Trade Improvements 2
Printed From: Illyriad
Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Suggestions & Game Enhancements
Forum Description: Got a great idea? A feature you'd like to see? Share it here!
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=6133
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 03:12
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.03 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Trade Improvements 2
Posted By: ajqtrz
Subject: Trade Improvements 2
Date Posted: 05 Feb 2015 at 23:42
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A while back I made some suggestions regarding trade in Illy. Those focused upon the underlying economics of trade and suggested, in part, that the cost of equipping troops was far below the benefits reaped and thus it was better to forgo equipment (and thus lower demand for the goods needed to craft that equipment) and just build more troops. In this "installment" I'd like to address the problem of trade distribution and hub location. By trade distribution I mean the tendency of most trading to be done in Centrum and for many, and maybe most of the other hubs to be under-utilized. By hub location I mean the placement of hubs in arbitrary locations by the game rather than by the players. There are, I think, a number of reasons for these problems. First, most hubs are so underused that in many cases they are ignored. Second, because it costs nothing to store things in Centrum, there is little reason to store anything anywhere else. Third, a hub may be well placed, but the placement may not be where the players need it to be. That the hubs are under utilized is obvious if you look at the market. Almost all buy and sell orders are in Centrum. Why? Because that's where the buyers and sellers are. No player wants to sell something in a hub that isn't being used. To change this we need a way to drive the buyers and sellers away from Centrum. This results in the prices for things in other hubs being higher because the competition is far, far, less than Centrum. And since the cost of storage in Centrum is nil there is little to no reason to store anything anywhere besides Centrum. To solve these problems we need to force buyers and sellers out of Centrum and give the players a method by which they can move or build new hubs. Getting the buyers and sellers moving out of Centrum is the easy part. If we make staying in Centrum more expensive or limit how much they can store there they will be motivated to move. You can either just plain limit the amount of goods to some reasonably high amount, or charge for anything after a certain amount, with the charges going up as more is stored. If I have a billion food in Centrum and I'm paying 1 million gold a day for the top 500,000,000 I very well might just move it to save the gold. This true of every item too. By limiting, either by a strict limit or by financial incentive, the amount stored at a hum...all hubs I would say...you force those with more to re-distribute their storage. Second, if we have a mechanism by which alliance can build hubs and declare them to be a hub, we can place hubs where they are needed and wanted. This is a more radical idea, but say an alliance builds a hub, could they not collect taxes on it? And if lots of alliances build hubs it would increase the competition between hubs and other alliances. Thus, to fix the problem of uneven distribution you need to charge for storage above a certain level in Centrum or reduce the cost of storage at other hubs. To make sure hubs are where they are needed and wanted you could allow alliances to build them. Those are my suggestions in "Part 2 of 'Trade Improvements" Let me know what you think. AJ |
Replies:
Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 00:41
| May I ask how many traders you have, and the hubs you have toured? I have certainly found several worthwhile places to trade in Elgea. |
Posted By: phoenixfire
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 00:45
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I have found multiple Hubs that are used frequently but none of them are quite as active as centrum. Also i like the part of alliances making hubs, it would allow for alliances to sort of stash all of their excess res away and make war a bit more fun if these hubs were raze-able during war, or maybe even just blockadable. |
Posted By: Count Rupert
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 04:27
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I'm not sure I can agree with some of your assumptions. The problem has nothing to do with storage being free in Centrum. I think you'll find there are WAY more being stored in hubs outside Centrum. I have thousands of percent more stored in other hubs than I do in Centrum. Your plan ignores why Centrum became Centrum. Chiefly, sellers want to sell where they have access to the most customers. I wasn't around but that became Centrum. It's central location and friendly relationships with all races make it make it an attractive location to sell among other reasons. Making Centrum unattractive for economic activity is only going to shift that activity to another nearby hub and make it the new Centrum since the reasons for Centrum's existence as the chief center of commerce will still be the same. It's not going to force that activity to all the hubs located throughout Illy. One, there isn't enough economic activity to spread around. Two, sellers are seriously restricted in the number of hubs they can be active in by the number of traders they can field even if they otherwise have the goods. The easiest way to shift the emphasis away from Centrum, is to put all the other hubs on the same footing; make them all visible by all players. Then regardless of a hub's location on the map, offers there can be seen by everyone. This might then be able to generate some of the activity you're looking for in some of the other hubs. At the very least, traders can consider other factors in where they ply their wares.
