NPC vendors

I personally like how the shops work in Old School Runescape. The general stores sell some very basic items as standard (cooking tools, woodcutting tools, etc), as well as any items that other players sell to the store. So if I sell some arrows to the general store, another player can purchase those arrows. The more of an item in a store, the cheaper that item is.

I like this because it means every general store might have different things, and you can pick up some really good deals from them if you are lucky.

Damokles

I would like it if every city had at least one of each
(armour and weapons different sellers for different types: heavy, medium, light / onehanded melee, two handed melee, ranged bows, staves and wands, books and foci):
Armour vendor (standard armour for different levels that you can use if you dont have much money, your last armour broke and you dont have anything else to replace it with)
Weapon vendor(same as above)
Miscelaneous(fishing poles, rations etc)
Trading goods (like flour, or milk, or string, or paint/colouring etc)

@Damokles

That suggests you would be ok buying gear from NPC vendors which means they'd need to sell wears comparable to craftable gear. I guess inferior since you say "if you don't have much money" but it kind of requires knowledge of player market prices to tune the prices.

@wanderingmist

So then what would the difference between a metro shop and a city shop be? Number of slots? Or just the intrinsic population difference where more people in metros will provide higher variety of things for players to buy? Also for this to be valid, items need to sell for a reasonable price at vendors. Would you suggest that you can only sell certain wares to the appropriate vendor? Do they have limited money? Why would a player sell to a vendor NPC instead of setting up shop to sell to other players?

neuroguy wrote: »

@Damokles

That suggests you would be ok buying gear from NPC vendors which means they'd need to sell wears comparable to craftable gear. I guess inferior since you say "if you don't have much money" but it kind of requires knowledge of player market prices to tune the prices.

@wanderingmist

So then what would the difference between a metro shop and a city shop be? Number of slots? Or just the intrinsic population difference where more people in metros will provide higher variety of things for players to buy? Also for this to be valid, items need to sell for a reasonable price at vendors. Would you suggest that you can only sell certain wares to the appropriate vendor? Do they have limited money? Why would a player sell to a vendor NPC instead of setting up shop to sell to other players?

It should be noted that at the time there was no auction house in runescape, so if you wanted to sell anything you either had to do a direct player trade or sell to the store.

Wololo

Intresting post!
Yes as @Wandering Mist sayd; the runescape system was rly nice. For alot of items the sell price to general store was just under market value. Some would check them out looking for bargains.
I like the idea too of NPC's selling goods only after you complete a quest for it (like in GW2 with Karma vendors after heart quests). Or if they are the same race, same ZoI, same organisation, same corruption stage or only offer goods after a certain siege or event. That could make some NPC's very potent and sought after. Ofcource it would be metagamed but the more variation they bring in this the more it will tie into other systems and professions.

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

I personally like how the shops work in Old School Runescape. The general stores sell some very basic items as standard (cooking tools, woodcutting tools, etc), as well as any items that other players sell to the store. So if I sell some arrows to the general store, another player can purchase those arrows. The more of an item in a store, the cheaper that item is.

I like this because it means every general store might have different things, and you can pick up some really good deals from them if you are lucky.

In the context of a game like Ashes, this could be genius.

Damokles

neuroguy wrote: »

@Damokles

That suggests you would be ok buying gear from NPC vendors which means they'd need to sell wears comparable to craftable gear. I guess inferior since you say "if you don't have much money" but it kind of requires knowledge of player market prices to tune the prices.

I would rather say that crafted gear would take its minimum prices FROM the npc shops. Crafted gear would never fall below "NPC" gear,.
It is sad how some games handled their crafting, WoW for example has "good" crafted gear, but they are either RNG locked, or bring a net win of a few gold....
Gems for example are sold for LESS then the material cost to acquire the materials.
(you spend 100gold for 10 ore, you refine those for around 2 gems, cut those gems, and these cut gems would sell for around 10gold for example....)

NPC Gear:
normal rarity, good armour, no special stats = very cheap

Crafted gear/looted gear:
uncommon and higher rarity, good armour, extra stats = more expensive then NPC gear

Shoklen

Could go the star wars galaxies way.. No NPS merchants at all, everything player made... (At least at the start, in time there were drops but that's another topic..)

