need, but also spending more time on maintaining such places, transporting the items and etc.
I am against the attitude that players should always adjust to major flaws in game mechanics, btw. At some point, it becomes worthless to put so much effort into it. It's a game, after all.

And as maze says, I think that, if done wrongly, this could make raiding and alt vaulting much worse than it already is.

People will altvault/carry away everything they can regardless due to the nature of the sieges though. The only times when we were able to loot were when the village didn't expect to be raided at all. If you have spotted the siege 6 hours before it should end (mind that sieges last for 16+ hours nowadays), you still can carry away the stuff regardless whether they've been packaged or not.

I agree with maze that the packages should be limited in time as well. Good idea, actually.

[Kaios]

Stockpiles for everything. Infinite capacity.

And then this:

http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=41095

[LadyGoo]

Meanwhile, my suggestion is directly related to optimizing trades inside of the game. More trades = more vibrant and active community. Stockpiles are hard to use in market conditions due to vandalism needing to be permitted. So, what you have linked is a QoL inside of a village, rather than affecting stuff globally.

[Kaios]

It's pretty much the same thing. You would package a stockpile the same way you're talking about packaging anything else to create a bulk product that is either liftable or movable in some other fashion.