Merchants Inventory

[Grenwyn]

What I'm observing from looking over the thread is that it should be easier for a lower-level player to sell items than a higher-level player. Am I right?

[Isolrem]

As it stands, it's not difficult to sell your 10 adamantine swords to 10 different merchants. If a reboot allows for X crude spears what's the benefit of finding X merchants to sell them to, as opposed to being able to sell them all to just 1? Either way you're still making Y amount of coin. Just with one way you're walking all over the place.

The difference is when you get to 100 adamatine swords, 1000 adamantine swords. As it is now you can probably find around 100 just on the ground at that place. It would take forever to find enough different merchants to sell these to, but if you can sell them to the same person that's an instant 2000 platinums (of course lifting them remains a problem)

[Jaenoic]

So we should let the first person who hits an area take his/her 50 expensive weapon Z and sell them to 50 merchants, ruining the sell rate for everyone after him/her?

[Solaghar]

That's essentially how it works now except that the first person who sells everything at the merchants basically has ensured no one else will ever make money from the same item, not ever

[Jaenoic]

That is exactly my point, which is why I suggested removing the code which lowers the selling price for consecutive items on a merchant, or raising the amount of items sold to a higher amount than 1 before the selling price dropped.

Maybe not the best solution, but I'm just pitching ideas out. Maybe someone more capable than I can take it and make it better.

[Gwain]

I still think that killing the golden goose may be the best idea. Items made in trades (The wood trade specifically) Bows should not be sellable to merchants. Especially since wood can be bought in the game cheaply and return a profit almost one hundred times bigger. It was those players making ten or fifteen of these bows and selling them to every merchant in the game that eventually killed the older merchant system in my opinion.

[Nysan]

I still think that killing the golden goose may be the best idea. Items made in trades (The wood trade specifically) Bows should not be sellable to merchants. Especially since wood can be bought in the game cheaply and return a profit almost one hundred times bigger. It was those players making ten or fifteen of these bows and selling them to every merchant in the game that eventually killed the older merchant system in my opinion.

I hate the idea of seeing all trade goods get the no-sale flag treatment of potions and scrolls. However, its difficult to argue your point. The 'wooden bow' vendor spam is hard to miss and is a bit discouraging to see. Sad to see it reach this point, but I support no-sale flags on crafted goods, for now. If there is a better way to address this I don't see, I'd love to hear it.

[Gwain]

I'd only suggest it on wood goods because they don't need to be made from items that are processed through one or more secondary trades. There's only one step to creation.

[Nysan]

I'd only suggest it on wood goods because they don't need to be made from items that are processed through one or more secondary trades. There's only one step to creation.

I understand. I am just a bit fuzzy on how hard/easy it is to label this or that with "nosale" flags. If it is easier to mark all trade goods than spend several hours looking for certain trade goods, I'd accept a blanket change. Less time spent coding around bad apples, the better. If only wood items can be coded easily, then yea I would love to see just the problem trade targeted, much like potions/scrolls were in the past.

[Bregga]

I don't know if I like the idea. I mean what is the point of learning and spending the time to master the trade if you can't sell the items you make? How hard would it be to make a random reset of the merchants to make it harder for people to time it?

[Gwain]

You could still sell them to player characters though.

[Bregga]

I can see player characters being interested in higher end items like mithril plate. But for me at least its much easier finding high end items on merchants and through quests.

[Jharthyne]

I haven't been playing for a while, so my knowledge of the skills and crafts may be a bit outdated. But instead of outright banning the sale of player-crafted items, one possible alternative is to lower the prices merchants pay for wooden goods. The woodworking trade is one way for players to earn a bit of spare cash (making wood carvings, small furniture, etc) so I think we should still keep it as such. To prevent abuse/misuse, let's see what are the items that players make which can disrupt the economy, and either make it more difficult to make these (requiring more materials, or other skills, for example, to make bows).

[Kallias]

Any items created by players, have almost no value to PC's. The only reason for getting a trade at all, is to sell items to NPC merchants. Removing that facet of the trade would, in all practical purposes, remove the entire allure of the trade to begin with.

There is no difference between making an item with a trade and selling it to an NPC, and killing an NPC and selling their things. In both cases what is being sold has no value to PC's. Seems like a silly rule to me. But I'm also one who uses woodworking often to make coin on my PC's, mostly because I've been asked by Admins to not kill NPC's for the purpose of selling items.

How many steps do you have to take to make sure that no one ever becomes rich? There is no harm in people in having platinum, the harm comes in removing player's ability to make platinum...which that suggestion would be a step toward.

[Nysan]

Any items created by players, have almost no value to PC's. The only reason for getting a trade at all, is to sell items to NPC merchants. Removing that facet of the trade would, in all practical purposes, remove the entire allure of the trade to begin with.

