Bazaar overhaul

[Qualtar Shylok]

Not sure if this has been covered before, thanks for being understanding if it has.

Two major changes I would like to see for Tradeskillers, and one additional minor change that is not necessarily directly related to tradeskills, but is indirectly related.

First off.. I would like to see them add the "stall" feature to nearly every city in Norrath... Make use of them old buildings in the old world cities that no longer get used. But not every building, perhaps 5-20 random unused ones, depending on the town... some are smaller than others so they would not have as many, but others are larger and do need more.

This has muliple effects:

Allows traders to set up in any city zone.
It also allows traders to exceed the 500 vendor cap that the bazaar offers.
The obvious effects are that it will allow folks to sell in remote locations.. perhaps their hometown, or other places and bring life back into some of the older world zones. (Wouldn't you like to own your own shop in Kaladim, Freeport or Neriak?)

An indirect related change that would be necessary is the removal of weight limits of coin for all trader zones (cities) or even perhaps worldwide. The amount of coin in the world has become inflated with no changes in the weight limits that were originally established for the initial game (back when carrying 100p was alot!)

The last major change I think needs to be made is the removal of the "price" column within the bazaar function. The ease at which players can gather other traders information has greatly contributed to the massive decline in the economy. Players can easily undercut each other within a days time and kill the market on goods or items in an attempt to use items to mass produce them for skill ups and sell them off at extremely low costs. This would cause players to rely more on the "auction" channel (or other channels) for price checks at best... but may also cause players to have to hoof it to vendors throughout the world if they want to have the lowest price. Just like they have to do for NPC's.

With the above changes, the /bazaar function would only work within the zone that you are in... not worldwide, and you would still have to "inspect" the PC to see what his/her prices are... just like you do for NPC's

[Eleena Transient]

So you want to make consumers port all around the known world, track down every possible vendor that sells what you are looking for, write down who and price, then go back to whichever is cheapest?

Uh, No thank you. I'll keep my convenience of one stop shopping and sortable price comparisons.

[Xxyl]

Totally agree Eleena. Not only is it too much work for the players but for the coders as well. Easy fix is just up the bazaar limit to 800-1000, get rid of the excess space in the bazaar around the arena area (is there REALLY a need for the hidden tunnel and all the stupid cells?), and add in more stalls. There is a LOT of wasted space in that zone that could be put to better use.

I really don't think Sony expected the bazaar to be such a big success when they finally made it operational. In fact I can barely remember the days of zoning into the bazaar with it devoid of people. It has definately become a necessary tool and mainstay in the EQ world.

[Qualtar Shylok]

Well getting around the world has never been easier, with a port stone to every major city located in PoK.. so I don't see that as a real heavy issue. It might have been prior to PoK or even the Nexus, but today every city is nearly just one zone away.

Upping the bazaar limit would create even more lag.. surely you notice it now, and it often causes it to crash. There are often malicious attempts to get players to crash via bugs, or just missed opportunities to be a vendor due to no space.

As a tradeskiller, you probably have seen or even been involved in price wars... this is not a good thing for any true tradeskiller which completely devalues the skill and allows those with cash (to blow) to gain skills faster than those without. Under this situation there is usually little desire by the individual to preserve the actual value that the specific tradeskill provides... that being an opportunity for true tradeskillers to excel on a path (noteriety, wealth, etc) that is not normally taken by those with other goals (raiding, exp'n, max skills, etc).

Overtime, tradeskillers build customer bases and you know who to go back to for service. If you find out that you can get better deals elsewhere you advise your tradeskiller of that, and if he/she is unable to accomodate you then you find a new vendor. You could also look at it like you lost an opportunity to get a better deal because the trade skiller with the real lowest price was not able to set up his/her vendor due to space requirements.

This post is really intended for those with tradeskilling in mind as a profession... from a consumer perspective I would not think it would be too popular because of the "convienence" that you lose by one-stop shopping.... but from a tradeskiller perspective I think its a great idea to try to preserve the craft and make for better overall game play.

I am not sure about the "too much work" for coders thing.. I often here that, but without a coder coming in here and saying that (which they have in the past and it turned out that even the coders were wrong!, remember hybrid exp penalty anyone?), I place a lot of scepticism on it. Besides.. under your suggestion to add more "stalls" in the bazaar, why can't they add them in any zone? I am sure it is quite possible. Revamping the bazaar completely with graphics, etc. seems alot harder than just adding "stalls" which require no actual graphic changes. You code the building that currently exists just like the "stalls" in the bazaar are... if you step outside of them, you can not be a vendor, if you are in them you can. (X, Y, Z locs coded to allow or disallow /trader mode) With the wealth of cities around I highly doubt you would walk into a building with say 100 people crammed inside of it... Who knows though... maybe you would.

