Goblin Squad Member
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I thought I give the auction house a try. Place about 20 items up for sale. Mostly starter weapons think a couple of great swords, longswords long bows, starting armor,crafting resources raw and refined. At the end of the day or the beginning of alpha 9. My crafting character went from having 3 silver to flat broke. I am not sure if the alpha 9 wiped my money or the licenses fee for unsold ah items did but she broke.
So I in a sort of catch 22 the only way she can make money is by selling on the ah. But since I do not know what sells and since she is broke there is no way for her to make any money. I really hated trash vendors in other games but right now I would love one to sell all the stuff I make that does not seem to be selling in the auction house.
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Goblin Squad Member
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To elaborate on Ryans remark: the moment you interact with either the Bank or the Auctionhouse, any Coin that you have on you as loot (shown as "Copper Coin: 235" in your Inventory window, will be magically transformed in (unlootable)Abadar credit, a virtual currency. You can see the amoount of Abadar credit on the bottom right of the AH UI and in the Bank UI, however when you check your Inventory UI, you will now see 0. Because you now have zero (lootable) copper coins on you. I did not check, but I think Abbadar credit does not show (yet) in your Inventory UI. Would be handy though.
As to selling trash to vendors: I miss it too, but I understand why they are doing it. It is currently too easy to go auto-pilot on those Gobbies near every town, and accumulate a huge amount of trash that would sell for a pretty copper. I think they want to avoid such an extra coin-inlet into the game, since they want to get the resource/crafting economy off the ground.
I also do not think it would be wise to make all those Lesser tokens and Starter weapons salvagable, because that would make for an almost better resource income then running after Nodes. Stephen is thinking about making crafting weapons salvagable though, at a much diminished return off course, but that would make more sense since those weapons also cost a lot of resources to make.
I hope that the lesser tokens will actually become usefull at some point, I tried a few but I could not really notice an effect. The token of Curing and Freedom seem quit usefull, unfortunately the animationlocks and the duration of these animations and swapping between Implements, weapons, Utilities and whatever are a big hurdle to use anything else then your basic weapon attacks. Much more stuff has to be instant or at least the swapping should be.
For instance, after you use a Utility, and then go back to your bow attacks, you go through the entire animation again of whipping out your bow, before you start the animation of the actual attack.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thanks for the information I sometimes forget that visiting the ah banks your money. I also may have been wrong about what character had the 3 silver. Thought she had some money but I could have been wrong thinking back. It be nice if the Ah showed a history of stuff you sold or stuff that sold on the ah. I see there is note about that be nice when it in game make it easier to decide if the item worth the cost to auction it or not.
It would be nice if there was a way to "break down" armor/weapons we don't want (or can't sell) into salvagable and re-usable crafting components.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It would be nice if there was a way to "break down" armor/weapons we don't want (or can't sell) into salvagable and re-usable crafting components.
The community's working on it: Salvaging
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Goblin Squad Member
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So I in a sort of catch 22 the only way she can make money is by selling on the ah. But since I do not know what sells and since she is broke there is no way for her to make any money.
Of course, there is the other way of making a pretty penny, probably how you got your three silver in the first place: Whack some goblins over the head, they drop copper as loot. You won't get rich quick, but it works.
To elaborate on Ryans remark: the moment you interact with either the Bank or the Auctionhouse, any Coin that you have on you as loot (shown as "Copper Coin: 235" in your Inventory window, will be magically transformed in (unlootable)Abadar credit, a virtual currency. You can see the amoount of Abadar credit on the bottom right of the AH UI and in the Bank UI, however when you check your Inventory UI, you will now see 0. Because you now have zero (lootable) copper coins on you. I did not check, but I think Abbadar credit does not show (yet) in your Inventory UI. Would be handy though.
As to selling trash to vendors: I miss it too, but I understand why they are doing it. It is currently too easy to go auto-pilot on those Gobbies near every town, and accumulate a huge amount of trash that would sell for a pretty copper. I think they want to avoid such an extra coin-inlet into the game, since they want to get the resource/crafting economy off the ground.
