Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
How to know your market, when you have no world market?
So you want to sell in AoC, but you don't know how to price your goods? Make it to high, and people will walk away, make it to low, and you cheat yourself from making a profit. So what will work in AoC?
day 1
Building your resources:
No matter what your going to make, you need the resources to do it. So be it your doing it for yourself, gathering up what you need, or you buying it off others. That means you still have to make money, and in the beginning you need to go out and kill stuff to get the coin your need to buy from others. At the end of the day, you should have a good beginnings to what your going to make for your in game business. Most of this time your basing it on what you know of past games market history with players.
day 2
Making your items.
At this point your making whatever you picked to make, and getting it ready to sale. What do people need, and what is needed over all. You have to find out what is in demand at the start, and gain as much of coin you can on the next day. You might find what is needed based on past games, or you might miss the mark and get set back. But all in all you will have a few coins on the next day. At this point your taking the current market orders to fill on the next day.
day 3
Finding your market.
You should at this point have Identified all the items people are looking for, and your picking what your going to make to gain the coins your looking to make from those items. At this point the market is set for new questing gear, so it's what you need to make while this market is still young. You should keep this trend in mind for later future orders.
day 4
Retires of failure.
Ok you might have missed the mark on your 1st and 2nd orders, but it doesn't mean you give up, and you find what will work for you right now. Do you just get the resource for others to make things? Do you provide a service to process items? Or do make what is needed and sell the finish product?
week 2
Knowing your market
After a few days of hard work, you have a growing business in game. People are buying from you, and your making good coin. So now you want to expand a little. This is where you have to watch what your doing next. It's all about location, location location. If it be a freehold or a spot in the towns market square, you have to be the person people remember that come back too. If you played your cards right, people will be looking to buy from your 1st, so you need to make sure your keep your bags full. At this point you should know what sells the best, and what don't make the coin.
1 month
New markets.
Now this is going to be the bear of the game. You know your areas market prices, what sells best, but what about the next node town over. Maybe your trying to get a foot hold in a new market, but you don't know what the prices at before you get there. So you can do a couple things.
1. hire a scout - send this person out to report on the pricing in the next town, let them tell you want the local prices are set too.
2. Take a sample - You go to the new town on your own, and you have a sample of what your selling. This trip is mainly to scout for yourself the prices in the new area. So you might take a hit on your sales, but you get a feel for the market at hand.
2 months.
Keeping a record.
If your going to be selling in other towns, outside of your own town, you must keep a record of the prices of each town. We have no global market, so you can't see what is selling at what price in real time. You have to spend time to keep a log on what the prices were doing a week ago, and what was selling good over the few weeks of your sales.
Ok I am just tossing ideas out there, but if someone has better idea, I would love to hear them. Maybe what I said can work or not, but in AoC when your buying and selling whatever, the world will be a huge place to do business in, and we do not have a global market to help figure out prices. City A at level 6 might sell items at a very high rate of exchange, where you have Town B at level 3 selling the same items at a discount. We who play the role of merchants need to find the right mix, and keep the buyers happy, or face losing in game business before it starts.
Comments
Buyers are as clueless as the sellers. Even though people will most likely circumvent this by having alts in each major nodes to keep track of pricing.
You get a feel for it when your items stop selling.
1. It's not needed any more, or
2. yes you did price it too high.
I always drop my prices to check if the item is still needed. If it doesn't sell period, I recycle it, or sell it at junk prices at the NPC vendors.
This just comes from what I seen in other games, but this time we will not get the help of the global market, so it's going to take a little more work. Most of what I will be doing it handling the resource side in the beginning, then move on to items market. Resource always sell great in any game, there is always a market for them. That should always be the main focus if your going to be a seller. After a few weeks, you an pick your new market, if that is what you want to do. Me, I am hoping to have help, if my family will fall in line with this game. haha
Make price checkable from anywhere.
Well how can we check it from anywhere, if we don't have a global market place? It was already stated we will not have a global market place to sell our goods, everything will be done locally, and the next town might have different prices vs what your selling in your home town.
Yes I totally agree, I was making the point in the early days, we will not know the market, and as you pointed out need to get runners to check the markets. This of course will not happen until around 1 month to 2 months of the game being out. At that point the markets should be in full swing, and We will need people to scout the markets. Look another in game job that will be needed. Lets hook this with the taxi service, and it's win win on manyy levels lol.
Guilds in my time of crafting for them, got a discount off my regular prices. Plus whatever I priced in the public, I tried to keep it as fair as I could. Some players jack up the price for an epic item into the millions. Ok I understand if its rare and epic, get what you can for it, but really anything over 100 million gold is just nuts.
In real life you could walk to a bunch of different stores and each could have different prices. Prices will fluctuate and normalize depending on the supply and demand of the demographics in each location. Should be no different in game.
If you watch some of the videos you will see that we go to bazaars in each location to purchase and buy things this gives it a more realistic feal and can make looking for what you want an adventure in it self.
When you do not have a global market where you can see all the prices it becomes difficult for people to mass purchase and resell items easily. Which means you have potential as a normal player to make more for what you make and find in your adventures cause it limits how pro game sellers end up selling things off line constantly farming things to throw off markets.
Global trading houses is one of the reasons MMORPG games went downhill over the years.
That's my 2 pence, and I'm sticking with it
At the very beginning after release, items on market are going to be rare (because people haven't farmed them yet), and thus one can expect people to try sell for bigger prices at first (it never hurts to try, specially if there is no %ItemValue deposit).
With time, as market fills up with more competition, prices will likely drop.
So at beginning, it will most likely be better for you to farm your own resources up, rather then attempt purchasing them on the market.
One thing people have to remember, the NPC vendors will not be free. At least I hope not, you should pay them to sell your goods at your Freehold or market cart or stall. The more money you put on them, the longer they will be contracted under you.
This is how it worked in UO, and it worked pretty well. It put time limits on how long you could sell an item, and made sure you returned to keep the vendor well stocked and paid.
For example; plants would be more expensive in snow area/cities since there will be no plants or maybe different kind of plants. In the other hand ore might be cheaper in those areas and so on.
People will do caravans to transport those ressources in other cities to maximise profit.
I guess their would be more leather work in forest/"green" areas so prices will drop and the contrary in snow areas in wich will be more mining and maybe less (even no?) leather work.
Prices will be higher in cities/nodes where those ressources are not here because you'll have to take the risk of being killed on your way to bring those ressources (since there is no TP).
When i say the whole point of the game is the world economy it's because people will PvP for these ressources, caravans, even siege to get a node wich will provide you ressources (that you might not have in your node) in addition to taxes to citizens. Even guilds wars that bring rewards might be money/ressources.
I have to get back into the mind set I had when I played UO, it works a lot like how AoC will be doing it. And I made tons of money off my vendors and direct sells are the market places. AKA standing next to the bank. I would tame the max number of horses, then line them up next to the bank, and they sold like hot cakes. lol I would do other mounts too, started with horses, then lamas, then these two legged lizard looking things. If you could ride it, I sold it. lol
Now it won't always work like this, I have no idea of the true mechanics, but from one simple thing "no global auction" you have created potentially infinite scenarios in which you lose big or win big and its up to player skill and shrewdness to ensure the ledger remains green.