Player shops are really hard to pull off. There either a cluster fudge lag fest. AH work best cuz they take player shops and meld them together into one easy finding tool. So the middle ground would be NPC traders. Stay with me here, ill give ya the quick version.

For example lets take the simple farmer:
Farmers make the raw material -> Company's buy them to make a product -> Sell them to consumers for profit

Simple enought, now lets MMO it:
Players farm mats OR crafters make material -> Place them for sell with a NPC trader -> Consumers comes by to browse what the local traders have for sale and when purchased the profit (after npc cut) is sent to you.

There can be a whole area in the main cities with these set traders inside there shops or tents, so its organized and not cluttered. One section for vendors selling raw material, another for crafted goods. Crafters can be know for selling to one specific shop and even pay a little extra for a shop keeper to advertise there product in a /say when ppl interact with the trader.

That would be my idea of player shops that work , gives you the feeling of bargain hunting while giving freedom to the crafters and economy.

Quote: kingmutez on 04/25/2012, 01:50 PM - view

I don't understand why people think they're difficult to pull off, or why an auction house and player shop can't coexist together. They've worked well together for almost ten years in FFXI, and have been doing fine in K-Tera for over a year now. Obviously they can coexist (and even compliment one another) perfectly fine, and as far as being "hard to pull off", Tera already had them (and continues to have them in other countries).

I do love the sandbox element of player shops, but I think for Tera an AH works better. Crafting isn't complex enough to justify a player needing his own market. An AH reduces the lag and keeps the prices in check, it's also a hell of a lot easier to buy and sell goods this way. It was a good call.

Quote: Bissrok on 04/26/2012, 08:37 AM
I'm not sure what the complexity of crafting has to do with player shops. There are still plenty of things to buy and sell.

And it's player shops that help keep the auction houses keeping the prices in check. Without the shops the market is too easy to control. Someone can use the auction house interface and easily track and buy low selling items and re-list them at a higher price. I would argue that the "hassle" of browsing all the player shops helps keep discounts safer longer, giving legitimate shoppers a greater chance of finding bargains before AH vultures do.

The only way I would support having these player shops is that if their items automatically were included on broker searches. When I search the broker, I want to see everything for sale.

Also, as mentioned before, they definitely need their own designated area in every village/town.

Quote: Cerec on 04/26/2012, 06:42 PM - view
Going by that philosophy, how would you justify the existence of the Trade channels? Are you monitoring all the buy and sell orders taking place over chat throughout the day? Because you can't use the broker search tool to browse through them. Why expect anything different from player shops?

Some would argue that the disconnect between the auction house and the player shops is a strength, not a weakness. Besides the reason I already gave in the post above yours, I'll give another example as a reason:

One player recently commented that they had set up a potion selling shop on the Island of Dawn to help new players. I believe he said the potions were priced at one coin each (the minimum price). Now, had those potions shown up on an auction house search tools, the entire stock probably would have vanished in moments to the wrong buyer.. likely a reseller. It was the remote location of the shop combined with the its exclusion from broker searches that allowed those potions to benefit the audience the shop owner had intended.

Quote: Cerec on 04/26/2012, 06:42 PM - view
They already do. Player shops were restricted to specific locations designated by the developers. They could not just be placed anywhere in Velika, for example.

Man I miss these things. I want my dedicated pet on standby in secluded areas offering to buy things that drop off nearby mobs and would otherwise be vendored, selling scrolls and pots in return. :c

81 pages of good suggestions and feedback :/

I really wish Knoxxer would comment on this or something maybe throw around some ideas and go from there.

Have pets default filter set to off for everyone.
Have a limit on pets in city's / safe areas.

Limit what the pet can say via message. Only have the message say what items are in the playershop and price of them. So no RMT activity could ever happen.

Something could be done :C

Leave the selling of items (player wants to sell) to the Broker.
Put the player pet shops up as a cash shop item.
Limit the pet shop to just purchasing items (player wants to buy n number of x item).

glad this petition failed, now i can list way more items on the AH which is way more useful than stupid shops all over the world no one can find what they really need...