What you don’t want happening already is no one’s going anywhere else all there is is more travel.
I buy locally if I don’t want to travel. I sell at remote locations so I can make a few coins for my time and effort doing the travelling for the buyer. Buyers get convenient stuff, sellers get some coin for their service.
Saffron grows everywhere in First Light. It is and should be inexpensive there. Buying it for the FL price in Brightwood defeats the entire point of having it not grow in BW. It’s only one example, but the whole game was designed for the independent TP model, and they’re just throwing this out there because they desperately need to appease a few people and maybe get a little good press now when they could really use some.
I don’t think it’s gonna work, and I do think it will break more than it fixes.
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perfect example. wholeheartedly agree.
Anytime I have a lot of weigh I just reset my house recall for like 30 azoth and that’s it. That’s if my inn recall is on CD and my house is already on CD too.
This post smacks of “A sense of pride and accomplishment”.
I don’t want your sense of this at all. Separate AHs suck and I would very much like a global one.
Yeah if only gold was worth anything.
What you just stated is AGS going fully AMAZON. IRL amazon is your global auction house that can get you goods from other side of the country or even world to your door…
People focused on saving gold and azoth.
They’re failing to see how on the flip side, making gold will become harder because now they’re going to have to compete against EVERYONE.
We’re about to enter a world with extreme undercutting.
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Personally conflicted on this one. I like the idea of the localized markets… but at least on my server, it seems like most trading is happening in the 2 usual suspects and other settlements often appear abandoned.
While there is certainly opportunities to be the “merchant” or the “flipper”, with the entire game considered, I kind of feel its more costly to keep the current setup than it is to link it.
As some have pointed out, games that have robust local markets have other game designs at play to compliment that setup. Here, it seems to be fighting some of the goals behind the territory system.
I’d rather see some life/activity in each settlement than the 2 hubs that have emerged.
As has already been said, the fact that there are different prices in different TPs for the same goods proves that the economy is working. That’s supply and demand. The OP is absolutely correct on all points. Removal of local TPs will remove that real economy of supply and demand, since the supply would then be global. And I understand, a lot of people don’t like to walk, or use azoth to fast travel (and btw, yes, you can fast travel between cities in Albion Online). There are always other options. Don’t want to walk to the TP four zones away? Pay the higher price to buy it at your local TP. Or pay someone to gather/craft it for you. Or gather/craft it yourself. Or pay someone to go buy it from the other TP. No one is making anyone travel to another TP, that’s something that each person is either deciding to do, or deciding not to do.
On the other hand, the gatherers, the crafters, many of the people posting on the TPs, do have to travel. There are goods that are only available in certain locations. Hides and herbs are good examples. These already have a regional system in place. And if I want to craft something using one of these regional goods, I have three choices: I can go there and gather them myself, I can go there and buy them for lower prices in the TPs where they are plentiful, or I can pay a premium to get them wherever I want to craft from someone else who went there. So regional systems of supply are already built into the gathering and crafting. And gathering and crafting are a big part of the TP and economy.
So if AGS means that by global they are going to allow people to buy at any TP from any TP, but the price will be based on whatever the price was at the original TP and the buyer will have to pay a delivery fee based on the weight and distance the goods are shipped (just like azoth fast travel) and there is a small chance that the goods may get stolen or damaged en route, then global could work. But if by global they mean that all TPs will be combined into one single server wide auction house, that’s the second most damaging thing that they could do to a real player driven economy, second only to adding an NPC vendor.
Cheers
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I agree with what your saying, however there are still reasons to travel.
People have reasons to purchase homes such as faction/guild ownership. Easy of traveling across the map. A house in the northern parts can help us get up to shattered mountain cheaper.
I believe this conversion is bias in nature and being limited in scope.
Currently we are only speaking of buying and selling. However there are more things to factor into this conversation.
Currently the games capitals are Everfall and windward, as it seems.
People are forced to live here if they desire activity and ability to buy and sell efficiently.
With a linked market, people become free to buy their houses where they chose, such as a house for aesthetics (city of choice/favorite city) or a house for ease of travel to farming locations.
Currently the issue Amazon mentions to us is that the cities that are not being centralized do not have enough activity to remain viable for a company to upkeep.
I believe the idea that Amazon has is that if they link the market. People will spread out because they are no longer tied to a city only for the market. For instance, I want to live in morningdale but i dont because of the market, player activity and because of the first 2 things, the crafting tables have not been upgraded.
Of course, as i said before, we dont have to link the market place to fix this. We can also make the game harder by removing the ability to fast travel with items in your inventory
I agree with the sustainability factor, that is something i did not consider and does help the situation. However, if we look at it from the buyers position. People will be willing to travel or fast travel for a single item or a couple and then head back. At this time, most items are most abundant and cheap in the highly populated cities.
