Display Item prices in Shop Tracking Golem

[Creon]

Hi, simple suggestion,
Is it possible to display the item price in the Shop Tracking Golem? Saves writing in the notepad and checking each stool one by one.
Thanks

[mrwarp]

That will likely not happen. Then it would become nothing more than an auction house.

[ErDrick]

That will likely not happen. Then it would become nothing more than an auction house.

No offense but how is that any different then it currently is minus some user-unfriendlyness?

I was against it in the beginning because it is ripe for exploitation and cuts down on social interaction ( I still feel the same way on both points btw), but if you are going to have it why make it pointlessly annoying.

Once it exists you pretty much have to use it.

[Creon]

I agree, you shouldnt give the excuse its user interaction when you are not interacting with an user, but with a shop npc of that user. If you are going to do that, as @ErDick above said, why make it pointlessly annoying by having the player check each stool to see which one gives the cheapest price?
I fail to see how checking each stool for the price, is in any way shape or form exploration or an social interaction. If that's the case then have we really lowered our standards for exploration and social interaction in an MMO?? Avoiding the improvement of player experience shouldnt come at a cost of cheap interaction

[Mbaums]

Citan has some an blogpost (that I'm sure Beta can find!) that talks about MMO-market theory.
Some players put prices in their shop title, and that practice throws a wrench in the overall plan. If I remember correctly, the convenience supports flipping items and people make money by just sitting in the market. If you played on the EQ-time lock servers in the past few years, something noticeable changes when they introduce the expansion with the bazaar. I believe what happened was the wealth distribution became less even.

Avoiding deep MMO market theories...
I use the snippet tool in windows after I search for an item, to temporarily save whose selling what and I remember the lowest number after running around. If 10 people are selling something, I rarely check all of them, but just find an acceptable price vs the best and I think that's the overall goal. I see Bob is selling something, I know Bob is a good guy, I might shop with him vs someone else if he has a fair price. I know if I had all the prices in front of me, I would just buy the cheapest.

Side note question, what item were you buying that made you question the system? I ask because most of the time if you dont need it now-now, a work order is usually cheaper. The game rewards long-term planning big time. Player stalls are buy-now prices where the work order board usually "can someone sell me this in a week?"

[Yaffy]

Price listing may sound like a nice Quality of Life feature that removes annoyances and saves you time, but the thing is that annoyances and spending time is a major part of MMORPG economies.

Players already have the ability to get the vast majority of items on their own, without the need to purchase them from other players. The reason why player trading is appealing is because it allows you to avoid the hassle of having to collect the items yourself. When you purchase an item from a player store you are literally spending money to save time.
The reason why different items have different prices in Gorgon is because they are priced heavily off of their value in time. Most items are priced higher because they either take more time to collect, are a bigger hassle to collect, or because they're more difficult to collect and therefore require a higher level player whose time is more valuable.

The thing is that purchasing items also takes time, and this time and awkwardness when buying items affects prices in the same way that collecting them does. By making player to player trading more awkward/time consuming, it allows for more price variance. It isn't just about player interaction, it's also about how it affects the market.

For example, let's say you want to buy Amethysts at the player stores and you believe 500 councils is a fair price, so you go and check the golem and see which stores have Amethysts. You go to the closest store, but you see that the store is selling it at 600 councils, so now you have three options:
1. Spend 100 extra councils to buy the Amethysts, but save yourself some time
2. Go to the next store until you find a store with 500 cost Amethysts, spending time to potentially save money
3. Check every store that has amethysts for sale and find the best price out of all of them, potentially saving you the most money but spending the most time.

Depending on your mindset as well as your current wealth, you may decide that the 100 extra councils is less valuable than your time and just buy it, or that your time is less valuable and you should browse more stores. It may sound silly because the stores are all pretty close to each other (Or at least the ones in Serbule), but remember the whole reason why you're buying Amethysts is to avoid the hassle and time waste of surveying in the first place! This is what allows there to be price variance, as people who might be selling things at higher prices can still potentially sell if their store catches the eye of someone who is ok paying their higher price to save time. This was even more extreme back before stores were a thing, as sometimes people would sell Amethysts for over 1000 councils simply because people didn't want to waste their time trying to find another seller in trade chat!

Additionally, from the seller's side the ability to list items in a shop allows traders to become more involved with selling items as well and creates a business game out of the market. If you want to sell Amethysts but you aren't sure what the best price is you can study the market and other player's stores to try and evaluate what the current best price to sell Amethysts would be. You could try to undercut everyone, or you could have a higher price because you know that you could potentially sell your higher priced Amethysts since people will still visit your store. You could also just be lazy and throw up your Amethysts for whatever you think is a good price too if you're confident as a seller. Even if you try to sell Amethysts for 500 but they've devalued to around 200 for some reason it could still sell to someone just as lazy who isn't keeping up with the market and is another reason why price variance is possible. Basically you can do a lot as a seller and it can be an enjoyable game on its own that people love to play and most importantly, there's a reward for committing effort into it.