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Posted By: Solanar
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 04:44
| Half the reason trade in illy is borked from the beginning is lack of necessity. There is no real need for it. Before trade hubs, when all trade was city based, few people bothered. Vets can produce for themselves, newbs don't have sufficient cash to impact trade. The structure of illy (lack of true rarity and limited bottlenecks) makes trade and gold no more than a mini game 99% of the time. It's only during tourneys or the few large wars that even individual players run low, and the market never runs dry. Crafted gear, while neat, lacks sufficient depth or impact. Rarity and effort keeps the cost high, but the value isn't enough for most people to bother. Except for people who simply enjoy it, or for the occasional shortcut, the markets just don't matter. |
Posted By: abstractdream
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 04:51
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I (NOT a trader) have a different opinion on this (surprise!). Centrum as the main trade hub is logical and useful and isn't a problem as far as I can tell, but a benefit to all. It centralizes trade so everyone knows where to go to get what they need instead of having to search all around or ask in GC. As for the rest of the hubs, they are most useful as distribution hubs for alliances. I know they're useful for storing your stuff, and I recommend it as the best way to avoid theft but hubs come into their own when an alliance clustered around one uses it to move things around where they're needed. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. ------------- |
Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 20:18
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While Count Rupert is probably correct that things are stored outside of Centrum, he does mention that traders are in Centrum because that's where the traders are who do trading....which was my point to begin with. It's true, as he states, that other hubs contain things, but other hubs are not usually active trade hubs. To stimulate trade you need to distribute trade and to do that you need to either increase the cost of storing resources in Centrum or restrict how much you can store there (and thus force you to do some buying and selling elsewhere). Personally the first option is much easier to implement as the fees collected are collected at the sale and could just be raised. The latter would be harder to implement and not a guarantee that trade would be more distributed. And while Brandmeister and PhoenixFire have experienced higher trade levels at some hubs, I do think they can admit that Centrum trades do dwarf anything anywhere else. My response to Solanar is pretty much covered my first post, "Trade Improvements" and I think he and I agree pretty much, though it may be we come to different conclusions as to why crafting and using crafted items is not a high use activity. Finally, abstractdream is probably correct to say it's not a problem ...for him/her. The idea the we all need to search to find what we want may underscore the problem as if the hubs were more even you would see other hubs listed when you look in the markets for an item...right no we usually see only Centrum listed and abstractdream may, therefore be assuming that the market only shows Centrum. And while it may be that the other hubs are distribution hubs for alliances it is also true that whatever you can do in Centrum you should be able to do in all other hubs...but cannot because nobody really trades in other hubs for the most part.. which is my original point. One wonders how things would be if your own local hub had as much activity as Centrum. Certainly things would move faster and often you could receive your goods much faster. I do, also, wish to thank every body for their responses. I'm certain the devs read these things and consider what the players are saying...so we end up, in the long run,...getting the game we desire. AJ |
Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 21:57
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With all due respect, you've played this game for almost a year, and your trade rank is still #1247 (18.8M). A new player can pick up minerals off the ground and sell them, and have a higher trade rank in a month or two. I also noticed that you avoided my questions about where you have traders, and what hubs you have visited. Without any evidence that you are a participating trader, I question your credentials to speak about the activity in hubs and how they should be structured. I don't think we need to drive trade out of Centrum. Certainly not with game mechanics limits or any other artificial factor. Illyriad is a sandbox, and the players have chosen Centrum to be dominant in Elgea (the recent free visibility aside). If other hubs are to be active, then it must be because traders work hard to make them active with attractive buy and sell orders, and good communication with their customers. |
Posted By: Captain Kindly
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 22:51
I'm adding my vote here. :) Also, there is a group of players who do not trade through any Hub. Those players (including myself) use Centrum as a provider for market rates. The same rates are also commonly used for newbies who do not have access to a Hub, for selling their hides, herbs and minerals. ------------- http://elgea.illyriad.co.uk/a/p/60249" rel="nofollow"> 
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abstractdream wrote:Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 06 Feb 2015 at 23:54
