R.I.G. Trade Forum

Only one I might add to that is

WTT - Want to trade. Someone may have a chestplate they don't want, and are instead looking for a Sith robe, if they are of near equal value someone may just be looking to trade it rather buy or sell.

Other wise nicely done as always!!

So WTT, WTS, WTB, OS, RS

Anything else? Should be create a standard thread title format. Example: [tag] type: name, special

Where
tag: WTT, WTS, WTB, OS, RS
type: armor, weapon, material, trinket
name: Jango's pistol (or craft any for OS tag)
special: 50% off

Also thinking about OS, RS, they can be material gathering services too, I suppose.

Good one Ty! See, that's why we keep you around

Good suggestion Az,

[TAG] TYPE: NAME, SPECIAL

seems very useful! For services the type can simply be the type of service, like "enchant" (if there was enchanting).

What about the "special" part? Is that like a sort of "comment"? I guess it makes sense to add item color or things like that (item color = level of item). Then again that might fit in the name part ( e.g. "Plastic Gun (blue)" ).

However people shouldn't put their life story in there if nothing else is needed like "[WTS] Weapon: Grand Dagger of Satisfaction, BEST UBA DAGGER MAN!!"
Not like this kind of thing would happen

I was more thinking special stand for things like "discount", quantity, "# charge left -if that exist-", etc

example:
[WTB], krait's scales, need 20 as opposed to [WTB], 20 krait's scales

I think it's better to have a specific spot for these thing and not put them in the "name" of the item.

Alright

so "name, amount" in this case. anywho, seems to me like we got it all then.


just out of curiosity, when would you use "discount"? (discount on what price?)

Grome wrote:

just out of curiosity, when would you use "discount"? (discount on what price?)

Marketing Grome, it's all about marketing.

And I have seen people WTS stuff at 20% in trade chat in a few MMOs...

"Do you want to buy a grape? It's 50% off." sounds cool but it's got nothing to mean if there's not a pricetag to begin with.

And if it's just about the 4,99 effect (i.e. making something sound much better than it is) then it shouldn't go in the hopefully factual thread title.

Grome wrote:

"Do you want to buy a grape? It's 50% off." sounds cool but it's got nothing to mean if there's not a pricetag to begin with.

And if it's just about the 4,99 effect (i.e. making something sound much better than it is) then it shouldn't go in the hopefully factual thread title.

Even with the best of intentions there can be issues. One person looks at the price in the auction house and sees 10,000 gold for the Sword of a Thousand Truths. "50% off on the Sword of a Thousand Truths" becomes a really bad deal when its up on the auction house the next day for 2000 gold. I often find the auction price fluctuates wildly in-game, which will lead to many variations on a theme of "I thought we were supposed to cut each other good deals on the RiG." But I did cut you a great deal!"...

With this sort of thing going on it becomes nearly impossible to impose even very objective guidelines such as "Give Riggers 10% off the auction price." At the same time I'd like to see the RiG Trade Forum used to foster a sense of community effort and support. Not sure how to make it happen yet

Don't have to tie it to the auction house prices. As long as the prices are acceptably good, as in "rarely to be found at the auction house at the time" or something like this, it's alright. I feel like it would just happen naturally.

People get good deals so they'll want to give something back as well... If they're not already motivated to help others at the cost of a little profit.

Is there a foreseeable possibility that people who do not "belong" to RiG come in here to get the good deals and never give something back to the community?

Might wanna give the seller the possibility to choose a "real" member he knows (or can judge by postcount - you might not wanna give this really good deal to the guy who just made his first post).

Otherwise you are maybe aware that some forums out there have reputation systems with points (which show in the profile). These points are usually given out by other members of the community on single posts or only once as a one-time approval if they thought your post or general contribution was/is helpful.

These are two ways to make sure there is no abuse by outsiders, which is a real possibility I'd say. Discuss.

Grome wrote:

Is there a foreseeable possibility that people who do not "belong" to RiG come in here to get the good deals and never give something back to the community?

It's not something that can be avoided and the opposite is also true: some people might want to use the board for trade and participate a lot in the community in the game, but totally ignore any other part of the R.I.G. forums which could make it hard who is participating and who is not. I don't expect getting to know everybody on a personal basis in the community...

We also might want to have a "through PM or not" policies. Do we let people bargain outside of the forum or everything on the public place?

Well, actually there are ways to avoid this at least to a certain degree. I agree we shouldn't expect people to take part in the forums just to have a better chance at trading but a vouching system wouldn't hurt I'd say. You can vouch for people positively or negatively if you know the player through forum or ingame. That way when trading with someone who has been vouched for you can still know if the person is trustworthy.

There are always ways. I must admit however that this system may be doomed if people are not at all interested in anything else than trading and don't give a damn about vouching for people etc. But then again maybe we should have people care about it. After all, nobody wants this to get too chaotic. Or am I missing the point?


