Suggestion: Dynamic Merchants

[BraveSirRobin]

If you read the latter part of my proposition BSR, you'd see a suggestion there that these merchants do not include the upper most treasury (the stuff people sell for insane prices). Even if they were implemented and did include that upper treasury, finding where they are, capitalizing on it with money in your pocket, and actually getting one of those high end items to spawn in their inventory is highly unlikely. There is that inherent risk of carrying all that coin on you for so long hoping to get lucky, too. I also suggested these items would be inflated by a percentage as well, so it's not just a freebie.

And as for preventing their farming, I understand people spent countless hours running around the module farming every spawn, but dungeons don't move the last time I checked. I suspect that anyone trying to get these merchants to spawn, or look for them will be spending unreasonable amounts of time doing so, even as a monk. There is no guarantee they spawn in the first place, which keeps it more in line with a rare happenstance encounter.

Alright, well if the uppermost treasury isn't disturbed, it isn't as bad. But, the way that NWN is scripted, you have an issue with the limited time these lads exist. Once a barter window is started with an NPC, it remains both open at the appraise skill result and open, even if the NPC is removed or despawned. It can result in people finding NPCs and leaving the window open and exploiting the system, allowing them to either send people back to get more money, or to call over friends to fund them OOC. It's the kind of exploit that would be terribly difficult to crack down on as well, as in most cases it won't be an egregious thing, but purchasing several moments after the NPC has left.

In the worst cases, it can result in flooding the market with items, unless the NPC only sells one of each during his spawn times with a limited inventory.

[DaloLorn]

If you read the latter part of my proposition BSR, you'd see a suggestion there that these merchants do not include the upper most treasury (the stuff people sell for insane prices). Even if they were implemented and did include that upper treasury, finding where they are, capitalizing on it with money in your pocket, and actually getting one of those high end items to spawn in their inventory is highly unlikely. There is that inherent risk of carrying all that coin on you for so long hoping to get lucky, too. I also suggested these items would be inflated by a percentage as well, so it's not just a freebie.

And as for preventing their farming, I understand people spent countless hours running around the module farming every spawn, but dungeons don't move the last time I checked. I suspect that anyone trying to get these merchants to spawn, or look for them will be spending unreasonable amounts of time doing so, even as a monk. There is no guarantee they spawn in the first place, which keeps it more in line with a rare happenstance encounter.

Alright, well if the uppermost treasury isn't disturbed, it isn't as bad. But, the way that NWN is scripted, you have an issue with the limited time these lads exist. Once a barter window is started with an NPC, it remains both open at the appraise skill result and open, even if the NPC is removed or despawned. It can result in people finding NPCs and leaving the window open and exploiting the system, allowing them to either send people back to get more money, or to call over friends to fund them OOC. It's the kind of exploit that would be terribly difficult to crack down on as well, as in most cases it won't be an egregious thing, but purchasing several moments after the NPC has left.

In the worst cases, it can result in flooding the market with items, unless the NPC only sells one of each during his spawn times with a limited inventory.

Teleport them out of range. Removing/despawning the NPC might not do anything, but they don't like it when you walk out of range - I figure they won't like it when they walk out of range, either.

That being said, the original suggestion did seem to have been along the lines of having a limited inventory, full of random (but thematically appropriate) treasury items, so yeah, there wouldn't be much danger of flooding the market.

[Sinthepie]

Here's a problem with dynamic merchants- people with large amounts of coin will buy -everything- off of the dynamic merchants, leaving nothing for others and then will sell them at a higher price. It is something that has happened before with many trader pcs where they would sell something cheap, only to have it resold for an absurd amount of coin somewhere else. So while the idea is good, it would be abused for profits, and even if you limit it to 1 item per pc somehow, there are groups of people who will simply all run over to the npc wherever it is and buy one item per person until the npc is out of items

[Hypatia]

By that logic, only rich people would win the lottery, after all they can afford to buy all the tickets. But that’s not what we see... mostly it’s poor people who play the lottery and rich people spend their time in more efficient ways of making $.
The people with the high levels and mountains of coin are more likely to find those items in a dungeon because the odds are better. Finding one of these traders sounds more like a lottery and there is too much chance involved. So wouldn’t the uber rich high levels prefer to roll the dice In dungeons where they know what they can expect to find, and leave the low to mid levels to searching out those rare merchants? They didn’t get rich by being inefficient with their time after all.

[MAB77]

To be frank even "lower tier" inventory would not be possible for a wide variety of reasons. The sheer size of the treasuries themselves, how they are maintained and the way merchants work in the toolset, just to name a few. This is also a niche we keep for you, the players. There is a plethora of decent loot drops items for sale already thanks to PC merchants, there is no reason to give you guys artificial competition. When you think about it, PC merchants do exactly what you suggests. Merchants you can encounter randomly anywhere and with a variety of wares from the treasuries. You can't have better dynamic merchants than that.

