How can we encourage more trading?

[Truth0]

I bump this because a) I really feel this is one of if not the most important thing to look at and b) This (below quotes) sums up most of my thoughts and really the thread in general and I it's generally better forum etiquette to bump rather create a repeat thread.

Forced character specialization would do nothing to change the fact that a large village can produce everything in the game, it would just make villages more authoritarian about how their members spend their time. It would also tip the balance of power even further towards large factions, as hermits and small groups wouldn't be able to get by on their own.

For something to be worth trading, it has to be or require one or more of the following types of item:

- Time-consuming to acquire in meaningful amounts. Linen, cavebulbs, etc.
- Requires an advanced character to create. Particularly Psyche crafts, which the devs have noted have gotten rather out of hand.
- Localized, so you can't get it just anywhere. Metal, high-q water/soil/clay.

If we want more trading, we need more items in at least one of these categories.

More time-consuming items? Ugh, there's enough already. For variety I wouldn't mind a few more things like pearls where persistence occasionally gets you a single valuable item, but that's more of a matter of psychology and storage space.

More advanced items? Well, it wouldn't hurt, but it wouldn't really change the trade system as it stands.

Now, more localized stuff, that's what we're talking about. Right now, with fast travel and relatively homogeneous terrain it's not hard for a faction to have everything available internally. But for world 4, no fast travel and regional diversity could add a huge amount here. I don't know about you but when I think of trade the first thing that comes to mind is loading up a wagon or a boat with locally-produced goods and taking them to some place where they're in demand, swapping them for whatever's plentiful there, and continuing on.

Unless character specialization is added (or enforced) and somehow alts were made less likely to be used (don't know how this would go, have some ideas but no good ones) you will never see trading as you see in real world economies/ other simulations. Making land segregated for fertility or 'mineability' will be pointless because people will just continue to make their usual mine alts like they have been and have no large wall in the way of doing so.

Until you see real villages pop up (the ones right now are just glorified BOYS ONLY tree houses) where people come together to trade the basic goods and trades between each other, you will never see any real higher level trading.

If I can cut down a tree, make the pieces, make the table, make the utensils, and make all the food that goes on it, there is absolutely no reason I would seek out someones help in doing so.

On the topic of coins: coinage is also made useless by the fact there exists no 'ground level' forced specialization. Currencies exist because a carpenter may want a pig but the farmer does not want the carpenter has to offer. There has to be the NEED of others skills and objects with strict limitations on what individuals can produce.

Until the "Jack of all trades" gameplay is ended by us (never happening) or forced, you will never really see successful use of coins, villages, and "real" trading.

The fact that you can take LP gained form one task and apply it in a completely different area is really a different topic from specialization. I could see the redesigned learning system making it so say you have to actually hunt to get to be a better hunter, but that's a whole other discussion with its own pros and cons.

The economy blows as most terrain types do not have unique products or animals nor are the terrain types unique to any area (which has been addressed by multiple players as well as the devs). Most skills are easy to get and any one person can be self-sufficient for any of their (reasonable) desires. Allowing people to dump massive amounts of LP into smithing, carpentry, etc (which I know is heavily related but otherwise a separate topic) creates some variation player to player as well as quality that might/does invoke some trading, but in general does not. Maybe the game wasn't envisioned to have much of an economy (despite the existence of vendor stands). I just feel that a living economy encourages travel and more social behavior for those that desire it (as well as make the game less easymode). Although to be honest a traveling merchant in H&H would have a hard life as 95% of all settlements are abandoned and/or destroyed [unless they trade exclusively with the big-name villages (addressed in a quote above) (which I suppose is the only thing that makes sense since newbies, and by extension most everyone else, have absolutely nothing to offer)].

As an aside, Wurm solved this issue slightly by giving players more xp for improving and repairing low quality items compared to their skill level in the relevant skill, thus making newbie products desirable to the veteran players who want to have a chance at continuing to earn worthwhile xp in a specific skill. This doesn't apply here directly, but doesn't have to. There are ways to solve the economy, expand it, and even include newbies in the mix (on the selling side of it).

I'd rather see stands improved with some anti-theft measures. Maybe require a roll of int*stealth vs the shop owners' per*exp to actually steal something, so people have to risk their mains.

This would be a good idea. In addition, allowing traps to be added to the vending stall would be interesting, useful for the problem, and amusing.

As disclaimers... yes, I am new to the game (although not the specific genre) and I have indeed visited Oranges and Apples. It's just disheartening to have already created most of the objects and structures in the game after only a few days of playing as well as owning most of the skills. I have nearly everything I could want and need and it took so little time and effort. I would assume this is a big factor as to why so few people stay to play the game past a week or so. They've already went through and built/seen everything there is (essentially, "beat" the game).

I have more angles I would like to further analyze, comment on, and suggest solutions to, but I need to get off for some time. Please, feel free to continuing discussing these issues. I strongly feel this needs to be corrected.

