Not true. Windward is the biggest trading city even though you cannot farm any high level resources nearby.
Maybe for extremely rich players who own multiple houses. Or maybe just that, you are lucky and governing companies don’t impose too much property taxes on you. I am unlucky so I have to pay 2000 golds to a tyrannical company belonging to my own faction. every 5 days even with some property tax reduction bonus. (20% tax rate every 5 days)
Sure why wasn’t everything global in the first place? It’s such a pain in the as* to travel all over the place.
Similarity is not the same as wealth distribution.
So although the Marketplace is centralized now, this does not change the fact I have to go bank to bank to get materials to throw up on the market as I still do not feel its viable to have materials teleported from one bank to another.
So for me, I do not feel impacted by the trading post change. I am sure I will eventually find my niche in this game once I have capped all my tradeskills.
It’s not even multiple markets. It’s the same market that is so unsaturated from being spread out that everyone packed it all into one or two settlements.
Well it sounds like the change will happen either way, and if it totally sucks more life out of the economy than we as a community can ask for it to be reverted. Right now it is more of a struggle to make gold at end game, and this can be one way to help resolve it.
I don’t think anyone was ripping people off by buying low in one area and selling high in another. It was a smart move and totally fine. I was actually fine w/ the old system. I can do either. Here are my own personal pro’s and con’s-
Pro’s:
People can get materials/items anywhere and then head to the nearest town to sell them without having to worry about going 3-4 areas over where the “main hubs” are.
People won’t have to use as much Azoth to buy or sell items at the main hub.
Outlying towns will now get more buying/selling since people don’t have to use the main hub towns.
It’s so much easier on the average player
Con-
Players who made coin playing the market game will no longer be able to make an easy profit by simply buying product at a cheap price in one place, transporting it to another, and charging more.
I think that pretty much sums it up. Now as far as global storage, that might end up happening, but I think it will be awhile before it does.
I certainly don’t think anyone that was playing the market was ripping off anyone or exploiting. I think they were being smart players and saw money to be made. However, I saw this same strategy used many times in other games with an open linked market. People will buy items that are priced super low. Sit on them for a bit till the price goes up and then sell higher. Same system, it just takes more patience and less travel.
No downsides, only upsides. The change will be great. Stop with that imaginary market that exists only in theory. Limit Trade Post and Storage per settlement didn’t help develop anything, just turned into a hassle since day one.
Local markets made sense when there was no fast travel. There would have been markets that reflected the local resources available, and full time traders would have plenty of content and profit opportunity shifting things like cheap thick hide from Brightwood to Ebonscale.
However, azoth travel killed that idea. There’s no local market, there is WW, Everfall and somewhere it won’t sell. I feel for the New World Commodity Brokers losing a playstyle, but the outer ring towns don’t really function with the tax distribution in its current state.
Fun fact: Players already made trading posts linked.
…by using one town and only one town to sell in.
I, myself, poured every single Perk Card into Trading Tax Reduction (when it came up) for Everfall. I will never sell anything on any other Trade Post, because it’d be stupid of me.
In short.
…this change will not affect anyone. Because we are already doing it.
It is a bad idea because it solves nothing. It will not help to spread people between towns. All economy system must be reworked.
The first stage is local storages. There was some sense in isolated low capacity storages when items dropped from inventory after dieing. But now it does not make any sense. Ok they can be local, but there should be a system that allows cheap hauling of resources between them, and storage capacity should be at least 3000.
Then to make all towns alive you need to make different production bonuses. All towns in low level zones should have them. Like +10% to fiber processing etc.
Then all low level materials should be placed only in low level territories, there should not be iron ore in 30+ maps. But to make it work resource processing scheme should be changed as well.
Then taxes. There must be a system that prevents town owners from abusing taxes. Something like: minimum tax in town without processing bonus should be more profitable than maximum tax in town with processing bonus.
Than there should be some random high level events that force people to move between maps, it could be portals, but not in the current state.
And at last, why the F there is a double tax on a market. Why I should pay a tax when put something on sale and pay the second tax when buying something? With this stupid system there will never be equal cost market. People will sell and buy things in town with maximum tax reduction bonus. And the easiest way to get it is to train pirates in restless shore.
