Turbine Nation
New and exciting details were revealed at Turbine Nation concerning their upcoming plans for Banking and Vendors. An entire roomful of people cornered Echo and harassed him into giving us details. (Okay, maybe it was a planned part of the morning presentation on AC2, but doesn't harassment sound better?)
The first step in the introduction of vendors will be converting all NPCs that sell items so that they use a shop interface (probably in September). There are currently no plans to add any items for sale that are not already available, so miners/butchers can breathe easily...the only suppliers of traits will remain players.
The consignment vendors themselves will be released in October or November, depending on just how much time it takes to complete their coding and QA.
Vendors
As I said in the intro, the first step in the introduction of vendors will be the conversion of NPCs that sell items to use a shop interface. This means any such as the Traveling Peddler from the Olvidan Steading quest, not just the various Crafting Supply NPCs.
You can see here the new Vendor Interface
The vendor interface will be simple to use. You click on and drag the item you wish to purchase to your inventory. A confirmation window will pop up, identical to the one you use when you move a stack of items from one pack to another. The default will be either the maximum number of the item that you can afford or the maximum number available to purchase, whichever is smaller. Take a moment to select an exact quantity, click OK and you will have made your purchase. (The cost and quantity will both scroll as you adjust the number, so that you can keep track of how much you are about to spend.)
After just enough time for the dust to settle from this change, consignment vendors will enter the world. (Most likely in October or November unless major tech issues crop up.) There will be six locations where these vendors will be found, 2 on each continent. Most likely these will be in the towns with crafting supplies: Cragstone, Cavendo, Ikeras, Hakata, Linvak Tukal and Ondekodo. This has not been finalized, however, so take it with a grain of salt.
In each town, you will be able to find a single vendor for each different type of merchandise. It is not known yet if each vendor will only be able to sell a specific type of product. However, I don't think it is likely that a person shopping for the latest and greatest in Swords will wander up to an NPC named Bob the Armor Vender. Not with Ted the Weapon Vendor standing right next to him. So it will be best to put the right products on the right vendor.
Off the top of my head, this was a tentative list of possible vendors:
Now, there will be two ways to use a vendor. One if you are interested in shopping, the other if you wish to set up a store with that vendor and sell your wares. Each vendor will essentially hold the stock of multiple stores separately for the sellers. If you do not already have a store set up with this vendor, you will need to set one up at this time. You will be able to give the shop a unique name.
Next, you can stock the shop. Drag stacks of items into it and the interface will in some way ask you to set a price (this had not been fully coded yet). That price can be in gold or in some amount of any one butchered or mined material per item in the stack. Other items may be able to be set up as a purchase price, but this has not yet been finalized...much will depend on how difficult it is to code. The Dev team would rather have something with limited medium of trade available SOON than being able to make more general trades six months or a year later after coding in every possible item in the game. Besides, they have other things they would like to add to the game that will require the code effort that would be wasted in that.
Okay, now that you have set up your store, what will the customer do? Well, the first thing they will do is pick which town to shop in and go up to a vendor. Each store will only be available in the town it was set up in, with that particular vendor. This will have an interesting dynamic as people become used to specific stores and tend to check them first for good items/prices. Over time, certain towns will likely become known for certain commodities...and this will be different on each server.
Once a customer has chosen a vendor, they will choose to enter the shopping interface instead of the store management interface. Some search tools for specific items will be available. Exactly how detailed this search will be depends on how fast Echo can code. So we should all pray for flying fingers. In my own opinion, the strength of the search will decide how many different vendors can thrive...easily finding items in odd stores will spread out the spending from a few preferred shops.
After using the search you will select a shop and view the items and prices. As with NPC vendors, you will drag the item or stack to your inventory and choose a quantity to purchase. The exchange will be made automatically, pulling the gold or trait required out of your inventory. This trait/gold will NOT appear in the store inventory.
Later, the shop builder will return to the vendor and enter the store management interface. All the payments from their customers will be delivered to them at this time. And if they keep their stock up, they'll perhaps become one of those preferred shops that drive the economy of the world...and their name will be on everyone's tongue.
Banks
Well, storage is on the way. This is high on the list after vendors in terms of code additions. Don't expect some form of super muling interface, though. That will have to wait until after Housing, most likely. What you will see instead is simply a container that can be used by any character to access some additional storage, much like storage in the game Diablo II (or so I am told, never having played that game).
The storage will be very character specific. Each character will have access only to their own goods. (No, you're right, I am repeating myself...this is an important point the Devs wanted to be clear.) It is the perfect place to toss some unused items while doing Reckoning Gems or some other activity you need some pack space for, though. Also, unlike Vendors, all bank locations will access your storage...so if you drop an item in storage at one location, you can pick it back up at any other.
In the long term, any storage beyond this will be tied in to housing, although improvements or changes may happen to this form of storage before that time. I think that this will fill in the gap until we have homes, though. And it will still be useful after that, I think. Especially if it is handy to nexi, for easy access to the few consumable supplies that exist in AC2. Personally, I can't wait.
