Automated Player Shops in Realms

A big part of OR’s economy has always been player trading, with realm shops and all kinds of items being sold across the server. Unfortunately, there is currently no good way to have an automated item shop in a realm without many compromises. Many servers have a chest/sign shop system, but I think OR could do something much more sophisticated.

My proposal is to introduce a new block called a “Shop Pedestal” or something similar. It would only be placable in realms, and once placed in a realm, it would only be breakable by the person who placed it and the realm owner. There would be several important features that this Shop Pedestal would have:

• The Shop Pedestal would have a GUI when right-clicked. For the “owner” of the shop pedestal, the person who placed it, this would be a GUI where you could input an item to be bought/sold, as well as an option to set the buy/sell price, as well as being able to individually enable/disable both buying and selling of the item. The shop owner would also be able to specify an amount of that item to be bought/sold at once, up to the item's maximum stack size.

• The Shop Pedestal would have a fake floating item on top to indicate what item is being bought/sold, as well as the name of the item. This would allow players in a realm with many shop pedestals to find what they are looking for quickly.

• For any player who is not the owner of the Shop Pedestal, right-clicking the block would show a buy/sell GUI, with buttons to buy/sell various quantities of the specified item, as long as buying/selling is enabled for that Shop Pedestal. Buying items from a Shop pedestal would remove items from its inventory (more on this in a moment), and the spent rubies would be sent to the owner’s ruby balance. Selling items would subtract rubies from the shop owner’s balance, giving them to the selling player, and the shop items would be added to the shop pedestal's inventory.

• In order to combat inflation on the server, Shop Pedestals could have a built-in ruby tax. My proposal is a 1% ruby tax per transaction, rounded down but with a minimum of 1 ruby (similar to AH’s 25 ruby minimum).

• Shop Pedestals would have an inventory that would consist of just one slot. That slot would be able to hold a large amount of any item, regardless of that item’s maximum stack size. The shop owner would be able to input items into and remove items from this slot, and this slot would be used for buying/selling items. This is to prevent shop stock from being capped by the size of a chest. Additionally, shop pedestals would support hoppers, with hoppers pointing into a shop pedestal inserting items, and hoppers under the shop pedestal removing items.

• To prevent shop pedestals from being used as a general storage solution, I believe they should have a relatively expensive crafting recipe. My proposal is 5x platinum in an X-shape, a ruby block in the top slot, and a chest in the bottom slot.

• When items are bought/sold while the owner is offline, the server should keep track of the amount of bought/sold items and rubies, and upon logging in, the owner should see a summary of how many items/rubies were bought/sold, similar to AH. It would also be cool if shop pedestals kept track of their transaction history, which was viewable by the shop owner.

I think a server as sophisticated as Origin Realms needs an equally sophisticated player shop system. This proposal probably isn't perfect, but it captures the general idea of what I'd like to see on the server.