[Proof of Concept] Item Renting

[Nyorai]

Howdy epvpers, I'm not even sure if there's anyone left around who'll find this interesting but I was kind of bored and so I figured I'd use my time to share something with you that we've been working on at Conquer Origins for a while.

TLDR: It basically is a renting system that allows players to safely rent items to other players.

Introducing the Item Renting system

The item renting was an idea that was suggested by one of our community members at Conquer Origins quite a while ago and that has been heavily discussed throughout time. This idea is based on the premise that players should be capable of leveraging the time they've put into building their items to make some profit out of it while at the same time they give other players the opportunity to wear items that they normally wouldn't have access to.

The system itself is pretty much a trustless system that allows players to put out items they own for renting so that other players can pay to have access to the items for a limited period of time.

What's its relevance/What problems does it solve?

I would say that this system has plenty of benefits and interesting concepts but I'd like to mostly focus on two things that I believe to be the main problems that the system has a chance of solving:

After interacting with the private server community for a few years now and also based off my experience of playing the game since as early as ~2004, there is one thing that I believe we all have been through or at least we have an acquaintance that has experienced the problem of losing items for trusting someone they thought they could trust. In a perfect world, players should be capable of trusting each other and lend their items without having the risk of being scammed. However, I'm aware this scenario is unrealistic and I believe we might have a really neat solution for this problem. Through the item renting system, players will have a trustless solution that will allow them to lend their items to their friends or other random players without any risks, the system itself will take care of everything for them and will return their items in the same condition/stats they submitted them in.

On top of this, something else that I've noticed throughout the years is that on every server, once a group of players has managed to establish themselves on the server and build a decent set of items, it becomes harder to retain new players as they get the illusion that they cannot catch up or stand a chance against them. While this may be true in newer versions of the game, it certainly is not on a more 'classic' approach where a couple weeks of gameplay will allow them to fight against veterans. However, players still get this idea and I believe that having a system that will give these new players access to existing items that they normally wouldn't have will help them speed up the process and get a feeling of balance between new and older players.

Challenges that we faced

As mentioned, this system was heavily discussed for months and I believe that it's one of those things that can either make or break a server and, if not done correctly, it'll certainly be the latter. Therefore, I'd like to share with you some of the challenges that we faced while working on this idea and the approaches we took to somehow solve or minimize them.

Can I sell/trade/drop a rented item?
This one was actually a no-brainer, we knew for a fact that if players had the chance, they'd rent items from other players and try to somehow make profit out of them by selling them or they'd try to 'steal' them for themselves. Therefore, we've decided that once a player rents an item from a different player, that item will be character-bound meaning that it should not be possible for that item to leave that character until the renting period is over.

What if someone changes the gems on my item?
We also understand that for someone who is putting out their items on the system, it's important that they return them as they initially got them. Therefore, we've decided to don't allow any stats of rented items to be changed, such as gems, quality, etc. except for the item level. Basically the rentee will be allowed to change an item's level but it will return to its original one once the renting period comes to an end. On top of this, rented items cannot be socketed so people can't use the system to spam their items without reborning them.

If I cannot lose rented items, can I rent my own to avoid losing them while redname?
To prevent players from using this system to avoid ingame punishments, such as the loss of items for being red/blacknamed, we've made sure not to allow players to use these items when their PK Points is 30 or above. It's also not possible for players to attack others outside non PK-Free maps in case they're wearing a rented item so there shouldn't be a way for a red/blacknamed player to be wearing a rented item.

I can still use the system to avoid durability costs, right?
To prevent players from doing this, we've made sure to have the system ask players to pay the full repair cost of an item's durability (from 0 to 100%) upfront. This will guarantee that this cost will be covered no matter what. In case an item's durability reaches 0, the renting will automatically come to an end and the item will be relisted at full durability again. The repair cost is non refundable and will also serve as a gold sink.

If I can rent items from other players, why would I need to work on my own items?
This is possibly one of the most controversial challenges to date and one that we really won't be able to tell how relevant it is until the system is actually released. However, as we know this is something that would happen if there were no limitations, we've made sure to add some restraints to rented items to keep players motivated on building their own set:

• Players with rented items cannot deal damage to other players outside Free-PK maps;
• In case a player attacks you outside Free-PK maps you won't be able to fight back unless you unequip all of your rented items;
• Rentees can rent items for a maximum period of 4 hours (6 for VIP players);
• Renters can put items out for renting for a maximum period of 24 hours (72 for VIPs). Once this period has come to an end, the item will no longer be available until it's listed again;
• Once the renting period of an item comes to an end, it will automatically be removed from your inventory or equipment slot;
• Items can only be rented by one person at a time;
• There is a 25% fee taken by the server to cost of renting an item from another player;

I could continue and keep writting a wall of text with more information about this system but instead I'd like to invite you to come and test it by yourselves. This feature has been under tests for well over a month so I'd like to believe that we've got everything covered. However, as I know there's always the chance of something being left behind, feel free to help us improve this system and report any possible bugs that you may find. The system is set to be released tonight at Conquer Origins.

