Merchant Wagon

[LadyV]

How about a mobile version of the barter/trade stands? It would allow people to be mobile and move their wears into walls when they are done instead of having to build walled markets to protect stands. It might even foster travelling merchants more. Thus hiring guards for trade caravans...

Here is a sample image I found on the net.

http://s1229.photobucket.com/user/undel_wow/media/merchant_wagon.png.html

[caz]

lol do you play flight rising too? that's what the image is from
but yes it would be nice if it could fit within a normal gate

[LadyV]

lol do you play flight rising too? that's what the image is from
but yes it would be nice if it could fit within a normal gate

No I can't say I do. I just went looking for a picture to match the idea.

[GrapefruitV]

I love any ingame trade supportive idea in general, but the only way to make it really popular and usable is making it [almost] impossible to steal from. If guarding unwalled goods was an option, we would see open markets with barters now and in the past. Most people prefer the safest way and that's understandable. It's impossible to make it safe even with big combat group online 24/7, so as long as we have less risky alternative, barters and/or wagons will be used only for roleplay and goods with lowest value. If such wagon would be impossible to take things from for everyone except the owner(or owners with claim-like system), I'd travel through wilderness everyday with tones of gold and posted my location for everyone to come and trade. But here comes the huge world issue, which makes alt-to-idol trade more efficient, so for wagons trade to become actually meaningful we need both fixes: safety and no alternative/no teleports.

[NOOBY93]

And of course if it was impossible to steal from major abuse ensues

[GrapefruitV]

Current seige mechanics itself makes atleast a part of well built and organized village unlootable [without bugs]. Besides such abusable container already exist, it's called offline alt inventory. Mostly poor people use it now, but wagon fixes its most annoying feature - need to log in, so yeah, it would be more popular. The point is to make it not worth it. Some few seconds thinking ideas for that:
- make wagon building resources consuming
- make wagon space consuming
- make it impossible even for owner to take things out after placing it (you can only buy it)
- make it impossible for wagon to be parked on the claim (consider wagon as another claim)

[NOOBY93]

Current seige mechanics itself makes atleast a part of well built and organized village unlootable [without bugs]. Besides such abusable container already exist, it's called offline alt inventory. Mostly poor people use it now, but wagon fixes its most annoying feature - need to log in, so yeah, it would be more popular. The point is to make it not worth it. Some few seconds thinking ideas for that:
- make wagon building resources consuming
- make wagon space consuming
- make it impossible even for owner to take things out after placing it (you can only buy it)
- make it impossible for wagon to be parked on the claim (consider wagon as another claim)

But villages are not unlootable, raids do happen, people do forget to check rams, rams can be camped, but if you're making an unlootable container...
Although I do agree on the "there's already alts" part, sadly there's no way to prevent alt vaults...

[Eemerald]

wagons in general are great, the issue is the safety aspect. It would be nice to have ways that people can connect with one another without the need to have guards on call for trades to happen, or for trades to just occur through oathing alts back and forth.

When we built the trade centre we did it so each merchant had a 'cell', but people asked for it to be open 24/7 so they could buy without having to wait for merchants to open their shop. The moment we did, things were stolen from them. so no one wanted to keep it open, and setting hours guards could be present and ppl could come, and we could open things up was too much hassle, so it just died. Even the barter stands alone if it was impossible or very difficult to break into, you could easily have open trade hubs without traders worrying all their stuff will disappear the moment they go to bed. Same would be important for a wagon.

We should plan a wagon trip! Where's phaen when you want to do a trip around the world??

[GrapefruitV]

But villages are not unlootable, raids do happen, people do forget to check rams, rams can be camped, but if you're making an unlootable container...
Although I do agree on the "there's already alts" part, sadly there's no way to prevent alt vaults...

Almost all big villages can be looted only partly, if not abandoned and no bugs involved (you can't loot personal plots far away from outer walls using one ram, you can't reach idol area without spies, etc.). So it kinda remains the same, since no one would store entire village in wagons. To add some human factor influence wagons can borrow another claims feature - being disabled after owners inactivity.
Salem's unlootable stands worked out great, but there is Boston, which makes a huge difference (gosh, I feel like there is too much salem mentioning in my posts lately).

[NOOBY93]

There's no such thing as too much mentioning Salem, provided you mention the good parts of Salem to give ideas for Haven.
Anyway, I just don't see the point in merchant wagons, can't think of any off the top of my head but there's heavy abuse with mechanics like that. Personally, in all MMOs I favor WoW's trading system the most. (both sides put stuff, both sides have to agree, when you clicked agree if you change the stuff you put in, you un-agree)
That being said, if it has to be merchant wagons, I'm for one that is lootable, because highwaymen pillaging travelling gold merchants on the road? Drama ensues.