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I never missed bartering in games, maybe because in real life I also don't barter at least in my country. We have fixed prices and you either buy or don't buy (maybe there could be a special offer), but overall you simply don't barter. The Problems I have in games are much more high inflation, shops are worthless or much too important.
Mental Check point only has a handful of videos so far, but they've all been interesting (especially the ones about being credited in over 100 games and remembering tutorials). Cool to see even smaller channels I follow are working with Extra Credits.
I've had a theoretical system in mind for a while now where each npc has a number of values that influence how they value items (this npc is a blacksmith, and a dwarf, but living next to a coal mine) that influences what they're willing to buy from a player (so the dwarf will buy all metals at a high price, but coal is super cheap, and they refuse to buy anything elven), depending on the players speech skill, and the player can buy with more than just gold, having to offer up some goods in exchange for what the dwarf is selling, such that the dwarf feels like he's getting a good value, or at the very least, not getting ripped off. Lastly, non-item attributes can also be traded, such as trading a favour with the Dwarf King to get the stuff for free, or you've done a quest for the locals so he winds up giving you a discount, or maybe you've claimed a castle and you offer that in exchange for a full set of masterwork armour. This way you actively have to think about what you are trading, what you have done, and what your influence on the world means
To add depth to the mechanic, if you traded lots of iron with the dwarf, you will see more iron items the next week, and the price he's willing to pay for iron will decline (also encourages players to explore and not optimize the fun out of the mechanic)
Perhaps to make the world seem even more dynamic, perhaps the coal mine starts raising their prices, and so making your own coal reserves a cheaper price makes the dwarf willing to stomach the still high prices of metal. Or they are willing to do you a favor, like gift you one of their weapons or armor to sell. Which may be useful if you find bandits being added to the mix, and so you have to fight to keep your stock from the criminals.
This makes me want a game where you are a disgruntled shop employee and your goal is to persuade customers that they don't need to buy the shiny thing they want to waste their money on.
A simple thing that might work with random npcs would be adding a relationship/reputation score with various merchants. Extremely hard bargaining would give you a negative relationship with that merchant, which would over time make them less likely to give you good deals, or maybe even refuse to sell to the player entirely This would make players balance short and long term gain. Money is often tighter in the early game in many rpgs, making the risk worthwhile, but burning too many bridges would potentially be too much of a detriment endgame. ESpecially if merchants had unique or rare items pop up into their inventory later
Kingdom Come Deliverance uses this exactly. If you bargain too hard, you will lose reputation with the merchant and the entire settlement and future transactions become more difficult.
Reccatear actually does this! Plus you have to set the price high enough to be respectable so no just botteming out. Unless it's the orphan buying candy. Give her the candy.
Yeah i thing recettear does this. i didn't dig in the hidden values, but the amount of cash customers bring with them when visiting your shop increases when they feel you gave them a good deal.
Yeah, haggling can be improved, but you know what I'd really like? A discussion of the goals of shopping as well. A lot of games *have* shops, but the prices are so prohibitively expensive that by the time you can buy that cool axe in the shop, the game already gave you one. Other games use shops as a kind of progression system: As you progress through the game, shops will have better gear available than you already have, and they're the *only* place to get that gear. However, these games tend to keep prices low enough that you effectively stroll into the shop and buy a set for every member of your party and walk out. The upgrade doesn't feel like a reward for having the money, it's just level-up progression hidden behind an extra step that costs you resources. The worst offenders are jrpgs, I find: you can get to the latest town in the story, and go "oh hey better gear. Better buy up!" and equip your whole crew, only to to take 5 steps into the new area and find a chest that gives you...one of the items you just bought. Then games with crafting mechanics will often have shop-made items worse than the crafted ones. Which just encourages players to save their gold and craft everything instead, which means grinding for crafting materials. But since the crafted gear is better, the game wants to make sure it's not to easy to just craft everything you need, so often drop-rates are low, and now players are optimizing the fun out of the game trying to improve their gear. The fact that grinding for crafting materials often also gets XP only encourages this cycle. I think the best shops are the ones you see in rogue-likes and rogue-lites: these shops almost always offer you things that can only be got in those shops, and further are used to give the player a relatively large number of ways they can modify their run in powerful ways (gear that synergizes with what the player already has, a reliable dose of health, etc) but the player's currently-accrued gold prevents the player from getting all these benefits at once; they make a choice between what is worth buying, but the nature of the roguelike prevents them from trying to hoard (with some exceptions). In short, A lot of game shops don't have a good answer to the question "if something in a shop can also be acquired by playing the game's core gameplay loop, then why am I spending my hard-earned gil/gold/rupees on this?"
I think shops in crafting games work best when they are selling resouces. Either basic materials in bulk, or hard to find (or even unique) materials. That way you can trade a crafted (expensive) item for more materials to craft even better items.
@@treyslider6954 not what I meant, but 100% agree. Pokemon does that, and I do feel PokeMarts are very essential. I meant more in games like Ateliers or Minecraft. In Atelier games you craft a LOT. So going to the shop and restock is a good option. Problem is 90% of Atelier games dont have a good insentive for you to buy materials. A good example of shops being essential are the Atelier games with a time preassure. Thus rather than wasting time gathering materials, you spend money. You see, lack of time is a poor's people problem. Ta ta.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance actually gives the soft benefit of increased reputation in a community if you are generous, paying more than initial asking price or offering less when selling than the buyer's initial offer. The system is a bit cheeseable though, since you can use it on trivially cheap items to boost your reputation for pennies. Also, while the game generally does a good job of making people react differently to you depending on the impression you give and the way you look, that part was unfortunately missing from trading and haggling. If you look like you're rich and important, haggling for something that should be trivially cheap for you anyway should make you look like a stingy exploiter of the lower classes and harm your reputation.
I think a really good game about this is “No Umbrellas Allowed” It’s all about bargaining and I think hits most of the notes that this video talks about, it’s a smaller game but I would definitely recommend
The issue with eve is that there wasnt a lot of unallied haggling or marketing. You mostly worked the market itself through supply and demand. The most haggling happens between corporate leaders (alliance leaders) and creating incentives for team members to sell to the corp rather than the open market.
@@mynameisntpatrick1476 There's definitely that, but also a lot of action in the T2 (and I assume now higher tier) components market and markets involving starbase products that was intensely interesting, if only for the complexity.
You know, it never really occurred to me that you are able to dump trash mob loot on vendors because you yourself are their supplier for folks that want to buy that stuff for their own mundane reasons. I'd imagine you could probably impliment a more in depth mechanic where you are able to sell different kinds of trash loot for different amounts, to different folks, but with an added caveat that if you take lower prices from smaller merchants, they might cut you in on deals later on that big time merchants would consider themselves too good for. Heck, developing a solid business relationship with different vendors sounds like a pretty good way to seemlessly integrate a friendship or even romance mechanic if you end up as one up and coming business person's best supplier that helps them really get their store off the ground. Plus it could be a good subin for crafting mechanics, if you sell a surplus of spider eyes to a potion maker they might be able to give you the extras in a batch of medicinal salves they were able to make with it, but if you sell it to the weaponsmith instead, they'll be able to offer you a deal on poisoned arrows or bolts or daggers.
Vendor trash is there for gameplay reasons when you want to reward the player with things of their choice. Comics have been written about vendor trash.
The best thing to do would be for the game to calculate supply and demand. If a player dumps 20 sets of dwarven armor at once, they are going to get a lower price because there isn't enough demand in the local area and it's going to take time to sell. Merchants near civilian areas would offer higher prices on common goods and lower prices on armor / weapons / magic. If there is a war going on between two countries, the cost of armor and swords would increase across the board in those two countries and slightly more in adjacent ones. If there is a plague, the cost of medical supplies increases. This also applies to the supply as well, you can limit the number of supply based on conditions as well.
I really enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn's shops, even though there wasn't much special about them. But enough of them had little backstories for why the merchant sells what the sell, and there was still a "quick sell" option in your inventory.
One other thing that I felt Recettear did well was how getting to know your customers better really helped your business. This included decorating your shop to influence who shows up and stocking according to the clientele and how far you've gotten. Each NPC had a budget as well as preferences, and a potential downside of just putting all of the most valuable stuff in your shop is that if the only customers you got were on the poorer side, you could very well not be able to sell anything at a profit.
