Marketplace to Stimulate Economy (Poll)

Suggestions
#1

One of the big issues that I’ve seen people talk about before in these forums is the “rich get richer” issue. I agree that it is something that should be addressed, as it makes it harder for new players to get involved in the economy. One obvious example of “the rich get richer” is the ~85,000 dram price this month to simply own a stall in Highsteppe. Of course, you can always sell to the blacksmith NPC, but where’s the competitive feel to the economy in that? Yes, you could get one in guild city, but the profit will be quite low. A marketplace in place of the stalls would allow for a more organized and player driven economy. My idea is to have something similar to Runescape’s “Grand Exchange”. That way, you can list an item for buy or sell for whatever desired price, and if someone does the opposite for a same or lower price, it gets sold/bought (if the explanation doesn’t make enough sense, look up how it works for further details.) I’m curious to see what everybody thinks about this, as I know some people will disagree while others will love the idea.

  • Keep The Stalls
  • Implement Marketplace Idea
  • Other (Different Suggestions)

0 voters

1 Like
#2

Just since this has been mentioned so many times recently, could we just get a general confirmation on whether or not you’re still considering stall changes in response to natural expansion of the game @Riley_D? It’d be nice to have a post to at least point people towards to say “they’re working on it”.

This probably isn’t a high priority given the hefty development plan already for larger-scale content, but its been mentioned enough that knowing its on the list would probably put some people at ease.

It’s an on and off hot topic with not a ton of feedback thus far
https://community.orbusvr.com/t/broker-or-auction-house-needed/11344
https://community.orbusvr.com/t/adding-a-auction-house/10505
https://community.orbusvr.com/t/flea-market-stalls/11462
https://community.orbusvr.com/t/proposal-to-improve-market-stall-data-modeling-automation-and-awesomeness/11001

2 Likes
#3

I’ll note additionally that I think the stalls are an effective enough method right now. The people who have the quantity and will to trade seem to generally get a stall if they so desire, but that is and will be increasingly less true as more people continue to establish themselves at endgame.

1 Like
#4

I think an auction house is one of the most needed things in the game next to the bug fixes and performance issues, with the guild city rework happening in the future it would be the best place to have it as that is meant to be a “high level” hub but currently most people just use Highsteppe

Right now, if you don’t have a stall your options to make money are:

  • Vendor stuff for low values lower than the item is worth, in most cases at least (dyes don’t vendor and highly differ in price due to rarity and colour)
  • Find someone who has a stall and hope they are willing to buy stuff so they can resell for you (normally selling cheaper so they can make a profit)
  • Hope you hear someone looking for an item you have and sell to them
  • Use a very in-active website which has only had 1 listing in the last 2 months
  • Use #Trade on the unofficial discord which also seems very hit and miss

If I missed any please correct me. But as you can see, these are not great and are very inconvenient as you are either getting bad prices or trying to use outside sources which is annoying while trying to play a VR game.

As for buying, right now without an auction house, there are around ~17-19 players per month that has a great control over the prices of the market, if one of them has the money and wants to (I’ve seen this happen) they can buy all of an item off the other stalls and then put all their stock back on their own for much much more and because there is no easy way for people to just trade with each other they are forced to buy the item for this new high price, if there was an auction house this would be a lot harder for it to happen as there will be a lot more people than can get involved.

A part from the price manipulation that can/has/will happen there is also the issue of stalls being highly inconvenient, say for example you are looking for something and you check all the Highsteppe stalls and you find it on 2 of the stalls but it’s a lot higher priced than it normally is or what you expect it to be, you then have to either take a 3min run to Guild City or buy/use a reagent to teleport there, but then you could get there and there is none for sale there or it’s even more expensive, you then have to go back to Highsteppe which is either another reagent, 3min run or if you didn’t use it before you left you can use your home teleport which is just ends up wasting your time, there was a thread from over a year ago where Riley said there will be a search option to make it easier to find stuff, this never happened

So yeah, as a stall owner, that’s my view on it, I don’t mean get rid of stalls and replace it with an Auction house, but they could work alongside each other

Edit: I’d also like to point out that players having multiple stalls, one in each area is very unfair to the people wanting to get into the market as it leaves less slots open for them, I think it should be changed so you can have only 1 stall, and then you have to make the choice if you want Highsteppe or Guild City, if everyone that got a highsteppe stall also got a guild city stall then there would only be 11 stall owners rather than the 20 that there should be which just increases the issue, I think this would be a good thing to change with next month’s stall auction to give more people a chance and fight the whole “Rich get richer” thing

I’ve just been back and looked at the previous stall auctions and there has always been 1 or more person with more than 1 stall:

Auction 1: Rejinx, Rold

Auction 2: Damander

Auction 3: Johann, J, JrSlims

Auction 4: Johann, J

Auction 5: Johann, J, vedboon, Airus (Though Airus passed his second one off to someone else after he won it)

Auction 6: Johann, Crazie, J

3 Likes
#5

I have also made money helping lower levels through quests. In all reality dram isnt needed except for a quest where you have to offer up a certain amount. Everything can either be gathered or crafted in the game by anyone. Dram just saves time.