Yes high-sec is difficult to gank in, but technically, it is open pvp and has been done before.
Currently my concern is the health of the game, rather than my own want. I want local markets.
I dont want linked markets. However, I have been stuck in Everfall since launch because thats just where everything is, if i need something else, and i filter the market by All, windsward will have the other best option.
I want to move to another city but i dont want to participate in a tedious back and forth for everything a dead city doesnt have.
This game also forces you to use the AH, so i cant even ignore it. The game is too in the middle right now. It needs to pick a side, at least linking markets is picking a side, casual.
The other option is make it harder,
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What does not happen. You need to go to Everfall to buy stuff, with luck BW.
The only experience we have is, again, Everfall have all the economy and the distribution from there get weaker and weaker.
I have no idea what server are you playing, most of the things I need to travel to Everfall to buy, mainly to buy some piece of gear, sometimes with luck you get something on BW or WS at a better price.
You just want some RP. The local market just helps concentrate people in the same settlement.
Thank you for framing that as you did - my thoughts exactly.
I’m am only level 41, but all the “end-game” and “almost end-game” settlements are ghost towns. I’ve looked at the markets in these ghost towns and the markets are sparse and in my opinion - not healthy (few options, not a lot of variety).
I would prefer the local market setup as its just that extra level of flavor… but the settlements all need certain levels of activity for that to actually work well.
During much of FFXI’s lifespan, its markets were unlinked. It worked incredibly well because each trading hub/city sustained lots of activity and there were plenty of opportunities for folks to operate as traveling merchants and what not. They’ve linked them as the game has aged to support current player numbers.
Unifying the market will help, but very little.
The problem is the way territory is designed, specifically the role of owning a territory. The areas should have been made with default craft station values. Maybe Everfall is good for refining t4/5 metal, but by design lacks the ability to turn those materials into a t5 finished product. Those materials would have to go elsewhere to be completed, perhaps Morning Dale by default has t5 outfitting stations, but lacks high level refining stations.
This would make materials move around, and different locations would create their wealth via trade, but at different parts of the process. Quests should be on the town boards that prevent stations from decaying (or repair decayed) to a set minimum value (which is what they will default to after a failed invasion defense). Bonus points if these quests have both pvp and pve versions.
Companies should get a cut of the craft station usage costs, housing tax costs, and market transaction costs. Taxes should, however, be a fixed amount server wide.
Companies should instead be using funds to improve keep defense for invasion/wars, as well as providing buffs to their territory attractive over another for similar output stations (think reduce material usage cost, travel cost, increase gold creation, etc.).
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Time gating/resource management is not interesting. It gave you negative reasons to visit multiple cities because everything was in 1 of 2 cities.
And if you wanted to sell anything in a reasonable amount of time it was still all taken to one of two cities.
Arbitrage between towns is not the only way to make a profit. It’s completely viable to buy up the resources that are undercutting your price and relist them.
All 20 rare amulets are not going to be worth actually selling. Most will probably have unwanted perks or attribute combinations.
Time gating gameplay behind having to hunt down the best deal through every auction house or resource management of how much azoth you’re going to have to waste to get there is not interesting.
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Starter settlements make more money which results in a very unbalanced economy for the other settlements.
Players are focusing on most popular trading hubs like everfall and windsward which leads to very poor server performance due to all players being in the same place most of the time.
Having to teleport everytime you want to make a good purchase is exhausting for most players so this is a more than welcomed qualitiy of life improvement.
Players will finally be able to use the neutral zone trading posts without having to teleport to the other side of the map.
This is pure fiction. Except for Everfall and Windsward, all the other settlements are deserted.
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Yeah, I’m not in favor of this future change to the market board. In an older thread, I mentioned how AGS should offer unique bonuses (one per server) to settlements that the owning company can acquire. The goal would be to make various settlements more attractive.
For example, before the cost reduction to respec, it would have been nice if a company can acquire a bonus that is a respec shrine for their settlement. The shrine would allow any visitors to respec at a reduced cost.
If an unattractive territory had this shrine and charged players 150g for players to respec at it, then the proceeds would go to the owning company and they could make 6k from just 40 players using the shrine. The settlement might not be the best place for trade, but at least they can generate revenue for upkeep in some other way. Other bonuses could be a barbershop or any other things that players are willing to pay for.
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I can’t wait till this is implemented, low pop servers struggle if you want to buy something it’s maybe in 1 or 2 towns never the same you could go to 5 places just to be able to make one recipe, I’m all for it let’s roll it out now!
This would just lead to an additional min-max scenario. One perk would be naturally stronger than the others and would become the most sought after, then we would be back in the same situation of that town becoming the major point of influence. This could be based on any number of things including distance from resources, location in the map, and what the actual perk is.
This would literally turn into “go to this one place to do this one thing if it doesn’t cost more to get there than it’s worth.”