Trading system improvements

[player1]

Hi Styg,

I really like the game, including current trading system.

But I think some improvements can be made, without sacrificing its depth.

Here are some ideas.

1) Have "usually buys" description for each merchant, which would describe what kind of goods they would sometimes bye.

Currently, player only knows what merchant would buy at this moment, and not what all kind of items merchant could require later. By formalizing merchant roles this way, it will be easier for player to decide what kind of items to stash in vicinity for the future, when merchant requests get refreshed.

I think it would be easy to implement (merchant essentially already have those descriptors, they are just not exposed in the UI), and would greatly benefit the players, decreasing some tedium of the trading aspect of the game.


2) When in settlements, show player stashes as part of the inventory during trading.

Idea would be that when inside settlements, any stashes, that are owned by player, appear during trading.
This would streamline trading aspect of the game, without loss of depth and player would appreciate lower tedium during trading.

This would, of course, require implementing some kind of mechanic, that would mark specific container in the settlement as player stash, as well as what maps are part of the settlement.


3) And for the last, something more ambitious.

What if there is "global" trade screen for each settlement? Idea would be to list there all merchants that player discovered from the settlement, and buy things directly from there, without needed to manually go to each merchant. Only requirement would be for the player to be inside the settlement (no buying from Junkard, if in SGS).

Idea of this enhancement would be to additionally reduce tedium during buying/selling phase of player adventure.

I understand this one would be more tricky to implement, and personaly, I would rather get in-game map feature first, before this. 

[Elhazzared]

Funny enough this is sorta what I sugested a lot earlier during development but was ignored. It was only slightly different but it would make perfect sense.

Instead of selling to shopkeepers you have a central repository which is the only place where players can sell and the central repository buys everything that the players have to sell. In turn and just from a sense perspective, shops buy whatever they need from this central repository for their shops.

In short, the player would only need to go to one place to sell everything which effectively worked like a distributor warehouse in today's world... This would also allow to remove sale limits because from a sense perspective, the warehouse is always stocking up on things as it sells everywhere including possibly trading excess with other settlements for things that they need in their stocks.

[player1]

^That is interesting idea, but from the current system standpoint, it would remove money limits that each trader currently has.

And role-play wise, no merchant is able to buy everything, even if discounted, since they need to keep some cash, to keep their business afloat. Thus, traders buy only some stuff and are prepared to only buy for limited amount of cash from the player.


Thus, in my 3rd suggestion I did not touch trading system at all (which I generally like), I just suggested what is essentially an UI change. Instead of having player walking 15-30min around various merchants during their stuff, lets have single screen for the same thing and save player engagement for important stuff. 

[Elhazzared]

True, but what is the money limits that merchants have other than annoyance? instead of going to every single merchant that you know to sell everything, you just do it all in a fast and convinent way. less time wasted running around like a headless chicken, more time exploring and doing missions.

Also this is why the central repository works. They are not exactly a merchant. Merchants buy from the central repository but this is only background explanaition to have things make sense, merchants don't need to have money anymore at this point because you specificly sell at the central repository and specificly buy at merchants.

The central repository would be something that is super rich, it buy cheap from everyone and sells at a higher price to all merchants and everyone else in the base that isn't just a common person, for example, it would sell stuff for the labs or stuff for the manufacturers in the base too. They also trade with other settlements which A, increases their profits and B, explains where new stock of things you didn't sold to the central repository, comes from... In terms of comparison, a merchant deals in specific ware they sell, so they serve a very specific part of the population, not to mention, they are not selling for the scientists and any other parts of the settlement that need materials. They don't even sell guns for the settlement security personal. The reason they don't is because they just can't beat the prices that the central repository offers on everything. So you have the merchants that sell to a few commoners of the settlement and people passing by vs the central repository who literaly sell everything to almost everyone (just not to the people the merchants are supposed selling to). The disparity in profits os of course huge so they would have a lot of cash to literaly buy anything the player character throws at them.

Ultimatly this would be great because there are 2 things that hinder this game (to me they hinder it so much that I don't even play it ever since they patched this new system in the EA). one is weight limit. While from a realism perspective it makes sense, in reality all it does is force to go back and forth to sell. It's much better if you can just loot all and sell all a it becomes more immersive than stoping midway through a mission just to sell stuff, fortunatly there is a way to get infinite or nearly infinite carry weight already so that's good. The last is the merchant buying limits. While the current system makes sense, the fact of the matter is, you either throw away stuff or you have to spend days of your real life to sell everything. The later is obviously going to make you quit out of sheer foredom and the former basicly tells you. Don't explore and don't do sidequests. There is no point in looking for more loot if you're going to throw it away at the end.

While I believe that overall Styg and his team have done a great job, I think he really underestimated how important loot is in these kind of games.

[player1]

True, but what is the money limits that merchants have other than annoyance? instead of going to every single merchant that you know to sell everything, you just do it all in a fast and convinent way. less time wasted running around like a headless chicken, more time exploring and doing missions.

My idea of single screen for all merchants was to reduce that annoyance, without changing actual trade mechanics. I actually really like depth of current system. Including player using stashes to keep non-sold heavy stuff, they could not pawn off yet.

Essentially, only thing removed would be long walks between merchants and stashes, since everything would be performed from the single screen.

