Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
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.
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.
Auction House question and comment regarding ease of use
So I read today that they will have only local auction houses with caravans used to trade goods. I can appreciate the need for that, however I do have some concerns. ESO has a similar auction house that is run by guilds who use local vendors in various cities and towns throughout the game to sell your goods. In short it's annoying and I have concerns on how such a system would work here.
What ends up happening is your goods don't get a lot of visibility and potential customers in many spots, making things hard to sell and the only way for customers to view and compare stores is by manually clicking on each NPC which limits how many they're willing to view. Most players pick one town or city that has a lot of guild stores and is considered a hot spot and that's it. It also makes it hard to find what you want so often you're not getting the best price or the quantity you need, or if it's a more rare item, it might be harder to find.
It's just a pain in the rear to use and I can't stand it. There's no real benefit to it there. Here the caravan system is cool so it makes more sense, but I'm still concerned that it's going to be a pain to use.
So here's my suggestion - can we have a system whereby players can view and compare from any local auction house in the world via a simple UI accessible anywhere via the game menu? So that way the seller will still need to use the caravan to get their goods to a particular location to sell it, however the player can still view all of their options so they know where to go, and the seller can get better visibility. Thoughts?
What ends up happening is your goods don't get a lot of visibility and potential customers in many spots, making things hard to sell and the only way for customers to view and compare stores is by manually clicking on each NPC which limits how many they're willing to view. Most players pick one town or city that has a lot of guild stores and is considered a hot spot and that's it. It also makes it hard to find what you want so often you're not getting the best price or the quantity you need, or if it's a more rare item, it might be harder to find.
It's just a pain in the rear to use and I can't stand it. There's no real benefit to it there. Here the caravan system is cool so it makes more sense, but I'm still concerned that it's going to be a pain to use.
So here's my suggestion - can we have a system whereby players can view and compare from any local auction house in the world via a simple UI accessible anywhere via the game menu? So that way the seller will still need to use the caravan to get their goods to a particular location to sell it, however the player can still view all of their options so they know where to go, and the seller can get better visibility. Thoughts?
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Leiloni said: This would incentivize traveling, an expedition via " on the hunt for goods " - it gives reason(s) for players to travel & explore
Plus, this would prevent their being ONLY one Hot-spot. Each Node will be Hot-Spots - each Node having it's variety of Players selling all of kinds of Goods of different kinds, prices ... and maybe items that other Nodes won't have.
- Think of it this way ... in ThemePark MMOs ... the newest expansion is where all/ most of the High-LvL Players are going to be - because of the New Hub. Along side the fact that each Region seperated by LvL ( i.e. you'll never see a LvL 1 in a LvL 110 area while in a ThemePark MMO )
- Ashes of Creation is aiming for each Node having Players of ALL Level-ranges at Nodes ... although not initially (i.e. you've have to build it first). Not every Node provides the same thing though - which incentivizes traveling. If you're interested in what the other Nodes have ... or in this case ... if you're interested in what Players from the other Node(s) are selling - then that gives further incentives of traveling there to find-out
- of course this would kinda depend on how Chat is set-up ... if Chat is set to where only Players from your Node can view messages. That means that other players won't see them from other Nodes. BUT if its a Global Map ... then everyone will be able to see it.
But again, How much convenience is considered too much ?Because it could affect how long Content will last
In fact the system is so flawed that people have created addons to track sale prices throughout various guild stores (reliant on users uploading data for their own guild stores frequently), and it allows you to know what the standard prices are across the game and what to list your item for.
This addon also has a separate site that allows you to search for these listings and find them in game, but most players I don't think are aware of it and personally I've never used it because alt tabbing to search AH listings is just too much work for me. But here's an example of what it gives you if I search for max level, max quality healing staffs (the forum seems to be messing up my link but you get the idea):
https://us.tamrieltradecentre.com/pc/Trade/SearchResult?ItemID=&TradeType=Sell&ItemNamePattern=&ItemCategory1ID=0&ItemCategory2ID=1&ItemCategory3ID=8&ItemTraitID=&ItemQualityID=4&IsChampionPoint=true&IsChampionPoint=false&LevelMin=160&LevelMax=160&MasterWritVoucherMin=&MasterWritVoucherMax=&AmountMin=&AmountMax=&PriceMin=&PriceMax=
is ESO a ThemePark MMO ?
Is a WoW Clone ?
- Does it play like WoW ?
- Does it feel like WoW ?
- Does have any (redeemable) features that makes it a comparison to WoW ?
Because if they are any , then that's probably the "true" reason why its annoying ... because its being compared to ... " the original that it was based-off on "in any case, i understand what you mean, but it seems as though it'll just lead into too much convenience .. to the point to where the entirety of Ashes of Creation won't resemble its formal self
Also having vendor search by location would give away tactical information that those with nefarious reasons could use to track node development and resources. If you see that silver is only popping up in Happy Valley, it is time to rally the troops and go attack Happy Valley before they get all the shiny benefits their newly discoverd node of silver gives.
