Shops

[JTG]

So. The only excuse I see between post and post is "Unnescessary hassle". Bartering is a hassle, you haven't ever done it in real life have you? One side tries to get the upper hand over the other one. Whether its the vendor or the customer.

[Hamel]

So. The only excuse I see between post and post is "Unnescessary hassle". Bartering is a hassle, you haven't ever done it in real life have you? One side tries to get the upper hand over the other one. Whether its the vendor or the customer.

Don't take my words out of context. I said that organizing dates for trading is an unnecessary hassle, not bartering.

[provo]

So. The only excuse I see between post and post is "Unnescessary hassle". Bartering is a hassle, you haven't ever done it in real life have you? One side tries to get the upper hand over the other one. Whether its the vendor or the customer.

"unnescessary hassle" is the reason we have "collect branch" and not "reach in tree" "put hand around branch" "pull on branch" "break branch off tree" "place hand in bag" "remove hand from branch" "remove hand from bag".

Increasing hassle is no argument for anything and JTG that pretty much your arugment against shops. "Its not enough of a hassle".


However if you want another reason. then fine ill give you one.

There is no barter economy in this game for several reasons, one of which is that their is no method of conducting barter in-game, given players are often offline and there is limited security for trade. A shop in some form, will allow players to barter objects. Once a barter economy begins players can move away from the subsitance economy.

[theTrav]

If there was a shop in Laketown that held fish and let me grab a bunch of them for a wrought coin or a couple of cast coins then I'd use it.

I'd probably put up my own shop that let people take baked goods or cloth for a price as well. I reckon people would use it.

I don't like the idea of restricting shops to lawspeakers or even villages only.

[Gauteamus]

i am just bumping this thread up as I read it and think of different ways to implement shops. I think some kind of asynchronous trading is important to get in the game.

EDITED to add something to my post as I read:
I like the OP take on this, and 144 cic per RL day seems like an all right fee.
Maybe have it so that items in a shop are (virtually) unstealable as long as the cic meter is filled, but have it being gradually easier to steal the items as the meter bar has been empty for a longer time. If you dont pay the (invisible) shop keeper, he will not see to your goods with as much zeal.
Which players should be able to do actions on the building? Can anyone feed the meter? Can anyone place goods? How many separate deals can be placed in one booth? How are the biddings kept separate if there are more offers?

[Jackard]

So, what am I proposing? A new shop building. It'd look something like a market stand, and have at least a chest-sized double inventory (one inventory for items for sale, another for storing your payment). In there you could deposit items you want to trade away and specify what you want for a unit of each type of item you're selling (example: 20 cast coins for a loaf of bread). Then, a customer could come to your shop even if you're offline and buy items. With the theft skill, he could withdraw items from your shop without paying anything. If your shop is on claimed land this would leave a theft clue.

I think they had something almost exactly like this in Ragnarok Online... or maybe it was another mmo, I've played a lot. could have been Mabinogi

not that im endorsing this, mind

[ArPharazon]

I am concerned about the requirement that these shopkeeper NPCs should cost coins as it potentially creates a circular problem: In order to open a shop, one requires coins; in order to acquire coins, one requires a shop (or the ability to produce coins, or the ability to steal coins, or successfully engage in trade with another online player). The obvious way around this would be to allow shops to buy goods (effectively selling coins), but it would be imperative that this feature is activated at the same time as, or prior to, the activation of the selling feature. Otherwise, shops become limited to those who do not require trade to obtain coins.

I think it's pretty obvious that if we have shops (and this topic has convinced me that we definitely should) they will need to be both buy and sell shops. The shop building should probably be limited to one per player, with limited space and a requirement to manually maintain it at least every 24 hours, to discourage alt-based shopping malls. The maintenance thing could also cost you coins, which creates a nice economy sink and makes coins (and by extension everything else, assuming a functioning market) rarer, and helps make industry players a little less disadvantaged and a little more busy with mining. Also, the added overhead would balance using a shop, and if coin dependence was an artificial basis for the economy in this way money would be more common. The shop could even be "fueled" by coins, 100 max, like the crucible. =P Or perhaps just make it deteriorate quickly and require iron to repair, so that if you don't check on it your stuff eventually scatters on the now-empty ground.

