The problem is exactly that you can no longer trade normally. Like many of us said, the merchant would make a good addition to the trader. But it is a problematic replacement.
Well, if this whole Merchant/Trader system is so bad, then all you chapter 18 players need to playtest the hell out of it and do nothing but point out how bad it is. Honestly, if even one player comes here and says it is alright, I am going to accuse them of being a mole for Inno. lol
I wish I had a chapter 18 beta city so that I could say that it's alright.
I'm trying to understand the complaints. The main issue is that you're worried that the trading volume will be too low and/or not scale correctly? That is potentially a problem, yes, but we don't know yet if it is too low.
I think I have a solution for this (at least for portal lv 2):and for level 39 main hall it is limited to 1800 ascended goods per merchant
then if you send out merchant, you get instantly desired goods back, but your merchant is on 6 hour cooldown
The whole reason why they can do it so easily is because of decay. Since they were first and quickly cornered the market no one else can amass a large enough stockpile to fight them.But there is a catch, these are decaying goods putting a soft cap on how much you can earn from it. you can never reach the scale you need for a rockefellar scale world domination. they can influence the market a but and for example have an imbalance stick longer than needed but they can never control it.
....with the 6h cooldown of the Merchants....
It depends on what ascended goods are for. I don't see any in the techs, so as long as everyone doesn't have the same expenses in settlement buildings then having a player with each boost should work.So I see maybe some fellowship switching by chapter 18 players when this hits Live? If you have a fellowship with at least one player boosted in each of the T7 Ascended goods, then those three, or more, can just sit in-game together for a little while and trade around the goods through the Merchant until they each have what they need, or they run out their spare goods
only if you can produce 37200 unurium per 3h, which nobody in the world can, i can barely keep up with 1 single boosted manufactory at this point (unurium is also needed for techs)With 6 T1 I can make 5280 T7/3h,
every settlement hub on level 1 need 270 +270 ascended goods per 8 hoursIt depends on what ascended goods are for. I don't see any in the techs, so as long as everyone doesn't have the same expenses in settlement buildings then having a player with each boost should work.
only if you can produce 37200 unurium per 3h, which nobody in the world can, i can barely keep up with 1 single boosted manufactory at this point (unurium is also needed for techs)
my negotiating only free to play city cant even keep 3h production of 1 manu, it just producing less then 6200 unurium per 3h
let alone T8 and T9 in next chapters, i cant imagine our unurium production will be triple, unless they start massively introduce them to event buildings and on top of that i will also need unurium and ascended goods for spire negotiating, not even in wild dream i can keep up with that with current state of the game.
300k is not even enough for 1st 3 techsto hopefully have 200-300k
Sure, if the goods are perfectly balanced and if everyone can coordinate to be online at the same time, than trading will be possible (but annoying). But those are some pretty big ifs.The cooldown only matters if no one takes the trade you made through the Merchant. If someone takes it before the 6 hours ends, then you get that Merchant back at that moment.
So I see maybe some fellowship switching by chapter 18 players when this hits Live? If you have a fellowship with at least one player boosted in each of the T7 Ascended goods, then those three, or more, can just sit in-game together for a little while and trade around the goods through the Merchant until they each have what they need, or they run out their spare goods. This might also get people to talk to their chapter 18 map neighbors and coordinate a time to be online to do this. This may be why they really called this chapter Team Spirit, because of the teamwork it will take to complete the chapter in a reasonable amount of time. Now I need to go and check the boosts in my Live fellowship, where there are 5 or 6 of us either done with chapter 17 or in chapter 17, to see if this will work.