Barter System Thoughts

[Gallowsknight]

This a cart before the horse thread, because obviously there's no NPCs currently in place. But I had some ideas for the full version/singleplayer.

When you want to barter with someone it could bring up your inventory and the items they will trade. Each item has a hidden numerical value that is affected by 1. How much they like you 2. Your haggle skill and 3. What they value the item as.

In the later, a Hunter/Trapper would have a very low value for animal meats because he already has them, but a higher value for bullets or hunting knives. The same with a fisherman/forrester/whatever with low values for fish, wood etc.

You put up what you'll trade and what you want and it will give a percentage chance of the deal occurring much like when you repair something. If you win a deal you increase your haggling, the amount depending on how ambitious you are. If you get rebuffed you can modify the deal. Three disagreements though and the barter will be locked for an amount of time (a cooling of tempers if you). To prevent people spamming trades.

Merchants would work differently, there might be a guy with a boat who has access to other communities further south who turns up every week. He'd work on a supply and demand method, informing you about what he needs in advance like furs, medicinal plants, whatever. You can put requests in for stuff (i.e. bullets, scrap metal) but requesting would jack the prices slightly.

I think a system like this would give the player some flexibility as they could offload items like surplus meat and furs for useful tools. But sometimes there'd be small margins for profits and you'd have to consider if a trade was really worth it or if it was only worth it for future business.

Thoughts?

(I have been enjoying this game for the last month. Look forward to what comes in the future).

[octavian]

I do not see bartering working the way you describe it, at all. Skills and merchants fit in any other game but TLD. Instead of arguing against your ideas one at a time I will say two things.

Other people, communities in particular, beg the question why the self-imposed isolation. You would want to team up and go where people are, not stay alone like some prepper cook having a Noah in the Ark fantasy, the flipside being of course that you see your own kind as a threat, threat being what your own kind makes of you as well. Hinterland has to address this, and the fact that you have locked and loaded your haggle skill inside the chamber, and the NPC did so too.

[BearyManilowe]

With so little backstory, and the only backstory presented thus far is a geomagnetic storm, the idea that you would intentionally avoid finding civilization yourself by trading with a random NPC kind of gives off a fallout vibe. TLD I think is trying to avoid this, as to our knowledge, there is no reason to not trust anyone. If you talk to a guy who is going back to civilization, it would make no sense for you to say "okay, see ya later. Bring me some bullets when you get back."

As much as I would like the idea of settling in a vacant cabin and establishing my own little cubby in the wilderness of Nowhere, Canada -- that whole idea kind of ruins the "survival" aspect of the game for me. The end game shouldn't be being complacent living in the first cabin you find after your plan crashes, it should be getting back to your life before the crash, getting back to humanity. Maybe an NPC along the way could help you out, and when he offers you something you can return something he needs, but a full on "trader" would be a negative addition for me.

[Boston123]

Pretty much what the other two posters above said: There is NO reason for our characters to actually WANT to stay out in the bush. Sure, it is fun for us, the "players", but examine it from the "characters" POV: they are scared, cold, lonely, and probably fighting off wolves. Then, someone finds them and says that civilization is relatively close by. If our characters DIDN'T want to go with them, something would be wrong.