Trading Post

[calodine]

Here's the thing. Couriers etc are great, but how would you instantly know that someone on the other side of the world wants to trade X for your Y?

...Messenger pigeons?

Have a re-read of my main post.

The automated part of the system would be the selling/view of what is for sale. You put the item you want to sell into the trade post, and set the price, just like in the stalls we already have. Unlike the stalls we already have, trading posts could have a 'global sale' screen, where you see what is available at all existing trade posts.

And thats exactly what I was complaining about.

Being able to see what someone on the other side of the world is selling is a stupid, stupid idea.

I'd much prefer a trading setup like this:

New world soon. We get a load of small villages/groups pop up. Naturally, one such group in each area will be the best. The biggest, the richest. So you get the people from the other towns going to trade with them and each other. You get some explorers from the next grid over who find a village, they point them to the town. They go there, someone goes back to the town in the other grid. Bam, you have regional trading. Villages trade to nearby towns, towns do the big trades with other towns. Why? Villages have less stuff, and just going to a random place and trying to sell things without prior setups is silly. So you sell to the town, who has more stuff (From the other villages doing the same), and needs more stuff. Villages get what they want from the town, the town gets what they want from the villages. Either needs something their area doesn't have, you ask the next town over to bring some next trip.

Best part? We can already do this. All we really need are caravans. And horses

It's also good because it means a raiding group would have better luck going to the town and doing some detective work to find out if any of the villages have good stuff, and maybe what time they bring it over to the town. Better raiding dynamics too.

[vikingdragons]

wow, thats a really good idea, but i still think having some kind of TP would be cool, just make it take lots of time to be delivered, so that ppl would perfer caravans over the TP. The TP would only be used for those extreme trades, that have to be done from across the world.

[calodine]

But...Why?

They would ruin any kind of regional supplies. Just like teleporting does. It makes anything but the absolute best resource useless.

[vikingdragons]

hmm, well, i never looked at like that...your right, that kinda of stuff can ruin the games economy, so yes, maybe a global trading market is bad, but also think of the problems that can arise when (not if, but when) the ghost towns start to form. i agree with you now, but thus ghost towns can be a problem. maybe one day, you have nice, solid trading routes that you rely on, and then a village or town goes dark, and you lose precisious resources. we need a way to find any claim, village, or town easily, and if one goes dark ofr, lets say a week? the claim/idol is removed, so that it frees up resources and land. i knw that can be done sometimes, but with only the main grid mapped, it will be really hard on frontier settlements.

[calodine]

Or, you know, people could move in. If you have a successful town with good resources and an established trade route abandoned, why not move in, instead of rerouting the trade to a less ideal spot?

[vikingdragons]

i dont think i was clear enough. these places are already claimed! ppl own them! but the ppl died in their sleep or were abducted by aliens or taken in the rapture, so the stuff is sitting there, and only the ppl with all of those crazy-expensive criminal skills can go in and use the crap that got left behind. I say if a Claim Owner doesnt log in for 1 week, the claim is removed, and if no one who is part of a village logs in for 1 week, the idol is removed. that way, you dont have these gaint ghost towns and annoying invisible walls everywhere, and will let ppl use the stuff that otherwise would just sit there until the next apocalypse, and it would also encourage ppl to play more often, and really invigorate the game's population and economy.

[calodine]

1 week? No way.

Maybe if a dead guys stuff isn't taken by a reincarny after two weeks. If someone doesn't log in for a month.

[vikingdragons]

ok, a month is reasonable, but no longer. if their isn't a reiecarnation or any activity whatsoever, the stake/idol is gone, no exceptions

[Yolan]

I'd much prefer a trading setup like this:

New world soon. We get a load of small villages/groups pop up. Naturally, one such group in each area will be the best. The biggest, the richest. So you get the people from the other towns going to trade with them and each other. You get some explorers from the next grid over who find a village, they point them to the town. They go there, someone goes back to the town in the other grid. Bam, you have regional trading. Villages trade to nearby towns, towns do the big trades with other towns. Why? Villages have less stuff, and just going to a random place and trying to sell things without prior setups is silly. So you sell to the town, who has more stuff (From the other villages doing the same), and needs more stuff. Villages get what they want from the town, the town gets what they want from the villages. Either needs something their area doesn't have, you ask the next town over to bring some next trip.

That does sound more natural, but I think the problem of distance, when combined with actually being able to find people online, forces people to use IRC atm. You don't want to haul some stuff half way across the world to find out if maybe somebody wants it. Given this reality, I'd rather there was something in-game people could use, which is even better in not being reliant on somebody being online.

You also mentioned that my idea would result in only the best stuff being any good. Well there are two other variables than Q. How far away the trading post an item is stored in from the trading post you are at (maybe a _long way away_), meaning either a long distance trip or paying heaps of bucks to have someone haul it for you.. or the price of the thing itself. Higher Q = the more somebody is going to ask for it. There's no reason to suggest low Q objects will be wothless, just worth _less_, which is as it should be.

Being able to see what someone on the other side of the world is selling is a stupid, stupid idea.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see how being able to see what somebody else is selling far away is 'stupid'. You're going to have to tell me why. Because its not realistic? That's not very persuasive for all the old reasons.

We need a system that promotes trade and connects people. Just adding wagons and horses aint enough.

Devs?

[calodine]

They don't have phones. Realism is a plenty valid argument here.

Both would be solved by what I jokingly suggested earlier. Messenger pigeons. Well, not pigeons, but something of that ilk. Maybe a courier, with a horse and the planned marching, assuming some sort of path finding, you could cross three grids quick enough.

Big towns will spring up. I'm pretty sure we agree on that. all we need to do is triangulate based on the positions of other towns to find one in the middle. The other towns send couriers to that town with a list of what they want and what they have. Some other village has something you want and you have something they want, the couriers hearth back, tell the village, and get a caravan ready. I don't mean a shitton of people carrying boats, I'm talking full caravans with huge storage space and a travel speed closer to run, maybe requiring a two-three space lane to move. This means building trade routes. That means banditry is possible, which means mercenaries. Now people can fight others without resorting to griefing, and actually get something out of it.

You don't want couriers, the same system works, just add some sort of automated messenger pigeon type of thing. I don't know what they would have used way back when. You send a message, it gets there a few hours later.

So what we need: horses and caravans (Both have plenty of use in general, especially horses), possibly writing on paper and board. These could be used on a more local scale for leaving messages for other villagers, assigning jobs, other announcements etc.