#Collection of all Player Shop threads

164 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lone raptor
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Players made many threads on Player Shops, which are now collected here as a list.

Post all new Player Shop suggestions here. Posts unrelated to the topic will be removed.

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onyx mortar
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Something I was thinking could be a helpful change is putting a few "generic" stalls in the A area that do consignment and are not player owned. Let people post a few items, dip their toes into retail management, before hiring their own stall.

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The consignment system with NPC vendors is a neat concept, but they are all spread out across the world and that makes it much harder to use.

fading hollow
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That’s actually a neat suggestion ngl
Ur cooking🧑‍🍳

blissful nebula
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Hi newbie here, I feel like the player shop in serbule is very maze-like, and It takes me so long to find anything because I get lost in there. Like I need to check stall e3 b3 and c3 and it takes so long to figure out which part of the maze each is. Heart12 That is my feedback ty ty

gusty dragon
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A better map for the area with labels for A, B, etc might help

grave flare
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
grave flare
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I know a big concern for the market is trying to keep prices from being droven to the ground by the way Auction Houses tend to cause a race to the bottom for quick sale prices (mentioned by Citan many times including here https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Elder_Game:_The_Case_Against_Auction_Houses) so… This is a more elaborate crazier idea:

The community could be enabled to be able to vote ingame on what is a fair price for a given item.

Sellers with a certain minimum level of Retail Management can create, on a board or NPC, a call to vote on the price to item X as Z. They can add their justification for the suggested price in the post. The community then either upvotes or downvotes the suggestion. If the suggestion passes a certain negative threshold (absolute votes or %), it’s automatically closed as rejected. If it passes a positive threshold by a certain time limit, it’s accepted.

The accepted price suggestion would become the de-facto floor in the sale system (be it the current shop system we have or a changed one), so no listings below it are possible, but higher ones are; and the price enters a cooldown period where it can’t be changed again.

To lower the potential for manipulation, only 1 vote per account is possible (server-specific). Could also make it so that players in the same guild are restricted in how many price suggestions they can create within a timeframe, or some other limitation per shared guild. Can make it so the cooldown period for suggestions is reset upon a game update too (so that if a mechanic is released that increases the value of item X, people can update it).

There are a lot of potential limitations that could be introduced at the cost of some freedom in the current economy, like a hard % change cap on price suggestions (I’m not a fan of the idea for new servers especially, though for the OG one maybe), no caps on gear, a reputation/trust system (more accepted suggestions gives higher trust rep shown on new suggestions).

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(One-to-one trades, of course, wouldn’t fall under this. This is only for player shops.)

This could enable at least the popular request for people to be able to view listing prices in the ingame Market search NPCs without causing the castle of cards to come crumbling down for sellers and crafters… Or some other QOL changes, particularly along the route of transparency/visibility.

It’d also give a server a (more direct) communal influence on the price of commodities and rarer items both, while allowing the crafters and traders protections, and still have roadblocks in place to prevent a fair degree of market manipulation by the richest (in money or knowledge) in a server. So more transparency and engagement both.

I know it’s a lot more elaborate of a suggestion, and unlikely, but I’ve seen systems like this work before (granted, in bigger player economies with at least some higher degree of trade transparency used by people to justify their price change suggestions). Humble potential suggestion over 🙇

lone raptor
lone raptor
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The layout of the player shops in Serbule is a function of graphics concerns like occlusion.

knotty fern
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Clean up layout and increase density of shops

catagorizing shops into sections does not work players will always go for the highest traffic area to sell anything they have of perceived value, and theres too many players for that idea to work anyway unless it was an equal and "effortless" decision which catagory of shops to visit, teleporter for example into a location for the dedicated shop types, having to walk around instantly makes it unappealing to rent a shop in a far location

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Move all player shops to the casino and add a teleporter to the casino at serbule (like at rahu) as a centralized market location

