I just spent over 2 hours looking through various shops trying to find something I needed. I wanted to play the game, not waste so much time.

If we had an auction House similar to what WoW has that would have been as simple as going to the proper category and sorting. Or searching.

Basically you put only a couple main locations that you access it from. SOL for one. Then you can auction anything you have in your inventory(Hull). It'd have a standard set of posting options. 1 day, 1 week, 1 month. every auction requires a fee you pay to the Auction House. Small percentage of posted price. You post an item, or stack of items. Set the beginning bid price as well as a buyout price. That way someone can try to buy something for a less expensive price(bid) but there's the risk of someone coming along and deciding they needed it and were willing to buy it now(buyout).

The items would be removed from your inventory instantly. You could make it a requirement that you have 1 storage ship there at the Auction House base that will be able to hold the item should noone buy it. Or you could make it so there's a tab for current auctions as well as a tab for expired auctions.

Maybe even tie it to a skill. each point of the skill allows you to post 2-5 items. With everyone getting 1 point at creation. Base shops would still be used, but not so many as now. Plus people without bases would then be able to sell of all that extra loot without need to get into base building until they wanted to. Maybe even make auction house accessible to all bases. Or make a Auction House Com you can build that'd give such access.

Hell, when I got tired of playing WoW, I still kept my paying account for about 1 yr just to play the Auction House. Buying low and selling high. It was addictive as hell.

In fact maybe limit free to play accounts to using only 2 posts in the Auction House while pay to play players get more. I'd stay a pay to play for that alone.

If you made it so it had public subs/functions players could write their own programs to interact with it for market trending analysis. No write access, read only.

That's one of the reasons I get bored with this. The monotony. If after doing some DGing I could stop at SOL or my base and put up the things I'm not in need of, it'd simplify things immensely. It would also allow for standardizing pricing to a degree. People would have to lower prices to beat the competition to a sale. But some would buyout things priced to low and put them up for a profit.

then sol will end up looking like stormwind, loads of bored ubers x1000 who dont even need to visit the shopping galaxies that give SS its character

Right, but look at how many hang out there now. I also said it could be made to be accessed from bases. Not to mention other AI bases. Maybe even any of them.

How many have spent hours on hours simply on the trade channel, buying or selling, and still didn't get what they wanted?

A skimpy, or generic alternative, would be to make it so all items being sold at various bases list in a trade tab, with category selection. Have it so the galaxy and base it's being sold at are listed as well. Also the price.

I dont know if you are aware of what is planned though, which is super exciting... and thats a web searchable list of shops and prices which you could access in game or from the website. So say you wanted to know if there was a shop anywhere with a certain item you can quickly compare prices across the uni and locate it. This is the ideal solution and retains the character of the SS shopping galaxy.

Alternately I see the market moving towards all shops being in free market as is already happening due to their being no pvp.

I still think prices should be kept off the list. Being able to see who has what for sale and where is enough, you should still have to shop around to get the best deal.

thats just a fake market imperfection though, if you had an infinitely fast ship it would be the same thing as showing the prices. I'm not a fan of fake difficulty stuff..

Its not a fake imperfection because you're justifying it with impossibilities.

There's pros and cons with the auction house system:

Pros:

-All in one location to get everything you need

-Instantly obtaining the item on purchase instead of traveling

-Easier to find rare stuff

Cons:

-It removes the need for player trading bases, and part of the reason for the current shop system is that there's risk of losing your shop in wild space layer and is a desired attribute.

-It removes the potential to a large degree to find good deals, as everything would be indexed, everything would be priced and very quickly everything would be averaged out and you wouldn't be able to find that shop over in X system with that great deal you found. In the end it removes market diversity.

-It removes risk traveling to shops to obtain wares.

In any case.

Now I could see the following potentially happen.

- Auction House in which premium players get say 5 or 10 item slots in per account.

- Market index system where you can see where a item is, the name of the item, and you can double click on it to autopilot to it if you've already explored that galaxy if the owner of the base wishes to publish that specific item. I do not believe you should be able to see the price of the item however.

Just my opinion anyways.

That gives major incentive to have multiple accounts, which if Premium only puts people like Goett at a vastly better advantage. On the other hand, if anyone could do it, then people will just make f2p accounts.

Personally, it should just be a search window. Put in some words, get shops(T0 commods excluded) that list what you're looking for, if anyone has it. You won't get team, price, or warp level, so if you don't know who owns the place, theres still the chance of walking through an enemy galaxy.

I think this is the perfect solution. It solves the problem the OP posted about(searching for hours for an item), while otherwise not changing the economy at all. Although it WOULD create an interesting market change based solely on whose shop is closest...but if you could do the search from anywhere, that problem would also be prevented.