That's going to be hard to do with a 2 day limit on sales....that would only be of use to people who log on every day. Casual people may as well ignore that part of the game completely and just trash everything except the coin they loot. And if the AH charges for posting, well, one more reason to avoid it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's going to be hard to do with a 2 day limit on sales....that would only be of use to people who log on every day. Casual people may as well ignore that part of the game completely and just trash everything except the coin they loot. And if the AH charges for posting, well, one more reason to avoid it.To elaborate on Ryans remark: the moment you interact with either the Bank or the Auctionhouse, any Coin that you have on you as loot (shown as "Copper Coin: 235" in your Inventory window, will be magically transformed in (unlootable)Abadar credit, a virtual currency. You can see the amoount of Abadar credit on the bottom right of the AH UI and in the Bank UI, however when you check your Inventory UI, you will now see 0. Because you now have zero (lootable) copper coins on you. I did not check, but I think Abbadar credit does not show (yet) in your Inventory UI. Would be handy though.
As to selling trash to vendors: I miss it too, but I understand why they are doing it. It is currently too easy to go auto-pilot on those Gobbies near every town, and accumulate a huge amount of trash that would sell for a pretty copper. I think they want to avoid such an extra coin-inlet into the game, since they want to get the resource/crafting economy off the ground.
I hope they extend the time items can be up for sale in the auction house. It gets really tiring putting the items up again over and over.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope they extend the time items can be up for sale in the auction house. It gets really tiring putting the items up again over and over.
Pretty sure we get to set our own expire time in EE so it will all be good.
I do agree the two days is pretty useless and sorta killed trade in Alpha. I have an inventory full of +2/+3 weps and armor and there is no point taking several trips up to Thornkeep to sell it as 2 days later I would have to make another trip to relist it all again.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It would be nice if there was a way to "break down" armor/weapons we don't want (or can't sell) into salvagable and re-usable crafting components.
No, please, no.
You haven't played EVE, I think. With the right skills the stuff you were able to loot while mission running was a decent secondary source of income.
If I was able to kill goblins near a starter town and get all the iron I want from the armor/weapon drops I would never gather it in the wild.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope they extend the time items can be up for sale in the auction house. It gets really tiring putting the items up again over and over.
Pretty sure we get to set our own expire time in EE so it will all be good.
I do agree the two days is pretty useless and sorta killed trade in Alpha. I have an inventory full of +2/+3 weps and armor and there is no point taking several trips up to Thornkeep to sell it as 2 days later I would have to make another trip to relist it all again.
I've found more in Talonguard than Thornkeep and even that's pretty sparse. I am so ready for persistence.
Money means nothing without persistence or a AH that is desirable to use.
I'm probably the richest man in Alpha right now with 1 gold and 60+ silver, but that means nothing since no one is selling things on the AH and all my shinies will be gone in a month or two.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Money means nothing without persistence or a AH that is desirable to use.
I'm probably the richest man in Alpha right now with 1 gold and 60+ silver, but that means nothing since no one is selling things on the AH and all my shinies will be gone in a month or two.
Across all my alts probably have 15000 or 20000 coppers as well.
It would have had a lot higher but I got to the point of happily paying 3000 or 4000 for recipes and spells to give away to people.
Another reason not to bother trading - more than enough cash already :D
Nowdays I just ditch the coppers I get from the kills, they just take up encumbrance .... 30 coppers or a pelt ..... That isnt even a choice.It feel wrong, but it is the right choice. :(
It is only there to give bandit types a warm fuzzy feeling if they loot you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The war mammoth in the room: Two days is no time at all to make a sale for 95+% of items.
Maybe with hundreds of people checking that particular market each day that system would work, but we're not there nor will we be for a dozen or more weeks into EE. All that's happening right now is markets and Abadar credit are solidifying their reputation as functionally useless and THAT label will persist into EE.
For as long as sale duration choice stays only two days the player base is going to continue to direct barter for trade and come up with really convoluted Quartermaster systems to collect materials and distribute goods within their social group.