Make player shop floors accessible primarily through teleport dialogue menu with many categories, spawn in middle of room surrounded by shops maximizing "prime real estate"

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repurpose serbule keep as an actual keep with some king or something

lone raptor
lone raptor
placid meadow
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Why is the serbule market area such a maze? Why is the E and F side not the same as the A and B side? Why is d and c not more open? Why do we need all the crazy walls?

lone raptor
stoic stag
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Is there any way someone can make an app that could track prices in stalls that you open? Or would such an app be against TOS?

median stratus
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someone already made one for arisetsu https://pgtools.xyz/
but he has to manually update all the price info which is a ton of work

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still useful for ballpark figures

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if you mean an app automatically reading stalls you open i dont think it would be against tos but it'd probably need to use some funky screen reader tech since i dont think prices get logged anywhere unless you buy something

grave flare
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There’s basically no logs or public data about sales and prices, the only way to get something that “automatically” tracks things and updates is by breaking TOS in some way (probably multiple ways), which is why it doesn’t exist

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Even then it’d still be unreliable to a degree not dissimilar to the old linked tracker imo given how it’d have to be done (ofc I’m not encouraging TOS breaking, to the contrary lol)

lone raptor
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Honestly, I don' think tracking the player shops in this way is at all useful.

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You have four servers, probably five with all different economies.

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And as FirYngs says, it's unreliable.

grave flare
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There’s also the point Citan has made a few times in that such a high degree of transparency actually makes market manipulation easier when an economy is as small as ours. All it takes is one player with enough councils and an alt to sell things back and forth to artificially set demand/price/supply (nvm having a group of them) - but people would trust the data no matter what it was because it’d be “what the tracker says”.

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You need a population orders of magnitude larger for that possibility to stop being so easy to happen. Dunno how large exactly, I’m no game designer 😄 but probs large enough that it stops being relevant for PG unless creative solutions (the current system being a potential one) are put in place to avoid them.

median stratus
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the pgtools.xyz guy has been doing it manually since august of last year and its useful even though it must be an insane amount of work. i think he just records the lowest price for each item, which may not be representative at all. not close to a real time market tracker but its useful to find a floor price for something you want to sell

grave flare
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I think it was useful in the original server to a degree, and I liked it a lot, but the problem of recording listing prices is that there’s no insight into completed trades, right? There might’ve been both lower and higher priced ads that were sold before you recorded them, and you’d never know - you can’t even infer that a trade was done based on a prior listing disappearing, because the item could’ve just been taken off or the stall closed and whatnot.

So then now we have a 30x bigger playerbase and new servers with wildly different economies - there’s no way Mock 2 or Flamestrike would now sell for 15k or whatever like it would’ve on the OG server on the 3 others, while it makes sense that flame dust on a new server is costing 500 and up because of the sheer demand of lower lvl players getting into fire magic… But, if we have A TrackerTM, even if it were another one under the current market system, people will still take it to find a floor price like you mentioned

grave flare
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Which opens room to manipulation: since we can’t tell which prices led to trades being completed, what’s to stop a few richer players (in either time or money) from forcing prices down purely by making more listings at a lower price, right? They don’t even have to actually make trades - make the listings between a few of you, wait for the website to be updated for the day, then take the listings off (or buy each other’s stocks, etc etc).

It’s not a problem unique to the website, and it’s no criticism to the person who made it bc it was so useful to me a lot of times! I’ve told them that myself.

But let’s put it in the context of work orders instead for example. Player work orders are often created with ridiculously lowballing prices - let’s say we had a website that tracked those listings. You and I and more experienced players would know that the prices shown there would be way too low and which ones, and know that those WOs often go unfilled or closed by folks in a hurry or without knowledge, but someone using The Prices Tracker would think the price shown would be the item’s price floor, even though it’s just listings recordings.

The only difference in scenarios here is that there’s a higher current degree of trust in player stalls for fairer prices; but the determining factor for how positive your experience using those types of trackers is still comes down to your game experience and time engaging in the market to make an informed decision supported, but not determined by, the data we get to see.

