Market & Traders

[◄Chuck►]

(Copied from internal area to widen the discussion)

I noticed that there is still a certain interest for the car trader's role. I'm wondering if returning to the old trading scheme and deactivating the auto-generation (the script that generates low-value cars) could be a step forward (again).

The idea of traders is as old as the market is. There has always been a "trader" flag in the database that wasn't ever used. But since TC World, the technical base couldn't be better for professional traders.

I imagine there could be a traders-license for 10 grand or so, which grants a virtual warehouse where traders could store their cars.
TC World then could be the showroom for those traders. The traders could choose a nice logo and put featured deals into the front window or so.

There are downsides too, to which somebody may know a solution for:
- Unlike real world, the condition is always 100% accurate as numbers don't lie. So it's a bit hard to negotiate over prices as the reference price is totally known.
- Supply of low-value cars could break down as most people only sell the "slow ones" and keep their FZ5's

(Maybe there could be a special car-source for traders, but then that might only (unfairly) flush money into the traders' pockets. Dunno )

Thoughts?

[Brixton]

I´ve think about for a while since I see the post today morning.

My first thougt was: "Yeah, Nice Idea. That bring even more roleplay to the server".

But then I think more about it. Is TC realy a MMO Server? I think not. The core of the fun on TC is that you can go out and drive. Drive as a cruiser within the rules or drive like a maniac (street law maniac, not server rules ) and be chased. The RP-Factor is there but much lower than in a classic MMO.

The good thing actual is: You can earn some money and lose it very fast as well. But with the used car maket you have the chance even as a newbi to drive the fast cars.

The problem I see, when you give the trading in the hand of the users instead of the scipt is a unbalanced market which made it very easy to buy cheap cars like UF1 but very hard to buy fun cars like UFR, XFR or FZ5.

But the good thing on TC is, that the whole gameplay is maked from the user on the server. There are no hight hurdle in the game itself which limited you to much. With a user based, trader based, car market I think there will be such a hurdle.

Why is TC so popular and all the other cruising server are not? Cause you have on no other server such a simple system of getting money - losing money - and buy cars. A used car trading system based on traders will make it much more complicated and harder to learn for new player.

So all in all a -1 from me. The used car system is very good like it is.

[Tingle]

Would be cool if the pricing mechanism for each car is recreated and kept secret, as well as stopping insim from telling you its second hand value automatically.

That way, there will be more competition in the market between traders, otherwise they will just set the price to the price suggested by insim, probably won't make a profit and won't have any incentive whatsoever to pay £10k for that licence.

[SO•Huski]

TCBay anybody?

[SO•Sebas]

- Remove the ability to players to see the real value of the car, only the condition and mileage (Trader cars).
- Continue to offer low value cars on the market, maybe only offer some of them?
- Have a "private" market for traders with cars at a lowered price (simulate auction).

That's all i have for now.

[◄Chuck►]

But the condition already is a synonym for the value. Ie, a new FXO is 18k, then a 100% car would cost 16.2k (90% of new price). A 50% FXO would be 8.1k, and so on.

[Brixton]

(2017-09-08 14:56)Chuck Wrote:  But the condition already is a synonym for the value. Ie, a new FXO is 18k, then a 100% car would cost 16.2k (90% of new price). A 50% FXO would be 8.1k, and so on.

Even if I say -1 just a thought for that. Maybe you can take in a random variable into it. So the cars with e.g. 50 % cost between 7.500 and 9.500 €. So the conditon only give a area for the worth.

[guxjim]

I think is a good idea to let the player to trade with car because now is really difficult to do it.But what about repairing the low cond cars?.For example: you buy a low cond car and that car can only be repaired to the 25%, and to repair it you pay 2k and have to drive 50km between 80/100 kmh to repair it. i think it could be a nice idea. It could be nice also if you need a license for doing this.(sorry for the english XD)

[Tingle]

I don't think there's a simple way of making this actually work then. If the price is just an almost linear function of the condition then it's pretty much pointless if everyone will buy/sell their cars using this logic, as the market will remain near enough efficient.

If the market is efficient there won't be any room for the traders to make profits and therefore no reason to pay €10,000 for a licence. Though it may be good if they just want to use it to store more than the current 10 or however many cars you can store at the moment.

[Barney [CA]]

I'd definitley say yes to removing the autogenerating of lowvalue cars, and also to not add (as many)low value cars by hand every now and then.
At least not so often. Since both have been implemented car trading on the server has almost stopped, as theres is almost every car for every desired price availiable.
Back then, you could at least "negotiate" a bit for rare GTRs for example.

On a positive note, that has decreased people "ripping" off new/unexperienced cruisers by selling them way overpriced cars. Mostly FZs and XRTs.
For the same reason im totally against removing the !carinfo. New players need that to get a grip of how the value is, without knowing the technical details.

Instead i'd rather suggest the (trade-) value of cars to be influcenced by "previous owners", "bulit date" and/or "heavy crashes"(if that isnt too hard to implement.
Just some first random numbers thrown in for (your)example a 50% FXO, eg 7500km, has a value of 8100,-

The new (trade) value would then be something like value*(1-(0,005*previousowner)), with 5 previous owners it would only be
8100*(1-(0,005*5)) = 7898,- same could be done per month since bulit date(maybe a tad lower reduction) and heavy crashes.

A 50% FXO, 5 previous owner, 12 months old and involved in 5 heavy crashes would then have a value of:
8100*(1-(0,005*5))*(1-(0,001*12))*(1-0,0025*5))= 7705,-

Apart from those "fixed" numbers there's still room for negotiating anyways imho, but barely anyone did ever take into account if a car is actually serviced.
That can be a price difference of 1500,- but is being totally ignored by everyone.

I'm not totally against a traders licence, but i dont really see a need for that much effort, while most people anyways only trade to make money(of unexperienced drivers), but not for the roleplaying part.

---

€: or is the value displayed in !carinfo actually lowered by serviceprice, if the car is overdue?

[◄Chuck►]

Ehm well, we're now heading where I predicted we were going. There is a flood of "beginner's cars" and the big ones are sold out (eg FZ5) or shortly before.
Something has to be done.

[Barney [CA]]

I still think this way its better than having all cars in all conditions availiable.
Imho new players need to get a grip of everything before they buy a FZ, speed/crash around everywhere, get in chases and lose all their money.

The FZ is just the "best" and most wanted allroundcar, and not having it on the market will support car dealers and interaction on the server, and will lead to more TBO fun.

Is it possible to adjust the conditionloss-script that it goes only for the UF1/XFG/XRG to keep the market smaller? And then, if you really think there should be more rare cars availiable, just manually add a few from time(like for christmas, easter and so on).