2 small improvements to the market. (lvs)

[Pettmol]

I love the market! I hate having to gather and grind my own stuff!
I especially love the private shop part of the market, but at times it can be a pain to go through every shop and chest to see who's selling rockets and shulkerboxes at the lowest price.

I therefore have two quality of life improvement ideas for the market. They are fairly easy and cheap to implement.


1. Map and banners: Every shop get's a banner with their name, and we add a map wall (or floor) wherever it's the most convenient for people to see.


(pretend this is the market and not a random flatt world I just made and placed a bunch of banners around.)

Why does this help? Well glad you asked imaginary voice in my head.


2. The Book: In front of the map we place a lectern with a book. On the first page have rules and info, (how to get a shop etc etc). After that every shop get 1 page each to add in what they sell and their prices. This way you can quickly when you drop by the market see what everybody is selling and the price. (Exactly how much info is for each shop owner to decide)





Small issues with this

You can't edit a book when it's on a lectern and you can't remove a book from a lectern when you're in adventure mode. This means when you want to edit the book a blue to give it to you. This is to my mind, not a huge deal, after all the blues are usually around and you'd need their help to change stuff at the market anyway. (It also hinders somebody from messing with what the book says, which seems unlikely but still)

For the first few days we could have the book somewhere semi safe from like in the end (no new, untrusted people can get it), and people could write in all their shop items, then it the blues can move it to the market. (The blues should also make a copy of it ofc)

We could also debate if we should have the prices in the book, or if just what you're selling is enough to make it easier to navigate and look cleaner.

I can supply all the necessary materials, what do you people think?

[SneakySkeleton]

Hey Pett.

I love the 2 ideas, however I'm against adding prices to the book. Here's why.

1. I feel it encourages players too much to drive down prices.
The market is competitive, but it is also supposed to be a decent 2nd income source. But more importantly, it is supposed to be fun. Driving down prices is likely to make it near worthless/impossible for newer players to enter the market and make it worth their time. This is how a monopoly is created, and that's no fun.

2. Some players want to be flexible with price changes.
Yes, us blues could accommodate for this, but the vast range of items sold there would make it very easy to lose track of. If a player is to change their price by means of paper label inside of a chest, it may cause underpaying issues if players only look at a (possibly) out of date price on the lectern.

3. Not listing the price encourages players to look around, and give everyone a chance.
If we were to list prices, some players will just go straight to the cheaper options, that's a given. However if we don't list prices, it encourages players to give every shop a look around, and put everyone on a more equal playing field. They may only be looking for one item, but going into multiple shops may encourage some players to buy more in other locations.

I may think of other reasons (and add them later), but I personally think these outweigh the pros of listing prices.

[Forseth]

I love the ideas. A map for easy overview of the market (and an overview where you can see where the market ends) and a book that describes the different personal shops.

However, I do agree with Sneaky that we shouldn't list prices of individual shops. I wouldn't mind a book governing the average price or the price of currency, but not every store's content and price

How about we add a section in the book for each shop and add a small description to that. Such as:
"Forseth's shop off goodies is on the main road and to the left. Feel free to drop by for some random blocks and loot. You won't regret it"
or
"Don't miss SneakySkeleton's well designed personal shop with stock changed and updated regularly. Even has two entrances for your convenience!"

In other words things that easily describes the store and what it specialize in, but not in detail. Most stores does random sells (like mine) and probably don't need a lucrative descriptions. But the redstone shop or If some creates a specialized "New content" store it could be easily described without the need for listing prices. Plus players could pick a fitting description for their store and once written in by a Zriend, It don't need changing that much since it isn't so specific on
sales.

[Zedwick]

I like this idea, and agree with those who say prices should not be put in the book.

I prefer the idea that each shop essentially gets to put an ad for their shop on a single page in the book. They can choose how they fill their page, whether listing their popular items or giving a general overview of the types of things they sell, or perhaps focus on providing clear instructions for finding their shop. Just set a few rules for what can and cannot be on their page; for example you could say no prices and no comparisons to other shops (e.g. "Cheaper than Zedwick's shop!!!")

Just make sure to leave enough pages at the beginning to provide an index for all future shop pages. Perhaps in the interest of fairness occasionally redo the book to give different shops a chance to be nearer the beginning of the book?

[ABParadigm]

Without really reading the previous replies, I'd like to say that I'm in favor of this book idea, bar the prices. I think each shop should be kept to a maximum of one page. I do think that if you are in the market looking to advertise prices, you should do so by word of mouth. In my opinion that's also part of being involved with your shop, by promoting it, and your prices, on a personal level. I also don't like the fact that you wouldn't be able to change prices without a blue to edit the book; if you just advertise it in your chest you can edit prices quite easily. Just my two cents.

I think any addition to the market with the new 1.14 functionalities would be welcome. There is a lot of stuff I'm sure we could use.

[Spectatre]

Agreed that prices/price comparisons shouldn't be allowed in the book.

To me it would make sense for there to be a default 'starting' format, so that every player shop has a presence in the book. Just basic, whose shop it is, general list of things they sell (blocks/items, maybe specify the sought-afters and valuables like Elytra, Shulkers, 1.13/14 goods?). If a player wants to personalise their page, they can do so by request via a Blue. I have a semi-up-to-date list of what players sell in the spawn market player-shops, and could send this to whoever gets this written up.

Mixing the order around also makes sense - alphabetically may be an easy/uncontentious starting position?

The Banners/Maps thing seems great - if fitting everyone's IGNs in a visible way on banners/maps is impractical, maybe giving every shop a 'number', and then numbering the banners? Even if there was a way to use physical blocks to 'write' a number on the roof of every shop, such that it would show up clearly on a map, may help folk find their way around to the shop they're after. Not that it's a very large area to navigate, currently, but still a nice quality-of-life improvement

[Forseth]

The order the book lists the shop doesn't really matter for me, as I could always sneak up to the book and switch pages until it's on my shop page, thus the next players to look at the book will see my shop first. Whoever does this the most is the most present for new customers

[Zedwick]

The order the book lists the shop doesn't really matter for me, as I could always sneak up to the book and switch pages until it's on my shop page, thus the next players to look at the book will see my shop first. Whoever does this the most is the most present for new customers

I suppose this is a fair point actually, as the book in the lectern will remain open on the last viewed page, the order the shops are viewed in may end up being randomised just by people viewing shops in it (even without any enthusiastic tampering by Forseth and other shop owners).