[bitza]

you have no idea what you're talking about.

on trade and why it "sucks":

there are a shit ton of 'newbie products' that are marketable and can be traded for higher level stuff. bricks, linen and foragables are the first real "trade goods" a new guy can get into. you're not going to get top tier combat gear by trading these but you can develop your character and trade for equipment to go into producing more marketable things (cavebulbs, cheese, pepper) which results in less overall work for the same return on trade or better.

economy is fine, the reason trade "sucks" now (i use quotes because its a matter of opinion) is NOT due to the scarcity of metal vs. other shit, or the fact that newbies can't produce anything worthwhile (they can), but for two reasons:

1. for a fresh noob it's a pain in the ass to get to nople or any other marketplace if you're not already close to it. sure would be nice to have the ring of brodgar back again for this reason

2. permadeath. yep, until this changes (and it isn't), visiting other villages and the old "hidey ho neighbor" thing will always sketch people out to some extent, maybe that dude in linen outside is just waiting for you to hop outside your wall to trade grape seeds for perch, to put on his soldier sword and dragon helm and gut you like a perch, hoping to get your keys. maybe there's a suicide alt camping nople with ranger bows waiting for folks to hop in (this happened fairly frequently in world 2 actually). maybe the shit you just bought is scented, and your new trade partner and his wrecking crew are on their way to your camp right now.

for these reasons and more, people you meet in game might seem cold, wary, or outright not giving a flying fuck what you've got to say or what you want. some people in game are nice, the ones that aren't are probably just overly cautious/paranoid.

maybe not everyone thinks like i do, but this game is full of assholes and it will never be a carefree trip to the farmer's market, and thats why i love it

on localized resources: (I know i've posted something along these lines before)

wagons suck for transport, rafts are even worse, removing fast travel and implementing localized resources would be the dumbest idea ever.
if i'm in a situation where i can either mine iron in the north, or grow crops in the south, i'm not going to find a trade partner for goddamn flour or shit like that. i'm going to make a 'north' indy alt and a 'south' nature guy, and cram deer dogs until i can warp back and forth. or if fast travel is removed, i guess i'll be caravaning to myself which is even more retarded.

on "ground level forced specialization": don't have a thing to say that avu didn't already say, and probably more succinctly and clearly than i could.

[bitza]

atm its more like u see half the stands empty/raided and corpses lying around, pretty much no people. has more the feeling of buying things after midnight in a dark side street than a market. it would also make it interesting for people just to spend time trading, e.g. u start with a brick and after 10 trades u got 2 bricks and 2 seeds.

yeah, he said it better too. this is the effect that permadeath has on the economy and trade

[DatOneGuy]

I don't see much of a problem with current trading, people not wanting to trade just don't want to take risks, and that's fine, there will be places eventually where you don't have, but atm taking a risk letting in a newbie is the same risk of taking in a griefer alt, so any place that's safe and will let you in, probably isn't safe. For example AD's Black Market, they plan to only have people sworn in with Charterstone access from villages they've traded with quite a bit, now this is fine as it allows them to regulate by-character who is allowed in, but once the person swears in, if he turns out to be a griefer despite all the screening process, he can get in any time, I mean what can you do, break the CS? Have ALL those people get sworn back in?

There's no real secure way to have a marketplace, but just like IRL, even today for all the security we have some crazy bomber could come in and blow the place up, someone can pull out a gun and shoot ya in the face, anything can happen and sometimes it does.

As SpidersEverywhere put it though there are three reasons to trade for things, and we have nothing in the third category that you don't have to travel for.

Now, while I really like the idea of Dwarf Fortress style caravans coming to my city to trade goods I don't enjoy the idea of caravaning out in long distances to someone else's, especially with current mechanics.

However if they do do away with fast travel and this becomes how it works (or if there is some other reason CR travel becomes unfavorable for trading), I already have a good plan of where to live, why, and how to setup my village so

[Truth0]

I had not fully examined and commented on every angle as I mentioned in my disclaimer, and you both did hit upon the weak points that I had yet to bring up. I agree with the challenge that full PvP, permadeath, alts, and the travel system poses. And it is certainly too much to ask people to "play nice," especially if they just really want to role-play a mean character.

The first and probably most common solution to bandits, d!cks, etc, that comes to mind is thinking of a way to make trade and travel worthwhile enough that some people would bother to set up a few safe trading centers/villages as well as at least one "safe" route to get there. Usually this comment/suggestion is made by those who really want to role-play a traveling merchant or mercenary. But I am saying in this instance that there is no incentive to create "safe" zones and/or areas of trade because, again, most people don't have what anyone else wants (with perhaps the exceptions that bitza mentioned such as linen and foragables, as well as of course high quality items from veteran players). For people to risk their lives (or alts) in the pursuit of trade they really need to be making trades that are to them that worthwhile. Do any of you feel that such an occurrance is possible (not a rhetorical question)?

