What's the appeal of trading games?

[Damned Registrations]

Transcendence by George Moromisato has a decent space variant of trading, I recommend trying it if you like trading. Trading is not the main purpose of the game. It is a supplement to earning credits to buy equipment, but a very thought out one, that you want to be good at to do better.

You can succeed as main fighter or main trader or both, there is supply and demand, market saturation, black market, different trading syndicates/corporations, different currencies, asteroid mining and much more.

Transcendence is an awesome game. Shame he basically abandoned it, all it really needed to be perfect was some more content and a chance to swap into bigger/more alien ships for the endgame.

 

[Johannes]

Trading is there mostly to give you a motive to travel. Whether that's fun, depends on how interesting traveling from A to B is, with combat and other hazards.

 

[laclongquan]

I like Patrician 3 a lot too, but I always had trouble controlling the sea battles. If that part worked better it would outstanding.

Patrician 3 sea battles are fun. Some players can do only that, selling captured ships for fund to repair and upgrade their ships. No trading~

And even if you dont like it, you still need to do it whenever it become unescapable, because even a mediocre player can do better than autocompletion.

Port Royale 2 battles are no better, IIRC~ No worse, thank the devs, so there's that.

 

[Old One]

Patrician 3 sea battles are fun. Some players can do only that, selling captured ships for fund to repair and upgrade their ships. No trading~

Oh yes, I did that quite a lot. It's more entertaining than simple trading, that's for sure. You're basically a privateer.

Still, I could never click and mouse fast enough to control multiple ships, so it was always my ship alone (with any escorts serving only as minor distractions and cargo mules) against whatever fleet I was attacking. Not terrible, but it could've been a lot better.

A Patrician game with really great naval combat could be a top ten all timer for me. I love everything else about it.

And BTW, I love good trading games for the trading. There's something innately satisfying about buying some cargo, then travelling around until you find a place to sell it for a profit.

 

[BadassNonbinaryPrincess]

There was a basic indie RPG that had trading, I forgot the name of it. I liked the game, it was kind of Final Fantasy combat in a PC game like a blobber. The trading involved just going to one little town and buying a bunch of hay bales or something and then taking them somewhere else to sell. It wasn't very fun but you didn't have to do it much.

 

[Dark Souls II]

The appeal of trading games is pure, unadulterated capitalism. Leeching surplus value off the working class, robbing them off their crystallized lifeforce in return for shiny pebbles and 250% overpriced bread. The next day, yet again they will have to wake up before dawn and go sell their labour, a fragment of their lifetime they will never get back. But you, you will be comfy in your cozy little store, and growing more powerful with each customer that you scam. Feels good man.

Spoiler

 

[Keshik]

For me, it's partly the appeal of figuring out and working with a system and more majorly, the fantasy of actually being financially successful

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think one thing not mentioned here that is a big factor is exploration. Going back and forth on an established route is dull, but the ability to trade makes discovering a new port with new merchandise or even just new prices on existing stuff rather exciting, as it shuffles the deck and you get to rethink all your previous strategies.

 

[Borelli]

Patrician 3 is the only game where i enjoy repetitive micromanagement (you can automate your ships but it was not something i was doing for the whole of my fleet).

Trading in games like Battle Brothers or Mount & Blade is like totally missing the point.

 

[GaelicVigil]

Uncharted Waters was the best trading. I would always play as a merchant in those games. No other game ever quite captured it for me.

 

[Serus]

Patrician 3 is the only game where i enjoy repetitive micromanagement (you can automate your ships but it was not something i was doing for the whole of my fleet).

Trading in games like Battle Brothers or Mount & Blade is like totally missing the point.

Perhaps because those are not trading games and aren't about trading. Just a thought.

 

[Beastro]

I've never found trading appealing before. I've never even attempted it. In games that featured trading, like Mount and Blade, Sea Dogs, or Sid Meier's Pirates, I completely avoided it.

As a kid, I remember coming home one night to find that my brother had rented some NES games. I was thrilled until I saw him playing MULE.

I sat and watched for a bit, then asked him what it was about.

The conversation went a bit like this:



Since then, I have never understood trading in games (beyond trading to buy relevant things, like weapons, to do relevant things with them, like kill people and blow stuff up, of course).