A recent game I’ve liked the trading system in is Book Of Travels. In BOT, all trade runs off a barter system, forcing the player to carry lots of items in their limited bags in order to trade them, because you can’t just sell them and get some intangible currency. There are higher value trade commodities that the player can trade for which can significantly reduce bag fullness, but they cost a little more than they can be traded for.
"Haggling could make a trip to the store feel like figuring out a good puzzle, turning the experience into a memorable, more human interaction" I don't know about you, but I've never haggled at any store. I'm sure there are places where this happens, but for many - perhaps most - of us, that's not at all relatable. Not to say that it couldn't be fun, in the right circumstance. But I suspect that for most games, it would be detrimental.
Reccatear has more depth to its selling even more in depth. There's putting items in the window to attract customers vs what sells well. There's selling to customers for less to build trust to charge them more later, but not too little that they don't respect you.
Yeap, was about to say they missed that part of Recettear. I think the meta is to sell them at a "loss" to keep teh custumer happy, which unlocks better customers (word of mouth) which can pay more. Some customers will have more money, and the main antagonist will pay almost any exorvitant price you set her to.
Honestly, I love when some retail therapy is built in to the game. A thrift store mechanic would be nice. A randomized shifting set of items at a discount with rough estimates on the stats of the items before you buy. Weighted so most thing are a reasonable deal, with some hidden gems for the thoughtful and lemons for the careless. Maybe a high luck stat would increase the chance of the items stats turning out better, or high intelligence could give you a tighter estimate on what the item could turn out to be. Ideally something that’s a welcome starting point for newbies on a budget, and a test of the games systems for the experienced player.
There are a lot of common selling tactics that I have never seen in games. Giving credit to customers so they can pay later, giving discounts for large purchases or combinations of products, exploring brand loyalty and fidelity programs, giving free trials and so on.
This seems haggling as a single player RPG style which is appreciated. But i have to mention the Germans and their crazy obsession with trading games like Port Royal, The Guild or Patrician. In patrician products have a production/worker/raw material base cost that gives a set price to the final product (Say, Pig iron price + wood price + workers = price of Iron goods). You can get pig iron and wood only from certain provinces with a price that is determined by the amount available and the local production (basically offer & demand) or you can skip the middleman and get a permit in that city and build your own woodcutter/smelter reducing the price of the goods, increasing the population (since you are giving work to local beggars) and getting a steady amount of raw material to ship to your main city that produces the final product. You can also cause inflation with overproduction which will hit your wallet pretty hard and cause a chain reaction over your trading empire when you cant pay your sailors or workers. (I also forgot to mention how Wheat prices increase in winter and basic products are on high demand during a siege). The haggling aspect of the game comes when you bribe people to elect you as mayor or when enacting policies like extending the wall or increasing the garrison troops. The Guild is more in dept in this system too, with more RPG elements and specialized trades. You can be a sophisticated goldsmith that takes and entire day just creating an expensive gold necklance or you can be a farmer and just saturate the market with fruits/vegetables and meat. Same offer & demand rules but the best part comes when you do the haggling/bribing/manipulating/torturing people since apart from becoming a merchant or criminal you can start a political career and thats when the game turns from a trade game into game of thrones, like having your daugther in the position of tax supervisor so she can send her tax inspectors to interrupt the production of an enemy dynasty or when running for a position within the city hall you bribe, charm and manipulate people with money, charisma, potions and perfumes so they vote you in. Obviously these mechanics are not haggling perse but you can see the foundation to build an economy which can help influence haggling or set world events in motion with your actions or interactions,.
Tabletop Games have a much better hold and understanding on this mechanic for sure! Various pricing tables fluctuate based off of supply and demand. I think Slime Rancher was closer to deploying some of these mechanics but overall video games have only scuffed the surface. Perhaps we need to send some of these classics out to our video game designers! ;)
In real life, the most memorable local stores I've been to and have consistently gone back to, have been ones with owners/cashier's who chat with you, maybe even lower prices by a bit. The conversation allows for a personal connection that helps lodge it in your memory, and I agree that games should absolutely capitalize on this concept as well
I’ve played Dragon Age Origins a million times, but something that always bugged me is shopping. Because there’s hundreds of different weapons and armor sets you find throughout the game but 90% of it is worse than what you already have, so you end up walking around with 19 sets of Dwarven heavy armor exiting a dungeon to sell to the nearest shop and they’ll do something…. With it.
Most of this discussion was focused on the player as the Shopkeeper rather than the custom, which is also worth discussing. It’s complex but something like having the player’s relationship with the shopkeep effect price. Or being able to leave a bulk goods drop of with the shopkeep to sell of over time, but have the price dependant on your relationship. I remember seeing a Skyrim mod that could recycle sold weapons back to bandits depending on how honest the NPC was.
I'd love to see haggling represented well in games--though unless haggling is an integral part of the game (for example, the player's a shopkeeper), I imagine it would also be wise to allow players to disable haggling if they end up disliking it, be that because they have trouble grasping the system or simply because they find it tedious.
Agreed. Most of the time in a video game that allows me to buy and sell stuff, I just want to sell what I don't want and buy what I need quickly... so I can get back to playing the game.
From a player-run-shop perspective, I'd just like to be able to toss in extra things into the deal. "If you buy RIGHT NOW, I'll throw in two iron daggers ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!"
A idea I would like to see is merchant guilds. Guilds that will cater to a certain brand or good. Join them and you will get perks and discounts for those items but rival merchant guilds will not like you and raise the price of their goods on you. Maybe even have quest lines where you can either negotiate or steal from your rivals for better deals on items.
Trade caravans in Dwarf Fortress are pretty fun. You can tell the caravaners what items you’d like them to bring next time around, but doing so increases the price. I’m pretty sure they also give you better deals if you have a better relationship with them.
"Haggling with someone who wants to scam you" That was also done in Recettear. The purple-haired customer that had memes back in the day about "c-c-combo breaker" only visited the shop to sell low-quality art at inflated prices. Recettear also had a system of customers leveling up and having more money to spend at all, which wasn't well explained but encouraged the player to not try to sell only things that would get the most profits. I think the combo system was also meant to be Recette benefitting from not frustrating customers through overly harsh haggling.
Pathologic 2 is a game that really gets this right. Buying stuff with money generally doesn't work (well). Instead, you can trade items with other characters, but each type of NPCs will only accept specific items and have certain values for them. Things like gears, nuts, and soap suddenly become important inventory items as well.
I loved shopping in sunless sea, an important part of the game is trading and fetching items between the islands, and can be pretty fun figuring out the routes most profitable and remembering which islands sell what
I would love to see a more in-depth trade/haggling system combined with storytelling through items and the unique opportunities that pop up in that space. Kind of in the way Papers Please was able to tell full stories just by the papers people had on them, what people are willing to buy and sell might be really interesting!
I've always thought that stardew valley had a particularly weak play here. There's no advantage to sticking with the community center in the main game, but imagine if the story was that Pierre would only buy enough to sell to the local townsfolk but JojaMart would buy anything off you to export it out of town. That would make your thousand pumpkin farm depend on Joja in a way that it just doesn't at the moment. Maybe even make you reconsider your choice to support Joja.
One of the things I would love to see in a Running-A-Shop game is some kind of MSRP or Average Price Index for goods, especially when starting out. I know some of the fun is guessing to figure out good prices based on customer happy/sad faces, but for me that's just stressful.
You could make a car dealership game where they make an offer, you claim you need to talk to your manager, make them wait for a half hour and come back with basically the same offer as before.
I once wrote a short story about an [NPC] crafting materials merchant. He was filled with contempt for the players but only had cheerful dialog. It got a C, I was very smug
What if instead of just a horizontal line in haggling of high price and low price, there's also a vertical line where the deal changes? So like the buyer would say: "I don't want to buy this sword for 4000 gold. But I will if you also throw in some health potions for free." or a seller could be like: "Fine, I'm willing to sell this sword at 3500 gold, but I want you to do something for me."
Consider also that IRL the same kind of shop in different regions, areas, parts of a city or even a different adjacent street can have wildly varying types of items depending on what overheads they have, connections to different suppliers, or sometimes down to the sellers traditions, local customs or agreements influencing what they end up stocking in the store. There should also be an option not to haggle high or haggle low, but whether you really SHOULD haggle with prices at all, if the shop is located in poorer neighbourhoods, looks worse off, or in some specific cases you might even consider buying high as an indirect donation method. Probably covered by the altruist buyer archetype, but still worth considering about.
