improvement to traders?

[BalmoraPete]

Traders just sit in one place all year round and that's never going to change as they are. give them a vehicle with vertical take off like a hot air balloon, don't give it an interior that the player can enter because that would make things complicated. than just give them a building next to the landing area for them to enter to replace the wagon.

 

I've made my statement above, the rest of this post is unnecessary to read but i might as well express the rest of what i see wrong with traders and what i see as a solution.

traders sell items for gears. the only reliable way to obtain them is killing higher level drifters. so the temporal storm happens, you want the gears but you are playing vintage story because you don't like minecraft and refuse to build a mob farm. so you kill the drifters in a fair fight in an open area and get the gears but you need more for an item. the game logic is pushing you, why don't you just dig down to where high level drifters spawn and make an area to fight and kill them. how advanced do you make this fight arena? how is this not just a mob farm? why is the game built this way? combat is not great and doesn't need to be, its not the focus of the game. monsters should not drop anything. the game should not push you into fighting monsters for loot.

I don't know what the dev for vintage story has planed but the way i see it he has two choices. first is the animal crossing social game route where none of the mechanics matter and the goal is simply to make an aesthetic house. second option is add some colony sim development elements that tie all the mechanics together into a complete game. if npc are added for the player, a way of deploying them would be needed, a transport arriving to deposit them from above sounds like the only way.

if some kind of npc colony sim elements are introduced along with more advanced trading i can see a way where multiple dead end game mechanics could fix each other along with the gear economy. Rift ward a currently useless construct could designate a settlement zone protecting it from monsters and rift activity. first an area designated for landing delivers NPC, from here it could function like dwarf fortress, the original inspiration for minecraft before development lost sight of any creative vision. currently farming is disappointing, you have one harvest and you have so much food you never have to plant things again. survival is currently a tiny early game element that quickly turns into the same as minecraft where all you do is munch on something in your inventory one in a while. if you could take on npc workers for some risk reward at a drain on food stores you could keep the survival element of managing supply as a lasting mechanic in the game.

If all of the above is ignored and vintage story is just a game where you build a house and adventure i still feel like the wilderness still shouldn't have random guys in wagons claiming to be traders just siting around going nowhere without animals to pull the wagons to even pretend like they ever moved.

[Thorfinn]

Is the basic problem you are addressing that it's not realistic that the traders restock without leaving?

Re: gears, the more reliable way is to go caving and bring back all the aged crates you find.  You can also arbitrage goods from other traders. There are usually a few gears at every translocator you find. If you are the kind who likes to buy a lot of stuff, probably arbitrage is your best bet, but you can top things up selling things lke bread or clay or charcoal. Even tin-bronze tools. It's pretty easy to make enough on a pick to buy enough tin to produce another half-dozen.

Edited November 23, 2024 by Thorfinn

[BalmoraPete]

Yes restocking is a part of it but its more than that. I might misunderstand the lore for the traders but unless they are hunting for animal pelts or searching for artifacts to sell they shouldn't be spending so much time sitting around the wilderness. a closer to ideal mechanic for traders would be if they were more sparsely distributed around the world and only available for a few days before they move on. currently theirs way too many traders all over the map and they just sit around as an eyesore blighting the land with their presence. supposed dangerous world where you need to survive but its covered with guys in wagons that don't have food, don't care about the cold and monsters. you can just barge in and store your stuff in their containers and use there bed and they don't care. don't we need at least some attempt at roleplay from the trader npcs, some kind of attempt to make them seem like a living part of the world and not just noisy vending machines?

The wagons are never going to move. i understand the ship that's under development is a complex vehicle but the wagon is much more complicated object not to mention it would be piloted by an npc. It would also need animations for animals to pull it and so much more i could mention. a flying trader wouldn't have to navigate a complicated 3d block world, you wouldn't have to worry about the player or natural environment creating navigation difficulties that would block it. whats a more interesting player interaction?

