I have been thinking about this a lot since the close of the last test and since the changes to the auction system. I see a couple of issues holding back the player economy:
1. Too many street spirit vendors
2. Street spirit prices are too low
3. Players not only have to compete with the street spirit vendor's low prices, but also get dinged by the auction system's listing fee and commission.
I would love to make things in the game and sell them to others. The problem is, hardly anyone is buying things from other players because they can easily travel a couple of streets over and get the thing you need from a street spirit. And I don't just mean food items. How much cooler would it be if the answer to a new player asking "Where can I get a tinkertool?" was "Oh, delicious makes those! Buy one from her auction page! <link>".
So, I propose the following:
- Greatly scale back the number of street spirit vendors in the world. Maybe have one street per area that has a number of them selling different things, but make their inventory incomplete and constantly changing.
OR
- Greatly increase the cost of items at the street spirit vendors! We should have to pay a premium for the convenience of buying things from the NPC vendors.
OR
- Both of the above! (my preference)