But also, haggling is just an application of persuasion, and there's at least as much room for improvement in how other forms of persuasion is handled. The stock pass/fail skill check so many games have could be /drastically/ improved by some of the same sorts of things. Anything to cut down on how often it tends to feel adjascent to mind control.
I would point out that while Recettear encourages being a bastard, the actual gameplay rewards knowing your customers enough to get them to walk away happy, which then increases how much they are willing to spend at your shop. Effectively, hard positional bargaining gave you more today, but soft gave more long-term.
Yeees! Go and develop these systems and then implement them in Grand Strategy like Stellaris and Civilization. Because I just realized that is the reason why most diplomatic interactions are so boring or even dumb.
I like that in Tales of Symphonia you usually have an expensive weapon option when going to new shops, but if you have an old weapon and the right materials you can make it into a weapon thats just as good if not better
You can probably borrow the idea of patterns from boss battles and maybe earning negotiation tactic cards. Assess the customer and their interests to offer the right items and use the right negotiation tactics to maximize the price
"How about dealing with 'celebrity' customers whose item choices might 'influence' the demand for said items? Or trying to haggle with someone who wants to scam you?" What's the difference? imo if you run a business in a major city a requirement of doing business is a sign that says 'Influencers pay triple'.
I wanted to like Recettear, but the haggling system just made me anxious. The time limit to complete the game made me feel that failure to haggle perfectly doomed the playthrough.
I think Supply and Demand should be included into a Merchants system. So a player can't just dump a ton of the same item on them and expect the same value all the time, also combine it with the limited money for Merchants like in ES games, so as a player sells items of the same type to a merchant after some the value they get will decrease cause the Merchant already has plenty of them and doesn't want to run out of their own money as well.
Well this episode gives me the warm & fuzzy feelings. I only know about Recettear because of an old Extra Credits "Games You Might Not Have Tried" video a long time ago. And, just so you know, the merchant is an infected Leon from the future, that's gone back in time to help original Leon NOT get infected. That's how he always has what Leon needs, (b/c he bought it from himself!) and always knows where he'll be, and already knows how to get past all the dangerous traps and creatures to get there.
I love recettear for tackling those problems and creating a nice little story around it. Even the scamming aspect is something I remember very very well
I had a game idea a long while ago now, that as you get richer (the automatic no brainer goal of most games) the world around you gets poorer, like gold is a limited resource. Talking about having goals other than getting the best price for yourself, reminds me of the idea. If you constantly get the best deals and watch those businesses go well, out of business... it could eventually mix up the player's priorities perhaps.
Meh. I don't know. If I had to go through the trouble of negotiating a price with an NPC in an RPG when I just want to buy some potions and continue with my quest I would be pissed off! I would really hate to find such a tedious mechanic in the middle of my standard RPG. I would rather obtain discounts by becoming a regular customer or completing quests for the shopkeeper or something along those lines.
There is definitely a balance, like you don't haggle when you go to Walmart, or as mentioned sometimes you just want to buy a bunch of base items like potions, arrows, spell components, ect for sticker price because you just want to get back to the main gameplay loop. So definitely have some easy way to pick between haggle and sticker price modes, even if its just having an option at checkout to accept price or propose new price, and also enter a "tip" value to improve relationship with the vendor if desired. (Improved relationship better have some decent rewards like discounts or exclusive "off menu" items) Also if haggleing is just move a slider so they barely except or has an otherwise slow and clunky interface then that won't be enjoyable.
I think it could be pretty interesting to have outright scamming as a game mechanic. How about a game where you start with a warehouse full of defective items and have to offload them by any means necessary, even ponzi scheme or pump-and-dump. Obviously the game should frame this as villainous behavior, but for players, learning first-hand what scammers say and do to trick people could help them to avoid getting roped into real-world scams.
I really feel like No Umbrellas Allowed needs a shout-out here. While your goal is to haggle well, and the actual price-calling involves finding an NPCs price limit, there are lots of good twists. First, the world is one where "avarice crimes" are a thing, so haggling too aggressively puts you in danger. Also, you're running a secondhand store, and must appraise items to determine how much it is worth, but all this information is public, so the seller knows exactly how much you are increasing or decreasing the value of what they're selling. After a bit, you unlock the ability to hide details in order to buy low and sell high - but again, doing this too often or too aggressively puts you in danger because "avarice crimes". And of course, there are lots of interesting side quests which unlock abilities or story lines, such as NPCs coming into your shop asking for a specific item, or other times when you might have a character-relevant item that you give to them for free in order to explore a character's storyline further. Maybe in return you get a valuable connection or an item that gives certain bonuses (e.g. making customers more patient). What interests me the most is the real tension you experience when you are constantly fluctuating between having stocked shelves in order to sell items, and having cash in order to buy items (rarely both), and the anxiety of not knowing if one of those character-relevant items will be available on a day that you have the money to buy it or not. I'm probably overselling this game, but I do think it's genuinely a really good storefront game, and it should really come up in any discussion about haggling systems.
Set prices aren't _too_ unrealistic, it only gets a bit implausible when 3 years of in game time passed and nothing happened. But within a week, it makes sense.
This reminds me to haggling in old game named Grom. The game is RPG BTW and shopping is just supporting feature, as you'd expect. Haggle option appear whenever player sells/buys items from shopping. The one who can start haggle is the one paying with cash. The haggle itself is a mini game in which each side choose 4 from haggle cards they have then do card battle to determine the price of the transaction. The haggle starter will always draw card first allowing the opposite side to counter with his card. Oh yes, rock paper scissors system is applied here so no card is dominant. Some cards are stronger than other cards also. After both sides show cards, the price changes depending on who win: price will drop if haggler win but price will rise if he lose. That's a decent haggling system but since shopping isn't main feature, player could just ignore haggle option when it's presented. I rarely haggle since grinding and hunting for loot gives much better result (XP and money).
I think you should check out a game called "Ittledew" which does a good job with their shop mechanics. Also, I'm thinking about making a shop in a game that you'd have to complete quests to unlock shop items.
In the Everquest MMORPG there's a feature were the merchants will resell items that players have sold to them, sometimes for ridiculously high prices but sometimes for very cheap. It can make a routine trip to a vendor an experience akin to finding a loot chest as you never know what might be there.
One bit of caution, and you briefly mentioned this, but this is one of those systems one shouldn't half-ass, as there is a boring-yet-acceptable baseline, and almost any change will add more steps to that. Even if you come up with a decent merchant system, if it doesn't mesh with the goals of your overall experience, it's a waste of a good mechanic AND your player's time.
This made me think of the economics in MMOs. Like, the value of items. Some games, you get a 'cheap' iron/steel/whatever sword for like, 15 silver or something. Doesn't seem like much...until you look around at the NPC merchants selling food. Things like, a loaf of bread for 6 copper, or a slice of watermelon for 4 copper. Because then you realize that that 'cheap' sword is actually really expensive for the characters in that world, even if it isn't for the Player. An NPC farmer might only see a few silver per year in income for all their work, but here you are as a player dropping a full gold coin for an expensive runestone. And to just further magnify the wow-factor of prices, there was one interaction I saw between NPCs in game as background dialogue: someone wanted to buy something rare and generally hard to acquire. The seller refused to sell at first...until they were offered 1000 gold coin. 1000 gold. In a world where an expensive meal might be 25 copper. That's like being offered $3 million dollars for something when you're making minimum wage. It was so interesting to me. LoL.
In RPGs just give the merchants infinite money because I when on a dragon killing rampage and now I need to sell 6500 septems worth of scales and bones
yeah this is another issue! merchants need to be programmed with finite wallets, and be less willing to just buy all of the random crap in your inventory. You should only be able to sell stuff that they, as a character, would be interested in buying.
@@ff-qf1th This is pretty easily solved to be honest. Merchants can be programmed with a list of items they will buy, how much of those items, and the price multiplier per quantity tier. A Blacksmith would only purchase swords / armor and the price they give per unit would decrease at certain quantity thresholds. They would only buy x amount max of each item per week.
I wrote a book called Trade Winds an Items and Services Compendium. It is an item book for table top RPGs and it has rolling for prices as a key mechanic. This is good because with a bit of bargaining the players might get advantage on the price of an item, or they may get to roll the price with a smaller die size. Which allows for some fun interaction.