1) Open map and see shape of trader, run to location and find its not the type of vending machine you want or lacks specific item, mark type of trader on map and run to next one until you get the item you want listed for sale. traders only buy and sell tiny amounts of specific items only with gears. lots of running around.

2) Spot trader in sky, check map, its moving in the direction of a landing location you've found so its most likely landing, vehicle is styled and color coded so you already know what type of trader it is. traders buy large amounts of goods related to their trader type but only buy and sell so much, can barter for goods. reputation system, if given good trades they will return on a set schedule that they tell you adding to an interesting extra game element.

Edited November 24, 2024 by BalmoraPete

[Maelstrom]

If a tree falls in the forest and no one sees it, did it really fall?

Or in this context, maybe the traders depart for other places when you aren't around but somehow know to be back there when you do show up.  Incredible critters, them traders, to know you so well you'd swear they're reading your bloody mind like you read a book!  

[schmuckersworkshop]

its sad that traders are so hard to come by when you need them to even advance the game. not only that you need one specific trader to advance the game. they seriously need to make them more available. 200 or even 50hrs of gameplay to find one is kind ridiculous. people do have lives lol

[Yerik]

On 11/27/2024 at 12:43 PM, Maelstrom said:

maybe the traders depart for other places when you aren't around

I think they use translocators hidden in their cart, or a small hand held one 

[Thorfinn]

4 hours ago, schmuckersworkshop said:

its sad that traders are so hard to come by when you need them to even advance the game. not only that you need one specific trader to advance the game. they seriously need to make them more available. 200 or even 50hrs of gameplay to find one is kind ridiculous. people do have lives lol

It's just a learned skill. Lots of people prefer the colorized map because that makes it trivial. But even with the standard map, before too long, you can recognize the pattern and guess where the traders are to within about 50 tiles.

If playing without a map, nerdpole one you found, go out to where you can just see it, (at least with my graphics settings) and there will be another one about there somewhere. Climb up 50-ish ladders and if you were headed in roughly the right direction, you should be able to see it. If not move one direction or the other, while still keeping the pole in range, and you will probably find it before too long.

The RNG can still get you, though. A couple games ago I explored for, I don't remember, 2,3 days, maybe, and found 22 without a single Treasure Hunter. As you can probably guess, he was the next one I found. I saw his light from atop a ladder around midnight.

I would mention that changing world parameters makes a huge difference here. Oceans more than about 30% this rarely works, though it may well be because a full third of the time, the RNG will have placed it in a tile that's underwater. Once 3 or so of those are "skipped" you are talking about variation of something like +/- 200 or more.

[schmuckersworkshop]

I'm sure there's plenty of methods to find a treasure hunter trader faster. I opened 3 new worlds and travelled around flying looking for traders. yes they are spread out somewhat in a common pattern. but having only 1 treasure hunter pop up for every 10 traders you visit isn't something that I would think most find enjoyable. I've actually talked to Tyron about this and he agrees that the randomness of the traders is a lot and the fact that the story progression requires the one trader makes it very difficult to continue the story if you wanted to. and with the new mounts being locked behind the archives. makes its even more important to find that treasure hunter trader. Tyron is looking into it and most likely will try to implement something like the welcome mats mod in the game to help bring traders around. giving you higher chance of running into that elusive treasure hunter trader. because the traders spawning are random. and more then a lot of people have had problems finding them, and with the story hinging on finding one, makes it a little less enjoyable. still a freaking awesome game and I love the community and creators! I appreciate all the suggestions though, i will have to give them a try. i know my visual settings aren't the highest so that might be part of the issue in finding them. but like you said the RNG of it is kinda killer 

[Guimoute]

On 11/22/2024 at 7:04 PM, BalmoraPete said:

traders sell items for gears. the only reliable way to obtain them is killing higher level drifters. so the temporal storm happens, you want the gears but you are playing vintage story because you don't like minecraft and refuse to build a mob farm. so you kill the drifters in a fair fight in an open area and get the gears but you need more for an item.

