Ideas to start in-game trade

kittykatthegreat · 2019-05-26 13:43:45

I’ve seen Jason say before that he would like to see trade in the game. I think one of the problems with solving some of the issues to get trade started in the game, is life is too short to monopolize resources for a town to establish something like a store. Also, with life being so short it would require the store to be handed off to someone younger to take over and manage everything after you die. This would be very difficult to pull off because you could run into people having no interest in taking over or just one bad apple ruining everything it has been built up to. Then as far as trade between individuals, people can only carry so many items and most larger tools are shared by the whole town. So it would be hard to hunt down someone with the item/s you need willing to make a trade. Then you also have the problem of once a trade it agreed upon, how do you safely make the trade knowing that you get what you asked for and that no one near by steals it while you are trying to make the swap.

This could be a very far reach of a fix but something to think on. if money was introduced to the game. Something like a market tech could be added to the tech tree. Something like build a building with x amount of storage inside and end large piece to add to turn it into a market could be a cash register.

People could make money by depositing resources into the store. Then use money to buy resources that others have placed into the store. This solves the problem of having to get a line of actual players to run the store. The less refined the object the less it’s worth in money terms.

Having a store in your village would also be a reason to bring in outsiders to come trade for resources that their city needs. The store could also have an out put based on what has been brought into it. Very simple example you cant buy a rope from the store if 4 milkweed or a rope had not previously been sold to the store. But say you have a thread and some cash and the store had two milk weed in inventory. You could sell your thread and buy back a rope.

Having a system like this could also reward players that know how to make higher tech because the higher the tech of an object the more it would be worth in the store. This would also make having private property more important so people can’t steal your projects out from underneath your feet.

The store and money would pretty much serve as a middle man to make sure trades go fair and smooth. Player A spends most of their life gathering iron. Instead of just leaving it by the smith they deposit the iron into the store to make some money to buy what ever resources they want for their next project. Player B can then go to the store and buy iron to smith with and making for example a hoe. That player C the farmer can trade in for their crops. That player D can buy to make pies with.

Your money could be given to other players or passed onto other players at your death. Leaving another aspect of the game of are you born rich or poor.

I would like to see what pros and cons people see with this idea and what are some other ideas people have for trades between cities and individual players.

lychee · 2019-05-26 15:21:41

I think this is a reasonable idea for kickstarting trade, although I'm not sure how much jason would like it since a vending-machine store is a bit magical/anachronistic.

That said, I do think this is a great thing to discuss because one barrier to trade in OHOL is that it's simply just too inconvenient. It can take a good 5 minutes to have a bartering conversation with someone, which is a pretty substantial fraction of your life. Ordinarily these kinds of conversations just don't happen. Normally conversations are more about "can I borrow your knife" type discussions.

With regards to kitty's suggestion, the currency needs a backing (like someone needs to control the "printing" of money), or else there will be crazy inflation to the market. I personally think the easiest currency in OHOL is a pip -- for instance a pipnote. Deposit food to get a pipnote equal to the food value of the food item. A rabbit pie is 14 pipnotes. Players could set the exchange rate for non-food items.

paulof · 2019-05-26 15:31:40

That's a great idea. This would make properties useful again, I mean, you need a place to keep your stuff and if you buy a hoe you don't want to plant berries for everyone, only for yourself and your children. You have to think how to not let village dies since everyone would work only for themselves. There must be a motivation to still work for the village.

Psykout · 2019-05-26 17:28:19

Money has already become too much of an impact on our world, I would rather not having that be in the game world as well.

Keyin · 2019-05-26 19:03:58

Printed money is only accepted because it has something backing it up. When we used metal coins, the worth of the currency was backed by the value of the metal it is made from. We recently moved away from that.. our currency is no longer made from precious metal, and we have paper notes that are backed up by the government. Basically, the US dollar is only backed by the united states military... it is the reason it is accepted by other people. The notes have no inherit value.

I do not think there needs to be a currency. Just use a nonperishable commodity that everyone values as currency(ropes,buckets of water, iron), or simply use barter. The only realistic currency system is one where anyone is free to print/mint their own competing currency, which is not ideal.

I would support a way to carry a large store of value in a compact space though.

Currently there is no good contender to be a currency in game.

The properties of a currency you want are:

1)Non-perishable
2) Easily divisible
3)Able to store large amount of value in small space/weight

Pretty much everything fails #3, and most things fail #2

Many MMOs solve this problem by making their currency take up no space and also making it weightless(#3) and usually nothing can be purchases for only a few of the currency, making it easily divisible.