Thought of a neat scenario. >Player Picks Option to buy a high level item’s crafting ingredients instead of the item itself. (Player has a high crafting/intelligence score!) >The player gained the option to say. “No thanks, I don’t need [Rare Key Ingredient] to make this. Shopkeeper: “….Nani? “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DONT NEED THOSE [Key ingredient] TO MAKE THIS!?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO HAGGLE FOR THAT STUFF?! >Player can now negotiate a deal in exchange for the trade crafting secrets they know!
Mount & Blade doesn't have a haggle system, but prices are based on supply and demand. there are ways to manipulate S&D to your profit and get rich quick, even dirty tactics such as going to a location where materials are cheap, buying all the stores in all cities in the area you can (including your rivals stores), convert all the shops to only one industry, sell all your shops, and watch as the industry crashes, while you buy finished products at EXTREMELY low prices while increasing demand of all other industries you eliminated. you can also sell food to a starving city after a siege at ridiculous prices, and sell weapons to factions who are fighting a war
I always wanted a "weapons shop" where you can pick the weapons you like use them on training bots and than you buy the weapons of choice with a seller NPC and if your charisma and intelligence points are high enough, you can bargain for better price.
I like Slime Rancher's use of a "stock market-like" market system. It discourages players from farming just one type of slime. The more Plorts a player sells, the lower the price goes, while the other prices go up.
Come to think of it... - A Merchant Skilltree would also be interested, or Mechant Cards. - Cards modifying: how much $/% is sold more/less to XYZ type of character, at X frequency... - Or quests even: if you sold to X within last n minutes, Y will buy from you at higher prices, etc. - The above actually reminds also potential faction and guild systems... - ... so the system becomes a balance of relationships between your connections.
When I run tabletop games one of my ways of helping out my players is by having most merchants willing to give you a discount if you go get supplies for them, No one has figured out yet that I have several fixed recipes of health potions and the like that they now may know because they are fetching the ingredients
I notice that part of the problem is how scarce the resources in a game are really changes how useful merchants are. Fallout and Warcraft give you massive amounts of junk resources worth a fair amount but the merchants don't give you too much useful stuff for your money, since you've already got large amounts of resources, but if you make things very scarce things might not feel fun either since you're getting nothing for your efforts and merchants may sell useful stuff but you rarely get to purchase from them
One thing you can do is have some invisible (or visible) reputation mechanic. Your NPC friend is probably not gonna be your friend for long if you always demand outlandish low prices from them.
I would suggest as an option for this sort of gameplay that adds more to it, No Umbrellas Allowed. You are a shop keep in a city that is in political turmoil, the stuff you buy off people and sell back to them effects the story line and future interactions with the resistance and the government.
Years ago this video had a a substantial impact on my life because it introduced me to Potionomics, which was no released at the time, and I spent ages anxiously awaiting it's release while following the creators on social media. Tomorrow we celebrate the release of Potionomics Masterwork Edition and I'm so excited to enjoy the game once more ❤
I have one game that answers it pretty well: Football Manager. They have pretty much the single best haggling system ever, from very basic deals to trying to hire celebrity players, ajusting budgets, making promises...
Pathologic's barter economy is FASCINATING because it essentially involves organically figuring out what people want, and it is inherently engaging because the stakes are so high. Fail to barter for enough delicious eggs and you may starve to death. It also really enforces the games themes and ties directly into the narrative because it requires you to interact with tons of different types of NPCs throughout the game and hear what they have to say about how the plot is developing. I will admit that it is definitely solveable and the actual tension drains a bit once you figure out the abusable trades, but I think there is a golden nugget in there about the game not just TELLING you how to make money, and you needing to engage with the NPCs and use your knowledge of who they are to try and figure out what they value. Kids want shiny nick-knacks more than medicine, parents want food more than weapons, ruffians want lockpicks more than socks. etc.
What if haggling was done as if from Papers, Please? Customer walks in, you see a face. It's a good friend! You greet them! They act "off." They offer to pawn off an item to you. You inspect it, it's a watch. Using your tools, you identify it as a Rolex. You remember your friend usually brings you small quality items, nik naks. This Rolex is much pricier than they have ever tried to pawn off. What do you do? Do you suspect they don't know the value and can make a great profit by undercutting them? Do you suspect they stole it and is selling evidence? Should you call the cops? Are they a powerful person and you have to consider getting robbed and/or vandalized if you give them a bad deal? Did a family member die and they just want to get rid of this inheritance?
Sidereal confluence is one of the most insane trading games I've ever played. The rules are pretty rough but it's always a great time every time I break it out.
This video seems mostly focussed on small scale RPGs but I can see bartering be a major aspect in a Dwarf Fortress-like game where you try to maximize profit for your settlement (of course) while also turning travelling traders into recurring customers, attracting new costumers and keeping the political landscape in mind. Selling too high is bad because even if a deal is made people won't come back. Selling to low is bad because it will attract worse customers who misbehave if you don't lower your prices even further. Selling something too irregularely is bad because your trade partners don't know what to expect when they come to your settlement, selling things too regularely is bad as other factions might think you are trying to monopolize a market. A balance act of profit, good will - and even the opinion of people who aren't even part of the trade.
Two Ideas I just had First how you prize your wares has an influence on different characters. For example selling them cheap strengthens your relationship with poorer chars or families while guilds or other merchants dislike it because you undercut their prizes. Also it can give your characters attributes. Charging average prizes but giving discounts to poor or families makes you known to helpful but fair and if you then charge rich people extra you can end up in a whole social and political dispute. I think this works especially well with a handfull of deepley fleshed out NPCs but it could also work out on a bigger skale with random henerated NPCs that fall into some categories (Artisan, Collector, Rich, Poor, Guild Member etc..) I see a lot of potential there. My second Idea would be to implement supply and demand ideas and structures in a game. The X Games like X3: Terran Conflict have tried this. Basically the rate at wich your selling and buying resources and items influence the price. It would be awesome if you could also influence these mechanism through the world. Creating artifical scarcity to increase prizes or increase demand by sponsoring some influencers or hosting the big ball of the kingdom. This could extend to starting actuall trade wars or, I don't know, blocking a major trade route by getting a really big ship "accidentely" stuck in the Suez Canal, thus dropping supply drastically but you were prepared and have your warehouses full of goods.
In MOTHER 3, a lot of the shops are literally vending machines (that you can sell things to). And that's fine, because in an RPG that's really all we want.
Looking to barter for your next meal? Let us help!
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I never missed bartering in games, maybe because in real life I also don't barter at least in my country. We have fixed prices and you either buy or don't buy (maybe there could be a special offer), but overall you simply don't barter.
The Problems I have in games are much more high inflation, shops are worthless or much too important.
So, I wish the games content and the historical content were on separate channels.
@@felixjohnsens3201 0
Mental Check point only has a handful of videos so far, but they've all been interesting (especially the ones about being credited in over 100 games and remembering tutorials). Cool to see even smaller channels I follow are working with Extra Credits.
I've had a theoretical system in mind for a while now where each npc has a number of values that influence how they value items (this npc is a blacksmith, and a dwarf, but living next to a coal mine) that influences what they're willing to buy from a player (so the dwarf will buy all metals at a high price, but coal is super cheap, and they refuse to buy anything elven), depending on the players speech skill, and the player can buy with more than just gold, having to offer up some goods in exchange for what the dwarf is selling, such that the dwarf feels like he's getting a good value, or at the very least, not getting ripped off. Lastly, non-item attributes can also be traded, such as trading a favour with the Dwarf King to get the stuff for free, or you've done a quest for the locals so he winds up giving you a discount, or maybe you've claimed a castle and you offer that in exchange for a full set of masterwork armour. This way you actively have to think about what you are trading, what you have done, and what your influence on the world means
OOOoooo! That would be an interesting way to work that mechanic! We approve!
This war of mine have a similar bargain system, although not so nuanced as you describe, but could be a good starting point
To add depth to the mechanic, if you traded lots of iron with the dwarf, you will see more iron items the next week, and the price he's willing to pay for iron will decline (also encourages players to explore and not optimize the fun out of the mechanic)
Perhaps to make the world seem even more dynamic, perhaps the coal mine starts raising their prices, and so making your own coal reserves a cheaper price makes the dwarf willing to stomach the still high prices of metal. Or they are willing to do you a favor, like gift you one of their weapons or armor to sell.
Which may be useful if you find bandits being added to the mix, and so you have to fight to keep your stock from the criminals.
...That's literally just a matter of customizing every shop in the game.
