Merchant Archive

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DingoBoi wrote:

Ok, I'm sure this is not the first, but it is a newish idea in the game.

A long time weaponsmith who took a break recently returned to the game. He sold 200 shares at 1million credits each to finance the re-start of his business.

He intends to pay dividends monthly from the profits.. of course much going to him for doing the actual work. Quite a novel Idea. The shares sold out within about 12 hours of offering as a tribute to his good name. Other unknown people likely could not do this.

This opens a bit of a stock market as it is expected these shares will be traded and sold among investors and new investors.

I think it adds a whole new dimension to the merchant industry potentially. It would be great to see a real type of commodities/stock market though it seems dreadfully difficult to code in an mmo environment, especially since we are waiting on simple fixes.

Just wondering some of your thoughts on this. Here is a link to one of the threads:

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=eclipse_trade&message.id=304115

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this would be very cool if supported by game software. it would be a bookkeeping chore otherwise, but some people do not mind that sort of thing. same thing with consignment sales. if the game code supported it, many merchants would do it, but as it is, it is too big of a chore for some of us to get interested.

Wow you want to do all that work in a game? Why not play in the real stock market. Lol

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DingoBoi wrote:

It would be great to see a real type of commodities/stock market though it seems dreadfully difficult to code in an mmo environment, especially since we are waiting on simple fixes.

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A resource market run by server side code would be really good for the economy. Something in line with what UO did would be grate.
To thoughts that do not know the system, it basally allows any player to buy, say boards, in as large a amounts and one need (in stacks of 500). However, for every time 1000 boards are sold the price of boards go up by one gold coin per board. The same NPCs, that sell boards, buy them back at 1 gc/board less the what they sell for, and for each 1000 sold back the price drops by one.

Such a system atomically sets a price of resource at the level where supply and demand is the same. Off cause, it will make a huge increase in the amounts of resources when it is first interdicted, but that will only be temporary, and it will at the same time remove huge amounts of credit from the game. More over it will become a credit sink as the 1 cpu difference between buy and sell price eats of the profit positional.

Granted in UO the resource business is a lot less complex, but the basic system should be useable here as well.

True capital markets would be a great addition. It's definately benificial to returning crafters or someone that 'knows' the crafting game to use the start up capital to rapidly rebuild their harvesters/factory/resource infrastructure. I have used this informally in two ways. One, when I returned after a long absence I sold stocks to some wealthy guildmates to start. Two, I informally finiance new crafters by loaning them harvesters in return for resources at a later date. This works pretty well, because new crafters biggest limitation is lack of capital as well as lack of knowledge.

But it would be really great if it could be built in as a game mechanic. Right now, the informal method limits the resaleablity of the stock (How would I know who to tip?). And its would be a book keeping pain in the butt. Truth be told, as cool as it would be, I would rather see more energy poured into making marketing, stockkeeping/inventory, accounting (including employee payments) fleshed out before fleshing out capital markets. There are still some basic long term viablity issues with a few of the crafting profession like DE, Architect and Tailor, all of which have no real potential return customer base. I would be jazzed to see how different companies would be valued, based on how profitable and what product lines they offer, and capital markets would make that more visible.

Another big benefit to a capital market would be that crafters without guilds could be more competitive. Right now guilds are serving as the main informal markets, which puts non-guilded at a significant disadvantage. Key to making a capital market work would be the ability to...
a) See in game accounting statistics on sales and repeat business - All of which crafters would want for themselves.
b) The ability to post information in game in a persistant, like business plans, corporate strategy and activity reports. The email system is ok, but it doesn't have in game/world persistably. Right now the only option is to put comments on vendor items, and even then you have to redo it every 30 days, which is a pain.

Interesting thought all around though.

Psst marge, he was/is an armoursmith

Personally I like the idea. If nothing else it adds to the fun of the game. Obviously you're reliant on the trustworthiness of the other person, and not expecting them to drop off the game after three months, leaving you with some worthless shares.

Of course, the devs could code a stock market type deal of their own, which would overcome all these problems. Dividends could be paid automatically, shares could be traded safely, and if the player didn't log on, he could be voted into liquidation.

Of course, this would require the devs to work on the leet MS Access database that underpins the game!

*waits to be struck by lightning*

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Frogsley wrote:
Psst marge, he was/is an armoursmith

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