Alejandro

If what prevents hyperinflation to occur is the mere fact that we can "cheat" the risk by using teleporting merchant ships, then there might be a problem with traders to begin with. Teleportation shouldn't be a fix for too-long distances or too much risk. Also, I'd expect the devs to introduce larger merchantmen in the future. I doubt a traders' snow is the largest we'll see. But even then, 800 units of something costly is nothing to scoff at, as profits go.

Ah, the mention of the unwashed Steam masses; this forum's version of "we, blue-blooded aristocrats, do not meddle with the peasants". Has been happening for a week now.

I put up 20. Fine, make it 1500. Why would Seller A, who placed his bid five minutes before Seller B, be penalized with goods that won't sell for the day simply because he placed his bid five minutes prior? He's active, he should be able to undercut. Also, your argument is invalid. EVE, and many other sandbox games, have economies who work, despite people being able to undercut each other. You're also not considering the fees. It wouldn't necessarily lead to bidding wars until oblivion. It wouldn't simply lead to a normalization of prices across given areas. And yes, it'd reward people who are active. That's how sandbox games are supposed to be. Defending this system where we pay high tax upfront, can't take gold without removing the rest of the contract (laughable at best) and cannot do anything once somebody has undercut you but pray people will get to your wares or accept you've just lost 10% of your goods value is close to the definition of insanity, at least economy wise. My question to you is: do you even trade? I understand some of yall are used to an economy where there was as many ports as there was players active on the game, but we're in a different world now.

They shouldn't be. I haven't been hunting traders enough to comment on the chase itself, though, but I'd imagine some ships to be faster on the OW. That said, even if they somehow are, people shouldn't be allowed to simply transfer vast ammount of goods by teleporting every four hours. It completly removes one of the main aspect of a sandbox game (and, to me, the most interesting one, as PvP is definitely more interesting when there's something in play).

How are you reading it as the solution when it's not even something I breached in my OP? I literally didn't touch the taxation system at all. Also, it's definitely possible to have bidding wars at the moment, as there is no information about the quantity of goods sold at a given price. So if Seller A comes up and puts up 1600 Iron pieces at 50 a piece, Seller B can come and put up 20 at 49. Then Seller B can wait until Seller A - who has no idea how many goods were put up at 49 - decides to remove his current contract to relist at 48. Seller B then undercut him again. Or hell, I can simply put stacks of 20 non stop to undercut people. Somebody should be able to adjust/lower the price of what he wants to sell, since he has already paid taxes for it at a higher price anyway. If anything, that person is only reducing his own margin of profits. I don't understand what you don't understand here. I'm simply saying Seller A shouldn't be penalized because Seller B came right after him and put up goods for 1 gold lower. Like, how is this non-understandable or complicated to you? I don't get it. It's like you think we can't have bidding wars (which we already have, anyway) and that bidding wars would be terrible (they wouldn't, they would lower the prices and costs).

1)Essentially, you'll have bidding wars and people will benefit from lower prices, up until one side decides it's cutting too much into his profit margin. Essentially, capitalism? This is already happening, just with a clunky mechanism in place, one that doesn't make any sense whatsoever and penalizes the seller who comes in early. 2)Easy. You put the taxation on transactions. Somebody buys from my coal at 50 a piece. I put up 50 pieces and sell 10 pieces, so 500 gold. The tax is 10%. Right now, the current mechanism would have me pay a 250g tax. The logical step would be to put the taxes on the transactions. At 10%, when I come to take my gold, it'd give 450 gold and keep 50 gold as taxes. But that's not what I'm proposing in the OP. I'm proposing a simple bandaid on this broken, clunky and, frankly, unworkable system. Give us the option to take our gold once a sale has been made without removing our entire contract of goods AND give us the possibility to edit the price of our goods towards a lower price if we sell and a higher price if we buy. The economy benefits.

-P2P trade system works when we have a small population. Right now, it's more of a complement and certainly not meant to be the only trading option. Otherwise, you'll see port/nation chat flooded with "WTS 200 coal". I'm definitely not in favour of spam. -In real life, you don't pay upfront as a seller. Companies pay taxes after a fiscal year. Not before they actually put up goods for sale. Would you imagine GM paying taxes at full for the 2.5m cars produced this year, before even selling them? -I'm not opposed to the tax system. That's not what my suggestion is about. I'm actually asking to keep the tax as it is. You put up a contract, you pay for the taxes. -It doesn't make sense to be taxed twice for the same goods. We should be able to edit the prices in a contract to make them more competitive if somebody else comes by and lists stuff at a price lower than yours. You wouldn't make a company pay twice just because it decides to lower its prices to follow a nearby competitor. -We should be able to pick up gold from a sale at any point without it destroying the contract. Again, the system is highly unrealistic and nonsensical. A game shouldn't be made hard by how clunky and ineffective its UI and design are. EVE is still a hard, cutthroat game despite having a working trade system. By the way, as it stands, what we have is exactly what you described. Anybody is free to come behind me and list at a lower price than I did, even though at the moment I listed my wares, they were at a competitive price. I shouldn't be punished twice, first by not being able to sell my wares and second by having paid upfront a high sales tax. It simply doesn't make sense. Either make the contracts stick but put the tax after the sale is completed or allow us to adjust the contracts (as would be logical) and claim gold as it sells (provided you are in port).