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Sorry for the long texts lol it’s just the topic has been revived all over again with the fresh infux of players (in Strekios we’ve been seeing it a bunch ingame for example), so I wanted to elaborate more clearly especially for their sake. 😄

knotty fern
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the current vendor setup adds unnecessary lag to serbule an already populated starting zone and the layout is unimmersive and wasteful

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there are also already vendors in the casino but are and will probably stay unused making them redundant content

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because there are so few and out of the way

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it also means any trade must happen at the serbule area, which means its inherrently already centralized to a low level starting zone

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all other towns are just a means to an end to trade and make money at serbule, rahu/statehelm and whatever else there is doesnt matter and your only option is to base around this area

lyric edge
knotty fern
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are there player vendors in rahu for mid game players to sell their things?

lone raptor
lone raptor
earnest valve
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Stall analysis written by Albanjo is absolutely based and correct, system is terrible at its current state. Esp with amount of players we have, and there are no incentive to base your operations anywhere but serbule.

lone raptor
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If you have a suggestion, post it. Anything not a suggestion will be removed.

earnest valve
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under current system without proper foot traffic you just get no sales, statehelm and casino market do not meet the basic requirement. Shops are too spread out, its not convinient for people to see stuff you have to offer. Suggestion is - make trade zones in casino and statehelm as congregated as serbule market, maybe place casino market teleport further away from daily, so people have to go through market zone too.

knotty fern
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statehelm has 2 player shops between some vendors and a small house with like 10 more, its woefully innadequate as an alternative, casino is barely better because the shops are hidden out of the way

the amount of shops should be increased in both areas

oak pivot
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Really like the game overall, but the player stall system is frustrating. Maybe it worked OK when there were a few hundred people on a single server who started at different times and were at different levels of progression? Right now though it's a completely un-usable system to the VAST majority of players who weren't one of the few that could pick up a serbule stall on day 1. I hope at some point the entire player trading system is given another pass, because this aint it. Suggestion: please consider a broader rework of player trading in the games long term roadmap.

lone raptor
rugged halo
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I suggest we do not allow players to hold multiple shops on alt accounts. I am trying to get an A stall just to notice some players have multiple stalls

lost crag
# lone raptor

You can reduce the amount of visible shops while still having an easy to understand layout 🤔 a la the Casino where the merchants are in their own little rooms. Though I think you can go even easier to understand, like rows of "hotel room" shopping areas.

agile ridge
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Suggestion: the equipment search tab could really do with a way to save presets, or a UI that lets you see your selections and adjust them without scrolling. It took longer than I'd like to admit to realize why I was getting zero search results while looking for +inv necks and belts even though I knew they existed from seeing some on stalls I regularly check.

onyx mortar
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As a counterpoint to some of these complaints, I almost never randomly browse. I have an item I am looking for, I hit the golem to see if I can find it, and then go to that stall. The casino and Statehelm locations have not curbed that behavior, just changed distance traveled to get the items. My hurdle with the changes are that items I used to be able to find are now gone. The longstanding players that sold them lost their stalls and did not reopen. That's a net loss to the player economy. I think this system will work better with a higher level and more informed player base. Until then it is struggles.

merry sundial
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Make the market an instace.
Make it pretty.
Add some pretzel stands that you can rent and sell only food for example.
Add more stalls.

placid meadow
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Make portal from every hub to there but portal is bound to player, so when you take it back, it's to where you came from.

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Kinda like unrecall or something

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When you appear in the trading mall, you appear at a random location each time, so no particular set of stalls is more central than another

onyx mortar
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Beautification though is not something I would personally want them to spend time on as I spend like....less than one percent of my play time in the stalls area.

onyx mortar
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The lived in feel of the game is something I really appreciate about it

placid meadow
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I agree. It is really just an engineering solution without much thought to the theme or previously decided decisions

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I always have this argument in my head of ideals(stalls everywhere, distributed, like real life) and reality(shopping for something sucks due to travel constraints. Owning a shop sucks due to shortages, customer base, rent pricing)

onyx mortar
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Realistically, if you follow history, shopping districts were a thing for discrete businesses, but malls popped up to consolidate customers into one location. The Serbule flea market accomplished the mall side.

