Poll: Would you play a medieval trading game?

[Shanahanapp]

So recently I've been reading a lot of Spice and Wolf and that coupled with the recent popularity of the "Space Trading Game" as I'd call them like the X series, (I'm sure there's a more professional genre name) got me wondering.

Would people be interested in a game that swapped out the starship for a horse and cart? Towns and villages instead of space stations, cobblestone or dirt roads instead of starlanes. I know it'd definitely interest me.

So my question is would other people be interested in seeing a dev tackle this. I wouldn't have thought so at first but I wouldn't have thought space-based ones would be interested either.

 

[Bad Jim]

Something like the Patrician series perhaps?

http://www.gog.com/game/patrician_1_2
http://www.gog.com/game/patrician_3

 

[DementedSheep]

There is this game which I was considering buying and I was doing that in Floris's Mount and Blade for a while so yes.

 

[Aetrion]

I would definitely play a more developed Mount and Blade game, but I'd have little interest in it if the battles were stripped out to make it more focused on trade.

Personally games like the X series or Eve annoy me, because for some reason everyone making spaceship games wants to make an economics simulator with a spaceship minigame thrown in. Nobody seems to ever just want to make a straight up spaceship game that is actually about spaceships. Even Star Citizen seems like it's going down this route where they want to make it all about crafting and trading and permadeath and all this shit that basically means if you're a casual player you'll never even get a big spaceship, let alone get to have any fun with it. I mean, I get that some people like that sort of thing, but it's obnoxious to me that nobody seems to be making games for people who want a spaceship simulator.

The same would go for a medieval trade simulator I guess, to me trade needs to be just one of the things you can do, not the core of the whole game.

 

[kris40k]

Did you ever check out The Guild series? I goes from Medieval to Renaissance times depending on the version but can be heavily trading based like the X series.

 

[Terminal Blue]

It sounds pretty rad. However, in historical terms there really wasn't much trade for most of the medieval period, possibly better to move slightly later to the renaissance or even the age of discovery.

A game set around the rise of large mercantile guilds like the Hanseatic league in the late medieval period could be fun though.

 

[flying_whimsy]

I'm not much into that sort of game, but I would love hearing stories about it. It'd be nice to see something that really focused on just how difficult trade was back in those times.

Especially when someone accidentally picks up plague on a trade route and annihilates their hometown or something. Working the crusades in could be neat, too; being forced into different trade routes or having to worry about having your staff and material drafted for the cause.

 

[spartan231490]

An economic sim based in the middle ages? It could work, I suppose. Eve worked, after all. Though economic sim holds no appeal to me, personally.

 

[Frission]

The Guild II was an okay example of this. Anything that deals with economics would be interesting.

 

[Lil_Rimmy]

Well, there was this awesome Warcraft 3 map from back in the day literally based off of Spice and Wolf. It's called Founders of the North and was basically about rising from being a no-one to a full blown lord by trading, hunting, gathering and eventually warring.

It's actually recently go back into development by the original dev, so I can't wait to play the new version.

OT:

Yeah, I would. It depends though, as I would prefer the game to include other ways of doing things (fighting, producing your own resources etc.) and actually be a first/third person experience, rather than a send cart here, receive cart here overworld sort of game.

But properly fleshed out and with enough gameplay so that it doesn't just end up being a game about figuring out the goods prices and then just repeating? I'd love to play it!

 

[BeeGeenie]

Another vote for The Guild series.

Here's hoping that The Guild 3 ever happens... and isn't a buggy mess.

 

[Katherine Kerensky]

I immediately thought of Spice and Wolf when I saw the thread title >.>
I'd play the hell out of such a game, so long as it weren't some sort of overview thing. I'd want it to play like the Mount & Blade games, so I'd have to go around and do things personally, third or third person, no merchant empire building while scrolling a world map.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Mount and Blade Warband actually has a fairly extensive trading system. Goods are cheaper in the villages that produce them and are sold for more in centers that produce them in short supply. A town's economy is effected by a number of different things such as: bandit attacks, war, location, and general prosperity. Trading is easily the best way to make money in the early game. Once you know the goods prices for each area, you can map out a trade route and make a lot of money. There are mods that will make this even more in depth.

Of course, you yourself will have to worry about bandits too, so you'll want to higher a good amount of guards. Eventually, if you wanted, you could start spending your fortune on enterprises throughout the land gaining more and more power if you want.

The game is what I would call a medieval sim in that you can do pretty much anything you want in that setting.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

It's been done. Patrician did it a couple of decades ago.

 

[CrystalShadow]

I wondered the same thing after watching spice & wolf...

Though I've rarely seen an entire game built around it, you do sometimes seem to get it as some minor point of another game...

I would definitely play a more developed Mount and Blade game, but I'd have little interest in it if the battles were stripped out to make it more focused on trade.

Personally games like the X series or Eve annoy me, because for some reason everyone making spaceship games wants to make an economics simulator with a spaceship minigame thrown in. Nobody seems to ever just want to make a straight up spaceship game that is actually about spaceships. Even Star Citizen seems like it's going down this route where they want to make it all about crafting and trading and permadeath and all this shit that basically means if you're a casual player you'll never even get a big spaceship, let alone get to have any fun with it. I mean, I get that some people like that sort of thing, but it's obnoxious to me that nobody seems to be making games for people who want a spaceship simulator.