.

Personally, what I dislike regarding central repository idea is that it does not fit the setting. Something like that would work in more organized union like environment, not in current "everyone is on their own" setting. Plus it would require strong economy.

In fact, if there is expansion to Underrail, I would not mind if there is a faction in which internal trading works like that, if it fits their flavor.

[Elhazzared]

I do believe it fits. Settlements trade between eachother, otherwise settlements wouldn't keep getting new supplies in enough quantities... They aren't out there alone and there are alliances so to speak of settlements bunching up together eitehr by force or willingly.

Would it make sense that not all settlements would work like this? yes but small concessions can be mad in favor of better playabillity. It certainly makes more sense than opening a window showing everything that every merchant has and ultimatly that might be harder to implement when you consider that some merchants are in another area although part of the same settlement.

[Waladil]

What if some of these were only implemented later in the game, specifically after the PC gets their house? After doing some of the initial renovations, allow the PC to hire a valet who can, among other things, act as a personal shopper. Put stuff into a designated box in the house, and "Jeeves" (Because all butlers must be named "Jeeves") both runs the things to the various merchants around Core City to sell them and maintains a catalog of everything the merchants have to sell.

Or, in programming non-lore terms:
Put a merchant in the PC's house that will aggregate all the other merchants' inventories, and a box that attempts to sell its contents every time the merchants restock.

[player1]

^I kinda like the personal shopper idea.

With up to date catalog of all merchant stores (that are available to the player). Then player makes the shop list, and after some time items will be delivered.

And everything that player wants to sell can be put in "on sale" box. Then, based on the game trading systems items will get sold slowly over time to merchants that have cash and desire those items.

Of course, the shopper would need to be payed daily wages, of course.

[Elhazzared]

The only problem I see with that feature is that it works only very late game. Until then the player still has to put up with the currently very incovininet system. I find it unecessary to only give a conviniency right towards the end of the game rather than at the very beggining.

[player1]

Yeah... I agree, it is kind late game option, while some way to reduce tedium with item trading should come earlier.

.

Anyway, first thing that should be implemented is some way to include stashes in the merchant screen.

Idea is to keep encumbrance important when going into field, but when in friendly territory, going between stashes and merchants is just extra unneeded tedium to the gameplay.

[phobos2077]

My suggestions for trading system:

1) Add junk dealers. They should buy more item types in greater quantities but at a much lower price. This will allow players to get rid of the stuff they don't need with less hassle. I often find myself in situation where I have a lot of stuff and I can't sell it all (some things like throwing knives, nets, etc. cannot be sold to anyone, AFAIK), so I end up doing a lot of micromanagement just to free some space.
Unlike many others, I like games where inventory is limited and you need to manage it and take only what you really need. But this system works better when there are places to easily stash or dump all the stuff you don't currently need (like companions or car trunk in FO2) without having to move halfway across the world.

2) Increase amount of weapon frames in shops or tie their level to player skill level somehow. The problem is that I can find better weapons than I could craft almost every time. This defeats the purpose of crafting weapons as a way to get some advantage in equipment, because you will rarely find a weapon frame that is good enough to be better than your current weapon and easy enough for you to craft (unless you put insane amount of skill points in Mechanics early on, which will cost you greatly).

[player1]

Let me iterate on my original stash idea.

Why to not have it a bit abstract?

Lets say when in settlements, in trading or full controlled zones, stash is always available as secondary inventory, to represent that player has nearby location to stash all heavy loot.

When moving between settlements, it moves with player. This would represent player boarding cargo to the boat or train and then stashing it inside destination settlement.

When in wildness or hostile territory obviously stash should not be available, and that should be where inventory and weight management should take the place.


This would greatly streamline trading process without loss of depth.


EDIT:
It does kinda resemble stash from the Pillars Eternity, with dumbing down elements removed.

[ShadowRun]

1) Add junk dealers. They should buy more item types in greater quantities but at a much lower price.

I like it.

Why to not have it a bit abstract?

This is certainly a clean implementation; people picking up the game would "get it", without needing to flag various barrels as "stash" etc.

In Torchlight, the player has a pet. Most of the time this is a combat buff / offensive weapon, but the player can forgo that for a time by loading up the pet with all the junk items accumulated in the dungeon and send it off to the shops to sell everything. After a time (proportional to how many maps away from the settlement you are) it returns with the cash.

Now, if you were able to use Hacking to reprogram a robot encountered to fill such a minion slot (my preference would be the remote-control bot from the battery recycling plant), you could right-click its inventory icon to deploy it to the ground; pack its bay with a "to stash" basket and a "to sell" basket; then it can trolley off and do your shopping for you while you remain out in the field (or in your character house, while you make dinner IRL, etc.). This would need balance limitations: you couldn't accumulate more than one bot; it wouldn't do anything in combat if you did deploy it during combat; etc.

That would give you delayed access to cargo hauling, because the map where the bot is would become accessible once you've cleared the tunnels, but not so delayed as to be end-game exclusive. It's also an area that two of the SGS NPCs already explicitly tell the player to go to (fetching battery plans; helping Camp Hathor) so it rewards players who check in with the NPCs to follow the progression of story, rather than just running off in a random cave the moment they can.