This idea is for the fun of brainstorming. Making this post does not imply that I believe the devs should implement this system, but rather that I would like to discuss it with the forum community. If you think this idea is inherently flawed or critically misguided, then please share your opinions! However, please understand that discussing bad ideas doesn't hurt anybody except those who choose to partake in the discussion and don't attempt to dissuade others from taking part.
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Without certification ANY item in a trade window will appear as "Unidentified [item type]" (e.g. "Unidentified Cloth Waistband") and cannot be placed in an auctionhouse. Uncommon, common, and junk items are able to be certified or de-cerfitied by the player with a click. Rare and above require certification from an archivist at the bank (one queue per account). Items placed in the archivist's queue would take time (maybe money too??) to certify based on the rarity of the item, but that time passes while online or offline. Once certified, an item can be viewed in a trade window with a full tooltip showing the name and stats and can be placed on an auctionhouse if they exist.
Your average player would come back with their day's haul and stick it in the archivist's queue or trade it with a friend or a middleman of their choice (for a good price if they have a rapport with the middleman). Once certified they can sell it any way they please. If they have a friend or guild member they want to trade it with, then the honor system clearly applies.
If you are a crafter or farmer who produces/acquires mass goods, then you need to build up a reputation for yourself as a vendor or build a rapport with a middleman who can sell your goods. This shouldn't be much of an issue for honest players.
If you are a bad actor with few friends, then maybe middlemen blacklist you. This means that you need to certify all your items before you trade them. Maybe you try and trick the little lambs and try to pull a fast one selling your junk items as if they were epics.
I'm not sure if this would have any effect on botters or if they would see a clear way around it.
Notes to clarify: The archivist is an NPC only and rare+ items can only be certified in the queue at your bank and wait the time required. Any item in your inventory (or on a corpse you are inspecting/looting from) can be seen for its true nature by you.
Potential benefits:
Player reputation matters and known crafters can make a name for themselves.
Slows down or decreases profits from disreputable farmers selling their goods.
Creates room for middlemen in the trading world willing to take risks on unidentified goods.
Potential downsides:
"Artificial" limitation on players that rub players the wrong way.
Hurts honest hardworking farmers who haven't built up a reputation and who want to sell items en masse.
Sale of "loot rights" bypasses this mechanic.
That is an interesting idea. Can you answer a few questions about your idea to help me better understand, specifically related to the benefits?
1) Player reputation matters and known crafters can make a name for themselves.
What happens to players that falsify what items they are trading? For example, they promise Super Sword of Cabbage Slayer and give Minor Sword of Crap. The player on the receiving end will be upset, obviously, and seems that it would violate the "Play Nice" agreement most games have in place. Do you anticipate word of mouth to be sufficient to stop these scammers?
2) Slows down or decreases profits from disreputable farmers selling their goods.
What prevents farmers from leveling an archivist to certify their own items to circumvent the system?
Creates room for middlemen in the trading world willing to take risks on unidentified goods.
What happens if the middleman buys an item reputed as one thing, but then ultimately becomes another? Would that unfairly hurt the middleman's reputation by no fault of their own?
X
By the way, this thread reminds me of the Dead Alewives D&D Skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kgx2b1sIRs
GM: Galstaff are you sure you decided to haggle with the blacksmith?
Galstaff: Yes! And I am using my Ring of Charms which adds a +10 to all convincing rolls!
GM: You don't have to remind me. *rolls dice* You seem to have... convinced the blacksmith to lower the price of his sword.
Galstaff: Rock and roll! I use the sword!
GM: What do you mean you use the sword?
Galstaff: I swing it around to see if it's magical!
GM: Wh? Huh? You can't tell if the sword is magical by swinging it! It's not a lightsaber.
Galstaff: Well, whatever! I'm supposed to find out if its magical.
GM: It's called a detect magic spell.
Galstaff: I didn't want to use that up!
GM: Say you slept for six hours after you cast it.
Galstaff: Okay, detect magic!
GM: ... its not magical.
Galstaff: DUDE!! He said it was a magical sword!
GM: He was lying.
Galstaff: He said he never tells a lie!
