Safe Zone

[Cookie]

The only real "security" seems to come from the threat of revenge. Outside of having/hiring NPC guards, i don't know what else there is to do about it.... and something about the idea of introducing npcs into this game, I find just plain revolting...

The trouble is right now the threat of revenge is useless. The uber player killers have their hearths securely behind walls only other uber players can get through and if there are any White Hat uber players willing to leave a murder scent in the heart of Black Hat Home Territory they don't seem to be posting in the forum any more. Maybe the character reset will change the dynamics so that this is different in future.

As for the guardsmen NPC's I think you can relax about that. The dev's have stated that they won't introduce NPCs if there is any way humanly to prevent it. (The one and only NPC in the game is now inside a second dimension within one of the dev's magiced cabins. Curiously she was in the retail business originally although now she is only a caryatid.)

It seems to me that our best bet for trade is coming up with a security system that doesn't require 24/7 watchmen or uber players to defend us. Like vaults that were closed using a cart, I am hoping there is a way to do this mechanically, such as by having a lawspeaker take down and replace crossroad signs every day to open and close the market. For example what about if we had a rule where people using the market had to leave a theft scent as security? This would not work since the majority of players didn't invest in theft and so couldn't do this. But you get the kind of ideas I think we should be playing with if we want to figure out a way to do this.

[sabinati]

The real barrier to trade seems to me to be trust.

I wouldn't dream of trading with most of the people who post trade offers on the forum because they have such rapacious reputations. I would assume that if indeed they wouldn't attack me for lulz they would mark me down as worthy of raiding. Not to mention that I might be buying stolen goods or contributing to making certain not very socially responsible players even stronger by supplying them. Similarly I wouldn't dream of trading openly on irc or the forum. The announcement, "I can supply sausage grinders...." or "Will dig cellars for food, all materials provided, will travel," seems to me equivalent to saying, "Hey uber players, see if you can track me down. I have loot!"

Having a safe zone would mean that I could actually meet with people to trade. I would still be a bit leery though of trading with a main.

However the devs have shot down the idea of player to player transfers of goods, proposed in order to prevent theft when the goods were on the ground, because they want to have the possiblity of fraud and theft in the marketplace. I think they are not yet ready to establish a trading safe zone. They want us to take measures to protect ourselves and prevent these things not to make it automatically easy. Mind you, in case you find this idea depressing, it does appear that perhaps they decided that the stronger dishonest players preying on the weaker had gotten imbalanced too far and are trying to get it rebalanced with the upcoming character wipe.

lol and i thought chak was paranoid

[Chakravanti]

lol and i thought chak was paranoid

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not going to raid you/try to kill you/cheat.

[warrri]

lol and i thought chak was paranoid

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not going to raid you/try to kill you/cheat.

You could stop pretending to be the humble angel on the forums. Iirc you were the first one to ever considering selling stolen goods...to goons to track chernobyl. Not to mention your betrayal afterwards.
But what do i know

[theTrav]

lol and i thought chak was paranoid

I avoided trades with del many times back when brodgar had stuff worth trading largely because I figured he was a dodgey fucker who would come after us if he thought there was a copper in it for him.

[minck1]

There could also be market hours when, with the system I described, the market would be closed and only a village member could re-open it. Of course with players in all the time zones in the world this would be inconvenient to a bunch of them and it would leave the door open for competing market places to open in order to get the after hours traffic -not necessarily a bad thing.

What keeps the thieves from swooping in after you close and stealing all your goodies? Moving them to an undisclosed location is possible but could take hours if you had a good day. Also, griefers could come in and destroy all your buildings making the next market day a disaster.

[Cookie]

What keeps the thieves from swooping in after you close and stealing all your goodies? Moving them to an undisclosed location is possible but could take hours if you had a good day. Also, griefers could come in and destroy all your buildings making the next market day a disaster.

One possibility: the Market Square itself is behind nice thick brick walls and you can only get access by either knocking down the wall or through the gate which is opened only when the market is opened. Inside this square people can park their Market Stalls and protect them with a claim when not open for business so that anyone lifting things from the stalls at least leaves a theft scent.

Also, because the Market is set up as a meeting place a lot of trades would be one time only. I show up with a meat grinder and pay a toll of one loaf of bread. You show up with a basket of chanterelles and pay a fee of one chanterelle. We are both separately let into the Market Area to do our swap and the minute you hoist the meat grinder over your head you port back to hearth and the minute I hoist the basket over my head I port back to my hearth. No goods remain to be swiped from our transaction at least.

As yet buildings are indestructable, but they could break through the wall, smash all the vendor's carts and steal all the copper coins and items that were on them for sale. But to do that they would have to leave a ton of scents. If the same imbalance develops with one bunch of antisocial players much stronger than all the rest the problem would not be market security, but that super vilains exist without counterbalancing super heros. With luck the imbalance won't occur again. If it does there is a game flaw, or else the game becomes "the underground trade network" where the game is based on making sure the Black Hats are kept out of the loop and can't find out where the market is located this week. Little security would be needed in that case, because it would be moving around.