Player Shops

I agree that its much harder to mod things in multiplayer, which is why I raised the point that I system like this would only be secure if it was controlled server side. Without anything being controlled by the server there would be no need for the mods to have to work in multiplayer. It would just require:

Cheat to get huge quantities of money ==> Mod to untick 'cheat tick-box' again ==> Player is no longer labelled and free to go and spend their money.

No mods would be required after unticking the box, as the game would just be set back to registering that that money was legitimately acquired.

But anyway, some good ideas! I think we should just agree to disagree, and all eat cake instead

 

They said that modding will be post release, and that they will try to make so you automatically download and install mods as you enter on the server, whitout having to do anything, but that when you go to other server, it would have only the mods of that server (Or vanilla, if no mods installed).

 

This idea may also solve the problem of vendor trash, because shops would only want to buy things that sold well.

Also, for things like weapons, it'd be great if you could have a built-in way to try it on, say, a firing range. The customer can't steal the item that way, but can see if they'd like to buy it.

 

I think i have a solution for cheaters that could make everything work;

Save legitimate things on a cloud and illegitimate things client side. Now I know what your thinking. "But in the end, he still has all the items!". This is where the next part comes in.

There would be two versions of every item, a tradable version and non-tradable version. Tradable versions are saved by cloud and untradable ones client-side, so that you cant hack in tradable items / Credits, only the untradable versions.

 

So, what is looks like is...

You take your old stuff, or anything you want to sell, hire an NPC to sell it for you, you set the price or item trade. You then comeback and collect your money, which has come from real players who bought you items.

I like it, but can you hire a player to sell stuff, or get materials, and put him on "payroll" where he is payed automatically from the store's cash?

Could you make it so that their are some extremely rare things, found on less than one percent of planets, in a hidden way, so that only a massive company could get at enough of it, but you could find it and sell the planet to them...

Now, as a link to my only suggestion (I have been looking for a related suggestion) what if you could customize an item, copyright it (preventing anyone who has seen it from crafting it is the customizer), and then sell your incredible new gun/sword/ship/mobile base/anything else.

This would be awesome...

 

I thought you character didn't have levels at all, it was all based on how good your gear is? So the shops can't sell leveled equipment, and with vanity items you can't even tell what current gear they have and thus their level. So... what makes you think that any single transaction isn't potentially game breaking by giving overpowered weps or what have you to your customer? There's really no gaurentee then. Also, its been said before but I don't think its really sunk in yet - a full game economy is not possible unless starbound has an official server where everything is stored. The only real alternative is a closed economy on a server to server basis, with the restrictions of only new characters created on that server being allowed to partipate. Also, I know you dislike cheating, but a lock out on characters for cheating in items is ridiculous, at least as a trade of for a real economy, which as I've said is impossible unless the aforementioned scenario is provided. Don't get why his economy is so important that you should be blocked from multiplayer with cheated items. SOME PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THAT WAY. The more freedom the better

 

Edit: As Rade and I have come to better terms, I see no reason why this whole flamefest should be shown when it serves no productive means in regards to the idea this thread exists for. I'm not one for hiding my past mistakes, however, and so I shall throw these in a spoiler. If you want to read them, please feel free; just know they are not to be taken too seriously as I was acting rather stupidly (and immaturely) when I was writing these. (hehe copypasta)

Regarding players buying overpowered items, that's been talked about quite a bit. I honestly don't feel like reposting, so do you mind reading some of the previous posts? It's only a page or so, nothing too much.

It's more of a Minecraft approach to the whole situation. All of those servers with plugins that give an economy to the server, with money and player shops and an economy. Something that can be done on a server-to-server basis that wouldn't be hard to set up at all.
That's the idea here; to have the same kind of system built into Starbound, so players (it wouldn't take more than 10~20 players to make a small economy) can buy and sell their goods to each other, and ultimately spend more time playing the game together.

As for freedom, I used to agree with you, until I read a fascinating article about how sometimes restriction is required and a better alternative to complete and total freedom. I'll post it if I can find it after school.

