The Trading Post: A player driven Vendor solution.

[Daremo]

There are some items which are very rarely on the AH. They don't sell well, because they are rarely available, so no one looks for them on the AH, so they don't sell well when they are there. It's something of a vicious cycle. No one wants to fill their Ah sales slots with something unlikely to move nor walk around with an inventory full of junk in their bazaar.

But what is there was a way for players to redistribute goods and farmed drops while still leaving their AH slots free for fast moving or high priced objects?

The solution to this already exists. Guild Vendors. They buy items at a higher rate than selling them to vendor, and sell things that are sold to them with a mark up that decreases the more they have in inventory.

Imagine non-Guild specific vendors, perhaps dealing in specific item types(Weapons, Armour, Pet Jug ingredients, things that are made or farmed to be NPCed already), with a list of items like guild and Tenshodo vendors have.

Sellers can make slightly more gil, at least until saturation levels are reached, buyers can find items that might not be otherwise available to them, and buy them at a somewhat higher price, thus removing a certain amount of gil from the economy and slowing inflation.

Let's look at an example selected at random: Beast Blood. Normally NPCs for 262~279 gil, depending on fame. A Trading Post Vendor would buy this for 200~350 gil, depending on stock. For the sake of round numbers, let's say the TPV has a max stock of 1200 or 100 stacks. The price would change by 15 gil for every 10 stacks in stock. So with 0 Beast Blood in stock the TPV would buy for 350, then 275 with 50 stacks in stock, and 200 with 100 stacks in stock.

The TPV would then sell the Beast Blood to other players for 400~700 gil again depending on stock.

Selling on the AH would still make sense if you have demand, a price of 3k~5k gives sellers more of a profit and buyer's more of a savings than selling to Trading Post Vendor, but if you're in a hurry, or things aren't moving/available on the AH, this would make a handy alternative.

(The above is just an example mock up, and in no way a suggestion for specific prices, stock levels, or items. Void in Arizona, your mileage may vary, all rights reserved.)

Something like this could cover low and mid level armour and weapons, as well as some of the harder to find crafting ingredients that people get and don't know what to do with. Since the sales lists would be decided by SE they could leave off any items that might prove problematic, and even change them from time to time.

And now I call upon my fellow Forum goers to examine this idea and tell me what's wrong with it. Don't nitpick the example, it's just a mock up, and I'm not going to deal with it. Please focus on the base idea.

Thank you for your time.

[Forevergogo]

I like this :-D

I think something like this could potentially knock out the auction house, save for the items that have ridiculous prices attached to them. And that's a good thing. Since the beginning I've hated the limit of 7 items at a time on the auction house. After a few hours of play- I have far more than 7 items I want to sell- and bags bursting that don't want to hold more over, especially if they're cheap stuff that moves slow.

This is an excellent solution, and should be taken in all seriousness!
The only problem I see with it is once it becomes 'stocked' the items are going to move slower than they come in, and eventually it will make sense to NPC at a regular vendor for more. Aaand we'd be back at where we started, but low level and slow selling items would be available all at one place.


I think the easiest solution to solve all the problems would be to increase the auction house sale list to 30 or 40 items, and remove auction fees. That sure would get the place bustling again! Sometimes things are labeled as "slow" selling simply because people haven't put it up in so long- and because it npcs for more than its price history! Players need to be smart enough to sell it for more than what a npc will buy it for, and if the item has no real drive or need on the market- the developers need to evaluate it and give it one.

[thefinalrune]

Its a welcome solution. The real problem that exists with any vendor sold item is the extremely disproportionate difference between the price they sell at and the price they buy back at. Real world economics don't work that. Could you imagine spending 500$ on a single strawberry? It sounds extreme, but the markup ratio is similar to how prices work in game. I run my own business in real life and the markup on my products is less than 10% of what I buy them for (mind you they're expensive products, but the ratio is fair).

While I wholeheartedly like your suggestion, I'm still under the general belief that the best and fastest solution would simply be to offer more items from the existing vendors at more reasonable prices. It would require no increased server strain on the auction house system and would actually help balance out inflation for craft-able sells since people would be less willing to buy the items off the AH for more than the vendor sells them at.

[Forevergogo]

Could you imagine spending 500$ on a single strawberry?

lol!! I remember my first time finding an item vendor in town seven years ago. I wanted to buy a couple potions, and maybe a phoenix down or two for my friends who always seemed to be dying. Imagine my surprise..... hahaha.
(Lower the price?)

[RushLynx]

I don't think anyone in the development team has even glanced at vendor prices in years... they finally made warp scrolls and reraise scrolls easily accessible... now they need to make potions and stuff from all the OP npcs and what not like 10g... no1 is going to pay 300g for 50hp... low level players might pay 10g for it, maybe even 50-100g since 50hp is actually really nice for them... at the same time I'd really like to see meds reach higher numbers and become relevant again... potions don't cure enough at all... and the MP from ethers is a joke for most people...

[Vold]

I came up with this idea months ago(minus the overly complicated price thing - I get enough of the price going up and down from guild NPCs) but we never got any feedback on it. The problem with it is RMT. I hate to say that and I hate that SE will consider RMT before the player but eh whatever. I'd rather do it and then ban RMT after they abuse it than just give up in advance in defeat. Players really need to be able to find stuff when they need it, and if not the AH then the shops. Since crafters are already dumping stuff on NPCs, jacking up the prices at the appropriate shop for the appropriate items to motivate selling to them over a different shop would be the way to go. Players looking to buy then can visit those shops for the gear they want at affordable prices since it's just not worth it to the vast majority of players to lock up 7 of their AH slots with cheap slow selling items.

This is really the only way to go, and it's a matter of it being worth the time investment or not at this time. Probably isn't so it might be some time before it happens if ever.