Mesha wrote:
And Crommie, do you have anything conclusive to propose as to what to do to get bigger in and out-"flow" of silvers?
I'll just comment this before going to bed, hopefully I have time to craft a more thorough response later. Anyways, what is important to consider is that:
Even though the staff theoretically controls all the inflow of the money, it's actually controlled by each individual player for his needs, to a point. I wouldn't worry about it at all right now. When the player needs coins, he will work/kill/trade for them, and eventually he shall have the necessary amount of coins.
What is more important is the creation sensible, useful and popular ways of giving people more opportunity to spend those coins. That makes those coins more useful, and thus more valuable. For a specific idea: Try to make something out of the LTE-stat buff which I casually mentioned.
Would you pay 15s to have +1 to a stat, for a week? Or 20 more to have total of +2 in two different stats?
It doesn't have much work left in it, once I find out why it aint working.
Basically the gods, in return for a suitable tithe of money, will bless you with certain attributes for a short (think hours, not minutes) amount of time.
Got to say though...the gems still probably wont have the effect effect we'd like it to. Ill put it in lay-men's terms, so to speak.
Person A: Has piles of money, and wants a magic gem
Person B: Has a gem, and sells it to person A
Person A had a huge stockpile of money, so he probably knew some trick to bring tons of money to himself
Person B almost had to acquire the gems in question by fighting some of the strongest mosters ig
To build on this, Suddenly Person A realizes he has an uber-powerful sword, so he goes out and fights until he has tons of money again, pulling tons of money ig
Person B realizes how easy it is to make money with these gems, and goes out to fight more of those monsters that drop gems, pulling even more money out of this air, and, not to mention all of the expensive items he finds.
Soon we have Person A with a very strong weapon, pulling in hundreds of silver very quickly, And person B pulling tons of money in from the monsters he fights, along with a constant stream of very strong weapons and armor.
Then... we spiral deeper into inflation... and, well, enough said. Im not saying the magic gems will definitely hurt the economy, just that they probably wont help it...
Unless there are HEAVY, built in locks, it'll get abused.
Lets take maps for example. They started out great, the chance to obtain one was small.
People used to fish like crazy (and toss away the fish -_-) for a chance to get the maps. The amount of possible findings was reduced, people continued fishing more and more.
Same with the dragon. The dragon was powerful and dropped some nice stuff. Experts (1 mage +1 fighter) found a way of killing the dragon, and they used to wait until it respawned.
This only stopped when the dragon started spawning less frequently.
I think the only way to stop what bdgdkay is predicting, is that the amount of possible gems running around is well looked at. Why not leave the gems just for very rare case scenarios, and GM quests? That would make them very very rare.
Hadrian_Abela wrote:Why not leave the gems just for very rare case scenarios, and GM quests? That would make them very very rare.
Because distributing expensive items through quest is the most unfair, arbitrary and imba way you can come up with. The most ruthless and quick-cliking shall inherit the land.
For clarification of what I'm talking about, look at the "Roleplaying fear" topic on the General board.
...then how do you distribute them? Through mini-quests (you know you're sitting down after a long day of PG-ing when your mule starts talking to you)?
How about being able to randomly find them by doing whatever resource collection task, given that your skill cap is still in the positive, and that you're lucky?
How about: (heavily) diminishing returns over a long period of time? So effectively, the longer you do X within Y amount of time; the smaller chance of finding such a gem you have. You can PG all you want, but the only way to quantatively maintain a high chance of finding such rare gem is to spread the actions over a large amount of time, instead of just doing it for a long time.
Kadiya @ news wrote:Try the system out for a couple of weeks before you give us input on what you think of it, though we'll be happy to have reports on any bugs or errors you might find.
Developers want to see their stuff used.
--
End discussion about magic gems NOW. Follow Kadiya's advice instead.
The thing is though.. gems are -expended-. They can break when combined, they can be put into things. These things will most likely be used, IE: if you have a powerful item, that can assist you, would you not use it? As the more you use it, the item deteriorates and then.. POOF! No more weapon, you need a new gem.
Thus is the way, of the magical gems. Their demand will be the same so long as the market isn't flooded.
And that won't happen because they are -very- rare. If some one is going to hunt for these gems, it will be no different than pg'ing fighting.
Hadrian_Abela wrote:
Anyone can obtain leather, anyone.
Obtaining iron/coal is also quite easy.
Problem is, I don't ever find anyone selling it.
Now new (and poor) players can earn quite a bit of money selling leather and iron/coal (3 coppers a piece gives you some good cash), but nobody appears to want to.
What's the reason why?
It just makes the poor poorer, and the smiths richer because they can't buy anything with all their cash.
