Endless Legend's Marketplace is one of the most unique and ambitious features of the game. After reading the GDD on the topic, I was intrigued by this feature. I was especially interested on the Roving Clans faction and how they'd be masters of the Marketplace, looking to profit as the other factions fight, scheme and do other 4X-y things. I imagined a layer on top of the game where players could manipulate prices, control supplies of precious resources and subjugate opponents using the good old fashioned cash. Maybe my expectations were too high, but the GDD laid out an ambitious system.



The Marketplace as of 0.5.19 definitively has all of the bells and whistles. There's a ton of information and things to do in the Marketplace. There's also money to be made, especially for players that are producing things they don't need. Unfortunately, this screenshot from a recent game sums up my experiences:







The Marketplace is currently a lonely sideshow. It is not an integral part of the game. If you choose to explore it (likely because you're playing Roving Clans and you have all of the techs) it can be interesting, but in general players, human and AI, ignore it.



Here's the trio of problems that spoil the Marketplace:











There are also some exploits. You can sell one of a resource to lower the price, then immediately buy a bunch of it at the reduced price. o0ber points out a way to "go infinite" on Dust but selling off discounted units.



Suggestions

• Remove all of the tech requirements from the Marketplace. If there's a concern on players getting early access to the Marketplace stuff change to Era requirements.
  
  
  
  
• Remove Buyouts completely and replace the Buyout button with a shortcut to buy Industry Stockpile(s) from the Marketplace to complete production. Now all Dust purchases are tied to the Marketplace and Industry Stockpile prices fluctuate (think "Mercenary Labor"). The alternative is removed but the convenience feature is still there.
  
  
  
  
• Make prices reasonable to start and attractive if there is low demand.
  
  
  
  
• Inject some Stockpiles into the Marketplace like how other items are added in.
  
  

Thanks for your attention!

Yes!



It's a very good summary about what's happening now, or what's not happening in the market.



The only thing I disagree is about eliminate all tech requirements. I'll simply put all of them in the same tech (no including the privateers options). In this way:

1. The Roving Clans will start with this tech, not loosing this Little advantatge, which imo is one of the things that differences they from other factions.

2. The rest of player will have to research this tech to get acces to héroes, and in the same time will solve the problema of priorizing other things, because they'll get acces to all market at once.

Propbuddha wrote:


Suggestions

• Remove all of the tech requirements from the Marketplace. If there's a concern on players getting early access to the Marketplace stuff change to Era requirements.
  
  
  
  
• Remove Buyouts completely and replace the Buyout button with a shortcut to buy Industry Stockpile(s) from the Marketplace to complete production. Now all Dust purchases are tied to the Marketplace and Industry Stockpile prices fluctuate (think "Mercenary Labor"). The alternative is removed but the convenience feature is still there.
  
  
  
  
• Make prices reasonable to start and attractive if there is low demand.
  
  

Thanks for your attention!

Heartily agree with all points (as I usually do with Propbuddha's ideas), especially the suggestion to remove normal city buyout. There's a brilliant opportunity in the market to create a realistic buyout mechanic, it really should be utilized.

Because of the way tech progresses the techs required to access the marketplace are far too easy to ignore. Unless I'm the Roving Clans that have that tech to begin with, or the Vaulters who get tons of science to use willy nilly, I often find myself completely ignoring the marketplace altogether unless I'll need a specific resource I can purchase or a hero for a quest, and only then will I research the tech needed.



I feel the fact that you have to unlock them to even use the marketplace can really get in the way of this feature functioning as intended.

I agree that the marketplace needs more options and alternatives, to make it really important. The exploits are mainly balance issues, that should be fixed easily.



Right now everyone IGNORES the marketplace, simply because it requires too much technology. There are too much time and resources to spend just to UNLOCK the market. If Amp wants to make it more important, they shouldn't lock and forbid it in such a manner.

I always grab Rookery and the Stockpiles/Resources techs... at some time you always want another hero and the resources tech more than makes up the science input by allowing you an avenue to sell all your excess resources, including T1 strategic resources when you don't need them anymore (and especially if you got augmented extractors on luxury resources). I can't imagine I'm the only one who thinks like this, so I'm not sure whether everyone truly ignores the marketplace.



The mercenaries marketplace is a different story... as Roving Clans its useful to sell your units, sure, but I've never bothered doing so with anybody else except one Wild Walkers game where I had massive industry output. The only time I find mercenaries useful is if I'm invading far away from my factories and need immediate reinforcements. I guess it is also useful if you want to play a sneaky diplomacy game with privateers, but I've never done so.



Really like the alternative to buy-outs though!

I wonder what if they swapped the rookery and the marketplace tech?

Move market to t1 and rookery to t2?

Give people the option to get into the market place faster but now that I think about it what real bonus would that bring it would be highly situational

I like the market and love it building the roads the docks

Maybe if you could buy information? That would be fun

Or be able to buy hero items for heros which i would assume would not be as good as the items you get for faction quests but now i'm just ramblin

I like the idea of having basic market access free without tech, but instead have techs to research that offer various advantages, like more selection or bonuses from buying or selling.

Access to the marketplace should definitely not be locked away behind research. The marketplace is one of the unique features of this game, and could offer many strategic choices by itself. The current marketplace access technologies could instead be replaced with technologies that offer better prices and selection.



Furthermore, I would go as far as saying that in many respects, the marketplace is a worse alternative than other technologies. Without players selling on the marketplace, units offered on the mercenary market are rarely well-equipped, and the supply of strategic and luxury resources simply can not support all but the smallest empires, and possibly not even those. In contrast, a mid-level Broken Lords hero can support an empire of 7 cities without enough luxury resources to continuously maintain its boost, with only a single extractor.



As it stands, the marketplace simply does not offer enough to the player to be used in anything but edge cases (with the exception of heroes), and the interactions of the Roving Clans with the marketplace are disappointing as well.

Every Propbuddha thread deserves to be bumped. Devs, please have a look at this.