Some possibilities for black market trading opportunities under the new trading system:
1) The most obvious seems to be to trade on offers that are restricted. I.e. an Ally trading on a Realm Only trade, or non-Ally trading on an Ally trade. For a bigger challenge, a non-Ally trading on a Realm Only trade.
2) Trading on offers from a realm with which you are at war.
3) Skimming gold from the transaction by shorting the seller, then pocketing the difference. The challenge here would be to try to hide it in some way that is not obvious. Perhaps a delayed message about a shortage in the trade balance in the next tax report? You couldn't charge the buyer too much, as the money has to come from somewhere. To fleece the buyer, see the next idea...
4) Trading on mismatched offers. I.e. matching a 400 bushel Buy with 350 bushels of Sell, and pocketing the difference. As above hiding the mismatch would be difficult. Delayed message in the Harvest report? You couldn't short-match the seller, as that would leave bushels floating around in limbo.
All of these could have varied risk levels. The greater the risk, the greater the potential profit. Failure could result in confiscation of the food and/or bonds by either the buyer or seller, or maybe even arrest of the trader by agents of either party.
All interesting. Maybe offer a menu, similar to all the options that Infiltrators get?
hang on.. what trade balance in tax report?! that doesn't exist anymore.
Some kind of note could be added. The key is that it is delayed. The tax report seems the logical place.
why? only the lord and steward gets any trade info
--
Food Sold (29 days, 21 hours ago)
message to the lord and steward of Avengmil
Kendrick Date of Riombara, Duke of Rines, Margrave of Rines, Marshal of the Storm of the South has accepted your offer for 300 bushels of food. You gained 60 bonds.
Scammed (19 days, 21 hours ago) <- random length between 4 and 10 days?
message to the lord and steward of Avengmil
Apparently 20 bonds from a previous transaction are forgories.
hmm... that doesn't work.. because i've not seen an actual trade message from traders matching offers....
and eh.... it'll be dead obvious if you don't keep any bonds and suddenly get 40 bonds even when you are told you are supposed to get 60.. unless you lose 20 bonds when you get the scammed message (.. guess could work similar to "fine")
now.. if it's food, then it's very easy to miss.. but only because most people don't log their food every day.
Quote from: Indirik on May 22, 2012, 11:14:52 AM
Some kind of note could be added. The key is that it is delayed. The tax report seems the logical place.
Since they get paid in bonds, perhaps they get the message the next time they visit the bank?
That's very hard to keep track of. When you get bonds, you get bonds. There's nothing saying "you got bonds from XX and YY". The bank's the exception.
Quote from: Foundation on May 23, 2012, 03:30:53 PM
That's very hard to keep track of. When you get bonds, you get bonds. There's nothing saying "you got bonds from XX and YY". The bank's the exception.
All you need is to add a second database column to "gold" and "bonds" called "fraud" or something. Whenever the lord tries to change bonds into gold or send bonds to someone else, the script (whatever you call it when the button is clicked) checks to see if the "fraud" column is nonzero, and if so, notifies the lord and deducts those bad bonds from their count. Probably best to fail the transaction entirely, so that sending 50 bond doesn't turn into sending 30, or causes a negative bond count on the lord or something.
The problem is that the lord could get rid of all their bonds via trade offers. This would be a trivial way to avoid paying the cost of the fraud. Then those fraudulent bonds would already be gone. Its quite possible that that idea just won't work. :(
eh... to make it go full circle.... use the equivalent of a "fine" I mentioned except it's automatically deducted from the next tax?
ie.. you get a delayed notice saying you got scammed.. and then the tax after that you have to cough up to replace the dodgy bonds...
Would that not discourage the normal use of bonds?
Quote from: Foundation on May 24, 2012, 02:14:05 PM
Would that not discourage the normal use of bonds?
Would it not discourage selling your food to begin with? People will just have to live with it.
Of course...do we want to make players unhappy?
You're all over-complicating this whole scammed business. Traders used to keep anonymity after a black market transaction because their name was not mentioned, and the food mysteriously disappeared, no message whatsoever.
With the new system, it does not matter what message the lords get, or when. So long as the trader's name is not mentioned. My thoughts on the options presented:
Quote1) The most obvious seems to be to trade on offers that are restricted. I.e. an Ally trading on a Realm Only trade, or non-Ally trading on an Ally trade. For a bigger challenge, a non-Ally trading on a Realm Only trade.
Perfect.
Quote2) Trading on offers from a realm with which you are at war.
Perfect.
Quote3) Skimming gold from the transaction by shorting the seller, then pocketing the difference. The challenge here would be to try to hide it in some way that is not obvious. Perhaps a delayed message about a shortage in the trade balance in the next tax report? You couldn't charge the buyer too much, as the money has to come from somewhere. To fleece the buyer, see the next idea...
Leave the Trader's name out of the report. Highten security for a short time in case they try again on another of that lords offers.