The interface could allow you to specify either buy, buy/sell, sell of any good, but only for coins. Perhaps the kinds of goods you sell can be limited, and the shops are tiered similar to walls. Maintenance probably should increase somewhat with shop level.

The shops should probably be hard to knock down, so that you can't just make an alt and bash down, taking everything and stashing it. Not more difficult than walls though, probably. Also if there are tiers, the lower tier shops should be flimsier. In any case, I think it would be better if stealing from a shop was easier than bashing it. If we get skill levels, you could just have theft checks, which are reasonably hard to pass, but still low enough to be relevant.

Of course, none of this applies in-game since we can't affect the weight or composition of coins or pass them off as being of a metal different from what they actually are, so everyone has the ability to instantaneously verify the metal value of a coin with 100% precision.

As it is, the coins are backed by a very benevolent, very reliable government: The Kingdom of Jorb and Loftar. So why back them at all? If we had skill levels and if craft skills could fail possibly wasting materials, maybe some basic metalworking skill could check the coins/bars you get and maybe misidentify them? Since there's a chance crafting can fail with the right ingredients, if you try unknowingly using the wrong ingredients, and fail, you'll never know if it was just luck or if you confused your metals. Of course, if your metalworking skill sucks, it's probably the metals. =p

This would make trade *very* complex, as said, you would have trade routes, possibility of specializing in only one good, a whole bunch of new career options including full-time metal appraiser, shop robber, caravan guard (since there'd be a LOT of caravans now) and so on. It would need at least some skills to be level-able though, which doesn't seem to be in the short term plans... Or you could just use Int for assaying metal and Agi for stealing.

As an aside, by the way, I wonder if we could pay 3-4 low level PCs to stand around RoB and peddle a bunch of our stuff in 6-8 hour shifts? Dunno, maybe work based on commissions with an account for every character?

[Gauteamus]

I think it's pretty obvious that if we have shops (and this topic has convinced me that we definitely should) they will need to be both buy and sell shops. The shop building should probably be limited to one per player, with limited space and a requirement to manually maintain it at least every 24 hours, to discourage alt-based shopping malls.

Nice post, ArPharazon, with many good points.
Two things I don't understand:
What do you mean by "buy and sell shops"?
And what problems do you see with alt-based shopping malls?
Do you mean the potential problem of shops beeing used as a cheap and possibly quite safe way of storage?

[Erik_the_Blue]

Having shops require a constant influx of coins in order to operate creates a deflationary force on the economy. This is probably a bad thing. (To be clear, I'm referring to the supposed NPC shopkeep that would be needed for the shop to even be open. Coins paid to NPCs to hire said NPCs effectively disappear from the world.)

As it is, the coins are backed by a very benevolent, very reliable government: The Kingdom of Jorb and Loftar. So why back them at all?

I'd say that's backing by the gods, not a government. Nevertheless, requiring player governments to back currency allows for more interesting scenarios to form, particularly seeing as this is a very social game when compared to traditional MMORPGs.

[Junkfist2]

requiring player governments to back currency allows for more interesting scenarios to form, particularly seeing as this is a very social game when compared to traditional MMORPGs.

This. NPC markets are a bad idea, as is coin payment of NPCs.

Erik's been pretty spot on with criticisms and suggestions in this thread. Want a shop? Man it with your character while he's offline. Don't drag in NPCs to artificially bring up "coin" demands with the black-hole that is NPCs requiring payment or devalue player interaction and risk through an un-manned meat-puppet as a medium.

P.S. If shops can't be compatible with regional currencies and the signature mechanic then I don't think they're worth it.