This makes me want a game where you are a disgruntled shop employee and your goal is to persuade customers that they don't need to buy the shiny thing they want to waste their money on.
this is a wonderful idea!
that sounds so good
A game just waiting to happen!!!!
So basically "Papers Please" but on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
@@NotHPotter Arstozka undergoes Shock Therapy
A simple thing that might work with random npcs would be adding a relationship/reputation score with various merchants. Extremely hard bargaining would give you a negative relationship with that merchant, which would over time make them less likely to give you good deals, or maybe even refuse to sell to the player entirely
This would make players balance short and long term gain. Money is often tighter in the early game in many rpgs, making the risk worthwhile, but burning too many bridges would potentially be too much of a detriment endgame. ESpecially if merchants had unique or rare items pop up into their inventory later
Kingdom Come Deliverance uses this exactly. If you bargain too hard, you will lose reputation with the merchant and the entire settlement and future transactions become more difficult.
I think Potion Craft works sort of like that.
Reccatear actually does this! Plus you have to set the price high enough to be respectable so no just botteming out. Unless it's the orphan buying candy. Give her the candy.
Oblivion also used this feature. You were more likely to get a good deal, if the merchant liked you and with every failed haggle he liked you less
Yeah i thing recettear does this. i didn't dig in the hidden values, but the amount of cash customers bring with them when visiting your shop increases when they feel you gave them a good deal.
Yeah, haggling can be improved, but you know what I'd really like?
A discussion of the goals of shopping as well. A lot of games *have* shops, but the prices are so prohibitively expensive that by the time you can buy that cool axe in the shop, the game already gave you one.
Other games use shops as a kind of progression system: As you progress through the game, shops will have better gear available than you already have, and they're the *only* place to get that gear. However, these games tend to keep prices low enough that you effectively stroll into the shop and buy a set for every member of your party and walk out. The upgrade doesn't feel like a reward for having the money, it's just level-up progression hidden behind an extra step that costs you resources.
The worst offenders are jrpgs, I find: you can get to the latest town in the story, and go "oh hey better gear. Better buy up!" and equip your whole crew, only to to take 5 steps into the new area and find a chest that gives you...one of the items you just bought.
Then games with crafting mechanics will often have shop-made items worse than the crafted ones. Which just encourages players to save their gold and craft everything instead, which means grinding for crafting materials. But since the crafted gear is better, the game wants to make sure it's not to easy to just craft everything you need, so often drop-rates are low, and now players are optimizing the fun out of the game trying to improve their gear. The fact that grinding for crafting materials often also gets XP only encourages this cycle.
I think the best shops are the ones you see in rogue-likes and rogue-lites: these shops almost always offer you things that can only be got in those shops, and further are used to give the player a relatively large number of ways they can modify their run in powerful ways (gear that synergizes with what the player already has, a reliable dose of health, etc) but the player's currently-accrued gold prevents the player from getting all these benefits at once; they make a choice between what is worth buying, but the nature of the roguelike prevents them from trying to hoard (with some exceptions).
In short, A lot of game shops don't have a good answer to the question "if something in a shop can also be acquired by playing the game's core gameplay loop, then why am I spending my hard-earned gil/gold/rupees on this?"
I think shops in crafting games work best when they are selling resouces. Either basic materials in bulk, or hard to find (or even unique) materials. That way you can trade a crafted (expensive) item for more materials to craft even better items.
@@icarue993 Yeah, I can agree with that: shops a great places for restocking on commonly-used consumables (health potions, buff stims, etc)
Agreed. It makes high ticket items in shops obsolete and thus the shops unworthy of my business!
@@treyslider6954 not what I meant, but 100% agree. Pokemon does that, and I do feel PokeMarts are very essential.
I meant more in games like Ateliers or Minecraft. In Atelier games you craft a LOT. So going to the shop and restock is a good option. Problem is 90% of Atelier games dont have a good insentive for you to buy materials. A good example of shops being essential are the Atelier games with a time preassure. Thus rather than wasting time gathering materials, you spend money.
You see, lack of time is a poor's people problem. Ta ta.
@@icarue993 This is pretty much how the shops in Atelier games work.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance actually gives the soft benefit of increased reputation in a community if you are generous, paying more than initial asking price or offering less when selling than the buyer's initial offer. The system is a bit cheeseable though, since you can use it on trivially cheap items to boost your reputation for pennies. Also, while the game generally does a good job of making people react differently to you depending on the impression you give and the way you look, that part was unfortunately missing from trading and haggling. If you look like you're rich and important, haggling for something that should be trivially cheap for you anyway should make you look like a stingy exploiter of the lower classes and harm your reputation.
I think a really good game about this is “No Umbrellas Allowed”
It’s all about bargaining and I think hits most of the notes that this video talks about, it’s a smaller game but I would definitely recommend
Couldn't agree more.
I know this focused on single player games, but the player based market in EVE online was always very interesting.
Possibly the only game ever made where it's possible to commit escrow fraud.
The issue with eve is that there wasnt a lot of unallied haggling or marketing. You mostly worked the market itself through supply and demand. The most haggling happens between corporate leaders (alliance leaders) and creating incentives for team members to sell to the corp rather than the open market.
@@mynameisntpatrick1476 There's definitely that, but also a lot of action in the T2 (and I assume now higher tier) components market and markets involving starbase products that was intensely interesting, if only for the complexity.
@@BjornTheDim Explain
Oh man Recettear. This is still my go-to wholesome game that my girlfriend and I will just play for hours.
capitalism ahoy!
I hear you there !
This game is still one of my all-time favorites :)
wholesomme? Isn't the game about a litteral child being forced to work because she inherited crushing debt?
@@Freekymoho SSSSSHHHHHHHH
You know, it never really occurred to me that you are able to dump trash mob loot on vendors because you yourself are their supplier for folks that want to buy that stuff for their own mundane reasons. I'd imagine you could probably impliment a more in depth mechanic where you are able to sell different kinds of trash loot for different amounts, to different folks, but with an added caveat that if you take lower prices from smaller merchants, they might cut you in on deals later on that big time merchants would consider themselves too good for.
Heck, developing a solid business relationship with different vendors sounds like a pretty good way to seemlessly integrate a friendship or even romance mechanic if you end up as one up and coming business person's best supplier that helps them really get their store off the ground.
Plus it could be a good subin for crafting mechanics, if you sell a surplus of spider eyes to a potion maker they might be able to give you the extras in a batch of medicinal salves they were able to make with it, but if you sell it to the weaponsmith instead, they'll be able to offer you a deal on poisoned arrows or bolts or daggers.
Vendor trash is there for gameplay reasons when you want to reward the player with things of their choice.
Comics have been written about vendor trash.
The best thing to do would be for the game to calculate supply and demand. If a player dumps 20 sets of dwarven armor at once, they are going to get a lower price because there isn't enough demand in the local area and it's going to take time to sell. Merchants near civilian areas would offer higher prices on common goods and lower prices on armor / weapons / magic. If there is a war going on between two countries, the cost of armor and swords would increase across the board in those two countries and slightly more in adjacent ones. If there is a plague, the cost of medical supplies increases. This also applies to the supply as well, you can limit the number of supply based on conditions as well.
I really enjoyed Horizon: Zero Dawn's shops, even though there wasn't much special about them. But enough of them had little backstories for why the merchant sells what the sell, and there was still a "quick sell" option in your inventory.
One other thing that I felt Recettear did well was how getting to know your customers better really helped your business. This included decorating your shop to influence who shows up and stocking according to the clientele and how far you've gotten. Each NPC had a budget as well as preferences, and a potential downside of just putting all of the most valuable stuff in your shop is that if the only customers you got were on the poorer side, you could very well not be able to sell anything at a profit.
A recent game I’ve liked the trading system in is Book Of Travels. In BOT, all trade runs off a barter system, forcing the player to carry lots of items in their limited bags in order to trade them, because you can’t just sell them and get some intangible currency. There are higher value trade commodities that the player can trade for which can significantly reduce bag fullness, but they cost a little more than they can be traded for.
"Haggling could make a trip to the store feel like figuring out a good puzzle, turning the experience into a memorable, more human interaction"
I don't know about you, but I've never haggled at any store.
I'm sure there are places where this happens, but for many - perhaps most - of us, that's not at all relatable.
Not to say that it couldn't be fun, in the right circumstance.
But I suspect that for most games, it would be detrimental.
Reccatear has more depth to its selling even more in depth. There's putting items in the window to attract customers vs what sells well. There's selling to customers for less to build trust to charge them more later, but not too little that they don't respect you.
