Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A point about trading and its current issues.

As many of you may be aware, the game currently offers two different trading UI switchable on a toggle: trade and barter.

Now, in the past months I happen to read people preferring one or the other, but here's the thing: from a viewpoint of pure convenience it's a no contest. Barter is significantly superior.
The reason is simple: with barter you can gift things to traders to increase their "attitude" toward the player. Usually all it takes is gifting items or gold for a total value of 120-200 gold coins to get a maxed out attitude, which translates in getting SIGNIFICANTLY better prices, both when you are selling stuff and when you are buying.

If this wasn't already gimmicky and exploitable enough, there's another side issue: attitude is on a character-basis rather than party-wide.
What this means in practical terms is that not only you are offered a cheap trick to maximize your profits, but to leverage it at its most, you have a mechanic that actively encourages the player to deal with additional "inventory busywork" (in a game that already has it in spades) by constantly juggling items from a character inventory to the other.
It also makes the possibility to switch between characters in the trading screen basically self-harm, since if you are not buying and selling with your most "beloved" party member you are implicitly leaving on the table a shitload of money.

My suggestion in the end is rather simple and consists of two main point, neither of which particularly complex to implement:
- remove this cheap way to manipulate prices with gifts.
- implement a less volatile system of "price fluctuation" and make it PARTY-WIDE rather than single-character-focused, maybe determined by your party's average charisma and/or reputation with the faction/merchant you are dealing with.

Advantages of these changes:
- it removes the temptation to exploit the system by removing the exploit.
It makes the option to switch between characters while trading something sensible to do and even advisable rather than an exercise in financial masochism.
- it somewhat helps to keep "gold inflation" at bay.

So, you want to replace a system that gets you better prices with merchants with a different system that gets you better prices with merchants...

I want to replace a volatile system based on leveraging a blatant meta-game exploit with a more stable and coherent one, that scales reasonably. Yes.

So, like group approval raising from repeat business?

The specific value to use is a bit beyond the point. It could be based on your overall reputation as heroes, your relationship with the faction, your AVERAGE charisma value as a basic standard, eventually it could take into account a little discount on top basic prices because you did a quest for the trader, etc.
Eventually you could get even temporary bonuses on top, like using Charm and Friend, that come with short-term benefits at a long-term price (your reputation with the merchant will plummet after he's freed from the enchantment). But this mostly is already in place.

The point is: it should be mostly a background thing and not something you should be able manipulate so easily with so little effort.

And it should be party-based, simply because otherwise it's going to actively encourage all that annoying juggling of items from one inventory to the other.
Have you ever realized that if you switch to a different companion while trading prices can change significantly? While this could make somewhat sense in abstract, what it does is making the tabbing between companions non advisable. The most efficient strategy when dealing with a trader is to open the group inventory, pack your "charismatic leader" like a mule and sell or buy everything with him.
Not hard to achieve by any mean, but time-consuming, annoying and very "meta-gamey".

I agree with every observation made, and with the conclusion that having seperate prices for party members encourages players to face the tedium of inventory management.

I’ve come to enjoy getting good reputations from vendors, though, because it entails less pointless looting.

+1

And for the record if anyone thinks that "party-based reputation" is too much work to implement, I have even the simpler variant:

- let the prices be decided by the companion that starts the trading, regardless of which companion's inventory we switch to, during the process".

There, done.

+1

The bribing traders thing is silly, gamey, and too easy. Let our Charisma (you know, the D&D stat that governs the attitudes people have toward you), and maybe our reputation (save the tieflings? +20% value for sold goods to merchants in the grove) govern traders' attitudes.

The fact that prices change depending on which character is selected just makes things more tedious, especially in multiplayer. It essentially turns one player into the trade-bot, which is annoying for everyone.

Both of the above combined is just blegh.

The same "exploit" exists. Getting better prices with merchants is, at the end of the day, getting better prices with merchants. It doesn't matter if it's party reputation, or gifts, or choosing a specific character to do the trading. All are "meta" ways to get better prices. The only thing that I see that changes is that you don't have to give up any items/gold as gifts, thus adding more stuff to the pool of stuff you can sell, thus adding to inflation. It doesn't solve anything, it just moves the goal posts to something else. What makes me believe this? I have two save files running right now in Fallout 4 where my characters are extremely rich. I'm not able to bribe them with gifts, or to use charm to influence their prices, and they're capped at how much money they have to purchase what I may be trying to sell, and yet, I can still amass tons of money in game, even if I ignore perk magazines that increase my selling price and decrease my prices when I try to purchase from them.

The point being that, even if this system was removed entirely, currency inflation is going to happen. It's going to happen with what's currently in game, and it's going to happen with everything you've suggested, so nothing will change, regardless, and players that are wise to how these systems work are still going to be able to "exploit" them. So how is changing it from bartering for better prices to using the character with the best charisma to get better prices going to improve anything? What makes you think that players that are willing to "exploit" one meta system won't "exploit" a different meta system?

I don't know a single store that gives better prices to my likable friend than they do to my sour faced friend.

+1 to the OP.
The current system is very annoying and juggling inventory between characters is not fun.
Now the prizes depend on your charisma and how much the merchant likes you (which depends on how much you give him/her for free).
Plus prizes are also better when casting guidance on your char.

The same prizes for every char and prizes only dependent on the reputation your group has with this faction would be better.

There are other exploits I find annoying:
- NPC drop everything you ever sold to them (but not their own goods) when you kill them.
This encourages players to kill every NPC before you move on.
- Merchant inventory and gold is limited and gets refilled every time you rest.
This encourages rest spamming to sell or buy stuff.
- If you exploit all this stuff (which is not complicated but annoying) money is a non issue in this game.
Grab everything you can, give it for free until you have max reputation, and then very soon all of your chars will have magic equipment, some unique items and as many potions, scrolls and arrows as they like.

