Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
We that the current plan is for a marketplace to use a large plot. This is a costly choice- it makes sense for settlements with a commerce emphasis to choose a market instead of a 3-role training facility or other large building, but that's a difficult tradeoff to make for most towns.
I'm not sure how practical it is for those other towns to do completely without some kind of trading post, though. Relying on face-to-face trades or long distance shopping trips for daily consumption items seems impractical to the point of punishment, so I'm thinking maybe we should propose a smaller, limited marketplace option for non-commerce settlements.
Maybe a trading post could not have durable goods, only consumables and components. Another possible limitation could be that only residents could use it, unlike large markets which could be open to the public. There could also be a cap on the total volume of goods available for trade, although I'm not sure exactly how that would work.
Should such a post be medium or small? Or should there be both, with the small shop even more limited than the medium one?
On a related note, I'm very curious as to whether a marketplace will be a template option for the WotT settlement designs, and if so how much we'll have to give up to get one.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I want to put this here since the Dev's didn't really answer them:
The thing is, we have 19 plots of land, now, I thought that the NPC towns were pretty small as it is, but 19 plots is far less than what even Sotterhill currently has.
I am looking at Sotterhill which has 28 buildings, and going by size and what Tork said....
It looks like we have 3 Buildings that weren't discussed:
Auction House
Keep
TavernMedium Buildings -
Academy
Drednaught School
Fighter College
Occultist School
Seminary
Skirmisher School
Temple
Thieves Guild
War Wizard SchoolSmall Buildings -
Alchemist Lab
Apothecary
Arcanist's Workshop
Artificer's Workshop
Enchanter
Geologist
Iconographer
Jeweler
Leatherworker
Loom
Quartermaster
Sawmill
Smeltmill
Tailor
Tannery
WoodshopSo, the questions that I have right now are....
1) What slots does the Keep, Tavern, and Auction House cover?
2) Can we convert a Large into 2-3 medium plots? Can we Convert a Medium into 2 small plots of land?
3) Do we get anything outside of those 19 slots? There looks to be some more room within the town to place things, and there is also room outside of the town perimeter itself.
4) Have you considered allowing some buildings to be built outside the perimeter, but within the hex?
5) When placing buildings do we get a measure of control where they go? Or do they have predetermined plots?
6) I believe you said there was a limit to 10 of the Index Boosting items/structures, Is this still accurate? If so are we limited in where they can be placed?
7) Do you have different types of architecture for these buildings? Or are we stuck to just the current look?
8) Can you give us a run down on the aesthetic difference we can see between settlements?
9) When will we be able to see walls? Can we place them or are they predefined?
10) Can we close the door to our settlement?
11) Do defenses, like walls, take up a different set of slots than the 19 we get?
12) What all buildings do you have planned without training options?Note: If you negate the first...
If you look at a map of Sotterhill you can see that there is quite a lot of free space. I think perhaps the slots they were mentioning might be specifically for Training Facilities.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Yeah, I'd love answers to all of those too. I suspect the Keep doesn't occupy a plot since it's a mandatory prerequisite to have a settlement at all. Taverns I would guess take a medium and are going to be pretty much be a plot tax since that's where you recover Power- it'd be great if we get the tavern for free too.
I would have guessed that the Auction House is the same large-plot Marketplace building that Stephen mentioned in the post I linked. But, looking at the Sotterhill map in your user guide, it looks like a small site or medium at best, so no idea.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Perhaps, you still have to build one if you are starting from scratch.
I would actually like to see all of the space of the Settlements used up. In fact I think it would be cool if we had buildings that attached to city walls like in Stronghold. I would even like to build things outside of the city walls....
And speaking of city walls, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD please allow us to close the damn gate! I have played so many games that had no gate closing feature I have begun to suspect it must be a coding nightmare of some sort I am unawares of...
Either way, I would love to see huge sprawling cities/settlements that utilize as much room in their Hex as possible.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I also wonder how impractical it will be to not have some kind of a market.
