Shops

[theTrav]

if cabins are indestructible shops should be too.

Neither 'should' be indestructable, but if the shop is indeed a building (albeit smaller) then it should be approximately AS destructible as a cabin.

[sabinati]

well then i guess shops should wait until cabins are destructible

[Ford]

UO had vendors and I think they were pretty lame, who would want to go through dozens of vendors comparing prices or looking for particular goods for an hour (either located all across the country on people's properties or in a big village square spam) when you could just have a wow style auction house for each village? Just have one NPC in each town where you can drop your goods off and specify the parameters of your auction then get the fuck out of there and back to work. Then buyers can just go to that one NPC, search for what they want, sort by price, and get the fuck out. No offense but H&H is ALL grinding, after I spend 2 hours chopping wood or making armor or getting meat I want to go to an AH and choose whether I want to undercut everyone and sell my stuff right away, or choose the mean price and not be in a hurry, then put the auction up and get a notification in my mail that its sold, then come back and collect the money. I do NOT want to put my goods on my vendor and hope someone comes across it and decides to buy it eventually, or spend 2 hours checking all the wood/meat merchants in town to see what i should set my price at (would it even matter since how many people are going to check every separate vendor in town comparing prices- they are more likely to just pick the first they come across that seems reasonable).

This would make it possible for traveling merchants to exist, going between town auctioneers buying low and selling high.

Prices in the form of other goods would be neat too, or even leaving the price open ended for the buyer to make an offer.

[sabinati]

holy shit that's brilliant

[Delamore]

Then goons rob your auctioneer.

[sabinati]

if auctioneers could only be built in towns i don't think it would be a problem.

[Peter]

That does sound pretty good. The problem is there isn't any inherent value to objects, so auctions would be a little difficult. It could still work, but it would require that the seller look at each offer before sellecting one, rather than the best offer winning. It certainly would make coinage much more usefull.

Items should gradually decay as they are for sale, otherwise we will find a LOT of apples and newb hats for sale. Maybe if an item gets an offer or is otherwise examined, it resets a 24-hour life cycle for the item.

Now, perhaps it would be best if it still needs to have a player character manning the booth. They just don't need to be involved in every trade and could simply be there while in fact logged off.

Then, this player's skill could determine how easy it might be to steal from this trading post.

[Potjeh]

As Delamore points out, centralized trade would either be worthless due to all the thieves it'd attract, or it'd be thief-proof and abused for storage. That, and this centralization reeks of communism. It should be responsibility of the shop owner to invest in security and maintenance of his shop. Not to mention the actual construction, which should be fairly expensive. And I really hate how this would shaft the solo players, even if I'm not one myself.

I do NOT want to put my goods on my vendor and hope someone comes across it and decides to buy it eventually, or spend 2 hours checking all the wood/meat merchants in town to see what i should set my price at (would it even matter since how many people are going to check every separate vendor in town comparing prices- they are more likely to just pick the first they come across that seems reasonable).

I do. Trading should require some business sense, such as knowing where to build shop and when to adjust prices. Trading shouldn't be something that everyone does anyway, as that'd just promote shop spam. Buyers, well, they'll quickly learn who has good prices on specific items, especially when these prices are advertised on the forum.

[jorb]

I'd love it if people actually traded for objects rather than just items. Beehives, herbalist's tables. Stuff like that. That would mean you'd have to cart between towns. Carts could then be waylaid, and there'd also be a real point to maintaining and building a road system. For that to be worth the effort, objects would obviously have to have very (extremely) high value at the higher quality levels. That means big difficulties producing the object, high value throughput, and probably qualitative advantages over lower grade goods. I also think it means that the production process has to be more costly in terms of time and effort than the actual carting. I would also love it if newbs could provide meaningful goods or services to experienced players.

If shops were reduced to long lines of NPC bot stands, that has suck potential. Removing the need for simultaneous player interaction takes a big chunk out of the point and fun of it. There is no meaningful bartering to be had with a bot, for example. I once took an alt of mine for a long trading trip across the map and back home again. Met a few players, but few or none interested in trading. It was fun approaching little farmsteads looking for trade, and it'd be a lot of fun if stuff like that could actually be done in a more meaningful way. One of the things I absolutely love about H&H is that I always have one finger on the attack hot key when I meet strangers in the wilderness.

I don't have an issue with auctions per se, but wouldn't it be more fun if players actually had to organize auctions, rather than having an abstract UI of one kind or another for doing it? The general problem with introducing abstract UIs is that aspects of reality which could, potentially, make for good stories, are abstracted away. There's a fine balance between abstracting away the chores and keeping the actual fun parts.

I believe that the time differences between players IRL, and their respective location differences in game, together with the relative ease of most production, are the main factors hampering trade at the moment.

Wall of text for the win.

[RaptorJedi]

One thing Blaccy thought of that never got off the ground was a trading post. I liked the idea of everyone bringing their goods to a central location to trade once a week (or multiple times a week). Such a place could even be set up at the new RoB, if it was planned right from the map reset.