Ainadak said:@Iksar - There's literally no difference in who pays the tax. In the "seller pays the tax" case you bring up as an example the seller lists for 10 gold: seller gets 6 gold and buyer pays 10. In the "buyer pays the tax" the seller lists for 6 gold: seller gets 6 gold and buyer pays 10. No matter how you slice it taxes are money that the buyer loses and that the seller doesn't get, so splitting the tax between the seller and buyer doesn't actually have a unique impact.
If there is no downside for the seller, then there is almost no reason NOT to use the AH when you get every penny you ask for. This whole idea of taxing the AH is to encourage sellers to hawk their own wares to make full profit for their sales.
letsdance said:@ainadak it seems you don't understand how percentage calculations work. if you remove a percentage of the total available money, the prices for player trades will simply be lower by the same percentage. no matter how high the sums of available money in the economy are. you could multiply everything (cash drops, vendor value of items) by 1,000 to have huge sums instead of low ones, but that would change nothing, except you had to to add a "k" to every price you type.
Krixus said:How do you reduce values set by the player base? Supply and demand will set the value. Nobody got rich selling small bronze to vendors for 1pp.the money that is available in the economy is the sum of cash drops and vendor value of cash items. values set by the player base are a direct consequence of the total availble money. if you get twice as much cash from a dungeon crawl you're going to pay twice as much for your desired item.
You said "reduce loot values". I took that to mean items, not coin.
@ainadak it seems that we actually mean pretty much the same. i said above that a trade tax serves to take out money that is already there, which is what you define as market capital. and when you said "huge sums of capital" i now assume you mean in relation to the money earned (per whatever time unit). first i thought you just wanted to increase the numbers. btw i was wrong when i said a money sink makes only sense when introduced later: obviously a trade tax works the same no matter when it is introduced. it's just that until the money is circulating for a while, there's no difference to reducing the cash loot.
Inflation stops when Trade*tax = Input.
it's hard to argue against that. but so far i've talked about total available money, and i think that's not quite the same. for one because i don't know how we're going to define inflation in a MMO and also because there's usually lots of unspent money.
The purpose of an auction house isn't to BE a money sink. It simply happens to be an easy one to implement.
In the real economy, wealth is a function of production (or used to be in the time of gold-backed currencies, but let's not go into that). Now, unlike an MMO, in the real world you have finite resources to exploit, finite labour, finite time, finite infrastructure. So wealth can only grow so fast before it hits a bottleneck. In a game, wealth pops into existence every time someone loots gold, and there isn't a hard cap on the amount of lootable gold. I mean, the developers could set one. But I doubt it would go over very well when you go on an adventure and bring back 1 gold piece because too many other people went out adventuring too and got all the available gold from the gold pool. This is why MMOs usually have money sinks - to remove some gold from the economy and prevent excessive inflation, since when everyone has a ton of gold, everything costs a proportional part of said ton of gold.
Taxing sales is a quick and easy money sink, but it doesn't have to be the only one. I disagree that taxing sales causes much inflation because it still removes gold from the economy, and that prevents prices from skyrocketing due to excessive availability of said gold. A 40% price increase by the seller to offset the tax is hardly any inflation at all compared to what can happen with no money sink, because that 40% is still permanently removed from the game and doesn't keep piling up.
How big a money sink you need will depend on many factors, from drop rates to the extent to which everyone is forced to trade with someone else. If no single player can be self-sufficient, they will less likely amass huge quantities of gold. On the contrary, if you can play the whole time rarely buying anything, only selling what you get, then you'll be swimming in gold and won't mind spending significant amounts for trivial items (thus, inflation).
Archaen said:The original point about taxes for an AH was to deter its use in favor of p2p trading. Taxes will not do that without something more than chat to facilitate p2p trading. Plenty of games have significant tax systems for their AH and it doesn't deter AH trading at all.
But how many of those games also aren't heavily weighted down by bind on pickup and bind on equip items?
Archaen said:The original point about taxes for an AH was to deter its use in favor of p2p trading. Taxes will not do that without something more than chat to facilitate p2p trading. Plenty of games have significant tax systems for their AH and it doesn't deter AH trading at all.
It's interesting that you use the word trading. An AH isn't really trading, it's buying and selling. Semantics, perhaps, but another reason against the AH is that it creats a CASH game, intead of a legit trading ecosystem.
