Salem

First of all I would like to say that I know that some of the things I'm about to discuss have been proposed and that some of the things are already planned for the game, in some way or another. This is how I see a possible system working in something hopefully could work as a complete system. I also apologize beforehand for any spelling or grammar mistakes, English is not my first language.

First of all there is a distinction I would like to make, and it is the one between a trader and a producer. These are two entirely different type of players, if taken to its extremes one could say that a producer is a player who is only interested in producing and crafting resources and items either for sale or for use. Traders on the other hand produce nothing on their own, instead they make a living of buying things and then selling them at a higher price, it's these players that control the market and decide the prices of stuff. Of course there are also a whole spectra of players everywhere between these two extremes, especially since we in Salem probably will never see full time traders as we only have one economic center per server.

So with this in mind it could be said that the producers are generally only interested in selling what they produce while a trader is interested in both buying and selling stuff. Now, one might argue that as the game progresses high tier producers are probably going to want to buy lower tier materials from other producers, but the way I see it is that either they are going make agreements with each other, or it's likely that there will be a trader middle man who will make things run along smoothly.

So what is this fuzz about need to sell and buy stuff about? It is, of course, about the current trading system, in which we have, on one hand the trade barrels, which I think are fine, and on the other a have the stalls, which I personally don't think are working in a good manner as they work now. First of all because they are the only reasonable way of making lots of money with out having to put a huge effort into trading via the barrels, in my opinion the current economies of the servers are way to small to be able to trade via the forums and such in a effective manner. Secondly because they are extremely limited in their availability, this is probably intended and in my opinion this is fine when there is a working infrastructure around the stalls but at the moment this isn't the case. This is due to that they currently aren't catering to their intended users, dedicated traders, as much as to producers.

So now we have defined the problems the stalls currently have and I would like to start with addressing the first point. To solve this problem I would like to propose that some kind of market is created where every account is given access to a singe slot for selling stuff, with the opportunity to rent a second one. To make it less viable to use this slot for banking items there should first of all be a requirement that a price be set for each item put up for sale, secondly that there shouldn't be a sales tax but instead a fee for placing you item on the market, this fee should be rather high, but if the item is sold then part of the fee should be returned to you, should you instead choose to withdraw your item from the market, you will get nothing back. The fee should be based on the price set for the item, and if you choose to make the price higher while the item is on the market, you should have to pay the fee for the difference between the old and the new price. Should you instead lower the price you will not get any money back from the fee.

The second problem I believe can be solved by changing the way the stalls currently operate. What I would like to see done is to first of all add buy slots to the stalls (from what I have gathered this is a planned feature), there should also be a buyers tax, which means that the stall owner will actually pay a little more than the seller gets. The second thing I would like to do is to make the stall rent significantly higher, and change it so that taxes payed from the stall also counts towards the rent, with a multiplier attached to the tax generated through buying stuff through the stall, this would encourage actually using this feature.

I believe that if these proposed changes were made that we would see a smaller subset of people being attracted by the stalls, while the producers, who are the main group of stall owners at the moment might actually be content with selling what they produce to traders via the stalls or through their free slots, and buying what they need through the same traders. In the end I think this would result in money moving faster between different parties and trade becoming smoother over all. This also makes trade money more available to the average players, who have been dependent on charms, cricket, hides and the like to acquire money in the past, this would in turn slow down inflation, which is always a big problem in sandbox games.

I know some people might feel these changes would brake the sandbox, but in my opinion they would only improve the game by simplifying trade. Also some people might feel this would marginalize the forum traders, but I feel that a game should be played in the game and not on the forums, also trading for extremely large amounts of wares would probably still take place on the forums.

Any thoughts? Feel free to discuss this but can we please keep the hate to a minimum. If you feel something needs a more thorough explanation just ask.

TL;DR: GTFO!

