Player to player trading

Ashes of Creation concept art.

There will be player to player trading in Ashes of Creation.

Q: Will Ashes of Creation have player-to-player trading? Will there be anything stopping me from gifting a friend that's fresh to the game a bunch of in-game money to help them get on their feet quickly?

A: There won't be anything to stop you from doing that. – Steven Sharif

• Player to player trading, interacting with vendors or NPCs, and the ability to access storage is disabled for corrupted players.

• Security systems are in place to combat RMT and other forms of cheating.

The nature of player to player trading already introduces that in an open economy game... that is why we have measures to attempt and heat flag suspicious transactions, active gms and other honeypot systems/agents that will be active in discovering those types of cheaters. – Steven Sharif

Buying and selling

Player stalls, personal shops, and auction houses enable buying from and selling to other players.

• Player merchants will not be able to be placed on ships.

	Player stalls	Personal shops	Auction houses
Cost	Rental fee.	Placement certificate purchase.	Listing fee.
Location	Can be rented at locations near the unique building in an economic node or in Marketplaces.	Certificates from non-metropolis nodes, allow placement near the node's unique building or on a freehold. Certificates from economic node metropolises allow placement anywhere in the world.	At Markets in Village economic nodes allow raw resources and processed goods to be posted. At Exchanges in Town nodes allow all goods/items to be posted. Metropolis stage Economic nodes enable remote bidding from linked economic nodes. Auctioneer NPC emissaries present in Vassal nodes allow some access to the parent node's auction house.
Player presence	An attendant NPC is assigned to the stall. Character does not need to be online or at the stall.	Player must be online and present at the shop.	N/A
Storage	Linked to character's warehouse.	Linked to character's inventory.	Raw materials and gatherables are automatically deposited within the listing node's local warehouse. Anything other than raw materials and gatherables will be mailed to the purchaser.
Advertising	Items and services are listed on Bulletin boards in the same region. There may or may not also be listings at auction houses.	Custom billboard appears above the character. Items are not listed in the parent node or auction houses.	Items listed are visible in community boards (bulletin boards). Metropolis level economic nodes enable worldwide sale prices for auction houses across Verra.
PvP	Players are not able to be attacked or robbed while occupying their player stall inside the limits of a node. Material losses may occur if the node's warehouse is destroyed during a node siege.	Players may be killed while occupying their personal shop and are subject to material loss due to normal death penalties.	N/A

Player stalls

Niküan player stall concept art.

If there were ever a cornerstone serving as the bedrock of Niküan trade, then this modest stall would be it. Stacked from floor to thatched roof with all manner of catch, it is prepped for a full day of commerce and trade. Here, haggling is not merely a suggestion, but a requirement.

Alpha-1 player stall 3D renders. 3D model by Adam Will.

Player stalls (also called Kiosks and rental stalls) are rentable locations near the unique building in an Economic node, in Marketplaces (the constructible building available for placement by mayors of any Town (stage 4) node or higher), or as business buildings on freehold plots.

All nodes do have the ability to spawn player stalls. If you're not an economic node and you don't have a market- that's essentially your unique building- then you can construct essentially what is I guess would be called a... marketplace; and that marketplace will then come with certain services and it will come with a certain number of stalls. The economic node as I recall has the ability to construct an auction house and the auction house serves through the economic means the ability to list and sell items and that comes with additional stalls as well for the players. – Steven Sharif

Renting a player stall enables players to sell items as well as provide repair and enchanting services, even when they are not online.

• Player stalls are rentable by node citizens.
  • Player stalls may be utilized for a period of time based on the price paid to rent the stall.
• Player stalls are linked to a player's warehouse.
• Players are not able to be attacked or robbed while occupying their player stall inside the limits of a node.
• Player stalls do not require the attendance of the character or for that character to be online.
  • An attendant NPC is assigned to the stall. This may be an "image" of the player.
• Bulletin boards that list the items available in player stalls can be accessed from anywhere in the region.
  • These give the location of the stall so players can travel there and purchase the items.
• Stall sales are also listed in auction houses.
  • This may no longer be accurate.
• Players are able to input required items for repair and also purchase required materials for that repair.
• Player stalls may still operate during node siege declaration. This is subject to testing.

Personal shops

Confectioner’s Delight pre-order pack cosmetic building skin for the cooking profession.

Certificates to place Personal shops (player-owned shops) may be purchased by citizens and non-citizens from Economic nodes.

• These certificates allow the placement of a personal shop near the unique building in an economic node or on a freehold.
  • Once the economic node has reached metropolis stage, personal shops may be placed anywhere in the world.

• When a character creates a personal shop, a billboard pops up above them with a custom advertisement message for items or services available on that character's person. Purchasers can interact directly with the character to purchase these items or services.

A player shop is where you have a certificate to essentially create a shop with your character and a little billboard will pop up above you as you sit down for that shop and advertise a custom message that you want say that has to sell things and/or services that are on your person. So players can then come up to you and they can interact with you. So you reside yourself to that shop. – Steven Sharif

Auction house

Alpha-1 Auctioneer NPC.

