This is just my opinion, of course, but I thought the trade system from before the rework was great.  All that was needed was prices needing to be updated due to hyper-inflation.

I'm grateful that you, PA, realised that you have created somthing a lot of people didn't like when reworking trade, and you are taking steps to fix it.

Please, let us trade with all trade NPCs again.  I'd like to sell my fish wherever.  That kind of freedom was amazing.  Seriously.  I loved the game for it.  Now, I hate this aspect.

Also, most of us aren't trying to live as merchants in this world.  A simple mechanic of buying what is hot, not based on rumors, but actual facts, would be fine.  However, the distance mechanic for driving up goods' value makes most sense.  People love exotic things.  It also reflects time, or money due to Magnus, invested in moving goods.  That is the crux of moneymaking in this game: time/effort spent = money.

But keep it simple.  No competition for hot items, or competition against NPC poacher guilds or anything.

If you want, make some mini games to increase profit, if people want to be more immersed in it.  Like, amity based games with the traders, like we currently have in bargaining.

I would like it to be mostly AFK, moving goods from one point to another.  I want it to be an alternative from grinding, and fishing, so I can do something that feels immersive, yet is not as intense as grinding.  You can have some engaging elements, but let those be optional, to get the most value out of something that for a lot of us is an alternate AFK way of making money.

Thank you for fixing this system.  Please restore all NPC traders.

Peace.

And thanks for getting rid of the captcha nonsense.  I'm not a robot.

Edit: Nevermind, it's still ongoing.

I'm not a robot

Bring back the old system with the following changes:

1:  More trade exp.  Make active trading worth more exp than crate trading.

2:  More money.  Make it in line with current lifeskills income.

3:  Get rid of node connection requirements.  Having to connect every corner of the map to each other is a pain in the butt.

4:  Increase the chance of rich merchant ring pieces.

5:  Add trade mastery.  Other people can probably give better ideas for this, but it needs to be added (along with barter mastery).  More money?  I don't know.

6:  Lower the ridiculous trading exp skill curve past M11.

7:  Stained Silk trade exp needs to scale with current trade level.  As it stands right now, you can exchange 2k stained silks at M11 and end up getting 0.00% trade exp, that's pretty retarded.  Compare that to exchanging bottles for fish exp, I still get fish exp from bottles at G18.

For the love of God, bring back island trading, which was the main reason why I built an Advance for my 2nd carrack.

As long as they don't balance the silver to be so bad that there is no point to doing it like last time, whatever they come up with will be fine provided it isn't just ''land bartering'' like they were teasing for 3 years.   I'd totally be cool with them just bringing back the vanilla NPC to NPC wagon and ''Hot Time'' stuff minus the competing over imperial trades.

Presuming that it'll still be something like Wagon Trading, im not too worried about the exp rates or barrier to entry.  Wagons and stuff have been made exceeding easy to make (provided they fix the quest) and with the amount of life exp buffs we can get now people can easily reach the point where a higher trade level doesn't mean too much and the ROI of raising your level is measured in years (Mid-M20s) with the silver equivilent of a couple hours grinding and couple 100k junk crates.

No connections would be nice as thats just an annoyance of pulling up a few farms.

We need VIABLE chances at trading for merchant ring peices, not the 1 every 100+ years average values for some peices we use to have.

If bartering with the manager is going to have an effect we need a Mangate-type buff to autocomplete that for the day.  Having to spend 5-15 energy every couple minutes when your wagon got to a new town wasn't sustainable.

Trading mastery would be nice after a 4+ year wait.   I know it can't really be money or crate related, but at least we should get some Q.O.L. functionality out of it like easier barters, longer lasting timers on trade items, more LT or quicker times for the Trade Wagon, etc.

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Just for the record, you see fishing go up so much because it doesn't have the 'normal' exp curve that most of the lifeskills have.  It starts out extremely slow and has far smaller required amounts per level when compared to other 'normal' lifeskills.   It doesn't matchup with other lifeskills well until G40+.   eg) The amount of base fishing exp needed to get to G18 is the equiv of most other lifeskills' M15