[Kereth]

Doesn't really change my assessment, no. In fact, it potentially makes it more extreme, since now crafting time doesn't have to be as much an expenditure of real time.

The issue is that a player can run to a shop, type "sell all" and get a cash return for their crafting, or they can spend time, maybe even a few hours, tracking down another player who is interested in their item, and get a slightly better price. That time they spend hunting could potentially be used for more crafting, or for some other productive endeavor, and if the time/effort only rewards them with a small gain, few players will bother with anything but the fast way (npc vendors). This goes the same in reverse.

Most games, whether gathering items from drops or crafting them, have lots of common quality items, which are expected to be shopped. Then, there are a few, higher quality items, which are both more valuable and rare, at least to a certain extent. Rarity comes from the fact that either a. You only make these items 1 in 100 times when crafting, b. have to get more expensive, difficult to obtain items to craft them from, which may take considerably more time to gather c. they are dangerous to obtain, often being in the possession of some singularly powerful monster, and so forth. These items are not shopped, because they are the best. Everyone wants one, but because they are harder to obtain, there isn't one for everyone. That means only those with the deepest pockets can get one. Those who have them will sell them to other players, because they will sell for large quantities of money, while the shops will only give a slightly higher price for them. Those who do no have them will seek out players to buy them from, because they will not be found in shops, and because they want the advantage these items provide.


So long as there are a small quantity of items like these, there will always be player to player sales occurring. Selling to npc vendors is inevitable, and that's not a problem. Have loads of common items in your game, and let players stock up on cash by crafting or killing and looting to get these items, but if you want them to do more than that, you need to provide something better.

You say you like controlling things with economics, and I'm offering you the most basic of that. Watch your supply and demand, and keep all hidden costs in mind.

-Kereth