To be completely honest though, it really seems like you're just pointing out all of the flaws without giving any kind of solution. If you don't like the idea, sure, that's fine. You never said you didn't like the idea, however, so I'm a bit confused as to what your point is here. Are you just here to point out flaws, or are you here to help and offer your assistance in solving these problems?
Every idea has problems. That's one of the reasons why they're posted here; so other people can have their say and the community can work together to fix the problems that may not have been noticed alone. You aren't obligated to help fix them, but it would be appreciated and would probably make you look a bit less standoffish. So, maybe provide some solutions as well next time?

 

Most of what was said before is completely nullified because there is no "leveling". This was overlooked from the start and the idea was built around it, making most of it useless. Also, the bits about in game currency being broken by the most cheaty server is absolutely absurd, since servers don't interact with one another, and any server owner with a brain will not allow pre-made characters to join.
Read : ECONOMY SOLVED.

I read all the posts before posting. I always do.

Yeah... this is more about making the most customers happy. See, a server to server economy will appeal to those who want pixels to be worth something and actually allow consistent trading.... but people also just want to dick around sometimes. Cheat servers and controlled economy servers can exist side by side; in no way are they mutually exclusive. And i realized restricting people can be rewarding in a game. That is the entire point of a leveling system or any kind of one way progression in a game, the more powerful you are the less limited you are. That's kinda why in most games, you start at level 1. But still, there's no justification for killing cheat servers. Or even a justification for the premise of this quote, which is "freedom is bad"

Great suggestions! I think i covered this pretty easily in my first post, but i'll do it again, just for you. I don't dislike the idea of a working economy. I dislike the idea of a working in-game economy at the expense of other game types. The server to server economy is designed to be the solution to your problem, since it affects nothing outside of the server itself, thus allowing other server types to flourish. Everyone gets their jollies, and everyone's happy. As for player trading specifically? That will exist in some form or another regardless of whether or not it's supported by the devs. The main hurdle is assigning even approximate values for any of the in game items. Even if you do that, everything is randomized so many types of equipment will be rarer on one server than another, so the value would be different. You're just looking for a box that streamlines trading between players. There are flaws for sure, but this isn't even a problem.

And don't even get me started on the lack of knowledge about third party inventory editors. Any decent one will never be detected, and can't be. I guess the thing that really riled me up was a post about banning detected cheat characters from multiplayer period. Also an absurd solution to a non problem, since servers can just make you make a new character when you join.

 

Quoting Hell-Knight:

Should servers force players to only be able to use currency, items, or characters created on that particular server?

This would solve the problem, and I like that idea, I think characters shouldn't be usable on different servers, or maybe that be a setting for the server owner

Also, another idea, maybe there could be a huge station, like someone else mentioned, but instead of buying and selling plots, there are say, for simplicity's sake, 10 different rooms. Each room contains 10 different shops. Every week, the list is randomized (or maybe sorted by sales). So week one, player 1 is in room one, right next to the entrance, player 2 is in room one, 5 people away from the entrance, player three is in room two 2 people away from the entrance. Next week comes along, player 1 is 9 people away from the entrance in room two, player 2 is next to the entrance of room one, and player 3 is next to the entrance of room three. If it wasn't random, shops could be ranked on number of sales per week, then once a month, the sales rankings are reset, with the top room getting rewards perhaps?

 

This is interesting! It'd be nice to be able to sell off any extra items that I didn't want to hang on to. I'd love it! 8 D my clan is also allied with a merchants group, this would be right up their alley. I like! 8 D

 

Edit: As Rade and I have come to better terms, I see no reason why this whole flamefest should be shown when it serves no productive means in regards to the idea this thread exists for. I'm not one for hiding my past mistakes, however, and so I shall throw these in a spoiler. If you want to read them, please feel free; just know they are not to be taken too seriously as I was acting rather stupidly (and immaturely) when I was writing these.

Economy not solved. Firstly, the idea wasn't around leveling, it was built around the already implemented and stated procedurally generated guns system that allows for a vast variety of weapons. This is the base for which this idea was built, since randomly generated weapons means some will be better than others, and in turn, more desirable.
Also:

The bits about in-game currency being broken by the most cheaty server is absolutely valid, and this isn't the only reason why. There's also the topic of hypocrisy, but that'll be covered a little later, just for the sake of consistency.