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And ultimately we will see the same behavior. Businesses pop up, people think it is great, rent gets too high vs income and they fold, and this makes way for the next gen of entrepreneurs. I can see this working on a long enough timeline in serbule, but people are impatient. People want stalls now because they want income and think this will fix it. I am not confident that for most players it will. So the goal post will move.

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One thing I am sure of is that I do NOT want a WoW style auction house. But managing the expectations of an influx of 3k new players is going to be difficult.

oak pivot
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Agreed on no AH, I do wonder if it could be as simple as an NPC stall that sells items from multiple players - ie once you get enough favor you can list 1-3 items for sale, and multiple players list their items all at the same vendor. Basically the same as consignment, but searchable via the marketplace golems so people actually use it. In fact, I wonder if they switched consignment to be searchable by the golems if that would largely fix the issue.

onyx mortar
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Consignment searchable by the golem is a GREAT idea.

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The only hurdle to that being "oh I found the item I want!" Head out to Kur Mts and it is being sold for 5x reasonable price.

agile ridge
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Makes me wonder if it's best to leave consignment with the current set of favor NPCs unsearchable. Also makes me wonder if NPC consignment is serving any purpose. It feels like if you want to move something quickly it's better and cheaper to advertise in chat, and unless what you're selling is rare, fast-moving and expensive enough to be worth consigning it's better to just hoard or gift/vendor it instead

onyx mortar
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I cannot say for sure that I have ever bought anything off consignment. Prices are usually crazy. I for sure have never posted consignment.

north magnet
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As a new player, the inability to check trading prices fully discouraged me from interacting with the shop system whatsoever. I noticed prices in the first room of Serbule seemed way off and did not bother digging further through the entire market.

My current perception after 20 days of playtime is that work orders, shops, and consignments are basically scams, and that the only real fair trading can be done in trade chat.

I'm aware some or all of that is a combination of relative noobishness and Dreva's volatile market, but I figured I would drop an honest perspective on it as a new player.

lone raptor
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Just a reminder, we're looking for suggestions. Everyone can edit their posts, but ultimately, if they are not suggestions easily read by a busy Eldergame teammember, they'll likely get removed.

elder mango
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Personal suggestion is giving just a tiny bit more leeway in paying your shop rent.
I'm not asking for a month or a week, but being able to pay 24 hours in advance would mean you don't lose your shop due to oversleeping or a power outages.
Not asking for people to be able to keep shops indefinitely, but the current system feels a little hostile in a "mobile game daily login rewards" kinda way, where you need to set an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night to pay it.

median stratus
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as your retail skill goes up you can rent for 48 then 72 hours at a time, so ~30 and ~54 hours in advance

elder mango
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I think a really interesting fix to the overcrowding would be to change which stalls open at which management levels.
Like serb is clearly the best place to have a shop, and is also often overcrowded.
Why not make serb like, retail 10, and casino retail 0?
That way it actually funnels more players to the casino, more shops in casino see foot traffic, and the reward for getting your retail up is a better location for your shop?

elder mango
# onyx mortar And ultimately we will see the same behavior. Businesses pop up, people think it...

I am worried that due to the number of players on the server, and the limited number of stalls, that instead of this happening you just get a cycle of group A swapping out stalls with group B and repeat when it becomes too expensive.
Or even people selling their stall location to the highest bidder, like we see in other MMOs with high demand public housing locations. Which, nothing inherently wrong with that, I appreciate emergent gameplay and the pursuit of capitalism, but it may result in some non-zero number of people never able to get a stall and being priced out of buying one without sigificant effort that others got via luck of finding an open stall.

elder mango
# agile ridge Makes me wonder if it's best to leave consignment with the current set of favor ...

