Merchant's Trading System

Glim · Post by **Glim** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 2:42 am

Hello,

Currently I would like to propose two changes to the merchant's trading system. They could perhaps be included with or without each other.

Increase the amount of each good allowed in the game at one time. Right now, I believe it is at 20. I always looked at the merchant thing as building up your resources, starting small and as you trade being able to buy more and more. Now though, it appears that a dedicated merchant still could not make more per trip than the express deliveries quest for young characters, despite the fact that the merchant's system requires more time and effort than express deliveries.

My other suggestion would be, perhaps the more expensive items could bring more profit per item than the least expensive items. Hopefully this will not be too IC to say, and I might be wrong in a ways as I do not know the prices at two certain locations, but an item that costs 8 electrum each can make a 5 electrum profit off each lot, while another item that costs 100 electrum each only makes a six electrum profit off each lot and that is if you sell it somewhere that costs money to reach.

I believe that as you work towards building up towards being a merchant, getting more capital etc, that your profit's should also increase. But as it currently is I don't believe that is the case.

Feedback is always welcome,

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:52 am

Both can be done easily enough.

What do other people who have used this system think?

I'm a bit afraid that increasing the number of goods available might make it easy to make a lot of money in just one trip.

As for benefits, I thought I made it so that the most expensive things would let you make a bigger benefit (if you buy them where they are the cheapest and sell them at the highest price possible). Can you send me details about this problem to the builder address please?

Raona · Post by **Raona** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 9:28 pm

I've not tried to make a living at this, just done it on the side, and for that it's been fine and dandy. You have to put in the effort up front to learn what trades for how much, where, then it's just a matter of having the capital and capacity to transport it. You quickly learn what is worth transporting in terms of profit per unit weight and bulk! Perhaps that underlies some of the profit difference in Dal's current pricing scheme? (Spices are light and small, armour pieces heavy and large, for example.)

If that's not the rationale for the profit not lining up with cost, I think Glim's pricing suggestion is a good one, and quite relevant to situation of someone trying to make a living as a trader. On the other hand, some number 20-50 as a maximum for trade goods does seem reasonable, as both the supply and the demand in any given location are finite; right now, economics don't impact prices, and that's really only reasonable with reasonably small trade quantities. Perhaps the amount earned per expedition should be increased, but I'm not in a position to say.

Alvirin · Post by **Alvirin** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:00 pm

I have been experiencing with it for a long time, and the only suggestion that I see necessary is to improve it is reducing the time at which certain trade goods restock, if you know the right routes you can make WAY more money than killing mobs.

What I would like to propose is a method so players whom wouldn't be IC to be caravaneers, they can still get some money by interacting with those that is IC doing so.

It is the creation of a item called "bag of the merchant guild" this item sold in the merchant guild, enables creating trade goods that you can sell to caravaneer PC's.

With this item if you have the right items you will lose the bag and the ingredients buy you will get a trade good that you can sell to a PC caraveneer.

Example of use:

With X fishes over the ground and while holding the bag you type:

PACK seafood.

Then disappear a fixed amount of fishes and the bag, but you get a barrel of seafood that you can sell to a caravaneer.

Also Trade skills could be also modified so they could produce items that could be used to create trade goods, so a herbalist could produce tea bags that could be packed and so on.

Vibius · Post by **Vibius** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 12:55 pm

Taking in consideration that this system is progressively being used by more people it could be considered increased the frequency at which the outposts
restock.

Namic · Post by **Namic** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:03 am

I agree with the point of that it should be more profitable to buy and sell the higher priced items because why spend the extra when you can spend less and make more, but I dont really agree with the more items availible because then it would make earning coin even easier than it already is for a member of the merchant guild

Ekina · Post by **Ekina** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 7:01 am

I agree with Alvirin and Vibius that the time it takes the goods to be restocked should be lessened. I don't think making more available at one time is a good idea because that will only create an opportunity for one person to make a large amount of coin.