The same would go for a medieval trade simulator I guess, to me trade needs to be just one of the things you can do, not the core of the whole game.

Well, yeah, it is annoying if that's all you get.
I have fond memories of X-wing and bridge commander...

But... There's more to life than combat, and more to spaceships than blowing stuff up, which you can't really do much with if the universe itself is very minimalist.

Although I have to admit, the progression of these 'space trading' games is very tedious.
I played X3:Reunion for 300 hours or more, just to be able to get the cheapest grade of capital ship (a station transporter)
Given how my trading empire was doing, I'd probably need to play it for 1000+ hours to stand a chance of owning a single properly equipped capital class warship.

I can see how that would incredibly frustrating even if you're OK with trading.

We're not talking like, 5-10 hours of trade here after all. We're talking 100's to 1000's of hours to get this stuff...

That's a bit extreme...

 

[Fractral]

But... There's more to life than combat, and more to spaceships than blowing stuff up, which you can't really do much with if the universe itself is very minimalist.

Although I have to admit, the progression of these 'space trading' games is very tedious.
I played X3:Reunion for 300 hours or more, just to be able to get the cheapest grade of capital ship (a station transporter)
Given how my trading empire was doing, I'd probably need to play it for 1000+ hours to stand a chance of owning a single properly equipped capital class warship.

I can see how that would incredibly frustrating even if you're OK with trading.

We're not talking like, 5-10 hours of trade here after all. We're talking 100's to 1000's of hours to get this stuff...

That's a bit extreme...

In X3:R the best way to get money is complex building or capturing, since the Bulletin Board missions are a massive pain and pay out with bugger all. Having 20 Universe Traders and a large complex somewhere safe like Avarice or Antigone Memorial works out fairly well, but is still a colossal grind. I finished Reunion with just an M3+, never bothered with the higher level ships.
Terran Conflict makes it a lot easier to get large sums of money. Run through a few storylines to get some good ships (the main storyline gives you one of the best M3+ ships for free) and raise your combat rank, then do combat missions for a few hours. I managed to get a 100+ station complex as well as a TL, three M7's and a fully outfitted Boreas M2+ in under 100 hours. It's a lot more fun than Reunion was. Albion Prelude is totally broken in that regard; the Siezewell Stock Exchange can be accessed from the start of the game and allows you to get 100 Million credits in an hour of real time.

I'd be totally up for a strategy medieval trading sim. Mount and Blade's first person approach really put me off, since I spent so long dallying around walking and fighting bandits when what I was interested was trading and court intrigue, neither of which is easy to get into. But something on the scale of Europa Universalis without the combat (or maybe just not so much) and some more complex trading mechanics would be great.
Come to think of it, I remember playing a board game set in the 18th century where you commanded a fleet of trade ships and sailed around all of the ports, exchanging cargo. Can't remember what it was called, but it was pretty fun.

 

[Aetrion]

But... There's more to life than combat, and more to spaceships than blowing stuff up, which you can't really do much with if the universe itself is very minimalist.

Yea, personally my favorite space game right now is Space Engineers, which is all about building ships and the various production lines that give you the materials to build them.

That game also falls flat as the "total space experience" because it doesn't have any trading, and combat is just a drain on your resources, you never really gain much by it.

What I personally think Space Engineers does better than most games is give you the feeling of space exploration, in the sense that you aren't just a trader who's doing laps between well established stations, you can go out into the yonder and armed with drills, refineries and assemblers build new ships from scratch. The problem with space engineers is that just like space trading games don't really let you have that sense of exploration and adventure, Space Engineers never lets you have the satisfaction of coming back into port, taking on missions, conducting trade etc.

To me trade is an essential part of a sandbox game in any setting, because it's one of those "infinite activities" that you can do to to make money, but it shouldn't be the only part of the game.

What I really like about Mount and Blade for example is that the way in which all the lords and what not interact with each other ends up creating stories even though it actually isn't following any kind of script. Like this one time in M&B Warband I was courting a princess and she says a lord at the court won't leave her be, and I should duel him. So I set out to find where he is and it turns out he was imprisoned in a far away land following a war. So, ever the romantic, I laid siege to the city, got them to surrender their prisoner, and then, right as he was thanking me for freeing him, gave him the gauntlet. This is of course seriously swoonworthy machismo in medieval times, and the princess loved it.

Stuff like that is where the best moments in sandbox games come from from my perspective.

 

[kris40k]

...she says a lord at the court won't leave her be, and I should duel him...

...it turns out he was imprisoned in a far away land following a war...

...So, ever the romantic, I laid siege to the city

Something does not compute here....

...dude, you killed like a few thousand people so some psycho lady could get you to kill her ex.

 

[Aetrion]

...dude, you killed like a few thousand people so some psycho lady could get you to kill her ex.

Well, we were at war with them, and I didn't kill him, just beat him in a duel to make him swear on his honor to no longer pursue her... It was medieval times damn it!