Laura said:
I thought the announcement made by Brad in the previous stream would make people talk on the official forums, maybe I've missed it? I honestly was disappointed with this design approach. The Auction House in the modern MMORPG design philosophy was a major factor in cutting the player-to-player interaction. It destroyed the reason why people connected in older MMOs like EverQuest. With the Auction House you honestly have no reason to care about the community... you will simply go to an in-game software and search for the best price out there in a single click eliminating possible haggling, bargaining, talking to people, and hence creating a social experience. That lost social opportunity doesn't comply with the theme of Pantheon being a more social MMO.
What do you guys think?
I don't think it'll be quite as bad as you think. They had a similar system in Vanguard where the auction house was availble in each of the three major cities and then it was only auctions posted for that specific continent. There was still quite a bit of trading that went on outside of the auction house. I can attest to this on the sheer number of people that came to me for boat parts. Rest assured that hubs will form that people will head to to peddle their wares.
Krixus said:It's interesting that you use the word trading. An AH isn't really trading, it's buying and selling. Semantics, perhaps, but another reason against the AH is that it creats a CASH game, intead of a legit trading ecosystem.
Yes, it's semantics. It's also wrong. You can play the market without an AH just as you can with it. Classifying player to player trade as inherently good and AH trading as inherently bad is a fallacy. An AH facilitates playing the market, but that can be mitigated with additional measures. On the other hand, an AH adds convenience and discoverability, stimulating trade between players.
Malsirian said:High tax on AH items won't deter people from using the AH it'll just drive prices up when trading directly to one another outside the AH imho.
Even if direct player to player trades follow AH prices with sellers pocketing the part of the price that goes into tax in AH trades, as I've said before an AH is actually a powerful money sink which is essential to keep inflation in check. A 40% AH tax that drives prices up by that amount is still better than the inflated prices when not enough gold is removed from the game. And it's not clear to me that it WOULD drive up prices outside the AH, since if there's enough competition AH sellers will eat the tax in exchange for convenience.
Iksar said:Don't feel like using a side feature of the game (using killing/PvE as the "main" feature here), then you pay extra to circumvent it. Don't like/want to deal with spending time leveling crafting? Pay a crafter to make your stuff. Don't like to play the merchant/economic game and don't want to spend the time? Pay to have an AH sell your **** for you. Don't want to spend the time to travel across the world? Pay a Wizard or Druid to port you.
I read this and had to point something out. All of these things include other players, EXCEPT for trade in a classic auction house.
Regular AH we have all seen tends to take out all sorts of socialization by making things way too easy(eliminating middle men and need to send messages), just like an automated grouping system would.
Even people who don't like tunnel trading could choose to let someone else sell their stuff for them with some sort of system that lets other people do so. An item loaning system of some sort maybe.
But again...
Kilsin assures us the new auction house Idea VR has will eliminate our need to complain about AHs, which I can't help but assume includes the most popular complaint about how it is antisocial. Forgive me if I am incorrect there.
>Even people who don't like tunnel trading could choose to let someone else sell their stuff for them with some sort of system that lets other people do so. An item loaning system of some sort maybe.<
So if I harvest 20 pieces of copper that I want to sell to a new metalworker for almost nothing I need to either go from craft hall to craft hall looking for one, spam chat or get a friend to do that for me. Um ...no thanks.
dorotea said:>Even people who don't like tunnel trading could choose to let someone else sell their stuff for them with some sort of system that lets other people do so. An item loaning system of some sort maybe.<
So if I harvest 20 pieces of copper that I want to sell to a new metalworker for almost nothing I need to either go from craft hall to craft hall looking for one, spam chat or get a friend to do that for me. Um ...no thanks.
So, the answer to not having to haggle to buy/sell is to have to haggle with someone else to go haggle for me?
dorotea said:>Even people who don't like tunnel trading could choose to let someone else sell their stuff for them with some sort of system that lets other people do so. An item loaning system of some sort maybe.<
So if I harvest 20 pieces of copper that I want to sell to a new metalworker for almost nothing I need to either go from craft hall to craft hall looking for one, spam chat or get a friend to do that for me. Um ...no thanks.
No, you sell it to a merchant, the new metalworker would in turn buy it from him.
