Buying and Selling from Merchants (Question Inside)

I chose the 3rd option. Vendors should be able to sell what is sold to them by a player and have a static list of items that they always have available.

This is being created as a living breathing world so the first thing that comes to mind for me is if a vendor obtains an item through a trade, of course they would have to resell that item to make any profit them self, just like any real life business.

If I go out and harvest items that I have no intention of using and want to make a little coin off it, I can go to a vendor and sell those harvested items. If another player comes by that vendor a little while later, those items I sold should be sitting there in the vendors inventory ready to be sold--or if I craft items, or loot items or whatever the case may be. I should have the option to do a direct sale to players either hand to hand or through a market place, which in a good economy should make me more coin but if I just want to dump items to a vendor, yes, those items should not just disappear.

It would bring up other ideas to do this. Such as, if I craft a sword and can not do a direct trade, would I make more money selling it to a general goods vendor or a weapon vendor? And then when a buyer comes along to that vendor and sees that sword, would they get a better price from one or the other of the vendors? Or would all vendors in the game not care to set different prices and all prices through a vendor remain the same?

A previous poster mentioned the "life of consequences". This is one of the thoughts that came up when I discussed this question with my husband. If I decided I really shouldn't have sold that awesome whatnot and go back to the vendor and it's not there, that is just tough luck for me. Every action should have a consequence, good or bad, and I would really think hard next time before dumping my items to a vendor.

Love the questions, love the direction you are going with the game and I absolutely can not wait to play.

I'm actually a 2&3 mashup. I'd like merchants to sell static items, or items that perhaps change slowly over time as well as buy the player's items and provide the player a reasonable "buy-back" window in which the player can get a mistakenly sold item back from the merchant with no additional cost. Once that window is closed, however, the item goes up for sale at the merchant's rates.

I picked #2. The concept of looking through a vendors' goods and finding player sold items sounds exciting. I'd take it a step further and say that while anything can be sold to any vendor, specific vendors sell specific items, like only the blacksmith sells metal weapons and armors. I'd go yet another step further and say only the vendors in that town exchange goods between each other, so selling an item in Halas won't mean someone can pick it up from a vendor in Qeynos.

Following up the idea of traveling merchants, said merchants could carry player sold items, pay for player escorts to neighboring towns in coin and temporary discounts, and even potentially lose some or all of their wares to a raiding party along the way. Orc treasure trove comprised of player sold items? What's so RNG about that?

Finally, I'm not much of a fan of auction houses. From the beginning I've been for localizing in game markets to regions or towns, creating multiple lesser economies underneath a larger world economy in the game. The auction houses' role is for making trade convenient, but it rarely if ever encourages player interactions. Rather, they just allow a player to place an item for a price they set and they eat a bit of a tax setting it up. Another player just picks the item and hits "buy" and that's the extent of the interaction. I feel there should be a square in every town with a dedicated trade-chat channel and a billboard with purchase requests and sell advertisements made by players for other players to look through. Encouraging players to actually *gasp* communicate for non-vendor priced transactions would go a long way to strengthening communities, isolate economies to a per region basis, and promote player traders to travel from town to town for the sake of profit.

Here's what I would like to see: Supply and demand. If there are a thousand rat ears being sold to merchants and rat ear pies just aren't selling well, the cost of both should go down, both for the merchant and for the player. Naturally, this would require NPC supply and consumption considerations as well. Let's say, for argument's sake, that merchants sell rat ear pies at 1 gold per pie and buy rat ears at 1 silver per ear and sell them for 2 silver. Across all of Norrath, 500 rat ear pies are consumed every day and mechants have access (through NPC connections) to 250 rat ears (with one rat ear required per pie, absolute only use for rat ears).

Two scenarios:

1. Players stop hunting rats and/or selling rat ears to merchants

In this scenario, the price of rat ear pies goes up until the NPC consumption drops to 250 (minus player consumption). The price of rat ears goes up as well, as making rat ear pies becomes more lucrative and so bakers are willing to pay more for the rat ears.

