Do you think a system designed around a trade house would work in an MMO instead of money/gold? By this I mean if certain automations were done for the player, would players accept a trading system as the only option to get other resources the need? If so what kind of automation could you think would help such a system?

Let's say I'm a farmer and I have lots of beef. More than I can eat. I need some iron to repair my tools though and I'm not a miner so I don't have any iron and mining it would take too long. So I go down to the trade post and I put up on an automated system that says 5xbeef for 2xiron. Then let's say along comes a miner who is hungry. What's the best way to hook these people up and then once found easily allow for negotiation.

Would automation (no matter how advanced) still make this a huge pain? I don't see this very often in games. Using gold seems to be the norm since it mimics our real life. However, in a virtual world we don't have all the real world issues like physics... So you would think that some level of automation in virtual trading would make this an attractive option as brings communities together and removes gold farmers and all the other issues related to currency.

Any ideas around what kind of automation you can think of to make a trading system as easy as money?

I think this system could work in an mmo. It is more cumbersome than using money, but that could be part of the charm of the game. I think AngleWyrm touched on one of the difficulties the system could face; dealing in things that are not easily divisible. In our modern world, facing something like trading a chicken for a cow where both sides could agree that an even trade isn't fair, throwing some money in with the offer can seal the deal. No doubt these kinds of issues popped up in civilizations before standardized currencies were used though, perhaps you could research how those situations came to be resolved.

I will stand by my saying this will be more cumbersome than a single, universal currency (money, gold, gil, dolla dolla bills y'all) but I think automation would go a very long way towards making it easier to cope with. Like maybe your "trading post" system would have an 'offering' and 'requesting' side. In the offering side, the user could put what item(s) they are offering as a complete unit (2xchickens, 5xeggs, 2xbags_of_flour) and on the requesting side, the user could put together several selections they would take in exchange for it. So I might be willing to accept (1xcow) OR (1xbull, 2xgallons_of_milk) OR (1xmedium_quality_broad_sword) OR (so on and so on for as many of those as I was willing to sit there and enter (or some amount of options in line with a technical restriction you put in place)).

In that system, another player could come and search with his 'willing-to-trade' items (maybe an option you can toggle on all of your items) which could be 1xcow and 5xgallons_of_milk, for example. That would return me offers that people have made that I could meet the 'requests' of. So that earlier trade would show up as someone offering (2xchickens, 5xeggs, 2xbags_of_flour) for my (1xcow).

Listing out all of the things you would be willing to accept sounds like it would get pretty tedious. Maybe some sort of counter offer system could be devised? So then I could list a minimal number of specific things I'm requesting but then people could suggest other things they'd be willing to give me for my offer. Maybe you'd have to limit how often people could make counter offers (suggestions) so somebody doesn't spend hours suggesting (1xegg) for things that clearly no one is going to trade for just (1xegg). Definitely some subtleties to work out in that kind of system.

I don't think these system tweaks do anything to deter gold farmers. "Gold farmers" would just as readily become meat farmers or iron farmers or hay farmers if that is what had value.

@Angle I do wonder if players would come up with some kind of common item as currency (rice in your example). Your example of needing a horse and a cow are good examples, but I guess I wouldn't see those 2 people being able to barter just those 2 items or maybe a horse and a cow are equal to those people if they both need the other bad enough? On one hand I feel like a barter system can solve some problems and make getting resources you need more interesting. On the other hand I fear it would consume most of the gameplay, which for sure isn't what I want.

@sun In NeoPets did this bartering end up taking a lot of time and take away from other gameplay?

@J I was thinking that it would just be more work than the gold farmers would want to deal with. It's not as clean as gold and so maybe there would be less desire to do the "gold farming" thing. Just a guess though. There is no central thing of value anymore and everything is equally valuable (for the most part). If the players just agreed that rice was the most common need and easy to make by most, then that would encourage "gold farmers" to make rice I guess.

I agree that making bundled trades can help mask any imbalances in the trade. Sure a horse is more valuable then a cow alone, but a cow and 3 chickens can = a horse. However this, as you have shown, complicates matters :) This is the main part where I think automation can really help, but the details of how it's implements would make or break it.

If I was a player and I needed 10 iron the first thing I'd want to do is just type iron in a search box to bring up every trade that has iron in it. Maybe an option that only shows acceptable trade items that I have in my inventory to get exact matches? Then I decide if it's doable or not? Like you said listing everything you'd accept would be a pain. Maybe as a player putting something on the trading post I list things I WON'T accept? This should be a shorter list you'd think. It would automatically select the same things I'm putting up on the trading block as that wouldn't make sense to accept the same things I'm putting up to trade.

Someone makes an offer and it automatically shows me no matter where I am. I can Accept/Decline/Decline w/reply where I can say why. Would we get a ton of silly offers to weed through from someone just being stupid? : / Lots to think about with this system.

There is another problem besides items being not divisible.

If for example someone plays a blacksmith and needs coal/iron and sells swords, but the miners searching/finding iron/coal dont need swords but mules for transportation, but people selling mules need to feed those and farmers selling food need fertilizer and people selling fertilizer need bags and people making bags need leather and people finding leather from monsters need a sword? And there can easily be many other such cyles, which could easily be fulfilled by everyone trading for money, but get near impossible to solve with only bartering between 2 people allowed, when everyone would shy away from accepting something they dont immediately need and they dont have experience in how good it would resell and no connections to other people needing it.

I guess people would then try to resolve it by slowly finding some easily convertible and divisible item like gems needed for upgrading, but that can have sideeffects like people hoarding those like they would with money and people needing it for its intended purpose suffer from it being less available or only when they by luck have something a hoarder badly needs at that moment.

People would also get tired of very slowly selling something and think they'll just keep it for later(in reality hoard it forever), reducing overall availability which in turn makes it easier for other people to have a near monopoly and only sell at ridiculously high prices, which leads to even less trading, which can lead to inflation.

If you want to help with trading in such a system you would need to make it very easy for lazy people. Repeatedly putting together different sets of items you want to get rid of every few hours/days can get really annoying.

The easiest solution for people would probably be to just have two sets of items in their storage account, things to keep and things to sell.

Then when someone needs something he types the name and how many of it into a search, if there is any account which contains that inside the 'for sale' set he can move a few things from his 'for sale' set into an offer box, everyone else which 'for sale' set contains it gets a message next time they are online, the first that clicks accept gets the trade. Then maybe allow counteroffers with showing the 2 boxes with offered and wanted item and 2 boxes with all other items in these 2 peoples 'for sale' sets and allowing to drag and drop stuff around and click counteroffer which in turn notifies the first person who can accept or decline.

The problem is then people would maybe feel spammed by all those offerings and reofferings while they maybe just want to kill some monsters at that time.

Didn't see it mentioned, but Path of Exile has a no gold trade system, and is an mmo (with instanced combat areas, but still an mmo).

The way it works there (from the stuff I've seen), is that when you 'sell' items to a trader you get scroll and/or stone fragments. Enough of these (10 i think) automatically make a stone or scroll. The stones/scrolls are also used to 'buy' items. Trading between players is also possible and it just comes down to bargaining.

The key why that works though, I think, is that the stones/scrolls are one time use items that are quite commonly used in game (such as identifying items, or augmenting items) - and thus gives them value without flooding the market with them.