Players making and crafting everything made the game very interesting in the early months. Add in gear decay, and crafter's stayed busy nearly the entire time keeping players geared.

For a game in 2002/2003, galaxies did a lot right, though also did a lot wrong and crashed.. heh..

That said, sounds like our characters themselves will be the vendors in Ashes.. and with limited inventory space we can only sell so much.. and will be caravans to get even more from one city to another if you want to sell "over there".. since there is no "global market".

swooxie

Either make no npcs or makes npcs where you can only sell gathered materials and let them create the armor/weapons/jewel for them to sell (if the hit an required amount).
Never liked that npc have unlimited items.

Shoklen wrote: »

Could go the star wars galaxies way.. No NPS merchants at all, everything player made... (At least at the start, in time there were drops but that's another topic..)

Players making and crafting everything made the game very interesting in the early months. Add in gear decay, and crafter's stayed busy nearly the entire time keeping players geared.

For a game in 2002/2003, galaxies did a lot right, though also did a lot wrong and crashed.. heh..

That said, sounds like our characters themselves will be the vendors in Ashes.. and with limited inventory space we can only sell so much.. and will be caravans to get even more from one city to another if you want to sell "over there".. since there is no "global market".

One thing to keep in mind is that player run stalls can only be set up in an economic metropolis, and auction houses are exclusive to economic nodes of stage 3 or higher. So until those start popping up the only way to sell things reasonably is to NPC vendors.

@noaani it could definitely work for non-economic nodes that don't have access to player stalls or an auction house.

Wololo wrote: »

I like the idea too of NPC's selling goods only after you complete a quest for it (like in GW2 with Karma vendors after heart quests). Or if they are the same race, same ZoI, same organisation, same corruption stage or only offer goods after a certain siege or event. That could make some NPC's very potent and sought after. Ofcource it would be metagamed but the more variation they bring in this the more it will tie into other systems and professions.

I just like the exploration and discovery of talking to NPCs without knowing who's a merchant and who isn't or what they will have for sale. When games encourage this type of interaction, e.g. not having quest markers so you interact with NPCs, pay attention and choose dialogue choices (therefore become invested) and perhaps get a quest, an item, or something without having known it would happen beforehand. Divinity Original Sin 2 did this well.

Damokles wrote: »

I would rather say that crafted gear would take its minimum prices FROM the npc shops. Crafted gear would never fall below "NPC" gear,.

Yeah that's usually a consequence of having NPCs sell/buy items for a particular price. If an NPC will buy each of your copper ores for 10 silver (with no other restriction), you will only sell it for at least 11 silver to players. Similarly, if a shop keeper sells the exact item you're selling for 5 gold (assuming infinite stock), you have to sell it for lower. I do then agree that NPCs should not sell the same gear that players can craft to not "cap" the price players can sell at.

Damokles wrote: »

NPC Gear:
normal rarity, good armour, no special stats = very cheap

Only issue I take with this is that it doesn't allow for any distinction between vendors in a metro vs vendors in a village. But vendors don't need to sell just gear either. What about raw materials or consumables? How would the stock be managed?

swooxie wrote: »

Either make no npcs or makes npcs where you can only sell gathered materials and let them create the armor/weapons/jewel for them to sell (if the hit an required amount).
Never liked that npc have unlimited items.

That's cool, so the resources sold in the node kind of impact what the vendors sell? I think it would be a bit annoying to code but definitely doable. I like it, it even makes you excited to visit the NPC vendors if you get to a far-off node in a different biome because you don't know what they have available in the region and therefore what they might have for sale.

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Damokles

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Players would need the specific resources (copper/bronze, silver, gold etc), and at that point people would just barter with goldbars xD

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Lol like coins? Probably not, you would need sufficient "coin" to start up the economy as a fully barter economy is tough to pull off I think. I think it would simply be too hard but I could be wrong.