1 Like
#6

It’s also needed for transmog :yum:

#7

True! Forgot about that!

#8

There are really two halves to this question.

The first half is “As a player, what type of in-game economic marketplace do you prefer?” and the second half is “What type of economic behavior do the devs want to drive with their in-game marketplace?”. I don’t believe either approach (individual vs global) is flatly better than the other, as they both have pros and cons to be considered. Many major MMOs have used each of these approaches and both have shown that they are fundamentally viable.

Individual Stalls/Personal Stores

  • More market variance (wider range in prices, more potential to find a “good” deal)
  • Opportunity for market location hunt gameplay (where to get a stall, what things to sell at which locations)
  • Increased feel of a living world (interacting with individuals in the world rather than a UI box)
  • More difficult to browse and find the items you want and to post your items for sale
  • More difficult to; corner the market/price war/flip quickly/manipulate/add-third-party-auto-searching

Global Auction House

  • Less market variance (rarer to find a “good” deal)
  • No opportunity for strategic location-of-sale gameplay
  • Reduced sense of a living world when shopping
  • Much easier aand more convenient in posting items and searching for items to buy
  • Easier to; corner the market/price war/flip quickly/manipulate/add-third-party-auto-searching

There are also semi-hybrids where you can have a personal store but they are all searchable from anywhere like a global auction house, to in theory give some of each approach, but fundamentally the decision comes down to, is it more important to make posting and selling of items extremely convenient for everyone, or is it more important to have wider price variance, location strategy opportunities, and an increased sense of a living world?

Personally, I prefer the latter, but I’ve also enjoyed games that had the former, and I can understand why some people prefer it.

#9

A fairly simple solution would be to have a sell feature built into the stalls. It could be automatic based on a % of items listed at said stall and include everything available to buy. It could be toggled on and off so you dont and up with an extra bunch of stuff your trying to unload. This would also allow us to keep the unique feel of the stalls.

Example. A stall sells 4 types of dragons, a few monster parts, and some tiles. The dragons could be toggled off so the stall will not buy them. The monster parts could be selling for 30 a piece with the %slider set to 33% so you can sell yours for 10 dram to the stall. The tiles selling for 600 are set at 50% so the stall will buy them for 300.

~Orednod the wandering Gleeman

#10

I would like to see more liquidity in the market and to make it easier for newer players to get involved in buying/selling/trading. Even if you agree that 10k dram isn’t an inordinate burden to require to get a stall, the month-long lease process is perhaps the larger barrier. And since I wouldn’t want to do like weekly or daily leases on stalls, that means we need something else, too.

A few options that have been considered thus far include:

  • Have an Auction House, but limit the items that can be bought/sold there. So essentially the Stalls would become the more “premium” or “specialized” location to buy items (like high end potions or specific dragons, etc.), whereas the AH would be for buying/selling/trading the more mundane items like gathered resources. That way you can still get some liquidity and ease of trade going, but retain a reason to have stalls still.
  • Offer the ability for players to set up temporary stalls. So Market Stalls would still be better in that they’re available 24/7, but if you want you could set up a stall for an hour as a sort of “pop up.” We would also likely make it so that you can’t set up these types of stalls in cities. So the idea would be that you could be more of a traveling merchant bringing your goods to the Wilds or dungeon entrances, which requires more effort and also keeps you from actually playing the game, while the Stall owners would be playing more of a “Walmart” type role in the economy.

Anywho, it is definitely something we are going to be working on in general as we approach the next phase of the game.

5 Likes
#11

Appreciate the thought-out response, I think that’s a solid idea to address what people are asking for.

If we’re trying to keep with the VR immersion idea but open the market to small-scale merchants, localized auction houses locked to specific cities would be cool. Like having an auction house in Cailo Fa Ki you could post wilds mats on and then run back out for more. You still have to go there to check it out like stalls now and it would keep the whole cornering-the-market issue at bay by still distributing resources to shop points around the game. It would also give people a reason to visit places that are otherwise one-and-done quest stops like Hulthine’s vale. And leave just stalls in the bigger cities for the more ambitious merchants.

3 Likes
#12

this would be SO amazing, I have already seen someone sitting behind a counter selling stuff to people passing by, with adding temp stalls it would be so awesome

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4 Likes
#13

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Not only do some people typically get multiple stalls, but they also have their guild members owning them alongside making 2 or 3 fellowships own ~50% of the stalls in the game. As for the marketplace/auction house in guild city as part of the rework, I am in LOVE with this idea, 100%, all the way.

1 Like
#14

I used to love the private stalls in Aeon when they first implemented them. Since this is VR it might not work. Right now I would agree the market place is terrible. But if players could rent stalls for x hours to sell a limited amount of goods that could be interesting. Maybe have stall areas, so you can only sell, materials or crafted items or dragons etc in that area. But make it in game for a reasonable amount of money so that everyone could participate. Set a limit per day so people couldn’t monopolize

#15

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