Not exactly the thread for this, but I think consignment would probably serve a better function if instead of like 2-4 items every 7 days, it let you put 2-4 items up for sale for 24 hours and reset every 24 hours.
As it stands, the opportunity cost of losing your week of consignments with that vendor means only using them for exceptionally valuable sales or not at all.
I think faster turnover with lower opportunity cost would see it as a decent use-case. And you aren't locked out of having the items back for a week if it doesnt sell.

worn raptor
# onyx mortar One thing I am sure of is that I do NOT want a WoW style auction house. But mana...

I agree with the no AH thing but the one thing I’m noticing about my time on Dreva is how hard it is to pinpoint true value of an item without going to each stall constantly and checking trade religiously. I also notice patterns of certain items being way more expensively advertised during certain hours. I think the only thing I would want to somehow get that an AH provides is a better way to understand the market. Ex, what’s the range of price for this item, velocity of trade, etc. Maybe it could be a skill!

elder mango
worn raptor
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I found that tool! Patiently waiting and hoping it’ll have server filters

median stratus
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i did like the idea someone had earlier about having communal consignment npc vendors that are searchable via golem. maybe the number of items you can sell at a time is tied to retail skill

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and unlike the existing consignments any number can be bought at a time, not just the full stack

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basically they'd be like the existing vendor npcs except shared by multiple players, the number limited by how much scrolling you want to allow haha

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of course that introduces new problems. multiple people selling the same item at different prices. golem just says its there. do you always need to look through the entire list to make sure youre getting the best deal?

onyx mortar
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i like the adding themed shop sections to the specific consignment vendor. here is the food consignment vendor. here is the gear consignment vendor. here is the farmed resources consignment vendor. it helps players looks to correct sources for items and can help with parity in pricing.

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the downside to that is pricing becomes a race to the bottom.

elder mango
elder mango
lone raptor
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Not a suggestion. Your previous thread will be added here.

barren kiln
somber seal
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Glad this is the big point of discussion right now. Let’s gets this fixed and thank you for all u do devs and all.

latent crypt
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Maybe have a raffle for vendor spots? So that everyone has a chance, people can't just keep stalls forever with alt accounts, and you can play the game instead of looking for a free vendor spot.

onyx mortar
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I don't quite understand the pricing transparency conversation. This is an economy. You have something. You set a price. Someone buys it or they don't. When prices are too high, that helps cycle stalls, because when stuff doesn't sell then the cost of painting the stall is too much.

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Nothing has a static value, it's all perceived value. You don't have to look at every stall, that's a choice. It also reflects what we do in life. Buying something? You check this store? Too expensive, go to the next. Amazing wants how much? No thanks

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It's normal behavior.

lone raptor
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Reminder--this is a suggestion thread. Not feedback. This topic has already been closed and duplicate posts are not allowed.

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#1225658855946584134 message

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We're curating suggestions for the devs.

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People are providing solutions.

austere surge
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Is there any dicussion going on for adding more shop stalls? Or doing an instanced shop area so it can get bigger/smaller as players need shops? Right now its impossible for newer players to get a shop because they're all taken

pastel apex
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A lot of people have bought them not realising especially in Serbule that the cost quickly rises

somber seal
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A waiting list? Anything other then what is currently there

blissful nebula
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https://discord.com/channels/592041654677012480/1474803957338734846 I guess this should go here actually.

Suggestion: Allow us to commend or condemn a shop, if they have good stock and good prices, they get put higher in the list of shop golems when people search things.

This would be a good middle ground for people wanting golems to show price, but this would allow the community to just be like "this shop isn't trying to f**k over new players, more people should shop here" and if someone was actively being abusive with their prices taking advantage of their convenient shop location, they would be on the bottom of the shop list and people would know this shop isn't good.