The PM story: Do you mean for auctions? It's a good point. If anything I'd say we should choose one of the two ways, not both.
- bidding by posting
OR
- bidding through PM

I'm not sure which one is better.

by posting: more transparent

by PMing: more private

Both can create and solve issues. We should also decide whether we need a sort of trade forum police that helps in case of misunderstandings...

On a second thought I think such a vouching system might totally cripple the trade forum's utility.

I'd say forget about that and just let it flow. It should create incentive to give back to the community, which is what we're aiming for in the first place. We'll have to cope with the few who try to only take advantage.


PM or Post?

I'm not entirely sure about this yet. For me, there is a conflict between two systems to work this out, we have to figure out which one suits better.

- private and undisclosed bidding process
OR
- open and transparent bidding process (would probably have to be regulated)

The one thing that can happen with a private and unregulated bidding process is that some people might always get favored over others (well known members of the community, powerful members, whatever), which is not good. Call it "corruption" if you will.

This does not happen in an open bidding process, if you just fix that the highest (last) bidder gets the item. However in this case it is more difficult to avoid "bad" members of the community to get many things even though they don't deserve it.

It might be possible to add to the open bidding process a rule that the seller can overrule if he has a good reason for which he does not want to sell the item to the last and highest bidder. These should be rare cases however. A "Blacklist" can be useful if some people show bad behaviour but shouldn't be installed at first I'd say.


In the end I think I'd favor the open bidding process because it seems more likely that known members get too many favors than that some people really need to be put in their place.

You know we might just create a small web app to manage the trading/bidding part too. With bids and everything...

I can volunteer to make it (ugly as sh*t though, web design isn't exactly my thing, coding is). I love doing these sort of things too, small change from playing games.

My reaction to this is "Why re-create a standard game mechanic? Isn't that what the in-game auction is for?" I understand we're trying to put a friendlier process and pricing, but isn't the whole purpose of the auction house methodology to get the maximum price anyone is willing to pay for an item?

Allow me to attempt to derail this "RiG auction system discussion" and see where (if anywhere) it leads us. I shall attempt to do this by posting a couple of 'radical ald'ternate ideas" for discussion. I'm not vouching for either of these suggestions yet, just trying to get some discussion going.

SUGGESTION: - Disallow auctioning of any items on the RiG forums. THEORY: The purpose of this forum is to offer a back-channel for friendly trading, NOT to drive prices up. The basic auction principle is to increase price, which runs counter to the purpose of having a RIG trading forum. OBJECTIVE: Provide a place for Riggers to offer services such as gear for lower levels at semi-fixed and reasonable prices.

SUGGESTION: - Disallow monetary transactions. THEORY: Riggers are not here to make money, they are here to help one another. OBJECTIVE: Create a place for people to do straight "materials for items", "item for item", or "free to good home" trades rather than any form of money making.

I think Aldemarran read my mind, I was wondering the same thing. We don't need to "replace" the in-game Auction House, do we?

What you say makes sense. I like both suggestions.

I'm inclined to think #1 is better (basically what we had talked about before minus the bidding).
#2 is really good and I'd instinctively favor it, but there are obvious reasons why the real world has widely gotten rid of trading with no currency. It just creates issues, sometimes direct trading is made difficult. (depending on what items the game has and how the whole thing works it could still somehow work though)

I think you can have both Ald's suggestions at the same time.

What we can do is generate cheap prices for items, not based on what their in game insano auction house prices are. Maybe the costs of mats, something, and you always have the option of just being a nice person and making the item for someone or helping them collect the mats. Maybe if someone needs something BIG and super rare or expensive, maybe we can all rally together to help. Could be other ways to solve it as well.

Most of us, I'd assume, even given a free item will try to tip incredibly generously. I know we'd all like to make money, but we all also want to help fellow riggers out.

There are pitfalls to every scenario, this is true, but without a little trust in our fellow riggers we can't really keep the dream of a great community alive. Can't force anyone into anything, but we CAN give options.

We're all pretty level headed it seems, and I know that in game we'll work something out between people. We could tie the trade forum to the big list of trade skillers we're going to have, as well as the big trade events we'll host. Basically making a flourishing center for game trade without gouging everyone, while at the same time assisting new or lower level players by keeping items from getting insanely priced.

After having written all of that I should probably point out that I not only have no problem with trying to earn credits. I'll be out there selling stuff for as much as people are willing to pay. (About the only limit I place on myself "out there" is that I don't try to trick people into buying stuff for a higher price than they intend to pay.) Internally I try to focus on building up the community. Yes, I have a double standard. I treat those whom I respect, whom I can trust to voluntarily be fair with me, differently than I treat random Joe/Jane Gamer on the curb in Coruscant. (And, by extension, those whom I know will voluntarily try to "harm" me by deliberately attempting to take the fun out of the game for me get treated in yet another, less pleasant, way. But this is a discussion for another thread and is provided here only as background.)