Also you give an example of buy 4 milkweed-stalk/2 thread/1 rope from the store. You can't buy 1 rope unless someone has already sold one of the above. That raises the question of, when does the person who sold the item to the booth get their compensation? If it is when someone decides to buy the rope, that could take a long time. If it is immediately when they sell the rope to the booth, then there needs to be a credit system.

And this raise the subjectivity of value. I may think that rope is really valuable, and want to sell rope to the booth for a large amount of this currency(whatever it is) so that I can buy some iron. There may be other who agree on the value and are willing to buy it at that price, but most people will want to pay less.

Under your system, how would value be determined, since value is subjective? How many rope can I get with one iron? How many rabbit furs can I get for two buckets of water? What can I use this money for other than buying stuff from other players? If it isn't good for anything outside of this reading booth, there is no reason for you to leave the booth with money in your pocket.

The only problem with a system that values food soley based on the # of pips it restores is that does not take into account the other properties of the food. For example, you have to factor in thing like if the food is non-renewable, if food gives you a bowl/plate, the amount of time it takes to produce, how convenient it is to carry the food.

Now, to make trade happen it needs to be worth it for both parties. It has to be profitable to both parties engaging in the trade. That means that both people feel richer because of the trade they made, because that thing they traded for is worth more than the time it took to trade and the value of the stuff they gave to the other person.

So, if I am trading say iron for rope, the amount of rope I return home with needs to be worth more than the time I took to trade and the iron I gave to the other person.

Say it takes me 3 minutes to ride to this other village on my horse cart and 3 minutes to ride home. Say it takes 1 minute to find someone willing and with the amount of rope i want(unlikely, not impossible). Say it takes 2 minutes to unload the iron and load up the rope.

So in total I am spending 9 minutes and 6 iron on this rope.
So the question now is not how much rope is 6 iron worth. It is how much rope is 6 iron and 9 minutes worth. The answer is a lot. Iron is non-renewable and pretty much everything relies on it. Rope is kind of expensive/time consuming to make, but you can make a ton of it.

How much milkweed could I have made in nine minutes? Not counting the time waiting for it to grow, because I can do other things during that time.

Lets say it takes me 9 minutes to put down the soil, plow, water and harvest 36 milkweed. I use the community compost pile/hoe. So...9 minutes is 5 rope to me.

How much rope is 1 iron worth? Very subjective.. I'd say maybe 3? So, to me my 6 iron are worth 18 rope + the 5 rope I could have made=23 rope

You are probably thinking, "So then you trade the 6 iron for 23 rope"

WRONG

If I trade the 6 iron for the 23 rope, I would have been equally as well off at home, making my own rope! Where is my profit margin???

I need at least 24 rope or else I make no profit! Also, we need to account for risk...

This is the risk that I will not be able to trade. My risk of dying on the way there... the risk someone from the town sees a foreigner and panics. The risk I have to spend more of my precious time negotiating, or getting someone to interpret for me since we speak different languages. There is a significant chance the trade will not be able to happen. What are the odds I will not be able to find someone to trade with? Lets say... 30% chance I find no one to trade with.

That means there is a 30% chance I will waste the 6min round trip, and maybe 3 minutes trying to desperately find something. And what is that 9 minutes worth..? Well we already know from last time, 9 minutes= 5 rope. 30% chance to happen means I need 30% of the value of 5 ropes to make the risk worth taking on, so 2.5 ropes. That sets a new minimum to the amount I need from this village 23+2.5=25.5ropes, so I need more than this to make a profit.

So this means if I trade my 6 iron for 26 ropes I will feel like I made barely any profit.

Now we run into a problem. My horse cart has 4 baskets and I have a backpack. The backpack has 1 pie in it,so I only have 3 slots there. The 4 baskets give me a total of 12 slots.

I can only carry 15 rope. Lassos cannot be stored. The trade is not worth it because I do not have the storage capacity to take back the amount of rope I would require for my 6 iron. Even if I used backpacks instead of baskets, I would only be able to carry 16+3= 19 rope. If I used a hand cart with rubber tires I would still only be able to carry 23 rope, and it would take more time to get there and back, so I would need more rope. If I brought someone else to help me carry the amount of rope, I would need to account for the amount of time they could have spent doing other things like making rope themselves. And then I need to give them a share of the rope for the 9mins they spend coming with me, and they will probably want a sizable percentage. So trade ends up not being worth it.