Items need an option to stay in the market for at least a week for the system to be viable right now and early EE; up to a month would be a lot better to have ALL items viable for sale at market. And also add depth to the business game choosing how much coin to invest in making the sale of each product in that area.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I must say that I really really don't understand the logic behind put in the AH without a filter to get rid of the non present stuff (and letting it stay that way week after week). It isn't like we testing the system very much....
Even better than filtering out what's not there, I think, would be if the AH displayed the postings for all the item types returned by your search parameters (rather than requiring you to select a single item type before showing you the actual open auctions for it).
e.g. if you searched for recipes, the AH would display all active recipe postings in the Market window (rather than only displaying sales for a single precise item at a time).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've always really liked seeing everything in there... It let's us scroll and explore, and dream about that sweet armour that we want. :)
Also, it will let the real economist players monitor sales trends like what is selling high, low, how long it takes to sell, what is in high demand, where are the shortages in supply, etc. All very important in a complex economy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The 2 day sale limit plus no way to see what is available without clicking on each item separately (just bolding the items which have units in stock in a generic search window would have sufficed) has pretty much killed the AH.
The AH probably should have been left out altogether until after EE.
However now we have an almost functional version what is needed is longer sale times and a simple indicator of what items are in stock.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan, the AH is an important part of the game, if players are unable to search for what they want then they will leave.
You have to realise that for EE, players will be looking for equipment and items that they need, a search filter is imperative, even as one who wants this game to succeed, a viable AH in a necessity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If the AH insists on including all items whether present or not, it would be helpful to have additional search options, such as "raw:acidic" or "craft:leatherworker". If I have to sift through every grain of sand in the bucket, at least let me select a useful dune to scoop from.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They may want to force you to search for specific items to better utilize database indexes.
It really is a terrible interface. There are many examples of good Ah interfaces out there in the gaming world. This AH is not a functional system in its current state.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Ryan, the AH is an important part of the game, if players are unable to search for what they want then they will leave.
You have to realise that for EE, players will be looking for equipment and items that they need, a search filter is imperative, even as one who wants this game to succeed, a viable AH in a necessity.
Um... There IS a search function that works.. It's not perfect, no, but it is functional.
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Goblin Squad Member
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They may want to force you to search for specific items to better utilize database indexes.It really is a terrible interface. There are many examples of good Ah interfaces out there in the gaming world. This AH is not a functional system in its current state.
I must be playing a completely different game than y'all... The interface is not great, but it does work just fine.
I have no problems putting dozens of items up for sale in a few minutes. I also have no problem, using the search and the filters, finding any gear or item I'm looking for. Sure, sometimes after searching I discover that there are none of said item listed for sale, but no big deal.
I think this us another case of 'all those other games have spoon fed us for so long that we are spoiled and don't want to put in the effort.'
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Goblin Squad Member
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They may want to force you to search for specific items to better utilize database indexes.It really is a terrible interface. There are many examples of good Ah interfaces out there in the gaming world. This AH is not a functional system in its current state.
I wasn't really commenting on the User Experience of the AH. I haven't used it enough to form an opinion.
However, I know a thing or two about databases and doing a blanket search on all items that contain a particular bit of text anywhere in them is extremely costly. It's possible (purely a guess on my part) that requiring a specific item type is intentional, to keep the database server from being hit too hard.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I must be playing a completely different game than y'all... The interface is not great, but it does work just fine.
I have no problems putting dozens of items up for sale in a few minutes. I also have no problem, using the search and the filters, finding any gear or item I'm looking for. Sure, sometimes after searching I discover that there are none of said item listed for sale, but no big deal.
I think this us another case of 'all those other games have spoon fed us for so long that we are spoiled and don't want to put in the effort.'
Pretty sure you are.
Just checking what spells, manoeuvrers and recipes are for sale in a settlement AH takes me over half an hour. I do not even bother looking for the dozens of materials my crafters use anymore. Unless you are just looking for 3 or 4 very specific items ( "I want some heavy armor and a battleaxe" ) searching the AH takes forever.