GM: He was lying when he said that!
Galstaff: DUDE!!
XX
I would be glad to answer your questions! Thanks for asking them.
Player reputation matters and known crafters can make a name for themselves.
What happens to players that falsify what items they are trading? For example, they promise Super Sword of Cabbage Slayer and give Minor Sword of Crap. The player on the receiving end will be upset, obviously, and seems that it would violate the "Play Nice" agreement most games have in place. Do you anticipate word of mouth to be sufficient to stop these scammers.
In this case the player on the receiving end would be upset and should be upset. In my mind it's akin to ninja looting items. The victim in this case would learn that the seller is disreputable and try to spread the word about them and they should learn that the value of a good depends on their trust in the seller (would you buy a rolex from a man on the street at full price?). It will be a hard learned lesson for many people if implemented.
Slows down or decreases profits from disreputable farmers selling their goods.
What prevents farmers from leveling an archivist to certify their own items to circumvent the system?
Ahh, I should have specified that the archivist is an NPC. No player can certify rare+ items. The only way to certify those is to put them in your account's queue (found as its own tab of the bank window) and wait the required time.
Creates room for middlemen in the trading world willing to take risks on unidentified goods.
What happens if the middleman buys an item reputed as one thing, but then ultimately becomes another? Would that unfairly hurt the middleman's reputation by no fault of their own?
As soon any item is in your inventory, then you can see it for what it actually is. Any middleman would be able to see the item for its true nature and the risk of a purchase only applies to the current trade. I think this is an important detail that I left out. If the item is on a corpse that you are inspecting/looting from or in your inventory, then you can see it for what it is.
I think you have some good ideas. The biggest hurdles I see is:
1) (You aluded to this one) The system may be too cumbersome to apply to every rare item, especially at the lower levels where new players are trying to learn the basic mechanics of the game. Two ways that this could be avoided: make rare items really rare and make it apply after a certain level, like Level 20 (where a new player has already learned the ropes).
2) (You did not include this, and I think this is a big one) Honest players will get hurt by being scammed. I did not see any recourse for a scammed player other than word of mouth. A player could lose all of their money by a scammer with no recourse to get their money back. That player will not only complain to other players, but also to GMs. The will go onto forums and other public outlets complaining. If nothing happens to the scammer and the money is not returned, they will blame the game, potentially publicly. This could make them stop playing, and try to encourage others to do so or not start playing, as well. This loss would be more welcome if there was a way that the player could get retribution on the scammer and potentially get their money back.
1) Yeah, I guess I don't see this as being the kind of mechanic that would often catch a new player off guard. If you're trading with someone for the first time and they've promised you the jewel of the sea, but what you see in the trade window is "Unidentified Gem Stone", then you should ask some questions to figure out what's going on. Item trading is so commonplace that people are going to learn this mechanic really early on. I think that having in the back of your mind the idea that someone might try and swindle you just makes you more appreciative of those who you believe won't.
2) This gets to a big picture decision the devs need to make and have probably already made. If you remove mechanics where one player can take advantage of another player, then player reputations are less likely to build and be relied upon. However, including those mechanics means that people are going to get hurt.
This sounds very similar to an aspect of an idea I shared recently. Here is an excerpt:
"Crafted-by-Stamps" --
When a player crafts a piece of gear, they have the option to imbue it with their own "Crafted-by-Stamp." These could be purchased in multiple quantities and are consumed upon use. They could also serve as an official timestamp that could distinguish discoveries and potentially add value to the idea of players collecting "original" pieces. Whether imbued on an original or not, these stamps can help with bolstering player reputation by allowing players to put their name on their work.
As a crafter, I can't really think of a situation where I would not want to put a maker's Mark on an item. I will go read your full thread when I vet home 1ad7, but right now I am like....why?
To the op... I am wondering if you could summarize the primary intent of the idea. Maybe I missed it on my phone, but it sounds like you are thinking about a reputation system of sorts for people selling on the market. However, I don't see a mechanism where someone would a quote a negative reputation and this be unable to certify items for trade?
