Minecraft Name: subxplorer Suggestion: Eliminate the current market place and utilize the warp command to player owned and built shops within protected areas (towns) Reason: This will be a bit lengthy but I know that my suggestion and justification will explain clearly my thoughts and goals. Issues with a Central Market: 1. Lag We know that where there are many trade signs lag can be a major problem. Thus, the reason for the current market design competition. It seems that a main sticking point for a new design is for it to reduce the amount of lag in the market. However, that is being accomplished by spreading shops locations out and creating “nodes” which leaves a disjointed and inefficient market when it comes to players moving throughout it. 2. Location& Layout Everyone wants to have a great location for their shop hence the reason we have seen front row shops go for millions. No matter what design the market has, not everyone will be able to be next to the entrance. Currently this has been partially resolved by allowing everyone to have /warp and making warps to each shop. However, people still don’t like the space the market takes up and how shops are spread out (My personal opinion is that there should be about half as many shop spots as there currently are). Some of the current submissions to the Market Design Competition are reminiscent of the old market and are more focused on functionality and while I think that is important I do know that this will most likely result in more lag. There is also the issue of shop size. Should all shops be the same size or should front row shops benefit from having more space? Basically no matter what, there will have to be a compromise of lag vs functionality and not everyone will be happy or in agreement with the location of shops or layout of a market due to the limitations that having a central market brings. 3. Inactives/Unstocked Shops Many of the current shops are basically inactive. There are several that do not even follow the 8-10 trade sign rule (which is never enforced). Even more frustrating is that many of the front row shops are inactive and not stocked. This is a significant problem in my opinion as this is an economy server and to have prime real estate that is not being used for its intended purpose hurts all of us. As a player there is nothing more frustrating than going to a shop and it not being stocked. In fact other than lag the main complaint I hear from other players about not wanting to shop at the market is frustration with items not being in stock. I even know players who just buy everything from the Server Shop for this very reason. No matter what market design we have this issue will continue to be a problem unless there is some way to give some incentive for players to have active well stocked shops. Proposal: Here are the details of my proposal for getting rid of a Central Market place, but still having player owned shops that would be located in towns and accessible by warps. 1. Shop Information If a player wants to have a shop. They would apply on the forums. Their shop would get a /warp <IGN> and a /warp sign at spawn or where ever decided on a shop directory. The player would need to meet some requirements to get a shop warp. Some of these requirements would be a minimum shop size (ex. 20 x 20) and a minimum number of trade signs already set up. These requirements should be reviewed whenever the shop renews and if not met the shop wouldn't be renewed. The player is totally responsible for his shop design, his stock, pricing etc. (as long as the minimum requirements are met) As far as lag is concerned it is up to the player in how they design and where they locate their shop (ex. it would probably be a bad idea to locate a shop in the middle of a farm). 2. Forum There would be a new forum under the general section called “Market”. Only players who have applied and been granted a shop would be allowed to have a thread on this forum. A sticky thread would be made with a poll where players could vote for their favorite shop or perhaps top three favorite shops. The sticky thread would update monthly with and list the 10 “Top Ranked” shops and the poll would then reset for another month of voting. This system would be an incentive to shop owners to have good prices and keep their shops stocked. It may be too difficult to implement but it would also be nice if based on the “top ranked” shops from the forum each month that the /warp signs would change on the market directory at spawn to give higher ranked shops “top ranked” status. This may be accomplish simply by adding a line of text “Top Rated” to the /warp sign itself instead of moving the /warp signs location within the directory. 3. Chat This last part may be a bit of a stretch but I think that there should be a new chat channel named “Market Chat” or “Shop Chat” this would be a channel that shop owners can advertise their shops in. They would not be allowed to advertise their shop in the current “Trade Channel”. I believe this would help with the current trade chat spamming and give players more control on what chats they want to ignore. Other Information: For the /warps themselves, I would recommend (with some input from @Jffsprs ) that they follow the format of /warp <IGN>. This way warps would simply be created and deleted if and when a shop expires. If the format was /warp <Station#> then it would be a bit more confusing when it came to shops expiring etc. as the /warp would have to be transferred to a different location or player. I do know that many players will have strong emotions about such a radical change. Some of us who have front row shops also will not be happy as we paid a lot for our current locations. I do think that since Rows 1 - 3 are auctioned when they become vacant that it would be appropriate for the owners of those shops to be compensated in some way, if this suggestion were to become a reality. However whether that happens or not does not keep me from believing that this suggestion will benefit the server immensely and is a much better option than our current market. I believe that this suggestion will help with the lag problem and allow players more freedom in the design of their shops. It will also reward those players who are active and have well stocked and designed shops. I look forward to hearing what others think about this and I hope that the staff would give this suggestion serious consideration. Thank you (I want to give a special thanks and shout out to @Imabankthing and @Jffsprs for letting me bounce ideas off of them and giving me feedback for this suggestion.)
