Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24304663-20140111214839/@comment-24108228-20140210212951

The complete lack of traders. Why is there a complete lack of traders? Because there is a massive abundance of scammers.

The biggest difference between the world of theory and the world of 303 is the complete disappearance of traders. In the world of theory, living on paradise and getting to the mithril stage without moving off the island is a completely legitimate thing to do. In the harsh world of 303, the best stuff your going to get sitting on paradise is a battle club, and if you spend long enough, perhaps someone will trade a few iron for about 3 hours worth of pie, and if your really lucky, they might tell their friends about the struggling cook on paradise and get you some more customers, all with their own handful of iron.

From the perspective of a quick advancing pro, this is a rip off. From the perspective of a tribe living at rockma, the person at paradise needs mental help. From the perspective of the cook at paradise, this is a great deal. Why? The lack of traders. Similar to the people in real life who farm in poor countries for a living, it is simply a case of "Accept any deals thrown at you, or you don't trade away your stuff.", and as much as we like a dedicated skill trainer who needs metals, it's not exactly fair on them. With the same amount of work, they could get much more, by mining it themselves.

But we don't want them to mine it, we want them to buy it from us, because then we have dedicated skill trainers to get hard to get stuff from at much cheaper prices than getting it ourselves, yet for them they are the winners. But without traders to sell their stuff to, they cant live life as a helpful skill master, and we have to train the skills ourselves. What we need is more traders, and scammers took them from us.

Bottom line, scammers make our lives a pain. Make it harder to scam, like with a trade system or something.