Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Suggestion: Resource Contract container item
Perhaps this is an obvious suggestion, so apologies in advance if a similar proposal has already been made.
It occurs to me that a better means of offering resource contracts is needed in-game. Particularly for hiring Rangers and Scouts to collect creature resources, but this could apply to other resources as well.
I propose that a "Resource Contract" container item (like a backpack, but with functional attributes) be implemented as craftable item. Here's the idea:
(1) A Novice Artisan crafts the "Resource Contract" container
(2) Player #1 picks a single, specific resource type that can be placed into the container (perhaps determined either by menu selection, or by initially placing, say, 1 unit of the needed resource in the container).
(3) Player #1 sets capacity (in units) for container.
(4) Player #1 sets a timer for the container.
(5) Player #1 transfers an amount of his/her credits to the container.
(6) Someone who owns a vendor (perhaps Player #1) places the container for sale on his/her vendor (for a very low price, like 1 credit).
(7) Player #2 sees the container for sale, and purchases it.
(8) Player #2 collects enough of the resource specified in step #2 to fill the container to capacity specified in step #3. The container must be full before proceeding to step #9.
(9) Player #2 offers the filled container to the same vendor from which it was purchased. The credit amount specified in step #5 is IMMEDIATELY transferred to Player #2 and the container & contents are transferred to the stockroom of the vendor (simply an automated acceptance of a vendor offer).
(10) Should the container's timer (specified in step #4) expire before it is filled, the container becomes disabled, meaning that the contents can be removed, but the vendor will no longer auto-accept it, and the credits are transferred back to Player #1.
That's it. I'm sure there's bound to be oversights in my proposal, and it is certainly open for discussion.
The bottom line is that it seems like there should be a way for the existing vendor system to allow crafters to specify specific resource needs and for hunter-gatherers to fill them.
All the vendor owner has to do is make a junk item and name it
'Need Yavin Herb Meat, paying 50cpu'
or whatever the resource is he needs.
If you've ever read Flatfingers proposal for player made contracts, you'd see that these ideas are related.
The ability to farm out agreed apon 'contracts' for players, with guaranteed payouts and understandable requirements would be a gift to wandering, casual or newbie characters.
And the technology for this is already in place in a similar manner - if you've done the Artisan Contractor missions in the NPC Guild Halls, you'd have been given a container that only accepts a particular crafted item and when you go back to that Contractor with the container full, you're given your reward.
I still think this is an excellent idea - yes, the results can be achieved in other ways, but this would make it easier and more reliable. I'm all for easier and more reliable.
Expanded to components (Master Artisan parts, anyone?), loot, and other items, this would take the focus from dropping off items in a vendor and 'hoping' they turn up before it goes poof, and turn it into resourse gathering missions with player benefactors.
/applaud.
Nice work, Harske!
Not surprisingly, I agree with Tinkergirl -- I strongly support this idea and others like it. As I've said before, with some minor exceptions the economy of SWG (and, to be fair, most MMOGs) is stuck in the Stone Age because the concept of the "enforceable general contract" doesn't exist.
Without enforceable general contracts that allow players to establish long-term, trustablebusiness relationships, the most advanced formal system for making economic exchanges is the Secure Trade Window. That's a useful feature, but it'sonly good forone-shot, immediatedeals... andhow is that any better than Og and Urg swapping stone knives for bearskins?
Yes, of course there would be technical and socialissues to address inimplementing such a feature. So? Since when has anything worth doing been easy? Should the Combat Upgrade to fix SWG's somewhat broken combat system have been vetoed merely because it required time and effort? Why then can't we consider adding an advanced economic feature to SWG that would offer valuable new features that could benefit every player in the game?
A player contract system would:
- allowplayers to create their own content in the form of fun missions
- give new players a useful way to earn goodmoney
- expose veteran players to gamecontent they weren't even aware of
- increasethe velocity of money(which would help equalize wealth)
This is why I came up with my own proposals (which Tinkergirl mentioned)for a reasonably general Player Contract system. If you're curious, you can find the full (and I do mean full
) proposals in Player Contracts: A Design Document and Player Contracts: The Short Version. (The original essay that sparked the idea wasAdvanced Economic Systems in Online Games .)
I think ageneral player contract featurewould have such a powerfully positive impact on SWG gameplay that it's worth doing. Even if onlythespecific form of contracts that Harske proposes were implemented, we'd still be better off-- if nothing else, implementing Resource Contract Containers would be a greatproof-of-concept for the larger notion of general Player Contracts!
So sign me up, too.
And one other thing -- while there's value in informed and constructive criticism, my respect is reserved for those who take the time to develop an idea and who have the courage to offer thatidea in apublic forum.
So bravo, Harske!Please keepoffering yourideas here and elsewhere any time you like -- for every one-line dismissal,there'll always be someone who's ready to giveyour commentsa fair hearing.
Not that that guarantees everyone will like your ideas, of course.
--Flatfingers
I swear he can hear his name being typed....
So Harske - if you implemented this, what kind of limits would you put on it?
So, your Novice level or above crafter creates the container. Would you also maybe have larger containers creatable at different skill levels?
