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Grand Exchange
Topic Started: Feb 6 2009, 02:26 AM (345 Views)
Muentai

Failscape (AKA Runescape) has a system called the Grand Exchange which is a truly amazing idea and that, in my honest opinion, should be seen in a LOT more MMO's.
Back when I used to dev my own server, I made an extremely rough beta version of this idea and it seemed to be working quite well. However, I didn't develop it further due to lack of interest on the server and due to a number of bugs in my source.

The Grand Exchange is basically a single place (Custom Free Market?) where players meet to.. well.. exchange stuff.
But here's the catch..

It's all done through NPCs.

For each and every item, there is a set market price saved in the database (Helps control hyper-inflation and such) and a stock count that goes with it. If someone wishes to sell an item, but finds no buyers, they can sell that item to the NPC for the current market price.
1 gets added onto the stock count for that item.

So, the next person comes along, wanting to BUY that item, and see's that it's actually in stock.
They don't have to look around for a seller or smega for 20 minutes "OMFG B> BLAHBLAHBLAH", they simply buy it from the NPC for the current market price.


The only tricky part of this is controlling the inflation. Items cannot simply stay at the same market price forever, and I highly doubt the mods have the time or patience to tweak the market prices every day based on demand.
Which is where the auto-inflation script comes in (And, unfortunately, is where I began to see bugs in my beta.)

This script will detect the most activity (e.g. most sales/purchases of an item) and modify the market price ever so slightly depending on the item.
Some items will be reduced, others will be increased, and the script could be edited to make some items more/less sensitive to inflation depending on it's rarity.

Whilst there are FAR better ways to control inflation, this is the script I began to work with. I couldn't really think of any other way and the way that Runescape manages theres is quite a bit different.


I thought this was quite a good idea, but with such a tightly woven community here, it might not work all too well.
What are your thoughts?



Before anyone goes screaming about how this "isn't possible", you're wrong. It IS possible, even a lone developer like me managed to throw together a rough (working) beta of this idea.
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Zeek
Just another average member
I'm totally for really anything that stimulates economic activity. The issue here is that a system like that may only work for scrolls or throwing stars, not for different items that may have different stats, scrolled or unscrolled.

There are also tons of items. I don't know how many items there are in Runescape, but even a list of every scroll would be quite a list, and I'm somewhat concerned that if such a system grew too big, it would put a strain on the server when it recalculated everything. Plus, things that almost never appear in the economy like certain scrolls in Mushroom Shrine would end up horribly inflated, because there may be demand for the item but almost no supply, but very few people would want to actually pay huge amounts because the effect isn't worth it. For example, 60% Overall INT scrolls, which actually do drop, suddenly started selling for 60m each at one point because people really wanted them but nobody was selling, despite that it was way more than the generalized price based on two points worth of INT on an overall.

Now you might say that the temporarily inflated prices should be the new price, but only a few of us caused them to skyrocket in selling value for a week or so, and we were willing to pay it. Currently, I offer people 50m each for any 60% Eye Accessory for Accuracy scrolls, even though the +2 Accuracy if it works isn't really that valuable, but just to get people to make the effort to hold onto them and sell them to me instead of throwing them away because almost nobody wants them and they would otherwise take up a slot. But after a week and probably two dozen spaced apart Super Megaphones, I've only found two for sale. Should more people with unscrolled raccoon masks sign up to buy them and nobody sells them to the system because they simply don't appear that often, the system might end up pricing them at 300m each, which would be absurd and a price I don't think anyone signing up for it would pay.

I still personally like the system of player-made NPC shops, along with the Owl of Minerva search engine. As I mentioned before, an automated pricing system isn't going to be able to get an accurate reading when someone decides to be the one person selling 21 W.ATK Stormcaster Gloves, which quite frankly, ended up going for just over the maximum amount of mesos that one character can hold. Logic would dictate that any 22+ attack gloves for sale would be valued higher, which just isn't possible through sheer mesos and an automated computation of meso prices. With player shops, the person with the 22 attack gloves can advertise them and the current offer of 2 billion mesos and 5 chaos scrolls and leave it like that for other people to see and leave bids on if they'd like.

Perhaps, you could simplify things to an auction type deal. Long ago, the best way to buy and sell items on global servers was through the use of basilmarket's auctioning pages, where you could search for items many different ways, and players could list the item's stats and put a starting bid and say for how long they wanted the auction open. The only issue after that was contacting the other player in order to do the transaction, but if this were a part of the game it could happen automatically. The only difficult part would be organization, because a website is much easier to navigate and sort through than to tell an Owl of Minerva that you want to buy a level 90 bowman overall, because there could be a 30 DEX Blue Ades for sale, but you searched for a green, red, or dark one.

Okay, I'm done for now.
Edited by Zeek, Feb 6 2009, 03:06 AM.
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Faint
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in my honest opinion, should be seen in a LOT more MMO's
sounds no better than an 'auction house' of some sort which just about every subscription MMO has.
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LuckRoll

I agree with this idea. ^^

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Quesenek

that sounds like a good idea but... wouldn't it just be easier to have an auction house like in wow?
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Reiatz
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It sounds really good but FM shops easily do the job once they can be fixed.
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Skeem

An auction house would be good, Auctions are like perfect markets xd
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Muentai

Of course, the easiest option would be to just fix Player Shops. I was just throwing this idea out there since it's been hanging around in my head for a while now. After all, that's what the Suggestion Box is for, right? ^^

An auction house would be insanely difficult to implement. While possible, it'd probably take a few skilled coders several months to perfect, time which IMO would be better spent developing other things.
Not to mention the strain it would place on the database, constantly updating with newly added items and newly added bids, keeping track of every little thing going on would be a major pain in the ass. ;x

Still, I'd love to see some sort of improvement in the economy, since it's 100% up to the community at the moment leaving items extremely vulnerable to hyper-inflation. I've seen a good few number of people trying to push the price of chaos scrolls to 200m+, when I think 120 - 150m is just about a perfect range. (<<< Just as an example)

So yeah, Player Shops would be pretty sweet, but I still think a system where the market is controlled would be a lot better. :)
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Vincent
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this is a great idea it is way better than player shops
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wietepiet
~Never Alone~
Yeah this idea is great.

But instead of some market price you could make it the price the seller wants it to be.

On the other hand: Shops do the same thing.

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Gotejjeken

Automatic price floors and ceilings would be a great idea, as it'd help prices drive towards an equilibrium. Especially with crafted items, where they actually have to be made, so each individual component could factor in to the sellers decision. I think it's a good idea in addition to player controlled shops, it'd help to stem supply and demand a lot.
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Smiley
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(´ ;ω;­`)
This looks extremely complex, especially given my crappo attention span.

This is an awesome idea, and if implemented, will give Exia an actual "economy" to speak of, especially with the meso rate down to 10x. However, yeah, MapleStory already has shops. All we need is them to work for basically the same effect.
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Reiatz
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Now that she's on the staff, maybe Dylan will let her test it o.o
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