Buying and Selling in AoC, how should it work?

ArchivedUser

Outside of direct interactions with other players, how would you like to see this handled?

1. The Town Markets

2. Your Freehold

3. The NPC

Think on the 3 areas, and if you have a different one, please add it. I will be back to talk about each one in more detail. Of course IMO, nothing is set in stone yet.

ArchivedUser

Pooka thinks An Auction House...but instead of your typical AH, they need to have a creepy guy...with a large overcoat that sells items that you give to him and he mails it to you when stuff sells.

"What are ya buyin?"

This would bring Pooka much joy.

ArchivedUser

Ok here is how I would love to see it:

1. The Town Markets - We know we will get a cart or booth to sell from, and we know we need a caravan to bring in our items. We can sell from these places in person, or have a default NPC sell for us, while the space is rented out. If your doing a booth/ cart in the town, you need to pay for the right to sell in those market places. What's to stop people from selling without paying? nothing but the amount of items you can hold. If your going to be selling a ton of items, you have to rent the space.

2. Your Freehold - This is where your doing your magic, and making whatever your going to sell. Your only paying rent for the location, so there isn't a need to pay to sell your items, like you will need at the towns Market place. I believe you can sell the max amount of items from these locations, and open things up for others to use your crafting stations. Without knowing more, I will just leave it here., but the freeholds will be a very important place for all crafters in the game.

3. The NPC - The NPC vendors should have two roles in the game. One to sell your items, and Two to buy your items. Not we all know you can sell to the Game NPCs, but I would like to expand that same option to contracted player NPCs. Yes, we should have them to sell all of our items, if we are online or not, and at the same time, they should buy items from players too. We send the buy/ sell prices, and we Sell or Buy in game items with these contracted NPCs. If you need more ore, but your not online to get it, setup your buying vendor at your freehold. If you want to sell items while offline, same setup your selling NPC vendor at your freehold. IMO we should have both options, and we should be able to set the price. Of course the market will drive the price going both ways.

That's my view on the 3 I posted, and I will add one more.

4. The Black Market - is this something you want to see in AoC?

It's an underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or transaction which has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by some form of noncompliant behavior with an institutional set of rules.

Your thoughts?

ArchivedUser

The idea of a black market seems interesting for sure.  But mechanically I fail to see a reason for it or how to even implement it.

ArchivedUser

Brigadoom said:

The idea of a black market seems interesting for sure.  But mechanically I fail to see a reason for it or how to even implement it.

I was thinking in the area of corrupted players. I might be wrong, but I don't see them buying and selling to the open markets in town, or coming into some ones freehold to get what they need. So enter the black market, you get anything you need at the right price.

ArchivedUser

Good stuff overall. Just one small point. Sales at freeholds, and services sold there will be taxed by the node that if falls under. So while you are paying taxes on that freehold (rent), there will be further taxes (fees) associated with say your tavernkeep npc that sells those honeycakes you make to provide an exp boost. They haven't confirmed levels of tax yet, beyond that they are set by the node leader from city hall, but you can believe that freehold is not going to translate into "tax-free haven."

ArchivedUser

UnknownSystemError said:

Good stuff overall. Just one small point. Sales at freeholds, and services sold there will be taxed by the node that if falls under. So while you are paying taxes on that freehold (rent), there will be further taxes (fees) associated with say your tavernkeep npc that sells those honeycakes you make to provide an exp boost. They haven't confirmed levels of tax yet, beyond that they are set by the node leader from city hall, but you can believe that freehold is not going to translate into "tax-free haven."

Really any taxes will be set by the Mayor of the town, so hopefully they don't over tax the people.

ArchivedUser

I believe the Black Market that will spring up on its own will be due to people wanting to bypass the taxation systems that may be in place in the node. So black marketeering and smuggling will begin to exist in nodes where taxes are high.

Instead of hiring a caravan to move goods, the smugglers will just have a team of players and mules who can move in a group and dump the resources into a market (all theory depending on how the system works). The black market will start to appear, and I believe will go hand in hand with the tavern system, for people who want to sell goods but not be taxed through the marketplace or freehold system.

The Black Market Tavern would be where people tend to congregate to shout out their wares, or utilise some in game system (such as the player quests) to list goods or intention. If a single tavern becomes the unofficial hub for under-the-radar deals then people will tend to gravitate there in the absence of a trade channel, or indeed any global chat channels.

So this will all behoove a major to keep taxes reasonable to prevent these smugglers and black marketeers because the saving wouldn’t be worth the effort.

I love that there is even the potential to theorise about this stuff for Ashes.