Thursday, March 4, 2021

Barter Trades 2.0

Okay hear me out, this one is quite drastic, and I know people don't like change, but it might be pretty good. Tell me what you think.

Dynamic barter trades.

In the last few weeks, lots of trades have been changed to account for different events, like fuel shortage, bitcoin price, or just game balance. When my usual trades happened to be more expensive, I was pissed.

But it showed something good. Change made me rethink what I wanted to craft/trade/use.

Imagine if, at each reset, one or more of these things happened :

  • Some barter trades stay completely unchanged
  • Some barter trades slightly changed
  • Some barter trades drastically changed
  • Some prices changed.

You have a charisma level, you have a reputation to trader, and you have a dynamic market. Prices vary, we see it every day, every hour even.

Yesterday, the ACCPC armor needed 3 of each cloth (except fleece), now it needs 3 whiskey bottles, its more expensive. The armor is now more expensive. Maybe tomorrow ragman wants more aramid again and it'll change to 5 aramid, 1 whiskey.

Having a fully dynamic trader system gives us the following :

  • All items would become useful at some point, you wouldn't discard GMCounters all the time.
  • Charisma skill becomes relevant (cheaper trades / prices, or even different trades altogether for charismatic people)
  • Reputation means something, and repeatable weekly/daily quests would make more sense to push that rep further than the current max.
  • Prices & trade would be so dynamic that inevitably, some times would be cheaper than usual, and others more expensive, making you pay attention to what you spend (especially if you're not a wealthy player)

On the downside, it would be a nightmare to keep track of all barter trades if they changed constantly, so we would need a UI upgrade to show that in a more convenient way. I have no solution for this, but from the top of my head

  • Show available barters in the tooltip of an item
  • Show available barters in the "Inspect" view of an item
  • Add a new screen that lists all barters in a very, very compact way that lets you see what you can and can't trade for in a single screen, without clicks (i'll make another post for that later on)

What do you guys think? The items and trading system would certainly feel more alive, and it would require us to put more effort into the game which is something I think a lot of people would agree on.


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