In most MMOs I've played, characters often base themselves out of a capital hub, with easy access to banking, crafting, and auction house. (Having bank, crafting, and trading in close proximity makes a town easy to work in. Having long runs between these facilities is like building a house with the refrigerator in the basement, the stove on the ground floor, and the sink upstairs.)
In Wurm, things were a bit different. Players established various settlements to serve as trading hubs, where there were a large number of vendors for customers to buy from. Going to a trading hub was more efficient than going to all of the scattered settlements. (There were merchant NPCs that sold goods stock by players). However, in Wurm most settlements can be (mostly) self-sufficent.
Not speaking for TEO and Brighthaven, but they've said they will have fighter-training. They're surrounded by mountain hexes, so there will be mining going on. I would expect that such a settlement would have a lot of fighter-related crafting going on as well, armorers and smiths outfitting the warriors. Those crafters need access to a range of supplies, which they can't necessarily get on their own because the game design (terrain layout and skill system) encourages specialization, not self-sufficiency. So how do goods like leather and cloth get to those crafters? Or is each crafter expected to periodically make a trip to other settlements, and work out of the stuff they have banked in town?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
... Relying on face-to-face trades or long distance shopping trips for daily consumption items seems impractical to the point of punishment, so I'm thinking maybe we should propose a smaller, limited marketplace option for non-commerce settlements.
Maybe a trading post could not have durable goods, only consumables and components. Another possible limitation could be that only residents could use it, unlike large markets which could be open to the public. There could also be a cap on the total volume of goods available for trade, although I'm not sure exactly how that would work.
Should such a post be medium or small? Or should there be both, with the small shop even more limited than the medium one?
As a possible alternative, maybe towns without a market could have fairs (or market days).
The large market facility is a market (or local auction house?) that operates continuously, 24/7. Maybe the medium equivalent is a 2-day market, set to operate for two 24-hour periods each week. The small market could be a 1-day market, set to operate one 24-hour period each week.
Merchants might be able to add/remove goods from their market stocks all through the week, but buyers could only purchase items on the market days.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Well, I expect a lot of crafting goods to come from the substitute salvage that you get from fighting Monsters. Cloth and Leather based products so far come directly from fighting Mobs.
What each settlement will need the most of is specific bulk resources, as well as the choke hold crafting resources, like coal.
|
I see the large plot Marketplace building to be the catch-all economic center for a Settlement. This should Train and support nearly all Role training associated with running the market, crafting goods, offering contracts and the like.
The medium and small size ones will be things like "Ye olde Macgicke Shope" or "herbalist," buildings that support specific roles and host product for sale to the general public.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Are there Large or medium buildings planed for crafters and/or gathers?
In the latest Gobbocast, Tork mentioned that there will be medium facilities that support multiple tradeskills.
However, if a settlement has only six medium slots and devotes five of them to feat schools and one to a tavern, that leaves... let me do the math here.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Good Old Jane, I pretty much have loved that guy in everything he has done, including "Chuck" and "The Last Ship".
So, I figure that the Medium Buildings he is referring too are things like Skirmisher, Dreadaught, Occultist, and so on.
I figure that you will be able to specialize your larger building....like a Martial Academy where you could get Fighter, Skirmisher, and Dreadnaught all in the same place.
It kinda makes a lot of sense to me. If you could be close to self-sufficient enough by yourself, and definitely self-sufficient with a buddy or two, then it discourages ever leaving your hometowns and dampens the general political atmosphere.
My current thought is that you might be able to set up what is essentially a local NPC vendor for whatever craft skills you directly train, or maybe a highly specialized vendor or two in the medium to small slots.
If you want the full blown everyone can come in, browse, trade, sell their stuff, set up buy/sell orders, contract, etc... you're going to need to dedicate substantial space and thus trade-offs for it. That encourages more interaction between distinct entities that may or may not even get along.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The medium and small size ones will be things like "Ye olde Macgicke Shope" or "herbalist," buildings that support specific roles and host product for sale to the general public.