Hurr durr, let's force people to make new characters instead of loading up the ones that they spent hours and hours on getting the best junk!
If that's something people with brains do, I don't want a brain.

If you would have read all of the posts you would have seen that I dropped the idea of locking characters out in lieu of the Oblivion-style fenced item tag.

You talk about freedom and yet you want to restrict one character to each server and force people to make new characters just to join? At least my version didn't enforce stupid things on people.
Cheaters have their place, and they're welcome to do whatever the hell they want. It's their game. That doesn't mean that I want to participate in their activities. They have their place, and that place is not with legitimate characters.

How would this effect other game types in any way? If Starbound is anything like the devs told us it would be, then there should be no problem whatsoever. Starbound is going to be a progressive game, and as a progressive game it means progress directly influences everything you have. If you are far in the game, you will have more money than when you start. If you are far in the game, you will have better weapons. If anything, Player Shops would only help the Starbound formula, because it means you can encourage proper progression; unless a person spends a lot of time gathering extra money, they're only going to be able to purchase what they have enough for, therefore confining them in their "weapon bracket". You can't buy what you don't have enough money for.

As for pricing, it should be a pretty simple affair. Time-consuming, but simple. You'd just have to figure out the currency pacing (how much each monster gives, how much it costs for one thing) and make prices based on how good the item is and the currency pacing.

Once again, why would you make that a prerequisite? Why should people have to make new characters just to join one server? That's just as absurd as my idea.
Addressing the "banning detected cheat characters from multiplayer period" thing, I don't think it's too much to ask not to have to play with cheaters. Fair enough, that's a bit extreme, but it would be cool if there was an option to allow or deny people with hacked inventories.

And one final note; I'm completely fine with opinions, ideas, and even complete animosity towards my ideas. I am not, however, fine with sarcasm and general rudeness. We can debate about this all day and I'll be happy the entire way through, but it ceases to be a debate when you treat me like crap. I don't think I'm asking much here; just mutual respect.

 

You're right, a list of weapons where some are better than others completely changes the game. Because that's unique somehow... Oh wait it's not. Even procedurally generated guns can be ranked in files as if they weren't random at all, because all mods can be accounted for in the game. So what is your point?

... because you said so? LOL

Let me enlighten you. You complained that in order to have an unbroken economy, the standards and security would have to be very stringent to keep cheaters from destroying the real economies on servers. So let me point out this: If you allow single player characters onto servers with their gear and money, there is no guarantee that any items or equipment, or any PROGRESSION they may have is legitimate. Furthermore, This problem stems from the use of third party map or inventory editors, the creation of which Tiy and the other devs have no control over and cannot stop. This is a glaring problem and needs to be addressed in someway if an unbroken economy is even going to step into the realm of possibility. Then you came up with the idea to flag all characters that use cheat services and ban them from online play.

See this is where we differ in opinion. You are willing to kill off cheats for everyone, so that you can have a working economy. An economy which will be contained in a closed system on a server. I think it is simply RETARDED that mechanics in a closed system can in anyway affect MY choices of play outside that system. But that's not even the funny part about your misinformed view. While your system of flagging cheats may sound like a good idea, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO IMPLEMENT. If saves are allowed client side, (on your pc) they can be cheated. PERIOD. I'll even give you a quick example of why this is. If you create a character, find 10 pixels, and then save your progress, guess what? The game saves all of your inventory in the form of a string, probably in hex in a file on your PC. Alternatively, If created a character, quit, and then put 10 pixels into my characters "inventory string" via an inventory editor, guess what difference there is in the actual data present in my character's inventory string? NONE.There is no difference between the data in the legit character save and the cheated one. This is because in order to even work inv editors use algorithms to replace the string with new data that is THE SAME as the new data THE GAME ITSELF would have put there if the items had been gotten legitimately. In fact, it is generally helpful to think of inventory editors as a version of the game itself, but instead of playing, you tell it what you acquired instead.

