Quote:
Originally Posted by Axlrose
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I read through this whole thread, and for a while, I thought I was back on the Eve Online forums...
Taking an aspect from that game and applying it here, IF the powers to be decided to implement a bazaar type feature without opening the Luclin expansion, then I offer a suggestion.
First - instead of East Commonlands tunnel covering the whole game world, perhaps it has the eastern portion of the map as a region only. Thus another bazaar area could be located near Qeynos to cover Erudin, another bazaar located somewhere in Greater Faydark, two more bazaars in Firionia Vie and the Overthere, and once Velious opens a bazaar at their starting zone (name escapes me at the moment). Thus the potential of different markets with different prices for the same items. And similar to Eve Online, some players might play the markets instead of grinding the same mob again.
Second - advertising your wares and being active at the keyboard means you could sell for free. But if you decide to go away for a bit, but still online, then pay a hourly broker's fee to keep your wares listed on a market board (an add-on to the game - people crowding around the boards, looking for goods, and seeing who is selling). This fee could be based upon a percentage of your total wares for sale; so every hour it is automatically deducted from your wallet. If you run out of money, then you are evicted from seller's mode. Or they could implement a non-playing character as your market mule and selling your wares. You have the option of being offline too. But this route would be the most expensive of them all. Payments are removed from a deposit your added and / or taken from offline sales with the same option of being evicted from selling mode once the money is gone.
Third - profit?
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There are all sorts of pros and cons to both a bazaar / auction house type system, or a system that requires complete player participation. These pros and cons depend heavily on the individual player, and what they want to spend their time on in a game. Many people have less time to play, or simply would rather not spend a lot of time engaging in arguably boring trading.
Others, like myself, vastly prefer a trading system where greater individual participation, personal drive, and knowledge of the market(s) yields much greater personal reward. I also enjoy the idea of bartering and haggling, as they are extremely canon to a fantasy RPG world, and help scratch my roleplaying itch.
That being said, I think you have some great ideas there, and I would have enjoyed seeing something like that implemented when Bazaar was, or sooner as you say. Perhaps the most tedious and annoying aspect of classic EverQuest trading, was having to link, or even short-hand write posts with dozens of very low-value, low-desirability tradeskill items, research pieces, and other smaller pieces. Trying to sell these things for a more established trader quickly becomes much more trouble than they are worth. This tends to make items that should be cheap and common, actually quite difficult to find.
To that end I would have very much liked to see a system that reduced or eliminated some of the tedium involved with trading many low-value items. Even if you don't mind the issue of having to spam and keep track of many, many small items, limited inventory and bank space is an issue, and you are forced to maintain several bank alts near the trade zone.