I like the idea in principle, but I'm not sure it would be very practical. Identifying items in UO was more of a pain than anything. It might also be annoying for groups when it comes to deciding who gets what (unless you just always do round-robin or /random).
One significant problem I see with this is most items will be known for dropping from particular mobs or in particular areas, and after a little time there you would have a pretty good idea of what the item is without needing to identify it. That is, unless they introduce a more randomized loot system than EQ (thinking something like "global" drops for certain levels).
And on that last note: I'm fine with whatever loot system they decide to go with, but my preference would be an EQ-style loot system with additional "global" drops that don't belong to any particular area or mob but instead belong to specific level ranges. However, this seems to be an iffy topic with a wide variety of opinions as to what the system should be.
They could make it so that all "global" drops must be identified, and leave the mob-specific and area-specific drops (and Lore , No Drop) alone. :P
Just my 2copper
I dont understand what problem this idea is supposed to solve, if any. We've already seen examples of item windows showing the name and pertinent stats of items, so why then should it appear in a trade as some unidentified item? The tradee just needs to mouse-over the item to see all of its information. You don't need to tack on a needless extra step or two just to trade an item. If you are worried about sneak-trades where you put one item into a trade window then sneak-switch it for another item after the tradee puts in their money, this mechanic won't fix that. If you want player crafters to get 'credit' for making an item, that can be done through an automatic inclusion in the item info window of 'fabricated by XX with love', or whatever you want. Why people keep asking for more complex steps for simple actions is bewildering.
Ok, here's a proper reply to the OP. First, with regards to the design intent of the proposed system:
1) To bring some risk into trading. I kind of see this like I see the leashing of mobs. Taking the leashes off makes the world more dangerous and encourages you to find and settle into a community.
2) Reduces item flow into an auctionhouse for farmers with a poor rep. If they can’t trade with unidentified items because of their bad rep, then they can only sell items at the rate that they can certify them.
3) Creates a niche outside the AH for interpersonal trading and for middlemen.
I appreciate this intent but I think these things might be achievable in different ways that aren't quite so intrusive to the actual process of buying/selling items.
For #1, if I understand where you're going correctly, I would suggest instead that basing trade around local/regional markets rather than global markets, and without global visibilit, encourages the same result. By that I mean - if you have global visibility (even with local or regional markets), everyone can see at a glance what supply/demand looks like for an item. That farmer can make an instant value judgement to decide whether it's worth it to keep farming and trying to sell the item, or to move on to something different. However, without global visibility, it's not a sure thing. The market might be saturated in one city but the items might be in a lot of demand elsewhere. Likewise, demand might fluctuate wildly depending on what subset of consumers are active in that particular market at any particular time. Thus, the would-be seller will be taking on more risk in acquiring inventory. They might find a niche to fill, or they might not. Or, they might find what looks like a good market only to find that there's little to no demand there.
For #2, I think a better way to accomplish this goal is through a straight reputation system that is visible both in market interfaces as well as elsewhere in the game, like an LFG interface. Partly because I think just restricting them from the market doesn't really have enough teeth - they'll find ways to get around that problem using alts. However, reputation systems are a slippery slope because they generally *can* be gamed and manipulated - or used for economic warfare. I spent 11 years playing EVE Online, most of that running an industrial corporation. One of the common tactics that people would use in that system when faced with competition in their favorite station would be to go put a bounty on whoever was selling against them. The idea was, if you make the bounty high enough, you get that person ganked while they're transporting goods to market, and you're harming their ability to compete. To get around that, we used networks of corp-less alts to sell our goods, and delivered the goods to the alts via in-station trades rather than using trackable contracts. In about 8 years of operating that way, we had roughly 50 billion ISK worth of bounties placed on our seller alts (who never left their stations, so the bounties were pointless), and no one ever tracked the goods back to our corporation (although we got wardecced for different reasons on occasion). That's not to say that a determined person couldn't have sat and watched over the course of weeks or months and figured out what we were doing, but most anyone who would have cared wasn't patient enough to do that :)
All of that is to say that while reputation systems start off with good intent, players WILL use them as a weapon against each other, for good reasons as well as bad ones - and that there will likely always be a way for a determined person to get around the negative effects of a bad reputation, at least when it comes to market activity.