Yeap, was about to say they missed that part of Recettear. I think the meta is to sell them at a "loss" to keep teh custumer happy, which unlocks better customers (word of mouth) which can pay more. Some customers will have more money, and the main antagonist will pay almost any exorvitant price you set her to.
Honestly, I love when some retail therapy is built in to the game. A thrift store mechanic would be nice. A randomized shifting set of items at a discount with rough estimates on the stats of the items before you buy. Weighted so most thing are a reasonable deal, with some hidden gems for the thoughtful and lemons for the careless. Maybe a high luck stat would increase the chance of the items stats turning out better, or high intelligence could give you a tighter estimate on what the item could turn out to be. Ideally something that’s a welcome starting point for newbies on a budget, and a test of the games systems for the experienced player.
There are a lot of common selling tactics that I have never seen in games. Giving credit to customers so they can pay later, giving discounts for large purchases or combinations of products, exploring brand loyalty and fidelity programs, giving free trials and so on.
This seems haggling as a single player RPG style which is appreciated. But i have to mention the Germans and their crazy obsession with trading games like Port Royal, The Guild or Patrician.
In patrician products have a production/worker/raw material base cost that gives a set price to the final product (Say, Pig iron price + wood price + workers = price of Iron goods). You can get pig iron and wood only from certain provinces with a price that is determined by the amount available and the local production (basically offer & demand) or you can skip the middleman and get a permit in that city and build your own woodcutter/smelter reducing the price of the goods, increasing the population (since you are giving work to local beggars) and getting a steady amount of raw material to ship to your main city that produces the final product. You can also cause inflation with overproduction which will hit your wallet pretty hard and cause a chain reaction over your trading empire when you cant pay your sailors or workers. (I also forgot to mention how Wheat prices increase in winter and basic products are on high demand during a siege). The haggling aspect of the game comes when you bribe people to elect you as mayor or when enacting policies like extending the wall or increasing the garrison troops.
The Guild is more in dept in this system too, with more RPG elements and specialized trades. You can be a sophisticated goldsmith that takes and entire day just creating an expensive gold necklance or you can be a farmer and just saturate the market with fruits/vegetables and meat. Same offer & demand rules but the best part comes when you do the haggling/bribing/manipulating/torturing people since apart from becoming a merchant or criminal you can start a political career and thats when the game turns from a trade game into game of thrones, like having your daugther in the position of tax supervisor so she can send her tax inspectors to interrupt the production of an enemy dynasty or when running for a position within the city hall you bribe, charm and manipulate people with money, charisma, potions and perfumes so they vote you in.
Obviously these mechanics are not haggling perse but you can see the foundation to build an economy which can help influence haggling or set world events in motion with your actions or interactions,.
Tabletop Games have a much better hold and understanding on this mechanic for sure! Various pricing tables fluctuate based off of supply and demand. I think Slime Rancher was closer to deploying some of these mechanics but overall video games have only scuffed the surface. Perhaps we need to send some of these classics out to our video game designers! ;)
@@extrahistory The Guild and Patrician are video games, though. ;)
In real life, the most memorable local stores I've been to and have consistently gone back to, have been ones with owners/cashier's who chat with you, maybe even lower prices by a bit. The conversation allows for a personal connection that helps lodge it in your memory, and I agree that games should absolutely capitalize on this concept as well
I’ve played Dragon Age Origins a million times, but something that always bugged me is shopping.
Because there’s hundreds of different weapons and armor sets you find throughout the game but 90% of it is worse than what you already have, so you end up walking around with 19 sets of Dwarven heavy armor exiting a dungeon to sell to the nearest shop and they’ll do something…. With it.
Most of this discussion was focused on the player as the Shopkeeper rather than the custom, which is also worth discussing.
It’s complex but something like having the player’s relationship with the shopkeep effect price. Or being able to leave a bulk goods drop of with the shopkeep to sell of over time, but have the price dependant on your relationship.
I remember seeing a Skyrim mod that could recycle sold weapons back to bandits depending on how honest the NPC was.
Beyond legit gripe with games. I end up as a pack rat because selling goods isn't worth the amount a shop owner NPC would pay
Juicing up your Speech/Charisma (if such a mechanic is present) can fix that.
I'd love to see haggling represented well in games--though unless haggling is an integral part of the game (for example, the player's a shopkeeper), I imagine it would also be wise to allow players to disable haggling if they end up disliking it, be that because they have trouble grasping the system or simply because they find it tedious.
Haggling is a mechanic I would absolutely avoid like the plague
Bro, same.
Agreed. Most of the time in a video game that allows me to buy and sell stuff, I just want to sell what I don't want and buy what I need quickly... so I can get back to playing the game.
@@dabeerdsgamer7763 Usually you can just do that by taking whatever the merchants initial offer is.
Ah yeah, the good old Resident Evil 4 shop guy. Really nailed his iconic sentences there. Good job.
Huh, I always assumed Recettear was pronounced like “racketeer,” as a play on words of dishonest business dealings.
From a player-run-shop perspective, I'd just like to be able to toss in extra things into the deal. "If you buy RIGHT NOW, I'll throw in two iron daggers ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!"
A idea I would like to see is merchant guilds. Guilds that will cater to a certain brand or good. Join them and you will get perks and discounts for those items but rival merchant guilds will not like you and raise the price of their goods on you. Maybe even have quest lines where you can either negotiate or steal from your rivals for better deals on items.
All I know is that I would retract my offered discount the moment Shepard endorses a different shop
Trade caravans in Dwarf Fortress are pretty fun. You can tell the caravaners what items you’d like them to bring next time around, but doing so increases the price. I’m pretty sure they also give you better deals if you have a better relationship with them.
"Haggling with someone who wants to scam you" That was also done in Recettear. The purple-haired customer that had memes back in the day about "c-c-combo breaker" only visited the shop to sell low-quality art at inflated prices. Recettear also had a system of customers leveling up and having more money to spend at all, which wasn't well explained but encouraged the player to not try to sell only things that would get the most profits. I think the combo system was also meant to be Recette benefitting from not frustrating customers through overly harsh haggling.
what, you're telling me you've never killed like 2 squirrels on the way to wal mart and sold the silver ring you found on one of em to the cashier?
Pathologic 2 is a game that really gets this right. Buying stuff with money generally doesn't work (well). Instead, you can trade items with other characters, but each type of NPCs will only accept specific items and have certain values for them. Things like gears, nuts, and soap suddenly become important inventory items as well.
I loved shopping in sunless sea, an important part of the game is trading and fetching items between the islands, and can be pretty fun figuring out the routes most profitable and remembering which islands sell what
I would love to see a more in-depth trade/haggling system combined with storytelling through items and the unique opportunities that pop up in that space. Kind of in the way Papers Please was able to tell full stories just by the papers people had on them, what people are willing to buy and sell might be really interesting!
I've always thought that stardew valley had a particularly weak play here. There's no advantage to sticking with the community center in the main game, but imagine if the story was that Pierre would only buy enough to sell to the local townsfolk but JojaMart would buy anything off you to export it out of town. That would make your thousand pumpkin farm depend on Joja in a way that it just doesn't at the moment. Maybe even make you reconsider your choice to support Joja.
One of the things I would love to see in a Running-A-Shop game is some kind of MSRP or Average Price Index for goods, especially when starting out.
I know some of the fun is guessing to figure out good prices based on customer happy/sad faces, but for me that's just stressful.
You could make a car dealership game where they make an offer, you claim you need to talk to your manager, make them wait for a half hour and come back with basically the same offer as before.
I beleive Recettear does this. There's aways a market value, and you can increse or decrease the price.
I once wrote a short story about an [NPC] crafting materials merchant. He was filled with contempt for the players but only had cheerful dialog. It got a C, I was very smug
They really needed better shopping in cyberpunk 2077
What if instead of just a horizontal line in haggling of high price and low price, there's also a vertical line where the deal changes? So like the buyer would say: "I don't want to buy this sword for 4000 gold. But I will if you also throw in some health potions for free." or a seller could be like: "Fine, I'm willing to sell this sword at 3500 gold, but I want you to do something for me."
I absolutely hate, despise and abhor haggling. I actively go against my desires if a seller even suggests the idea to haggle.
Consider also that IRL the same kind of shop in different regions, areas, parts of a city or even a different adjacent street can have wildly varying types of items depending on what overheads they have, connections to different suppliers, or sometimes down to the sellers traditions, local customs or agreements influencing what they end up stocking in the store.