The problem I see with a decentralized market is ease of use. I could walk through the market right now and figure out exactly what the market prices are, and I can easily compare prices in the market to buy at the cheapest place. Arguably the most important part about the market is the fact that it's easy for the users. Although in my opinion the market should have a very limited amount of smaller shops. (like 20 of them at most) but that's not feasible with like 50 shops being rented out. It would reduce lag at least.
I'm not in favor of a proposition to decentralize the market. All that will do is lower competition, upset users who paid millions for prime shops, get rid of the ease of access the current centralized market has and make things more confusing for newer players. With it's current ease-of-access, the market allows players easily navigate through player-run shops and find the lowest prices, which breed competition among neighboring market stalls. Not just that, but with the market in one place with a giant portal for it at spawn, it's easy for newer players to find the market, as opposed to doing countless warps, spending minutes after minutes just looking at the shops - that's boring and overwhelming for newer players. It's important that they see our niche, the economy, largely represented by the player market, in one whole place. It'll give them the impression of "Wow! This server has a bustling economy with a big market place!". Also, what happens to the users who paid millions upon millions of dollars for their prime shops? I'm sure they won't be happy with having their valuable prime shops worth much much less than what they paid for. All we'll just get from this is players complaining about being "ripped off" and even quitting as they feel that everything they worked so hard for is gone. As far as the market forum and chat channels go, we already have the Classified and Ads section, as well as the trade channel. Chat and forums are already messy enough and the last thing we need to do is make them even more messy. Overall, I'm opposed to this suggestion and I believe that it will just cause more problems than it solves.
1. Addressing the issue of lag, perhaps a better solution would be to reduce the number of shops rather than remove all shops? Or even submit a market design in the competition currently being hosted, and optimise it to have less lag. 2. The people that own prime shops had to pay for them, often up into the millions. Even now, plenty of stations that aren't considered "prime" still get business, they just have to be more competitive with their prices. In terms of having to balance lag, functionality etc, compromise is the key. I'm sure given enough time there will be a design that manages to strike a good balance. 3. Sure there are "inactive" shops, but for all that time their owners are losing money on rent. And frankly, if someone makes these inactive shop owners a decent offer, they may sell it on. In terms of shops being out of stock, from experience, users generally just move onto the next shop when they find one shop is out of stock. With my row 2 shop, despite having signs saying "Mail me if you find something out of stock", never once have I received mail. This goes to shows that it's simply not that much of an issue for most users to be bothered. 4. I'm not a fan of your proposal, for many of the reasons outlined by others. Futhermore, people are already free to set up their own shops in towns, linking them to warps, a prime example being /warp colebex. This already exists, even if in an informal manner.
-1 Accepted: I think I'll make a town revolving around shops. Oh wait, the ECC Mall, of course! Denied: Market > Mall.
You sort of read my mind in a way because ever since this whole market building debacle has been unfolding I've just been thinking that the whole market concept is inherently limited by the game itself and therefore, lame. But the warp feature is a little to ephemeral to be an effective central market, the only way you know a warp exists is either you read a sign or someone is bleating it every 3-5 mins in trade chat. My idea is kind of at an early stage and I feel like some clever fellows are going to be quick to tell me I'm nuts but what if we utilized a system similar to the old town portal system? The market could actually be a portal directory with a very limited amount of space where a player could design a several block deep "store front" in front of their stall's portal describing in design and with signs/banners what could be expected behind the portals which would lead to a players town where they could set up any sort of shop they like. I love colebex. I loved urbsnovem or whatever @Minecraftguy65 had before he became a stall owner. If a player made a crummy laggy stupid shop everyone would be saved from it by never having to see more of it than its store front. These portals could be rented the same way that stalls already are, they'd just lead to markets of whatever design and scale in player towns. It would open up a world of creativity and unless I'm mistaken it would be a lot less laggy. Colebex has a billion things going on a zillion signs but it's still running at a higher fps for me than the current market. This is sort of unrelated but I also think that placement of shop portals should have less to do with how much money or senoirity is involved but rather the popularity of the portals use. Rich senior players would still totally have the advantage there but it would prevent the super rich from just blocking up space cuz they want to. Okay let the hole poking in my idea begin!
You are the second person who has come to me with this idea. My original suggestion is basically asking for a fancy wall with warp signs at spawn. However this idea is also viable and would be a compromise for those who want to see an attractive market area that one can walk through.
I think either way would be x1000 better. The portals would cater to those who would feel robbed of a market experience by a warp sign board like you said, but either way completely +1. The spawn market in it's current incarnation is extremely limiting and while the new entrants in the design contest are pretty neat they're limiting in similar ways. I've seen much more exciting stuff that players have done in their own towns. We are basically forcing the market to be cupcake wars when we could have like a legit wonderful bakery that provides every sort of fresh wonderful baked good.
This would ruin the worth of first row, they are currently worth a lot (first three are worth a decent amount). However, I support kukelekuuk’s idea. Currently we have way too many spawnshops, it’s a lot of empty shops