Unrealistic and nonsensical. If the only trading system between players is to use contracts, contracts should have more options, especially ones that makes sense (like claiming the gold you got from your sales without removing the rest of your goods still on sale (and that you already paid for in taxes!)). As it is, the current contract system implies the use of a middleman. I tell him how much I want of an item or how much I'm willing to take for an item. The fact that I pay a sales tax upfront, before even selling items, is ridiculous. But let's agree to that part. Then, he should be amicable to reducing the value of my goods if I'm asking for it. After all, it's like paying 5 bucks in taxes for an item that you asked 50 bucks for. If you decide to ask 40 instead, you're cutting your profit margin and no one else's. I truly don't understand where you're coming from. This system is probably the most limited trade system I've ever seen across any MMO. I'm proposing a bandaid, at best. Stuff that just falls into common sense category.

As it is, there's only two options once you have placed a contract: to delete it and abandon the goods or to claim it back (take the gold and the goods). The problem is that, given that we pay a full sales tax before any item is actually sold (which is preposterous but we'll try to work around it), if somebody undercuts your contract, you're out of luck. You either have to hope that people buy that person's goods and then get to yours or you have to suck up the losses (because you paid the sales tax early), claim the contract (take your goods back) and relist them. I propose that we thus change the contract system from its current "two options" form to a more logical four options. 1)Delete the contract. (Delete contract, abandon goods). 2)Claim the contract. (Claims all the gold made so far and recover the goods you have not sold yet). 3)Claim the gold. (Claims the gold made from the sales so far.) 4)Edit the contract. (Set a new, lower price to your goods for sale. You've already been penalized by paying an higher sales tax once, there is no reason for you to be penalized twice. If somebody undercut you by placing a new contract, you should be able to undercut him again without placing a new contract and paying another time a high sales tax on goods you didn't even sell! I should be able to go see the auctioneer and tell him "hey, this is the new price I'd like to ask, thanks").

Ships, gold and the likes shouldn't be mirrored. Only XP and even then. The problem goes as follows: Say I'm one of the crafters of my clan. My clan is on the most populous server. But hey, I'm a crafter. I could simply set up shop on one of the less populous servers, run my goods without risk, do my commerce over there, make easy money and then use that money on the main server. Or say my clan is into port captures. Port captures can pay a lot. We decide to stomp on a small server, go after easy pickings, isolated ports. Make a fortune. Bring back that money on server 1. Those are but the first few, easily observable "exploits" one could do. I'm sure creative minds would find A LOT more. Servers should be separated or merged together whenever the infrastructure allows. Having mirrors is simply asking for a catastrophe.

Simple. Being able to get in your merchant ship and teleport it back to the capital with your goods in your hold is disruptive to commerce, favors a completly-safe approach to moving goods (just wait once every 4 hours to move your most precious cargo, if not all of it) and removes an interesting PvP element from the Open World. I'm all for the teleports to outposts but one shouldn't be able to teleport if one has goods in his hold. Period.

Would tend to agree. Repair mode should be repair mode. No firing and repairing.

Then either chase him, block his route, or demast him. As it stands, the current repair option isn't something that gives a second life anyway. It's a small repair. I don't see how a second repair would force people to back each other up more or less than they already do. Repairs are minimal and would fall under a cooldown anyway. What you'd have, though, is the possibility for someone who managed to escape from harm's way to maybe re-enter the fight as a damaged, but still effective fighter. Yall are acting like a second repair (or any repair) means a new life or a new fully repaired ship. Someone who goes in the middle of an enemy force will still be badly damaged and risk sinking. The only difference is that if he is able to escape and the enemy force doesn't finish him off, he might actually be able to come back 10 minutes later as a ship able to withstand a few more hits. Having one more repair doesn't make you think less. It forces your enemies to actually chase you a bit longer if they truly want to see you dead. People weren't thinking less when we had three repairs and more when we had zero. They just, for the most part, played more conservatively or sunk faster. Too conservative play gets boring. There isn't a whole lot of fun to be had firing potshots from a thousand yards away. Also, the extra repair would work with the same cooldown as urgent repair does. Managing repairs actually adds more complexity to the fight, not less. P.S: The goal of a suicide run is to die. It's to reset the instance so you can get into another as fast as possible, with a basic ship. Obviously, as we level up, it's less likely to happen.

Fairly straightforward. Right now, we have one ship repair, one sail repair and one "urgent repair" (eight minutes CD). My proposal would be to bring back an extra ship repair. It's already not particularly easy to demast someone, but major encounters would definitely be improved upon if one had at least an extra set of repairs (or if repairs worked the same way urgent repairs work, no limit, but with a CD of 8-10 minutes). It'd certainly make PvE fights a bit easier, but would add a bit more strategy to group fights. As it is, someone who gets too damaged (but no leaks/major problems) is essentially out of the rest of the fight, even if he can manage to keep his ship out of harm's way. Knowing XP and gold gain is based on damage dealt, a lot of players who find themselves badly damaged tend to go for one "last suicide run" instead of trying to stay alive and repair, which is nonsensical.

I liked "Society" from Pirates of the Burning Sea. Sounded right for the time. I'd suggest Company. Fleets and Squadrons seem very militaristic in nature. Companies did a bit of everything, even though their main focus was obviously commerce.