IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Modifications suggested:
1) More than 40 slots (40 was a suggestion, I'm fine with keeping 125 or making it 80 etc)

2) Longer time, not unlimited time (3months regular items, 6 months materials) (I suggest 6 months for everything in this case, easier to code)

Initial idea:
I could make a post with several proposed changes and why, but we should try to stick to just this one for this thread, please and thank you

existing:
125 slots 7 days timer

proposed
fewer slots (40?) unlimited timer

this will cause lots of benefits

people can properly sell their items, without a hassle of resetting after 7 days. other games do not have similar limitations, and it fosters trading quite well

I have heard time and time ago "too much hassle, might as well give it away or break it" and it is true, it IS a hassle

People like Yubina are amazing for putting up with relisting, I try but I fail at it, they are heroes to me =)

This will also cut down on loading time (fewer max slots) and have more relevant , more useful things on merchant if the slots are limited

yes it would impact mat-storing on merchant but... no one's really going to risk losing more than 40 stacks of mats anyway.

Discuss openly please

I rarely even put stuff in the merchant for any reason. I find the merchant useless for storage, and only marginally useful for actual commerce. I fall into the "Gift it or destroy it" school of thought.

Why? The 7-day timer. Pure and simple.

With no guarantee that (whatever item/mat) will actually sell, the profit I makes off of the items and mats I destroy is not much lower than the profits I get from the merchant. In fact, the difference is so slight that it costs me more to use the merchant than it does to just destroy things.

As for storage, that's kind of dicey since I have a life away from Atys and I don't want to lose stuff simply because I sometimes have to adult.

I haven't given much thought to how many slots is appropriate, but I applaud this proposal in principle. Furthermore, I can't think of any real complications that would arise as a result or any great difficulty in implementation.

+1

I support the option of longer/unlimited timer on resale items.

I don't really know if I would want it to be at the expense of lowering the total spots available, a premium service you pay dappers to the merchant to provide, or a premium service for subscribed accounts- But regardless, the merchant system currently is mostly a trash can.

Thanks Gidget and Placio

I also don't want to limit the slots but... realistically when asking for something it's usually good to propose a counterbalance too, as 125 unlimited time slots is a bit OP

I wouldn't mind the same amount but the loading screen is slow enough without everyone using lots of slots.. so I would propose reducing from 125 and maybe leaving it a higher number (40 isn't really what I want, I want more :))

In my opinion, a potential downfall would be the selling of "basic" mats. If they never expire, then these mats would be around FOREVER. I generally throw "basic" mats away, and only sell "fine" or above, as they generally sell, if my price is set reasonably.

And the only things I sell to the merchants is those things which are of lower quality than my crafting ability.

Like thus: If my hypothetical crafting skill is, say, q100, then I will only sell items of less than q100.

... just saying....

Personally I think basic and fine mats are a bit more popular for people like me who do overseer missions

They are common ecosystem so you can do a mission in any land (or any tribe)

Should be okay, if people have unlimited time, they can keep re-adjusting their prices until they find the price people are willing to pay =]

I would've thought so too until I started getting serious about overseers and grinding craft levels.

At first, it was just thinking that I'd be willing to pay a few dappers to get out of digging the hundreds of mats needed for my favorite Overseer missions. (Many overseer missions I take are for non-Tryker gear >q150, but Lakes is the only place I can dig over q130.)

Then I got a few craft skills to where I got less than a level a bag. At that point, it became clear to me why the price of q250 Basic/fine mats was as high as it was. Sure, you get some in there at +9999% for storage, but there is also a fair bit of it that is priced low enought at it's obviously for sale.... and a fair number of people who are willing to pay that much to get out of an hour of digging.

Also, there are certain recipes that call for Basic mats; even replacing with Fine would lower the stats on the crafted item.

In short, Basic mats are more useful (and thus sell better) than you would think... at least for q250.

I partially agree with this proposal, with a few modifications:

- I would still periodically purge items under .. say, q50. Many people trying out the game will kill some mobs and/or craft a couple of items, put said stuff on sale, then stop playing. This would leave the bottom list of the merchant cluttered forever with q5 yubo eyes and q10 daggers.

If you've seen the amount of q10 LA boots on sale in Silan, you know what I mean. And maybe the amount of q10-q50 daggers in any capital. At least in Silan, the sheer number of boots makes it difficult to load the LA merchant list, and this is with the *current* 7-day limit.

- I would not allow infinite time for resale, but simply a time long enough that it doesn't punish the honest merchant. Say, 3 months for raw materials and 6 months for crafted items.