Even if I could get this person to work for nothing because they're my friend... what kind of people are going to give me 26 ropes for 6 iron? Maybe if they're desperate... but if they're desperate, they probably don't have the tools required to grow/make that much milkweed.

In real life, trade can happen very quickly(buying something on amazon takes only a few minutes, which is much less valuable in real life). The cost to have it transported to me is much less. Shipping is a much lower fraction of cost. HUGE amounts of things can be transported at once, like on freight ships or delivery trucks stuffed with hundreds of ropes.

VERDICT- trade does not happen, because time is much more valuable in game than in real life(for obvious reasons)
and space is also much more valuable(only one item per tile, horse carts only fit 12 items). A lot of items aren't worth the space it takes up... I cannot carry so much back with me or take so much to them.

And if they don't want to trade or don't have what I want? I just lost precious time, and I take on the real risk that they will simply kill me for my stuff or invade my town later.

Maybe I am comparing the wrong Items..? An iron tool is not worth much more than 1 iron, so I would need to trade a bunch of iron for a bunch of tools... but then I can only take back 4 tools... so 5 iron for 4 tools..? I think I would rather keep the 5 iron and my time, the time to get there and back I can easily forge my own stuff...

Maybe kerosene tanks..? It basically acts as a huge store of water... if you have a crate with tanks, maybe you would trade your kerosene for my iron..?

But I personally never deal the high-tier well stuff, so I will let someone else do the calculation to see if this trade is viable, but my guess is probably not.

SpiritBomb32 · 2019-05-26 19:54:51

If you're running a milkweed store and selling rope, you can't have someone else making it on their own for your business to work. Why have a bread store if bakery is making everything? You make a store out of the bakery. Then everyone goes hungry and accuses you of hoarding and griefing. Want to set up your own self sufficient bakery? I mean sure but you're just wasting resources because there's already a bakery.
You could set up a deal with the bakery that you get all the rare pip foods like turkey, turkey broth, milk, butter, etc and you could sell rare pip foods from your store.

Rubber would be a pretty easy job to take over, no one needs rubber as much as pies so no one will accuse you of anything.

But I think if trading would work then communication needs to be upped. It would be a good help if a player's character limit was doubled as they aged. It's still the same when your a baby, but when you get to be 15 the limit increases.

Would voice chat be possible or just stupid?

kittykatthegreat · 2019-05-26 19:59:15

Yes, a lot of thought would need to be put into the value of the items. As far as how money would be created and destroyed, its created and backed by the item you sold to the store, its destroyed by purchasing an item from the store. One would simply not use the store if they felt they were better off spending their time gathering the items themselves. As far as not being able to carry as many rope that are worth the six iron you have on you, buy as much rope as you can carry and the rest you would keep as cash to use later on or hand down to your children. best break down of my idea is the store would serve as a large storage that people would have to put something into it if they wanted to take something out. As far as breaking it down to every little detail to make the whole idea work, no i have not done that. There would need to be a lot of thought put behind how do you keep people from greifing this system and not allow them to grab up every item in town and sell it to the store. One thought for this is possibly ownership of crafted items and free for all of base materials and if someone dies and does not will their possessions they become unowned items that cannot be traded at the store.

pein · 2019-05-26 23:04:37

first i would like some basic questing
if you are older, you could set tasks for rewards
you make a new pack and set as reward
first person to accept the "quest" can complete the reward requirements
for example get a full stack of firewood here then set 2 empty tiles
once the task is done, the person can acces the pack, no others can do that

when you got a lot of kids, and only few clothing, then this could be a way to spread it with a cost
don't have to be a hard task
like planting milkweed, or making a compost
something basic
ofc would be a problem to restack the same firewood and claim the reward but ofc you would set task which is needed, so it might just work out
even if they abuse the system they need to do a task for it

if someone starts it, has like 2 minutes to progression steps, or for compost like 10 min, ofc could be a competition or first come first server or multiple rewards for unique people, kind of a vending machine

this would help to make people work a bit and those who want to help, they could just make tasks others provide if they got no idea what should be next

jasonrohrer · 2019-05-27 22:02:50

Kittykatt, great idea.

Keyin, excellent analysis of why trade isn't happening.

I think Kittykatt's idea would solve it. Especially if focusing on the lack of local trade (which we obviously need to solve before long-distance trade).

It is a little on the magic-y side. But time is so limited and valuable that we may have no choice.

As far as setting prices, it feels like there could be some kind of automated parimutuel-style thing, where prices get set by scarcity. As resources pile up in the market, their price goes down, and as resources are depleted, their price goes up.

