First of all I wasn't sure where to post this. It was either here or the fan site section but seeing as I am trying to get feedback from users I thought I'd post here as it seems that the vast majority of users seem to only read this forum and I really need the feedback of as many people as possible to decide if this is something that is worth spending my time doing. So apologies Kilsin if I've got it wrong.
I'm thinking of developing a companion website for Pantheon where users can organise to trade items between themselves. It would sort of be an offline market place where people can trade with each other on a website and would allow people to bid on gear that others are selling in the same way as you do on eBay. This would allow item trading no matter where you are as the website would work on a desktop machine or on a mobile phone so you could trade while you were at work for instance or while you were waiting for a train. Also you'd be able to leave feedback on a seller and a seller would be able to leave feedback on a buyer so hopefully people make sure that they keep their reputation on the website and don't try to do anything dodgy.
The site would be split into different servers so that you can limit items for sale to the server that you play on. You'd also be able to search based on different stats or say based on the items class or race requirements. Think Allakazam crossed with eBay. You'd have all kinds of ways to search for items for sale. You'd also be able to filter items for sale by price. It might also be possible to organise trades across server boundaries so say you have an item on server A and want an item on server B you could find someone selling on server B who wants an item on server A you could organise a trade like that.
So is this the kind of website that people would be interested in? I need a new programming project and this is something that would keep me occupied for a few months. I'm also happy to take feature requests from people if there is anything that they'd like to see on the website.
I think that VR should consider Cromulent to write an "official" version of this. Someone has to maintain the website/app that runs these things, right? I agree that as a feature I would like to be able to handle trades and other item management on my iPad. If I can do this on my leg with my iPen I would pay an extra $5/mo to be a premium salesperson. There is a guild worth of stuff to manage, after all. VR would need someone to work on it, and it's small enough of something to be managed with one person. Trade Cromulent a VIP Lifetime Sub for a couple months work / future updates?
In "unofficial" form, I think what would happen is that players would compare the listed market prices in-game and be relatively inflexible about trading for significantly more or less. If that occurs, it's a big stumbling block to use it when I should just buy and sell in game - a format with the unbeatable aspect of guarenteed safe sales. In _Star Trek Online_, not a comptitive game, there are some redditors that maintain trades similar to this. However, the only time it gets used is to buy things that are mostly unobtainable and thus command such a high price that the exchange does not allow it. So only the 1% can shop there, really.
I doubt this will be received well by most of the community. It sounds a lot like a 3rd party global auction house app and a lot of the community here doesn't even want a 1st party global auction house. And if I'm correct the devs are opposed to the idea as well.
I don't mind an app to sell items but it has to be done correctly. A player has to have a trader NPC posted up somewhere in game something like the EQ bazaar or an NPC trader at their house. Players looking to buy items would then go to this NPC trader to purchase goods and if the player was ready by their app they could handle the sale.
I do not want an app that allows players to search items from all over the world without having to travel to the residency of that item.
Thanks for the replies all. I'll have to go through them one post at a time as I don't know how to multi quote on this forum.
Abiyram said:This would depend on the in-game trading mechanics would it not? I'm honestly not overly fond of this type of thing, but I may be a rarity in that.
It most certainly would. You are correct. From what I have read I was under the impression that the trading system could be one of two systems. The old EQ system where trading was done online and in-game like when people traded in East Commonlands tunnel and the new EQ system where there was a Bazaar zone and people could do offline trading.
If it is the old style EQ trading then the chance to trade offline would be a huge benefit to people who can't be online all the time either because of work requirements or because of family requirements. If it is the new EQ style them having a trading website would allow bidding style buying so both buyers and sellers feel like they get a decent return for the items they are selling like on eBay. That would obviously be a feature no matter what system the game used but it would also open up another style of trading that could be interesting.
Also from what I have read a lot of people seem to be against an auction house system so having an offline website that allows you to trade and to communicate between buyer and seller would be a really good thing to have and would mean that people would end up knowing each other through the website as well as through the game which I think would be a positive for the system.