There should also be an option not to haggle high or haggle low, but whether you really SHOULD haggle with prices at all, if the shop is located in poorer neighbourhoods, looks worse off, or in some specific cases you might even consider buying high as an indirect donation method. Probably covered by the altruist buyer archetype, but still worth considering about.
Always fascinating when one mechanic is made into the focus of a game, I can see a good bartering game being rather fun.
But also, haggling is just an application of persuasion, and there's at least as much room for improvement in how other forms of persuasion is handled. The stock pass/fail skill check so many games have could be /drastically/ improved by some of the same sorts of things.
Anything to cut down on how often it tends to feel adjascent to mind control.
I would point out that while Recettear encourages being a bastard, the actual gameplay rewards knowing your customers enough to get them to walk away happy, which then increases how much they are willing to spend at your shop. Effectively, hard positional bargaining gave you more today, but soft gave more long-term.
Yeees! Go and develop these systems and then implement them in Grand Strategy like Stellaris and Civilization. Because I just realized that is the reason why most diplomatic interactions are so boring or even dumb.
I like that in Tales of Symphonia you usually have an expensive weapon option when going to new shops, but if you have an old weapon and the right materials you can make it into a weapon thats just as good if not better
You can probably borrow the idea of patterns from boss battles and maybe earning negotiation tactic cards. Assess the customer and their interests to offer the right items and use the right negotiation tactics to maximize the price
"How about dealing with 'celebrity' customers whose item choices might 'influence' the demand for said items? Or trying to haggle with someone who wants to scam you?"
What's the difference?
imo if you run a business in a major city a requirement of doing business is a sign that says 'Influencers pay triple'.
I wanted to like Recettear, but the haggling system just made me anxious. The time limit to complete the game made me feel that failure to haggle perfectly doomed the playthrough.
I think Supply and Demand should be included into a Merchants system. So a player can't just dump a ton of the same item on them and expect the same value all the time, also combine it with the limited money for Merchants like in ES games, so as a player sells items of the same type to a merchant after some the value they get will decrease cause the Merchant already has plenty of them and doesn't want to run out of their own money as well.
Well this episode gives me the warm & fuzzy feelings. I only know about Recettear because of an old Extra Credits "Games You Might Not Have Tried" video a long time ago.
And, just so you know, the merchant is an infected Leon from the future, that's gone back in time to help original Leon NOT get infected. That's how he always has what Leon needs, (b/c he bought it from himself!) and always knows where he'll be, and already knows how to get past all the dangerous traps and creatures to get there.
0:27
"Stay strapped or get clapped" -Extra Credits
I love recettear for tackling those problems and creating a nice little story around it. Even the scamming aspect is something I remember very very well
I guess Nicolae bargained good on his advertisement video. Good Haggle Nicolae, Good Haggle.
The snake at 4:45 when you said "heck". Bet ya think you're pretty slick.
I see what you're doing here.
I had a game idea a long while ago now, that as you get richer (the automatic no brainer goal of most games) the world around you gets poorer, like gold is a limited resource. Talking about having goals other than getting the best price for yourself, reminds me of the idea. If you constantly get the best deals and watch those businesses go well, out of business... it could eventually mix up the player's priorities perhaps.
Meh. I don't know. If I had to go through the trouble of negotiating a price with an NPC in an RPG when I just want to buy some potions and continue with my quest I would be pissed off! I would really hate to find such a tedious mechanic in the middle of my standard RPG. I would rather obtain discounts by becoming a regular customer or completing quests for the shopkeeper or something along those lines.
There is definitely a balance, like you don't haggle when you go to Walmart, or as mentioned sometimes you just want to buy a bunch of base items like potions, arrows, spell components, ect for sticker price because you just want to get back to the main gameplay loop.
So definitely have some easy way to pick between haggle and sticker price modes, even if its just having an option at checkout to accept price or propose new price, and also enter a "tip" value to improve relationship with the vendor if desired. (Improved relationship better have some decent rewards like discounts or exclusive "off menu" items)
Also if haggleing is just move a slider so they barely except or has an otherwise slow and clunky interface then that won't be enjoyable.
I think it could be pretty interesting to have outright scamming as a game mechanic. How about a game where you start with a warehouse full of defective items and have to offload them by any means necessary, even ponzi scheme or pump-and-dump. Obviously the game should frame this as villainous behavior, but for players, learning first-hand what scammers say and do to trick people could help them to avoid getting roped into real-world scams.
2:33 is an absolutely genius depiction of a zero-sum game holy cow
I really feel like No Umbrellas Allowed needs a shout-out here. While your goal is to haggle well, and the actual price-calling involves finding an NPCs price limit, there are lots of good twists. First, the world is one where "avarice crimes" are a thing, so haggling too aggressively puts you in danger. Also, you're running a secondhand store, and must appraise items to determine how much it is worth, but all this information is public, so the seller knows exactly how much you are increasing or decreasing the value of what they're selling. After a bit, you unlock the ability to hide details in order to buy low and sell high - but again, doing this too often or too aggressively puts you in danger because "avarice crimes". And of course, there are lots of interesting side quests which unlock abilities or story lines, such as NPCs coming into your shop asking for a specific item, or other times when you might have a character-relevant item that you give to them for free in order to explore a character's storyline further. Maybe in return you get a valuable connection or an item that gives certain bonuses (e.g. making customers more patient). What interests me the most is the real tension you experience when you are constantly fluctuating between having stocked shelves in order to sell items, and having cash in order to buy items (rarely both), and the anxiety of not knowing if one of those character-relevant items will be available on a day that you have the money to buy it or not. I'm probably overselling this game, but I do think it's genuinely a really good storefront game, and it should really come up in any discussion about haggling systems.
Always happy to see Reccetear mentioned is such a cute and wholesome game, always wished we’d get a sequel.
Set prices aren't _too_ unrealistic, it only gets a bit implausible when 3 years of in game time passed and nothing happened. But within a week, it makes sense.
This reminds me to haggling in old game named Grom. The game is RPG BTW and shopping is just supporting feature, as you'd expect. Haggle option appear whenever player sells/buys items from shopping. The one who can start haggle is the one paying with cash. The haggle itself is a mini game in which each side choose 4 from haggle cards they have then do card battle to determine the price of the transaction. The haggle starter will always draw card first allowing the opposite side to counter with his card. Oh yes, rock paper scissors system is applied here so no card is dominant. Some cards are stronger than other cards also. After both sides show cards, the price changes depending on who win: price will drop if haggler win but price will rise if he lose.
That's a decent haggling system but since shopping isn't main feature, player could just ignore haggle option when it's presented. I rarely haggle since grinding and hunting for loot gives much better result (XP and money).
I'm surprised that they didn't mention Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland that game is all bargaining
I think you should check out a game called "Ittledew" which does a good job with their shop mechanics. Also, I'm thinking about making a shop in a game that you'd have to complete quests to unlock shop items.
In the Everquest MMORPG there's a feature were the merchants will resell items that players have sold to them, sometimes for ridiculously high prices but sometimes for very cheap. It can make a routine trip to a vendor an experience akin to finding a loot chest as you never know what might be there.
in kingdom come i've got 2 achievements which i'm very proud off
1. Stealing over 30k Groshen
2. Save 2000 Groshen by haggling
One bit of caution, and you briefly mentioned this, but this is one of those systems one shouldn't half-ass, as there is a boring-yet-acceptable baseline, and almost any change will add more steps to that. Even if you come up with a decent merchant system, if it doesn't mesh with the goals of your overall experience, it's a waste of a good mechanic AND your player's time.
This made me think of the economics in MMOs. Like, the value of items. Some games, you get a 'cheap' iron/steel/whatever sword for like, 15 silver or something. Doesn't seem like much...until you look around at the NPC merchants selling food. Things like, a loaf of bread for 6 copper, or a slice of watermelon for 4 copper. Because then you realize that that 'cheap' sword is actually really expensive for the characters in that world, even if it isn't for the Player. An NPC farmer might only see a few silver per year in income for all their work, but here you are as a player dropping a full gold coin for an expensive runestone. And to just further magnify the wow-factor of prices, there was one interaction I saw between NPCs in game as background dialogue: someone wanted to buy something rare and generally hard to acquire. The seller refused to sell at first...until they were offered 1000 gold coin. 1000 gold. In a world where an expensive meal might be 25 copper. That's like being offered $3 million dollars for something when you're making minimum wage. It was so interesting to me. LoL.