The trading post is already linked right now due to free travel by owning a house in WW or EF. Everyone and their kids have a house in these two towns. If you don’t have a house here then I don’t know what you’re doing. A free transfer to the trading post. And takes less than 45 azoth to reset. If you’re playing the market game by selling raw mats, pots, water, food, ammo, arrows, etc. for tiny bit more in other towns you’re really wasting your time in my opinion. I’ve tried it, it waste time. Yea I can’t tell another player how he/she should play the game, but there are much better ways to make money. You just gotta stay ahead of the game, and not going backward. Farming rawhide, greenwood, and other basic mats none stop every day is example of playing this game backward. You have to think forward and think new ideas to make better money. But hey i can’t tell u how u should play the game. Everyone enjoy their own style. This change will torn apart the casual role players. But won’t affect the hardcore gamers who knows everything about the game on top of their head. Won’t affect the gamers who kno wtf they’re doing.
did the OP just make it sound bad to make people’s lives easier in a geme where endgame traveling is actually WORSE than in early game?
I’d understand if the game’s name was civilization, but there’s no trade folks that are gonna lose a damn thing. endgame shi* will always make huge profits. High tradeskill will always make huge profits. Farming will always make huge profits. WoW is proof of this.
There are very few servers that are anywhere near high pop enough to make this anywhere near a sustainable dynamic unless ur life involves nothing but playing the game all day.
This is a far overdue QoL that would rid the game of how inconvenient it is to progress or help anyone cuz u have to constantly be saving ur azoth & being stuck in low level shi* cuz of stuff like this, while u end up leaving endgame content folk stuck in whatever ditch they found themselves in.
Y’all sound like doomsday prophets over something that is going to benefit EVERYONE, way off base.
This change is not just a QoL improvement, it’s going to allow people to get their house wherever they want. It’s objectively false that this will hurt the sellers as they will be free to get a house where they like to gather/craft and sell everywhere without azoth managing.
Buyers wont have to spend time and azoth to travel to buy cheaper and everyone will be better off.
Everfall wont drop your fps as much, alchemists will be able to settle in a town with a river.
Exactly the opposite of what’s going on. Local trade posts make no sense whatsoever in a game with fast travel, and people against the change are deluding themselves of having found a “solid business model” when in fact they’re making small change off of someone else’s lazyness.
The market is ALREADY global, everyone sells in Everfall and everyone fast travels there to buy.
You rowing against the change are the only ones looking at this from your own selfish and personal perspective because this change will benefit EVERYONE, including you btw, except it forces you to see that the job you created for yourselves was always a waste of time.
i do not understand your points as its seemingly always the same angle. The bigger picture is obviously not something that you have in mind because your main point QoL is the only valid point you made in your whole discussion
I think its fair to say no one here will be able to accurately and precisely predict what will happen as a result of linking the markets. Especially given the current state of various servers (most featuring low populations during various prime times, handful medium and even less with queues)
For me, my server has gone from medium to low quite quickly (speculate that is due to recent incidents/issues).
Nonetheless, when things were a healthyish medium, non-starter settlements were ghost towns with stale market activity and sparse listings. Given the game doesn’t provide any feedback on sales, you cannot really gauge how active a given market actually is.
As someone who attempted to be the “traveling merchant”…
Putting items up for prices over their “going-prices” in WW/EF typically resulted in a no sale
Putting items up for prices notably below their “going-prices” in WW/EF typically resulted in a no-sale (no one seemed to be willing to travel for even up to a 75% discount)
That was my experience and it led me to conclude:
Players were not willing to do shopping trips to other settlements, even for a steep discount
Not enough players hanging out in some settlements who were so unwilling to travel to WW/EF that they’d be willing to purchase items “locally” for a marginal premium.
While I am sure there is a market for “end-game” consumables in settlements that surround “end-game” areas (I admittedly couldn’t make said consumables), it would seem silly to maintain unlinked markets just so we can continue to have ghost-towns and enable players who want to flip a narrow selection of items in some settlements.
If AGS can find a way to encourage and sustain player activity in most settlements - local markets may in fact work. However, if it doesn’t work on a server with medium activity, it isn’t going to work on a server with low activity.
And that is the thing that most arguments for maintaining unlinked markets seem to overlook… how do you sustain/attract enough player activity in settlements other than EF/WW that local markets will likely actually function as designed?
This is a great point. But in my opinion the size the problem you are describing dwarfs the ability of a linked market to address it. I definitely see how a linked market would be more beneficial to a dying server where the outlying markets REALLY are dead. But those towns have way bigger problems at that point.