Fair enough if you are not keen. I want to hear everyones opinion. Both positive and negative.
candarie said:I think that VR should consider Cromulent to write an "official" version of this. Someone has to maintain the website/app that runs these things, right? I agree that as a feature I would like to be able to handle trades and other item management on my iPad. If I can do this on my leg with my iPen I would pay an extra $5/mo to be a premium salesperson. There is a guild worth of stuff to manage, after all. VR would need someone to work on it, and it's small enough of something to be managed with one person. Trade Cromulent a VIP Lifetime Sub for a couple months work / future updates?
In "unofficial" form, I think what would happen is that players would compare the listed market prices in-game and be relatively inflexible about trading for significantly more or less. If that occurs, it's a big stumbling block to use it when I should just buy and sell in game - a format with the unbeatable aspect of guarenteed safe sales. In _Star Trek Online_, not a comptitive game, there are some redditors that maintain trades similar to this. However, the only time it gets used is to buy things that are mostly unobtainable and thus command such a high price that the exchange does not allow it. So only the 1% can shop there, really.
It would be cool if VR did endorse the idea but I'd likely do it even if they didn't if there was enough community interest. I love programming and I need a new project as I have just finished my old one.
In an unofficial form I was hoping to have an eBay like system where people can list the items in one of three ways. Buy it now price (so a fixed price), Buy now or best offer (a buyer can either pay full price or make a secret offer lower than the buy now price that the seller can accept if they want) and bidding price (seller sets a start price and buyers bid on the item until the auction runs out of time). That would give more flexibility on selling an item than I have seen in any MMO either current or historical and I think both buyers and sellers would get something out of the service because there are three ways to sell an item and a buyer can pick the best option they have out of all the other options for a given item.
If there is an API in the game that third party developers could use (VR haven't said anything about this so it is still speculation) then I could flesh out the features of the website even more. Maybe there will be guild banks and you want to sell some of the items a guild holds? Really there are all kinds of ways that this site could grow in the future but for the beginning I'd like to keep it to a reasonably simple eBay style selling platform for items as I know I can do that without an API. The only slight problem will be populating the item database with information but if everyone selling items adds the correct stats etc to the item then it should fill up pretty quickly. I doubt VR will allow access to their own internal item database for various reasons so we'd have to come up with a player solution.
NoobieDoo said:I doubt this will be received well by most of the community. It sounds a lot like a 3rd party global auction house app and a lot of the community here doesn't even want a 1st party global auction house. And if I'm correct the devs are opposed to the idea as well.
I don't mind an app to sell items but it has to be done correctly. A player has to have a trader NPC posted up somewhere in game something like the EQ bazaar or an NPC trader at their house. Players looking to buy items would then go to this NPC trader to purchase goods and if the player was ready by their app they could handle the sale.
I do not want an app that allows players to search items from all over the world without having to travel to the residency of that item.
Understood. I know there is a section of the community that doesn't want in-game auction houses but frankly not every player has the time available to stay in-game all the time to sell items. They might have work commitments or family commitments and to have a system in place that basically prohibits them from being able to sell to the wider community because of those time constraints seems to be a bit unfair to them.
I'm likely to be quite a hardcore player but everyone wants the best deals and if you have to travel to a certain area to see if someone is selling an item you don't know if what you are paying is more expensive than another player in a different area. This would help people to see what prices for items are across the entire server and even what prices for certain items are across different servers. There were numerous websites for those who did a lot of buying and selling when EQ was in its prime and they didn't negatively effect the social aspect of the game. Furthermore the website is just for the buying and selling part of the transaction. Players would still need to meet up in-game to exchange the item and money. The website can't do that for you so you'd still need to travel and you'd still need to communicate with other players so I'm not sure I agree with your assessment.
I don't neccessarily dislike these types of things, but one thing that I believe this might diminish is the sense of community that goes on in game while people are posting their wares and seeing familiar names, that sort of thing. That seems to be the feeling I get amongst most on these forums as well. I could be wrong though, I certainly don't want to speak for others.
Such a site will undoubtedly exist, but it will probably wouldn't be in the developers best interests. Instead of players interacting with each other in game they will do so outside of it. The most prudent traders who travel and search the in-game world would also be at a disadvantage to those using a third party site.
Based on what we know, trading will be something highly localized and will have no auction house, especially globally. They seem to intend to keep it traditional with an emphasis on personal trading but with perhaps players being able to set themselves up as vendors, hire vendors to sell items or utilize a common consignment shop. There really hasn't been anything set in stone.