Yes I realize it's abusable in a few ways. But it would just be nice to have the sorting in the hands of the community, instead of just the raw prices. Maybe have a shop that is always in stock is more important than having a single amethyst in stock for 30 council. It would be up to the community and that's more fun 😄

As some others have pointed out, yes this would be abusable by alts/demos/scammers/tricksters. Idk what could be done about that tbh lol

lone raptor
lone raptor
trail flower
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The most obvious being: Me and my 200-man guild want to monopolize the "A" room, or whatever. Some newbie picked up a stall there. 200 instant downvotes, good luck selling anything. :p

lone raptor
median stratus
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the retail skill reqs definitely need looking at if people are supposed to spread out. im at ~49.5 and ive probably had at least 120 days of serb stall

earnest valve
grave flare
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You can’t simply trust players not to manipulate a market in any game ahah. They do and will, which is part of why PG’s is built the way it is.

I made a suggestion of potential upvote/downvote tied to influence in the economy at the start of this thread - reputation tied to account and price suggestions, with restrictions (time gated, guild membership, etc), as Citan has mentioned considering a reputation system in the past. It’s tricky to balance that type of thing as there is no true way to prevent multi-account completely.

lone raptor
lone raptor
keen nymph
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My 2 cents: I took the time to level Industry to 25 to get the retail management unlock for the cheaper 1k. Now all the stalls are taken in Seribule. Stalls coming up on the 90 days are already making deals for transferring to other people. Whatever changes are made, I just want the option to participate in retail management at all. Markets interest me and was the primary motivator for starting PG

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I don't really have a solution, as it is a complex problem, but one idea would be to allow players to offer consignments slots in their stalls. This way other players can join in their business. For example; maybe the cheese stall starts accepting meals in its consignment slots to round out its food portfolio

elder mango
# keen nymph I don't really have a solution, as it is a complex problem, but one idea would b...

I honestly think there is some solution to the entire shop issue buried in the consignment system.
As it stands, consignments are just too narrow, too limited, and have too long of a lockout timer to really fill a use-case.
Even just increasing the number of consignment slots as favor increases up to like 5 per NPC, and then lowering the timer down to 3 days instead of 7, and you'd have at least the makings of a stop-gap.
Right now people just throw a single in-demand item up for some absurd price, since selling something locks you out for a week so gotta make it worth using up.

keen nymph
elder mango
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Another thought, providing another way to get retail management experience without a stall would be a consideration.
Maybe each consignment sale gets you an xp hit?
If there were at least a way to skip serbule in retail management (I know casino does have some lvl 1s, but they are all taken every time ive checked), it would provide some sort of path into the skill.

somber seal
# elder mango Another thought, providing another way to get retail management experience witho...

I like this idea as well. Currently the frustration is getting to level 25 in Inudstry takes some work, only to then not be able to level retail because you cant get a shop. If there was a way to grind levels in retail without a shop so that we could open one in other areas that would be great too. The problem right now is no matter how much you wanna grind, work, or do anything to get into retail, you are stuck with a flawed system. A waiting ticket system? The management experience mentioned above? A instance close to serb that would proive stalls for those who qualify? Anything other then what it currently is please guys.

elder mango
# somber seal I like this idea as well. Currently the frustration is getting to level 25 in In...

So, for transparency, I have never touched industry since 2021. I just buy the full priced retail skill. I can't speak with any experience on industry.

