Who here thinks a Player vendor interface with shard search would be cool?...

As a shopper, a shard search would be cool... to search for all the sales offerings of a particular item on my shard, not x-sharding... with vendor location...

As a vendor owner, I would like to see what my compeditors are doing and to auction to the highest bidder on occations, for rare items... at the very least do a simple "price check"...

The interface could be accessed from any player vendor anywhere in the world... and of course you would still need to go and purchase the item off the vendor, cuz they ain't going to deliver... but the interface could have a recall gem...

So what do you say, I'm all for it...

I selected we should talk more because I think on one hand its a good idea for the player looking for a deal and especially the new player with not alot of cash on hand, however as a dealer/seller I think it would be devastating with the undercutting and such. It would simply drive prices too low imo. Also I'm not exactly sure the kind of impact it would have on the economy. SearchUO already has this feature set up for Luna but I believe it requires one of their characters to actually run thru the area in order to update so I dont believe it would be feasible to do it across an entire shard. I might be way off base here but its my 2 cents worth!

The person screaming "Nay, that's horrible!" is me.

Reason: It's Horrible. It would be almost exactly like WoW's Auction House (which is great!!!! only for WoW).

I think it's a good idea, personally, especially if you could filter out the stuff you don't want
Like, you could search for specific items by intensity (XX% LRC etc)

Dude, most of what you are concerned with, is "market forces"... and the "market" can be learned... and it realy has a will of its own, that can't be controlled...

Of course, Buyers want the lowest price possible, duh... hehe, would you buy something for 250k if you KNEW about another vendor selling it for 125k? This is just a "given fact" about a market place... The thing that you don't understand is, on High demand items, Buyers are willing to pay throught the nose for them....

My example is of two offerings for sale, and since you mentioned "under cutting", you must be familar with WoW... Now if there was only two ppl selling this item, you would have no way of knowing it... Therefor you would NOT be able to realize, its a pretty rare item...

Its kinda foolish IMO, to undercut a rare item... When I see this on WoW, and I'm one of the guys selling... Well, I just buy the other guys and relist it at a 50% profit... I think the guy walked away a happy camper and never realized I did it... and if they cry about it, well I'm sorry they were foolish... They should have learned "the market" before jumping in and guessing... Well, gee what should I sell this for? Whats it worth? Price check please?

Man, thats like taking a rare coin to a coin shop and asking "what its worth?" Sure the guys going to give you $100.00 for a penny... if its rare... If your foolish enough to take only one apprasel before you sell, God help you... Don't take it personel, when the guy turns around and auctions it for 50,000 US$...

As far as "undercutting", thats also a "market force" you can't control... First of all, unless you can do a search of all the offerings available at a given time (cuz the market changes with each sell/buy transaction), you don't know how many others are trying to sell the same thing as you.... The "market" can't help but become sacherated with hundreds of offerings of the samething and of course the price is going to fall... Because what you are trying to sell for a high price, is not such a rare item, therefor its common and NOT worth that much... Its another "market force" you can't controll... and you don't even know if it a high demand item ir not, just that theres alot of it for sale...

UOsearch is doing it now, for their own private benefit, using some 3rd party program, someone made.... to do a "Vendor look" and tally up a database, as you say they just walk around Lunu updating, but they don't go everywhere... Why should they? Luna is where all their own vendors are, why would they want more competition? Beside most items I've seen there have a US$ amount and a UO Gold amount for purchasing (heck they sell the gold too)...

An In-game search engine, I feel would be of great benefit to both Buyers & Sellers... Who play this game and NOT run off site Retail stores...

I hate shopping round so this would be good

Exactly... Search by item and see all offering on a shard of that same item... from High to low or low to high price... If you want a pair of Barded Leather pants with LRC & Luck you should be able to do that... or do a general Barbed Leather Pants search...

With all the Random loot & properties being generated, it would be nice to see all vendor stock in a listed form...

The problem with "market forces' in uo is cost to produce. In a real economy, there is a cost to produce that sets a threshold. Only by relocating the manufacturing process to a lower labor market can that threshold be lowered. Since the company must ALSO make a profit, this sets a price barrier.

Now with UO, there is no threshold on goods found in game. Produced goods have them, but by FAR the largest market is in rares, artifacts, and power scrolls. With that in mind, realize that people with no scruples, or incentive to make a profit, will and DO put prices at an unsustainable low. If they have a large enough supply, the result is artificial deflation of worth.

P.S> you can do this with UO STuff already for Luna (now the major commerce center on most shards). If you contact the UO Stuff owner, they sometimes add other vendors as well (especially if near a moongate).

Am I the only one that sees that this would be horrible FOR UO?

Most other games, sure, go ahead.

UO, for all purposes, should NEVER have anything like this.

UOGuy barely touched on the reason why.

I'm just lazy and hate searching for stuff all over Brittannia.

Then hire someone to shop for you

Dude, this IS a nice theorey... But its highly unlikely that any saine person would goto the trouble of "Monopolizing" a given product just to undercut themselves by selling LOW...

Quit the opposite would happen, believe me... Pricing would be maintained at an all time high just for spite, plus 10%.... Thats why there are Laws Governing such unscrupulouse acts of criminal behavior, in rl... The small independents would be shut out by the large Corps, due in large by lack of competition... All in all, they ARE the sellers... If they choose, they can NOT sell and just hang back to see "How bad you realy want it"... How high will your pleading(offer) go?.. Its called an "Auction"...or maybe a "little hint" they realy want cold hard US$...

hehe, you mentioned UO Stuff, hehe... Well, guess what? UOStuff is a conglomerate of "UOStuff, UOTreasures, UOResources and UOsearch is their attempt at "Monopolizing" all of UOs items for cash sales or optionaly, UO Gold, all the while maitaining their diversity as independent retailers... They are trying to Centralize ALL commerce to Luna ONLY, their territory, effectavely shutting out any competition because its SO hard to physicly look into each and every player vendor through out the rest of the world, in a timely manner... and this is by "design"...

Dude, "cost of Production" is much differant in UO because its limited... There are only so many ways to aquire an item for re-sale, the basic being Loot drops, Crafting with tools/materials or Buying with Gold...

Every retailer is responsible for calculating their own cost facters... and the only way in UO to lower your "cost of Production" is to do it yourself... Gather your own material, do BoDs for Tools and Praye you win the Lottery, Hunt High end mods and Praye you win the Lottery...

If the producers of UO would introduce an in-game vendor search, it would only show their support of "In-game free Enterprize"... and NOT centralized Outside Cash(US$) sales... JMO...