Working within those very loose and indefinite details, for any external site to be able to help players trade, it would need to pull data from some sort of in-game list system that allows us to browse items up for sale. Its also possible such a list will have built in, realistic limitations such as only showing items available in a certain locale. A third party site would likely circumvent those limitations.
Dullahan said:Such a site will undoubtedly exist, but it will probably wouldn't be in the developers best interests. Instead of players interacting with each other in game they will do so outside of it. The most prudent traders who travel and search the in-game world would also be at a disadvantage to those using a third party site.
Based on what we know, trading will be something highly localized and will have no auction house, especially globally. They seem to intend to keep it traditional with an emphasis on personal trading but with perhaps players being able to set themselves up as vendors, hire vendors to sell items or utilize a common consignment shop. There really hasn't been anything set in stone.
Working within those very loose and indefinite details, for any external site to be able to help players trade, it would need to pull data from some sort of in-game list system that allows us to browse items up for sale. Its also possible such a list will have built in, realistic limitations such as only showing items available in a certain locale. A third party site would likely circumvent those limitations.
Understood. But this site wouldn't stop people travelling to trade. As I said in a previous post the website can only facilate the agreement between two parties to sell an item at a given price. The buyer would still need to travel to the seller to exchange the item for the money in-game. The website can't do that for you.
The problem with an unrestricted form of trading as advocated by some on this forum is that if you only have two hours to play a day and you spend it getting XP you have no time to sell your items at all. This seems somewhat unfair. You'd have to give up your game time to be able to sell your stuff which some people might find a bit inconvienent. The website would help people like that to sell their items without having to reduce the amount of time they have in-game actually playing the game. I'm as much for an old school MMO as the next person (I wouldn't be posting on this forum if I wasn't) but this is where third parties (like myself) can add to the game without requiring the developers at VR do extra work to implement features.
People won't be forced to use the site if they don't want to and there would be nothing stopping you from contacting sellers in-game either if you wanted too. It would just be another website you could use when you couldn't get in-game say when you are at work or waiting for public transport for instance.
It's hard to know how a site like this will effect the game without knowing exactly how the in-game system is going to work.
What I will object to is the use of the word "unfair" to justify third party and other types of convenience situations. It is not unfair if I have 3 hours to devote to a game session while my husband took the weekend off and has 3 days to devote to a gaming session. That's how life works. We budget our time/resources according to the hand that we are dealt.
Please, please, PLEASE understand what I'm saying. I'm not attacking anyone here. I believe that the current state of MMORPGs is largely due to the fact that too many times "unfair" situations have been dealt with in a way to homogenize and water down games for the masses. If everyone is superman than no one is a hero, right?
One of my big concerns is how to you go about making sure RMT doesn't become rampant with such a site?
Marilee said:
What I will object to is the use of the word "unfair" to justify third party and other types of convenience situations. It is not unfair if I have 3 hours to devote to a game session while my husband took the weekend off and has 3 days to devote to a gaming session. That's how life works. We budget our time/resources according to the hand that we are dealt.
Nicely said.
Cromulent said:NoobieDoo said:Understood. I know there is a section of the community that doesn't want in-game auction houses but frankly not every player has the time available to stay in-game all the time to sell items. They might have work commitments or family commitments and to have a system in place that basically prohibits them from being able to sell to the wider community because of those time constraints seems to be a bit unfair to them.
Marilee said:What I will object to is the use of the word "unfair" to justify third party and other types of convenience situations. It is not unfair if I have 3 hours to devote to a game session while my husband took the weekend off and has 3 days to devote to a gaming session. That's how life works. We budget our time/resources according to the hand that we are dealt.
All that will happen in this situation is that people who have little time will ask other people to sell their gear for them when they are selling their own gear for perhaps a cut of the profit. I'm all for Pantheon being a difficult game but I don't think sitting around for 3 hours trying to sell your old sword is a good use of anyones time. Spamming a "WTS Sword of Death PST" macro over and over again in /auction is not a good use of time. I'm pretty sure that 99% of people would rather spend it getting XP or crafting or doing quests.
The whole point of the website is to allow people to spend more time doing what they want and less time doing what they don't want. Also if it is done via a website you can actually spend more time trading directly so people who are keen on trading can spend more time doing it and hopefully make more money from their time.