Now the concept of wandering merchants with unique wares is certainly interesting. But each merchants would have to be carefully designed to fit and enrich the setting. Each would require its own set of unique items to sell. If you'd like to try your hand at it, you need but just take the toolset and play with it. See what you can do then submit us your proposal. Remember though NPC merchants do not sell magical wares or at least only limited ones in power.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Two things I have to contest:

1) I do not believe the player merchant economy/niche will be as greatly affected as it's made out to be -- and definitely not negatively. Already, most player merchants spend a lot of their playtime in hubs and accept IC letters over the forums to arrange trades. Very rarely does any kind of bazaar event come up, and the availability of goods here makes these attractive to buyers anyway. You go to them with all your money, knowing you'll spend some of it. Just because player merchants can go and AFK in random parts of the world nobody plays in doesn't mean they will. So their niche is pretty well protected: they are around usually every day, selling not only looted but crafted items.

To reiterate, the idea is to have a merchant show up at random times and random places for an expressly limited time. Let's say they are found as often as every 4-5 days, selling just 2-3 items. This is not how PC merchants operate, and they certainly do not set up shop in the forgotten parts of the world waiting hours to surprise whoever comes by.

2) I do not like the idea that the current server environment dictates future changes. This notion that players are purported only to take certain routes, only travel with a few thousand gold on them, and generally treat the open world like it's just a loading screen between RP locales and dungeons -- if that's all true, that is, in my opinion, a problem, not a blueprint that all suggestions should be made in strict obedience to. The meta should be challenged not by whimsical suggested changes to player tendencies, but by changes in the module. Players will adapt to the changes and just maybe find a reward for their efforts. Or they won't, and they won't be affected.

[MAB77]

You missed the points of everything I said.

It cannot be scripted as proposed. You can't have a merchant store that will just randomly pick 2-3 items from a selection of numerous containers each holding hundreds of items.
You can have chests with random items, you can have NPCs with random treasures on them, but the merchant stores must be predefined. It's a game engine limitation. Even if we could, irrelevant to server economy, this would add nothing new to the game. It is redundant from the get go. We're contemplating countless of hours of efforts for something that brings very little to the module and would only use up more server resources. The return simply does not justify the investment. But do not take my word for it, I do encourage everyone to pick up the toolset and tinker with it as to see what is, or not, possible and how long it takes to implement. It's an humbling experience and curbs enthusiasm like nothing else! I'm still reeling from my own over ambitions projects myself (though I'm glad to report they are progressing well).

The closest we can achieve is to design an NPC with a defined merchant store inventory, and have that NPC show up randomly for a spell in certain locations. That is reasonably possible. But like everything we add to the module. it has to have a purpose and have a good reason to be there. To me that means it must offer something others cannot offer.

[SardineTheAncestor]

You missed the points of everything I said.

Let's slow down a little, I just haven't responded to the scripting viability part of it yet. We're talking design theory here, not game limitations just yet.

You said this:

When you think about it, PC merchants do exactly what you suggests.

I responded with this:

This is not how PC merchants operate, and they certainly do not set up shop in the forgotten parts of the world waiting hours to surprise whoever comes by.

This is what I want to get across mainly. They operate in different spheres entirely. One stays in hubs primarily, the other is found out in the world at unexpected places & times. One has a massive inventory, the other has just 2 or 3 choice items.

The closest we can achieve is to design an NPC with a defined merchant store inventory, and have that NPC show up randomly for a spell in certain locations. That is reasonably possible. But like everything we add to the module. it has to have a purpose and have a good reason to be there. To me that means it must offer something others cannot offer.

I personally don't think they need unique items or really good prices to be attractive and worthwhile. Just finding one could be a big break if you can justify shelling out.

It's a shame that the game limitations get in the way.

In this case, the alternative I'd propose would be along the lines of what you said, having a bunch of different merchants with cloned settings, giving each one a bunch of different locations to spawn into, but each one has their own items Merchant A has items ABC, Merchant B has items 123, and so on. It's moderately "exploitable" in that you know each merchant will always have the same items. But that's not necessarily an OOC detail. Each merchant has his specialty, they just don't come around very often.

So even if people catalogue all of it in google docs and spread that info around, there's actually finding them consistently. If the system can't be manipulated by player input, and one only spawns every few days to a week, I feel it just wouldn't be harmful even if the mystique is totally lost on some.

After a full year of every weekly merchant being found and having their entire stock (3 items) bought up -- which is a very generous guess, since people don't walk around with 150K at all times, not even split among their group, right? -- 152 items have entered the hands of players, as opposed to the thousands that players loot and sell to each other yearly.

Not all of those items are forever - some will be healing belts, quintessences, disease/poison cures, etc. that get used up. Some will be items that grant feats or metamagic, or lower spell slot items, which not all characters keep forever, and an excess of them is not harmful but you might really need one and not want to hit the dungeons that drop them even semi-reliably like 4 times. Some could be Disguise items. These merchants could even sell rare crafting reagents normally only found in loot or something to that effect.