Edit: added TL;DR section

What prevents the game from being a hard core sandbox is Boston in itself with its stalls and barrels+ the possibility to just port there. If we removed the city hub as has been proposed many times before, local economies would thrive with new/casual players trading with bigger villages. Stalls could be constructed in the villages with access to outsider if they so choose. Let there be no civilization besides that made by players!

anfros wrote:First of all there is a distinction I would like to make, and it is the one between a trader and a producer. These are two entirely different type of players, if taken to its extremes one could say that a producer is a player who is only interested in producing and crafting resources and items either for sale or for use. Traders on the other hand produce nothing on their own, instead they make a living of buying things and then selling them at a higher price, it's these players that control the market and decide the prices of stuff. Of course there are also a whole spectra of players everywhere between these two extremes, especially since we in Salem probably will never see full time traders as we only have one economic center per server.

I think such distinction in Salem was created solely by stalls. People who bought stalls immediatelly became traders and those without them are producers at most. Barrel trade is extremely inefficient compared to stalls - stall owner can sell anything he wants without big effort. It's so easy that he can even buy stuff from other people (producers) and resell.

So now we have defined the problems the stalls currently have and I would like to start with addressing the first point. To solve this problem I would like to propose that some kind of market is created where every account is given access to a singe slot for selling stuff, with the opportunity to rent a second one. To make it less viable to use this slot for banking items there should first of all be a requirement that a price be set for each item put up for sale, secondly that there shouldn't be a sales tax but instead a fee for placing you item on the market, this fee should be rather high, but if the item is sold then part of the fee should be returned to you, should you instead choose to withdraw your item from the market, you will get nothing back. The fee should be based on the price set for the item, and if you choose to make the price higher while the item is on the market, you should have to pay the fee for the difference between the old and the new price. Should you instead lower the price you will not get any money back from the fee.

You mean something like this? viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1381#p15384

The second problem I believe can be solved by changing the way the stalls currently operate. What I would like to see done is to first of all add buy slots to the stalls (from what I have gathered this is a planned feature),

I don't think it's a planned feature. At least noone has pointed it out to me so far

there should also be a buyers tax, which means that the stall owner will actually pay a little more than the seller gets. The second thing I would like to do is to make the stall rent significantly higher

This alone might help a bit already and wouldn't require big changes. High enough fee would force people to make proper use of stalls, and stall hoarders might decide it's too expensive to keep empty stalls

Chiprel wrote:

Procne wrote:

Anfros wrote:The second problem I believe can be solved by changing the way the stalls currently operate. What I would like to see done is to first of all add buy slots to the stalls (from what I have gathered this is a planned feature),

I don't think it's a planned feature. At least noone has pointed it out to me so far

jorb wrote:Player operated vending stands in Boston
I'll be adding them after the restart. Notice that you can presently only sell items from them, but we will look to eventually add the ability to purchase through them as well. First come, first serve.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=223#p2324

Ah, crap, I missed the underlined word and understood it as buying slots from stalls, instead of whole stalls. Sorry then

Procne wrote:

anfros wrote:First of all there is a distinction I would like to make, and it is the one between a trader and a producer. These are two entirely different type of players, if taken to its extremes one could say that a producer is a player who is only interested in producing and crafting resources and items either for sale or for use. Traders on the other hand produce nothing on their own, instead they make a living of buying things and then selling them at a higher price, it's these players that control the market and decide the prices of stuff. Of course there are also a whole spectra of players everywhere between these two extremes, especially since we in Salem probably will never see full time traders as we only have one economic center per server.

I think such distinction in Salem was created solely by stalls. People who bought stalls immediatelly became traders and those without them are producers at most. Barrel trade is extremely inefficient compared to stalls - stall owner can sell anything he wants without big effort. It's so easy that he can even buy stuff from other people (producers) and resell.

Yes, in Salem this distinction originates from when the stalls were added, and I don't think this is bad development per se. I believe the main problem right now is that this distinction is to small, if there was a bigger effort required to actually make a living as a trader, and of course bigger gains, I believe we could see the emerge of full time traders who make a living on acting the middle man between producers and consumers. Of course we will have to take into account that it is quite possible that big factions could actually use this system as a way to make it easier to acquire the strategic resources they need.