The Invisible Hand

[Kankman]

It's great to see so many areas of the game getting such love.

One such area that could probably use it is the way the marketplace works now. Forgive my laziness for not searching whether this particular idea has been proposed before.

Current situation:

Game boots. Merchants have coin. PCs unload their goods. Merchants run out of coin. Randomly, merchants make virtual sales, and PCs buy stuff sometimes. The staff have to intervene to determine the market is flooded with certain types of goods, such as chalton in Allanak, and make manual adjustments.

Proposed situation:

Game boots. Merchants have coin. PCs unload their goods. Rather than merchants saying "I've got too much of that right now" they actually lower the price they're willing to pay based upon how much they have. Yes, I know that right now you can haggle to lower your price, but the current mechanism allows someone to sell 5 (I think) of an item at the maximum price, and then they merchant just won't buy anymore.

An interesting change would be item the first is purchased at full price, and then the next purchased at a discount, with the discount continuing until it's really not worth selling anymore. However, someone desperate for coin, could sell their thing if they were willing to take the hit.

e.g.

Item the first:      150 coins
Item the second:  135 coins (base price * 0.9)
Item the third:      115 coins (second item price * 0.85)
Item the fourth:    92  coins (third item price * 0.
Item the fifth:    69  coins (third item price * 0.75)


etc.

Likewise, merchant shops could vary their sale prices based upon availability. Those things available in shops with unlimited supply would have their set price, but those purchased from PCs would start at a high price, and it could lower based on how much inventory they had, now accounting for the fact that there's no maximum they'd be willing to buy.

In this instance, if the shopkeeper had only one of an item, perhaps they'd charge the current price. If they had a dozen, they'd want to unload this item, and reduce the price perhaps by 2%. At a rate that would definitely be less steep than their purchasing price.

Yes, I am aware that the GDB is where ideas go to get argued about and then die, but I figured I'd put it forward anyway.

Thoughts?

[Riev]

I wouldn't mind at least increasing the maximum non-stock items to 10, and following this style of formula if possible. You can still haggle your way through, but if you're selling eight long bones, rather than getting 10 coins a bone and walking away with nearly a small, you can sell all of them but at a discounted price.

Its... kinda the same in real life. The more you sell to someone, the bigger deal you cut them. It encourages them to buy from you.

Want to make more coin? Make things people don't HAVE. Make the weapons that sell for 40 coins, because they've got so many shortswords that they're only buying for 30.


I'm down.

[Lizzie]

I wouldn't mind at least increasing the maximum non-stock items to 10, and following this style of formula if possible. You can still haggle your way through, but if you're selling eight long bones, rather than getting 10 coins a bone and walking away with nearly a small, you can sell all of them but at a discounted price.

Its... kinda the same in real life. The more you sell to someone, the bigger deal you cut them. It encourages them to buy from you.

Want to make more coin? Make things people don't HAVE. Make the weapons that sell for 40 coins, because they've got so many shortswords that they're only buying for 30.


I'm down.

Increasing it to 10 will just encourage spam-crafters to spam-craft more. Got max haggle and a thing the NPC will pay 300 sids for? And that thing only takes you 20 seconds to make? Awesome - you just earned yourself 3,000 in just under 5 minutes. Or maybe now only 2000, or possibly only 1000, but still, you made it in under 5 minutes. Easiest way to get stinkin filthy rich, is now even easier. And once again, no one can sell anything to the NPC until the NPC either sells some of those off, or the game resets.

I revisit my original idea, and present it yet again:

Have limits *per PC* rather than *per NPC merchant.*

"Yes Amos, I'll buy another one from you. I really don't need to stock up, so I'll only pay you 5 sids, and only for a single one. After that, step back because I have someone more important than you who's going to be bringing me one of those things, and I need to reserve space on my sales shelf for -his- item."

"Sure Noble Malik, I'll buy three more of those from you, at the regular rate of course - 10 sids each. But I'm afraid there's a Red Robe coming in an hour to sell me half a dozen, and I need room on my sales shelf for them so no more than three, this time around."

"What's that, elf Talia? I'll buy three of them. At one sid each and be grateful that I don't charge you for the privilege."

[Riev]

Ideally, I would say Lizzie's idea is best. Per-PC sales limits would be great, but thats a lot more tracking (I think) than is likely to happen, for tracking how many of an item were sold by what PC, combined with whether that item was bought recently by another PC. It'd be rough.

Reducing the amount of money given, based on how many are available, is a good idea, but only if the fall-off was pretty significant.

[Majikal]

Damn, I like all of these ideas. Per PC seems like it would be a difficult if not impossible creation, however I think it's got the most game benefiting potential. I like kankman's idea too, though I'd favor a steeper dropoff, otherwise, they're both pretty sweet.

[Kankman]

I remember reading a while back that more things were being moved into a database rather than being hard coded.

A table that tracked PC ID, item ID, shopkeeper ID, that the could could check to make sure it didn't go above X on a certain item should be possible.

[Lizzie]

I remember reading a while back that more things were being moved into a database rather than being hard coded.

A table that tracked PC ID, item ID, shopkeeper ID, that the could could check to make sure it didn't go above X on a certain item should be possible.

Pretty much this. If you use a database - even something as primitive as MS Access or create a custom database with VB6.0 (I realize Arm and VB6.0 have nothing to do with each other - just saying you can do it on something primitive), then you can absolutely positively run arrays on each PFile that include stuff Amos has sold within the past 125 hours, to whom, and [if stuff (within 125 hours) (at shop X) >5] then print "Dood you're done here, try again next week." <end subroutine>

It's a little clunky with a programs like MS Access and VB6.0 but someone who is an expert with either of these could probably whip up a subroutine for it in a few hours. No idea what kind of work it would involve outside Access or VB6, my coding experience is limited to those, C, and C++.

[Jingo]

I'd say just factor the number of items in stock and make them sell for a tenth of the price.

This would allow hunters to come in with chalton loot and still make at least twenty sids worth. And it would allow merchants to work with a functioning commodities market.

If someone comes in with  a fire opal and sells it, they might make 300 'sid. If someone comes in with 10 fire opals and tries to sell it against the other 30 fire opals already on the market, they might make 300 'sid.