Perhaps unfair was the wrong word to use. A better word would be pointless.
NoobieDoo said:I'm not assuming you to be in either category because I don't know your situation. But we have to ask ourselves what is truely fair and what is not. Are we asking to be accomodated because a mechanic/feature is unfair? Or are we asking to be accomodated because it is tedious or boring in our eyes?
Personally, I would like to see some form of trading where we don't have to be at our PC. But it has to fit within the world's lore and limits. The cosignment shop is a great idea and I really like player housing to permit trading NPCs while we are offline.
I'm actually quite keen on Pantheon being a hardcore game that requires people to spend a long time playing it to get results but what I don't find fun in games in sitting there spamming a "WTS Sword of Death PST" macro in /auction for 3 hours. To me that is just mindless boredom. If I wanted to sell something in real life I wouldn't stand in a high street shouting to everyone who walks past that I have something for sale and they should come and talk to me because I'd never sell anything that way. I'd use a third party website like eBay to sell my stuff because that is what it is good at doing. That is basically all I'm suggesting here.
As I said in my previous post unfair was probably the wrong word. A better word would be pointless or perhaps the phrase "waste of time".
Regardless of what people want, reality needs to be faced. If Crom doesn't build a site like this then someone else will. Todays gaming market revolves around websites so expecting something like this not to happen is a bit ludicrous. You will have trading sites/forums. You will have allakhazam type sites for info. You will have raid guides, build guides (if in game), and on and on and on. Anything that people can try to make a few bucks off of they will. Crom I'm not saying that's your goal just in general if you don't do it someone will.
I am in the "how much steak can you eat?" camp.
Bank bloated with nice 10-20 level range gear and you are in 30's with other stuff available? time to make room. Hard decision, sure, but need that bank space.
After a certain amount of time and you cant sell it? that slightly uber sword of procccing goes ot the first vendor you see- to make room for that crafting project you just got the bug for, or whatever, or how about- random gifts to newbies or as you get older, random raid gifts to high level players.
I am going to say something probably unpopular here, and that is I hope this doesn't open the door to gold and plat sellers, or someone destroying the ingame economy. Didn't like auction houses...saw the gold sellers/ plat sellers parked in them, monopolozing the prices of things. Page after page of one seller...hopefully in spite of those that like to make real money, our game won't be flooded with the kind of parasites that ruin game economies, and game immersion (whispers/tells, game mails all selling something) Or general chat spam...saying this up front so we are alert to things like that.
CanadinaXegony said:I am going to say something probably unpopular here, and that is I hope this doesn't open the door to gold and plat sellers, or someone destroying the ingame economy. Didn't like auction houses...saw the gold sellers/ plat sellers parked in them, monopolozing the prices of things. Page after page of one seller...hopefully in spite of those that like to make real money, our game won't be flooded with the kind of parasites that ruin game economies, and game immersion (whispers/tells, game mails all selling something) Or general chat spam...saying this up front so we are alert to things like that.
Unfortunately there is no way to fully stop gold sellers. They are embedded into every mmo to date because its a lucrative market. As long as people buy it they will continue to find ways to get it and sell it. The only way to stop them imo is to trace the IPs and perma block all access from an IP. But that can have major downsides and end up with unlawfully banned accounts. Many games have tried and tried to end gold selling but all of them have failed horribly. Hell, BDO made it so AH prices were fixed in a range and there was no trading at all in game yet the gold sellers found ways to get around it.
The only effective way to end the gold sellers is convince every player in the game to not buy gold and not to buy items from them. Which will never happen. Best we can do is report them often and hope that it becomes not worth it to rebuy accounts.
CanadinaXegony said:I am going to say something probably unpopular here, and that is I hope this doesn't open the door to gold and plat sellers, or someone destroying the ingame economy. Didn't like auction houses...saw the gold sellers/ plat sellers parked in them, monopolozing the prices of things. Page after page of one seller...hopefully in spite of those that like to make real money, our game won't be flooded with the kind of parasites that ruin game economies, and game immersion (whispers/tells, game mails all selling something) Or general chat spam...saying this up front so we are alert to things like that.