The limited auto travel and lack of fast travel means that your convenience factor is still going to be limited. You will still have to schlep your way across the countryside, buy the goods, and transport them back to your freehold or home node to craft the goods you are trying to make. The addons like TTC and MM require user generated data searches to update their database. Since we know that they plan to limit the API to keep hacking and botting down (and you can't say that ESO doesn't have a botting problem) any third party addon created without their approval might catch you a ban if they can detect it. And they have spent more time than most companies working on those issues, so they don't have the same problems that those that react after the fact get.
And finally, one of their core pillars is meaningful pvp. If people find workarounds to the economic model they have planned, then there is no reason to caravan stuff. No caravans, reduced pvp objectives, reduced pvp objectives, and the reasons for conflict that drives emergent gameplay are reduced.
The seller would send it out, the buyer would go to a notice board where they could sort through only their wanted items and it would tell them the sellers location.
It's only node wide, but it will save you some of the trouble of tracking down sellers
Another reason to prevent global auction house type set ups is that some nodes will be Economic nodes. It seems like if there were going to be a global auction house it would be a special feature of an Economic Metropolis, and not something every town should just grant automatic access too. Unless the special feature of the Economic node has been confirmed as something different.
Also, having an actual economist helping set all this up prior to an implementation might be why they have decided against the global route. They might be using it as a way to control, throttle, or strengthen the games economy.
So you buy that suit of armor and find it later 25% cheaper elsewhere. By an extra set and trek it back to recoup your loss. In the end after you buy something you will likely find the price starts to go down shortly thereafter anyways. It sounds like some people want the best prices and ability to see everything for sale without spending the effort of actually looking.
thats for sharing that information about ESO - i never played it
My suggestion would be to allow a centralized auctions in each location. What I mean is each city would have their own, a small outpost or town within the zoi of the city would have their own auctions as well. This way there is one location within each location that holds auctions. If you think things are too expensive and you didn't want to break immersion, you'd have to go travelling to find a location where these items are cheaper to make and have less value. If you want to break immersion.. well then find a trading discord/forum and post what you are looking for. Regardless, without fast travelling you will have to gauge every new area you are going to run to vs the chance that it will be more or less expensive. I don't want people crying to me that my prices are more than they are 4 nodes down. Run back or just eat the cost. Anyways, competition will normalize prices vs the cost of materials.
ESO's problems were that they had guild-ran auction houses spread out everywhere. It also didn't have much of an economy as all materials are equally easy to get and all it took was a little effort or spamming trade chat to get the stuff you needed. On top of that you could fast travel so you never really had to balance time vs effort. Since you could travel to any location and peruse any AH you didn't have to say "Hmmm, I wonder if travelling for 10 minutes to the next decent town is worth it since this [item] is only 15% over what I'm wanting to spend."
Also, don't forget that an economic metropolis will have all auction houses within it's zone of influence (zoi) linked up.
A better comparison to make is ArcheAge and how trading routes worked in that game. But AA was limited to trading packs, where AoC is creating a living breathing economy for all crafted and harvested materials akin to EvE online. A huge fundamental aspect of a living breathing economy is the risk/reward ratio because of the open world PvP. ESO is just a fundamentally different game because there is 0 risk in trading between the city hubs, and thus the whole guild traders system is more of a nuisance than a good game system. I don't believe the problems with it are applicable to AoC's systems.
At the beginning a region/node can see their own auction house as it was planned. But if you successfully escort a caravan to another region/node, temporally your region will have access to the other region's AH where the caravan went. This temporal access will be time limited or quantity limited. It also can affect for only the guarding party or for the owner of the caravan (guild) or even for the whole region. The Intrepid can balance that this benefit will not get too 'OP'. Maybe we should make there and back caravan guarding to get the access and the gold and the good also needs to travel. From the 'gold' it came to my mind: this temporal access can be gold limited access as well.
If Chat is separated by Node's ZOI ... then you might see a bunch of Players at the Borders of each Nodes' ZOI trying to listen-in on the other Chat - trying to "eavesdrop" for information ... maybe Chat needs to be based on whose Nearby ?
Maybe ... what you see in chat can correlate to the Bard in someway due to Hearing ?
- Since the Bard likes playing with Musical Instruments (sound) ... and the IF the Bard plays as a Manipulative-playstyle ( via Hymns, Curses, Hallucinations, Magical-Instruments, voodoo, burns etc ) ... this could kind of tie-into the Archetype very well - there's already an Archetype-Blend for the Bard called the "Siren" ... <~<
Idk, but the Chat Window is something to think about now xDBut this would also incentivize traveling too ... in a way