Many moons ago, we were told that an improved shop system would be created. Like many things, that has not happened yet. And with other large projects being prioritized right now, it isn't looking like the shop improvement is coming anytime soon. So why not add in a barebones/minimalist market in the meantime? The market would simply be a chest UI that has items in it. It would show the amount and cost. When you click on the item, the wool confirmation UI pops up asking you to confirm your purchase. When confirmed, the item is placed into a special market vault (accessed via /market vault, or something similar). Market vault space is limited for server reasons. A player can list at max 5 items. The market shouldn't be your dumping grounds for excess items. These items are listed via commands and slot position. They will also be confirmed using wool UI to avoid accidental listings. Unsold items can be retrieved at no cost on the server they were listed, and 5r per listing on other servers. There will be one market per server. This is to (potentially) help with data usage. All markets can be viewed from any server. All items bought come with a 5r fee. Rupee sink and deterrent for using the market as a way to transfer items. Items that are not sold within a week will be mailed back to the seller. [insert other details I can't think of right now] This is (obviously) not of high enough quality to be the forever solution. But it is simple enough that it shouldn't take much effort to create, and it has been almost four years since we were told that significant feature would be added. I don't mind waiting for a quality product, but if that quality product is not going to arrive anytime soon, then I am going to want to use a decent product in the meantime. For those wondering, yes, there is a plugin of the idea already made (it is by no means new) with many more features. The main idea here is to make this minimalist so that it can be worked on and released without taking up much time (likely none from Aikar). (sorry Aikar to bring up another idea from the past that people will bug you about lol)
If there is to be a charge, I suggest that both the buyer and seller are charged and that the charge should be a percentage of the value of the items being purchased rather than a flat fee. Or is the fixed charge a way to discourage low value items from being offered for sale? I would probably use it with or without that change.
I like the idea of an easy in-game auction house. The forums are not for everyone and would this help the trade market. Not sure about the low effort part. There are often silly things with players fast switching items or misrepresenting prices. Sure you get those with shops, but it's harder for a shopkeeper to change the sign while you're clicking on it. (Which I've had a shopkeeper try to do!) +1 overall, I think this would add value to the server.
Ther could be a 5r (or other fixed value) minimum charge on items below a certain value, and then have a variable charge for any value above. And I suppose that both the seller and buyer could be charged.
The description in your original post reminds me of our mail system. Is it your intention that that be used as a basis for the Market? If so, you should expand on that in the OP since much of the work has already been done. I am picturing sending a mail message to EMC Market that has information about the item and price in the Subject and/or message. Then anyone can list the messages that were sent there to shop. "Opening" one of them would cause a Rupee transaction and ownership of the contents.
Here's an idea (twist) on this. It might be what you guys were trying to explain but being french gives me a harder time to get nuances sometimes. Everyone gets up to 5 slots for different items for sale being single quantity of stacks if applicable. Price is set per unit and actually sold through the Empire shop until no more is up for sale by any players. Then it reverts to classic Empire shop price and those would all be unique per server to help keep things easier to manage. That way you get the best price you can hope for per unit until that price rangr runs out and it carry on to the next lower price. Empire commission at a e.g. 15% taken on the seller profit. The amount of item slots players get access to could be raised to a max cap in the for of vouchers sold like the other ones. Another cool initiative to help EMC rolling. It's only an idea I have and might not reflect your idea or your needs. What do you guys think? My reasoning on that system is that it promotes smaller seller to move their stock around without too much hassle compared to /v +shop. Also, you cut the need to browse multiple shops and help negate the monopoly of select megamalls over everyone else.
