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Buy Orders - why I think they will be a perfect addition to the game
Nerror
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer
Basically, a buy order is when a player places a request for an item or x amount of resources in the market place. The money for the buy order is taken immediately from the player or node when placed, but they can get it back if the buy order is cancelled obviously. Eve Online has well-designed system for this, if you want to look up examples in other games.
1. It promotes trade and crafting
Let's say a guild or node in the mountains need timber and/or lumber. They can simply place a buy order for this in their marketplace, at a premium price. Gatherers and Processors from all over the world will be able to see this, and they can load up their caravans to fill those buy orders. At the same time, perhaps the mountain node has plenty of cheap stone and metal that other nodes pay a premium for, so players can fill up their caravans again for the return trip. Everyone become rich and happy...
2. It promotes Caravan PVP
Obviously with many caravans come the thieving thugs intent on stealing the goods. They can also see those buy orders, and may plan to wtfpwn the n00bz for riches. The guild or node receiving those goods might have to send defenders to protect the caravans, resulting in a grand ole open world PvP fest.
3. It promotes player driven politics and node/castle wars and thus a less stagnant world.
Maybe the above mentioned thieving thugs aren't your random lowlife players. Maybe they are a mercenary guild hired by a competing node, intent on stopping the progress of the mountain node. Maybe said mountain node discovers this, and declare war on both the mercenaries AND the node that hires them, resulting in big battles and much smack ta.. I mean, political discourse.
I think buy orders will add immensely to the game, above and beyond the immediate convenience factor.
1. It promotes trade and crafting
Let's say a guild or node in the mountains need timber and/or lumber. They can simply place a buy order for this in their marketplace, at a premium price. Gatherers and Processors from all over the world will be able to see this, and they can load up their caravans to fill those buy orders. At the same time, perhaps the mountain node has plenty of cheap stone and metal that other nodes pay a premium for, so players can fill up their caravans again for the return trip. Everyone become rich and happy...
2. It promotes Caravan PVP
Obviously with many caravans come the thieving thugs intent on stealing the goods. They can also see those buy orders, and may plan to wtfpwn the n00bz for riches. The guild or node receiving those goods might have to send defenders to protect the caravans, resulting in a grand ole open world PvP fest.
3. It promotes player driven politics and node/castle wars and thus a less stagnant world.
Maybe the above mentioned thieving thugs aren't your random lowlife players. Maybe they are a mercenary guild hired by a competing node, intent on stopping the progress of the mountain node. Maybe said mountain node discovers this, and declare war on both the mercenaries AND the node that hires them, resulting in big battles and much smack ta.. I mean, political discourse.
I think buy orders will add immensely to the game, above and beyond the immediate convenience factor.
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Comments
(I thought about having purchase orders in player stalls, which I think would be problematic levels of automation)
Hrm I am not sure I understand why you think a second account is a big advantage here Niraada? You don't need to be active at your personal stall to do transactions with others. And specifically with buy orders, you need the money up front to place them, which I guess you could give to your alt account, but I don't see the point. It would make sense to have an alt character near the stall obviously.
If I can be out in the world, doing all the things I need and want to do while simultaneously have a constant, persistent presence within an active node purchasing materials for me, ensuring that I never miss out on when other players are offloading their gatherables, that's an incredibly large advantage over someone who can do either or.
For someone with a single account, there's an opportunity cost to running the stall vs going out into the world, whereas having a second account that can automatically purchase could eliminate that opportunity cost.
If I choose to go out and gather, I can't maintain my stall and presence purchasing from players who might be returning with gatherables on a single account.
With a second account however, you're not losing anything by having an account you're not actively playing sit in a node handling automated purchases for you.
I see the problem as smaller than you see it I think. It's a simple matter of logging in and out of an alt, if that becomes necessary. But either way, I believe any issue is outweighed by the benefits of having a buy order system
Isn't that what he said in the first place?
Unless I totally misinterpreted it, which is super possible because I didn't get a lot of sleep. x.x
Exactly how I read it. Which I assume this was already going to be part of the auction house mechanic
So the issue with buy orders is pretty simple but most honest people wouldnt think of it.
In albion online which is a full loot on death game, players could go to markets and set up a buy order like this.
400 iron ore at 13 silver per ore.
They put the money up front and people could full fill the order.
Their are two issues with these systems.
People will under price on purpose hoping to get expensive items for basically nothing by preying on player mistakes.
The market price of items change too quickly to allow buy orders to stay relevant for long.
