Shops

[kobnach]

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.

From where I sit, one of the things severely hampering trade in H&H is that need to have one finger on the attack hot key. Why trade with a stranger when their trading might just be a ruse to get me to let my guard down?

I know, that's a hobby horse of mine, and doesn't seem to be all too compatible with the direction you and Loftar want the game to go.

It's also not the only thing discouraging trade - first, there's precious little worth trading, and it's difficult to arrange for both parties to a trade to be online at the same time. Second, there's no cheat-free trade interface, farther discouraging trading with strangers. Third, distances are too large, and speeds too small - only large trades are worthwhile, and for most commodities, even a cart full of chests barely carries enough to make the traveling worthwhile. (Note also the various cart trapping bugs - there's some risk of losing one's cart to some newly enlarged village authority area... which one ought not to be able to enter accidentally.)

I've now moved house twice - and thanks to cart capacities and speeds, it's easier to abandon one's possessions than move them. I'll bring large objects (chests, beehives, etc.) if I have time and patience, but basically one moves with very little - a set of seeds and a few tools is sufficient unless one is wealthy - and if one is, well, it can take RL days before one has safe storage at the new location. This discourages moving, of course - but it discourages trade equally, or perhaps even more.

[Edit - "fixing" these problems by making things harder to produce - while equally tedious to move and exchange - will probably just result in people without superproducer neighbours/villagers simply doing without the new high quality things. If that's not possible, people will congregate in productive groups, creating alts to fill any gaps - as folks already do with nature (farming), industry (mining), nature (silk), combat (hunters/defenders), in various combinations.]

[Peter]

I agree. As it stands, mistrust and the fact that there's nothing WORTH trading are the two big problems.

So, whatever ends up being used, it needs to involve a way to make traders feel more secure, as well as items that can only be produced in areas that are very distant from one annother, even if this is at the detriment to solo players, and I say that as one of the more hermitic of the hermits.

[Ford]

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.

There are ways to deal with that like making it so that posting auctions required a deposit (determined by the price of the item) and had a maximum time for items to stay posted (48 hrs). You could also make it vulnerable to thieves but sound an alarm to all members of the village if he was being robbed.

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 don't see the similarity. Communism in this context could mean the village administration regulating prices of the goods and deciding who they were redistributed to- eliminating competition. The auction house actually facilitates competition/capitalism by helping people get their goods to the people who want them without any hassle. In fact, you not wanting to shaft the solo players seems more like a communist idea than an auction house- it's like how small stores get put out of business by walmart because they out-competed them, then they go cry to the government to get the walmart shut down- ridiculous. Let solo players have vendors if they want, if they think what they offer is better than what the AH offers but don't QQ.

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.

Is that logic going to work in towns with like 50+ people? Also, what kind of player wouldn't trade? What else is there to do?

Have an auction house for the people who want to just get business done and have vendors too for the roleplayers, so everyone is happy.

[Erik_the_Blue]

Regarding the WoW-style auction house (AH): WoW is a game primarily about killing things, finishing quests, and collecting gear. I'd hazard to guess that most of its players don't care for the hassles of trade and just want a one-stop-shop to manage things for them. None of this describes H&H, a game where crafting and the economy play a significant role. This isn't to say H&H having an AH would be a bad thing, but suggesting it because WoW has it ignores the fact that WoW and H&H are two different games. Different inputs result in different outputs. Implementing an AH does not necessarily mean it'll have the same effect in H&H as it does in WoW.

As for an interface, this could be useful as the game grows. We already have our own individual auctions via the trade board, but in something like WoW where there are thousands of items available at any moment, boards become less practical. That said, there's no reason why the interface couldn't be a third-party app. If we're only trying to connect buyers and sellers, there's no need to change anything in the game. Really, there's no reason why we couldn't have a third-party auction house provided someone has the ingenuity to write the system and a few reliable volunteers were willing to man it.

Edit: As for people who want to just "get business done", I think historically such people would belong to or have connections with trade guilds which would buy the goods and then manage selling them off. In other words, medieval wholesalers (among other things).

