Filters/Sorting:
Trade Rumour Filter:
The ability to toggle trade rumour items in the shop.
E.g.
Buy Rumours Only: See only good that have rumours of where they can be bought at price X. (maybe with the ability to set a 'below price X' too.
Sell Rumours Only: same but for Sell rumours.
Rumours about Town X: The ability to only see items with a rumour for a chosen town or towns.
Going over every item one by one to find which ones fit my current criteria is tedious and pointless... If we are switching to lists rather than cool object windows, at least make it work for us!
Percentage Value Sorter/Filter:
Ability to sort not just by price but by percentage value, ability to filter negative/positive % value goods. Even just colour coding the list prices rather than the 'expanded' info prices would be better. (What game play is there in going over every item one by one?)
"What I Paid" Value:
See the value of the good in my inventory vs the value in the current shop. i.e. "sell for" 50 "you paid" 60 and for good measure a price difference calculation +/- as right now seeing the difference in price in the two different lists is not always that obvious. this could all be in the expanded info for the goods in your inventory, or even just on the goods bar next to it's price (colour coded price difference).
Navigation by keyboard:
The ability to travel up and down the list of items using the Arrow Keys(or keybind) going over each individual item with the mouse to see their rumours, reaching the bottom scroll wheeling and finding my place again is irritating and tedious... To be able to simply move up and down the list with the arrow keys would be much easier when looking for trades.
NEW THOUGHTS:
Split the shops:
Idea: Have the various item types be in individual shops, instead of just filter buttons in one shop (leave the filter buttons for inventory/loot management.)
So you click Trade in the city screen and then are given your choice of shops:
Weapons
Armour
Food
Materials
Animals
Sell Junk to Shop.
(Someone else made this point and I think it is critical for a game where your early money making is in selling second hand farming supplies 'acquired' from looters. So simply put it is a button like "Loot All" in the current looting screen but it is "Loot all as Junk". The Division games are a good example of marking loot as junk and then selling junk with a single click. so Junk does not show up in your inventory, it would just take up inventory space. Or if you are worried about needing to drop weight then the junk exists in a separate inventory list that is toggled by a button to view.it could a have different colour box tint too, for example).
There could be more or less shops but basically split Trade Goods/Equipment into two places at the very least.
Here is Why:
Currently finding what you want and comparing your inventory price to the in shop price is kind of a pain. Here are some simple possible changes to help with this, but behaviours/formatting/etc. would be different for Equipment and Trade Goods, thus Split the Shops.
Trade Goods Stuff:
Every Item Shown Inline:
When in the Trade Goods shops have every item displayed in both your inventory and the shop so that the order stays in line with each other, with objects with #0 stock being red tinted (like unusable equipment) this way it is easier to compare prices for buying selling. Have scrolling move both lists at the same time so that comparing pricing as you move does not require two sets of scrolling Shop/Inventory.
Redesign the Trade Goods Shop:
Honestly the trade goods shop could probably just do with having a different shop interface built for purpose..
It doesn't need the characters in the middle, buying cheese and wood and silver ore has no bearing on how my character looks or what equipment they have. It is all just noise right in the middle of my view that makes it much harder to do the task I want to do. Buy and Sell Goods for Profit.
Just look at any Economic/Trader game, Patrician/Port Royale as an example. It just gives you what you need to do the job of trading.
You can use 99% of the assets and content you have, you just need to reformat and organise it better. This is an example where you have done too much work, and none of it lends itself to helping the player do the task of trading. It just becomes exhausting, frustrating and made me give up on trading quickly as it just frustrated me and made me tired.
Summary of Trade Goods Shop layout:
Remove the character/Equipment section in the middle
Create a single list of all goods down the middle with Left/Right quantities for Shop/Party.
Perhaps put the Slider Bars Left/Right for dragging quantities.
With the arrow buttons for moving set increments.
With all the new space gained from Removing The Character you can permanently display the detailed item info. Rumours, etc.
Rumours could be Buy on the Left and Sell on the Right, then at a quick glance you can instantly see what items have rumours and whether it has buying, selling, or both types of rumour.
Have the prices permanently colour coded (as in details section) so that you can quickly see good, bad and average buy/sell.
Permanently Show the Percentage price difference, with colour coding on the bar too (red percentage on Shop side, green percentage on player side, would probably be good).
Unavailable goods are always displayed in the list but are red or greyed out or some such to show the shop is out of stock. Perhaps grey if neither shop nor player has any and red if the shop has none (indicating a potential higher value)
Shop Buy Price, Player Sell Price and Average(what I paid) Price displayed.
In short none of this content is new work (except maybe what I paid price, but this is basic trade stuff for a game in 2020), it uses all the assets and information already in game, it just organises and displays it in a much better (I think) way.
Weapons/Equipment Shop:
Put the Equip button on the main bars next to the buy and sell arrows. (this goes for the loot screen as well)
Going into the drop down menu is just annoying to equip an item to someone. The button is small... just shift things over by 20 pixels or so and stick it in there!
Reputation Changes and Stock:
in games like Patrician, buying out all the stock of a Good reduces reputation with that City, conversely selling an item to replenish a zero stock boosts reputation with the city. This concept could easily apply to Bannerlord and be a good way for merchant players to gain favour with towns. (There could even be a perk that gains influence from this too).(Merchant Saviour or some such).
