Bazaaring/Merchant Bulletin Board...Follow

Well I do wanna first appologize to everyone as I am not one to cause a rucus or anything but one thing kinda erks me is...

In FFXI, they had these things called Auction Houses (AH), generally there were two to each country and a crap load in Jeuno (the major city), now...with these AH's you could list up to 7 items for sale. You could buy off this AH and view price history and whatnot so that you could sell yours for the general price of the other likeable items.

Now from what I'm gathering from EQ2...is that you have to buy this bulletin board, and you can then sell stuff using that thing. Where do you get prices from? Do you bump it up a bit from what the NPC offers you for selling it to them? Or is it from just overall experience? What if you come across a rare rare item that not everyone knows about? How would you come up with a price then?

I also don't like it how you have to go into the house area, right click and visit other peoples houses...so much loading and zoning and then they only have like 2 things listed...

I feel the game could have a much better trading system. That's how some people make their money, by getting these items from mobs (names mobs) and then selling it for a good profit...

But I can also see a pro out of this, making it more difficult to sell and buy from other players will eliminate the need for everyone to camp these 'named monsters' and jackin up the economy.

Maybe I am missing something HUGE and I am terribly sorry. But this is just my opinion.

Thanks for taking your time and reading this,
Slyone
aka
Andre

Yeah, as the above poster says, you can use the "Browse the Market" button on your board to find the prices that others are selling things at.

If no one is selling the uber item that you want to put up, then assign a price that you think it's worth. If someone buys it, then great! If not, then lower the price a little the next night, or see if someone else has it up.

No, no price history. I personally found the AH in FFXI to be pretty nice (compared to having to stand in your room afk...) so yeah, it's kind of rough to transfer to this (played FFXI for over a year... came back to EQ2 (used to do EQ) and remembered standing afk to sell stuff != fun. hehe)

I think everyone who can use it does... Dialup users really don't have the chance to use it (except over night) and most people who are at work (like myself) get kicked off when they do the morning restarts (10:00 AM EST makes it just a little too late.) So the BEST time to look is in the morning EST time. That's when the most things will be up. As for actuall percentages... I'm not sure. I'd say over half of the population uses it, but I know not everyone does.

to my knowledge there's no price history per say...

you simply browse market.. search for the item you're trying to sell and set a price you feel is fair. At which time you hope someone agrees with you enough to buy it.

for example last night after much tradeskilling and gathering I found a shattered froglok bone fragment.. not thinking much of it I decided to hang onto it since I had allready put that one in my collection and was intending on selling it to the NPC vendor to get rid of it...

then I thought.. well let's check the market board.. maybe it'll go for a few copper...

some people were asking as much as 1 gold.. O_O the lowest price was 11 silver (for something pretty easily found IMO.. since this was the 3rd one I've found this week) I put it up for 10 silver... went to bed.. and woke up 10 silver richer.

So from what I'm taking in, you also have to stay AFK inside your house, to sell stuff?

You can't even list it then leave and just have it left there selling? lol..agh..oh well.

Slyone

Ah ok, now it makes sense.

I figured the reason had to be something to the affect of economy issues. Makes sense. At least I know it won't turn out how FFXI did where it costs like 50 million gil just to get like level 55 armor and crap like that.

Makes me a bit happier to realize this. =D

Thanks for clearing that up.

Slyone

Market Board in a nutshell.

While not perfect, I don't think it's too terrible. You purchase a market board.. and sit in your room. This may sound very boring.. and well.. it is. But I'd much rather have to do that then deal with an outrageous economy any day. Though I've never played SWG, I know that they have an offline selling system. And I guess sony saw that as "Messing up the Economy" in some form. But yea, you got the gist of it.

Edit: is Swg's Economy really messed up?

Edited, Wed Jan 19 19:29:29 2005 by SteelGuard

I honestly don't think offline selling killed any mmo.

I'm no FF expert, but from what I've read you could literally farm gil. Players did it and did it a LOT. Were there also IGE bots farming gil? Probably. What about rumors of companies hiring Korean or Indian workers to farm game money to sell on line for real cash? Who knows? Hoever it happened, it was the FLOOD of *game money* into the game economy that drove up prices insanely and "ruined" these games for many people - esp. FF where u literally couldn't get a grp w/out the right job and gear (if what i have read is right).

Offline selling hurt the economy???? I don't think so. How What would be the mechanism???? If anything *limits* on an economy are what hurt it - the more restrictions the more strangeness. Ease of buying and selling and free flow of information about prices would create the most healthy economy possible. Right now barriers to this - ignorance over prices and difficult selling times - hard to find certain items - means players who learn these things can exploit others who don't or can't.