The other AWESOME thing about this is that it would inspire a market for items that are usually so obscure that you can never find them. For example, who would sell tech 5 ruin gear these days? Nobody can find it, nobody buys it, it's pointless. Throw in a search function though, and suddenly you're the only person in the universe who sells that item and noobs from across the universe come to your shop to get their items!

And then they know where you are, so if you supply other noob quality goods, like low tech missiles and buildable items, suddenly you have an enterprise based solely around low levels, funded by high levels, that would have been impossible if not for the search function!

Thank you to Everyone that's participating on this topic. I posted, mainly hoping to hash out a workable solution. That's why I said 'similar to what WoW has'.

I'm trying to inline comment below, hope I get it right. BTW thank you for your reply Precursor, and all the others as well.


We already have this in Teams. Teams help supply items/credits and assistance.


Again we have this as well from Teams. But also a solution utilizing the Auction House(AH for short) method would be that the item will be delivered to the nearest AI base, or even the posters base, from where it was posted. So you'd still have to travel to get the item.


True. But in a detailed craftable's system like SS has. You pretty much need something to remove some of the complexity. For instance, Orb Drone crafting requires various colored orb's. I have no clue where to get them, so I won't be crafting them even though I'd like to. Yes, I could ask on All chat. But you know how that goes. Usually at least 2 people making rude n00b type comments. Who wants to be humiliated because they don't know the game as well as long term players? Plus, it makes a potential income opportunity for some people.


I can understand this too. But it really just shift's thing a bit. Many thing's need to be crafted. You'd still be needing a base to build those craftable's, and those bases would still be in potential jeopardy. Plus look at the current system. 2 galaxy's away from Sol we have 2 different shop system's. It's a gluttony of a mess. 'Damn, I can't remember if I've checked this shop already or not.' I've thought this on several occasions.


I agree and don't agree with this. I agree it would average out some of the wildly differing pricing of item's. But you'd still find deal's. Like I said I kept my WoW account for a year longer and only played the market. Why? Because I could watch the market to find deals. Then I'd buy the item and repost with a slight-large markup. I found it funny that so many 'buy WOW gold' scheme's were around. I could easily rake in 50-1000 gold a day just from being knowledgeable about market trends and pricing.


True. But then joining a Team can do the same thing.



Okay. From that I'm guessing it won't happen. The only benefit it would be if the price weren't visible is that you'd know it was available, and possibly where. Auto piloting to it would not be possible if you didn't have enough skill to do so. New players will most likely not be able to use that feature then. But it would encourage them to spend those hard earned SP's on that skill earlier I guess.

But why not display prices? It would not destroy business's. It would make it more competitive. It would also likely make people choose to specialize.

I think your points are valid Precursor. But I also think they are already affected by team's. But your right that this would go a long way to averaging out pricing. But is that really a bad thing? You'd still find deals. Some people will have planets/moons with loads of metal or other resources. They'll be able to cut prices if they choose. But look at how things are going? Back in 2006 1-2 bill was a LOT of money. Now it's not so bad. It's more like what hundreds of millions were then. Before long we'll be using trillion's... As long as the market is affected by the player base's needs it'll fluctuate. More new players will mean a rise in demand for low end items and commods, and vice versa.

Good and fair points scottd.



I can't say what exactly will be happening in regards to the market or what features we'll be adding because a fair bit of it is in concept / planning stage so I'm simply giving my opinion in the general motion of things and the thread.

I'll admit though there's definitely good things about opening it up to a global index system I've just been in so many MMOs where everyone undercut each other practically every 20 minutes and it removed a great deal of personal interaction with the buyer / seller.

There is that great hurdle though for a new player to get gear outside of the common AI base listings though, unless they join a team and get outfitted, though I think part of that is to do with 'knowing' what you're looking for, not always so much of how hard it is to find although at times it is.

A new player doesn't know to go on the wiki to look up various gear they can loot / buy off other players. (if it's updated at all on such at the time ) and I can see where it'd help them a lot if they could see the listing of items in a auction, get tool-tip information on the item and various stats then go 'Hey, this looks cool and it'd work on my ship' *buys*.

I have mixed sentiments overall though. I do think it's a good topic to keep discussing here though overall.

We have decided against making an auction house like this for many of the reasons Precursor mentioned. The current plan of advancement is that sometime following our new web site, we will be adding an index where players can list what they have for sale and other players can sort through and search the list, and find out what's for sale, where, and for how much. Players will list their items via their bases in-game and paying some amount of credits for the listing.