[Eleena Transient]

Lets say for instance they let you set up shop in Freeport. Between the 3 zones there is room for maybe 60 vendors.

Joe_Buyer wants to buy some spider silk. Does he A) go to bazaar to look at 500 vendors or B) go to Freeport (assuming faction ok) to look at 60? I know where *I* would go.

So, Joe_buyer, and everybody else goes to bazaar to look for stuff, and only hits freeport IF its not on the 500 vendors. so, even if someone in freeport has it for 1/3 the price, it won't sell b/c people won't see it.

And if nobody buys it, nobody will try to sell there. Hello wasted programming time.


As for price wars, in all honesty, who cares? I price my wares at just above break even in order to discourage anybody else from entering the market. Item_X costs 300 to make after fails, if I sell if for 2000, then other potential people decide "Hey, phat profit, I better get in on that!". Now rather then 4 skillers, you have 15. Supply goes up, demand goes down, price drops. Instead, I'll sell Item_X for 450. Now other potentials won't bother skilling, or "wasting" time making Item_X

Price wars simply do the same thing of reducing the market to just over cost (or even below cost, like steins and sol robes). Its going to happen whether bazaar lists prices or not. Add in a plethora of Aid Grimmel skillers, and it means it happens FAST.


I am a very active tradeskiller. With 3 at 250, 1 at 213, and the rest at 200. I've made 100's of thousands of plat from my tradeskills over the last 2 years. And if the changes you want went live, I'd just as well give it up. I *need* to be able to find celestial essence @ 5pp each (costs only 2 to make, but I'll pay for convenience), or ethereal bricks @ 50pp, or silk swatches, or foraged items, or.....

[andyhre]

I think it would be fun to set up a vendor that made you unkillable in a popular grouping area, like for example the Maiden's Eye zone line in Dawnshroud Peaks and sell supplies, like nice arrows, and buy up loot like acrylia from folks who didn't want to lug it to the bazaar.

Which leads me to what I really want in the bazaar: buyer mode. Being able to go into auto-sell mode via /trader is a cool thing and allows the economy to function much more efficiently than it must have in the /auction days (I only started playing in February of 2003, so I don't know of the old days except from what I read). But knowing what someone wants to sell at is only half the story. it would be great if I could program a list of products I want to buy (I would presumably need to have someone link it to me to tell the game exactly what i wanted), how many I wanted, and what I'd be willing to pay. People could then hand me the item while I was in /buyer mode and the same way a trader takes their money, a buyer would give them money.

We could have searchable "looking to buy" lists. In the same way that the current system tends to drive down prices, this would actually raise prices, as informed buyers would eventually educate uninformed sellers. But more importantly, buyers and sellers would meet more often, which is a good thing.

Then, ideally, the same player could do both at the same time, having a list of WTB items as well as an inventory of WTS items. It would have to do things like check to make sure you had enough platinum (and maybe ask if you want to drain you bank if need be), but it would add depth to the marketplace.

[Xxyl]

Difference is you are changing how many zones compared to one bazaar? You can't just cut and paste code from one zone to another. It doesn't work that way. And yes, removing a wall here or there or making some changes within a zone (like say getting rid of the cells/hidden area in the arena and having extended bazaar stalls, maybe even in a seperate room) IS a lot simpler than changing every single city zone to make it "bazaar" capable. If you have ever played with a world building program you may understand what I mean. Not to mention, despite having the books, it is STILL a hassle to go to every single city to barter and buy/sell than it is to do it all in the Bazaar. People who vendor farm from various cities do so because they WANT to not because they HAVE to (the odd city specific vendor item excluded).

You are also wanting to get rid of encumberance caused by money. It just isn't logical to do so. Even paper money begins to have some weight after a period of time. No, this game isn't RL but it does emulate it in many respects and although we have the excuse of "magic" for why some things may be the way they are it gets pretty cliche to use it for everything. Magic should be "special" and not necessarily too common place. How easy do you exactly need the game to be? It has been dumbed down quite a bit since I started playing to the point I have started feeling they are going overboard.

As for removing the price column, as much as you want to preserve the tradeskilling community, it isn't practical. You want to cater to the few and hinder the many. I concider myself a tradeskiller but definately not a powerskiller. I am NOT rich, I do NOT have a sugar daddy/momma to fund my skilling, I am NOT in an uber guild to help me farm those high end PoP drops either. I am also not an avid Trader and more often than not I don't have a CLUE how much something would be worth off the top of my head. I've been doing tradeskills since before they were worth doing and I depend heavily on that price column to get a general concensus of what the going rate on an item is. Do I want to or can I match the lowest price for something or did I spend more than that to make it? It is all relative to whoever is selling and alittle competition never hurt anyone. So what if theirs sell faster or first. Yours will still be there when theirs are gone and you will be the next person to sell yours. I find as long as I am reasonable with my pricing and don't gouge people (and believe it or not, being reasonable with my pricing often times makes me the undercutter) that people will buy from me and continue to do so. I have NEVER had a problem moving my products from my trades. It just takes alittle patience on some items (Kaladim Constitutionals come to mind here).