Yes the AH is fine if you want to sell 5 or 6 items and shop for 3 items but that is not the point. It is useless as the basis of an economy especially when any serious trader will be wanting to set up an inventory with 100s of items for sale. In other words its clunky but workable for individuals but useless for traders.
It does NOT work at present. Back when I still bothered I would list half a dozen or more +2/+3 weapons and armor for sale and they ONLY sold if I announced something like " there are four +2 Longswords for sale in the TK AH at 400 gold each" in general chat. If I did that they sold straight away (so price was not an issue), if I relied on people finding them in the AH and buying the item, then they just sat there for 2 days and went to the vault.
The issues which restrict the use the AH gets are:
1) Your character has to physically go there. This is by design and working as intended.
2) If you do a generic search like "all recipes" you need to click on all 300 to see which ones are actually available.
3) If you do something like take a batch of +2 Hide and Steel Armor to say Rathglen and put them up for sale you have to go back 3 days later to relist any that did not sell.
Note people are not after some "show me all available items" functionality. They want the results of searches htey can already do to highlight those hits that also have items in stock.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The search is fine but you want to break it down first. So if I want to find Basic strips +1 I click the "Crafting" button first, then the "Refined" button, then the "Tier 1" button, then up in the search window I type 'basic'. Boom, done, easy peasy. You just need an idea of what you are looking for.
If I wanted the recipe for basic strips +1 I would click the "Recipe" button instead of "Refined".
I do agree that searching based on the description would be nice.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is why I think crowdforging is not really going to work. The players obviously have priorities, and I am sure they are noted, but the development team has a much more urgent and stringent list of priorities that overrules the players priorities. And that will pretty much always be the case.
If crowdforging is going to work imo, it needs to be in this format:
The devs have a few features or tweaks in the pipeline, none of which are crucial in the sense that they need to be implemented *now* else the game breaks. Each of these features/tweaks are already decided on by the devs that they are doable, and will be in the game, but the devs want the players to choose on which feature the devs focus their time.
Maybe this is how GW always envisioned Crowdforging. The problem with the above format could be though, that "focussing development-hours on one of 2 features" may not be all that efficient. It is probably better that different devs focus on different task simultaneously (which is undoubtedly happening in a development team constantly).
As to what we have seen so far, I am not seeing any crowdforging. Ideascale was an idea-tank, where lots of people also asked for tweaks. Apparently crying out for weeks for a much wanted tweak(that does not really seem like asking for the Moon) to the AH by the players does not get prioritized. There are bigger priorities, which I understand(stability, EE). However there are always going to be bigger priorities, decided by the devs.
Off course there will be times that the devs priorities match with the players priorities: I feel that these were the moments in the past year where we all said (including the devs!) "look, we crowdforged!". But no.
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Goblin Squad Member
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This is why I think crowdforging is not really going to work. The players obviously have priorities, and I am sure they are noted, but the development team has a much more urgent and stringent list of priorities that overrules the players priorities. And that will pretty much always be the case.
If crowdforging is going to work imo, it needs to be in this format:
The devs have a few features or tweaks in the pipeline, none of which are crucial in the sense that they need to be implemented *now* else the game breaks. Each of these features/tweaks are already decided on by the devs that they are doable, and will be in the game, but the devs want the players to choose on which feature the devs focus their time.
Maybe this is how GW always envisioned Crowdforging. The problem with the above format could be though, that "focussing development-hours on one of 2 features" may not be all that efficient. It is probably better that different devs focus on different task simultaneously (which is undoubtedly happening in a development team constantly).
As to what we have seen so far, I am not seeing any crowdforging. Ideascale was an idea-tank, where lots of people also asked for tweaks. Apparently crying out for weeks for a much wanted tweak(that does not really seem like asking for the Moon) to the AH by the players does not get prioritized. There are bigger priorities, which I understand(stability, EE). However there are always going to be bigger priorities, decided by the devs.
Off course there will be times that the devs priorities match with the players priorities: I feel that these were the moments in the past year where we all said (including the devs!) "look, we crowdforged!". But no.