[Ford]

Regarding the WoW-style auction house (AH): WoW is a game primarily about killing things, finishing quests, and collecting gear. I'd hazard to guess that most of its players don't care for the hassles of trade and just want a one-stop-shop to manage things for them. None of this describes H&H, a game where crafting and the economy play a significant role. This isn't to say H&H having an AH would be a bad thing, but suggesting it because WoW has it ignores the fact that WoW and H&H are two different games. Different inputs result in different outputs. Implementing an AH does not necessarily mean it'll have the same effect in H&H as it does in WoW.

I think it works so well in wow because wow has a lot of grinding and people don't want to spend a huge chunk of extra time (hours) doing something that can be done in the AH in a few seconds.

As for an interface, this could be useful as the game grows. We already have our own individual auctions via the trade board, but in something like WoW where there are thousands of items available at any moment, boards become less practical. That said, there's no reason why the interface couldn't be a third-party app. If we're only trying to connect buyers and sellers, there's no need to change anything in the game. Really, there's no reason why we couldn't have a third-party auction house provided someone has the ingenuity to write the system and a few reliable volunteers were willing to man it.

Instead of an AH just have a place in each town where you can post advertisements that you can search/sort/filter, connecting buyer and seller, leaving the transaction itself up to the people involved. It would serve the same function as the AH without the excess automation that isn't required because there aren't thousands of items.

Edit: As for people who want to just "get business done", I think historically such people would belong to or have connections with trade guilds which would buy the goods and then manage selling them off. In other words, medieval wholesalers (among other things).

You have to draw a line with the roleplaying somewhere to allow for practicality as most people can't play H&H devoting as much time to it as to a real job. The issue always comes up in MMO's whether to compromise features for roleplayers, pvpers, and carebears, and the best way I've seen it dealt with is to give each group their own server- so perhaps on the pvp/carebear server there would be an AH but on the roleplayer's server it would be disabled. Each group of people always wants something totally different from the others so I hope discussions like this won't end in one decision for the majority, leaving the other groups unhappy... I for one would find it pretty excessive to add running around bartering time to the already massive grinding requirement but if there's people who want to invest all that time they shouldn't be ignored either.

[Erik_the_Blue]

I think it works so well in wow because wow has a lot of grinding and people don't want to spend a huge chunk of extra time (hours) doing something that can be done in the AH in a few seconds.

That principle is true in general, but my point was that WoW and H&H largely have different player bases with different goals, so you can't logically expect them to approach the AH in the same way. As I said, different inputs result in different outputs.

Instead of an AH just have a place in each town where you can post advertisements that you can search/sort/filter, connecting buyer and seller, leaving the transaction itself up to the people involved. It would serve the same function as the AH without the excess automation that isn't required because there aren't thousands of items.

Computerized bulletin boards. We have that now (minus the computerization part) by leaving parchments in urns*. If you want the computerization part in-game, hire players to organize things. If you want an interface in-game, see what jorb said about abstracting player activities to the UI. If you just want it computerized period, build a third-party app**.
*Implementing proper bulletin boards would be nice so there's no guessing as to whether an urn is for parchments or not.
**This 'you' is addressing the broader audience, not any specific reader.

You have to draw a line with the roleplaying somewhere...

Um... I think we've had a misunderstanding. I wasn't suggesting roleplaying, and I know all too well about not being able to put much time into a game. Honestly, I don't know what you think I was suggesting.

What I was suggesting was a historical analog; i.e. players that enjoy trading more than producing could band together to form a "Haven-Mart" or whatever, which makes contracts with players who enjoy producing but not trading to regularly purchase their goods. Said contracts could be tailored to the realities of the producer's gameplay habits. Producers make an amount of goods they are comfortable with and get paid for it, and thus presumably are happy. Traders have a regular supply of goods which they can sell off to customers, and thus presumably are happy. Customers know where to go to buy things, and thus presumably are happy. This is basically an omni-guild, minus the other historical aspects of guilds I didn't describe (because you need a sufficiently large player base before specialty guilds become practical).