R.I.G. Trade Forum

I just wanted to put it out there, as it has been talked about. I will ask you to let me off for posting this in here - I just think it goes hand in hand with the forum layout thread in here.

This may evolve to become an "update post" to keep everything on a common denominator.


To kick it off, I will quote Ty:

Ty-Odi wrote:

Well, I have an idea for the 'Trade Forum'

And I will be posting more on that later

Basic premise is it would work very much like the trade forums on SWG for anyone who played it and remembers them? I will and I hope others do too, use it to sell items I have come across but do not need to you guys for a far lower price total than say they may fetch on the open market, as i would prefer to help you guys out, than credit cap myself in yet another game, lol.

I just think a nice internal RiG community auction house or something would work really nicely, and allow us to barter for items fairly, and just to help each other out if people need things? could also be used for things like resource contracts, item contracts, and so on

I will resume what I get from this (and add my own to it):

- AH like function: People putting in goods that can be bid on for a certain time (1 day, 2 days, whatever). Price might be generally lower than market price (depends on the bids in the end). Respectful bidding etc of course is implied.

- I would add to this the "request" function. Self-explanatory, this function would be used by people looking for a specific good who would then get an offer (bidding could be involved here too - needs to be discussed - personally I don't see it being needed just as much here).

- Things here firstly called "goods" can be multiple forms of trading: A simple one time transaction of an item, temporary contracts to install a regular transaction of an item. More things might be added.


It needs to be pointed out that the Trade Forum will be based, just like everything else we do, on mutual respect and friendliness. Expect the prices to generally be fair and never over the ingame AH prices.


Also, let me mention the use of forum tags, which might be appropriate here (such as [Selling] in front of your topic name:
"[Selling] Lazer Gunz Pew Pew").

This will require lots of moderation and guidelines.

*will post more thoughts later*

Admittedly I've no XP in SWG, but wouldn't the very act of auctioning drive the price up to near market value?

Aldemarran wrote:

Admittedly I've no XP in SWG, but wouldn't the very act of auctioning drive the price up to near market value?

It can do yes.

But not always. The issue is, and I am guilty of this, where in the past, you put an item up for sale on a public auction. You don't know the people or care, you just want the highest buck you can get.

The purpose or idea behind having one here, is that it is not in the public domain, we should hopefully avoid those resellers. I will have strict rules on resellers. Very strict in fact. If an item I sell on here for a fair price to help someone who needs something is then found on the main auction forum by the same person selling for more than what I sold it to them for, it will be the last time I sell them anything.

The basic idea though, is say I loot a Sith holocron of utter pawnage. I already have it for my Inquisitor, but this is a rare as hell drop, and worth a stupid amount of credits in game. Now many of you guys may not have those stupid amounts of credits so if say this item in game was selling for 1 million credits on all auction houses and so on, I would come on here, and put it down for a starting bid of half of that. There would also be a pre-requisite to the bid. It would have to be someone who was able to use it, and did not already have it. (again to stop resellers) Many players who qould fit into that would probably have managed to get it, but there will be those who have tried and tried to get it, but never had it drop, so they come and bid on it, it starts at half the going rate.

It would depend I suppose on the person selling said item, but I would personally do a 'Buy it now' option which was say at 75% of the going rate of an item. So yes, the bids may increase from the original 50% price but it would never go above 75% of the price.

I know some will take advantage and fair enough, I guess it will depend on how important money in a game is to you, as someone who in SWG hit credit cap on numerous occasions despite giving away tons of it to mates, and guildies all the time, it is not something that actually bothers me all that much. I have played MMO's long enough now, to know how to make money in them, and I am sure I will find my little niche in this one too, so items like this, I would rather sell to people at a decent and fair price rather than the all i can get option.

But, and I think this is important, either way, however people come onto our trade forums, however they use them, the people they are buying and selling too, will be friends. People your bidding against will be friends. I truly do think that itf it is done, you will see much fairer prices for things than you would on an auction house or official trade forum?

azarhal wrote:

This will require lots of moderation and guidelines.

*will post more thoughts later*

Why would it need heavy moderation? Guidelines yes (as to how to post your bid/how to put an item on).

Several years ago I was part of a community that had a very similar trade forum layout for Guild Wars. The moderation needed in that forum was near 0. Considering that wasn't even a community as dedicated (to each other) as we are, I believe moderation in this forum will be almost nonexistent.

Grome wrote:

Why would it need heavy moderation? Guidelines yes (as to how to post your bid/how to put an item on).

Several years ago I was part of a community that had a very similar trade forum layout for Guild Wars. The moderation needed in that forum was near 0. Considering that wasn't even a community as dedicated (to each other) as we are, I believe moderation in this forum will be almost nonexistent.

Ok moderation was probably not the right word.

I'm talking about posters needed to keep track of their threads and what happen in them.

azarhal wrote:

Ok moderation was probably not the right word.

I'm talking about posters needed to keep track of their threads and what happen in them.

By posters do you mean the respective OP?

Given the right guidelines there should be no problems and (even without) I don't see too many problems occurring either... Can you give an example of a problem you think would be existent?

Grome wrote:

Given the right guidelines there should be no problems and (even without) I don't see too many problems occurring either... Can you give an example of a problem you think would be existent?

People forgetting about their threads...

azarhal wrote:

Grome wrote:

Given the right guidelines there should be no problems and (even without) I don't see too many problems occurring either... Can you give an example of a problem you think would be existent?