 

That's not how trading works. Monsters sometimes dropping gears is just a bonus. You are supposed to make high quality goods (leather and linen-based items, recurve bows, bread, tools) and sell them for gears. That's your main regular income. In addition, you can gamble a bit and find the routes that will give you profit on items you buy and sell, instead of produce and sell.

My main pattern is: produce items to sell to survival goods trader and treasure hunter trader, buy wolf pup from survival goods trader, sell pup to treasure hunter, buy vessels from treasure hunter, sell vessels to commodities trader, buy potash. It's super profitable with just those 3 in the cycles, and even the last one isn't mandatory.

You could also produce soy en masse for agricultural traders.

[BalmoraPete]

On 1/26/2025 at 8:30 PM, Guimoute said:

That's not how trading works.

On 11/23/2024 at 1:59 PM, Thorfinn said:

Re: gears, the more reliable way is to go caving and bring back all the aged crates you find.

so i hear people saying "the intended way to get gears is this way". i don't care. people don't generally care how the developer intended for there game to be played. did the minecraft devs intend for players to use create resource farms, to enslave villagers. did valve intend for players to launch themselves with prop physics and rocket jump thru levels at incredible speed? when i made this thread i was quite sure an optimized mob farm would be the fastest reliable source of gears but was always unsure because you could get lucky and find the perfect string of traders that if you ran between them with trades it could be faster. now with the new update the edition of the new shivers ends the questions. i see zero way traders are faster than a mob farm that filters out non shivers. have you seen how many gears the new high level shivers drop? I'm not saying people should build mob farms, play the game in whatever way you find the most fun. lots of the time games become less fun when you understand the most optimal way to play them. even thou it would be the most optimal i wont be cooking pies deep underground next to a mob farm because its just tacky and tasteless and reminds me of minecraft.

I think i failed to communicate how underwhelming and useless the traders are. the player has access to vast amounts of resources yet traders will have like 20 gears and will only buy and sell tiny amounts. the player wants to move thousands of gears worth of goods yet traders only deal in tiny amounts that are of no use. they are unreliable venting machines with limited stock. want to build something with wallpaper and other trader only building parts? you buy the stock, than sleep and afk for them to restock that correct item, over and over. just give us dwarf fortress traders that come to us, have reasonable stock and world building reputation systems. the dev can do better than these current "traders" we have, underwhelming hobo cart dwelling venting machines.

[Thorfinn]

The traders are not useless, @BalmoraPete. It's just that they are not game-breaking. The vision is not a trader sim. It's already quite easy to skip exploration and progression and skip straight to iron age. Heck, just trading wolf pups can push you from stone to iron.

[BalmoraPete]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

The traders are not useless

I agree, I seem to have exaggerated. they can sometimes be helpful to skip laborious repetitive tasks. assuming they stock the item you can just buy a bow, or skip the hassle of making lots of storage vessels. but its inconsistent, you cant roll up and just buy 500 lime to save yourself the time mining the stuff even thou mining the 500 lime is the same amount of labor as making the storage vessels or bow. I've seen lots of new players streaming the game, one upon seeing a trader they questioned, "why are they just out here". the traders are a thematic misstep, an incomplete idea. the dev could just commit to what the traders are, if the traders are meant to sit around and function this way stop with the carts, put them in houses. they can be hermits or criminals banished from society that trade you crafts or goods they have gathered. that would also explain why they cant buy and sell in large volumes and why that cant just give you a ride to the nearest town along with so many other issues.

 

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

It's already quite easy to skip exploration and progression and skip straight to iron age. Heck, just trading wolf pups can push you from stone to iron.

why not skip the age progression entirely, buy a tinbronze pickaxe, turn it in and go right for the resonance archives and bed cycle the Ender Dragon.