My purpose with these suggestions is to create a vision of the RiG Trade Forum as a community service forum. This is a place where we build up our community, not where we focus on building for ourselves. Though I think we all realize that by building up this community we improve ourselves as well. Strictly speaking if someone makes a profit here I've no theoretical objections, but I do object to someone price gouging fellow Riggers and I do further promote offering "discounts" in-community.

All of which leads to a couple more suggestions...

SUGGESTION: Restrict access to the Trade Forum until newcomers have reached minimum post-count and/or time on the forum. THEORY: This is not meant for every random Marketeer. Only those who are actually part of the community by both presence and participation are likely to share our goals for the RiG Trade Forum. OBJECTIVE: Control the community that participates in this activity so as to limit freeloaders and con-artists from taking advantage.

SUB-SUGGESTION: Do NOT inform people what is required to obtain access to the Trade Forum. DO appoint a Moderator / Limited Admin who's job is to monitor people's access to the forum. THEORY: Prevent people from knowing how to game the system. OBJECTIVE: Allow people to flow into access and participation naturally instead of seeing it as their purpose in joining the community.

Edited for clarity, to fit on this screen, and to run in the time alloted...

I'm inclined against the "no money" suggestion. I happily give to my guild-mates, but if I'm spending all of my time farming herbs for flasks and none of my time working on my gear... One way I've dealt with that problem is to say "here's the discount price, I'll try to keep you supplied as long as you're aware that there are practical limits to how generous I can be." Basically I tried to make it more affordable but still limit them by making them put some of the effort into the task. And under those circumstances anyone providing all the mats gets their flasks for free since that was my limiting factor in how much I could supply.

I'm still not ready to say what suggestions are good or bad, just trying to generate discussion to help me formulate my own opinion as well as get us thinking of alternatives before we get too fixated on one idea.

Well, if you're talking about something that can be crafted, that is not a trade but a service in my understanding.

If a crafter has the ability to make it and you bring the mats there should be no question that the item be made for free.

It's not like this should not be done. Quite the contrary. The trade forum is going to be more personal so it will be easy to straighten out things between requester ("I want this potion") and the responding crafter ("I'll make you the potion, bring me these items: ..." with potential discount, like the flask e.g.). It's not like the crafter should do the service + deliver the mats (unless he already has it and is willing to give them up, which then takes the transaction into a trade "item <> payment").

It's however not gonna be like there is always gonna be a direct link between mats and item. In other words, not every item is crafted and for those non crafted items (drops most prominently) it doesn't make much sense to not use money as exchange item. You can of course make special deals if both parties have an item the other one is interested in but excluding money from deals would be foolish in my opinion. The guy who doesn't have an item of interest for the seller would have to either forget about it, buy an item of interest somewhere (possibly expensive) or buy the initial item to be traded on the AH. Excluding money would in my eyes cripple the trade forum.


I'll have to think about the restricted access thing first, but it feels like a good idea at first.

I concur mate,

Add to that, you may just want to 'help out' people within this community and not just sell to the highest server wide bidder?

We always sold things in guild in a similar manner and it worked on many levels. So yeah, I do think it could work quite nicely amongst us all

Yeah, considering both the case of non-crafted items and the case of crafting for those without the required gathering profession I think money needs to be allowed.

Oh for sure mate.

These things can work every bit as well as any AH. Better in fact. AHs are great for selling junk, but proper items? Well I would prefer to sell them to someone I know if possible and for a fair price

Good, so, no auctioning of any kind. First one to pay the price asked gets the item or service (negotiating allowed).


Onto the restriction business.
For myself, I will list pros and cons that come to mind.

pros...
no funny business. you can trust the people and it's a fair trading environment.

cons...
potentially excluding good people too.


Couldn't really come up with more. haha...

I'm pretty sure we should add at least some barrier, otherwise it will get out of control. The goal of this is to provide a fair trading environment - not for everyone (because not everyone can cope with this) but for us - if it's public we might lose it and its most valuable quality: trust.
Now, the barrier should not be too easy to con (like "have 50 posts"). It should not be too hard either, we're not elitists after all.

I'll just throw in the thought of a referral system of some kind, but only because I can't think of anything right now. Let's just see with what we could come up and of course tell your opinions...

The biggest benefit to having a twofold requirement is that its harder to figure out and spoof. Yet, if done correctly, it won't be hard to do in the natural flow of joining the community.

My initial thoughts for requirements were something like 10 posts and 2 weeks since registering. Interactivity with the community is something that will generate trust. Delay keeps people from faking the system out easily. If you get someone going "I have # posts, why don't I have access?" then you might hesitate to give them access.

One thing I will oppose vehemently is requiring people to sign the charter to gain access. There are the people who feel that "I agree in spirit but this one phrase means something different to me so I don't want to sign it." Or they just forget to sign it. But in the end the principle is that NOBODY should feel a need to sign it for ANY reason other than that they desire to support the ideal.