jsc29
Active Member
Hello, I am new to FOE, but am a very experienced EVE Online player and a trader in EVE. EVE has the best and most sophisticated trading system of any game.
Forge of Empires has a trading system which is very primitive and inferior even to games like World of Warcraft, which has a relatively poor trading system (called the auction house). This is entirely unnecessary, because many of the improvements require little or no changes to the interface, or are otherwise relatively easy to implement.
1. Do not tax trades. I do not know why designers do this. You want to hamper trading? To what purpose? The reasons I have heard justifying taxing trades in different games, whether it be WOW or whatever, make little logical sense. Taxing trades just lowers the volume of trades and the use of that game feature, and there is no good reason to discourage people from using a game feature. If you want to make players work harder for progression, increase the costs of progression. Taxing trades is not the right approach to making the game harder, it just makes it less featured and less enjoyable.
2. Show all the trades. Currently the interface does not show the player's own offered trades. Doh. Who thought that up? A design error like this simply shows that whoever is designing the trading system needs to be replaced with someone who has more experience in real trading and economics. Another blunder.
3. Make your regions explicit. It is ok to regionalize trade, but you should inform the players who the heck is in their region. Who sees my trades? Is it neighbors and guild members and friends, or other people too? This should not be some big mystery. The composition of the trading region should be explicit and known to the traders.
4. Do not restrict trading ratios. The restriction of trade ratios to 2:1 is a completely hare-brained idea. I think the idea here is some kind of market "justice". It recalls the vulgar hatred of "profiteering" or "gouging". A common person hates a merchant because he thinks he is being charged "too much". Everything should have a "fair" price according to the average person. That is the thinking of the common man who has no experience as a businessman. Then, of course, what does the common man do when he goes to sell something? Charge an unrealistic price and complain that there are "not enough buyers". The laws of supply and demand are simple and have been well explained since Adam Smith: let the market set prices. That is what is fair and makes the best system. The 2:1 restriction is dumb at multiple levels. For example, it prevents most trades from widely separated ages. If I want to trade 100 Lumber for 10 Basalt I should be able to do that. Making a dumb restriction like this is just de-featuring your game completely unnecessarily.
5. Get rid of the merchant trades. The tiny number of people that use such offers does not justify inclusion of this artificial feature. The trading regions should be large enough that the economy can be fully player supported. Player run economies are the funnest way to do trading in a game. If you think you need system-generated trades, it means your design or design ideas are flawed. In EVE Online originally a large chunk of the economy was system-generated. Over time, they just phased all that nonsense out and made it a completely player run economy and the game was much better because of it.
6. Allow players to trade coins for goods. The current role of coins in the game is stunted. I am not sure why you want to restrict the game to a barter system. I suppose it prevents gold farmers from exploiting the game, so there is a logic there. However, the price you pay is that the game is a lot less fun and versatile. You may want to consider this change. If you make this change, the market interface should allow both buy and sell orders. Don't make a mistake like WOW where there are only sell orders allowed.
Forge of Empires has a trading system which is very primitive and inferior even to games like World of Warcraft, which has a relatively poor trading system (called the auction house). This is entirely unnecessary, because many of the improvements require little or no changes to the interface, or are otherwise relatively easy to implement.
1. Do not tax trades. I do not know why designers do this. You want to hamper trading? To what purpose? The reasons I have heard justifying taxing trades in different games, whether it be WOW or whatever, make little logical sense. Taxing trades just lowers the volume of trades and the use of that game feature, and there is no good reason to discourage people from using a game feature. If you want to make players work harder for progression, increase the costs of progression. Taxing trades is not the right approach to making the game harder, it just makes it less featured and less enjoyable.
2. Show all the trades. Currently the interface does not show the player's own offered trades. Doh. Who thought that up? A design error like this simply shows that whoever is designing the trading system needs to be replaced with someone who has more experience in real trading and economics. Another blunder.
3. Make your regions explicit. It is ok to regionalize trade, but you should inform the players who the heck is in their region. Who sees my trades? Is it neighbors and guild members and friends, or other people too? This should not be some big mystery. The composition of the trading region should be explicit and known to the traders.
4. Do not restrict trading ratios. The restriction of trade ratios to 2:1 is a completely hare-brained idea. I think the idea here is some kind of market "justice". It recalls the vulgar hatred of "profiteering" or "gouging". A common person hates a merchant because he thinks he is being charged "too much". Everything should have a "fair" price according to the average person. That is the thinking of the common man who has no experience as a businessman. Then, of course, what does the common man do when he goes to sell something? Charge an unrealistic price and complain that there are "not enough buyers". The laws of supply and demand are simple and have been well explained since Adam Smith: let the market set prices. That is what is fair and makes the best system. The 2:1 restriction is dumb at multiple levels. For example, it prevents most trades from widely separated ages. If I want to trade 100 Lumber for 10 Basalt I should be able to do that. Making a dumb restriction like this is just de-featuring your game completely unnecessarily.
5. Get rid of the merchant trades. The tiny number of people that use such offers does not justify inclusion of this artificial feature. The trading regions should be large enough that the economy can be fully player supported. Player run economies are the funnest way to do trading in a game. If you think you need system-generated trades, it means your design or design ideas are flawed. In EVE Online originally a large chunk of the economy was system-generated. Over time, they just phased all that nonsense out and made it a completely player run economy and the game was much better because of it.
6. Allow players to trade coins for goods. The current role of coins in the game is stunted. I am not sure why you want to restrict the game to a barter system. I suppose it prevents gold farmers from exploiting the game, so there is a logic there. However, the price you pay is that the game is a lot less fun and versatile. You may want to consider this change. If you make this change, the market interface should allow both buy and sell orders. Don't make a mistake like WOW where there are only sell orders allowed.