Incoming death of the Flint Maffia aka linked markets

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38

That’s a freaking great change. It’s not a matter of QoL only here, but of vitality for the game.

Sure, it will kick out the economic activity of “merchant” between region, but let’s be honnest, playing the role of a merchant and his donkey moving thing by foot from one region to another was an activity a tiny percent of player was ready to engage with cause it’s incredibly boring.

Let’s add that the disparition of this feature don’t mean the disparition of this method. With companies being able to raise trade taxe (a lot) you’ll still have the option to do some direct trade and move it between region for high volume trade (basically avoiding taxation). It may or may not happen, we’ll see

Now for all it fix :

  • The economy, by a large amount : Servers are tiny with few player (~2000), you can’t further split it even more or end up in a micro market that always face market failure of one sort (too few buyer, too few seller, not the right kind of goods …)
  • It give back a lifeline to non central territory, player can now play there, farm the ressources node specific to this region and sell
  • QoL : It’s a huge quality of life improvement for the many
39

Here is a good insight

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40

My perception is quite the opposite.

It should be a race to the bottom taxwise, leaving fewer levers for towns to differentiate themselves, again, making geographical convenience probably the single reason to why you choose a town. Só taxation will not, for the smart governor, be any kind of differentiator that can be used. Might as well make it a flat systemwide rate.

If this is meant to make upkeep easier, we can assume all territories will be equally evolved, taxation will be the main competition, meaning everyone will be at the lowest, and solely geographical convenience will now factor into the choice of hub.

I might be shortsighted but even apart of content dilution in my eyes, this will further centralize the market and traffic while sure, companies that own other territories that hold no value will also get a cut of the cake without having to create value themselves.

The consequences are the main hub companies will move farther ahead, the periphery will be a bit behind but still create a huge gap to non territory owning companies.

I could maybe see this being more interesting if war defense was harder and territories flipped more often.

I guess with servers this small this may not be a huge deal, since at most you get 20 full companies for 11 territories.

For PVE exclusive players who do not engage in any form of trading or market making, which I suppose are a majority, this is a no brainer quality of life improvement for sure. It will only enhance their experience with no downside whatsoever. I don’t dispute that.

The game I myself like has several complex layers and one of them is apparently being removed against other options that could try to tackle the problem that I also don’t dispute actually exists.

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41

@idlersoup Well written. You word it better than me!

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42

Let’s be fair. Your dream was dead because you weren’t actually doing it in the first place. Which is the reality of a lot of players in this thread. If the system as-is was actually working, this change wouldn’t have been considered. It is unfortunate for the handful of players thriving from the closed markets, but the simple truth is there weren’t enough participants.

Exactly. It’s being vastly overstated just how many players were actually participating in this niche style of gameplay, but the short answer – the most important answer, really – is not nearly enough of them. Not to prop up the entire economy at least.

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43

Market making needs time… the sheer amount of a single resource if you want to actually open a market. It can be done if you have a company doing it together. Though no one is. Companies get territories and don’t move houses there, don’t move crafting there, and don’t post on the market there. Out of convenience because they had their setups already in the hubs probably.

Another layer of mobilisation deemed moot.

I for example sell all the cooldowns on periphery, at lower cost than the hubs. Win win for both. I save on fees, buyer saves on cost.

Bought a house there just to post the daily cooldowns without travel costs. They empty daily with both seller and buyer saving money.

This is an easier market due to cooldowns, thus scarcity. You haven’t given enough time.

Have 2000 kg of food saved to open a food market in my other periphery house.

If towns lose the tax lever they become non competitive, I can just craft and sell everything in everfall… which is what will basically happen.

It removes one month in (while people have been basically levelling) another dimension that added depth and content in my opinion.

I’m not going to argue against the masses. Pretty used at games being dumbed down to grind fests or fancy graphics Rock Paper Scissors. But it was a interesting thing that could have developed out of it.

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44

Another unpolished suggestion:

A much simpler option is make it so a town can only have one T5 station for refinement and one for Crafting.

This would actually deepen the game and give an extra lever to companies to manage their territory. Would reduce upkeep and upgrade costs all around as well.

They can be opt to contest a profitable duplicate or choose a unique one no one else has. If they want a duplicate they can compete with the other towns on taxation for refining, crafting and trading fees.

This would for sure move crafting and refinement traffic, and likely consequently, trading for these resources. And would also probably spread housing tax more. Maintaining the spirit of the globally local market.

More importantly, it would make the player have to make more meaningful choices in allocation instead of dumbing it down to the core.

But even this solution, would need to be given time to reach an equilibrium. This would be pseudo monopolies would probably start by raising housing tax, which would increase the scarcity of their good for trade, opening way to competitors or, bringing scarcity of said resource up to the point where the housing tax would actually be profitable for the crafter. On the flipside, raising property tax to predate on this would open the way for other territories to outcompete for that crafting station which is now theoretically very profitable and appealing.

We would only need a way to “sell” back a house and recoup something to keep pace with the dynamism.

Infinitely dynamic and never stale.

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45

Dumbed down? People are only using a couple of the trade houses, the others are next to empty.