What kind of range of resourses would you go for - units of sizes 10 to 10,000? Bigger? Smaller? Would you have a drop down list of numbers, or could you have one for 4622 units of hide?
You'd select the resourse you required, would you have to have a unit of that resourse to begin with, or would you select from a list?
How would you stop people using a list to see what resourses had changed/shifted that day?
Would you have these items namable, or would they take the name of the 'mission' they contain? Would you hope for a Bazaar/Vendor category for these, so that people could search for resourse 'missions' much as they do for items on vendors now? (Something I'd like, but could see being abused).
Would you limit how many of these a player could own at once? For example....
Armoursmith1 wants 20,000 units of a certain planets wooly hide. (S)He creates 4 mission containers and puts them on their vendor. That's one container for 5,000 units each, with a decent reward.
But oh no! Armoursmith2 who is in direct competiton with AS1 sees in a search that they're looking for that hide and hastily buys those mission containers when AS2 is offline - thus taking those missions out of the equasion. No-one now knows about those missions.
It would be a low blow, and in the spirit of competition, AS2 should really create their own missions with a greater reward, but where there's an underhand way of doing it... Hopefully there would be so many mission containers out there, that no-one could really hope to keep on top of them all.
I'm just playing a little Devils Advocate
Above post was from me.
Tinkergirl wrote:
*whispers*
I swear he can hear his name being typed....
I heard that!
Would you limit how many of these a player could own at once? For example....
Armoursmith1 wants 20,000 units of a certain planets wooly hide. (S)He creates 4 mission containers and puts them on their vendor. That's one container for 5,000 units each, with a decent reward.
But oh no! Armoursmith2 who is in direct competiton with AS1 sees in a search that they're looking for that hide and hastily buys those mission containers when AS2 is offline - thus taking those missions out of the equasion. No-one now knows about those missions.
It would be a low blow, and in the spirit of competition, AS2 should really create their own missions with a greater reward, but where there's an underhand way of doing it... Hopefully there would be so many mission containers out there, that no-one could really hope to keep on top of them all.
Which is why one of the features ofmy Player Contracts überproposal is that players be able to set a penalty for breaking a contract.
Suppose thataccepting a contract requiresa player toput X number of credits into escrow as evidence of good faith.If AS2 takes the contracts you describedbut doesn'tfulfill them, then he's responsible for paying AS1 the penalty money for breaking the deal. AS1 won't get the resources she wants, which admittedly could be a pain, but if she made the penalties high enough, she won't lose money on the deal.
(Note that a high penalty won'tdeterhonest players from taking contracts, since they have no intention of defaulting on the terms.)
To ramble for a moment: One of the things that quickly became obvious when I startedtrying to design new features for SWG a few yearsagois that most ofmy time would be spentcoming up with special rules to prevent cheating/griefing. And the result is that it's nearly impossible to have a simple feature such as a pure Resource Contract system. You wind up having to add so many checks and constraints and special casesthat by the time you're done, your once-elegant design now looks like a diagram of the hydraulic systemin the Space Shuttle.
Which is how I wound up with so many pages on my general Player Contracts idea. It's not longbecause Icouldn't stop adding nice-to-havefeatures -- it's long becauseit had to have features that inspire trust.Despite tryingto keep it simple and clean,itstill wound up becominga complex design because it has to anticipate the 10,000crazy things that people will try to do in practice.
Maybe there's a lesson there. Or maybe I'm just being excessively cautious, and a simple Resource Contract system would work just fine.
More discussion, please!
--Flatfingers
KillianShade wrote:
Just my two cents:
To fix the problem of a "penalty", why not make people buy the contracts? But obviously set a ceiling of say 10% of the value of the contract to the collector.
I could be wrong, butthere's something I'm not sure of aboutthis approach: When you buy the contract, who gets the money?
If it goes to "the system" (i.e., not to any player), you can justify it in game terms by calling it a "tax" but that won't make any easier to accept for many players.
If it goes to the person who put the contract up, what's to prevent them from setting the terms of the deal forsome huge number of credits(that they can't possibly pay) in order to get the purchase price up? Both parties to a contract need to be bound by a penalty clause, or someone will scam someone.
Also note that the contract feature itself needs to provide this security -- if CSRs have to be called in every time someone get scammed, the contract feature will not be trusted and will not be used.
So -- I'm not opposed to some other way of insuring trust that doesn't involve a voluntarily accepted mutual penalty;I'm just not sure I've seen another approach that works as well yet.
Or alternatively, could it be possible for these to be placed by certain levels of merchant, on artisan and/or exploration mission terminals. That way people can't select who they perform a contract for, but eventually contracts get filled
Hmm...!
Two reactions. First, I've never been warm to the idea of restricting who can offer contracts. I certainly don't mind the idea of giving Merchants an in-game ability that means something! But I'm just not sure it's right to take such a neat idea that could be fun for anyone to use and restrict it solely to one profession.
Why shouldn't Entertainers be able to make a Resourcecontract with an Artisan to find them some good resources for a musical instrument? Why shouldn't Artisans be able tomake a Guard contract withmercenaries to protect them while they tend their harvesters? And so on.
