Consignment shop.

New ideas, features you wish were in the game.
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Fink
Ancient MultiHued Dragon
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Consignment shop.

Post by Fink » Mon 29.03.2004, 11:01

Aule, the other day, mentioned an idea that got me all fired up - a player consignment shop. At it's simplest, it would work like this:

You take an item to this shop that you wish to sell, and 'sell' it  for zero AU. The shop is browsable by other players, who may buy from shop.

When a player buys one of your items, you may later stop in and get your cash from that transaction.

Berendol
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Berendol » Wed 31.03.2004, 09:58

This is exactly like the local Auction Houses people use all the time in Final Fantasy XI.

It's doable, but who wants to slog through the code to do it? Not it :)

Sounds like a good idea to me.
By appreciation, we make excellence in others our own property. (Voltaire)

Fink
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Fink » Sun 11.07.2004, 16:16

Something reminded me of this idea recently, so I thought about it a bit more. Here is a slightly more developed version of it:



The feature:
The purpose of the consignment shop is to allow players to automate the process of selling eq to other players, and to allow it to take place while the selling player is offline. The shop should allow player to find the general game sell price range for the item, and set it's sell price. Limits are placed on the amount of equipment the player is allowed to consign, and on the prices the player can set. These limits are to help maintain game economy, protect against cheeze, and to combat players treating the shop as a stash.



Some basic requirements:
- Using the shop should be uncluttered and managable to use. So, we limit the amount of times a player may consign.
- Protect aganist the abuse of using the shop as a quick and dirty stash. To do this, we introduce a markup for consigned items that any player buying an item must pay.
- For the option of auditing, items that flow through the shop should maintain any information that is used by the audit feature, if in fact any is used.



How it works:
+ Player may submit an item to the consignment shop, and set it's price.
- Player is shown the maximum possible player-to-store sell value of the item.
- Player may not set a price lower than the max player-to-store sell value for the item.

+ Player is allowed to have a maximum of X number of items for sale at the shop (say, 5).

+ The consignment shop marks up the player-set price by some percentage to create the price which the shop will sell the item for.
- The mark up percentage will scale based on the value of the item, with cheap items having the highest markup, and expensive items the lowest (say, 30% maximum markup for the cheapest items, to 10% for the most expensive items). This helps combat abusing the shop by treating it as a stash, by forcing a player who is doing so to pay the markup to get their item back. The percentage range for the markup is to keep very cheap (but useful) items expensive to stash at the shop, as, for example, ten percent of 1400 AU may not be much of a disincentive.

+ Items will be available for a maximum of X days (say, 7 days), after which the item is deleted and the normal player-to-shop sell value is credited to the player.
- Liquidation price: There are options here as to how to do this. It could be based off the charisma value the player has at the time the item is removed from the shop list, or it could be the max possible sell value of the item (we could see this last option as being an encouragement to forego immediate money for delayed money by using the consignment shop instead of selling the item to a normal shop), or a variety of combinations.
- Time limit for items to stay in shop: more expensive items should be allowed to stay in the shop longer than cheaper items, to reflect that fewer player may have the money for very expensive items. We could, as above, modify the liquidation price the selling player recieves at the end of the time limit to compensate them for this increased delay in recieving money for the item, as opposed to their selling the item to a normal shop.



Sundry concerns:
+ A griefer player who doesn't mind paying the markup penalty sets an incredibly high price for an item, and prior to it's being deleted buys it back and re-consigns it to the shop. This effectively keeps the item out of circulation.
- Place some absoulte limits on player-set prices that leave all the room needed for player to player transaction, but protects against stupidly high prices whose only purpose is to grief.
- Treat the items in the shop as still being "owned" but the consigning player. This then keeps the items ownership subjected to the audit, or whatever else an admin does to combat art hoarding.



-Fink

Emulord
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Emulord » Fri 11.05.2007, 17:38

sorry to do post revival, but i think this is a good idea.  
This way, you dont have to catch a player at the right time in order to buy something.  

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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Warrior » Thu 17.05.2007, 05:57

Yes, some kind of auction house would be good. I still think it should be an auction of some kind, instead of a set price.

With a starting price-> bids-> a minimum price and a buy-now price.
-- Mangband Project Team Member

Fink
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Fink » Thu 17.05.2007, 21:06

We could expand on the idea, and do both (consignment and auction). If all items placed in the shop were auction, it would limit what it could be realisticly used for (less items would be things that people would want now, instead of bidding on. The auction could be used for beefier, rarer items).

grisu
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by grisu » Fri 18.05.2007, 14:51

new implementations are difficult, so just become more active on forum for selling things or ingame with inscription put on a minor item.

Fink
Ancient MultiHued Dragon
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Re: Consignment shop.

Post by Fink » Fri 18.05.2007, 21:15

That implementing new features is more difficult than designing them is not a compelling reason to avoid thinking and chatting about them ;)

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