Curse

MSecorsky · Jul 22, 2005, 05:44 PM // 17:44

Not that it's as horrible as people say.

The merchants/traders are pawn shops. Very similar in pricing and practice. It's the best you can do with shops that do not have a regular restock, have no real competition and make fewer than average sales per week (thinking that the profit for each sale needs to increase to make the difference).

Here's a thought on how to fix...

1. Resupply. Touched on earlier, have the merchants get resupplied once or twice a week on all items.

2. Merchant goals. Have the merchants price items to sell out before the next restocking. If items sell too quickly, raise the price. Too slowly, drop the price. This will set prices to reflect a real supply/demand.

3. As for buying items, set the buy prices to fluctuate from say 25 to 75% of current sell, based on need, and these items become available for sale. Items high in stock that can't or won't move well, low price offered and visa versa. ALSO... allow the merchants to refuse to buy items that are overstocked. (No one will like that... but it makes sense.)

4. For restocking, if the merchant has greater than X% of an item in stock still when resupply comes, don't restock that item. Keep prices reasonable by controlling supply. This should also result in merchants in different towns having different prices and items available, making people shop around, balancing things out.

Well, I don't know how hard this would be to code, but I think the results would be a real stable economy. People may not get the prices they want, or be able to unload 12,000 plant fibers on a merchant, but that's the way it goes.

As for weapons... little different... allow the weaps merchant to resell weapons sold to him, at least a fraction of the gold/purps. This should bring prices of weapons back to more reasonable levels rather than having to pay 400K for a bow that does two more points of damage than yours does if a charr farts or something.

Furthering this line of thought... varying the amount of resupply can regulate the prices in the economy. Plus... say twice a week you could see these neat resupply caravans parked in town...

Thoughts?

Addendum... materials should have minimums determined by how much the merchant pays for it from the suppliers... they will never sell for less, maybe for equal if they're having a random sale on an items. Items in short supply could also be sold to merchants for a premium if the merchant is advertising a WTB for that item.