I really like the idea of the smaller "market" plots being limited to certain types of goods. I'm not sure how practical it is, but it appeals to me a lot.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
The medium and small size ones will be things like "Ye olde Macgicke Shope" or "herbalist," buildings that support specific roles and host product for sale to the general public.I really like the idea of the smaller "market" plots being limited to certain types of goods. I'm not sure how practical it is, but it appeals to me a lot.
Could even be a good upgrade at a craft skill trainer.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'm liking the idea of product-specialized trading posts. I think they'd probably have to also be limited to residents in order to protect the role of the full-sized large markets.
What kinds of things would a normal town need to set up trading posts for? Off the top of my head, the kinds of things you'd want to buy or sell on a daily basis include:
Arrows and bolts
Charge stones
Potions
Weapon honing consumables
Armor repair consumables
Raw crafting materials
Refined crafting materials
Bulk goods (?)
How many small plots should it take to fully support resident-only trading of daily needs? If we put ammo in one shop, combat consumables in another, and crafting materials in a third, is that a reasonable amount of plot tax for this convenience, in light of losing craft halls for 6(ish) trade skills in return?
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I don't think you will ever be self-sufficient, unless you are a nation that includes every Hex type, and in enough quantities.
Based on what we're seeing in Alpha, it's not even just a matter of getting every Hex Terrain Type, since some Forest Hexes produce Yew and others halfway across the map produce Pine. I think it will be literally impossible to have a nation that has access to each variant of each Terrain Type. I think it will be exceedingly common, for example, for Forgeholm to be getting stuff in their Mountain Hexes that just aren't available in the Mountain Hexes where TEO and KotC live, and that they'll want to trade with each other for those things.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I'm liking the idea of product-specialized trading posts. I think they'd probably have to also be limited to residents in order to protect the role of the full-sized large markets.
Personally, I would limit the small Trading Post plots to mirror a Refining or Crafting skill, allowing only items those can produce. Perhaps a medium Trading Post could offer Raw and Salvaged resources.
I don't think it would be necessary to have the system limit trading to residents only. If a major market has prices so skewed that it's actually more convenient for players to go to a small Trading Post somewhere else to get certain items, they deserve to lose the business :)
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
...and that they'll want to trade with each other for those things.
I certainly hope that's GW's plan. They need to defeat the usual gamer-reflex of "gotta do it all" in some way, and this sounds good to me.
We know that increasing Kingdom-size will have ever-increasing costs, but putting resources at huge geographical removes may defeat the efforts of even those attempting to pay those costs.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
How many small plots should it take to fully support resident-only trading of daily needs? If we put ammo in one shop, combat consumables in another, and crafting materials in a third, is that a reasonable amount of plot tax for this convenience, in light of losing craft halls for 6(ish) trade skills in return?
I think that plot tax is a bit high, frankly. I think most medium-largish towns would bite the bullet and go with the full market, in order to use those small plots to fill in training gaps.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I don't see how a settlement without trade facility, bind spot or banking would be attractive. Some things are just absolutely necessary in my view. Or maybe I just have poor imagination. It would make some sense to not count such facilities in the number of slot available if the number only gives the slots where settlements have a choice between several non-mandatory buildings.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I think I tend to agree, Wurner. It's good to have some resources unevenly distributed. Traders/caravan can fill that niche, moving goods to places they are needed. If there's no ability to for the trader to sell in Randomtown, though, then every character in Randomtown has to become his own trader and make the trip to Marketown and back to get required goods.
I would like there to be a way for some towns to be trade hubs, with some ability greater than towns that don't specialize in trade. But I'd think having no market at all will likely cripple a town.
Having markets with limited opening hours/days might be one way to provide some trading to most towns. Another might be to have a local market (medium building) which only allows trade between town citizens or a small market (small building) which only allows trade between company members. That small market might encourage players to have some characters join a trade cooperatives with their secondary or tertiary company slots, building a network of trade connections.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I wouldn't mind seeing a situation where they used a lot of the open space I outlined in the picture of Sotterhill.