As a long time miner, weaponsmith, and armoursmith... allow me to disagree with the whole "players dont use crafted items" stance. I don't have a leatherworker, but I have seen the armour worn by players, so I would disagree there as well. Same with player-made jewelry. Don't get me started on potions and scrolls. Lets not make generalizations about trades.

As regards to woodworking, you may have a point. Can't recall seeing anyone use a crafted bow, ever. Not condemning the trade, merely an honest observation... I don't see the wares used.

Edit: Honestly, woodworking is the weakest trade, as far as "PC usefulness" is concerned. Outside of the requirements to make certain weaponsmithing items, the only thing I use woodworking for is making disposable containers to store materials for my other trades. It just doesn't have the PC demand that basically every other trade has, in some form.

[Bregga]

Potions and scrolls aside I personally have not seen a huge interest from PCs to buy crafted goods.

[Kallias]

As a long time miner, weaponsmith, and armoursmith... allow me to disagree with the whole "players dont use crafted items" stance. I don't have a leatherworker, but I have seen the armour worn by players, so I would disagree there as well. Same with player-made jewelry. Don't get me started on potions and scrolls. Lets not make generalizations about trades.

You make 30 of whatever. That takes very little resource wise. You sell them to every person who could possibly use them. Our player base is way too small to support it. By any reasonable view, the PC trades are entirely used for coin from NPC's.

[Nysan]

As a long time miner, weaponsmith, and armoursmith... allow me to disagree with the whole "players dont use crafted items" stance. I don't have a leatherworker, but I have seen the armour worn by players, so I would disagree there as well. Same with player-made jewelry. Don't get me started on potions and scrolls. Lets not make generalizations about trades.

You make 30 of whatever. That takes very little resource wise. You sell them to every person who could possibly use them. Our player base is way too small to support it. By any reasonable view, the PC trades are entirely used for coin from NPC's.

Not saying trades are a rich-quick source of player-based income. If I can sell 3 sets of armour a week, I'm content. Same note with weapons, I don't expect a high volume demand. Mining... is a different story. If you can't move gems and metal regularly, ask yourself what you are doing wrong. Woodworking, I can't even give away crafted bows, let alone sell them, and that is really the only problem I have with the trade.

No one ever said trades were a high income tool, only a new aspect to a character's RP. Since woodworking has almost no items of interest to players, it doesn't promote character interaction and thus no noticable impact on RP. I see and am apart of RP involving most trades nearly every time I log in. I cannot remember the last time anyone even asked in-game about woodworking.

The problem isn't profit, there are enough coin creating ventures out there. The problem is usefulness.

[Gwain]

If anything, to avoid steering this discussion on finding ways to make navigating a merchant's inventory easier. I will offer this suggestion: There are several ways in the game to make coin very rapidly that have been introduced in the past four years that don't involve spam selling crafted items that on one will ever buy or raising areas, the trading post system,which is approved and welcomed and spoken highly of in the game and comes across as less criminal. The only catch is that the system takes time, careful ic planning and often long term travel.

Making fifty ebony bows/crossbows after buying ten gold worth of ebony wood, selling them to every available npc in the game and then slinking off and waiting for a reset and then doing it again is horrible. One thing that truly makes me glad these days is the fact that it is now very hard to spam sell things like that, and hopefully it will get harder. It might not be easy to make money like it used to, but at least regular player characters stand a better chance of it.

And with that change I believe that we should single out the woodworking trade only. It should be impossible to sell items to npcs that were made with the woodworking trade because the items (only the bows and crossbows mainly) are rubbish. They wipe economies and offer easy ways to make coin for those that have spent hours spamming up the trade, the materials for making things in wood crafting are easily acquired, they don't need to be mined, smelted, skinned, tanned, killed, just purchased. Therefore this trade much like the potion trade should be directed at player characters only. I applaud those that have ic businesses set up to sell these wood items to interested players, or to enjoy as crafts for rp's. I charge those that have nothing better to do than craft these item and sell them off to merchant oblivion to find better uses for their time and efforts.

Back to the original topic at hand. I've grown to accept and embrace the idea of merchants having a randomly set reset that clears their inventory. My only concern there is that we should also have merchants coded to hand back items we accidentally give to them, so that we can avoid loosing them in these resets.

[Nysan]

Trading posts are so undervalued... its a pitty, and thats only one way of continual coin prduction outside of vendor spam and area clean-sweeping. General question to those that have money making issues: Have you ever asked someone, IC, how they make coin? Just a thought.

*shudder* Don't get me started on the countless times I have given/sold an item by mistake to a NPC. Not to mention the small fortune lost by giving a stable NPC 2, 5, ect platinum rather than 1. Really wish there was a "return" or "refund" type command for the last item given/sold. Can't always rely on friendly imms being online to help out, luck only goes so far there.