Edited January 28, 2025 by BalmoraPete

[Guimoute]

On 1/28/2025 at 5:36 AM, BalmoraPete said:

On 11/22/2024 at 7:04 PM, BalmoraPete said:

traders sell items for gears. the only reliable way to obtain them is killing higher level drifters

so i hear people saying "the intended way to get gears is this way". i don't care. people don't generally care how the developer intended for there game to be played.

You said you could only get gears by killing drifters.

I said you can get large amount of gears by trading properly.

You then exploded into a diatribe about what is intended and what is not. This is not the topic, there is no debate. The topic is you failing to understand that killing drifters  is a slower way of getting gears than selling high quality goods. Don't notify me again please.

Edited February 9, 2025 by Guimoute

[Thorfinn]

On 1/28/2025 at 12:58 AM, BalmoraPete said:

why not skip the age progression entirely, buy a tinbronze pickaxe, turn it in and go right for the resonance archives and bed cycle the Ender Dragon.

I know you meant this facetiously, but that's kind of what I meant. I already verified that the RA can be done with day 1 equipment. Chapter 2, no I can't do that with just stone spears and improvised armor.

But my point was it's easy to buy 16 cassiterite nuggets, which is all you need for a tin-bronze pick and anvil. The best all-around armor in the game, gambeson, can also be purchased, starting with a minimal stake -- a couple three aged crates and you are good to go if you treat the game as a trader sim.

[BalmoraPete]

I understand people got fixated with the long rambling low quality part of my first post for this topic, my fault. i did say "the rest of this post is unnecessary to read". the intended point was that traders are sold thematically as an entity that travels the world yet cant ever move because of the mechanical restraints from the game. them being able to fly would fix that. nobody cared to engage with that point.

ultimately i don't care if trading or killing drifters is a faster or slower source of gears, that was never my real interest.

yet with the new enemies, bell headed shivers spawn reliably and drop 5-7 gears, with a farm that sorts out non shivers blah blah blah. try and tell me that you can get johnas parts faster than this. my original point was that the player shouldn't be incentivized to farm drifters because it leads to mob farms and engaging in one of the games weakest aspects of the game that is combat.

this is all silly to argue about i will refrain from further posting.

2 hours ago, Guimoute said:

Don't notify me again please.

Bazinga

[Thorfinn]

I'm not sure anyone actually cares what the model used for the mode of transportation. Or even if there is transportation. There was a mod several versions ago that converted the wagons to cabins. I'd even be fine with them just vanishing when the player does not have eyes on. Come back in a week, no trader, no wagon, come back the week later and he's there. I'm also perfectly fine with just handwaving the whole restocking thing, i.e., the status quo.

What I was responding to was the background information you presented which led to your suggestion.

[Zero_]

On 11/23/2024 at 5:00 PM, BalmoraPete said:

Yes restocking is a part of it but its more than that. I might misunderstand the lore for the traders but unless they are hunting for animal pelts or searching for artifacts to sell they shouldn't be spending so much time sitting around the wilderness. a closer to ideal mechanic for traders would be if they were more sparsely distributed around the world and only available for a few days before they move on. currently theirs way too many traders all over the map and they just sit around as an eyesore blighting the land with their presence. supposed dangerous world where you need to survive but its covered with guys in wagons that don't have food, don't care about the cold and monsters. you can just barge in and store your stuff in their containers and use there bed and they don't care. don't we need at least some attempt at roleplay from the trader npcs, some kind of attempt to make them seem like a living part of the world and not just noisy vending machines?

Yes. Something more like the Wandering Trader in the other block game would be ideal. I have traders disabled in VS.

[ifoz]

Traders are confirmed to be getting a remodel soon, and I suspect a full rework.
The new NPCs in the game are far livelier than traders and can eat and sleep, so I suspect traders will gain these abilities, too. Maybe even expand out of wagons into little outposts, who knows?