Could an answer to the trade problem be out there?

I have recently started playing an MMO called Rappelz. It is not new to the community im sure but whilst playing last night I noticed a pretty good idea from that game.

If you are wanting to sell items(whatever they are) they allow you to advertise, this doesnt go into any chat it becomes a small box above your head which is very distinguishable from anything else. Go near the player, click on the box and it opens his own little merchanting window with all his wares on show. you click what you want, send to basket, then decide. its a pretty simple thing to do i believe, i dont know yet ive not done it im new to the game.

But how much would it take to code something like this and implement into GW?
im not a programmer so its kind of an asking not telling question.

Would this stop all the bickering over trade chat?

Sounds like an interesting idea... I think it sounds good.

Pretty much the same as Silk Road, now imagine walking into Kamadan, Lion's Arch, etc and seeing 50 people with little signs above their heads. How do you know who is selling what and how do you keep track of who you've already looked at?

Hmm good points..
First one...The little box advertises what your selling a little. Not much granted but its an indicator. But it shows your trading without annoying chat...which is getting out of the trade spam issue a little

Point two....Hadnt thought of that one ...hmmm...any ideas to keep track..anyone? perhpas as soon as youve checked their store the box disappears. Ahh but that would screw you up if your comparing between traders maybe.
Hmm tough one that...I dont know on that one

Another thought , would it put any load on the servers, thus totally blowing this idea up?

Hm... there could be 'shop' stall spots. You click on them and you set the shop. Once they are all filled in one district, another is created so people can go there to set more shops.

For example, in Kaineng Center, some would be located in the Back alley... yeah, that place always empty behind the buildings, the Xunlai Alley, the middle of the shop and the upper balcony (for those who want to make funny shops only accesible after beating Shiro, hehehe...)

There could be even a panel much like the party search panel (or a new tab in that very panel) to list all shops in all the districts of the outpost. You could keep track that way, because the ones you have already seen are upper in the lists.

I think the best answer to this would be a Consignment shop
Basicly if an extra box was added to your storage that you place items in that you want to sell & maybe set an sking price.

People could then just buy it & when you sign on next you would have the money and maybe a message or that item would show up in a list of reciently sold items.

Or maybe a ebay store!
where you walk into this store & go to the Weapons Merchant/Auctioner and see what he currently has & place bids on stuff!
This could be a cool thing!

Nice idea Mithran, Kind of like a market street, UK is famous for them and probably many other countries too

Go there to sell your wares like a little market stall.
It would centralise selling and at least you wouldnt have to run around trying to find the guy in Kaineng or somewhere.

Just put an slightly different colour as the background of the box, or a different border colour around it to differentiate if you've viewed it or not. Kind of like we do with the forums. If there are unread posts they always differ slightly visually than the read ones...

Still the addition of an auction house WOULD Solve problems, and this is indeed a good idea, but would require a lot of effort that the Anet team is putting in GW2; time consuming, and Anet would never do it. If they wanted to do something real and solid about TRADE, they would have added auction houses long ago.

I'd go one up on this idea and make a town specifically for running these shops, with its stall spots arranged in a nice pattern for easy searching. I'd also prevent these being setup in other towns so that we have a single market area, which should make it quicker for a player to look through the stalls because they will have to change districts less. Maybe limit them to international districts only.

Having people AFKing will use server resources and people will AFK overnight if it allows them to keep their stall open. However while I can see reasons why people might want to stay online (such as to allow bartering) I can see no reason to force them to stay online. Therefore I'd prefer it if the stalls can be run while a player is offline or doing something else.

Compared to MMO's GW has a lot more people in one shard, meaning there will be a lot more stalls. So I'd also like some sort of searching system, but if we try to bolt one onto the OPs suggestion we run into the same problems that I think are preventing ANET setting up the auction house (the auctioning part is easy, its the searchable item database that appears to be the problem). Of the various AFK stall suggestions I've seen this would be the only one that gets around this problem.

/signed. While I prefer we get an auction house, I understand that it looks very unlikely for guild wars.

/signed

Seems like a good solution, daresay better than an auction house in some cases. I have a feeling, though, that if something like this isn't already included in GW:EN it's never going to happen for GW1.

Wouldn't just be easier to have a small auction 'person' in each major trade area.

Have something similar to a NPC trader person. You give them the item, set your price range, then people can browse through the NPC's storage and buy what they like. The money can then be transfered to your storage account.

Wouldn't be worldwide, it would have to be limited to that district or town. They could even charge for use of this NPC (say 2-3% of final sell price)

That could work, granted space would be limited to say 200 items per district, but its easier then spamming trade.

Ideas..

OP - Not hijacking, just working off your idea slightly.

For sure Malice thanks for the input.
Umm..the idea i guess is twofold. your not going to get an auction house Anet have said it time and again. So any additions i believe is to get away from adding things to another database of items.
This I think wouldnt add much to a database at all, its more of an extension of your bags/sacks. and then just trading whilst AFK type of thing. In fact its possibly more of a change to trading.
Maybe instead of the "straight" trade one to one. This is just another tab or tick box to allow it to be advertised differently

I noticed in Rappelz that most of the players who are trading are AFK so it would support the idea somewhat.

The second part and also adding to whats been said in the thread, is to take away the WTS spam. Advertise above your head, and only be able to do it in one area of major towns, that way its centralised.

I think going to a "half"auction house isnt going to go with anet.
Personally, I believe that if we want something better with what we have got, its got to be easy for ANET to implement, not bring much change to the system, engines, and database structures and also be reliable and useful.
If we plead for an auction house and its not going to work on the present system, we may as well think out of the box on something else and channel our energy into that idea.

Sardelac isnt a mere suggestion forum in my eyes it is more of empowering any player to help brainstorm new ideas.

I like this idea a lot.

/signed

Sounds like an Auction House. It IS and Auction House. And ANET has stated that GW1 will NOT HAVE AN AUCTION HOUSE! I think too many people forget that...

someone needs to sticky this thread an more u guyz out there need to offer ur own input but myself ive been wanting this since day one ive even said in other post of my own why not just make a bazaar(ffxi version of rappelz stall)

yes i most definately /sign plz plz plz give us a stall/bazaar/self sale store

w/e just give us one :P

Syn

Perhaps have actual gurt fancy shiny banks, go in and its another town were people can trade, if you dont want to go in and trade but just get some items/money in/out there is a little extraction point outside....what do you think?

Interesting at least... prob wouldn't work as is though. I think it would need shops that were district independent.

In Lineage 2 there was something similar to this. When you wanted to sell an item, your character is forced to sit. You could not sell while moving or standing. Above your head your name was replaced with a brief description of what you were selling.

The best part about all of this is that it is NOT server side at all. Therefore making it a feasable solution outside of auction houses. Auction houses usually let you sell even when you logged off. This would be a solution that would force you to stay online to sell to take the load off of the servers.

Also in Ragnarok Online.. there is a system similar to this. Only the merchant classes can sell, but people were allowed to create mini chatrooms advertising what they were selling. Also on the server I played on, they made a special map that was dedicated for people to sell there. But yeah, I think its a good idea.