Something like a price listing would remove a majority of the time spent trading, which sounds appealing as a buyer, but it severely devalues the majority of items on the market and limits price variance heavily. As a buyer it means that you will always know which store has the lowest price and therefore unless if you're INCREDIBLY lazy you may as well buy the cheapest item. This means that only the lowest priced items will ever sell, heavily limiting price variance. If you are a seller, you will instantly know what the lowest price is with 0 effort, taking away the seller game. It will also force you to price your products lower, as you know that because of the auction house everyone will only buy the cheapest item and therefore everyone will try to undercut everyone else and higher priced items will only sell if supply cannot keep up with demand.

This can cause massive deflation in the value of goods as not only does every seller start pricing lower, but the ease of selling pushes more sellers into the market, increasing supply. After all, if sellers can instantly know the current price of every item, then they can sell everything on them rather than trying to focus on specific goods since there's little work involved. This has been observed in other games (Ex. Runescape) where the inclusion of an auction house (Grand exchange) caused the value of many commodities to crash to being almost completely worthless. A price listing for player stores wouldn't be nearly as bad as that, but it shows how "QoL features" like instantly knowing the best price can quickly make what used to be profitable commodities into worthless trash.

This topic is a good example of a Quality of Life feature which sounds like an innocent thing that just saves some time, but in reality it can cause major damage to an MMORPG. Yes it's important to make trading between players appealing so that people will want to buy and trade in the first place, hence why the player stores can be a good idea, but making it TOO easy will severely harm the trading game as well, hence why price listings or auction houses are not a good idea. Plus, window shopping for the best price can be fun too in its own way!

[Creon]

I think you are reaching with that. I bought hundreds of items from the shops and never had I seen more than 7 shops selling the same item. To run around and check each shop wouldnt take loner than a couple of minutes. I would do this regardless if I find a price I see as "fair" because there might still be cheaper. I doubt a lot of people follow that train of thought you presented (fair price, i wont check the other stools, instead ill buy this one) I think a lot of players will check every stool to find the cheapest price. I get that small QoL can be detrimental to an RPG, but I dont think its that big of an issue in this case.

[Yaffy]

I think you are reaching with that. I bought hundreds of items from the shops and never had I seen more than 7 shops selling the same item. To run around and check each shop wouldnt take loner than a couple of minutes. I would do this regardless if I find a price I see as "fair" because there might still be cheaper. I doubt a lot of people follow that train of thought you presented (fair price, i wont check the other stools, instead ill buy this one) I think a lot of players will check every stool to find the cheapest price. I get that small QoL can be detrimental to an RPG, but I dont think its that big of an issue in this case.

There are definitely many players who don't bother checking every single table every time. For example it's an incredibly common money making/grinding strategy to purchase all items you see below a certain price, rather than being concerned about finding the lowest price. It's also common for people to not check the price of every item when they make impulse purchases, for example when someone randomly stumbles into a store selling a food they haven't eaten. Lastly there will ALWAYS be lazy people, and people will the most money tend to be the laziest. Unless if a price is insultingly high, there are definitely times where I'd rather just buy a gem for higher than market value than scour through 20 stores selling it, and it's definitely not uncommon to see more than 7 stores selling the same gem at times.

It all depends on how much money is at stake, how much time could potentially be wasted, and how much the person cares. If you plan on buying 99+ gems then it might be worth checking out all the stores to save more money, but if you just want to grab one or two then do you really want to go through 10+ different people's stores just to save 25 councils?

You are right that there are quite a few players who want to save as much money as possible all the time, especially people pinching pennies for level 50+ skills, but there are always reasons for people to end up buying an item that isn't the most expensive. I say this with confidence as someone who is both pleasantly surprised that my slightly higher priced items sold despite someone else in another section selling the same item, as well as someone who is constantly annoyed that my cheaper priced items haven't sold while the guy next to me is selling the same item for 2x as much and managed to pawn off some stock. Maybe it happened because of my store's presentation, or maybe just because they were lazy, or because one of our stores has a better reputation for a certain item.

There are hundreds of players who can visit the player stores over a course of a few days, so of course they will all have different approaches to both buying and selling. Including prices in the golem's listing basically kills any variety since both buyers and sellers all have perfect information on pricing, so there's no need for anyone to go through other stores for anything ever. At that point why even bother with store decorations or having appealing store dialogue or trying to run at specialized shop when the price is the only thing that will matter at that point?

I can say with certainty that price listings would cause many common commodities to drop heavily in price to the point where it would be harmful to the game just from sellers undercutting each other all the time (Not Runescape level crashing but still pretty bad), but I can understand why that wouldn't be convincing. At the very least, I think it would be easy to agree that adding price listings would just make shopping and selling less fun because you would decrease the amount of time people spend in stores by a huge amount, both for buyers and sellers, turning what could be a fun experience into just a chore.

And yes you can think I'm totally overreacting if you want, but there's a lot of harm that could come out of something that seems small and innocent like this. It's a slippery slope a lot of MMORPGs have experienced already, so it's not a good idea to introduce features that make buying and selling more simple unless if the devs are sure it's required to encourage buying and selling in the first place.