This was, and with Pantheon will again, be an option. It was quite common in early EQ. I'm pro in person trading and understand the damage AH's have done to trading in mmo's. But I would not go to the ECTUNNEL in early EQ... that place was toral chaos, proof positive that some loved it, just not me. I even hated running through it just to get to southern Ro.
My stuff was sold to the merchant... you want it Dumpster Dive. If it was a special item, I welt to ECT and took the first offer over what a merchant would give me.
That place was nuts, I hated it, some loved it, it's not right to take it from them.
I hated going across zones to get to EC tunnel, sometimes having to take the boat, but there was always a purpose to it, I had something to sell, there was something I had to buy. One could always auction chat in any zone to try and sell something if you didn't want to make the trek.
The tunnel added to the game, it was indeed a time sink, but it gave oneself a goal, albeit minor. 'I need some skeleton bones so off to E.C.', or send a message on the auction channel. And it pretty much forced everyone, even die hard solo players, to interact with others, adding immensely to the socializing in the game.
E.C. tunnel was alive, vibrant, constantly changing, people dueling, fighting mobs outside, telling jokes, like a Grand Central Station of players. Especially compared to the horrid auction setup later on in EQ2, with zombie players standing motionless, or all the other games where you just run up to one npc, clicked on it, and if your item was there great, if not you came back later. And no need to speak to anyone, just a big group of silent clickers. Bah humbug.
Pantheon can take the easy way out, ruffling feathers along the way. Omg it might slow down the power levelers, horrors!
Auction houses/npc's/etc. are like quest beacons, teleports and double experience days, once you go there to make things easier, the game becomes a three monther.
No challenge = just passing time to max level.
Max level = 'Need more content asap!'
Bleh.
So much loaded terminology. :(
These discussions would be a lot better if they didn't go down a slippery slope to powerleveling and other unrelated issues when talking about something.
If you're standing around equipping a new piece of armor, you're "silently clicking" as opposed to asking another player to help you put it on. There isn't a need to require people to talk to eachother to perform every single action in the game.
EQ2 had a quite fine "auction house" in my opinion. It served its purpose well and on numerous occasions, I ended up sending people tells after seeing their names on the broker anyway to try to get a discount. Oftentimes it worked.
yes auction houses do work. i think no one is denying that. it's just that the EC tunnel had a special flair, that AHs do not have. and i think it's those things that made EQ special. AHs just get the job done and i think, if you do not enjoy trading, there's no need to do it at all. just like crafting. we don't need an automated crafting skill advancement machine, do we?
unkpant said:I hated going across zones to get to EC tunnel, sometimes having to take the boat, but there was always a purpose to it, I had something to sell, there was something I had to buy. One could always auction chat in any zone to try and sell something if you didn't want to make the trek.
The tunnel added to the game, it was indeed a time sink, but it gave oneself a goal, albeit minor. 'I need some skeleton bones so off to E.C.', or send a message on the auction channel. And it pretty much forced everyone, even die hard solo players, to interact with others, adding immensely to the socializing in the game.
E.C. tunnel was alive, vibrant, constantly changing, people dueling, fighting mobs outside, telling jokes, like a Grand Central Station of players. Especially compared to the horrid auction setup later on in EQ2, with zombie players standing motionless, or all the other games where you just run up to one npc, clicked on it, and if your item was there great, if not you came back later. And no need to speak to anyone, just a big group of silent clickers. Bah humbug.
Pantheon can take the easy way out, ruffling feathers along the way. Omg it might slow down the power levelers, horrors!
Auction houses/npc's/etc. are like quest beacons, teleports and double experience days, once you go there to make things easier, the game becomes a three monther.
No challenge = just passing time to max level.
Max level = 'Need more content asap!'
Bleh.
There sin't a challenge in selling gear the EC tunnel way either just more time comsuming, and you having to be there to sell it, in reality the AH just acts like the middle man, and only cuts out the time it would take to the person selling the item and trading with him, the haggling still happens even with it being on the AH so it doesn't change that, plus they are regional so there no way to fully know whats in all the AH's unless you are boxing maybe 10-20 characters im guessing just to watch the AH, have fun at that i guess i wouldn't do it thats for sure. Everyone is complaining aboutt he AH like its a plague and it really isn't granted did it cut some socialism out of some games yes it did, but basically only the parts that took a lot of time for someone to get there i remember being in EC tunnel and someone wanted an item i was selling and due to death/CR/and being bound in Erudin it took him 2 hours to get to me, and that was only after i found a friend porter of mine to get him to me so he wouldn't be struggling anymore and than ym friend ported him to where he wanted just to be nice afterwards. So i can see this being a thing that VR was looking at in the long run. If in a zone you can be level 1 and see a group of lvl 30 in the same zone killing things for exp, than that tells me no where is safe in any zone, so therefore traveling will be difficult, So if i had to travel to a guy to get an item and had to squeeze by a ton of lvl higher mobs due to where he is selling, than imo i would prolly give up on getting to him knowing that i would have a higher chance of losing all of my gear than probably getting to him. or at least need a rez or 2 before getting to him.