Like another poster pointed out, Toco I think - my Gawd - they made a player artisan system where we are supposed to be reliant on each other from tier 2 up - yet - how can you buy what u need when it is so bloody hard for players to sell - and stuff generally is only for sale late at night - meaning you can only craft if u can stay up late USA time???? It boggles the mind.

Remember. SoE is made up of people. People are all flawed. Some people becme such huge fans of EQ that they think SoE people walk on water. Hah. They don't. They make mistakes just like everyone else, sometimes really, really big mistakes.

And hey, don't worry about people flaming u - this is like talk radio - you can get flamed for spelling a word wrong sometimes in here (wait that doesn't even happen on talk radio...). You seem like a nice person w/ a sunny disposition - try to keep it - that's worth something in this world. And don't let grumpy old gnomes like me get u down. But don't fall for SoE's propaganda, either. We should pressure them to improve the game, not worship them, imho. ...oh I'm gonna pay for that last remark but I don't care. I'm going back and deleting it.

It's not about passion and it doesn't merit outrage.

So, let me see if I can take a stab at explaining how off-line selling can potentially hurt the game and the economy.

With a system in place to allow offline selling, a much higher volume of goods will suddenly be available to be purchased since people can be selling while they work, play or watch TV.

Everybody will, in effect, be selling all the time.

This creates a number of problems, the first of which is that prices on common “low end” goods will drop through the floor due to excessive competition and will cease to become viable revenue streams for anyone. As competition drops off, the value of these “low end” goods is then free to “rubber band” upwards as the greed factor kicks in and the few remaining sellers begin to milk the market for “their fair share”. These wild swings in game economics are bad for the average player and bad for the game.

And low-end crafted goods won’t be the only causality in this price war. They’ll just be the first. Mob and chest drops that people currently count on to make a meager “living” will be next to fall. The value of drops like app3 spells and recipe books, even things like butterflies, shards and bones will become whored out overnight. So instead of making a reasonable profit from what he kills, the average player will have to play more and kill more to keep pace with the hard core gamers. Again, this is bad for the average player and bad for the game.

And all the while, more and more money is flowing through the system and the spiral of mudflation has been created and is then maintained.

Instead, we have a system in which money is scarce. A silver piece has value and a gold piece can be considered wealth. You may not be able to find whatever you want the moment you want it, but grow a little patience and rest assured that next week, the things you are crafting and the things that drop in chests will still have the same value they do today.

This alternative system you champion is also a problem because the average human animal is a lazy and slothful creature who, given the opportunity, will purchase an item rather than going out and getting it or making it for himself.

If everyone could sell all the time, EVERY DECENT QUEST DROP would soon be available to players for cash. And players would buy these things instead of PLAYING the game to get them.

Also remember that in the current system, nothing sold to NPC merchants is ever available for resale. SOE closed that loophole and I think it was a good idea. In EQ, I made a tidy living from mining the local merchants for a day or two after each patch. My bazaar mule was selling for me every night and much of my income came from resale.

In the last few months that I played EQ, I spent more time in bazaar than I did out adventuring. It was easier to make money there and that afforded me the luxury of buying the gear I wanted, instead of going out and killing mobs for the SAME DROPS!!!

With EQ2, what we have instead are two options. 1) Sell a given item to an NPC for an immediate but small fee, or 2) put the item up for sale on the board where it may sell for more… at some point… or not!

A couple of weeks ago, when I started to play EQ2, I did some research and seeing that I flat out could not afford to buy the things I wanted/needed, I began, from the very beginning, to quest for them. This has worked out really well, (imagine that!).

I have gear commiserate with the level of my characters and I am managing to succeed within the limitations imposed by the game. I have also created a nest egg since the drops that I don’t need for myself can be sold on the board when I have the time.

EvilGnomes, I know you are intent on seeing this whole thing as part of a massive conspiracy on the part of Sony to separate you from a larger percentage of your income and to insure that your gaming life is made miserable, but I just don’t think it is the case.

What point would there be to knowingly creating a disgruntled customer base? Isn’t it possible, or even likely that they are instead trying to make the game viable for the largest cross section of players who will then happily cough up their 15 bucks a month to keep playing?

The bottom line is that if SOE wanted the focus of the game to be on buying and selling stuff, they would have called it “EVER MALL”.


Edited, Wed Jan 19 23:00:00 2005 by OldBlueDragon

EvilGnomes - for the record, I'm not mad at you. In fact, I admire your *****! I just think you're mistaken about this issue.

There is nothing personal inferred or inplied in this post or my last. As far as I'm concerned, we're just having a pleasent, civilized discussion based on a point of disagreement.