[Mikhaila]

I think you are reaching with that. I bought hundreds of items from the shops and never had I seen more than 7 shops selling the same item. To run around and check each shop wouldnt take loner than a couple of minutes. I would do this regardless if I find a price I see as "fair" because there might still be cheaper. I doubt a lot of people follow that train of thought you presented (fair price, i wont check the other stools, instead ill buy this one) I think a lot of players will check every stool to find the cheapest price. I get that small QoL can be detrimental to an RPG, but I dont think its that big of an issue in this case.

No reach at at all. This would definitely change how people bought and sold.

[ramonsantana]

They could come up with a tab that you have to spend, lets say 500 coins to look up prices that goes up each time you use and if you keep leveling it the price stays at a certain amount and an option to not spend any at all with no price as it is right now.
Heck, call the new skill Customer skill lol :)

[Jester]

Just want to chime in and say I am that player that just checks until I find a fair price. Sometimes, there's 10+ sellers and I'm just not interested in that much running around. That said, I think the map could do with an update so it lists where the different sellers are, A B C etc. I waste more time taking wrong turns than actually checking out the sellers lol.

[BetaNotus]

Citan has some an blogpost (that I'm sure Beta can find!) that talks about MMO-market theory.

Option 1: Elder Game: The Case Against Auction Houses (http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Elder_Game:_The_Case_Against_Auction_Houses).

Option 2: Introducing Vendor Stalls (http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Introducing_Vendor_Stalls).

Option 3: Gardening Limitations (http://wiki.projectgorgon.com/wiki/Citan%27s_Gardening_Limitations) (This one is actually two forum posts that were too long for the usual forum list).

[Tasolth]

As a note of what should be obvious, Project Gorgon does not exist in a vacuum. The game MUST find a careful balance between the two systems, or a player may determine that the game does not value their time. Once the wonder of the initial game wears off and they try to settle in, if the player is still on the fence, it may be enough to turn them away.

Right now I avoid Serbule market as much as I can unless I really need something. That place is a lag fest in the best of times. Frame skip can dramatically sour the already grating experience. Has anyone ever mentioned that the shop golem is a PITA. It has been a few months since I last logged in, but I've not seen any notes on a revisit of the shop golem interface.

This is my personal opinion. Take it as you will. I don't play these games as a market simulator. There are a million things all trying to get my attention and a piece of my time. If the game is fun, that's enough for a while, but everything runs thin eventually. If i leave because I felt annoyed greatly by some system then that is what I'm going to remember the next time I consider the game. Those other million things haven't decreased either, so I'll pass on returning or suggesting to friends to get the game.

Just Saying.

[Yaffy]

As a note of what should be obvious, Project Gorgon does not exist in a vacuum. The game MUST find a careful balance between the two systems, or a player may determine that the game does not value their time. Once the wonder of the initial game wears off and they try to settle in, if the player is still on the fence, it may be enough to turn them away.

Right now I avoid Serbule market as much as I can unless I really need something. That place is a lag fest in the best of times. Frame skip can dramatically sour the already grating experience. Has anyone ever mentioned that the shop golem is a PITA. It has been a few months since I last logged in, but I've not seen any notes on a revisit of the shop golem interface.

This is my personal opinion. Take it as you will. I don't play these games as a market simulator. There are a million things all trying to get my attention and a piece of my time. If the game is fun, that's enough for a while, but everything runs thin eventually. If i leave because I felt annoyed greatly by some system then that is what I'm going to remember the next time I consider the game. Those other million things haven't decreased either, so I'll pass on returning or suggesting to friends to get the game.

Just Saying.

Nobody wants the market to be laggy or for the Golem to have an unfriendly interface. This thread is about adding a feature to the game, not people demanding the marketplace stays laggy or the search function should be messed up. If you want to throw around threats about quitting because the shopping Golem's text doesn't wrap around properly you should use the suggestion box in game instead, nobody's going to argue with you on that.

[Mikhaila]

"You are looking for some fast Expert Metal Slabs and you are given a list of who sells them. Running from shop to shop allows you to browse what other items there are. OH crap I need Copper Ore also to make that Ring! OH wow, I don't have that recipie or skill. Wow I could use those ??'s at a great price."

This is so accurate.

The current system is a bit of a compromise, but it works very well. It works on both information, and lack of information. There is enough there to make you seek out vendors, but it also means you are shopping around, noting what people have, who prices less on some items, who prices more. Countless times I've spent 10x what I mean't to spend because I saw things at a decent price and decided to grab them rather than farm them.

The limitation to vendor size means a lot of us specialize and that adds character to the system. Some have just gems, some vegetables. Others just a mix of what they tend to farm but don't need. Over time you get a feel for the market.

A system like you had in the EQ1 bazar would result in people easily controlling the pricing, buying up low priced rare items to relist higher, and dumping everything else for nothing. That doesn't happen as much in PG because the system has limited the number of items we can list, and we have limited info on pricing. I think it's a good compromise.