People forgetting about their threads...

You mean like: "Hey, I want to sell one blue crystal - Deadline for bids is 2 days from now" and then he just forgets about it?

Sounds kind of unlikely to be honest.

Grome wrote:

You mean like: "Hey, I want to sell one blue crystal - Deadline for bids is 2 days from now" and then he just forgets about it?

Sounds kind of unlikely to be honest.

It's the sort of things I would do.

Well remember about it 1 week later.

azarhal wrote:

It's the sort of things I would do.

Well remember about it 1 week later.

Well, okay, I could see how it would happen that one forgets that his auction is closed on Wednesday and he realizes on Friday. But that is not really a big deal unless the item was needed right away.

But this "remember you had an auction running" is more of a matter of personal organization and not so much up to the forum.

azarhal wrote:

Grome wrote:

You mean like: "Hey, I want to sell one blue crystal - Deadline for bids is 2 days from now" and then he just forgets about it?

Sounds kind of unlikely to be honest.

It's the sort of things I would do.

Well remember about it 1 week later.

The winning bidder would let you know about it before then

hehe.

Trust me, it will work just, even if you don't get back to it, till the day after, the bid will have ended, and someone will have won and would just message you to work out when and where they could collect it

It would be a great feature in the respect on SWG history but it will be very unlikely to be needed.

Why?

AH has been invented and brought to the games against the vendor in game system because ppl took the AH system into the forums so why have the players sent to the forums for an AH system when you can build it in game. I'm pretty sure SWTOR will have an AH system that will even be accessible through browser!

A simple trade system might be useful but when the game goes live - now it would just be dead weight!

/salute

From my experience, despite there being an AH in the game people still use trade channels and Trade forums.

Mostly, because the AH is usually a piece of crap-ware and doesn't fulfil the needs of the players.

KDS - Prometeu wrote:

It would be a great feature in the respect on SWG history but it will be very unlikely to be needed.

Why?

AH has been invented and brought to the games against the vendor in game system because ppl took the AH system into the forums so why have the players sent to the forums for an AH system when you can build it in game. I'm pretty sure SWTOR will have an AH system that will even be accessible through browser!

A simple trade system might be useful but when the game goes live - now it would just be dead weight!

/salute

I do expect to see an ingame AH just as much as you. Regardless of that, there may be reasons to run a Trade forum on the side.

As seen in WoW multiple times, it happens too often that the prices are ridiculously off.
Additionally the mentioned possibility of making a contract over time is often not available. Maybe we won't even get the "Looking for" feature.
So as I see it there are plenty of possible reasons.

SW:G has a forum like this on the public game forum, and it works pretty well.

It's more a matter of "training" the posters (stickied guidelines thread) than moderation, as near as I can tell.

Let's get the stone rolling again.

There's actually not that much to be discussed, it's a fairly obvious matter (at least to me).


Types of trading:

-- Contracts (mainly requests), as in arrangements over time (of any kind really, services or goods although free {for the person executing it} services should not be the main target here as those should generally be handed out for free afaic)

-- Exchanges:
- Demand good/service
- Offer good/service


Is there anything else?


There can be bidding on offers (otherwise just first come first serve), for a specified time period and the last bidder gets the item.
Bidding on Demands doesn't seem to be useful. Someone can respond to such a request by offering the good/service if he can, to the person requesting it - he then decides a price and the person who made the demand can then accept or decline it, in the latter case he'd have to wait for someone else to make him a new offer.


Prices will generally be requested to be fair.
Therefore the main benefit will end up to be the possibility to request goods/services that might not be available at the AH or only for unreal prices.

After a couple of days of thinking it over I haven't come up with anything further.

Vel, Grome, Ald',

How about making it light hearted, like a "classified ads" in the newspapers?

Well, that plus the auction part too.

Yeah, it's not too far away from what I envisaged. How would that look for you?

I like it alot Grome.

Huh?

Well, so like said before.

Auctions if you want to sell something (good or service, possibly "contracts", which will depend on ingame possibilities)

Requests/Offers, or ads if you like, to ask for specific goods/services or "contracts" or to sell them at a specific predefined price.


There's really not much more to be determined at this point and if anything else opens up it is quite easy to be added.

I suggest integrated tags (if possible) for the forum à la "[WTS]uber-sausage", where the tag has to be selected before you can create a thread.
Tags: WTS, WTB, something else? Just in case an "other" tag can be added as well.

WTS: Wanting to sell
WTB: Wanting to Buying

OCS: Offering Crafting services
RCS: Requesting Crafting services

Maybe add something for to differentiate materials, armors and weapons as well. Like M, A and W...

I was in my mind including crafting services in the WTS and WTB. It's true however there is a difference.

Differentiating between goods and services might be necessary. If you need a good, you need someone to have this one thing you are looking for. If you need a service, you just need someone to have the ability to perform a task with materials you yourself will furnish.

We're at 4 named tags then. WTB, WTS, OS, RS. (I cut out the "crafting" in case there might be other services and because it's shorter)

Good point Az.

Personally I'm not sure if we need more detailed tags (mats, armors, weapons) as after the tag is still a title which can explain what you're looking for or looking to get rid of (as "[WTS] heavy armor: arnold's chesthair").
Might be wrong though, and maybe it is useful?

I agree that only basic tags are needed. People should still be using thread titles to describe what they want. The tags are only there to help people sort through the info quicker, not replace reading relevant titles.