And you talk about freedom when you want to abolish even the possiblity of playing online with cheated material? PVP is a pretty big thing in online games today and terraria is no exception, with teams cheating in specific weapons or armor so that matches can be even on both sides. An unintended consequence (i'm assuming) of your atrocious idea is the death of balanced PvP for the foreseeable future on servers. Not to mention "fun" servers where everyone has a nuke spewing gatling gun. No sir, It is YOU who has made a mockery of freedom in games. YOU are enforcing stupid things on people simply because you want a working economy above all other things (read: at the expense of). Which isn't a problem, but it's be nice if you admitted this fact.

Why would I make this prerequisite? Simple. It is the most effective way to get YOUR idea (a working economy) and everything else in the same game, not instead of everything else. And It's impossible to detect cheaters anyways.
It's really simple, and it all revolves one little fact: Where do characters get saved?
If it's client side, all characters can be cheated. It will be impossible to tell if someone has legitimately obtained anything on their character.
If it's server side, no characters can be cheated, because you aren't given access to those files at all.
If Tiy starts an official server or wants characters saved on the cloud, then cheating won't be allowed either, but this is an extra service they would have to produce and then provide. In other words, it will cost them MONEY. In every other respect it is identical to server side saves.

At no point did I attack your personality, character, launguage skills, or anything besides the actual idea you came up with. If you don't want criticism for your ideas, then don't post them.

 

After spending thirty minutes reading all of our posts repeatedly, I can't help but feel like this is a little bit silly. This was "fun", I suppose, but I don't think it would be wise to bicker about something that clearly won't be resolved that easily, regardless of what solution we come up with.
Granted, I was rather overzealous in some of my suggestions, but that's the thing; they're suggestions. They're not meant to be taken as an ironclad thing, just something to be improved upon.
And yes, I know I missed quite a few things regarding what you said; many apologies. We both made mistakes here, and I'm not going to act like this whole fiasco wasn't my fault when it most certainly was. Once again, many apologies.
I can't help but feel like this post is going to resolve anything, and only serve to make me look weak and all that other stuff. That's probably just me being a bit pretentious, but I suppose I'll find out eventually.

Either way, I'm not giving up on this idea, and I'm not giving up on my opinions of them. I will happily take your suggestions into account, and I appreciate you giving them to me, no matter how they were presented. Thank you. (Yes, I know I missed the one you made originally and that spawned this whole thing. Once again, many apologies.)

I do have one thing to say, however, regarding what you've said. Mainly the last sentence.

You're right, you did nothing to attack my personality, character, or language skills. That didn't stop you from being rather sarcastic and rude, though.

I will say right now that I was less than civil when I responded to you, and once again; I apologize. It was petty of me.
But it was also rather petty of you to do the same in return. It's partially why I'm writing this right now; I don't feel like we could take each other seriously when we're both throwing our own jabs in the process. It's rather difficult to listen to somebody who is insulting you.

Anyway, I've said what I needed to say, and I feel better because of it. To be honest, I'm just getting rather tired of seeing you post and dreading coming to the thread to check because I know I'm going to have to respond to some really long post that just makes me feel stupid. I suppose that makes me selfish, but hard as I try to make other people happy I have to think of myself eventually.

 

Sounds like the systems some MMOs use.
I'm a bit worried that people will abuse it to bypass Death Penalties by transferring money with it to a friend, but whatever.

The alternative would be dropping items to the ground to trade or direct trading.
I'd like to have both direct trading and this system.

 

I'm surprised, I didn't expect you to be so mature. But you're right I was rude, and for that I apologize. I wont even give an excuse for my rudeness, as I don't think it really matters. I guess I feel very passionately about this game.
I really didn't mean to hijack your thread. If we speak again, I hope it is on more amiable terms.

Also I really do want a working economy in the game, and I actually do really like your idea. You can expect me to never bicker with you again.

But I won't let this thread die! Our rantings have exposed some facts I find interesting, mostly about how some people relate to game mechanics.

There are many ways to go the route of a supported in game economy. I feel I misinterpreted what you said on tthe subject first and then misrepresented it. It seems you would like a full on economy where every server online is a part of it. Is this correct? If it is, I was wrong about the general infrastructure of the economy and this does alter quite a bit how it can be created. If it is just a closed server economy that is the aim (along with any other servers via an in game portal) then I think the strict rules required for an economy can be quite lax outside of the closed system.