2. Players hunt down lots of rats and sell an average of 750 rat ears to merchants per day

In this scenario, the price of rat ear pies goes down until NPC consumption doubles, and the buying and selling prices of rat ears goes down as well.

These pricing fluctuations could also be local, though with the fast travel that you guys seem to want to implement, that could be exploited fairly easily.

Also of note is that a purchase of, say, 5-10 rat ears or rat ear pies when the market has 1,000 ears probably wouldn't make much of a difference on the price (the selling price might go up by a copper), but buying 100 certainly would, so trying to horde rat ears wouldn't work very well, since you'd have to be fighting increasing prices as you're buying and decreasing prices as you're selling, resulting in an overall loss.

There are a few aspects of this system that aren't perfect, mind you, but for the most part I feel that a supply and demand system could work, at least better than most systems in place in MMOs today. Furthermore, I feel that it fits with the overall design philosophy of EQ Next. Specifically, it merges well with the AI system and ever-changing world ideas.

As far as accidental selling goes, maybe have items have the option of adding an "important" tag by the player. The tag could be removed at any time, but it would have the effect of making the item non-tradeable for as long as it had the tag. Simple and effective.

I'm a big fan on the way some other games have done this, where merchants will only purchase items usable for their store and sell those items back to other players. So for instance the local blacksmith might have basic items for sale most of the time, and be willing to buy players weapons/armor to resale (at markup) to other players. But the blacksmith has no interest in buying snakes eggs or fire beetle eyes.

I love the idea that vendors wouldnt just have a static item list. A variable list will make talking to each vendor a game in itself hoping for some great deal. I would also like if vendors changed price based on demand and supply. The more of the same item (or perhaps even item type) is sold to the npc the less the npc will be willing to pay for it and the cheaper it will be available for other players. This way there will be no preferential npcs in central city hubs and people who go off the beaten path will be rewarded by getting better prices for their stuff.

I would really really love to have merchants that will buy things off you for a different price depending on what your selling

for example: A chest piece has a base value of 100gp

An armorer will buy the chest piece for 75gp
A weapon smith would buy it for 65GP (hey it's a good source of metal)
A General Vendor 40GP
A Chef 10GP

for me this would add a nice dynamic to the game

I guess one mans junk is another mans treasure, I mean anything with real value is gonna be sold on a auction or through a chat unless someone makes a mistake and vendors something valuable. But I am all for players trying to search merchant inventory, but it kinda seems like a wasted process...

I think the first few towns should have NPC that sells static lists as well as items that were sold to them.
But in other towns or player made cities, people should be able to hire NPC to sell items that they have made themselves, which allows people or guilds to run business and become more well known.
That would make crafting or gathering guilds more important if you want to keep you shop's item stock up.

I'm completely against the idea of npc-vendors or auction houses or things like that. It takes away part of the player interaction.

I really hope that we will be able to set up our own shops within our houses and employ NPC-vendors to sell our goods. A simple shopping trip turn into an adventure of discovery. You can explore other people's houses and maybe even become good friends with a crafter you ofen buy from .

SWG did a great job at this. Hope this feature will return to EQN in some form.

this sounds similar to how trading worked in the old uncharted waters games for the SNES and genesis. one port would have an abundance of an item and it would sell for cheap, so you could stock up on it there, and another port would have a high demand so you could sell it for a profit. you could set up trade routes, and travel back and forth buying and selling different items both directions. in those games, there were overhead fees, such as food costs and employee pay, which wouldn't be present in an MMO. without some way to chip into that, people would spend a few weeks building up insane amounts of gold. distance could be a deterrent if there wasn't fast travel, but there is. some sort of trader's tax could work, where an item gets flagged if it's bought at one vendor, and be subject o that tax. so someone would have to bring a large shipment in to be able to make a profit. trader licenses (possibly a cash shop item) could also be added, to wave that tax for a week at a time. there would probably need to be more to it than just that, but it's definitely more interesting than merchants just being trash cans with a consolation prize.