Or there's a time-based auction for everything put in the store. The price starts high and falls over time.

Anyway, there would need to be a lot of extra UI and fiddliness to make it work. And it could be the case that I build all that out and no one uses it. Very few people use the vending machines in Rust, that I've seen...

I'm still holding out for an idea that would lead to emergent trade.

Pyroll · 2019-05-27 22:21:21

Hello, I opened a trade shop for explorers down a road.
The price take one item give one item.
It worked really well !! It was a lot of fun.
But it as unforeseen effects. The town where the explorer came from had a lot of trouble keeping up with the people working less going to the shop.
A lot of explorers died not planning well their trip to the shop and starved. Some people gave their corpses or started a cult
But still huge fun

Booklat1 · 2019-05-27 22:39:59

adding currency without allowing the game to actually develop trade by itself is a horrible idea. Do you know what people will do with vending machines? block them. And good luck unblocking YOUR vennding machine with a town's pick

trade precedes money, and all money is worthless in a system that can easily produce it

Jason has stuck in his head that him gathering berries from his neighbor is a simple barter and that we'll see it in game. What he and people here don't realize is that business model is hardly viable without banks, without him being paid by credit card when people buy games. Sure we don't need people starving all time for them to buy food in game but trading strawberries is hardly the survival based trade that's lacking in this game. Even items like iron ores with 0 direct survival value can be traded as long as we have a currency tied to survivability. Honestly we even have that, food itself. Problems are you have nothing to buy once you're rich with food and everyone has it as well. Honestly, if game designer vs berry farmer is so viable why don't people trade card decks for berries in game?

Do we want trade to matter? make people compete for food and goods.

Last edited by Booklat1 (2019-05-27 22:42:02)

Sukallinen · 2019-05-28 22:07:32

Vending machine store:

Item value = 1

For each bought its value +1 (or double base value if there will be one).
If none bought in one minute value -1 until price is one.

Outlets: several, so out of town can also trade (maybe cost +1).

Base value of each item may be set or not, who cares. If it is set it should be settable by input-only-terminal that would be probably fenced. Or set could be buy-value of first one bought, not sold, to prevent griefers setting value of flint to 300 and emptying store. So once you put in an item you buy it back, and sell it again.

Also, why should this be owned ? Couldn't it be town's storage ? Solve both: storage and trade. Also I can see people checking prices and riding between (now) nearby towns doing profit.

What would be the cash ? Anything. Put stuff in you get credit in that machine. Five secs to take it away if not happy at price. See prices by asking nearby, i.e. "rope price" and get answer. If you want cash, print paper with and set price to that. Fast to make, ez to trade (well, once books of paper are done heh).

mikeyreza · 2019-05-29 02:44:40

this all feels a little.. artificial. or as jason says: "magic-y"
honestly, jason should just add a cash register item and a currency that can be stored in the cash register infinitely.
we would be able to make coins out of wrought iron using a coin-press, which ideally would only be placed within the store.
the cash register works like property fences. only the maker can use it but it can be passed down. if the maker is killed, it is unlocked. (store robberies? maybe not a good idea haha)
you would be able to put tags on items. tags are made by shearing a piece of paper and getting 6 tags. use a charcoal pencil and a tag and saying a number(instead of only being able to use letters in speech, you would only be able to use numbers whilst writing on a tag), you make "Tag with price - (x price)"
tag with price + thread = tag with thread.
tag with thread + any item = (x item) with tag. right-clicking on the item removes the tag and the item can be used normally. however, hovering over the item gives the name and the written price.
the dynamic will be:
player walks into store
player finds item they need
player takes item
player leaves price of item in coins on counter (we also need counters, and definitely money pouches that can either be attached to a backpack or on the waist of a player)
player leaves with item
shop owner puts coins in cash register
no need for long bartering that takes minutes off the life!
if you have read through my endless rambling, please point out some flaws or add suggestions to my idea. im sure there are many!

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-05-26 13:43:45

Ideas to start in-game trade

#2 2019-05-26 15:21:41

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#3 2019-05-26 15:31:40

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#4 2019-05-26 17:28:19

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#5 2019-05-26 19:03:58

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#6 2019-05-26 19:54:51

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#7 2019-05-26 19:59:15

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#8 2019-05-26 23:04:37

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#9 2019-05-27 22:02:50

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#10 2019-05-27 22:21:21

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#11 2019-05-27 22:39:59

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#12 2019-05-28 22:07:32

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

#13 2019-05-29 02:44:40

Re: Ideas to start in-game trade

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