As far as a waiting ticketing system, I honestly think that would just piss people off more. Not because it is a worse system, but it is more visible. There isn't a 'thing you can do' to make you more likely to get a shop. The optics would be upsetting, and that kind of thing matters for public discourse.
And from what I know, instancing is a complete non-starter as the game would require an overhaul for it. They are still working on getting multiple servers working nicely (cross-server titles, claimables, etc).
So if the solution needs to be added in the near term future, I think instancing can't be the answer. I think generally, the development philosophy of PG is anti-instancing.

placid meadow
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I don't think instancing is what is suggested. more so, a different "zone" you "enter" the trade hall(like entering casino) and it is just for stalls.

worthy bloom
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Exactly. Like Dream Realm, that was introduced to address early day lag of death in Serbule. A Zone with just stalls. To keep it simple: Just containing one (or more) Copies of the Merchant Building in Serbule Keep.

grave flare
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Btw FWIW the game already has instances (Guild Halls), and the upcoming housing is going to have it too - https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Dev_Blog:_Let's_Brainstorm_about_Housing. Ironically some of the points made for why going instanced rather than persistent for housing are exactly what afflict shops right now, like lack of scaleability and use of space.

So while instancing for shops has historically been a moot point, it’s not necessarily because of technical constraints.

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Player Stalls (from Citan)
We just don't have enough room for every player to have a permanent stall. Right now we're at a relatively low population ebb (player population has raised and lowered over the course of development many times... mostly unpredictably), but even at this relatively quiet point in time, we have over 1000 active players each week... and something like 200 vendor stalls. So that just doesn't scale. The fees are intended to force you to give up your stall for a while each month, or else pay a huge fee. I want people to be able to rent a stall for at least a week each month, even when populations go back up.
I'm open to other suggestions here, but I don't think the fee structure is the problem; it's a solution to a different problem, so to speak.
11/17/2020
https://forum.projectgorgon.com/showthread.php?2725-Player-vendor-stalls&p=19511#post19511

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The lack of scaleability also highlights that technically the change in fees structure we did eventually get with 1.0 was not meant (?) to solve the lack of enough stalls, see above - it partly addressed it as it’s meant to encourage people to move locations (into Casino and new Statehelm)… but if those locations meant to increase space aren’t attractive (as especially Statehelm isn’t rn since the economy relies so hard on “low level” loot), it’s almost DoA.

All to say that the new/bigger market zone suggestions (also discussed at length in one of the other pinned threads) accessible to or within Serbule kinda make more sense as a solution than the fees and lvl requirements (retail lvl reqs especially).

agile ridge
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I guess it all comes down to the fact that stall numbers are limited, the old system wasn't working well for anyone who wasn't already established in the most popular location, and the new changes aren't moving the needle yet.

And I'd imagine they'd be reluctant to do anything really serious about it since they're already stretched in so many directions wrt putting up extra servers and solving for high population issues. I agree that fiddling with NPC consignment to tie it into retail management or industry leveling would be one easy way to make changes without breaking anything else that's currently going on

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Second possible solution would be to make the whole "extra stall" thing an event. Add a small amount of semi-permanent consignment-only npcs in Serbule/Casino to start with. Slap a low industry requirement on being able to sell through them, like level 10. Selling would give decent amounts of XP in industry and retail management. Have the story be them condescending to offer traders a service for a fee.

The stuff listed with them wouldn't be searchable via golem bc they're feuding with shop management or w/e. BUT they'd be a central spot to hit to look for short term bargains, they could have limits for how much you list and how often so everyone doesn't just end up flooding them with everything, as well as arbitrary other limits (don't allow selling anything for less than vendor cost, maybe have a small but limited pool of vendor money for items they specifically want that week). So they're a way to farm up industry/retail management more quickly and also a fixed spot for players to check. More visibility than consignment with other favor npcs, but not as nice as being able to manage your own stall.

barren wind
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I think if they set Serbule stalls to have a limit of 7 days for a player to sell items, then institute a 7-day cooldown it would help give players a chance to sell goods in a more traditional "flea market" sense. Right now on Dreva a few veteran and other lucky players came on and have dominated the markets. It would be nice to see some other players get a chance to set up shop, rather than a few players that knew exactly what to make, sell, etc. right at launch.

west talon
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I think the current issue with player stalls is the sheer volume of players that just flooded into the game from the fall of AoC, the playerbase esentially exploded and now you're left with an outdated system that made sense for the ~150 concurrent players, but now for almost 5-700/server, its hard to gather the materials that were once much easier to get.

stoic obsidian
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Since we already have the "technology" in game for in world placeables, I would recommend taking a page from another game that lacks an Auction house, Mabinogi.