Option two, but with some more.

I would love to see merchants buy/sell not only with players, but with other npcs. A Merchant to merchant trade across the entire world that will completely distribute the goods sold by players. And how are they to be distributed? Well, trade wagons, convoys, teleportation, etc all of which can be raided by other nasty npcs or other players for that matter. But trade routes are guarded by mercenaries, guards, peasants, and, of course, other players, so stealing from a wagon should be a difficult task (based on the value of the loot the merchant paid for it). It should also take time to get items from one place to another. Days, maybe even weeks (in-game time), to get to there destination. After all they're only moving at a slow pace on a road.

Another idea is that the merchant can also distribute the goods among his city. Effectively strengthening the cities defense by guards, peasants, mercs, and kings buying said goods. It will also increase the total cities wealth, and thereby making it a high target for thieves (npcs and player alike), raiding armies, and maybe even a dragon if the city is flooded with treasure.

This, of course, triggers many mini quests and plenty of fun.

I am, however, not on the ban-wagon for a buy-back option. If you sold it by mistake, then it should be a mistake YOU regret, but hey it's not like the merchant is a bad business man, because he's willing to sell it back at double the cost.

Actually, it was option 2. Consequences.

Not to everyone. For that first generation through a region that "junk" may be critical for survival. Back in EQ I worked up an entire collection of bronze which lasted me for quite a while. I was more decked out than most. Same thing with WoW's launch. That "junk" that dropped in Westfall held me for several levels.

(Why are quotes not working for me anymore again.

I think that the most important thing isn't where the NPCs are getting their items, so long as the items they sell are actually useful. That trap that so many games fall into is limiting good items solely to drops off of raid bosses or random drops in the world. Sure, it's great for you to get that awesome one-handed sword for your warrior off of a tough boss battle. But that really kills the depth of the game if the only way to get top quality items is to kill super powerful enemies. If that's the case, where did the items come from? Who made them? Are those weapons impossible to make? I've always felt that the best bartering system in RPGs came from Baldur's Gate, where you could by a One-Handed Sword +2 from some random vendor, but it'd cost you an arm and a leg to do so. That's the kind of depth I'd like to see in the Merchants in EQN.

1. Merchants should be able to resale items that were purchase from players.
2. Vendors should be able to be created by players (SWG vendor system)
3. Vendors should base their buy prices on supply, demand, and market estimated prices.
4. Vendors should sell there goods at the average market price of the item.
5. Vendors can both be static and mobile to allow for coverage (aka caravans).

For point 4, I'd add the average price market for the area. Ice is cheap in frozen area, should be expensive in deserts.

David Georgeson
"No. If you want to buy from players, then do so. The game should encourage player-to-player action whenever possible."

I strongly disagree. If the game offers a lot a useful items and a crafting system that isn't completely fail (as many of today's games have) then players will always have a thriving commerce like in EQ1. I miss vendor diving. If someone doesn't want to take the time to auction their Blue Diamonds in the Bazaar or whatever type of market system is implemented; then they can sell them quick to a merchant and others can scoop them up for use in their crafting or whatever. Static merchants that offer the same bilge forever are boring and make the game seem less alive.

Yes I think there should be a static list the buy from, and there should be a time limit to allow a player to buy back before it goes up for sale publicly. But for the most part I think it's a great idea it would once again add value to the NPC merchant which over the years really lost importance, it seems like in MMOs today the only value the merchants have is to quickly sell junk too. This will make each merchant in the game a nice random potluck of junk and maybe the occasional rare item someone might vendor off. This will make the merchant worth talking to again, and make them actually seem like a real merchant or trader worthy of the title. Instead of a bottomless pit to throw your junk into.

This would avoid the resource dump in game, getting to buy from merchants what others sold them. I support it.