Example would be when you log in leather is commonly being sold and purchased at about 25s per. you go out to find some leather. You come back with your haul and the price per leather will have likely changed either up or down. You dont care because you will sell that leather anyways at market price. Maybe you hold on to it for the price to raise but you dont lose anything because you farmed that material yourself and intend to sell it at market price.
On the other end when using a buy order. You decide that you need to sleep or whatever. However you want leather ready to go for the next time you play. You check the market price of leather. At the moment it is selling for 25s per. You list up your order of 400 leather for 25s per. You log off expecting others to full fill the order as you sleep or work or whatever. You log back on. There are exactly three things that happened. You bought 0 leather defeating the purpose of the buy order. You bought a few but not even close to what you wanted. You bought all of the leather.
In scenario 1 you didnt manage to purchase a single leather. Why? Well when the order was listed the price was 25s per. Shortly after your post others started selling there leather for 26s per. Why would anyone sell to you when they could make more by selling to someone else.
Scenario 2 is roughly the same but with more time between the market price changing.
Scenario 3 is the worst case scenario. You managed to get all the leather you wanted. However you noticed that in the night the price of leather plummeted and you got taken advantage of. It is now selling for 15s per while you were buying it for 25s. You drastically over paid for the material you needed to create your items and chances are once you create the item you wanted the leather for it wont make you much profit either. Other crafters are listing that item in a finished state based on the cost of materials and the expertise they offer by being able to craft it. They spent 75s per item that uses leather per craft and you spent quite a bit more. Now they are selling their items for less than you can if you want to break even.
In summary buy orders become basically useless since it will always be better for the buyer if they simply exchange goods in real time. We call this sellers advantage. Or the demand for the item. Static listing a price isnt realistic unless you can base that price on some value that never changes. Like a npc selling leather for 30s. Obviously you cant ever price at 30 or more because then people just buy or sell to the NPC.
So the only use of a buy order system is for scammers to set up 500 pages of scam offers that only trap people who didnt know any better. IE newer players. For every 1 legit offer you find it will be overshadowed by 50 scam offers trying to take advantage of someone.
Buy orders are nice in theory but I cant think of a single way for it to work in practice based on my own personal experience in other MMO's with buy orders.
Players quickly adapt to volatile prices. If, to use your example, the price drops drastically overnight, and you bought leather for higher, well, lesson learned. Don't set it at sugh a high price next time. As long as there's a time limit on taking buy orders down and putting new ones up, or at least a percentage cost involved, it mostly comes down to players learning the markets. If nobody fills your buy order over night, it's quite possible you set it too low. Make a new one with higher prices, or pay the current cost if in a hurry.
They could just write down what stats they want and what level the equipment should be.
Example:
A player wants a plate chestpiece with intelligence and stamina for his homebrew build.
He goes to a notification board in a tavern inside his node and generates the quest.
Quest - Make me a plate breastplate
Requirements: Main stats Intelligence and Stamina, Level requirement of x
Reward: material cost and 150g
People would then see the quest and could decide if they wanted to accept it or not.
If they do take it then they have x amount of time until they need to complete the quest and if they dont do it, then they automatically fail the quest and it gets active in the tavern again.
After completing the item, the blacksmith can then go back to the tavern and complete the quest with the innkeeper. The questgiver would then get a notification that his item came and could pick it up.
The system then makes a quick crossreference of the used recipe and checks the current marketplace price for used materials and automatically generates a price for the item.
If the questgiver wants to take the item, then he has to pay the promised reward he gave at the beginning, which will then automatically be mailed to the questtaker.
Would be nice for economic nodes tbh.
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Markets
However, there is also something to be said for having to actually find and talk to a master crafter that can make that oddball great axe with intelligence and healing buffs. So I am actually a bit torn there. I know, one thing doesn't rule out another, so if Intrepid are up for it, letting players be able to place super specific buyorders like that is all good in my book
Here is something from the player stalls
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Player_stalls
Escrow system
An escrow system is planned to prevent griefing in the crafting system.[22]
We're going to have a UI... you're gonna put the resources in or they're gonna put the resources in. It'll be like an escrow system and then once [the job] is complete you'll get the item they'll get the money.[22]
I read that as somewhat different from a buy order system, but if players can actually go to a player stall with all the resources to craft a sword, and then get the stall NPC to craft it on the spot for a price, that's pretty awesome.
The way I read it though, was that it was more for repairing and enchanting.
"Players are able to input required items for repair and also purchase required materials for that repair"