For an effective trading system, especially one in a game where properties have different rent potential for different players, we need something more like ebay than like the current MCS system.
First, the seller should be able to post a public starting price and a private reserve. optionally a buy it now price. The seller can determine the length of time for the auction. I'm not completely sure but I think bids should be public.. or maybe the seller can opt for a silent auction. These details could be better thought out by someone with more auction experience than I have.
Second, the seller should be able to package multiple streets in a single auction. This would allow a player to sell an entire area that they have developed, which obviously could be more valuable than any of the streets alone. This creates an opportunity for the player to make great profits through smart buying/development. I think this would also extend the long term potential of the game. After rising in net worth through buying and building on streets, one can start to participate on a large level through smart buying and selling of larger areas of the world.
Finally, there should be a central "auction area" where a potential buyer can search for auctions matching certain criteria, again much like ebay. This assists with the higher level play where a player might be doing very little building and focus more on building wealth through trading alone.
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These are great ideas.
ReplyDeleteTrading or any method to transfer in game advantage from one account to another will allways be a primary target for cheaters. There really is no way to completely stop it but you can make it so that inter account trading is less effective.
One thing that i would like to see is that trades are performed openly and that anyone can participate. This would mean that each trade is essentially an auction, the trade/auction should have a reserve price, and must have a minimum duration (so no buy now price)...posibly upto 2 days to make the rental income loss more significant (I would expect that streets involved in a trade do not earn an income) and to give all players a chance to see the auction, this limits fast trades to trasfer wealth. During the auction anyone can make a higher bid than the current highest bid. If someone makes an offer for a property and the owner decides to offer it for sale then an auction is created with the current higest bid already set to the offer made.
On closing the auction the top bidders funds are deleted plus an auctioneers fee say 10% is charged..the seller recieves 90% of the sales price (again auctioneers fee's)
To ensure that players have the funds to pay for the bid i would allow them to offer one of their properties as securtiy...ie if they win then at the time of purchase its placed in mortgage and earns no income until they pay the mortgage off. If they choose not to offer a security and win but cannot pay because of insufficient funds on hand then they are charged a fine of 50% of the purchase price and the property goes to the next highest bidder.
the auctioneers fees will provide one small sink for ingame funds, so to will the occasional fine, and perhapes you could even charge a small fee or interest for taking a property out of mortgage...perhapes that fee could increase daily....and if the property is not paid off within a week then its repossed.
I would also want to see the trading lists be able to be sorted or refined by any number of factors, location, ROI, but also disparity between current highest bid and value...so that people can slip through a major wealth reassignment in a quite area.