Improvements to the Trading System

[DarkGold]

Yesterday I was listening to an interview with Tyron from October last year and I heard him discuss some thoughts on improvements to the trading system. https://youtu.be/5uvFrR9ZtV4?t=2677 44:37, Tyron said:

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you could see an overview of all the traders, what they sell, what they buy, and you could quickly check which one sells low and another one buys high and that's how you could make a living [...] something I have in the back of my mind since the last 9 years.

This was exciting to me, since this aligned with one of the pieces of feedback I had when I first started playing the game. https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/20317-v121-a-new-players-thoughts/?&_rid=941726#findComment-106624 I said:

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It would be interesting if there was some way to remotely check the trader's info. A board that one could add them to somehow once discovered (and maybe some other condition/s met). Or a telephone like device one could contact them through to receive this info remotely, if certain investments were made (maybe late game tech).

And in a reply...

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It's the kind of thing I imagine the player might have to invest in to gain a benefit from. Make one fancy piece of tech you leave at your house, and another fancy piece of tech to give to individual traders who you'd like to keep tabs on. Or potentially do some quests for them to help them fix up/install something.

So I wanted to make the improvements to the trading system I was eager to see a little more visible, rather than another thought among many in a thread about my impressions as a new player in version 1.21. I know 1.23 is supposed to be focused on combat, and beyond that, work is focusing on chapter 3, so I'm not sure when the trading system is next likely to be a priority, but here are my thoughts for when that day eventually arrives...

I'm a player who is already relatively invested in the trading part of the game and I use a spreadsheet to manage information about the traders in my game. It looks like this (but much longer):

Explanation for various things in the image:

• I've got trader types color coded by the color of the map icons I'm using for that trader type. Names in pink are traders who are living with other traders (I found a group of 3 traders living together, marked their group in pink). Because I have several of the same types of traders on the map, I also record trader coordinates, so I can remember which trader is which and easily find them on the map.
• I have a second spreadsheet that has the trader info from the wiki and populates the drop down lists on this spreadsheet, and uses the drop down selection to retrieve the price range (PR) an item can sell at, so I can see at a glance where the current price sits compared to its range.
• I keep a bunch of the items I am interested in buying or selling listed, then when I visit a trader, I fill in the price ($) and number (#) of any of those items that trader is currently buying or selling. I also track how much money the trader currently has in their wallet (Wallet) and when their next delivery of stock (Delivery) is. I might clear the info out when the Delivery expires, or keep the Delivery and Wallet there for reference, if I am going to need to wait for the trader to save up more money before I try and sell to them again.
• Item color coding just makes it easier to pick circular trades or specific items (like temporal gears, things I can't make because of my class) out of a list.

I'm not looking to completely replace my spreadsheet; it works for me. What I am looking to do is remotely check the info that I am filling in manually, so what is currently being bought and sold, Wallet, $, #, Delivery. I want to skip traveling to the trader to get this info IF I have invested in a way to get this info remotely. I want to earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work, then am happy to still travel to make all the trades I want to make before Delivery changes. I see the travel problem as something that can be solved separately (because there are things like base return teleporters in the game and I see travel infrastructure as a separate system I could invest in that could compliment this system).

I see 2 ways I could earn the ability to skip the information gathering leg work of traveling around and visiting traders in person:

1. Do quests for traders to help them improve their bases. Then they will grant me this ability now that they have the working infrastructure and as thanks. Their factions could come into this (you could advance a factional relationship) or it could be a process for each individual base/trader. I could see this being something you could achieve without being further along than iron progression.
2. If traders fundamentally lack the technology to communicate at distance, then we could use Jonas technology to craft items that would allow this, and gift those items to specific traders to gain this ability. We would have a piece of Jonas tech that we can use to contact any of the gifted items (and therefore the trader at the other end).

There could even be some kind of combination of the 2; we could get a blueprint for the tech by sufficiently raising our standing with a trader/faction.

This is my biggest desire for the trading system. All other desires are secondary to the earned ability to remotely check trader info, because I find the system relatively engaging and useful already, the information gathering is just a little tedious.

One other thought I have had that relates to communicating at a distance, but I don't think is necessarily going to work for the trading system, is homing pigeons (or other birds that could be used to deliver information, like ravens). I don't think they serve the kind of instantaneous communication the player would be looking for, but they are something that relate to the communication problem that I thought was interesting. Maybe birds aren't even able to navigate in this world full of rifts?

Edited 6 hours ago by DarkGold
Improved formatting

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, DarkGold said:

homing pigeons (or other birds that could be used to deliver information, like ravens).

Yes, absolutely. I’d love to have a rookery or something at my base.

[DarkGold]

2 hours ago, Facethief said:

Yes, absolutely. I’d love to have a rookery or something at my base.

I see you've thought about this before! And I'm not the first to want a system where we can get information from traders remotely.

[LadyWYT]

4 hours ago, DarkGold said:

One other thought I have had that relates to communicating at a distance, but I don't think is necessarily going to work for the trading system, is homing pigeons (or other birds that could be used to deliver information, like ravens). I don't think they serve the kind of instantaneous communication the player would be looking for, but they are something that relate to the communication problem that I thought was interesting. Maybe birds aren't even able to navigate in this world full of rifts?

Homing pigeons are a great idea, but I would also suggest a bell and resonator, or at least a similar receiving device. I think only the luxury traders have resonators now, but it would be an interesting late-game option to build some sort of receiver device to gift to a trader in order to allow a player to check their stocks remotely. In order to check stock though, the player needs to have crafted a bell. The bell can also serve as a handy warning device, as well as a way to communicate with other players and certain plot-relevant NPCs.