There are quite a few buildings that don't fall into giving training or having a large impact on Settlements. Not to sure that these should be taking up slots that are much needed for training facilities. There are some basic things that every settlement needs.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I would actually like to see all of the space of the Settlements used up....
Either way, I would love to see huge sprawling cities/settlements that utilize as much room in their Hex as possible.
On the other hand, I'd love to see the kind of high-density, often vertical building that real walled cities used.
Walls were expensive, and expanding them was expensive all over again. Rather than lay out more money, growing towns packed in buildings like sardines, and built as many stories as their construction technology could handle (and often a couple more stories in the poor neighborhoods). They even put buildings over bridges, because space was at such a premium.
For a new settlement, especially one that hasn't built a wall yet, sprawl is expected. For a mature settlement that has built a wall and used all its plots of land, I'd love to see something more like this or this.
Edit: We may be thinking of the same kinds of cities. I just associate the word 'sprawl' with tons of open space between buildings, not high-density development.
|
Goblinworks Game Designer
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
The large marketplace is to make it be an uncommon marketplace. Games with lots of local markets tend to see stagnation in all but a few of them. Our hope with it being a real tradeoff to host a market is that the settlements that have them will tend to have a lively and varied market, as members of nearby settlements (that don't have a market) come to trade.
We have talked about a smaller building that's a "We'll eBay It for You" type of shop. Players can unload anything there for an amount significantly less than they'd get on the actual market. Then players with more time, travel willingness, and market savvy could buy up the items from that shop and move them to a market. The trick is, we wouldn't want to artificially price things and thus distort their actual market values, so the current writeup has a fairly complex algorithm for interpreting local behavior into the shop's payout. Additionally, the payouts come from a settlement-allocated fund so would drain settlement resources if it's picking up a lot of junk (rather than putting server-created coin into the economy). It might be completely rethought by the time we get to it.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@Stephen - How about the idea of a minimum posting fee for markets. Smaller buildings would allow for a smaller 'stack size', meaning unloading 50 items in a small market has more overhead than a large market because one posting fee covers fewer items. Also, you can combine that with GP transaction limits similar to Settlement GP limits from the tabletop game. A large market could remove GP limits. A medium market would have a limit based on size. A small market would be half of that limit.
Let's say you have a Sparkly Ring of Awesome Shininess. You think you might be able to get 5,000 gold for it. Your home town is a Small Settlement with a medium market. The most you could sell it for there might be 2,000. Your neighbor is a medium town, but they only have a small market, so that is also a wash. 15 hexes away in one direction is a large town with a medium market. You could pull 4,500 in there. Or if you are willing to go 20 hexes in the other direction, you could reach a medium town with a large market and get your full 5,000.
In this fashion, you allow much of the local economy to run on local markets. But for Big Ticket Items or High Quantity Transactions, your best bet is to take the trip to someone who has invested in the infrastructure to best move your goods.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm not worried about making it convenient to sell. Players who want to sell can hoof it to the nearest real market if there's no better option available. While the ebay proxy is a neat idea it's not an answer to the question I'm asking.
What I'm concerned about is making it convenient to buy- specifically, to buy consumables needed for day-to-day adventuring. If I can't pop into a local shop to buy a stack of arrows and heal potions when I run out, I'm going to have to seriously consider whether I'm willing to live anyplace that doesn't have a market.
There's also a significant concern that the lack of a local ammo shop feature is likely to lead to the proliferation of AFK merchantbotting.
I think limiting a smaller trading post to residents only, to a restricted subset of marketable items, and possibly to a limited number of hours or days per week, would go a long way towards making players feel like building the large market is a meaningful choice and not a plot tax.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
@KarlBob Do a google map search of the L.A. sprawl. It is one town backed up against another and the only delineation between them is a sign at the corner of an intersection.