Glim wrote: I believe that as you work towards building up towards being a merchant, getting more capital etc, that your profit's should also increase. But as it currently is I don't believe that is the case.

I do think that maybe giving a slightly higher profit off more expensive goods would be a nice change. I have found it to be very easy to earn a large amount of coin in a short time from cheaper goods. Plus it just makes sense that the more you invest the more you earn.

Going off the whole building your wealth as a merchant thing, maybe there could be a second class of merchants and you could get a different ring and have access to different goods. You would obtain this status by selling X amount of goods, or maybe it could be applied for... I don't know, I haven't really thought the idea out... It might just be a way for rich characters to get richer, but it's something to work toward.

Enig · Post by **Enig** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 4:02 pm

One of the aspects which I've always found curious about the trading system is that there's literally no way to lose money; anywhere that *will* buy a certain commodity, will do so at the player's advantage. If you're looking to introduce an increase in trading profits, I'd suggest that both risk and reward be increased together. Though I have no idea of the feasibility of this in terms of coding and etc. But, something along the lines of...

If X =price when sold to PC and Y=price when sold to NPC of any given commodity

X = 5 +/- 2
Y = 6 +/- 2

And at random intervals (every 24 hours?) the amount could be recalculated. This way you could make, at most, 5 coins per item, or you could end up losing 3 coins per item. Anyways, it seems like it would make trading more fun, and also, I think if there was a risk of actually going into the red it would be a lot easier to justify increasing the amount of money gained from trading. As it stands, there are very tangible benefits with practically no chance of failure.

Oh, side idea that just came to me as I was writing this. Perhaps some of the commodities could be scripted to be perishable? The perishable goods would either disappear entirely, or turn into spoiled goods, or perhaps degrade through stages of quality as time passes?

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Fri Mar 21, 2008 8:18 pm

I disagree. The reason why those commodities were so expensive elsewhere was generally due to the distance and rarity of the items.

For instance, originally silk wasn't available to the world. Once it was made so, heh, silk is fairly inexpensive now.

The difference is that there is no massive 'airships' or anything like it to create said cargos. Each had to be delivered via a merchant driving a caravan or the like.

Enig · Post by **Enig** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 5:03 am

Selveem wrote:I disagree. The reason why those commodities were so expensive elsewhere was generally due to the distance and rarity of the items.

For instance, originally silk wasn't available to the world. Once it was made so, heh, silk is fairly inexpensive now.

The difference is that there is no massive 'airships' or anything like it to create said cargos. Each had to be delivered via a merchant driving a caravan or the like.

That might be the case for NPC merchants but I'd hazard to guess that a lot of PC merchants have access to flight, via spell or potion. For the few that don't the roads are not typically dangerous, and it's possible to go from one end of the MUD to another in around fifteen minutes. It isn't necessarily the best thing to do IC, but it's what we've got to work with. If the prices of these commodities were set to reflect the IC danger (ie. very low sale price, very high buying price), it would be giving a PC a solid reward for, basically, an imaginary risk.

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:37 am

I would really love a more dynamic system, with prices that would change according to the laws of the offer and the demand [is that how you call them in English?], but ... the limited area code does not allow for such a complex system to be easily coded.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:36 am

I've seen stocks in a MUD that worked properly. Regardless, though, I don't want to see that.

It's boring and all it will do is leave a bunch of people determined to make a profit holding a bunch of garbage so they can't even go on adventures because of their carry weight.

Sure, PCs have access to flight, but that doesn't mean that there aren't risks. Technically speaking, a wizard who lets his flight spell expire without landing first should be falling to their deaths.

It's painful to read that wizards unbalance the MUD so much that something as simple as Merchant Trading has to be skewed in accomodation.

I don't feel the MUD and its features should cater to wizards or even use them as examples to _not_ implement something. If a wizard uses the trading system to get rich... honestly? Most wizards ARE rich. *shrug*

Enig · Post by **Enig** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 12:08 am

Wizards with flight were the most extreme example I could think of, but my argument applies to every PC. It's quite possible for anyone over level 15 or so to easily get from Waterdeep to, say, Tantras, travelling roads and plains and facing nothing more dangerous than bandits, in a single IC evening, and even the bandits can be easily avoided. I'm certainly not suggesting that travelling should be made more realistically painful, but I also think that the reward for these little 'quests' should reflect the actual risk that the PC takes or else it will quickly become (more) unbalancing.

