Thread: Personal Shops

It would be great if our characters could set up their own shop and sell items they crafted or can't use. Normally we would sell it for a low price at a vendor or try and sell it at the Auction House. Not enough people know how to use or actually use AH. And selling to a vendor is wastefull of good unbound items.

I've seen this feature in Aion http://gameguide.na.aiononline.com/aion/Private+Store (which recently became free to play), and thought LotRO could use this feature.


Your character sits down and waves for people to come and buy your stuff. A custom sign floats above your head. Also, you can set the price of each item you're selling.

This would probably cause conflict with the current Auction House. I really think the AH is hard to browse. Additional filters might be helpful in narrowing down items you are looking for and can use. I suppose most people wont want to stand idle waiting for buyers to come.

It occured to me that I've not really played enough MMORPG's to know that they used to do the personal shops and then started Auction Houses.

I would love this idea! I used to play Knight online and it had something similar to this; your character would sit down in front of a mini stand and players could shop around amongst other players for the best prices.

This would most likely make the Auction House less populated with items (which I doubt) but would increase social activity in places like Bree, Moria, Stangard, etc. I can just imagine watching 2 players arguing over an over priced pie or something then a sneaky Hobbit buys it then runs behind a barrel :P

An interesting idea, one I have never heard of before. However as you have stated, this would destroy the already implemented Auction House system, which is currently extremely similar to this idea (excluding the custom shop signs). It would be an interesting addition, but from a previous post by Turbine, there would be no alternative 'Hobbies' or anything as optional game play soon.

Similarly, take a look at housing. Would it be set up like an instance providing several neighbourhoods of different player-base shops? Perhaps, but what would happen if the player left the game; would the shop stay there forever like the current system of Housing?

Still, an interesting idea. Kudos to the OP.

Thats a great idea, even though it would destroy the AH, maybe instead, there could be a way to show what WAS sold in the AH and how much, so that you know how to price your item. And of course add more filters to make it easier to find items. maybe even make a mobile AH so we could see what is on there without being forced to find an AH.

Good idea, but a problem I see would be lag with dozens of shops floating around an area. I've played some MMORPG's with this system and it tends to slow down loading times for me quite significantly

This is a horrible idea. What problem does it solve for the game? How does it improve gameplay? There's already a perfectly usable system in place for players to sell their crafted or looted goods, and it's the AH. I don't see what's so difficult or confusing about it, either. There are dozens of filters for types of goods on the left, at the top there are filters by level, and then there are additional filters in the drop-down. Most MMOs who allow players to sell do it via an AH method, so it's certainly not a foreign concept. Maybe if the AH were irreparably broken this might make sense, but it's not.

Besides, why would you want to spend your play time sitting behind a virtual shop counter trying to sell to someone who might just happen to pass by? I think that most people would rather post their items on the AH where EVERYONE can buy from them, rather than just the few people who happen to pass by the "personal store".

I've played in games that allowed "personal" stores, and they were a pain in the butt for buyers and sellers. Sellers had to waste their time hopping from shop to shop until they found someone selling what they wanted. Buyers had to find a location that gets a lot of traffic. Both of these issues are solved by having the AH already is a centralized hub for commerce. Even if a buyer set up shop in the highest traffic area (say, Bree-town square) they still wouldn't get nearly the traffic that the AH does. Who wants to get a port back to Bree when they can just pop into their local AH to find goods?

No matter how you set it up, the AH is already the most efficient way for players to buy and sell products to each other in this game.

How is anyone supposed to know what an individual is selling? Go up to each one and inspect?

EQ had something similar, but it had a search function so you could look for what you want, instead of just browsing. However, since the theory is that the current AH search is insufficient, so to would be the private vendor search function. And if Turbine did come up with a search method with less perceived problems, why not just attach it to the AH?

Creative idea. I'd have to hear more about how it would be implemented before giving a thumbs up or down, because I've never seen such a system in practice. I think it could add a dimension of fun for RPers, and I don't think it would destroy the AH system because there are a great many players who would still prefer the efficiency of quickly dropping off and picking up their items. But for players who would enjoy immersing themselves in the experience of crafting and marketing their wares, it sounds kind of fun. I can already envision a Saturday morning farmer's market in the Shire with a group of hobbits selling apples and mushrooms and freshly baked pies to passersby...and now I'm getting hungry!

Sorry, I am 500% against doing this sort of thing.

Not to be offensive or mean, but when I've played games, where when you walk into a main town or city and there are dozens of characters/stalls set up all over with selling bubbles popping up over them, I think it looks completely horrible and trashy.

For me, about 80% of those games are an instant uninstall when I see that.

Even if it improved the actual buying and selling of goods 10x over, I'd say absolutely no just for the huge degradation to the visuals and landscape (not to mention the real possibility of adding more lag to areas that already suffer from lag) it would bring.