First, you don't want to leave unwanted items to sit on the shelves forever. Every now and then, you can see magic amplifiers with 60% powers that get thrown on the market. They sit and sit. You have mats placed on resale at very high prices, even if using them in overseer missions wouldn't have you break even. At some point, they should disappear, if the collective buyers decide they don't need them in 6 months.

Just my 2 dappers. I wouldn't mind the changes even in their original proposed form, but I simply find they would introduce unwanted side-effects, described above :)

Thanks for your support MJ

I can totally agree with 6 months
The stress of resetting for storage in 7 days is high for me, so I just don't do it.

But I WANT to.. i just can't risk it as Gidget has pointed out, RL sometimes makes you miss your deadline, and it's a really unfairly short deadline.

Reduce number of slots : NO! I regularly exceed the number of slots with selling of looted mats. (I don't exceed the number when I'm digging because one tends to get full stacks.) My mats sell on a regular basis within the seven day time period.

Increase time: No. Be it one week or two or 50, at some point the stuff won't sell and it will totally clog up the vendors.

I don't see the vendors as a useful way to exchange goods and it has nothing to do with number of items or time in stock. Created goods are best made on a custom basis as a private exchange or at high level for a rate that cannot be matched on the vendors. (If I just got the ability to use q140 jewels it doesn't matter how attractive the price is on the q120 ones is...)

The fact that the vendor mechanic is quoted as being ineffective at faciliating selling IS a problem

These suggestions are meant to convey the fact that other mmo's allow for more time and less slots and their market boards DO work

(source: extensive personal experience)
(also it's logical in some ways, you can't necesarily store as much as you'd like so you freely sell what you don't need and buy what you do need, and others do the same, allowing a 2 way exchange)

In any case everyone is entitled to their opinions

But in my opinion a big problem with this community is that "no" is a very common answer

I'd love 125 slots + more time, the market is too clogged with junk anyway, at least good things may stay up

Sellers are discouraged from listing their items (weapons , jewel sets, mats) (especially sets of armor and jewels because of hassle and risk)

The reward is bascially nill compared to the risk of losing your inventory
So as stated... people just do everything on order

People can still do things on order, even if trade is increased
Many of my mats sell fine in 7 days but if I had 21 days I'd be doing better with less stress

In addition, consider this perspective

X people think everything is fine, the population may be X+Y

X may stay indefinitely with everything feeling fine to them until the end of time, the Y population may not like it but stay anyway...

Where's Z? The people who have already left because basic things like this don't work?

Isn't it in the interest of the game in general to attract and retain, and not lose, population Z?

I'm in population Y, I don't like a lot of what goes on but I put up with anyway because for the most part X+Y are really nice people

I miss my friend from Z who I delete every day, off my list.
I add more people every day, they leave very rapidly

Being able to cater to more playstyles helps growth.
Some people LIKE to trade
some people WANT to help by listing fairly

People like Yubina work at keeping their items on the market, I tried it, it's hard with a 7 day limit. And.. they use several alts to list already, even with the 125 slots (I haven't actually asked why)

Some games allow you to list 20 items x 2 or 3 which you unlock as you go. Runesape only gives you a few slots but your items stay there as long as you want

Anyway
Sorry if I seem hostile

There's always a possibility of a new NPC to run an ingame baazar or FH market for those that want to sell non-expiring gear, but this post was about the current selling system :/ Which is mostly for junk mats :( Not having to worry about my excellent/sup gear offerings expiring if I dont come online to restock them would be nice, but it still might not solve a seriously flawed system...

This post is not meant to suggest solving the entire broken system, but to add one element that may work toward making it work better , or just being more useful and less stressful to the user, instead of "meh just don't use it"

I agree with it will take sevearl posts of several ideas to really fix something this underutilised so I started with one change

Thanks go out to everyone who read and commented, my position is crafted to encourage discussion so some of what is stated is a bit far-left (or far-right or whichever it is)

@Bittty - Given my own experience with selling through the merchant, I feel anything much over 24 hours to be as excessive as you seem to feel anything over 7 days is. If clutter is the issue then we could actually improve things by shortening the time to 36 hours. Most things that I put up that haven't sold by then simply don't sell, so 36 hours seems more than enough.

To be sure, finding the balance between clogging the vendors and penalizing players for having lives away from Atys is tricky, but I think it also important to remember that we all have different lives; this is very much a case of YMMV.

I have to wonder if things would be a little different if the base values of Exc/Sup things were adjusted to be notably greater than the common-as-dirt Choice. Those mats are notably harder to get and less common, yet the dapper value on them utterly fails to reflect that. But that's a separate rant.