As for our difference in opinion: I prefer a closed economy; one in which character creation is restricted to servers supporting an economy (in order to keep everything traceable and legitimate.)

From my understanding: you want an cross server economy where legitimate items are always being hunted down no matter where they are, and you'd support anti cheating measures in the metagame over restrictions on your already made characters being allowed to join a server, since in your version old characters would have to be legitimate anyways.

To be honest, the best real possibility of this happening is for Tiy to use cloud storage, which is cheap and efficiently keeps data out of the hands of moddera and cheaters.
This may affect the modding community of course, but as you said, this is not an ironclad idea and is open to criticism.

Please let me know if I represented you accurately

 

Oh. I see.
Yeah I don't think that moving items cross-server is a good idea at all.
Not unless some sort of "server alliance" of server owners allow cross-server stuff.

 

I'm sorry but I'm against purely because I wanna be able to do my own singleplayer without any help

 

I'd like to think that I'm not stupid, but every once in awhile it just kinda happens. I think we all can understand.

Ideally though it could be something similar to the TF2 trading system on Steam, albeit with some minor tweaks and improvements to the system. That would, however, require cloud storage, and I don't necessarily want to bank on that as being a possibility. This would encompass the idea of a server-to-server economy, so you are very much correct on your understanding. The limitations, however, would make the whole thing rather difficult without some secure location to store these things: I.E. cloud storage. As I just said though, I don't want to bank on that happening, so as best as I can figure closed server would probably be the easier bet. And honestly, I wouldn't mind that. Any kind of economy would be enough to make me happy, even if it wasn't necessarily as broad as I would have hoped. (I think I was a bit held up on the idea of it being server-to-server and wasn't willing to change my mind on the subject. My bad. )

If it were to be server-to-server, however, I think the best way would to be having the items server AND client sided, and maybe, MAYBE, find a way to use the Steam trading system to trade from server to server via your friends list. That way, you're on the server and it not only checks to see if the items you have work with the current server list of items you have, but allows you to trade to other people from other servers assuming they're connected to the server as well. This would also prevent cheating as the server generated list would override the client defaults, so cheaters can still cheat and players won't have to deal with them if they join a non-cheater server. In theory, at least. Now, I can see a problem with transitioning from server to server as this system would essentially wipe your character for that server, and the best I can see around this (this would also be great for PvP servers and for mess-around servers) is to make loading a server item list optional so you don't have to force load a server list if you have to. Yes, I'm aware this still doesn't solve the whole "hopping from server to server without being wiped" problem, and I'm still not sure how to fix that. Of course, input is appreciated, and I hope to see yours and everybody else's feedback on this.

And, if Steam trading support isn't possible, maybe it'd be possible to integrate it into the exit menu of sorts. You could add a button on the menu for "trading", and it would give you a prompt asking for the server's IP you'd want to trade with, and if possible the name of the character on that server. The person on that server would be notified (if online) and they could accept/deny, and then trading would begin. The data would just be sent from server to server like a normal packet would, and the trade would be successful. In theory.
You could also add a ranking system to determine who and how honest traders are. ("Was this trade satisfactory? Yes/No" that kinda thing) It would discourage people from sharking and scamming, and could be stored on the Starbound website, similar to how Wanderlust does their ranking system.

And I'm really happy we got the earlier tiff cleared up and are now on better terms. This just feels better. Oh, and no hard feelings, of course.

I want to make the distinction that this is by no means required. They're player driven economies, after all; if there are no players to drive them they will not go. In other words, participation in any economy whatsoever is 100% voluntary. As it should be.

 

In that case go right ahead it's a yes from Me

 

This... is a great idea! It never even crossed my mind to utilize steam as well as use both client and server side data to check for accuracy! Building on this idea, what if there was a server connected to steam that you can't actually access to play, but it hosts an auction house and makes it available (via the server to server portal coding) for any other server you play on? And another possibly silly idea, is to make people make semi serious "bank accounts" in this auction house so that all pixels you'd want to store or use for virtual goods would have to pass through it's rigorous anti cheating measures. It kind of adds a serious roleplay element and i think it may help the economy and auction house idea overall, and it just plain makes me excited for this game!!1