I am absolutely 100% against gold sellers and if I found out that they were using my website to conduct their business in any way I'd do everything in my power to stop them including reporting them to VR and banning them from the website. I will absolutely fight against gold selling in any form and will not tolerate it on any of my websites.
Nothing in my website idea though would appeal to gold sellers. I am not talking about selling items or gold for real life money it would simply be an extension on top of the game allowing you to sell on the website and transfer the gold and item between the buyer and the seller in-game like any other purchase would be performed in-game. You'd still need to travel to meet each other to conduct the trade and you'd still need to communicate with each other to make sure that the trade went through.
Enitzu said:Regardless of what people want, reality needs to be faced. If Crom doesn't build a site like this then someone else will. Todays gaming market revolves around websites so expecting something like this not to happen is a bit ludicrous. You will have trading sites/forums. You will have allakhazam type sites for info. You will have raid guides, build guides (if in game), and on and on and on. Anything that people can try to make a few bucks off of they will. Crom I'm not saying that's your goal just in general if you don't do it someone will.
That is very true. I'm sure there will be all sorts of websites that people will launch. But I do want to make one thing clear. This is NOT a money making venture. I'm thinking about it purely as an aid to the game as I see it. It is probably too early to be thinking about things like this anyway so I might shelve my ideas and think about them more and then come back to it once the game is in beta and we know more of what features will actually be in the game. I'm sure I'll probably come up with other ideas in the mean time as well.
I'm basically a web developer that enjoys making websites and I'd love to make some regarding Pantheon as well as I love the idea of the game and think it is going to be a real success when it is released and I'm looking forward to being a part of that. Most of these ideas are just based around the idea of wanting to help people.
I don't want to do anything to piss people off. I just want to do something that will offer a bit of help to people who don't have the time to do things that others do or don't feel like doing.
Enitzu said:True thanks for your response. :)CanadinaXegony said:I am going to say something probably unpopular here, and that is I hope this doesn't open the door to gold and plat sellers, or someone destroying the ingame economy. Didn't like auction houses...saw the gold sellers/ plat sellers parked in them, monopolozing the prices of things. Page after page of one seller...hopefully in spite of those that like to make real money, our game won't be flooded with the kind of parasites that ruin game economies, and game immersion (whispers/tells, game mails all selling something) Or general chat spam...saying this up front so we are alert to things like that.
Unfortunately there is no way to fully stop gold sellers. They are embedded into every mmo to date because its a lucrative market. As long as people buy it they will continue to find ways to get it and sell it. The only way to stop them imo is to trace the IPs and perma block all access from an IP. But that can have major downsides and end up with unlawfully banned accounts. Many games have tried and tried to end gold selling but all of them have failed horribly. Hell, BDO made it so AH prices were fixed in a range and there was no trading at all in game yet the gold sellers found ways to get around it.
The only effective way to end the gold sellers is convince every player in the game to not buy gold and not to buy items from them. Which will never happen. Best we can do is report them often and hope that it becomes not worth it to rebuy accounts.
Cromulent said:
That is very true. I'm sure there will be all sorts of websites that people will launch. But I do want to make one thing clear. This is NOT a money making venture. I'm thinking about it purely as an aid to the game as I see it. It is probably too early to be thinking about things like this anyway so I might shelve my ideas and think about them more and then come back to it once the game is in beta and we know more of what features will actually be in the game. I'm sure I'll probably come up with other ideas in the mean time as well.
I'm basically a web developer that enjoys making websites and I'd love to make some regarding Pantheon as well as I love the idea of the game and think it is going to be a real success when it is released and I'm looking forward to being a part of that. Most of these ideas are just based around the idea of wanting to help people.
I don't want to do anything to piss people off. I just want to do something that will offer a bit of help to people who don't have the time to do things that others do or don't feel like doing.
Good to hear from others on this subject thanks Crom :)
My thought is that each town would have its own trade hub or auction house essentially to diversify the price of goods/commodities in different parts of the world. So something like this would be impossible. I would prefer each server keep its economics seperate and to not allow server transfers so money cannot be used to destroy or invasion of other economies
It sounds like a great Idea but the question is how would that impact the game IE I for one like running into town, bank call it what you will and seeing in chat people bartering their items trades ect auction houses just kill the game IMHO same with Guild Halls people just hide in them ect..