jwestonmoss
Alpha
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2021
- Posts
- 592
- Avatar Name
- Francis Merlinfire Sureshot
As a relatively newish player who is still getting used to the --way-things-are-- I sense that there are ways that could speed up portions of the economy, if it were just easier to transact.
Here's some examples of problems I run into.
I know this is a giant wall of text. I just know in my cycling of daily ped I run into these issues all the time, and wish it were more user-friendly.
Here's some examples of problems I run into.
- I want to sell an item, or a small stack of items, whose value is too low to justify listing on the AH. For most depo-ing players, the effort of hawking these items on a trade channel is even less economic than that in terms of player time, and so they'll just get TT'd. and while technically MU is paid by the player and doesn't matter to MA, MU paid by players ultimately is depo'd into the game, so it actually is better for MA for players to pay MU than for players to TT the same item.
- Solution: change the formula for the minimum AH listing fee. Instead of doing 50 pec minimum, use a formula that starts lower, and scales up as the TT value scales up, to a certain point where it reaches the existing 50 pec minimum, where the existing system continues as normal. In practice, lots of lowbies are effectively locked out of using the AH to sell, so they either have to spend time and lose MU doing some kind of reseller arbitrage, or TT. Or, as some do, stuff just sits in storage, so ped isn't being cycled as fast.
- While Calypso is unquestionably the "capital city of EU", a lot of players do live on the other planets. Due to the effort involved in commuting between planets in space (both in time and in risk), and the fact that the AH market is separate for each planet, the AH is at best 15% operational on any non-Caly world on both the buy and sell side. I know from experience this can make it difficult to cycle peds hunting on non-Caly worlds because I burn through my weapons. Assuming there are player-run shops (if I can find them, and if they are stocked with what I need, or stocked at all), i can get by, but i'm still burning time shopping.
- One solution might be to provide an interface to show the locations of player-run shops on the planet, and a listing of their items. Even if you still have to physically go there.
- Another solution would be to make planet-to-planet warps available across the board, for a reasonable fee. I recognize this would hurt taxi services. Would want to think of a way to handle this conflict.
- Related to the planet divide, and player trading, is the necessity under the current regime to sync up the time and location of two players to do face-to-face trading. In my society, I have a person that I regularly will barter hunting loot in exchange for weapons and enhancers. I like to explore, so I end up all over the place in EU. My friend spends 70% of their time on Ark, and 30% on Caly. They have a schedule in a significantly different time zone (and broadly speaking, the playerbase of EU in my experience is very broad in time zones). This means that in order to make this transaction, I need to deliberately travel to Ark, and wait until our schedules sync up, to make a transaction that will help me cycle ped. The easiest way for me to describe what I'm looking for is to use an analogy: phone call vs text message. A phone call requires two parties to be active and connected at the same time. Often, a phone call is only especially convenient for one of the two parties involved, the person making the call. With text messages or email, it's convenient for the person sending, and when the person on the receiving end finds a convenient time, it's convenient for them to read. That's because the transaction is decoupled into two separate parts: send and receive.
- It would be great if there were an easier way to transact between individuals privately that followed the "text message" model. I can think of a couple ways this might be accomplished.
- add a private sales tab to the auction house interface. the sell listing would be visible only to a specific individual or to your society (if chosen). Auction fee would be typical, but the private sales auction tab would be global, not locked to one planet. buyout only.
- add the ability for a player to make an "offer" to a player-owned shop, more or less like the way auction listing work: an offer of X for Y price for Z time. buyout only. offer would bounce into global storage if the offer expires, is rejected, or the vendor/shopkeeper is removed
- add the equivalent of the shopkeeper interface but as a "safety-deposit-box" between two players.
- It would be great if there were an easier way to transact between individuals privately that followed the "text message" model. I can think of a couple ways this might be accomplished.
- none of these auction-style solutions really help with items that can't be auctioned. it's not completely clear to me why there are so many items that are tradeable but not auctionable. if there's some rationale there, ignore this point, but for things like sweat, pills, bone samples, etc you will still have this problem
- needs to be easier to tip people. back in the day, SWG had a simple command: /tip <player> <amount>, or if you selected the player, /tip <amount>
- right now you have to open a trade, that's kind of unwieldy when you have a one-way trade
- i would like to be able to mail a tip to a player
- even if this tip, let's say, is forced to sit in some kind of time-out escrow for 72 hours or something, for security reasons
I know this is a giant wall of text. I just know in my cycling of daily ped I run into these issues all the time, and wish it were more user-friendly.