Feel free to ask any questions. All the feedback is appreciated so please leave your thoughts below

- Nyorai

Credits: Angelius for making all of it possible with the custom hooks that allow us to draw custom dialogs and show them to players with some neat things such as text input boxes, item description boxes, buttons, etc.

Conquer Origins | Item Renting

[Asphy×ia]

Very neat. Cool to see people still investing time into ideas and concepts for Conquer.

[Nyorai]

Originally Posted by Asphy×ia

Very neat. Cool to see people still investing time into ideas and concepts for Conquer.

Thanks! Your comment is very much appreciated

[KraHen]

Extremely nice work. How did you guys do the UI?

[EpochCommunity]

Originally Posted by KraHen

Extremely nice work. How did you guys do the UI?

UI comes from the TQ auction system

[Nyorai]

Originally Posted by KraHen

Extremely nice work. How did you guys do the UI?

Originally Posted by EpochCommunity

UI comes from the TQ auction system

The UI images are based off the auction system, that's correct. We used those as a starting point and pretty much worked on top of that. You can see that they're completely different while having some similarities tho. We simply decided to grab those files and simply redesign them to our needs.

The UI itself was possible to be put together through custom hooks that allow us to draw custom dialogs and show them to players with some neat things such as text input boxes, item description boxes, buttons, etc. The UI itself and respective interactions are completely custom and written from scratch.

[darkhc]

Originally Posted by Nyorai

The UI images are based off the auction system, that's correct. We used those as a starting point and pretty much worked on top of that. You can see that they're completely different while having some similarities tho. We simply decided to grab those files and simply redesign them to our needs.

The UI itself was possible to be put together through custom hooks that allow us to draw custom dialogs and show them to players with some neat things such as text input boxes, item description boxes, buttons, etc. The UI itself and respective interactions are completely custom and written from scratch.

Wow, nice work. Awesome.

[zoro7070]

why the server needs to take 25% in fees you don't take a cut from trade or booths in market?

Great work by the way

[Nyorai]

Originally Posted by zoro7070

why the server needs to take 25% in fees you don't take a cut from trade or booths in market?

Great work by the way

It basically serves as a gold sink for the server. One of the problems with conquer economy is the fact that the gold generation farly outweights the gold that is consumed by players. This leads to a long-term problem of loss of monetary value for gold (the fact that there is more gold, makes it less value).

Our goal with the 25% cut as well as a few other systems we have in place is to somehow try to balance that out and allow the economy to stay somewhat stable throughout time.

Originally Posted by krito777

Very interesting, thats one of the small things i liked about your server.
And my (14 month + -) old Idea about VIP you using it too, undercover picking ideas from me and in same time your MOD tell others that my ideas are bullshit getting rejected. (hehehe)

I saw people trying to delete my suggestion, to make it look it wasn't my idea... I have so much exprince with those rats

I just saying, since your MOD, have wrote to me that i should shut up and do no suggesitons: "everyone rejecting me"

I take it easy, i know you do not care about me if i leave.
Lately when there is a good server, the butthurt will start for you too.

(like now days hehe)

I appreciate your feedback and I am sorry that our server didn't fit your likings

[_DreadNought_]

Cool

[57bob57]

Very good idea for congratulations, have you seen the possibility of someone deleting the account using the rented items?

[Nyorai]

Originally Posted by _DreadNought_

Cool

Thanks for the feedback

Originally Posted by 57bob57

Very good idea for congratulations, have you seen the possibility of someone deleting the account using the rented items?

Thanks for the feedback! Yea, that's already covered, if the rentee deletes his/her character with a rented item the renting will automatically come to an end and the item will be returned to the system and made available for others to rent it.

In case the owner of the item deletes the character while there's an active renting, the system will automatically set the item owner's to 0 and delete it once the renting comes to an end.

[lyokoftw]

Amazing as usual i remember ur shannra used to be the best server I have ever played.

[m7mdxlife]

That's actually pretty neat, well done.