Glim · Post by **Glim** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 3:16 am

Selveem wrote:Technically speaking, a wizard who lets his flight spell expire without landing first should be falling to their deaths.

Not always true

D20 wrote:Should the spell duration expire while the subject is still aloft, the magic fails slowly. The subject floats downward 60 feet per round for 1d6 rounds. If it reaches the ground in that amount of time, it lands safely. If not, it falls the rest of the distance, taking 1d6 points of damage per 10 feet of fall. Since dispelling a spell effectively ends it, the subject also descends in this way if the fly spell is dispelled, but not if it is negated by an antimagic field.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 4:41 am

Thanks for the clarification Glim. I only lost fly spell once and I died from it. I must have only gotten one round out of the descent.

Enig, I understand where you're coming from. But, bear in mind that those people using this in a normal sense are not going to be taking advantage of it like you are suggesting.

To abuse it would likely get the same response as players who repeatedly loot high yield low level areas.

I just don't think abuse should be a reason for rejection here, that's all. Maybe put a timer on it - kind of like the jail code.. maybe you can't use it for a certain time after you've traded?

*shrugs*

Japcil · Post by **Japcil** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:06 am

Dalvyn wrote:I would really love a more dynamic system, with prices that would change according to the laws of the offer and the demand [is that how you call them in English?], but ... the limited area code does not allow for such a complex system to be easily coded.

What if we code an if check for an amount of vnums loaded? Similar to a statement of: If objloaded(i43) > 450. From there its a bunch of if-then-else statements.

Enig · Post by **Enig** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:45 am

Well, Selveem, you might be right. Not to mention, maybe part of my oposition stems from my guilty heart, since I have (in the past) done a few quick trading loops to 'earn a fortune and forget about it'.

On the other hand, I still don't really think that it needs to be made more profitable. There are a lot of ways to make a nearly ridiculous amount of money using it, as it stands, and a lot of different available routes.

Okay, here's a new idea, and I hope you fellows'll forgive me for spitting another one out sort of randomly. At the moment, commodities are not at all awkward to carry; how about making the objects really large and heavy (when appropriate), so it's hard to put them into containers or carry them around at all? You'd get PCs buying mounts to use as pack animals, and hopefully it would be pretty much impossible to 'buy out' most commodities at any given time; most importantly, I think, it would seem to be a pretty easy 'fix', not involving complicated code or anything. The commodities could then be made more profitable per unit for a PC and it would increase the overall wealth available while (hopefully) not pushing the earning potential of some PCs completely into the stratosphere.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 1:42 pm

I'm okay with any ideas, except those benefiting the 'some' and not the 'many.'

I get annoyed when Selveem actually needs money for repairs or to pay for helping someone come back to life and I can't sell things he's won through battle because people already sold 9000 quest items.

People say it's easy to make money. Perhaps it is for those who spend all their time doing it. For people such as myself, it's far more difficult than the claims would suggest.

Keep in mind, some people aren't normal merchants. There are many different facets to each character that should always be taken into consideration.

For instance, I couldn't see Selveem spending a lot of time going from trading post to trading post a month just to earn coin.

I like the trading post, but the scalp rewards are more alike Selveem's style (except for the actual scalping portion.. never agreed with that... I doubt all these goodie characters would actually go around scalping people.. Much less Kelemvorites. I just imagine he's bringing back the entire head if anything).

Dalvyn · Post by **Dalvyn** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:31 pm

I made it so that they would restock twice as often as before.

Selveem · Post by **Selveem** » Mon Mar 24, 2008 5:43 pm

Have I told you lately that I love you?

Merchant's Trading System

Merchant's Trading System

Re: Merchant's Trading System