I'm going to assume also that each individual NPC's chance of spawning can be modified somehow, and of these NPCs, only a few out of the dozens in the rotation need to carry anything quite like a resistance belt, or an eye of Ra, greater Geb/Mask. Those merchants in particular could have their prices tuned up a bit more, while the other more common stuff doesn't need to be any more or less affordable than it is when found on regular vendors.

It does also function as a gold sink, since many dungeons are completed without spending any gold, but to acquire these items you must pay. Some money does end up leaving the server forever as a result.

--

Just to be clear, I would be totally willing to generate identities (names/descriptions/dialogue) and even learn how to set up a few of these merchants, but I'd rather be certain that this suggestion is not rejected first.

[zDark Shadowz]

Theoretically;

The waypoints set for the merchants where they would spawn to would be the store, and to use the CreateItemOnObject script when the store is opened as a OnceOnly kind of check (an integer switch would do the trick) would be run against the treasurey or a shortlist of the treasurey maybe using the case functions to roll against a random table multiple times to fill up the store with random loot after it is generated.

Then there's just the matter of how the creature would spawn in in the first place. You dont want players trying to abuse the trigger.

Maybe each merchant trigger is given a date and time each reset with a randomised variable. So a merchant in the area could be narrowed down to spawn in somewhere during autumn, but no one knows which day in autumn, and if the server crashes or resets that specific day they will appear for would alter. You may not see them at all.

I know I could make a mess of it to try and do it, I've used case functions before and the createitemonobject function is the correct function, but making it clean/efficient is another thing entirely, and compatible with the module without inducing lag. I am out of practice.

Could the existing treasure scripts just be pointed at the store waypoint & its inventory instead, doing its split value thing to work out and generate items onto it? So the merchant is just a larger chest you buy from.


EDIT:

Oh wow no actually the random items are actually very easy to do to add to a merchant after a store has been created, you can literally copy and paste the script label that happens when you open a treasure chest onto the Merchant Properties, Advanced, OnOpenStore script of the Waypoint the store is set onto.

Adjust it so it executes a few times and that's your random items sorted. Doesn't need anything special in the merchant dialogue to do. At least that's how it's working in the toolset for me when I looked at it, I'd adjusted the script to remove the once only check, just commented that part out and opened it several times and there's several different items now beyond what was originally set up on the store.

But the store is also selling Gold as an item, lol. So it'd just be a dev thing rather than a player-toolset-playing thing at this point to make treasure chest script variants that are compatible with a waypoint, remove the gold option so people aren't buying sums of 200 gold for 1gp, and that's it. And deciding when/where/how the merchants will appear, but all the coding from that can likely be spliced from whatever you use to decide how herbs spawn somewhere.

[BraveSirRobin]

If you read the latter part of my proposition BSR, you'd see a suggestion there that these merchants do not include the upper most treasury (the stuff people sell for insane prices). Even if they were implemented and did include that upper treasury, finding where they are, capitalizing on it with money in your pocket, and actually getting one of those high end items to spawn in their inventory is highly unlikely. There is that inherent risk of carrying all that coin on you for so long hoping to get lucky, too. I also suggested these items would be inflated by a percentage as well, so it's not just a freebie.

And as for preventing their farming, I understand people spent countless hours running around the module farming every spawn, but dungeons don't move the last time I checked. I suspect that anyone trying to get these merchants to spawn, or look for them will be spending unreasonable amounts of time doing so, even as a monk. There is no guarantee they spawn in the first place, which keeps it more in line with a rare happenstance encounter.

Alright, well if the uppermost treasury isn't disturbed, it isn't as bad. But, the way that NWN is scripted, you have an issue with the limited time these lads exist. Once a barter window is started with an NPC, it remains both open at the appraise skill result and open, even if the NPC is removed or despawned. It can result in people finding NPCs and leaving the window open and exploiting the system, allowing them to either send people back to get more money, or to call over friends to fund them OOC. It's the kind of exploit that would be terribly difficult to crack down on as well, as in most cases it won't be an egregious thing, but purchasing several moments after the NPC has left.

In the worst cases, it can result in flooding the market with items, unless the NPC only sells one of each during his spawn times with a limited inventory.

Teleport them out of range. Removing/despawning the NPC might not do anything, but they don't like it when you walk out of range - I figure they won't like it when they walk out of range, either.

That being said, the original suggestion did seem to have been along the lines of having a limited inventory, full of random (but thematically appropriate) treasury items, so yeah, there wouldn't be much danger of flooding the market.

The best that could be done would be to create dozens of copies of the same merchant chosen randomly with different templates of gear on them, however the suggestion to teleport won't change the trade screen. I believe you have to actively walk away to do that, and an NPC/merchant will ring as, 'Busy,' if they are scripted to walk away and a player chooses to talk to them. People do this all the time in Vallaki with the ferries, for instance.

[SardineTheAncestor]

Trade screens are exclusive from dialogue, you can't be talking to an NPC and trading with him at the same time.

You could hold the NPC in one spot if he patrols but then he would teleport away anyway and the dialogue would disappear.