My game “Gem Finders” is going along alright since I’m doing it by myself but something I’ve noticed is that other games have trade systems for pets. Now games like recent “Unboxing Simulator” don’t have this and is a good game. Now for me personally I don’t want a trading system due to,
Scam
Not a lot of pet’s currently
But I also want to due to
Rare Pets
Fun to see what others have
Now this is the design support so due to this being a game design question I’d like a poll on what I should do since I’m conflicting on what to do.
Trade System
No Trade System
0voters
I want community feedback on this since I again am conflicting the two.
Thanks in advance,
-Notrealac0unt
Well, if you want to be like every front page simulator game, go straight for it. All jokes aside,trading system are honestly great when helping new people or just in general. They let people have new items that they want but can’t achieve.
It really depends on your game actually. Things like… trade systems may not be added because it is very likely that no one will use it, or trade systems must be added because we’re dealing with a lot of items that are most likely to boost one’s experience and enthusiasm when trading with another player, plus high player count.
Reasons like scamming can be solved easily with a “Ready” button when both traders are satisfied with what they are going to recieve. Never let these kinds of challenges prevent you from doing something, always try it out yourself and see how it goes
Well, to me it’s a good and bad thing. But for the Rare pets i would suggest you make a event for that. And the (fun to see others items) i would just add a inventory so you can! always see what rare items they got…! Scam is not really a probably they can decline or accept if they, fell like it!! Just try it to see if you like it or not.
Trading is absolute must have system in game , because mostly when player finishes the game (goes thru all levels etc.) there is nothing left to do and trading is just perfect thing to get onto , have something you dont like? just give it to friend or if there is something you want but dont have you can always get it by trading.
that is lots of fun and keeps players in for a long time.
Tips on how to prevent scamming while implementing a trading system.
Add a tips system. This can be useful for both the game and the trade system.
There can be a tip that randomly shows up explaining rules to trading.
Such as, Never trade your pets first! Never sell your pets to people! etc.
Also add a ready button. Once a pet is put in a timer counts down. once both players click ready, the game asks if your sure.
Finally you could add a system to were if someone does get scammed. perhaps you can create your own “Report” system. Players can send proof of them getting scammed. If you believe the proof is valid, you can ban the scammer from your game. and restore the persons pets.
Expanding on this, I would recommend looking at Steam’s trading system - the two-step process means that each party has a chance to review the items in the trade without the possibilty of those items being sneakily switched last minute, as doing so reverts you back to stage one and has clear visual feedback.
Personally, my experience with games is that a trade system tends to make the game boring quickly. For instance, I played Dungeon Quest a while back and you don’t know how many people just tried to beg for loot instead of going and doing the dungeons themselves. This, naturally, ruins the fun because you can just have someone give you OP gear and catapult you into the front of the game, but then you get bored faster and wish you had savoured it longer.
As an example of a game on the other end of the spectrum, Fantastic Frontier is one game I’m honestly so glad doesn’t have a trade system. Players learn game mechanics much better because they take longer to progress, everyone stands on the same playing field (rather than just being given free loot), and you as a player feel a sense of achievement whenever you get something fairly rare.
Its hard to have a trading system where the only thing that occurs is only trading; there’s going to be a lot of leeches as well. If, somehow there was a compromise, like a trading system where items have to be in a particular rarity range to be tradeable with one another, I think it would work better.
This is just me ranting though, it’s entirely up to you how you think people should play your game.
I think trade systems work well if the tradable items can only be used after you reach a certain point in the game (like levels requirements in Dungeon Quest). Otherwise you’d just get players trading each other best stuff and skipping all the steps required to actually earn their way there, which defeats the purpose of actually playing the game to begin with.
Trading tends to devalue the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting rare/powerful items as any new player could just beg and get them without investing any time or effort. There’s also issues out of your control to worry about such as duping, scamming, begging, the possibility of hacking of accounts with ultra rare stuff, and the possibility of real money trading for in-game items, all of which your players will hold you accountable for even though you can only do so much to limit them.
In the end, I personally don’t think trading is worth it nor do my most dedicated players as it devalues their time but its clear that many devs tend to favor it as it is an extremely highly requested feature.
I definitely think that scams have become a very prominent part of trading systems. I think instead of trading, you should set up a “black market” system (possible with Messaging Service) so that everyone knows what they’re spending, and value can be decided by the community around your game
Personally I believe too many people scam with trading to put it into a game. They’re also really easy to bug/glitch which could lead to item duplication or overall breakage. New players would also more likely spam players so if you do add it, make sure the player can toggle trade requests.
This is a very good point - you’ll want to have secure server-side verification, parity checks, and debounces all set up to avoid duplication glitches.
Trading systems are by no means required and often are bad for many games; often they lead to pros getting spammed, noobs breaking balance, scams, unintended interactions, and more.
Fantastic Frontier is one of my favorites! I originally disliked it because of how boring and hard it was to progress without trading but I soon learned to work hard for my own items instead of begging people for them!
Back to the topic, I agree with what @coolbulls said,
I think trade systems work well if the tradable items can only be used after you reach a certain point in the game (like levels requirements in Dungeon Quest).
I feel that this is a very good way of making a proper ‘no-cheat’ trade system, you won’t have random new players jumping to the top when they started the game 1 hour ago. However, there are also cons for trade systems too. I’ll list a few.
Duplication glitches, if you play other games outside of Roblox with trade systems, you would have probably seen a few duplication glitches occurring here and there
Selling of in-game items[not robux] for real money. Personally, there’s not much you can do about this, it is more of what people in other games do.
Newbies spamming pros. Not going to say much, I’m sure you have probably experienced it before.
Most importantly, you need a lot of security to have a trading system, if in any case, an error in the system breaks out, it can potentially ruin the game’s economy and the flow.
