HWS Feature: NPC Trader

Hey guys,

Jascha was so nice and coded a new cool feature:
##NPC Trader!
So let me introduce this quick:
NPC Traders are around the universe - for now in the NPC Economy and NPC Military Orbit in the center.
It is a zone like the zone for the Elemental Bank.

As soon as you go in you have the possibility to buy something from the NPC Trader (you see a welcome message). If you type tn:? you see the Trader NPC option commands. If you type tn:info you see your Trader NPC money / inventory credits which is needed to buy the packages.

So if you enter the NPC Economy soon and go to a promoted Sprout shop you can type ā€œtn:buy:1ā€ to buy 1 sprout packages to a given price.

Your turn! Set your packages + prices!

So now you come into play! :slight_smile:
Please let us know what packages should be available and at which prices someone can buy it.

Game rules:

  • 1 package can contain max. of 49 slots. You donā€™t have to fill all slots. Just calculate the prices accordingly. Try to stick to a theme. Like Sprout Package. So there could be every sprout, pots, water, lamps, etc. in it. Donā€™t mix sprouts with weapons for example :wink:

  • Please think very good about the prices. You know the marketplace offers better than we.

Bonus:

  • if you have a cool trading station with some shops inside where we can place the zones/traders in it (with signs or text headlines etc.) you get a one time NPC trade for free! :slight_smile:

In the meantime I prepare this new feature in HWS Connect so you can see what NPC Trader offers what at which prices! :slight_smile:

We hope you enjoy this feature.

Your HWS Team

Amazing game changer. With this you could eliminate fa:supply all together. I will work on some packages asap.

Two questions:

  1. What is the intended focus (i.e., target need) of this feature?
  2. Will this feature have the effect of reducing player interaction?

Good point.
My initial thought of the feature was to not have too much credits / spend credits in a good way and motivate people to explore the universe.
It is basically like a shop. You can go in and buy something. Sure you can also use ebay, ehm I mean player market but sometimes nothing is offered what you want.

Sure they can be seen as an adversary but for that we can discuss their prices and quantity. For now they are not amazon who will conquer the universe x)

Additionally for now we teaser them in two orbitsā€¦ but who knows where we place them tooā€¦ maybe you find them in HWS 4.0 in a hidden spotā€¦ undergroundā€¦ with alien artifacts or more?

No, seriously it is a first step and can be optimized a lot later on.

Iā€™m primarily a Trader and these some ideas I have. Prices would need to be tweaked.

  • Market prices on EU and NA are different.
  • Will there be a cool down on the TN:buy tool?
  • There are many millionaires that will be filling up their OCD soon. lol

update: greatly increased price table from original post.

Thatā€™s sort of what I assumed. Of course, we also do have the ability to place buy orders in the Marketplace. An NPC market offers the advantage of being immediate.

One thing to keep in mind regarding pricing: the NPC markets will have the effect of setting a ceiling on any commodities offered through the marketā€¦ Some of the Marketplace prices (NA server) are already well above prices Statler is recommending for some items.

thatā€™s why I said the prices would need to be tweaked. and EU prices are much higher then NA.

You are correct though, no one will ever sell for more then the Trader NPC.
I had initially thought about spiking the price x2 to make this a ā€œpremium serviceā€ the important thing in my post is the packages. Price needs to be tweaked.

Perhaps a gold standard?
Based on the amount of gold and coin in the market the ā€œCentral bank of Rexā€ will have to adjust the base %.
We know how well that works :smiley:

The 3% daily compounded interest makes this market a wash anyway. I was making 30k interest the first day.
a ONE Millionaire with a level 10 Gold AM makes 90k daily passive income.

Perhaps the best thing to do is set these prices as a premium for end game players. Question is are the server independent? If so will NA players buy from NPC and use the Cross Server warp to sell to EU?

Thanks.

Spending my days thinking on how to make ā€œstuffā€ travel among the stars, an idea crashed with my single-neuron brain.

Is it possible to give NPC Trader to Players?