Quote4) Trading on mismatched offers. I.e. matching a 400 bushel Buy with 350 bushels of Sell, and pocketing the difference. As above hiding the mismatch would be difficult. Delayed message in the Harvest report? You couldn't short-match the seller, as that would leave bushels floating around in limbo.
Tell Seller "The order has been fulfilled here is your X gold, yada yada yada" - all completely true.
Tell Buyer "You have purchased 350 bushels for the price of X. The deal was supposed to have been for 400." Then you throw in a line about either not catching the trader's name, or are provided with a fake one, an alias.
I really like that alias idea, come to think of it. Just imagine "You have purchased 350 bushels for the price of X. The deal was supposed to have been for 400. You are told the trader's name was Ben Franklin, but you cannot find any record of him." The only restriction would be it cannot use a family name of anyone, and preferably not the given name of any character on that particular island.
Quote from: Jeckyl on June 01, 2012, 01:47:10 PM
You're all over-complicating this whole scammed business. Traders used to keep anonymity after a black market transaction because their name was not mentioned, and the food mysteriously disappeared, no message whatsoever.
With the new system, it does not matter what message the lords get, or when. So long as the trader's name is not mentioned. My thoughts on the options presented:
Perfect.
Perfect.
Leave the Trader's name out of the report. Highten security for a short time in case they try again on another of that lords offers.
Tell Seller "The order has been fulfilled here is your X gold, yada yada yada" - all completely true.
Tell Buyer "You have purchased 350 bushels for the price of X. The deal was supposed to have been for 400." Then you throw in a line about either not catching the trader's name, or are provided with a fake one, an alias.
I really like that alias idea, come to think of it. Just imagine "You have purchased 350 bushels for the price of X. The deal was supposed to have been for 400. You are told the trader's name was Ben Franklin, but you cannot find any record of him." The only restriction would be it cannot use a family name of anyone, and preferably not the given name of any character on that particular island.
I disagree with the part where you say to inform the buyer that the deal have differences.
A message saying "your buying offer was filled" to the buyers and "your products were sold" to the sellers is more than enough.
Also we could get a history of the food income and outcome in the granary. This way only those who track down their business will realize that they were stolen.
Also I don't think that "create" a profit in a trade must be something made in the black market.
I'm playing as trader and this is something that really hurt the profession. But I will talk more about this in the proper post.
Another thing that could be done is the trader simply buy the food from anywhere and then be able to create a fake offer in any market to sell it latter. It would be a black market action because you are not a lord. Also this could inform, to the buyer, that the food would come from a random region. This way if the lord care from where the food comes, he may talk with the other lord to confirm its origin.
Another thing is also that broker trade in the black market could be done with gold and not only with bonds.
Keep in mind that the goal is not to make other players' lives difficult by obscuring information on their own offers. I never want to check and find that "your offer was fulfilled" for an arbitrary amount less silently. Either it happens and players are informed, or it doesn't happen, since I can just subtract my new bonds from my previous amount to get the difference anyways.
in the old black market system
you could:
successfully do it.
get scammed by npc.
get caught and have your name plastered everywhere.
so i would think in the new system, there should be a chance of your name being plastered everywhere.
If you get caught, yes.
Why not give bankers an ability to set up a trap to catch traders using black markets? Let bankers turn maximum of three orders under surveillance and if traders who use black markets buy that offer, his name will be shown to bankers.
if the chance of getting caught is a flat rate per attempt, this will encourage lords to spam really small offers to maximize the chances of catching black market traders.
That is why I want only bankers have the power. Out of all the offers they can only put 3 under surveillance. If you limit the total number of offers to three, that wouldn't be good for your realm.
Quote from: Zakilevo on June 02, 2012, 07:51:37 PM
That is why I want only bankers have the power. Out of all the offers they can only put 3 under surveillance. If you limit the total number of offers to three, that wouldn't be good for your realm.
Sounds like a great way to make trading suck, imo.
Black market used to be about really small numbers. Maybe that's partly because my trading skill always sucked, but I never saw anything really interesting on the black market. Sure, it was better than no offer at all, but still.
However, these suggestions sound like they'd allow traders to get thousands of bushelss from the black market...
These ideas definitely need to be thought through and balanced. But a limiting factor would be that the bigger the deal, the greater the risk. The smaller offers would probably be not too risky, but trying to trade on a restricted 1,000 bushel deal should be very risky.
Also, many of these options I posted don't really defraud anyone. Trading on a restricted deal means that the lord/steward posting the orders still gets the food or gold he wants. It's just getting bought/sold by someone other than intended. The options to actually defraud the posters and pocket an illegal profit would be even more risk.
The option for a banker to monitor trades for fraud is interesting. Perhaps it could be a police action style thing, limited to the physical location of the banker, or just his current and surrounding regions or something. I wouldn't want it to be just any three random offers from anywhere in the realm. Realms could possibly have dozens and dozens of orders. Monitoring three would be essentially useless. Rather, monitor a marketplace, and anything going through there would be scrutinized.