I just don't see how it would work. After 5 years, it seems to me that people are accustomed to using the AH. Maybe if this was in the game from launch day, but this late in the game, I just don't see it being efficient.

Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online had this feature and it worked/works, but they always had personal shops.

Well I've read all of your posts and I think the idea was just the fun of having your own shop. Like having a farmer's market ( I think someone mentioned it before). Though with the AH only players who are VIP or bought AH from the LotRO can post anything. I agree that it would probably be cluttered with people setting up shops. If you are looking for something in particular, you would probably have to use the [Trade] channel and ask. I still disagree with filters and browsing at the AH. Filtering out items you already have or can't use (like recipes) would be nice. It's fine if you know what your looking for but if you want to browse recipes, filters would be nice. Maybe even show best sellers list. There's that big black void of space when you open up the AH that seems like Best Seller/Hot items could be listed there.

I understand that the AH was the solution to the dissaproval of personal shops. So maybe this idea is just ####. Or maybe something like a sunday farmers market in hubs would be okay.

Originally Posted by Falenia

So maybe this idea is just ####..

No, it's actually a good idea. I am just saying that something like this would have to be included in the game from launch day.

Originally Posted by Nymphonic

<snip>

Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online had this feature and it worked/works, but they always had personal shops.

Star Wars Galaxies DIDN'T always have personal shops - that wasn't introduced until player housing came out, about 6 months in. But they always had the Bazaar - a feature remarkably similar to LotRO's auction house. And eight years later, when the game shut down for good, they STILL had both player shops and the Bazaar. The Bazaar was still active, and player vendors still got plenty of traffic. The two systems CAN coexist, because different types of people will use each one.

Players looking for ease and convenience will buy on the Auction House. Players who don't want to invest the bother and time in running a shop will sell on the Auction House. Roleplayers and crafter alts will probably run most of the private shops, and roleplayers or people who like to bargain hunt will buy at the private shops. In the end, both systems CAN, and at least in SWG, DID, thrive.

Personally, I'd love for my Champion to be able to set up a personal forge and shop where people can RP ordering armour or tools from her. But that would require the ability to set up crafting areas inside houses, which is a whole other boondoggle.

Not enough people know how to use or actually use AH....*venders are* a waste of time

I'm not sure how a bunch of individual stores spread all over Middle Earth with no way to search everything that is for sale at one time is a better system. I go to the AH, I type in the box what I want, I click it, I buy it. It doesn't matter if the person posted it in Bree, Galtrev, or Moria. I can find it all.


In your system, someone selling something in Bree will never get any business from Stanguard or Galtrev, and the people in the 21st Hall in Moria aren't even going to know the person in Bree is selling something. My farming/cooking alt hangs out in the Shire going from the farming areas to the Delving cooking area and to the AH to sell stuff. In your system, my business it totally shot because I have to farm, cook, then go somewhere were people will actually go out of their way to find me and buy my stuff. Instead, I can make level 75 food stuffs, put them in the AH, and people in Stanguard can buy them before the go solo Limelight Gorge stuff.

When my captain is questing in Mirkwood and Lothlorien, I collect a bunch of LIs I'll never use and don't want. I normally sell them in the AH. But in your system, I now have to find somewhere to store them until I'm done questing and then I have to leave my computer on, logged in, while my character travels WAY out of their way to find a place I can sit and sell them. What if I want to log out and play a different character?

Also, why in the world would I want Bree/Galtrev/Stanguard/21st Hall/etc. all lagged up with dozens of characters who aren't being played logged into the server making things slower for the rest of us?

Lastly, if I want to buy something, why in the world would I want to physically walk around to multiple locations clicking on little stores over and over again in order to find the best price on the item I want to buy, when I can just go to the AH, type in the name of the item I want, and there they are, all lined up and ready to be price compared.


I have played a couple different MMOs that had a marketplace with stalls like you're talking about. In every single one I hated it because

1. It was a pain to find stuff, going from stall to stall.
2. There was a huge fight for the best stall spaces close to the entrance
3. It was laggy having all those people logged into one place at once.
4. When selling things, if my connection lagged, computer crashed, I wanted to turn my computer off, etc I couldn't sell without being logged in.
5. Without an auction mode, prices stagnated.
6. It was a pain to have to go all the way back to the market zone every time I wanted to buy something and then *see reason 1* (Imagine you're about to start a raid with a hunter, you realize "oh no! I'm out of fire oil, one second guys!" So you pop into the AH, type "oil" into the search bar, check the 8 fire oils for sale, buy the cheap one, get your mail, go back to the raid. Takes 2 min. Or, "I'm out of fire oil." Assuming there's a market in which everyone is selling stuff all at once instead of being spread out all over middle earth, you go to the market and spend the next 10 min clicking on 30 different venders trying to find the cheapest fire oil all the while your raid is yelling at you to hurry up.)