And you are correct in saying that (although as cool as it would be + some realism), regional resource differences would not change much due to people having alternate characters/accounts (unless the world was even bigger than it already is). In fact the only thing I can think of on the spot that would possibly change the alt issue is making the travel between resource-different zones so tedious and/or cumbersome that it would not be worth doing it yourself (and thus a single merchant who makes it their job/finds it fun to travel, or a chain of merchants, could be of use). Again, such implements would be ideal for those who like that, but it also simply may not work.

Are there any other "solutions" to this issue? Does the playerbase in general care whether or not a full-game economy exists (because right now it's more like a few micro-economies with everyone discluded in them (80% of the players) having no economy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing). I just find it odd that it's not just that I have nothing worthwhile to trade, but that even worse there is nothing that I'd really care to trade for.

[spectacle]

Safe trading centers do exist, but the way they're kept safe is by being restrictive about who gets access, so newbs don't get to go there.

[bitza]

Long-distance traveling merchants are not viable at this stage in the game, for the same reason as before: permadeath. look what happened to the world caravan guys recently. they were driving their wagon around the world, doing their thing stopping at villages and doing the "hidey ho neighbor" bit, trading sometimes, and apparently there was some kind of misunderstanding and they got robbed and killed.

now multiply that by a factor due to the fact that now caravan wagons would be full of valuable trade goods in addition to traveling supplies.

you could always hire/train caravan guards if anyone was willing to do that, but then comes the problem of everyone being online to move together. are you going to round up the wagons and ship out if a guard can't get online to keep up? say next time another guard or 2 or a wagon driver isn't online when it's time to go, what then?

without major changes to game mechanics, trade will never be safer than it is now (which is to say, not all that particularly safe), and removal of fast travel would not change that either. in fact, i would predict that the life of a career merchant, in a world without fast travel, would be a short and brutal one.

on the creation of "safe" zones. nople was designed to be exactly that, and for the most part it is, but people have been killed there several times, the stalls have been robbed numerous times, sodom does police the city and punish criminals but that won't bring back your character or your stuff. the only true "safe" zone there could ever be would require some sort of 'no criminal acts' setup by game developers, and it should be pretty clear that isn't going to happen

[bitza]

I just find it odd that it's not just that I have nothing worthwhile to trade, but that even worse there is nothing that I'd really care to trade for.

unless you are using an alt account, i find it very odd that someone who has been playing less than a month feels this way. this usually indicates that you've been recruited to the game by a friend with an already established village, has cattle, maybe an iron mine, maybe some hq resources here and there. if that is the case, then you've pretty much skipped half of the game and no wonder you're bored now.

got iron? trade it for food, increase your feps.
got cows? make cheese and trade it for high quality combat gear. again, unless you joined up into a top tier village, i doubt you have a pair of thanes or a ranger bow.
and if you think you have nothing worthwhile to trade, i want you to try something. pick 2 cupboards of cavebulbs, post in the trade forum that you have them for sale, and watch what happens

[Truth0]

unless you are using an alt account, i find it very odd that someone who has been playing less than a month feels this way. this usually indicates that you've been recruited to the game by a friend with an already established village, has cattle, maybe an iron mine, maybe some hq resources here and there. if that is the case, then you've pretty much skipped half of the game and no wonder you're bored now.

In fact I did not join an already established village nor am I using an alt (unless you count when I tried the game out a long time ago and did not stay long due to various IRL reasons). Striving for a handful of top-tier items isn't that infatuating, believe it or not, nor is grinding for millions of LP so I can feel sexy with 1300 strength. If I may use a ceiling analogy, I feel like the actual (although perhaps unattainable) top is far away, but that it's extremely narrow up there, whereas I started at a relatively wide base. In other words, although there may be multiple things that are still out of reach (items) and skills can never be "maxed," I've still seen and done the vast majority of things in only a few days, not to mention weeks.

The issue that we've apparently switched to is that yes, I have been here for a short time, and that I've already experienced most of what the game has to offer in said time. It is unbalanced in that regard. Again, the base starts wide which is awesome, but narrows very quickly (and certainly as you pointed out even faster if you've already played, have friends who can give you stuff, and/or started/soon became apart of a village). (As a disclaimer, I am well aware that technically this game is in alpha and of course the developers will create additional content).


As for the original topic, I wouldn't agree with a hemisphere having simply only ore and the other having lots of animals and plants. That doesn't make any sense. The resources would indeed be broken roughly into sectors, but not so black and white. Different areas would have different animals and plants (perhaps as well as natural features such as mountains, etc, which would naturally have more locations for caves and mines). The moors and other terrain types would also be more or less regionalized and have unique plants and possibly other things to them. Whether or not that will create a more active economy, I feel it would still be an exciting thing to implement nonetheless.

[spectacle]

If you feel that building one of everything is "experiencing everything the game has to offer" then H&H probably isn't the game for you, and never will be.