Quote from: Indirik on June 02, 2012, 08:39:07 PM
These ideas definitely need to be thought through and balanced. But a limiting factor would be that the bigger the deal, the greater the risk. The smaller offers would probably be not too risky, but trying to trade on a restricted 1,000 bushel deal should be very risky.
Also, many of these options I posted don't really defraud anyone. Trading on a restricted deal means that the lord/steward posting the orders still gets the food or gold he wants. It's just getting bought/sold by someone other than intended. The options to actually defraud the posters and pocket an illegal profit would be even more risk.
The option for a banker to monitor trades for fraud is interesting. Perhaps it could be a police action style thing, limited to the physical location of the banker, or just his current and surrounding regions or something. I wouldn't want it to be just any three random offers from anywhere in the realm. Realms could possibly have dozens and dozens of orders. Monitoring three would be essentially useless. Rather, monitor a marketplace, and anything going through there would be scrutinized.
Wouldn't that block off too many offers? I think this could work if traders have a way to find out where the banker is. Then they can play cat and mouse.
It doesn't "block" anything. It makes things riskier. Kind of like Patrolling The Streets for infiltrators. If you limit Black Market deals to your current location only, then there could be a warning such as "You notice there are quite a few guards monitoring trades. Illegal activities would probably be much riskier right now."
Quote from: Indirik on June 02, 2012, 08:46:42 PM
It doesn't "block" anything. It makes things riskier. Kind of like Patrolling The Streets for infiltrators. If you limit Black Market deals to your current location only, then there could be a warning such as "You notice there are quite a few guards monitoring trades. Illegal activities would probably be much riskier right now."
Oh I misunderstood. Thought it would be 100%. Yeah I that sounds much more interesting and it will also give bankers something to do as well.
I agree. This is good add to the black market option.
I don't know what the bankers have to do now, but when I was banker, there are not much to do.
Is there any way to link the black market up with excess stores, like any food say in excess of 100 bushels above the granary limit would be put up in 100 bushel blocks at an average price between all the buy and sell offers in the area.
It gives more incentive to build granaries besides just preventing rotting and it also serves the automatic sell offer purpose. Of course this automatic sell offer would only be accessible to traders on the black market and not just any regional lord so more incentive for the lords to place their food on the market.
Quote from: Eithad on June 13, 2012, 03:02:38 AMIs there any way to link the black market up with excess stores, like any food say in excess of 100 bushels above the granary limit would be put up in 100 bushel blocks at an average price between all the buy and sell offers in the area.
I wouldn't make it quite that easy. Rather, if there is more food stored in the region than there is warehouse space to store it, then make it more likely that food is for sale on the black market, and make the attempt to buy it much more likely to succeed.
What about the ability to sell rotten food, or rotten food mixed in with good food? The larger the quantity the higher chance that you get caught. Seems like a suitable scam.
Best regards,
Quote from: Indirik on May 21, 2012, 09:47:39 PM
Some possibilities for black market trading opportunities under the new trading system:
3) Skimming gold from the transaction by shorting the seller, then pocketing the difference. The challenge here would be to try to hide it in some way that is not obvious. Perhaps a delayed message about a shortage in the trade balance in the next tax report? You couldn't charge the buyer too much, as the money has to come from somewhere. To fleece the buyer, see the next idea...
4) Trading on mismatched offers. I.e. matching a 400 bushel Buy with 350 bushels of Sell, and pocketing the difference. As above hiding the mismatch would be difficult. Delayed message in the Harvest report? You couldn't short-match the seller, as that would leave bushels floating around in limbo.
All of these could have varied risk levels. The greater the risk, the greater the potential profit. Failure could result in confiscation of the food and/or bonds by either the buyer or seller, or maybe even arrest of the trader by agents of either party.
What about the Lord is informed of a deal done but he gets a message that says "300 bushels were sold for 30 gold but xxxx gave us bottle caps instead, so we basically lost the food (or vice versa for selling)" where xxx, when the skill check for the trader is successful, is a random name (or one can just say he faked identity so we don't know who he is, like in infiltrator attacks).
Everyone could have done that, lord has no clue who could it be. It should be regulated to make it not too powerful and increasingly risky with the size of the deal perhaps, but like what was happening in the old system a trader dealing on the black market must also be smart enough not to be the only one potentially responsible for food disappearance and do it in the right place at the right time.
Quote from: Peri on July 25, 2012, 02:29:18 PM
What about the Lord is informed of a deal done but he gets a message that says "300 bushels were sold for 30 gold but xxxx gave us bottle caps instead, so we basically lost the food (or vice versa for selling)" where xxx, when the skill check for the trader is successful, is a random name (or one can just say he faked identity so we don't know who he is, like in infiltrator attacks).
Everyone could have done that, lord has no clue who could it be. It should be regulated to make it not too powerful and increasingly risky with the size of the deal perhaps, but like what was happening in the old system a trader dealing on the black market must also be smart enough not to be the only one potentially responsible for food disappearance and do it in the right place at the right time.
I'm loving the Fallout reference.