Commerce/Trade/Shops

[Sheidlok]

Hello Oortians!

I remember looking through oortonline.com before i bought the game, and one thing has always caught my eye: A player run economy, chalk full of shops, merchants, traveling tinkers, smugglers and swindlers alike. This, in my opinion, is what really makes a world live. And i started thinking about how this would apply in a voxel game like Oort.

Personally, i love to explore, and i have a grand time traveling from city to city with my wares, sharing rare materials from all over the worlds of oort and making them available to all sorts of players… While making a pretty penny in return.

So here we go!

1.Trust.

Now we would all like to believe everyone is trustworthy when we sell our goods, hoping we get the coin promised in exchange. I am looking forward to a trading system with a sort of window where you can see the goods you are buying (or selling) and the coin in exchange, with an agreement simultaneously. I would imagine this is in the works, along with the option to trade items and gold itself.

2.Organization/Shop front

Having been the merchant type before, it can get tricky writing down all of your inventory and pricing for each item to compete with everyone else. It would be nice to have an interface, perhaps one you could unlock through enough trading and selling in the options above.
When you have obtained a certain item, it would show in your “Shop” window/interface/menu or however you set it up. All of those would be great! it would be a neat feature to edit your shop from afar. From here you can manage your items, prices, what is for sale. Perhaps put your ads in there for soon to come items, discounts, however.
This is also useful if you are out of the game, and people would still like to sell to your shop. You could have goods you want to order, and let others sell them at your shop interface when offline, for your price and what you list. Or maybe a Shop Golem! (that way you really have to work to get something before you can open shop)

3.Travel

Us merchants need to move our goods one way or another to be successful. I had a few ideas here. We could carry a large pack on our back, for cosmetics as well as convenience. Everyone could tell a merchant and see what he has for sale! Or, if he is in the wrong place… What he has to plunder!

Another awesome idea that isn’t put into enough games would be a pack mule or horse to carry good! Wagon cart, however, i want to carry my goods with me. Perhaps a traveling covered wagon! (because gypsies). Regardless, i want to carry a lot of things, and i want to do it in style.

4.Trade/Delivery System

This really gets my blood moving. Now, i don’t mean trade between different PC’s, but trade between other shops, or shipments, guilds, towns, etc. Let’s say someone doesn’t want to take the time to make it to my shop, or purely convenience, how about i send a catalog? people can mail orders in. let’s say… 400 buckets of lava, since construction in mount doom has been busy and it is Crunch time, since Sauron is expected sooner than they thought.
Lucky for them, Muntie’s Rare Goods and Bad Deeds is open for business! They order through mail (i really hope you setup a mail system, but this is a post for later!) since they enjoy my speed. I send out a courier (or go myself) and their goods are delivered! Smaller goods could go through mail of course.

Segue!!

5.Work and Delivery

I saw that you would be able to place blueprints for people to build in your beacon, and earn gold doing it! Well don’t leave us merchants out. I have a package to be delivered, and i need help doing it. Imagine a protected package, it can only be opened by the user who purchased the goods. Said player picks up the package and must deliver it as instructed for the price of gold. In the case of the package being dropped, it could respawn at the shop for the next person to take over.( I can see this having a problem depending on the navigation of worlds, but, just a cool idea.)

6.Choice

We want choice. Alliances, enemies, whoever it is, i want to be able to choose who i can sell to. if those nobles with the beacons choose who builds and can live in their area, i can choose what side i sell my precious weaponry and goods to. Lets say Red and Blue guild are fighting, and Red guild screwed me out of some wares awhile ago. Well, Blue guild just made a friend! (since the enemy of my enemy blah blah).
Some might argue against this, however any bias put into it.. Well, you better treat your merchants wisely. And hey, that one guy being a total Di** to everyone and hoarding his things for himself? Well, take your business elsewhere. This keeps everyone in check and merchants don’t fall into the scum of the world. Just like here IRL, we can refuse business how we want.

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Please add your ideas! These are just what have been stewing in my head the past day or two, Id really like to see a rich economy! Perhaps some checks and balances to keep inflation from rising would be good too. I don’t like counting my gold in the thousands…

Thanks (:

• This topic was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by Sheidlok.

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