If a Node is the Vassal Node of an Economic Node, an Auctioneer NPC appears in that Vassal Node. The Auctioneer allows players to list non-resource/processed materials in the Parent Node’s Auction House, but players cannot bid on items from this Auctioneer. These resources and processed materials must be stored within an Economic Node in order to be listed in that Node’s Auction House. In order to bid, they must still travel to the Auction House in the Parent Node.

Auction houses enable players to list items at specific node locations.

• Previously this was stated to be at the economic node in which the auction house is located. The new quote may not necessarily contradict this statement.

Auction houses allow items and resources to be listed for sale at a specific node location. – Steven Sharif

• A listing fee will be charged to list items in the auction house.
• Vassal nodes of the auction house node will be able to view items that are listed on that auction house, regardless of node type of the vassal node.
  • This will be possible through an auctioneer emissary NPC in that node.
  • Items cannot be listed in non-economic vassal nodes.
• Items listed are also visible in community boards (bulletin boards).

• Integrated auction houses allow players to purchase items directly from remote auction houses.
  • Purchases of materials and gatherables will be automatically deposited within the listing node's local warehouse. Players will need to travel to that warehouse to retrieve them. Players wishing to move these items elsewhere will need to utilize the caravan system or other type of transportation.
  • Purchases of anything other than materials and gatherables will be mailed to the purchaser.

• There may be a taxation difference between auction houses versus other player businesses.

• On a regular cadence, a number of a node's freehold parcels become available to be bid for at auction.

• Data relating to auction houses, such as price history, volumes, average prices, may be available to players via a mayor-constructed service building in their node.

That's probably how it's going to be surfaced... Your your mayor is going to have to build it for you. – Jeffrey Bard

Escrow system

• Caravan insurance payments go into escrow and will be sent to a named player should the caravan be destroyed.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• An escrow system is planned to prevent griefing in the crafting system.

We're going to have a UI... you're gonna put the resources in or they're gonna put the resources in. It'll be like an escrow system and then once [the job] is complete you'll get the item they'll get the money.

Gear binding

There may be some gear binding (BoE or BoP) but it will be an exception rather than the rule, as this doesn't facilitate the objectives for the economy.

• Very little gear will be account bound or soulbound in Ashes of Creation.
  • The game economy is based around crafting and degradation of items.
• Gear is obtained via crafting, gathering and processing along with raid and dungeon bosses.

A lot of what we experienced in games that usually come before us is that many things are account bound and they're soulbound to your character... Instead very little here is character bound. Very very little. The vast majority of gear- yes you will get quest related gear as rewards- but it won't be let's say one set in one dungeon and you must run the dungeon over and over. Instead we want to really emphasize the reliance on the economy and crafters and gatherers and processors to support a majority of the gear structure in-game, combined with that of world raid bosses and dungeon bosses; not a repetitive quest line through a single dungeon. – Steven Sharif

Mailing items

• Raw gatherables and materials are not able to be mailed by players.
  • Purchases of anything other than materials and gatherables from integrated auction houses will be mailed to the purchaser.
• Social messages sent via mail will be received instantly.
• It hasn't been decided whether crafted items such as gear will be able to be sent via mail.

From an item standpoint obviously we can't allow mailing to include any type of resource material or raw gatherable because those are central to the gameplay and transiting through the caravan system and economic regions. But it may be possible to send completed crafted items like gear, equipment, stuff like that. But it's something we're still discussing. – Steven Sharif

Banking

Nodes advance to the first stage quickly. This enables NPC services such as vending or banking items.

• Banking between characters will likely be restricted to furniture and completed items.
• A warehouse ability may enable a player to transfer non-material goods between alternate characters. This excludes resources, materials or anything that relies on the caravan system.

Storage

Storage chest in an Alpha-2 freehold.

Storage points exist at warehouses within nodes and in chests (storage containers) that can be placed in freeholds and static in-node housing.

• Sheds are present on empty freehold plots to provide basic storage for materials needed to construct freehold buildings.

Player housing storage

Alpha-1 chest concept art.

Alpha-1 chest 3D renders.

Chests are a type of furniture that provides localized storage within a specific house.

• Players must obtain and place storage containers in their player-owned housing.
• Different grades of storage containers have different inventory capacities.
  • There are restrictions on the grades of storage containers available in different types of houses.
• Access permissions can be set to allow others to access a player's personal storage devices.
  • Personal storage chests may be set to permit access by family or guild members.
  • Transfer of resources and materials to alts will only be possible via player housing storage, as this is local to the specific house.
• Players are prohibited from moving goods out of depositories within a node following a siege declaration against that node.
  • Gatherables and processed goods that were stored in in-node housing and apartment storage chests become lootable upon a successful siege against the parent node. These do not become lootable if the node survives the siege- even if the housing buildings are destroyed or damaged during the siege.
• Corrupt players are not able to utilize storage systems.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• Personal caravans may be launched from any point of storage (including chests).

