New Skill: Merchanting

[NukeMarine]

TL-DR: Imagine a cross between Construction, Farming and Mobilizing Armies where players stock their various "stalls" around the towns with junk items to "sell" to the town's NPCs.

 

~~Premise~~

 

Merchanting is a skill to trade goods. The adventurer in Runescape collects many items in his travels and training. Merchanting is a great method to use the fruits of his labors to trade for more useful materials. A good merchant will find a need and fulfill it. A successful adventuring merchant will look to all his travels and find a variety of needs in a variety of places to fulfill while making a nice profit along the way.

 

Merchanting can be termed an end game skill. One can merchant without leveling other skills, accomplishing tasks and completing quests. However, the best experiences and rewards come to merchants that are skilled in many abilities, have experienced the tasks of many lands and helped others is his quests.

 

Game theory: Like construction used gp as the primary means to level the skill, merchanting will use mass produced items as the means to level. Like dungeoneering, having more skills leveled helps access higher level training in the merchanting skill.

 

~~Stalls~~

 

The skill starts off with various stalls around the NPC populated F2P and Member areas - Lumbridge, Al Kharid, Varrock, Falador, Taverly, Catherby, etc. Each stall has it's own specialty (ores, bows, weapons, wood, runes) usually not associated with the area. The player rents the stall (gp sink) for a number of barter cycles. Each barter cycle, the player has to stock the stall (item sink) and choose what item he's willing to take in trade. At the end of each barter cycle, the player completes the trade, collects his bartered item and gets experience in the skill. Barter cycle times vary, but it can be anywhere from 1 hour to 72 hours depending on the stall and the trade being arranged.

 

Other stalls become available through a number of means. Stalls can be improved using skills (crafting, smithing, construction, etc). More stalls get accessed by completing quests specific to a town (Feud, Fremminick Trials, Legend Quest, etc). The variety of items bartered improve as your other skills improve.

 

Game theory: this plays like the various farm plots in farming. In addition, more stalls means the player needs to gather more low level items to stock the stalls. For higher level barters, you still need more low level items in addition to higher level items. This places a drain and therefore a demand on commonly produced low level training items.

 

In addition, the long wait time between cycles means it's in the best interest of efficient players to gather a variety of low level items to stock as many stalls as possible.

 

~~Renting~~

 

Similar to having a butler, you can use the stall for X number of barter cycles. As you level merchanting and improve your stall, you can rent for longer cycles though it costs more. Renting is done primarily in gold pieces, though specialty stalls may have exceptions.

 

Though there are many stalls in Gielanor, you are limited in the total number of stalls you can rent at one time. This number improves as you improve merchanting, which is important as a successful merchant divides his time among many stalls for the most profit and experience.

 

Game theory: This just creates a GP sink. Limiting stalls also gives players incentive to find more efficient trade routes. In addition, it rewards players that play quests, do tasks and train other skills.

 

~~Stocking~~

 

You must fully stock a stall before you can complete the barter cycle. To determine what needs to be stocked, first select what you're bartering for. The higher level items require more items to be stocked. Stocking itself could be as simple of 100 runes of fire, water, earth and air for a stall at Brimhaven or 100 logs, 200 oak logs and 250 willow logs at Al Kharid. Stocking can be done in notes, and can be done in increments.

 

As your stall improves, you can stock more items for a better barter. You always have to stock more, never less though. So once a barter requires 100 bows, any higher barter at the stall will require at least 100 bows, though additional items such as 150 bows and 50 willow bows can be required.

 

Game Theory: This stops the problem in other skills where low level items cease to be useless. In farming, players use pototoes briefly then stop altogether. In merchanting, if a stall needs wood long bows to barter, every higher barter will at least require the same number of wood bows.

 

This is the part that requires the most balance. In theory, you want a certain cost per xp. The more efficient xp should cost more both in gp and items. Once a skill of this nature is released, there will be an enormous drain on items that's impossible to predict.

 

~~Thefts~~

 

Stalls attract theft. Thieves will destroy your entire barter cycle by taking your entire inventory. This can be avoided by a number of means. One can constantly overlook the stalls, but this cost time. Near most stalls are town guards that can be "encouraged" to look after your stall during its barter stage. Finally, one can hirer a clerk to monitor your barter stage. Better merchanting skills means you can hire better clerks that not only prevent theft but can speed up the barter cycle.

 

Game theory: This is like disease in farming. Theft removes items from the stock, pausing the barter cycle meaning the store needs to be restocked. Depending on the game mechanics, guards can be 50% effective while clerks and 75% or 100% effective with better types able to speed up barter cycles. In addition, players can decide to man the stall while their doing some sort of training. This is not efficient, but players should be given the option.

 

~~Final Sale~~

 

It takes time for your stall to barter for its items. When complete, you finalize the the sale and get your xp and bartered item. The final sale can be sped up with hiring better stall clerks.

 

Game theory: This is harvesting. You get a good item and experience. The experience is related mainly to the overall cost of the trade. Since construction is 6gp/xp it's not unreasonable to expect a 10 to 20gp/xp for the merchanting skill. Again, this will ultimately be decided by game balance beyond the ability of normal players.

 

The bartered items the various shops ultimately provide though should be something that helps encourage players to continue with the skill.

 

~~Secondary Benefits~~

 

For popular high alchemy items, perhaps allow a spot that "sells" items for high alc value which you can collect. Perhaps at higher levels, completing sales results in unique items. For example, the rune stall could generate 30 chaos runes for selling the base runes.

 

Game theory: This is where the skill can also be sold to players. Providing useful benefits to remove tedious everyday task can be a useful reward. Just like MTK provides a means to collect items, perhaps the stores can do the same. In addition, other stores could provide "alc'ing" or "mixing" or "crushing" with amounts dependant on the barter cycle level.

 

The idea being that higher level players don't care to perform mundane tasks that take away from training. Allow those that have good merchanting skills to have those tasks done for them in game.

[Ambler]

Looks good, however I think the stocking of items in areas should be unrelated to what you can find there, for exmple Logs in Al-kharid, ores in Varrock, Fish in Fally etc...

[NukeMarine]

Looks good, however I think the stocking of items in areas should be unrelated to what you can find there, for exmple Logs in Al-kharid, ores in Varrock, Fish in Fally etc...

 

I see nothing wrong with that logic. Good call.

[Sy_Accursed]

I think this would be decent but ONLY off the buying NPCs had a clever shifting logic to them.

 

Eg - Resources hold more value in locations they aren't readily available, prices and demands shift independently for each player based on what you have and have not sold to people. Eg if you sell a heap of sharks in fally it suddenly becomes awful to see sharks there.

 

Could add more depth to the skill by, for example, having competion stalls to scope out, area knowledge to know what types of things sell well, and even could have some NPCs that you can talk to and get dialogues to help garner hints of what residents want.

 

Also add like workshops where you leave resources to be produced into stuff. Eg maybe a workshop in Seers will take flax and thread and needles and then after a production period will give you shirts or trousers or skirts or hats (you order what you want) that's only use is selling on your stalls BUT these produced items obviously are better xp due to more time usage.

 

But overall I think its kind of a weak an idea for an actual skill, since it's just interacting with interfaces essentially. Seems more like a mini-game or diversion that could tie in with things like kingdom and player ports.

[Aten]

yeah, but suomi would never get max total again then l0l