Long long long time ago i used to play Ultima Online, there you can have your personal NPC Trader, all youā€™ve to do was to drop items in the NPC inventory and set the price.

Is it possible to make something like that on HWS? You can place your NPC Trader wherever you like or we can put all of them in the Elemental Market area, but to make them work, you have to PHYSICALLY bring the stuff to them, with all the risk that this can createā€¦like getting banged from a Pirate nearby.
Same risks for the buyerā€¦youā€™ve to come there with the money, buy things and get back home without getting banged.

But the question is still if is possible to give a ā€œSimple playerā€ the permit to ā€œload & manageā€ an NPC Trader. Is it possible?

Well technically yes - easy peasy. Why? Because we had this already before Eleon released their version of marketplace :smiley:
Would be just a click for us to activate it again. We could implement it to HWS Connect again. A local marketplace.
We deactivated it in favour of the Eleon marketplace. Since we wanted that you use this and give feedback so Eleon can make it better.
But just after the Eleon Marketplace we got some opinions that they want our marketplace back :wink:
Anyways if all of you want it back - let us know.

The NPC Trader has a different approach though. More like a shop with never ending supplies - as long as you have credits. This creates some tactical new ways of gaming before you start a fight for example.

Oh good! Somehow I missed the ā€œold marketā€.

Letā€™s see what the community things about that then!

Obviously, if we go ā€œbackā€ to the old way, we have to get rid of the new Marketplace, or make it really really really low profit, for quick and safe trade (something like 50% fee).

We can turn it off yes, but canā€™t manipulate it like the fees or offers you can trade there. :weary:

Turning it off completely would cause a shitstorm I think, but our marketplace can be tweaked like we want. So like the NPC Trader: your feedback is welcome!

How would this NPC look? Is it an avatar which i could put in my base, maybe the United Space Traders Destiny Marketplace (and Holiday Resort)? and who would sell my stuff when i am offline? Or would it work over HWS Connect?

For now a Zone like the one in Elemental Bank. You enter and have then options which package you want to buy.
The packages are listed in HWS Connect + prices.
About your personal NPCā€¦ wait a bit and you will see :wink:

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I didnt see the old marketplace but it sounds awesome. Implement say three trading spots where players can go to put offers and buy them. Then disable current market place and thereā€™s no need for this NPC trader.

For this game to evolve more towards an MMOx then it needs more player interaction and more player engagement. Give pirates targets, create a marketplace (Iā€™d like to see longer travel to rare resources tbh) such that Traders/Alliance who risk things out in PvP space can turn a tidy profit providing key essentials at point of need for a decent mark up and travelling back to ā€˜safeā€™ space with high value materials means a tidy profit.

Right now, the current market breaks the game more than it helps, if you have a better solution then put it in and turn the crap off. Also, no NPC trader making it easy street to stay in PvE land.

Yes, local marketplaces would be bigger fun.

I agree the big disadvantage:

  1. the chat will be spammed a lot again. Back in the days with our marketplace we had ~40 players. Imagine it now with ~100.

  2. HWS Connect will be mandatory for it. I would love it but some would want the ingame marketplace GUI back.
    Dunno.

Maybe we get some more feedback from others here and decide then for HWS 4.0.

Oh, iā€™m quite sure that if we get rid of the ingame Marketplace this forum will be plenty of shitloadsā€¦but personally i like direct democracy and if the community votes, then every ā€œerrorā€ can be justified and discussed.

Maybe we should put the idea ā€œBack to the old MPā€ in another thread for better visiblity?

wowā€¦ and the HWS go on!!! Great guys, awsome! Rexus, iā€™m your fan. This server not even seems to be just a empyrion game severā€¦ it is a Empyrion Version, a entire standalone version of the gameā€¦ you guys rock!! Gratz!

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Just looked at the NPC on HWS connect, its defo a really cool feature!

Just wondered if there was a max amount of packages? only ask because the package on offer for only 10,000 was so cheap! buy 5 of those a day youā€™d never worry about having to get anything ever again lol

I would of thought that package would be worth more like 50000