Second, I hadn't considered it in my original Player Contracts idea, but you've made a really good suggestion: why not allow the player who offers a contract to be anonymous?
The system will know who's offering the contract (it has to), but so far I can't see any reason why the player who accepts a contract has to know the in-game identity of the player who offers that contract. In fact, it might make for some very interesting gameplay -- if you're Imperial,do you take the risk of accepting a contract from someone who might be a dangerous Rebel?
Are there problems I'm not seeing with anonymously offered contracts? What about two-way anonymity?
...to prevent people "flooding" the terminals, set a limit (like with the vendor limit) on the number of contracts that any one merchant can have at any one time.
This is one idea that everyone who's talked about player contracts seems to agree on...
...which is a nice way to close a message.
--Flatfingers
To fix the problem of a "penalty", why not make people buy the contracts? But obviously set a ceiling of say 10% of the value of the contract to the collector. Or alternatively, could it be possible for these to be placed by certain levels of merchant, on artisan and/or exploration mission terminals. That way people can't select who they perform a contract for, but eventually contracts get filled, and to prevent people "flooding" the terminals, set a limit (like with the vendor limit) on the number of contracts that any one merchant can have at any one time.
Just an idea, open to corrections for where I've missed something obvious.
Player1 the Novice Artisan makes a Resourse Contract Container (RCC).
Schematic Name: Resourse Contract Container (RCC)
Components:
Shell: 40 Units Metal
Lock: 15 Units Aluminium
Transmitter: 10 Units Copper
Description: An empty resourse container that can be programmed to only accept one kind of material. It may be used to offer temporary contracts to resource gatherers.
Player1 has no need for any resourses right now, so (s)he sells the container on to a Merchant friend, Player2.
Player2 wants the latest spawn of Herbivore Meat from Endor - wants it bad. Is so keen that they're willing to pay 20 cred/unit for it. Player2 sets the container to 'want' that resourse and sets a value of '500 units' for the required amount. Not much, but it's a smaller, easier to digest amount.
So, that's a RCC that wants 500units @20cpu = 10,000c reward. Player2 accepts the charge (with a pop up "Are you sure?" window) and locks the RCC.
It now reads -
Meat, Herbivore, Endorian, Blah. 500 units @ 20cpu. REWARD:10000c.
Player2 puts that up on their vendor or the bazaar and crosses their fingers.
...
Some time later, Player3 the Novice Ranger is looking for cash. They decide to search for RCCs on the Bazaar and clicks on the appropriate filter. They get the following kind of screen...
...
Meat, Domestic, Corellian, Yackerty. 1000 units @ 3cpu. REWARD:3000c.
Meat, Domestic, Corellian, Yackerty. 50 units @ 4cpu. REWARD:200c.
Meat, Herbivore, Endorian, Blah. 500 units @ 20cpu. REWARD:10000c.
Meat, Herbivore, Tatooinian, Smackerty. 5000 units @ 2cpu. REWARD: 10000c.
...
We'd hope that Player3 would be able to order such things by Resourse Type, Reward, CPU and Amount.
Player3 decides that they'd like to do the Endorian job - as 20cpu sounds pretty good. They don't currently have an outstanding RCC so the system lets them try to 'buy' the RCC. It's cost is '1000c' - 10% of the total reward.
Player3 gets the RCC in their inventory - a non-tradable, non droppable, top level inventory item that they may only have one of. If they destroy it, the cash automatically returns to Player2, and they recieve an email telling them that the RCC was destroyed and who by.
Player3 takes a trip to Endor, gets the meat and puts it in the container. The moment it's full, a popup appears telling the player that they have completed the RCC and should return it for the reward. They are given a waypoint to the original vendor/bazaar.
(This is where things get fuzzy).
They must either return it to the vendor/bazaar they bought the RCC from, or place it on a random, different bazaar for a reduction in reward equal to 10% of the total.
Player3 is feeling strapped for cash and returns to the bazaar that they bought the RCC from. They 'offer for sale' the item, and a popup appears saying...
"You Have Fulfilled This RCC And Are About To Submit It For Reward. Continue?"
Player3 clicks yes and the RCC dissapears from their inventory, going 'into' the bazaar ready for Player2 to collect their resourses. The reward from the RCC is automatically transfered from the RCC to Player3's bank account, and Player2 is sent an email telling them that Player3 completed their contract and their goods are ready for pickup.
If Player3 had decided to leave the RCC at the nearest bazaar, and it was not the original one, then they would lose 10% of the reward in storage tax (or whatever you want to call it) and would only recieve 9000c for their work. The other 1000 is lost to the ether.
I've added a few things here, but one that I like in particular is that you can drop off completed containers at any bazaar for a reduction in reward. Maybe this could open up delivery missions later, where players have items that have been dropped off at far flung bazaars and want them collected? It leaves it open, anyway.
(Maybe once the contract is fulfilled, the container changes it's name to "Secure Container" so that future delivery missioners have no idea what they're transporting?)