The local markets I would argue have been a huge failure of the game which is why they are changing it. Everfall gets rich and the others are abandoned.

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Eve Online and NW operate on vastly different scales (Eve has something like 7,000 systems and is a single server. NW has 11 “systems” and is heavily sharded). Eve also has pvp-always-enabled, 50% loot drop, insurance against loss, unique resource distribution, and dedicated freighters. NW has none of this.

As a result, you’re not comparing apples and oranges, you’re comparing toddler toys to quantum mechanics. Tossing off a “look at Eve” merely shows that you have no argument whatsoever.

Edit – it looks like my reply went to the wrong post. Sorry about that.

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47

Big Iron Here, About to be shutdown and play a really terrible game like fallout 76 while unemployed.

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48

I unlocked the Robodog collectron yesterday. Yet F76 still hangs on to their local player vendormachines and trap c.a.m.p.s.

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49

u mean by merging now traders will have to get more creative than just picking up flint and selling it? And by doing so, experience NEW types of higher level items in the game? OH NO! What a tragedy.

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you can ridicule local markets; however it was a design choice by AGS. Players took this inventory management in consideration when buying the game. Those active traders have a playstyle being removed and how long has this game been out.

Yes, a minority is active trading. However a bigger portion of the players already spend trading tax territory perk points in different towns. Will those players get a perk point reset?

If AGS reverts a design decision after a month for their November Update, what major design will be removed in December? This change will not make other towns get more population. It will not generate heaps of gold from trade tax income. I will predict all prices go down from the influx of people dumping the overflow of their inventories. Why would people work on reputation of towns they will never revisit? They only have to specialize on a single town to do all their selling and buying.

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they’re already linking it. I have to say if the traders came to an action rpg with that as their main goal, there are much better games out there. And many of your “conclusions” about what it will do are way off. Of course, it will COMPLETELY move the population into endgame, which will PROGRESS the game and the TRADE and the ITEMS. That is the most obvious consequence. The earned endgame of all those who went to 60 should not suffer to satisfy the people who thought this game was Farmville.

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it’s an open world mmorpg, of course there will be alternative playstyles. AGS moved away from full pvp to welcome pve orientated players. Local markets are for others something to do when their friends are not online. People like to fish and craft in games. You can look down on everyone who does not play the same way you do, but every healthy mmo needs players with different playstyles to keep the population steady.
Why did so many games add seasons? Because their regular content did not entertain enough players. Offering other things to do in a game, will have players do something different from the same thing they do every day. For some it’s crafting, for others it’s fishing and then you have players who like to earn gold on a different way than doing the same elite chest runs.

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53

fishermen will now have incentive to fish up north, because of reduction in turnaround. It benefits everyone, except those who don’t like to adapt and want nothing to do with the endgame at all, which is illogical because more and more people are reaching 60, but their friends cannot afford to venture for long away from a tradehouse 3km away.

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oh no I don’t like to make meaningful choices. What should I put the bank at this outpost? What should I salvage? Should I use inn recall to bring all my valueable items to a town or azoth? Do I even want to sell these items? Is it worth my time?

Linking markets is dumbing the game down in my opinion.

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55

Yes, I was doing this…… internet mind reading is a nice trick but doesn’t add to the discussion.

That doesn’t detract from the larger point that you’re making, to wit, not enough people were doing this to make the system work. That may be so, but couldn’t we explore other options like maybe making cost of upkeep in far flung locales much cheaper? Maybe the cost of getting nice facilities in dead areas would make them attractive for capture and trade.

But no, we always have to appeal to the “I don’t want to have to walk somewhere” crowd. We have to have all access auction houses, mounts, fast travel, instantaneous omni-presence everywhere at all times because it is just to much burden to actually play the game.

Just put an instant level 60 full gear token in the store for $10 and be done already.

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56

Exactly.

Absolutely no desire to employ a strategy or look for options outside of having everything delivered to your doorstep… the gaming world has been AMAZONED!

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Wasn’t trying to mind read. I took the “I was hoping to…” part of your original post as “hoping to, but hadn’t done so yet”. I can see how it can be read differently however.

For at least as far back as Everquest, players have always saught to establish a centralized hub to make the bulk of their trade interactions. It’s pretty much inevitable. I think it would be the wrong move were New World to arbitrarily give greater weight to other territories simply because the player base seems to have chosen Everfall as the defacto trade hub on most servers now. It would be akin to telling the players they are wrong, which rarely tends to work out well.

I also have significant doubts New World could find a truly adequate balance between the territories, in particular one that wouldn’t require a multitude of additional adjustments as the game progresses. Clearly the tools given to actual territory owners are not enough in and of themselves to effect meaningful change either. Sadly in this regard as well I don’t think the answer would be to grant the owners of less appealing territories better tools to utilize than the more favorable territories would have.

About the only mechanic I know we talked a lot about in alpha/beta which could make a difference was an in-game caravan system of some kind. I suspect however that since it never came to fruition it’s simply something that would require too much Dev resources to impliment now. Frankly they have was bigger fish to fry at the moment. If something like that does get implimented however, it would have potential for effecting how/where players might be willing to do trade. That’s really the best “alternative” I can foresee though.

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