Trade Rumour Filter:
The ability to toggle trade rumour items in the shop.
E.g.
Buy Rumours Only: See only good that have rumours of where they can be bought at price X. (maybe with the ability to set a 'below price X' too.
Sell Rumours Only: same but for Sell rumours.
Rumours about Town X: The ability to only see items with a rumour for a chosen town or towns.
Going over every item one by one to find which ones fit my current criteria is tedious and pointless... If we are switching to lists rather than cool object windows, at least make it work for us!
Percentage Value Sorter/Filter:
Ability to sort not just by price but by percentage value, ability to filter negative/positive % value goods. Even just colour coding the list prices rather than the 'expanded' info prices would be better. (What game play is there in going over every item one by one?)
"What I Paid" Value:
See the value of the good in my inventory vs the value in the current shop. i.e. "sell for" 50 "you paid" 60 and for good measure a price difference calculation +/- as right now seeing the difference in price in the two different lists is not always that obvious. this could all be in the expanded info for the goods in your inventory, or even just on the goods bar next to it's price (colour coded price difference).
Navigation by keyboard:
The ability to travel up and down the list of items using the Arrow Keys(or keybind) going over each individual item with the mouse to see their rumours, reaching the bottom scroll wheeling and finding my place again is irritating and tedious... To be able to simply move up and down the list with the arrow keys would be much easier when looking for trades.
NEW THOUGHTS:
Split the shops:
Idea: Have the various item types be in individual shops, instead of just filter buttons in one shop (leave the filter buttons for inventory/loot management.)
So you click Trade in the city screen and then are given your choice of shops:
Weapons
Armour
Food
Materials
Animals
Sell Junk to Shop.
(Someone else made this point and I think it is critical for a game where your early money making is in selling second hand farming supplies 'acquired' from looters. So simply put it is a button like "Loot All" in the current looting screen but it is "Loot all as Junk". The Division games are a good example of marking loot as junk and then selling junk with a single click. so Junk does not show up in your inventory, it would just take up inventory space. Or if you are worried about needing to drop weight then the junk exists in a separate inventory list that is toggled by a button to view.it could a have different colour box tint too, for example).
There could be more or less shops but basically split Trade Goods/Equipment into two places at the very least.
Here is Why:
Currently finding what you want and comparing your inventory price to the in shop price is kind of a pain. Here are some simple possible changes to help with this, but behaviours/formatting/etc. would be different for Equipment and Trade Goods, thus Split the Shops.
Trade Goods Stuff:
Every Item Shown Inline:
When in the Trade Goods shops have every item displayed in both your inventory and the shop so that the order stays in line with each other, with objects with #0 stock being red tinted (like unusable equipment) this way it is easier to compare prices for buying selling. Have scrolling move both lists at the same time so that comparing pricing as you move does not require two sets of scrolling Shop/Inventory.
Redesign the Trade Goods Shop:
Honestly the trade goods shop could probably just do with having a different shop interface built for purpose..
It doesn't need the characters in the middle, buying cheese and wood and silver ore has no bearing on how my character looks or what equipment they have. It is all just noise right in the middle of my view that makes it much harder to do the task I want to do. Buy and Sell Goods for Profit.
Just look at any Economic/Trader game, Patrician/Port Royale as an example. It just gives you what you need to do the job of trading.
You can use 99% of the assets and content you have, you just need to reformat and organise it better. This is an example where you have done too much work, and none of it lends itself to helping the player do the task of trading. It just becomes exhausting, frustrating and made me give up on trading quickly as it just frustrated me and made me tired.
Summary of Trade Goods Shop layout:
Remove the character/Equipment section in the middle
Create a single list of all goods down the middle with Left/Right quantities for Shop/Party.
Perhaps put the Slider Bars Left/Right for dragging quantities.
With the arrow buttons for moving set increments.
With all the new space gained from Removing The Character you can permanently display the detailed item info. Rumours, etc.
Rumours could be Buy on the Left and Sell on the Right, then at a quick glance you can instantly see what items have rumours and whether it has buying, selling, or both types of rumour.
Have the prices permanently colour coded (as in details section) so that you can quickly see good, bad and average buy/sell.
Permanently Show the Percentage price difference, with colour coding on the bar too (red percentage on Shop side, green percentage on player side, would probably be good).
Unavailable goods are always displayed in the list but are red or greyed out or some such to show the shop is out of stock. Perhaps grey if neither shop nor player has any and red if the shop has none (indicating a potential higher value)
Shop Buy Price, Player Sell Price and Average(what I paid) Price displayed.
In short none of this content is new work (except maybe what I paid price, but this is basic trade stuff for a game in 2020), it uses all the assets and information already in game, it just organises and displays it in a much better (I think) way.
Weapons/Equipment Shop:
Put the Equip button on the main bars next to the buy and sell arrows. (this goes for the loot screen as well)
Going into the drop down menu is just annoying to equip an item to someone. The button is small... just shift things over by 20 pixels or so and stick it in there!
Reputation Changes and Stock:
in games like Patrician, buying out all the stock of a Good reduces reputation with that City, conversely selling an item to replenish a zero stock boosts reputation with the city. This concept could easily apply to Bannerlord and be a good way for merchant players to gain favour with towns. (There could even be a perk that gains influence from this too).(Merchant Saviour or some such).
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