It was like this in DOS1+2 too and there I found it annoying as well.

On the other side I really liked items in BG1.
You started with junk and finding your first magic weapon fealt importent because suddenly you are able to damage some enemies at all.
Unique equipment felt really great because it was rare.

It absolutely does.
I'm sorry you can't grasp why even after a detailed explanation, but that's just your problem.

What changes is that one system is prone to be highly volatile and can be maxed out in seconds with little or no effort and the other is not, as the changes in "attitude" would be gradual over time and progress.
Not even remotely true. In fact the opposite of the truth, since not getting higher resell value and lower prices out of nothing with 15 seconds of "work" would PREVENT excessive inflation (and you would accumulate less money over time and be more careful of spending them in general).
My condolences, but it's absolutely irrelevant. We aren't addressing economy issues in FO4 now, so the comparison out of nowhere makes no meaningful point.

Your point is questionable at best. If nothing else because no one suggested a miracle cure against inflation, and "containing inflation" wasn't even the design goal of the suggested change.
I just remarked on a side note that it would ALSO help marginally in that area.

Did you genuinely fail to understand every single one of the points previously made or are you just pretending for the sake of arguing?

Let me try again: I don't give a shit on how the prices are adjusted, exactly, or according to what value, exactly, as long as it's not a highly volatile system that ENCOURAGES INVENTORY JUGGLING between several characters.


Yeah, I'm sure it sounded like a clever comeback in your head. Somehow.

ADDENDUM

Just to be clear, as far as I'm concerned if they removed the current system entirely and replaced it with nothing more than just FIXED PRICES for everyone, it would still be an improvement and something preferable to what we have currently.

The system I suggested above (in both variants) is simply meant to be something that would maintain the same design goals of the current system (having reputation and likability affecting prices) but...

- with less room for blatant exploitation
- less incentives to spend even more time juggling items from one bag to the other

Actually, your system, if we run with "highest charisma" or total party charisma can exploited on the very first visit to the merchant.

Only because you don't really understand what's being suggested, frankly.

I make a comment that says I don't think it makes sense to give discounts based on charisma.

You respond with something personal and insulting. Curiously, what is wrong with you? Seriously, what is your problem? Do you lack social graces in every situation or just online?

Which is something that is already in the game now, in one shape or the other.

The game ALREADY gives different prices to different characters on the basis of their likability. Did this detail go over your head, somehow?
The difference is that "likability" now is not based on charisma AND/OR reputation, but on "This guy gifted me some pocket change, which means we are best friends for life and I'm going to give him huge discounts until the end of time".

The two things my suggestions are supposed to address are the high volatility of the system and unnecessary UI busywork, I'm not questioning the core principle because I simply don't care about it.
As I said I'd take a "Just basic prices for everyone and that's it" over what we have currently in the game.


I remarked that the joke wasn't particularly funny nor it made a meaningful point. Not sure where's the insult.

...But since we are on it, my problem, frankly speaking, is a low tolerance for smartasses that try to gratuitously antagonize and ridicule others without even having a legitimate argument to make in the process.

If that's your definition of "social graces", don't be surprised if you aren't treated like the hottest thing at every party you go.

Just to be clear, I want to stress that just because I dislike your way to argue things (and I'm sure the feeling is mutual) it doesn't mean I wouldn't recognize if you made a compelling argument about a feature.
But hey, you didn't.


Both BG1 and 2 (but especially 2) had several "end game" items on sale from relatively early in the game if you visited the notable shops early on. It's just that the player wouldn't be able to afford them for a while (and the skill check required to steal some of them was insanely high, as it should be with the value involved).

Incidentally, both BG1 and 2 had exactly a very basic form of what I'm suggesting here: you could get discounts as your party reputation grew over time and some additional extra point of discount with high charisma characters.

Actually it makes a lot of sense and is realistically accurate to the real world. I do not know how many here have been to actual market places or bazaars, but these are specific places in the cities for villagers and farmers who live in the country-side to come sell their natural grown food or other thingies. I've been to plenty in Croatia, Czech Republic and Sweden.

Such people are extremely friendly and will give you a discount just for having an interesting conversation or for being nice. And if you are a regular, such lovely people will give you permanent discounts and even give you extra of their product, because they're eager to sell it.

In the game, every merchant I've seen so far fits this exact type, either refugees or small merchants just wanting to sell their stock. So I agree that things should be party-wide, it would be a good change. But Barter I find completely realistic and immersive. These are small merchants in the middle of nowhere, makes sense to barter and gain discounts.

The problem is that I understand it all too well. Your easily exploited system isn't any better than what we have now, and, in fact, could be worse. I mean, it's not like anyone's going to roll up a bard, sorc or warlock with max charisma, right? Wait, of course they will. Surely nobody would then take Wyll with them, to get that extra charisma boost for better prices, right? Wait, of course they will. At least, under the current system, we have to give something to get something, instead of just taking really high primary stats on a charisma based character, and getting discounts right out of the gate, on top of being able to just sell all the stuff we might have bartered to obtain those discounts. Wait, that doesn't do anything to prevent an influx of gold into the game, while, on the other hand, bartering items and gold off for favor will. Not that it's going to make a lot of difference either way, as I said, games that don't have this kind of system still wind up with extremely rich characters. So your system will not only not solve this "problem", it will, instead, exacerbate it, because items that may have been bartered off will instead just be sold, adding even more gold to the game.