Q: What is the definition of an elephant ?
A: A mouse built to crowdforged specifications.To be fair there have been quite a few "crowdforged" decisions implemented that the devs have not necessarily agreed with. More significantly crowdforging does not equate to some socio-anarchist/democratic movement where what the most/loudest players vote for is what we get - nor would that be a good thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe this is how GW always envisioned Crowdforging.
The core of the Crowdforging idea is that we are going to work in conjunction with the community to define how significant parts of the game system works. If people begin to believe that they can alter the trajectory of that debate by convincing a sizable component of the community that their opinion on how something will be developed is a fact when it is not, we will lose our ability to have effective and wide-ranging discussions about those features.
Every day this project gets exposed to more people. Every day some of those people come here and encounter the discussion in media res. We want those people to hear the message loud and clear that this is a project where many many aspects of the design are undetermined at this time and will be worked on via a process where the community will have a deep and meaningful ability to shape those features including the ability to introduce new ideas and new variations on existing ideas.
I highlighted the really juicy bit.
I would also add that Crowdforging will likely be Crowdforged.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Actually, I do not feel that so many aspects of the design are undetermined at this time, nor were they a year ago. And I am mighty glad about that, because it is what drew me to PFO and why I am still around. Still liking the vision a lot.
I do not think we really will be able to shape the features that have been layed out for us (and which I love). I do think we can propose a few ideas here and there that may make it into the game at a later point, but I think these will be "cherries on the topping" features. Like a new horsebreeding skill or so.
I think most of the changes that we will see(and we will certainly see those), will be because they make common sense, or because something is obviously not working: not because we, the players wanted it this or that way.
The crowdforging angle was never something that drew me to PFO or the Kickstarter, so I am not disappointed or sad or some such.
If you guys think you are making a game together with GW then I am fine with that. :D I just hope that GW stays the course they have set out because I like the current plans.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I think the best search feature will be when a player can find all items with "weak acidic" in the description.You'd want that to be a normalized bit of data, and search by index rather than doing a text search of the description.
Yes. That is probably how what I want can be best implemented.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The search is fine but you want to break it down first. So if I want to find Basic strips +1 I click the "Crafting" button first, then the "Refined" button, then the "Tier 1" button, then up in the search window I type 'basic'. Boom, done, easy peasy. You just need an idea of what you are looking for.
yes perhaps the interface is functional for this very special case, but there is several other cases which is not working, for travelling merchants ... which in one way or another will be very important. So perhaps we can leave the instances where the AH work, and look at the bit where it don't work ...eh?
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Goblin Squad Member
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yes perhaps the interface is functional for this very special case, but there is several other cases which is not working, for travelling merchants ... which in one way or another will be very important. So perhaps we can leave the instances where the AH work, and look at the bit where it don't work ...eh?The search is fine but you want to break it down first. So if I want to find Basic strips +1 I click the "Crafting" button first, then the "Refined" button, then the "Tier 1" button, then up in the search window I type 'basic'. Boom, done, easy peasy. You just need an idea of what you are looking for.
Searching for a specific item that you want to buy isn't really a special case, it's business as usual for the average player living in a settlement. I would consider traveling merchants looking for any item selling low compared to another market to be the unusual case. Sure, the system should work for you, too, but if your potential customers find the whole system too frustrating to bother with, then customers and merchants all lose.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...merchants looking for any item selling low...
I agree; if you're going to be playing the arbitrage game, you should expect to not have things handed to you on a plate. The smartest arbitrageurs are actually going to campaign for making the opportunities *harder* to find--whether by making the interface even more difficult or whatever other means--to increase the barriers to entry for competitors.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And those of us who prefer to "browse the aisles" before deciding on a purchase. It does not work for us as-is, either.
Right now, if you were in the market for a sword, but not specifically a cold iron long sword +2, you could choose Weapons, Tier 1, Bladed, and not type a keyword. The only problem with this is all of the empty entries you have to click on in order to find the actual swords for sale.