We’ve talked a lot about combat lately, here’s a great vid running through some of the Commerce aspects of AoC:
1 Like
just watched this one a few hours ago. If they can pull it off the economic system will make the game
Oh yeah, I recognize a lot of what they’re aiming for here too as it has very strong ties back to the way that Ultima Online’s system worked.
In Ultima Online you would get a Vendor contract and drop a vendor outside your house, where ever that was in the world. You’d stock your own stuff, typically crafting all of it.
What that meant, rather than running down to the central town, browsing the AH for the best price on an X, you would instead check vendors as you moved throughout the world. Pretty quickly you’d start identifying where the good buys where at. Who kept their vendors fully stocked all of the time, who had the best prices or who had the best quality stuff. When I’d run low on healing potion kegs, I knew that so and so’s vendor over by a certain city were a MUCH better value by far and worth making a trip there to stock up.
Sounds like a lot of extra work eh? 
What this does is this: It actively pushes players to GET OUT AND EXPLORE the world! Visit other towns, check prices at different vendors as you go. It immerses them in the world around them, getting them to travel between areas. It gives people great reputations as they place to go to get quality wares or cheap prices.
I have always disliked the concept of central or linked auction houses. All it means is that whoever is the cheapest, gets purchased. It drives prices down in a bad way. It also keeps players from getting out in the world to find bargains, cramming them in around the AH instead.
Now the AH that will be in Commercial Nodes in AoC is merely a location in a village (or above) where players can rent vendor stalls. It’s a centralized market place only in that it puts a bunch of vendors closer together for convenience. Otherwise you’d have to check the NPC vendors at each player’s house. So it’s a minor conveniences but there will also be vendors at Freeholds so it’s worth checking those too.
I plan to have a Smithy and keep quality goods well stocked for sale. From my time in UO I found that it’s more important to keep your vendor stocked than it is to have amazing deals. No one wants to travel a distance just to find an empty vendor. Keep your vendor well stocked with items in demand and you will make nice coin!
This type of system also lends itself very well to situational vendors.
Having a small hut with a well stocked vendor of DUNGEON supplies, ie healing potions, reagents, bandages, etc RIGHT OUTSIDE the entrance to a dungeon meant you were going to be very popular indeed!
Inexpensive items, but incredibly needed if you were exploring the hazards of a dungeon. Nothing worse than running out of spell reagents, bandages, potions or whatever you need while making good progress in a dungeon. Being able to pop out and hit a vendor near the entrance was incredibly useful AND YOU WOULD GLADLY pay a lot more than the going rate for things just for the convenience of it being right there!
Think about it, an adventurer, loaded down with coin from the dungeon but badly needing a bunch of healing potions to keep going, would pay ridiculous prices for those potions if they were right outside the entrance.
Wonder if they’ll still have taxes with this system? If they do ibthink it’d be pretty cool if those taxes were actually used in game by the node leader. Hire npc’s to gaurd the node, turn dirt roads into paved roads, upgrade cheap wooden walls into stone wall and so on. That might be asking a bit much from the dev team but it would make paying market taxes suck a little less
This is the feature I’m most looking forward to based on all descriptions is the ability to be a full-on merchant player. And while not heavily talked about, the fact the game will have a stock market feature places alot of speculation in my mine of how this system will flesh out.