For #3, I think a better way to do this, again, is local/regional markets. What this will encourage is players taking on a "trader" role, where they find a good that's in high supply somewhere, buy it up, and then take it somewhere else to resell at a profit. When I was first starting off as a crafter I hated resellers, but playing in EVE (which had literally thousands of local markets) cured me of that. Now, I don't mind it, as long as it's for the purpose of moving goods from one market to another. I still get annoyed when someone buys all my stuff and then relists it in the same market at a higher price, but I've also learned over the years how to prevent that from happening as often without having to price my goods at exorbitant prices :)
Ok, so all that said, let's talk about the system you proposed itself - because while I think there are better ways to accomplish the goals you set out to achieve (with the exception of the reputation one, where the cure might be worse than the disease), I think that an appraisal/identification/certification mechanic DOES have value and adds something to the game.
So, here is a what if:
Assume for this exercise that items have a power to rarity scale of common/uncommon/rare/very rare/heroic/legendary/mythical/artifact (as rarity increases, power increases). Let's further assume that artifact-level rarity is untradable and limited to X per realm, so it's not something that would land on the market.
Assume also that players have a set of "Lore" skills that they advance through aspects of gameplay. There are three types of lore skills - Lore about places and history, lore about races and monster types, and lore about factions and notable people. These lore skills play directly into different aspects of the game. They might boost perception checks, provide additional information about opponents, grant minor bonuses in combat or to NPC vendor prices, and so on.
Common goods are "normal stuff" you might buy from NPC vendors, or get dropped by monsters. Useful in a pinch, but the discerning adventurer often wants better. These goods can be picked up, used, vendored, or traded on the market as is.
Uncommon goods are "high quality" items. Normal crafting recipes might produce these, they might also enter the game as drops or quest rewards. For an adventurer who is paying attention to their gear, this is generally the minimum bar. These goods can be picked up, used, vendored, or traded on the market as is.
Rare goods are as step above high quality. They're the sort of thing that crafters make with special ingredients, or that named miniboss type monsters might drop, or that a really tough quest might reward. A well-traveled adventurer might have a number of these items at any given time. These goods can be picked up, used,or vendored as is, but selling them on the market requires an appraisal/identification by whatever NPC banking institution is handling the transaction. This acts as a sort of "tax" on the sale of the item. The seller of course can pass the cost of that on to the buyer, but the net result is that if you want to sell those things, it's pulling money OUT of the economy - which as we all know is something that a healthy game needs to do from time to time.
Very rare goods are the types of things serious bosses drop, or that crafters make with special recipes and special components. These goods often have a lore-related history to them (this sword once belonged to Balagon the Conqueror, who subjugated the 7 barbarian tribes in the famous battle of Snake Pass). They can be picked up and used, but in order to realize their full potential, the adventurer will need to either make a successful lore skill check to identify the item, OR get another player to do that for them and hand it back, OR take it to an NPC appraiser for the same purpose. Until the item is identified and its history known, some bonuses are locked and unusable. Likewise, just like rare items, in order to sell them on the market, you'd need to pay the NPC appraisal fee - and a higher fee than you might pay for the less rare items. This also means that the buyer would NOT need to get the item appraised or do the lore check to use the item to its full potential.
Heroic, legendary, and mythical goods would follow this pattern - harder to obtain/create, higher lore skill requirements to identify, higher fees to appraise, and so on.
So, this approach leverages a similar mechanic to what you used to accomplish the following:
1) Act as an incentive for players to do things that might advance their lore skills (or make friends with people who have high lore skills)
2) Introduce a scaling tax on high-value items to help act as a money sink on the economy and prevent oversupply situations on those items (sellers will want to keep demand high enough that they can make the appraisal fee back in addition to a profit)
Make sense? Basically I'm just saying I think there's merit in the mechanic you proposed, but for different reasons than where you were headed originally. That said, no system is ever going to be perfect, and I'm sure there's some people who would object to systems like this that try to influence economic behavior.
It was an interestng thought exercise, thank you for starting the thread :)