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While Brandmeister certainly has a point that I am not a big trader and didn't answer his question it would seem to me that saying the system is in need of correction or improvement can be valid even if never did a trade at all. My rank as a trader or the number of trades I have made or not, doesn't change the points I make at all. If he has a disagreement with me regarding how the trade situation is done or how it can be improved I would like to hear it. If he thinks that because I'm not a big trader I cannot analyze the trade situation he would have a hard time logically showing that experience doing something means you automatically understand it's underlying structure or not doing means you don't understand the structure. Requiring such a relationship would be like requiring the race car driver design the engine or the engine designer drive the car when, in fact, it may be that the engine designer can't even drive and the driver doesn't know the least thing about engine design. This type of rebuttal is generally classified as an ad hominem remark because it fails to deal with the actual argument but instead tries to undercut the authority of the person making the argument. So, having traded at only a few hubs my evidence is limited to the fact that Centrum is almost always the only hub listed in the markets -- at least at the top screen full; other players have noted the centrality of Centrum as the trade hub; and the hubs that I have visited -- only 4 to be sure -- were either empty or missing a lot of items for sale. No doubt the evidence is not as good as it could be...but at least it's more than " I have certainly found several worthwhile places to trade in Elgea" as a rebuttal of sorts. Anyway, with far more experience, and no doubt the ability to do top notch analysis, I wonder how Brandmeister might actually analyze the trade situation and what he might suggest for improvement. At this point we do not know as he has not shared that with us. Maybe he could and we'd all be better informed? |
Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 07 Feb 2015 at 00:37
Are you seriously suggesting that recommendations are completely valid in the absence of actual experience? Your thesis is that trade is too centralized in Centrum, and that other hubs are under-utilized for trade. It's obvious that you haven't done hardly any hub trading. Therefore I find it quite valid to challenge your assertion that hubs are under-utilized, especially since it conflicts with my personal empirical evidence. How have you arrived at this conclusion, if not by experience? Utilization is something observed over time, and via interaction--if not your interaction, then whose?
This metaphor is a strawman argument. A better metaphor would be a 16 year old driver educating his parents on the right way to drive a car. While it is certainly possible that such a teenager makes some valid points, that does not seem very likely. In such a situation, it is customary to question just how these ideas were developed. Theoretical ideas can be useful, but they should be viewed with healthy skepticism if those ideas do not appear to be informed by practical experience. That goes double when those ideas appear to clash directly with empirical observations to the contrary. |
Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 07 Feb 2015 at 01:27
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Personally I think the main reason that trade is centralized in Centrum is that hub trade is sort of tedious and complicated. I don't do hub trade when I can avoid it, and I wouldn't want to trade at a lot of hubs and repeat the process over and over. Now, I am not a super active trader. There are people who find it delightful to set hub orders and shuttle things back and forth to fulfill demand at various locations. I probably would not be one of those people even if trade were not as cumbersome as it is. However, I think that the people who find a lot of joy in the mechanics of trade are in the minority. For most people, trade is a way to make extra gold through selling what they have too much of, or get stuff they don't have enough of, rather than an end in itself. The people who are looking for simplicity prefer the "Wal-Mart" of Centrum rather than the downtown shopping district of local hubs. One solution would be to eliminate the trade visibility restrictions. Make it so everyone can see every hub everywhere, or at least every hub on their continent, or for a much wider area (say 1000 squares). I think this simple change would actually INCREASE the activity in at least some local hubs, since people would be weighing convenience over price and selection. It would especially benefit sellers who essentially would be able to reach a wider audience. If this were done, it might be necessary to make the trade interface a little more robust, especially when looking for offers on the market, such as to only show offers within x squares or only at a selection of hubs, etc. Ideally it might be useful to have different visibilities for different goods. For example "bulk" goods like basic resources could be limited to local hubs and Centrum. Other goods could have wider visibilities. Just some thoughts.
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Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 07 Feb 2015 at 01:54
That's basically trading in a nutshell. Buy low, sell high, wherever there is demand. Selling items you produce is manufacturing. I draw a distinction between engaging in trades and being a "trader". I have a long list of things that needs to be improved in the user interface for trading and harvesting. I believe the concept is a good one for a fantasy game, but that most functions were a bolt-on instead of a truly integrated experience. Additionally, most interfaces were designed around single transactions, and were not really built to manage a "pro" level of trade volume. |
Posted By: Corwin
Date Posted: 07 Feb 2015 at 08:56
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My experience is that there is very little advanced resource trade outside Centrum but I don't really see it as a problem. I used to have buy offers for brown bear fur all across Elgea, in 5 0r 6 different trade hubs. In Centrum I offered 200-500 gold/fur less then in the other hubs. The offers in Centrum were filled within 2 weeks but the offers in all other hubs were still open when I moved my traders to broken lands. On the other hand, sell offers of basic resources and weapons/armor were doing great outside Centrum. The thing is, imo, that tradehubs are mainly here to trade the stuff you can't trade town to town and there is very hardly any of that outside Centrum in my experience.