In all of my time with games that have an AH, never has anyone ever messaged me to haggle a price or work out a deal. Also, AH nearly kills trading in the sense of me or someone else offering a different item +/- some money for a different item.
EC tunnel wasn't just more actively time consuming, it was different from an AH. You could very well unload your items faster in EC than an AH but you have to be there to do it. With an AH you have the potential to make far more money though, because while your items are listed you are likely off killing things and amassing even more money in the meantime that you otherwise wouldn't. So everything/everywhere else becomes slightly more expensive, more camped, more crowded.
Riahuf22 said:i remember being in EC tunnel and someone wanted an item i was selling and due to death/CR/and being bound in Erudin it took him 2 hours to get to meyes that's one of those memorable experiences that you'll never get in an AH. granted, this one you could probably do without. but there's also positive ones, and you wouldn't value those half as much if things didn't go bad sometimes.
I'm pretty sure all of us can recall some memorable experiences relating to the EC tunnel. However, out of the thousand times you visit the tunnel, maybe 10 of those times were memorable, and they were likely seldom memorable specifically for the tunnel itself.
It worked in a game like EQ because it was novel. I just don't see that novelty managing to be recreated in Pantheon. My first month on P99, it was pretty cool. After that, I got super bored of having to find a port every time I wanted to sell something.
Same deal on Phinigel. EC tunnel, initially cool, very quickly became an annoying, laggy experience.
I believe that making players be there to trade in person is an idea which, whilst good in theory, breaks down in practice.
In the real world players are online at differing times of day, which places a huge obstacle against trades - especially disadvantaging players who play at off peak or for limited hours. I've played games where players can set out a stall and have to be logged in manning it for trades to happen - practical upshot was people just left their PCs connected 24/7 AFK.... Other solutions for overcoming the issues in such a system are for trades to be agreed out of game, on forums or similar - I think we're better if it can be done in game and not have to overcome issues with eg two players who play mutually exclusive times wanting to trade.
My main issue with the usual global AH model is automagically moving items from anywhere to anywhere else - I like the idea of a number of localised AH's to prevent this, so items' locations also matter. This approach can also get too fragmented if there are too many of them, eg everyone having their own 'vendors' on their own plots of land - this just gets too much of a pain trying to find things to buy / selling things in a reasonable timescale.
The approach of a number of regional AH's is to me a nice middle ground, solving the largest issues with both ends of the spectrum.
daemonios said:Krixus said:It's interesting that you use the word trading. An AH isn't really trading, it's buying and selling. Semantics, perhaps, but another reason against the AH is that it creats a CASH game, intead of a legit trading ecosystem.
Yes, it's semantics. It's also wrong. You can play the market without an AH just as you can with it. Classifying player to player trade as inherently good and AH trading as inherently bad is a fallacy. An AH facilitates playing the market, but that can be mitigated with additional measures. On the other hand, an AH adds convenience and discoverability, stimulating trade between players.
Malsirian said:High tax on AH items won't deter people from using the AH it'll just drive prices up when trading directly to one another outside the AH imho.
Even if direct player to player trades follow AH prices with sellers pocketing the part of the price that goes into tax in AH trades, as I've said before an AH is actually a powerful money sink which is essential to keep inflation in check. A 40% AH tax that drives prices up by that amount is still better than the inflated prices when not enough gold is removed from the game. And it's not clear to me that it WOULD drive up prices outside the AH, since if there's enough competition AH sellers will eat the tax in exchange for convenience.
You didn't even address what I said and instead started employing your own logical fallacies. If you don't think that an AH creates a market based significantly more around CASH trading, and if you can't see the impacts that can have on the game, then I can't explain it to you.