Widoch has captured the feeling exactly. Let me show you, what a market stall system look like:



For reference, this is the Flyff, f2p game i did play for several years before LotRO. The spot is the central hub for 45-60 levels zone, with mailbox, NPC trainers and quest NPC's one has to go and talk with to advance several times in a play session. If the server looks like this, your framerate drops to 1-2 frames per second, and low end systems just crash on login.

I liked this feature in Aion, but it was used to prevent logging out from AFK in the beginning until they fixed that

It gives more interaction with other players. Turbine can work out what will be the best way to implement this, will you be able to write messages above your head? If yes, will players be able to disable it if they don't want to see it?

Will you be able to haggle with the shop owner?

Maybe if you interact with the shop owner you can talk with him/her by voice chat? Or a new chat window will open?

Would be nice to walk around, voice chat with the shop owners about the prices and move on to someone else when you feel like.

Originally Posted by DutchEZmoder

I liked this feature in Aion, but it was used to prevent logging out from AFK in the beginning until they fixed that

It gives more interaction with other players. Turbine can work out what will be the best way to implement this, will you be able to write messages above your head? If yes, will players be able to disable it if they don't want to see it?

Will you be able to haggle with the shop owner?

Maybe if you interact with the shop owner you can talk with him/her by voice chat? Or a new chat window will open?

Would be nice to walk around, voice chat with the shop owners about the prices and move on to someone else when you feel like.

Do you really think someone is going to actually be at their computer while selling something in a stall? If I'm at my computer while LOTRO is open I'm doing one of two things. Either I'm actually playing, or I'm crafting something and am reading the news while I wait. As soon as the crafting is done, I go play. You're not going to be doing any voice chatting with people over prices. If you really wanted to do that, there's already a trade channel in the game that can be used. I've had chats with people about prices via the trade channel many times.

I live in Asia and that means when I play there aren't as many active people on. It's ok because most of the things in this game don't require more than 6 people. The awesome thing about the AH is someone can post something for 48 hours and that means I have a chance to buy it even when no one is logged in. On the other hand, I could have the advantage, I'm not really sure. If I'm on when no one is playing, that means I'm going to be logged in when everyone is AFK selling stuff rather than during the busy part of the day when people are questing.

But, what do you do when you want to sell stuff but would rather spend your time questing? The answer to that is "two accounts." This is exactly what happened in every MMO I played with a marketplace. Everyone had their character they played, and then another account that was their market mule. I had two accounts. You had to have one, there just wasn't time to level a character, and sell stuff at the same time. Eventually the game created a *gasp* auction house that became so popular the marketplace became empty for the most part.

So, if you want a limited supply of items being sold.
Or if you want the server population to double because of all the market mules thus causing lag.
If you want to never sell that Worn Symbol because your ISP had a hiccup and booted you off the game while you were asleep.


Go ahead, make a marketplace.


______________________________ ______________________

I'm editing this because I want to be reasonable and I have thought of a possible compromise. While I see no problem with the auction house as it is now, I'm willing to try new things. So, instead of a marketplace, why not just a board that is linked to all locations with messages from people listing the things they are selling. You can then either contact them in game via chat, or you could send them mail with your offer.

Sadly this is basically a slower version of the auction house, but at least it removes the requirements that people be logged in at all hours in order to sell something, while adding a human element to the game.

Originally Posted by Hatter_of_Bree

Widoch has captured the feeling exactly. Let me show you, what a market stall system look like:

This is exactly what I picture when I hear of a stall system.
Why any game manufacturer would want their cities to look like this, on purpose, is completely beyond me.

Originally Posted by Chylde

...they STILL had both player shops and the Bazaar. The Bazaar was still active, and player vendors still got plenty of traffic. The two systems CAN coexist, because different types of people will use each one.

That would really be fun if there were both. Then there wouldn't be a huge clutter of people setting up shops because only those who wanted to, would. Those who prefer an Auction House would go there. To have both coexist would make the game experience fun for those who like the idea of a personal shop. Those who appose would no lose the current Auction House.

I imagine the Personal shop's items would just be listed out like any of the in-game vendors not a bunch of shelves with items on them (which would be nice but might cause clutter and lag). So I don't see how this has anything to do with housing and in-home crafting. I'm sure many would really appreciate crafting facilities at home though. :-) People could go sit in Celondim or something where many new players spawn and sell items. Even have a made-to-order service available to your customers. I bet the new players would appreciate that (as long as the items are affordable to them).

I don't support this because of main reason been: Extra Lagg and Extra Clutter.

AH is a good tool, I don't find personal shops as something required I think.
I have experience with personal shops in other games and really breaks immersion or at least makes "checking prices" not required to sell, that is pretty bad...shops just serve to charge more for the items!

I don't want shops like this.
/NOT SIGNED