Tooltips vs Spreadsheets (merchants and goods)

Backstory: Playing Elite Dangerous, staring at the long list of goods sold by the starport where I was docked. I had previously bought a couple, my newbie ship could not hold more than a few. After transporting them, I found all my effort had resulted in a net loss of money. I closed the market interface and went off to do a mission, where I made more than 1000% of the profit I would have made trading. I wanted to trade, but it was the wrong choice.

Suggestion: Tooltips for goods that show the top 5 buy orders and where. Maybe clickable to see further info.

Why?:
1-Player time spent: Because gathering this information is tedious. And tedious things are taken over by websites, so gameplay becomes Tab-out, fill out some fields on a website, write down lots of things on paper, come back into the game, profit. Not all time-sinks are bad, but this is a time sink that's spent away from the game instead of playing it.

-This would favor newer merchant players, experience and insider knowledge will make it less useful.
-This will favor older crafter players, having new players transporting more goods will lower market prices for high-demand goods
-this will favor PvPers (they can see what's really in demand, and camp those routes, knowing that new players will be coming along)
-this will hurt market skimmers, as it's unlikely people will transport to nodes where they know the price is bad.

Wanted to suggest it as a tooltip idea, since it seems it would make my favorite activity (merchanting) more fun, and stimulate PvP at the same time (push-your-luck game for me, do I transport the highest value good, or go for number 5 on the list for a safer trip?)

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Comments

grisu

tiltowait wrote: »

I understand your perspective, but I don't want to be a master-merchant.

No, sorry but you don't, I'm trying to explain that this is the very bottom of trading 101. That's the bare minimum to understand trading. I'm by no means a master-merchant in that context, I just dabble in it because I enjoy it from time to time.
You can't hope to trade and make money, If you are not willing to do that minimal effort of learning that basic principle of supply and demand.

I'm sure there are ways to make it more accessible, in general, but the proposed tooltip isn't one of them imo. It will just add to the confusion why your trade didn't make you money.

tiltowait

wanderingmist wrote: »

Like it or not, if you want to be a successful trader in Ashes you will need to know what is going on across the server.

See, this is what I'm worried about. If I want to be casual and log in once a week and do a little merchanting, I want to have some success, without no-lifeing it, 'cheating' with third party websites, or having some guildie lead me by the hand. I really don't think secrets add net value to a game.

Azathoth

If your goal is to run caravans, your goal should be to outsmart the PvP community that wants to hunt caravans. Not to avoid PvP all together, and not because sometimes you will lose some battles for your goods, but simply to lessen the chances it happens every time you run a caravan.

If there was information readily available to anyone about current running, or about to run, caravans then that information is available to everyone. Because all it takes is one post on Discord or in a chat channel. Suddenly anyone remotely interested in getting into PvP with a caravan knows when and where you are. I understand fast travel will prevent organized "zergs" but forecasting where you will be allows a lot more time and area for people to get to and wait.

I am 100% for PvP against caravans, but I don't think that means PvP's should have in game tools to determine when and where one is starting and where it is going. The caravan runners, PvE or not, should be able to try and plan out routes to avoid as much conflict as possible rather or not the are successful.

grisu

tiltowait wrote: »

See, this is what I'm worried about. If I want to be casual and log in once a week and do a little merchanting

If you don't want to learn that W A S D is oyur basic character movement then it doesnt matter if you log in once a week daily or are online 24/7, you won't understand hwo to play. Trading is by nature a bit more complex, but you need that basic level of udnerstanding.

tiltowait

No need to be mean, I understand WASD and I personally DO nolife games, research on third party websites, and strive to be the best.

You only 'need' to know a system if that system is implemented. I'm arguing about the system's design, not the need to know it.

grisu

I'm sorry if it seemed mean, I only tried to illustrate my point. Apparently I did a poor job on that. I don't know how else to explain that this will only add confusion.

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