In RPGs just give the merchants infinite money because I when on a dragon killing rampage and now I need to sell 6500 septems worth of scales and bones
yeah this is another issue! merchants need to be programmed with finite wallets, and be less willing to just buy all of the random crap in your inventory. You should only be able to sell stuff that they, as a character, would be interested in buying.
@@ff-qf1th This is pretty easily solved to be honest. Merchants can be programmed with a list of items they will buy, how much of those items, and the price multiplier per quantity tier. A Blacksmith would only purchase swords / armor and the price they give per unit would decrease at certain quantity thresholds. They would only buy x amount max of each item per week.
I wrote a book called Trade Winds an Items and Services Compendium. It is an item book for table top RPGs and it has rolling for prices as a key mechanic. This is good because with a bit of bargaining the players might get advantage on the price of an item, or they may get to roll the price with a smaller die size. Which allows for some fun interaction.
Umbrellas are not allowed uses a similar mechanic but with YOU as the shop keeper :) (some depth comes into effect after a few in game days)
"This war of mine" uses a very simplistic but interesting barter system. Everyone has different values for the same goods.
Yes, need more RE 4 shopkeeper enthusiasts. :D
Thought of a neat scenario.
>Player Picks Option to buy a high level item’s crafting ingredients instead of the item itself.
(Player has a high crafting/intelligence score!)
>The player gained the option to say. “No thanks, I don’t need [Rare Key Ingredient] to make this.
Shopkeeper: “….Nani?
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DONT NEED THOSE [Key ingredient] TO MAKE THIS!?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO HAGGLE FOR THAT STUFF?!
>Player can now negotiate a deal in exchange for the trade crafting secrets they know!
Ah Recettear.... I still remember yelling at my screen for when the Con-Artist Character came into my store and ruined my Combo meter XD
5:16 Missed opportunity, to draw that character from Recettear.
all true but i rlly don’t wanna haggle over every item in games not about shopping tbh
Mount & Blade doesn't have a haggle system, but prices are based on supply and demand. there are ways to manipulate S&D to your profit and get rich quick, even dirty tactics such as going to a location where materials are cheap, buying all the stores in all cities in the area you can (including your rivals stores), convert all the shops to only one industry, sell all your shops, and watch as the industry crashes, while you buy finished products at EXTREMELY low prices while increasing demand of all other industries you eliminated. you can also sell food to a starving city after a siege at ridiculous prices, and sell weapons to factions who are fighting a war
my comment is a apreciation for the marvelois voice acting of the laught of the Buhonero from RE4,
it was perfect
I always wanted a "weapons shop" where you can pick the weapons you like use them on training bots and than you buy the weapons of choice with a seller NPC and if your charisma and intelligence points are high enough, you can bargain for better price.
I like Slime Rancher's use of a "stock market-like" market system. It discourages players from farming just one type of slime. The more Plorts a player sells, the lower the price goes, while the other prices go up.
Come to think of it...
- A Merchant Skilltree would also be interested, or Mechant Cards.
- Cards modifying: how much $/% is sold more/less to XYZ type of character, at X frequency...
- Or quests even: if you sold to X within last n minutes, Y will buy from you at higher prices, etc.
- The above actually reminds also potential faction and guild systems...
- ... so the system becomes a balance of relationships between your connections.
When I run tabletop games one of my ways of helping out my players is by having most merchants willing to give you a discount if you go get supplies for them, No one has figured out yet that I have several fixed recipes of health potions and the like that they now may know because they are fetching the ingredients
I notice that part of the problem is how scarce the resources in a game are really changes how useful merchants are. Fallout and Warcraft give you massive amounts of junk resources worth a fair amount but the merchants don't give you too much useful stuff for your money, since you've already got large amounts of resources, but if you make things very scarce things might not feel fun either since you're getting nothing for your efforts and merchants may sell useful stuff but you rarely get to purchase from them
One thing you can do is have some invisible (or visible) reputation mechanic. Your NPC friend is probably not gonna be your friend for long if you always demand outlandish low prices from them.
I would suggest as an option for this sort of gameplay that adds more to it, No Umbrellas Allowed. You are a shop keep in a city that is in political turmoil, the stuff you buy off people and sell back to them effects the story line and future interactions with the resistance and the government.
Years ago this video had a a substantial impact on my life because it introduced me to Potionomics, which was no released at the time, and I spent ages anxiously awaiting it's release while following the creators on social media. Tomorrow we celebrate the release of Potionomics Masterwork Edition and I'm so excited to enjoy the game once more ❤
The heck snake on the middle dollar sign was clever.
I have one game that answers it pretty well: Football Manager. They have pretty much the single best haggling system ever, from very basic deals to trying to hire celebrity players, ajusting budgets, making promises...
Most games that include bargaining also use a reputation/NPC relation system, which takes a hit from aggressive haggling.
Pathologic's barter economy is FASCINATING because it essentially involves organically figuring out what people want, and it is inherently engaging because the stakes are so high. Fail to barter for enough delicious eggs and you may starve to death. It also really enforces the games themes and ties directly into the narrative because it requires you to interact with tons of different types of NPCs throughout the game and hear what they have to say about how the plot is developing.
I will admit that it is definitely solveable and the actual tension drains a bit once you figure out the abusable trades, but I think there is a golden nugget in there about the game not just TELLING you how to make money, and you needing to engage with the NPCs and use your knowledge of who they are to try and figure out what they value. Kids want shiny nick-knacks more than medicine, parents want food more than weapons, ruffians want lockpicks more than socks. etc.
What if haggling was done as if from Papers, Please?
Customer walks in, you see a face. It's a good friend! You greet them! They act "off." They offer to pawn off an item to you. You inspect it, it's a watch. Using your tools, you identify it as a Rolex. You remember your friend usually brings you small quality items, nik naks. This Rolex is much pricier than they have ever tried to pawn off.
What do you do?
Do you suspect they don't know the value and can make a great profit by undercutting them?
Do you suspect they stole it and is selling evidence? Should you call the cops?
Are they a powerful person and you have to consider getting robbed and/or vandalized if you give them a bad deal?
Did a family member die and they just want to get rid of this inheritance?
Sidereal confluence is one of the most insane trading games I've ever played. The rules are pretty rough but it's always a great time every time I break it out.
This video seems mostly focussed on small scale RPGs but I can see bartering be a major aspect in a Dwarf Fortress-like game where you try to maximize profit for your settlement (of course) while also turning travelling traders into recurring customers, attracting new costumers and keeping the political landscape in mind.
Selling too high is bad because even if a deal is made people won't come back. Selling to low is bad because it will attract worse customers who misbehave if you don't lower your prices even further. Selling something too irregularely is bad because your trade partners don't know what to expect when they come to your settlement, selling things too regularely is bad as other factions might think you are trying to monopolize a market.
A balance act of profit, good will - and even the opinion of people who aren't even part of the trade.
Two Ideas I just had
First how you prize your wares has an influence on different characters. For example selling them cheap strengthens your relationship with poorer chars or families while guilds or other merchants dislike it because you undercut their prizes. Also it can give your characters attributes. Charging average prizes but giving discounts to poor or families makes you known to helpful but fair and if you then charge rich people extra you can end up in a whole social and political dispute.
I think this works especially well with a handfull of deepley fleshed out NPCs but it could also work out on a bigger skale with random henerated NPCs that fall into some categories (Artisan, Collector, Rich, Poor, Guild Member etc..) I see a lot of potential there.
My second Idea would be to implement supply and demand ideas and structures in a game. The X Games like X3: Terran Conflict have tried this. Basically the rate at wich your selling and buying resources and items influence the price.
It would be awesome if you could also influence these mechanism through the world.
Creating artifical scarcity to increase prizes or increase demand by sponsoring some influencers or hosting the big ball of the kingdom. This could extend to starting actuall trade wars or, I don't know, blocking a major trade route by getting a really big ship "accidentely" stuck in the Suez Canal, thus dropping supply drastically but you were prepared and have your warehouses full of goods.
Amazing how memorable the merchant from RE4 is
In MOTHER 3, a lot of the shops are literally vending machines (that you can sell things to).
And that's fine, because in an RPG that's really all we want.
Tabletop RPGs allow for SO much flexibility on this front
I'm surprised there was no mention of Dwarf Fortress' bartering mechanics