That's true. The Phoenix metro area where I live is the same way. It's still sprawl, though. These cities just spread until they hit mountains, the coast, or neighboring cities. The population density is very low compared to a medieval walled city. When there's no room for sprawl, like in Tokyo, population density gets much higher than LA, Phoenix, Houston, and other sprawling American cities.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
There's also a significant concern that the lack of a local ammo shop feature is likely to lead to the proliferation of AFK merchantbotting.
You will always get AFK merchant botting with annoying 0.01 gold price revisions.
Generally in a game without server wide trades that is an issue for the central trade hubs because the bot still requires a character to be logged in and located at the place in question.
How will it be an issue in remote locations if there is no central serverwide market ?
|
|
There's also a significant concern that the lack of a local ammo shop feature is likely to lead to the proliferation of AFK merchantbotting.You will always get AFK merchant botting with annoying 0.01 gold price revisions.
Generally in a game without server wide trades that is an issue for the central trade hubs because the bot still requires a character to be logged in and located at the place in question.
How will it be an issue in remote locations if there is no central serverwide market ?
Markets will also be centers for outside sales as well, offering large Trade Contracts for goods located elsewhere, either to be brought back to the Market, or delivered to another location. In this way they will help support other local Settlements with a reliable, large source of Raw and Refined Materials they don't otherwise have direct or easy access to.
As for bots, I can see a few companies using this to their advantage but I think the need to earn achievements to advance for new feats will curb that significantly, unless someone really wants to spent 2+ years maxing out a PC for the particular Market niche he wants to fill and then just abandon all that investment turning the character into a bot?
I'm personally hoping the culture discourages botting, and the like along with other aspects of Negative Gameplay such as griefing and murderhoboing. I take great pride in my part of the RA and will be using that to help guide my attitudes and behavior of such deviants.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I feel there really needs to be a medium sized option for consumables/materials(both refined and raw)/ammo.
Or have medium sized crafting buildings also have a market option for the type items produced. The forge would be able to market swords and heavy armor. The Alchemist could market potions, The wood shop buy market wands, staves, and bows. etc.
This would need to be peer to peer trading. Getting the NPCs involved in a sandbox is a bad idea that would need constant tweaking, and will always lead to exploits no matter how carefully watched.
TL:DR, There should be some other option besides; use a large slot for a market or shout in local repeatedly for PtP trades. Thats a pretty large all or nothing gap that really should be bridged by some other structure.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Or have medium sized crafting buildings also have a market option for the type items produced. The forge would be able to market swords and heavy armor. The Alchemist could market potions, The wood shop buy market wands, staves, and bows. etc.
That should absolutely be included! Imho the notion of having trouble buying a certain potion in a settlement full of potion makers, just because there is no market (and none of them are currently online to hear your desparate shouts) is simply ridiculous. +1 for local "factory outlet stores"!
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Markets will also be centers for outside sales as well, offering large Trade Contracts for goods located elsewhere, either to be brought back to the Market, or delivered to another location. In this way they will help support other local Settlements with a reliable, large source of Raw and Refined Materials they don't otherwise have direct or easy access to.
But it will take player merchants to move between markets, not bots.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
Real World large cities are probably not that relevant.
In recent times we saw a deterioration of urban centres where for a century or more the inneer city areas became slums or poor industrial suburbs and the wealthier population lived in subruban enclaves. Around the 1960s this trend reversed and the inner cities areas and terraced industrial housing in many cities started to be "gentrified" restored and became highly desirable real estate.
Nothing like this is likely to occur in a game.
|
Goblin Squad Member
|
I would think that a producer setting a price should have NPC 'bots' to sell if that price is offered.
If there is a counter offered (with deposit), the 'bot' could relay the offer on return and be accepted.
Requiring player mediated character offer/counter/counter offer makes some sense but only for those player cultures really appreciating that. I have done this twice (not counting phony car process) in RL and it works, but it is not something I enjoyed.