Lag? You mainly get lag when there is a large number of people crowded into a small area of the zone (on EMarr this is primarily the endcaps of the stall row by the Nexus side bank). For some reason people think if they are bunched in as close to a bank as they can get people will buy from them first. Furthest from the truth couldn't be said more. I stay at the back of the zone and do just fine. I will even check /baz on certain items I am carrying that I know there are being sold on a few other traders with the same price and I will have sold MUCH more than they if they have sold any at all. More room will give those of us smart enough to realize closer doesn't mean better sales some much needed elbow room. Besides, with a full compliment of Traders in the bazaar on a heavy traffic day you are STILL going to have about 800+ in the zone anyhow with many of those extra bodies using /auction to sell their goods since the bazaar has reached full capacity. Others still use /auction because they like to do other things while tradering like fight in the arena or run back and forth from SH doing tradeskills.

Heck, upping the Trader limit might even make Sony some money if they got smart enough to make Trader accounts available where you can buy and pay for an account that is only luclin enabled, on one registration key, has a 1 character limit, is only used as a trader, and has a smaller monthly fee. (I probably shouldn't have said that part cuz it'll give Sony ideas! >.<)

It's all about practicality. Is it pratical for Sony? Is it practical for the ENTIRE player base? If you can't answer yes to either of those questions don't even concider it.

[Verdandi]

There is also the fact that The Bazaar is the primary selling point for the Luclin expansion, particularly for the sub-50 players. I very strongly doubt that the SOE marketing folks would go for that.

Personally, while I can see where you're coming from on the removal of the Price column, I don't think that'd ever happen either. I suspect that the negative backlash to such a change would far, far, far outweigh the approval. The PR folks wouldn't like that any more than the marketing folks.

[Taraddar]

Originally posted by Qualtar Shylok
Well getting around the world has never been easier, with a port stone to every major city located in PoK.. so I don't see that as a real heavy issue. It might have been prior to PoK or even the Nexus, but today every city is nearly just one zone away.

So are your going to buy PoP for anyone who doesn't have PoP but does have SoL to access the bazaar. The Nexus isn't really viable considering the up to 15 minute wait each time you want to zone.
Even if you do have pop this would still be a significant hastle. Lets say you just do this in 4 major citys freeport, qeynos, felwith and neriak. Lets look at how many clicks this would be.

For freeport I'd have to assume it would have to be in North freeport since thats where the bank is. So starting in PoK you have to go to the FP stone, zone over to WFP and then zone to NFP. Now that you've done your searching it's 2 more zones to get back to PoK.

For Qeynos it would have to be in south qeynos since once again thats where the bank is. Once again its 2 zones each way.

Felwith is a little better since the bank is in the first part of the city but it's still 2 zones to get to it and back.

Ok so now lets go to Neriak. Opps a barb shaman is kos there. Even so i've had other chars that could wander around in there and the only bank I know of off hand is in the second zone in so this one would be 3 zones to get there and then back to pok.

Don't forget since we're in pok we sill have to zone 2 times to get to the bazaar and back.

Ok so lets review. We've now zones 4 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 4 or 22 times. Searched for the same thing(s) times. Had to manually write down zone and price of anything we wanted to remember and have finally decided to buy something. Ok we're now a min of 2 zones away from being able to buy it from pok. Yeah this doesn't sound like any hastle at all to me even ignoring the faction problems.

If we where to expand it to all starting citys like you sugguest it would only get even worse.

Most likely the other "bazaars" wouldn't get much in the way of sellers or buyers. Why would some setup in an out of the way zone that doesn't see much traffic and might be kos to thier buyer instead of the main bazaar? Answer only if the bazaar is full and even then they might not bother. How many vendors would be uncapable of even moving zones because they where overweight to the point of being unable to move in a normal zone with items/traders sachels?

Upping the bazaar limit would create even more lag.. surely you notice it now, and it often causes it to crash. There are often malicious attempts to get players to crash via bugs, or just missed opportunities to be a vendor due to no space.