How they handle player trading is via player vendors that only stay active during your play time, but can be manned by an NPC to allow players to continue on their way. It doesn't even need to be a NPC as we already have items that dispense items automatically.

There are even restrictions in the form of "Licenses" that require players to pay money to a bank to setup a vendor in certain locations.

For example, while no one will care if I have a vendor in the middle of nowhere i, but if I wanted to have a stall in the middle of Serbule I need to pay for a license from Hulon to Hoarder.

Stalls would still be the preferred option, as they stay active even when a player is offline, but having temporary stalls would allow for players with the required levels to still sell their wares.

EDIT: This type of item already technically exists via the Item Vendor from Gadgeteering. The only issue is that this only sells a single item. So the only thing that would really need to be done is to expand this time to allow for multiple, different items: https://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Fancy_Item_Vendor

Reference to Mabinogi's Player Vendor System: https://wiki.mabinogiworld.com/view/Personal_Shop

Fancy Item Vendor
Mabinogi World Wiki
Personal Shop
quick hawk
quick hawk
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Having a stall is a big advantage. Something I've come to realize in this game. Players want prices cheaper then the going rate on the server. Which is frustrating. Having to waste time arguing with someone that an item is the price because its the current price on the server is irritating. Where as the vendors stalls get to just set a price and walk away. This kind of stuff happened in Everquest till they added their Bazaar system. All that needs to happen is the devs make a small map and have the map just be the enclosed building with just stalls lined up on every floor, boom done. No graphical issues because there would be nothing to load outside the building.

small dew
grave flare
# stoic obsidian Since we already have the "technology" in game for in world placeables, I would ...

I typed a whole comment on mobile saying I don’t hate some of the dynamics of Maginobi you shared, particularly:

You can only earn up to the maximum amount of gold that is listed on your license.

I was going to argue on applying this to current stall rental fees, but the more I typed the more I like the temp pop-up vendors instead.

I reckon it might require setting up zoning for where people are allowed to place those to avoid crazyness, but with the licensing sale cap (and making vendor close once all items sell, then activate a cooldown before player can set another) plus the requirement for the player to be online and active… It’d be constantly moving and kinda vibes.

What the heck. Sure. Make Vendors rename-able, allow multiple items to be sold via it (probs more complex to implement than it sounds?), let people change its color just for fun, and make the funds be redeemable via Hulon or Selphie or whomever at the used city(1) once vendor closes.

And leave stalls basically as-is for traders and crafters to be able to establish themselves and Run A Shop. Allows the historically desired market vibes to survive.

I always liked the idea of pop-up shops like in Ragnarok Online, and the vendor boxes are a neat way to enable something of the sort.

(1) or the player’s chosen NPC to marry if that will ever come indeed ;)

median stratus
small dew
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@median stratus oh I see, thought you were saying 49.5 merchant level not 49.5 days....

median stratus
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no you were right, i was thinking of the 50 skill needed for statehelm

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44 shop days isnt as bad as i expected for 25

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still gonna take a while (at least 44 days lol)

small dew
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Oh... see this is another thing. Folks aren't moving to casino where there are open stalls. So everyone's just fighting over serb stalls. This is preventing others from getting the opportunity to level and move to casino. Seems intentional.

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But since the dev team is so silent on this I went ahead and just down voted the game. I mean what else can you do?

lone raptor
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As a previously closed topic, this Player Shop/ Economy megathread remained open for everyone to have a chance providing last-minute suggestions, under moderation.

For now, the Dev team has the information they want on this topic, so this thread will be locked.

Reminder:
#1225658855946584134 message

lone raptor
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3cowstampede 3cowstampede 3cowstampede The Dev's answer to Player Shop discussions: #dev-news message

lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor
lone raptor