Security systems

Security systems will be in place to combat cheating, exploiting, botting, gold selling/real money transactions (RMT), item duplication and other things that affect the economy starting from Alpha-0.

• A broad spectrum of approaches are going to be utilized in order to try to protect the integrity of the game once it launches. Testing of these systems will begin leading up towards Alpha-2.

Security is always at the top of any concern when you have a closed system like an MMO is... We've seen a lot of MMO is launch without security in place and the economy gets ruined as a result thereafter. And every band-aid that's slapped on top of that wound is just making things worse. And so part of why you take the time in order to ensure that things are done correctly is also the security component of things; and that's where testing with a live audience is a bit different also than testing with a Q&A audience as well, because you're going to get those bad actors- and we call them bad actors because ultimately they're attempting to destroy the fun for others... So what we've done is we've hired some security experts who've worked on massive other MMOs like World of Warcraft and other games, and they bring with them lot of experience; and we're going to be testing that in leading up towards Alpha-2. It's a very important part of Alpha-2. It's not something that we really addressed with Alpha-1 because again, that was a much more barebones functional testing experience. We did see some issues during Alpha-1 and we made it important for Alpha-2 to test those systems. We have a broad spectrum of approaches that we're going to be utilizing in order to try to protect the integrity of the game once it launches. – Steven Sharif

• These systems collect user data and flag abnormal activities for investigation. This combined with player reporting functions generates a live "heat map" that draws attention to unusual behavior.

We do have already built into the game on the outset is essentially behavioral metrics. So in the game, as a player does normal things and they acquire normal gold, that's all good and well, but if there starts to be item IDs that appear on the player account that are out of the norm, like either a large amount of gold, or significant legendary items, what it does in the back-end it flags the account for view so that we can take a look at where did this item come from. Is it coming from a known gold seller or a flagged bot, or whatever; and then we investigate. So we're going to be pretty hard on the ability for players to subvert the natural economy systems by RMT or botting. – Steven Sharif

• Botters, cheaters, gold sellers, and RMTers, will face severe penalties from the active GM/community team.

It's important to note that there is a sanctity that must be protected within the game from RMTing; and let me just go into a little diatribe about this: But in games that I've played where the company or the publisher does not enforce rules, it becomes the standard that you buy gold if you want to be competitive. If you want to compete at the top tier levels in certain games, and everyone's buying gold, you almost either have to buy the gold or you're just not going to be able to compete with those people and that's a really shitty feeling to have. Excuse my French, I apologize. That is sucky; and in order for that not to be the case it is the responsibility of the publisher or the developers both to make sure that we have stringent practices from a CS- from a customer customer service perspective- to enforce our rules and to make sure that players are aware if they partake in this there is a huge risk in doing so. It's not going to be a slap on the hand. It's not going to be a "we told you once, we told you twice, we told you three, four, five six times okay. We're just taking some gold away", that thing. We have got to ensure that it is feared to do those things because that ashes has active GMS, it has active customer service, it has an active community team. – Steven Sharif

Trade agreements

Mayors can enter into trade agreements with other nodes to facilitate trade between the nodes.

• There are a limited number of trade agreements that a node can have.

• Mayoral caravans may only be initiated between nodes with trade agreements or alliances.

• Trade agreements affect reputation between the nodes.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Mercenary guilds will be a viable way forward for different organizations. I think there will be a lot of business to be had with that; and one of the systems in our trade agreements is creating an escrow for those particular type of arrangements that we're looking into. – Steven Sharif

Trade routes

Mayoral caravan launched by a mayor to establish a trade route with another node.

For example: this node over here might have access to cotton as a resource and when that node processes that cotton it might be some very nice type of linen that only that node, or very rarely nodes would have access to. So when you initiate a trade route, you're bringing its supplies that the mayor has requested because they're trying to build, let's say a specific type of service building, or they're trying to unlock a blueprint that they have access to now to build up their node. – Steven Sharif

Trade routes in Ashes of Creation refer to.

• Roads for the transit goods via the caravan system.

  You might have a mountain pass and during winter that mountain pass is always closed and so the trade routes on land change with caravans and that's something that can not only exist on a cyclical level but also dynamically based on player activity.

• Economic relationships between nodes established by Mayors or node citizens.
  • Agreements are established to trade commodities that are unique to particular nodes or node types via NPC-driven caravans.

From a diplomatic standpoint the ability for the mayor or citizens to set up NPC routed trade routes between nodes as a trade agreement or as a diplomatic process. – Steven Sharif

• An aspect of naval content.

Escrow

• Caravan insurance payments go into escrow and will be sent to a named player should the caravan be destroyed.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

• An escrow system is planned to prevent griefing in the crafting system.

We're going to have a UI... you're gonna put the resources in or they're gonna put the resources in. It'll be like an escrow system and then once [the job] is complete you'll get the item they'll get the money.

See also

• Economy
• Crafting
• Caravans
• Player stalls
• Currency