The builder/owner, as usual gets a key to their new, named market stall. They can enter inside. When a person is inside, the stall is "manned" by the shopkeeper (or anyone else with the key to get in) and can be operated by punters from the outside. On the vehicles/buildings page for the punters, market stalls have a special "Deals" or "Offers" button.
Clicking this takes you into a completely new screen. On this screen we see:
- the contents of a unique editable note (cannot be picked up) that resides inside the market stall. This is where the owner can write anything they want, include HTML and pictures like usual, to brand the appearance and message of their personal market stall. Here they advertise their main deals, requests etc. The same thing could be implemented as an interactive object (brings up the note editor for that note) inside the stall also.
- everything placed on the floor of the market stall "vehicle" by the owner becomes the shop's inventory. To this end, dropping an object while inside a market stall looks the same to players, but is handled a little differently than usual by the server: when you drop something while inside a market stall each object (only while it's on the floor of the stall) gains an extra button called "Price".
- The "Price" button when clicked displays a simple screen where you are prompted to
"Please select the resource type and amount you are asking in trade for this item. "
Resource: [listbox of possible resources]
Amount you ask for: [ ]
You first select from a simple dropdown box the resource type, i.e. iron, and then you enter the exact amount you want to price your dropped item at. Suppose you had 1000g of potatos dropped and you set the asking resource type to iron and the amount to 10g. Now, people outside who click the "Deals" button of your fledging new market stall will see (centered) :
John Doe's Lil Seaside Shoppe!
~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~~~
- Selling 1000g potatos for 10g of iron - [PURCHASE]
The potatos are the only item the shopowner has priced so far, so that's all we see appearing in the list. Other items might be on the floor of the stall, but they don't appear yet.
Of course, the point of this screen is to click on [PURCHASE]
This in turn displays to the buyer a very simple screen similar to current pick-up / drop item screens:
"1000g of potatos is being offered in exchange for 10g iron.
Enter how much iron you want to pay: [ ] "
Now let's say I only had 3g of iron, and so I enter 3g. My 3g iron goes into the inventory of the shopkeeper (inside of his market stall), and, only 300g of potatos go into my inventory. So you see, you can this way make very convenient partial purchases without tedious back-and-forth that can take days only to determine who has how much of what and what they want for it.
Key points of the suggestion which are sure to be contentious in ensuing discussion:
- This is not automation, because nothing is automated. Without a shopkeeper character inside, the market stall is inoperable.
- Our objection to automation is not a religious, uncomprehending hatred of it, but a very specific kind of objection: we don't want anything in the game which (like NPCs or other automations) isn't player-made and player-operated, because including such things would ruin the "purity" of Cantr as an intersting experiment in society-simulation powered by real people, not by pieces of AI code. This suggestion in no way impinges on that purity.
- Estimated programming complexity? Moderate. Expected effect on the game world? Difficult to comprehend, with deeply reverberating ramifications throughout, and all extremely positive. The crucial benefit is not even that you can trade much more efficiently, but that newbie characters and the generally dispossesed, suddenly see how much STUFF is actually available to them - if only... they had a little iron, for this and that. This directly motivates them into procuring whatever is needed to procure the items they want. Innumerable other advantages, especially for shops that sell RolePlay items like jewelery and clothing are obvious; at last, people who want something can find it in your shop for themselves, instead of you having to continuously find new people who want something you made. Seeing a ring for sale, may give a young lovelace character the idea that it's the exact ring he should give to his beau, and launch a whole epic story about how he jumped out of his skin to get it, and then Nick MacGregor looted the shop and killed everyone including the beau.
- Important limitations. Items can't be traded into the stall from the outside, this is obvious from the suggested implementation. Only resources, basically anything measured in grams. For trades where you give the shopkeep your sabre and he gives you 1000g potatos, you'll have to make old-fashioned verbal arrangements instead. Other limitations: when you as the owner of the stall set the asking price for your items or resources, it's 1-per-item. That is, you can't sell the same 1000g of potatos for 10g iron and for 15g diamonds at the same time. I imagine that'd be too complicated, requiring weird programming to do. So we kept it simple, one associated asking price per item on the ground is stored only. Picking up the item from the floor of the stall clears the associated asking price from the database, so it has to be set again. This way shopowners are able to reset/change the prices or types of resources they ask for at any time.
- Shopkeepers themselves are easily able to sell any item, at any price they decide, expressed in any resource they decide! They can sell tools, weapons, clothes, and even notes! If the item is not divisible into grams (i.e. a sword), then you must pay the full price or you cannot buy it.
- Stalls are protected by a lock like usual buildings or vehicles and hence can be broken into, repossessed, renamed etc.
- We need to discuss a reasonable approach to limiting the proliferation of market stalls, so that they do not overload the building/vehicle list, or a way to somehow display them as their own category. The original idea calls for static stalls, but perhaps, since they are vehicles, they could be made mobile (very slow variety). This way, town leaders who are unhappy with rampant capitalism in their town, for instance, could order all shop owners to get the heck out by dawn, or else.
- If we decided market stalls should be moveable, then it will be important to make them extremely slow, less than a human on foot. This will make it inefficient to trudge your stall from town to town. Much better to build a proper rickshaw or van, if you want to work this way. But on the other hand, for the trader who stays in the same town and perhaps buys wares from the travelling ones, the market stall can't be beat.
- Sitting inside a market stall establishes that character as an active trader, point of interest for anyone visiting by sea or road vehicles. That man in his twenties would've looked like nothing special to you before, but since he's in a fancy market stall, you know he knows something or someone, and can help you with your needs. What's he trading? just click on "Deals" and you'll see what he has on offer in the stall, but also importantly his HTML message. Currently towns are littered with useless notes of the form "John's trade goods..."; you pick it up, and want something, but who the heck is John? It turns out he was someone who lived during the years 845-967... and on the Dutch island. With the stall's HTML message you read on the "Deals" screen, you know exactly who, what, and can even get (some of it) right now.
- Sophisticated roleplaying can arise when traders inside stalls combine using the stall with oldfashioned barter exchanges, allowing furious haggling and price wars between neighbour shopkeepers to occur. (it's easy to be dynamic and in response to arising situations, such as bitter scoldings from punters or other traders, to change the asking price of anything you like, when you the owner are inside the market stall)
- I would suggest several different types of stalls, made of varying materials, including for example gold and diamonds for the fanciest. The function of having the fanciest stall would be that, the fancier you are, the closer to the top of the list of local stalls you appear. No sorting by alphabetical name, to prevent "_111AA Shoppes". A higher weight allowance for the fancy steel-requiring stalls permits the trader to have a bit of a respite from daily restocking duty. By the way, I have tasted some of this kind of activity in other games, and it is EXTREMELY ADDICTIVE, moreso by far than any kind of monster-hunting. With a little imagination, we can call forth a reasonable range of a few possible market stalls. From simple and rustic (build requirements: wood, hide) to amazingly fancy (build requirements: windowglass, silk, "stainless" steel).
- Oldfashioned trading isn't going extinct from this, on the contrary, it gets a greatly needed boost. Many town owners/leaders, I think, will set up Market Stalls and have someone sell stuff that normally just rots uselessly inside of their buildings, without anyone even knowing about its existence (typically, the town leader meant to do whatever with it, but... they just forgot). A variety of tools and "rare" resources will this way become available to people who need them for something.
), I was definetly for the idea.