The lag can be delt with to some extend by proper redesign of the zone. In EQ walls aren't all built the same. For example in the bazaar if you go to the arena section you'll notice things get alot less laggy. If they split the bazaar up into 4 or 8 sections devided off from each other like the arena is from the rest of the bazaar and you'd have alot less lag even with potentially more people.

As a tradeskiller, you probably have seen or even been involved in price wars... this is not a good thing for any true tradeskiller which completely devalues the skill and allows those with cash (to blow) to gain skills faster than those without. Under this situation there is usually little desire by the individual to preserve the actual value that the specific tradeskill provides... that being an opportunity for true tradeskillers to excel on a path (noteriety, wealth, etc) that is not normally taken by those with other goals (raiding, exp'n, max skills, etc).

Doesn't really have anything to do with the bazaar.

Overtime, tradeskillers build customer bases and you know who to go back to for service. If you find out that you can get better deals elsewhere you advise your tradeskiller of that, and if he/she is unable to accomodate you then you find a new vendor. You could also look at it like you lost an opportunity to get a better deal because the trade skiller with the real lowest price was not able to set up his/her vendor due to space requirements.

This post is really intended for those with tradeskilling in mind as a profession... from a consumer perspective I would not think it would be too popular because of the "convienence" that you lose by one-stop shopping.... but from a tradeskiller perspective I think its a great idea to try to preserve the craft and make for better overall game play.

This isn't really good for the tradeskiller either. You potentially loose sales because they don't check your bazaar. Not to mention you have to run all over the place as a consumer looking for the components you need for tradeskilling.

I am not sure about the "too much work" for coders thing.. I often here that, but without a coder coming in here and saying that (which they have in the past and it turned out that even the coders were wrong!, remember hybrid exp penalty anyone?), I place a lot of scepticism on it. Besides.. under your suggestion to add more "stalls" in the bazaar, why can't they add them in any zone? I am sure it is quite possible. Revamping the bazaar completely with graphics, etc. seems alot harder than just adding "stalls" which require no actual graphic changes. You code the building that currently exists just like the "stalls" in the bazaar are... if you step outside of them, you can not be a vendor, if you are in them you can. (X, Y, Z locs coded to allow or disallow /trader mode) With the wealth of cities around I highly doubt you would walk into a building with say 100 people crammed inside of it... Who knows though... maybe you would.

Competition and people dumping things on the market really isn't anything new or unique to the bazaar. Anything that tries to decentralize the bazaar or makes it a large hastle to use is ultimately going to fail. The bazaar works because it's centralized and easy to use. Try changing that and it isn't gonna work.

[calidorn2]

Just get rid of those stupid poles holding the awnings up. At least make it so you can pass through them.

[splunge]

Multiple bazaars. 500 traders in one zone needs a supercomputer and a 16 gig 98236489234mhz video card to handle without bad video lag. Increasing it to 800 or 1000 is plain stupid.

Make 4 bazaars with a limit of 200 traders each, all connected in a square, each one has a portal to a seperate zone, where the pvp arena is. The arena zone has 2 seperate rings for combat. One empty, colleseum style and one with obstacles to hide behind. And each of these zones has a portal back to the Nexus and to each of the other zones.

Have the /bazaar function be able to get data from all 4 bazaar zones and add an extra field showing which bazaar the trader is in.

Its the only way that makes sense to me.

[Piikaa]

Why not have a wall crash down in the bazaar, leading to a new "zone" where folks can go into "buyer mode"?

[Grenoble]

Aye, upping the trader cap in the same available space would just be a nightmare. How many people can cluster round the 2 banks? (Xxyl, I too am on Emarr).

Traders in old citiies? As an iksar, that's less than no option for me. And as said by so many others, one-stop price-checking/shopping is convenient.

A second bazaar, tho, off the first one, or expanding the first one, would be nice.

[Draggar]

OK, up the bazaar limit, but include an "AUTOBUY" feature in the search window. Find what you want, flick on "buy" it gets sent to you, you lose the PP, just like in a real transaction.

If lag is an issue, when you go into trader mode, stand on a portal that will teleport you to the bazaar, and have the buyers in a different zone.

[Zeralenn]

Originally posted by Grenoble
Traders in old citiies? As an iksar, that's less than no option for me. And as said by so many others, one-stop price-checking/shopping is convenient.

I second that. I tend to run evils -- as a Dark Elf shadowknight I' m not well loved in most places and my Bertox gnome cleric isn't much better off. Plus, I would really hate having to run to multiple cities. My machine performs well otherwise but I am a slow zoner.

I guess Innoruuk isn't so crowded; I have never run into the situation where I have been unable to put up my trader because it is full.

My personal wish list for the bazaar is what someone mentioned earlier: a saved search list so I can look through the list of ten or so items I am always looking for with greater ease.

...Zera