pawn shop limit per character and not overall limit.

[Hellblazer]

Ah thanks for the clarification. I thought he was talking of merchants buying  from the pc and selling back to other pcs.

If this was a possibility, lets say you have a reseller. He could hold a max of 200 items, and from those 200 items, no same item could be held more than two times, unless the 200 cap has not been reach. Gives the possibility of a wide variety of what he could sell back to other pcs. A server restart would simply wipe all items from the reseller and we start a new.

Hempstead, Vehl, Mariners hold, Leringard, Prantz, Arnax, Dalanthar, Miritrix, Hilm castle, could be the only place with such vendors.

just a thought beside tweaking the pawnshops. So the higher level drops could be sold at a very very reduce priced to those vendors who then could mark up the pric back to the original lens value.. or something like that.

[Script Wrecked]

You're talking about the system of NPC merchants who sell things for PCs, right?  The way it worked before was that each character had his own merchant, so if it were reintroduced there would be a merchant for just about every character.  And, unlike oxen and horses, they stay put whether the character is logged in or not.  That's the point; the merchant is there to sell stuff in lieu of the character even when the player is unavailable.  

If it were limited to one per city, how would we choose who gets to place his merchant and in which city?  If it is set for a small limit per city, how do we determine who gets the juicy, high-traffic locations?

The actualisation of inventories seems to create more problems than its worth. How about a (text) list of things for sale? And a quantity and a buy/sell price, a bit like an exchange.

[Hellblazer]

So the item would only be created if it is picked from the list, and not held into an IG inventory. like?

[Script Wrecked]

Two possible implementations:

• The item is destroyed when added to the list, and recreated when purchased. This is open to abuse by people setting the sell price exorbitantly high, and recouping the item when they need it. This could be counteracting by an immediate selling fee as a percentage of the sell price (whether or not the item is actually sold *ouch*).
• The item is stored in persistent storage, like a chest (like it would be now and the server subject to the benefits of that). The Exchange does not have to actualise the item for it to be viewed from the sell list. When it is bought, it is transfered from the seller's persistent storage to the buyer.

[Hellblazer]

what if the sale price of an finished good could only be set to ~20-30% up or down of the lens value, wouldn't that prevent the abuse you speak of?

[Script Wrecked]

That depends on how much of a free market you want.

[Skywatcher]

With the teams limited time to make changes and the volunteer work on the MMO, is this really the issue that we want them to be working on when an alternate solution is just to have people travel a bit further to fine an available pawn shop?
 
 *shrugs*

[Lynn1020]

I actually had some plans for something like this for the last update, but I realized to do it right, I needed more time than I had.  

So best I can say is: stay tuned

And for those of you who have fabulously rich characters already, stop plundering the pawn shops already!  

With the teams limited time to make changes and the volunteer work on the MMO, is this really the issue that we want them to be working on when an alternate solution is just to have people travel a bit further to fine an available pawn shop?
 
 *shrugs*

With the discussion here I think it wouldn't hurt to have it looked at.  If the team decides they do not want to then that is fine and no harm done.

If Dorg decides it isn't worth messing with then I'm sure Layo will go will survive.


Also if nothing else it has been a good discussion that may help with the MMO.

[Dorganath]

You think with the new servers and stronger pcu of today's systems, that system could be tried out again, at a certain degree? With a limit of item one merchant could carry im thinking.

To avoid commenting on everything below this suggestion, let me just reply here:


This most likely isn't going to happen, meaning it is extremely unlikely we'll bring back player merchants in any form.

[Script Wrecked]

NWN Layonara might be a good opportunity to test drive any economy simulations for the MMO (this may or may not include a trading (exchange) facility).

Of course, that is heavily dependent on how much effort it would take to retrofit it into NWN.

Code is code, right?

[Dorganath]

NWN Layo has a completely different economic model than the MMO....which is to say, we actually have one defined for the MMO and it works into many, many aspects of the game, from more specifically controlled loot drops to crafting and so on.  It would be more than just code. It would be a significant change in the way-of-life across the server and throughout many systems, not just the bolt-on of some small portion of it.

I might agree with this back when we were putting v3 into place, but at this point it becomes a bit too much to try and squeeze in.

[darkstorme]

You think with the new servers and stronger pcu of today's systems, that system could be tried out again, at a certain degree? With a limit of item one merchant could carry im thinking.

Bear in mind that NWN (neither server nor client) is not optimized in such a fashion that new hardware provides a stunning improvement.  Some of the limitations (object creation, etc) cause lag no matter how many cycles per second a CPU is capable of.

Also, sometimes, for no apparent reason, a server will begin taking up cycles until it's running at 100% of CPU capacity.  I'm not sure what precisely causes this, but it's indicative of a certain instability in the NWN server that is independent of the ability of the hardware on which it runs.

[Drizzlin]

Ah thanks for the clarification. I thought he was talking of merchants buying  from the pc and selling back to other pcs.

If this was a possibility, lets say you have a reseller. He could hold a max of 200 items, and from those 200 items, no same item could be held more than two times, unless the 200 cap has not been reach. Gives the possibility of a wide variety of what he could sell back to other pcs. A server restart would simply wipe all items from the reseller and we start a new.

Hempstead, Vehl, Mariners hold, Leringard, Prantz, Arnax, Dalanthar, Miritrix, Hilm castle, could be the only place with such vendors.

just a thought beside tweaking the pawnshops. So the higher level drops could be sold at a very very reduce priced to those vendors who then could mark up the pric back to the original lens value.. or something like that.

Just what Gun said. Every PC had the ability to place a merchant and they remained if you were on line or not, meaning you could have tons of merchants causing insane lag.

[lonnarin]

That was some evil lag.  I remember way back then when I first started here that it was the major turn off for me on this server.  Every time somebody walked into the merchant hall, the entire server would lag-hop into a fury of death tokens.  Once they got rid of the player merchants, I made this my primary and only server

[davidhoff]

Seems to me the easiest and best is still as the name of the thread implies....limit each character to say $1000-2000 at each merchant..period.

[Guardian 452]

I was digging today on the forums after every pawn shop I saw was broke.

I was thinking along these lines of a pawn broker that would re-sell what was sold it them. But im sure the lag and coding wont allow it. Its basically what we had before with the player vendors. Perhaps a pawn broker that wont resell silly things like salt, skelly knuckles and such 1gp junk.

Personally I have had the pawn window open and watched people RUSH to sell things after a reset... and id see things sold....dang! thats cool... wouldnt have minded having that.

G-452

[Guardian 452]

If people had followed the rules in place. That was and still would be an awesome system. It was the abuse that killed it. selling 327 salts and 211 stirge wings.... please!!!

Im all for in game and in person sales. My character Andraia had a grand time shopping the Angels Guild yesterday.... but that still isnt always possible, to meet when you want something.

We are getting closer though... with the chests that keep track of all going in and out... (love that whomever all did it!)

That was some evil lag.  I remember way back then when I first started here that it was the major turn off for me on this server.  Every time somebody walked into the merchant hall, the entire server would lag-hop into a fury of death tokens.  Once they got rid of the player merchants, I made this my primary and only server