Tangent: I will say that my fave economy in any game, which I will preface by saying I do not think is possible to pull off in an MMORPG, is the one in Path of Exile. In that game, the "currency" is crafting items. Even in that game people default to measuring/evaluating value in terms of 1 or 2 crafting items like silver and gold coins butttt I always thought it was really cool that you traded crafting potential. It eliminates needing currency sinks and causes interesting dynamics in terms of pricing around economic resets but I think it only works for the type of game it is: heavy RNG and the same crafting system for every player. So again, I don't think it will work in an MMO and I don't think it's worth trying even lol.

Damokles wrote: »

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Players would need the specific resources (copper/bronze, silver, gold etc), and at that point people would just barter with goldbars xD

You wouldn't be able to barter everything with gold bars though right? Housing rent wouldn't accept gold bars as a form of payment, would it?

neuroguy wrote: »

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Lol like coins? Probably not, you would need sufficient "coin" to start up the economy as a fully barter economy is tough to pull off I think. I think it would simply be too hard but I could be wrong.

Tangent: I will say that my fave economy in any game, which I will preface by saying I do not think is possible to pull off in an MMORPG, is the one in Path of Exile. In that game, the "currency" is crafting items. Even in that game people default to measuring/evaluating value in terms of 1 or 2 crafting items like silver and gold coins butttt I always thought it was really cool that you traded crafting potential. It eliminates needing currency sinks and causes interesting dynamics in terms of pricing around economic resets but I think it only works for the type of game it is: heavy RNG and the same crafting system for every player. So again, I don't think it will work in an MMO and I don't think it's worth trying even lol.

I think it's worth experimenting tbf. I mean... you won't know till you've given it a go right? To avoid people bartering with anything but the coins, there needs to be demand for it and I think that can be achieved by allowing the systems such as the Housing system to only deal with coins. Hope I'm not being confusing here

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

Would that be any better than the more established economy systems most mmorpgs use right now?

But sure, this is a fun thought experiment. Let's say that in the game you don't get any gold from quests or mob drops. If you kill a wolf you get resources like meat and fur to use in crafting, but you can only sell these resources to NPCs who have enough gold to buy them. The only way NPCs can get gold is if a player with gold coins buys something from them.

The only way to get gold coins is to mine the gold ore and turn it into coins. The advantage of a system like this is that it is far easier for the devs to control the in-game economy. If they see inflation happening they can reduce the amount of gold ore that spawns in the world. Then if they get an influx of players on a server they can increase the amount of gold ore to compensate.

The downside is that this system would be very very hard for new players who wouldn't have a stable income until they get to the point where they can harvest worthwhile materials to sell for gold. Much like real life, this system allows the rich to get richer, and often stops the poor from getting their foot in the door.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

TheNobleOne wrote: »

What do we think about the idea of allowing players to literally make money (Smith it)? That should eradicate the need for an NPC stall at all. Could it work?

The downside is that this system would be very very hard for new players who wouldn't have a stable income until they get to the point where they can harvest worthwhile materials to sell for gold. Much like real life, this system allows the rich to get richer, and often stops the poor from getting their foot in the door.

Maybe introduce the currency system earlier on with the ability to convert currency for example: 25 copper for 1 piece of gold. I think that way everyone at any level of the game is able to contribute to the economy one way or another.

TheNobleOne wrote: »

I think it's worth experimenting tbf. I mean... you won't know till you've given it a go right? To avoid people bartering with anything but the coins, there needs to be demand for it and I think that can be achieved by allowing the systems such as the Housing system to only deal with coins. Hope I'm not being confusing here

Think I follow but then you are motivating the manufacturing of gold coins just for the sink (i.e. property). You would probably need a way to pump that gold back into the pocket of players or it just sinks into property and stagnates without property to buy. I don't really like the system though, people may not be happy with barter offers, may feel scammed or may just hoard until the coin economy is up and running.

On the other hand, what does it add? It adds some crafting options, immersion from some realism I guess, and as mentioned, makes it easier for devs to control the economy. All of those positives could be achieved through other various means as well, I don't think the coin making is uniquely good at anything or contributes sufficient positives to justify it. It's also just super hard to predict shit with AoC already given how most of us are not used to MMORPGs without fast travel, inventory limits, and the many innovative systems it's trying to create. They need to have some grounded/relatable shit too haha.