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Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 07 Feb 2015 at 13:07
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It makes sense to concentrate crafted items sales in Centrum. The armaments are so specialized that you need exposure to all potential buyers. It also makes sense to trade the rare materials in the same place where the final products are traded. The items are very small and can be handled with a caravan or three, so distance isn't a factor. To me it also seems natural to trade bulk weapons and armor in Centrum (the ordinary, non-crafted stuff for building troops). Again, the items are easily portable, so Centrum offers the most exposure to buyers and sellers. There are several other popular hubs where these items can be sold, and they can also sell well in town-to-town orders. Here the trader is offering convenience, of either shorter distance local purchasing from a nearby hub, or the ability to prestige boost the incoming purchase items. These trades do quite well during wars and tournaments. I would note that Centrum visibility may have badly damaged this particular hub trade method. It used to be that a player could only see Centrum from one city with a trader. Now if they have prestige to burn, they can purchase from all of their cities, removing the single-city caravan bottleneck, and lowering the incentive to use slightly more expensive local hubs for advanced resources. Basic resources are too large to ship over large distances in any economical fashion. There is a good trade for basics all over Elgea, particularly in the new player ring. New players don't have the shipping capacity to send all the way to Centrum for basic resources, so local trades can do well in their areas. Probably the biggest limiting factor is that they don't have the gold to spend. However, all over the map, there are hubs with a large volume of bulk basic resource sales and a long transaction ledger. |
Posted By: Dungshoveleux
Date Posted: 08 Feb 2015 at 00:53
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Hubs are used way more for storage than trade. This presumably explains why there are so many of them. |
Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 10 Feb 2015 at 23:19
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I agree with most of what you say, Brandmeister, but the fact that things trade better in Centrum is only proof that Centrum dominates the trade and is the central hub for trade. My point is that if you wish to increase the distribution of trade so that more players can do more trades faster (distance determines the "churn" of trade) you need to distribute the trade system and balance it out more. As for the trade of crafted items it's the same story....Centrum is where they are traded so Centrum is where they are traded...little incentive to trade them anywhere else other than distance. But traders who take several days to send vans either direction will be at t severe disadvantage over those who can turn their vans around in a couple hours. This is what churn is all about for traders...trade fast and trade often. If we leave all the trading in Centrum we end up with everybody who wants to really be a trader needing to congregate around Centrum. Finally, the trading of crafted items is, I think, pretty low for reasons I put in my first post on trading. Finally, if the race car driver vs mechanic is a straman argument then so is the 16 yr old driver one. A 16yr old driver can analyze why his dad got a ticket when his dad blew through a stop sign. A 16yr old non-driver can do the same. Knowing how something works does not mean you have to have done it...though knowing how it works makes you better able to do it when you actually do it. Since you do it you do show some good ideas. Just apply, as you did in your second response, those ideas to the question at hand and let's ignore the qualifications of the speaker since they are irrelevant to the point being made. The key question is: is trading in Illy too centralized in Centrum. You say "no" because trading is centralized in Centrum. I say "yes" because if we move to distribute it across the entire area we increase the rate of trades as the average trader can reach an active hub more quickly and thus make more trades faster. Again, thanks for the thoughtful answer. You've help clarify the question and maybe my own understanding as well. |
Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 10 Feb 2015 at 23:25
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One more thing. In re-readying your response Brandmesiter, I do think you are correct that it would be good to use empirical evidence to determine the rate of trade per hub and compare that with Centrum. You seem to have those numbers. Could you send them to me? My "empirical" numbers are limited to: 1) about 4-5 hubs I've sent a trader to and found nothing there...except perhaps Hope Ridge. Maybe I hit the 4-5 hubs that have nothing in them and the rest are thriving and vibrant; and 2) the anecdotal evidence I've see here and in speaking with other players...albeit only about a dozen or so. But, it must be said, of those with whom I have spoken, pretty close to all agree with me that hubs away from Centrum are under utilized as trading hubs. But we can certainly settle this with your empirical data, so do share. Thanks |
Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 11 Feb 2015 at 02:00
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Sorry. It took me a lot of time and effort to determine which local hubs are active. I am not publishing the hubs where I trade, the items that I trade, or the amounts that I trade. Most hubs are used for storage--which I think is a completely reasonable use model--and knowing the truly active ones is valuable information. Maybe you can get one of the big shot traders to tell you where they are, otherwise you will have to invest the time just like I did. I am certainly not just going to publish that knowledge on the forums so lazy traders can come and compete with me. As to your theory, I will clarify something yet again:
You have not made a compelling case for why more distributed trading would be attractive. I don't buy the churn theory. This isn't a game of lightning fast transactions. Even if it were, a few points of prestige can double or quadruple caravan speeds. Many markets are dead because people don't want to buy and sell items there, and that has very little to do with distance. Where people are willing to trade, the real traders of this game are often found. Centrum is by far the biggest active hub in Elgea. There are some good reasons for that. But it definitely isn't the only active hub, not by a long shot. And in many respects, it isn't even the most interesting one. Every day my inbox has a few dozen notifications from profitable transactions conducted all over the map, and that's an average day, and depends on what I'm currently buying and selling. I have 7 traders out there, and no orders in hubs where I don't have a trader. Hedgor's Haven is one, Centrum is another. Two traders are presently touring the Broken Lands. My customers know where the other three are. |
Posted By: ajqtrz
Date Posted: 11 Feb 2015 at 22:10
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Brandmesiter So hubs are active and you had to do a lot of work to figure out which ones are and which are not and we should just take your word for it? But it does seem to me that if you were to share that information we would all be able to increase our trading because we wouldn't have to send everything to Centrum. Of course we could all do, as you have done, build a lot of traders and send them out as scouts so we can find out what you found out, and maybe in the spirit of competition that's a good idea. But since you are basing your position on the evidence you have gathered, I'm not sure in the spirit of fair debate you shouldn't share that information. Sort of reminds me of McCarthy saying "I have right here in my briefcase proof that Communist have infiltrated to the highest levels of our government" then refusing to share that info for "national security reasons." Of course, thankfully the seriousness of this information you possess isn't nearly like that...but still, same principle. If you make a claim based on certain evidence you should be willing to put forth that evidence, that's just plain how things are done when you enter into a debate. If I've over-generalized your position, I apologize, but it still seems to me you are arguing for a centralized market because a centralized market offers more contact points between buyers and sellers than having those points distributed across all of the hubs. This makes sense to me as well. However, it is, I think, a short sighted approach as if the contact points were more evenly distributed they would remain the same number or more as more people would actually become traders (not needing to be close to Centrum to do so would encourage this, I believe) and the time it takes to actually deliver goods drops. As for the "churn" theory, denying it does not make it false. The logic of doing more transactions more quickly simply means more opportunities for profit. Thus, it is to a players benefit to distribute at least the more common items across the entire hub network. If I had your information I might be able to show that this is false under the current case because of some statistical anomalies or something, but since I don't we have reached the point of saying: "Is too!" "Is Not!" It doesn't stand to reason to me that more transactions spread across a larger geographic area would result in less trade. But your secret numbers tell otherwise? As for the crafted items, their centralization in Centrum is not the problem, as I have stated elsewhere, it's that the value of the crafted item is so low it is seldom used...or to put it another way, crafted items do not have enough use value to make owning them particularly rewarding. Thus, they appear worth a lot but are not central to the game. This is reflected in my first post on trading. Finally, you say that "there are situations where it makes sense to have particular markets be centralized" and then go on to list everything except for basic resources which, it seems to me, are very seldom actually bought and sold, but are distributed more because it's easier and faster to deliver them to people from a distributed network. Again, though, I don't have your numbers to examine this assumption. What I'm wondering is, since hubs are used for both storage and distribution and for trade, what items, if any, do you think would benefit being traded on a more distributed basis? Aj |
Posted By: Brandmeister
Date Posted: 11 Feb 2015 at 23:51
| I have offered my observations as a trader. Good day. |