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Traders Overhaul Discussion


TheVampire

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Was working today and started thinking about what exactly was the turn off to playing Epoch for me. I love the community and a majority of what the mod experience offers, but I don't find myself playing vanilla at all. I came to the conclusion that the biggest reason to me is how the traders currently are.

I think the way the traders only sell sold items is great, but it causes a problem. A vanilla server starts with empty traders, and that doesn't make sense. Why organize a whole trader city if all the trader has to sell is a few drinks and cans of meat? If there's a trader city then the traders obviously have goods to sell.

It also doesn't make sense that every trader buys the same items at the same server prices. That's not how life works. Instead the traders should be varied. One should sell mainly guns and related gear, but if you are really hurting to sell an item, he will take it for cheap enough.

Another gripe is that there are too many traders on the map, which leads to the inventory problems traders have anyways.

So what do I suggest? Traders in cities should specialize in specific goods and give the best prices on them, yet still buy everything else with extra tax. They should be split between cities. Roaming traders should remain the same, but offer worse prices than the specialists.

Thoughts?

 

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I see your point, I don't mind them the way they are as long as I can say how many traders, and what goods they have and currently you can. My problem is the way I add goods. It is not good the way it is now. putting items in and then adding the number all the way down at the end of a very long statement is prone to errors and just a major headache. Plus I have to add them in the DB or kill the trader which isn't easy in a safe zone. The file epochconfig.hpp should not be the place to add items to traders. It should have its own well organized file like cfgpricing.hpp.

If I could sell AI vehicles at epoch traders that would be the win. I could ditch the BlackMarket traders.

I have two servers and I have on many occasions had players login message that the black market kills the game then logout.

The prices varying across the map is nice but lets get to the bigger issue, a rework of the trader system is overdue!

 

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The Trader system has been updated a lot in the last months!

Sure, we are not finished with it and I have also some more ideas, but I think the current state is much better configureable then a half year before.

AI-Vehicles can already be sold after this Update in the experimental files: https://github.com/EpochModTeam/Epoch/commit/561012b09cd89b0588a7d91a90faabaa10fc297a

What I take from your statements, we should add / change the following:

- Move the config into a separate file (where it doesn't matter if Server side in epoch_server_settings.pbo or Client side in the mission file)

- Define Trader types for:
   - Static Traders
   - City Traders
   - Random Traders

- Add separate Start-Items for these 3 Trader Types

- Change the Start-Items arrays to: 
{
   {"Item1","count1"},
   {"Item2","count2"}
};

Defining, specific Trader for specifed Items is a bit more difficult. There are some things to clearify first:
- If you have for example a "Weapon-Trader", can you also sell other items there?
- If so, what would we then do with these sold items? Delete?
- Or can you really only deal with Weapons there and you have to drive / walk to several Traders to sell your looted Stuff?

 

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For example a military weapons trader.

- Would likely only exist in one trader city on the map.

- Would offer the cheapest prices for purchasing military weapons (compared to other traders) and the highest value for selling military weapons.

- Will purchase anything, but if it isn't a military weapon he will want it much cheaper than a dedicated trader for that item. If I tried to go to a computer store and sell them a bunch of cans of beans, they might be interested if I sell it cheap enough, but otherwise they'd tell me to get lost.

- Occasionally gets new military weapons supplied to his inventory. Possibly daily real time (configurable) which would be a few randomly selected military weapons. He would still be selling anything he has been sold.

I imagine that there would be a military weapons trader, a building supply trader, and a vehicle trader that all act above in their respective category. However they'd all be at separate trader cities, which would make travelling to different trader cities and base location more important.

It mainly would encourage people to travel to the trader cities for the best prices on items.

I imagine that non-city traders would act as they already do, but with maybe some randomly generated common loot added occasionally. They are traders of opportunity, like survivors who are willing to trade if they see a deal. It's like a friend of mine says, "Everything you see is for sale if you name the right price."

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I have a radical idea - remove safezone traders. :D And make the rest brown traders dynamic (every restart) to avoid camping etc. But that's not gonna happen, unfortunately. I used to play on Japanese server which had no safezones and all traders were dynamic and it worked way better. No safezone camping, spawns were random (relatively) and well, much less drama over "oh he killed me as soon as I left the safezone!".

 

Then a bit moderate idea. The way I see it right now is that it is too easy to accumulate crypto over short period of time (you find a safe - sell it and buy any gun you want basically), gun prices are too high for selling or too low for buying, depending how you look at it.

Anything 7.62 caliber and above should cost more than it is right now. Lynx spawns too frequently. But that's server specific thing, I assume. I constantly find myself dropping them since they do not fit in backpack for selling later.

 

An example pistols and light machine guns up to 5.56 could cost from 10 crypto to 800 or something (6.5mm mk2000 could be the top cheapest machinegun for 800 crypto).

7.62 machine gun (Zafir) could start from 1000 crypto at traders, then other assault, marksmen rifles and sniper rifles could go up to 5000 crypto, lynx and LRR being the top most expensive guns. It would force people loot more, trade between themselves.

The reason is that getting money in game is easy. Especially if you collect only valuable stuff, like guns, safes, lockboxes, metal, cinder, mortar, gems etc.

 

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I think some more work could be done to refresh the trader setup as it is now, some of the ideas that @TheVampire laid out in the O.P. are interesting, as I myself have been thinking about extending the start items in the vanilla traders to incorporate some more useful items.

Removing Safezones would simply cause server hosts to run scripts enabling them again, Safezones are far too entrenched into these survival mods to be removed, as many players see no-safezone servers as an open opportunity for griefing.

Having the devs also spend time adjusting prices is also somewhat a waste of their time, in my opinion. The prices are at the mercy of individual server admins to change at will. And they will be changed, as they are now, on a server to server basis.

I personally like the way the traders are setup right now. It is the most realistic version of trading I have experienced in mods so far. I also do see the point of those that like the organized and categorized listings of other traders. 

I can agree that having specialist traders that will deal with items not of their speciality, but only at a at lower values could be an interesting concept. However, players are sometimes lazy and making them travel to different parts of the map will be unpopular. Could an option in this respect be a trader that bought any item for a lower price at every trader location: -

E.G: Player goes to Weapon Trader to sell looted rifles, but also has many food items to sell. The weapons trader will not buy food, but the Wholesaler trader will buy anything at a reduced price. Other ideas to incorporate into this could be to make some traders be affected by toxicty levels:  - if your toxicity is to high they will not trade with you. Like they think you may be infected and are scared to trade with you.

However this conversation eventually ends, I think the best direction to take would be to try and stick to the ideals of the mod, instead of the player.

 

If I were to have my own way, and dam it hell, I wouldn't have traders that sold weapons or food, maybe even health items. I would only have them sell vehicles and some base building objects.  But this would be an unpopular concept, because just like @KPABATOK I also long for the hardcore style experience.

 

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