It's because of several factors:
1.) Leather and ore are both considerably more difficult to obtain than apples (heavier, further away, refining stages, etc), thus any large quantity extractor either a.) Gets it for himself b.) has a customer already ('cause it's not something you do for fun or kicks)
2.) Chances are, that you aren't offering enough money (try buying for 4cp a piece, maybe? If you try buying with 3, then it's clearly not perceived as compensation enough for the work.)
3.) Lack of dedicated Merchant characters who keep a large stockpile of things and are generally around, making money and responding to the PC-demand of goods. (Oh, Silverstar, how I long for thee.)
4.) Poorness is a choice in the game. Players can access just as much money as they can be arsed to, thus save for noobs, there ain't any "poor" characters around. Thus there's no 'need' for business, either.
@last line: commie
Back to the beginning of this topic, on amount of money that creatues drop.
I think that this would probably be a good idea... you can find regular skelletons with drops around 15 copper, mages sometimes up to 20 copper. Granted, they dont always drop this much, but i think if it went from the current range of about 5-20 copper down to maybe...1-4copper, maybe up to 6 copper for mages... they would be still be worth the hunt for newer players, and wouldnt be bringing in such large quantities of money to bring inflation ig.
The same could be said with Demon skelletons, ive killed demon skelletons who have dropped up to about 75 copper, maybe if that were dropped to a range of about 15- 30 copper, that would help with the economy.
It was brought up that this would just turn into another skill with no
money to earn from it... if there were a group of 10 people, with a total of, for examples sake, 100 silver all-together, and each person had about 10 silver. That 10 in 100 silver would be the same as if the group of 10 people only had 10 silver, and each person only had 1 silver.
The other thing i think that could help balance this out is if any sort of equipment would degrade faster. This would make smith's have a bigger role in the game, and money would almost have to be circulated.
Another possibility would be that rather than trying to find more money sinks, it would be more effective to just raise the cost of the money sinks... For example, teleporters. Teleporters cost next to nothing to use, so, maybe if they were raised... all the way to a silver?, they would be more effective in balancing the inflow of money to the removal of it. And yes, people would probably complain about this to no end, but it cant really hurt -that- much to test it out...
The same idea can be used on various other things that are commonly bought from npcs, being potions of all types, etc.
Back to Esty on the idea of bringing the amount of money up even higher... Ive got to say that this would still be a bad idea. Sure the inflation ig is bad right now, but its not all -that- bad. Look be to around the 60's in America. Gas prices were well under dollar a gallon, to an average kid, 5 dollars could get you all you wanted etc. But, its not like people were making as much money as they do today. Today if you were to make... for example 40,000 dollars a year, then you are considerred middle-class. But, if you were to make 40,000 a year back then, you were considerred upper class. To put it in perspective if you made 40000 a year today, 4 kids in college would leave you scraping up dimes by the end of the year. 40000 a year then, you would have been able to send about 20+ kids through college and still have a nice house, car, etc.
Then, there is the arguement to be made about how realistic the ecomony is ig. In reall midieval times, you could by a loaf of bread for half a penny. Ig, it costs maybe 5-15 copper. Just something to consider there.
Again to Esty, it was mentioned that some things were being sold for fractions of copper coins. These things would be thing such as any easily harvestable fruit, sling-stones, on very rare occasions, things found at auctions (like i bought 250 boughs for 1 silver once), and really any item that is very easily found in very high quantities. You'll notice most of those things are very rarely used ig, the stones only good if you want to be an archer as a cheap form of practice(which, on the current system, its impossible to be an archer anyways), apples being a free source of food for people like newbies(which also if eaten too much lower your health), and even the boughs i mentioned, they are generally thought of as a cheap way to practice carpentry.
'No spoils of war' was the phrase tossed around after the first world war. The meaning behind it?
The average british redcoat used to be paid peanuts. The only way they could realistically prosper was to loot every enemy (and sometimes friend's) body. The more bloody or dangerous the battle, the more freedom the british commanders used to give their men afterward, as a kind of reward.
This all changed in the first world war, when politics got involved and the british had to appear 'good'. As a result, the average soldier started getting paid properly, and no longer had any need to loot.
My point is, for a warrior, it shouldnt be that the only way they make money is by looting enemies. Let the crafting skills make the easiest money, and open up more genuine oppurtunities for rp as fighters search for alternative measures in order to survive. Suddenly there will be a real desire to join the trollsbane town guard, or say a rich knighthood which will supply you with cheap equipment. There will be less 'lone yard-dwellers' who spend all their time skilling and looting skeletens and reds, before coming back to town to swamp the economy.
So yes, drastically reduce the money drops from (at least) simple enemies. Or.. if your worried about the possible consequences.. just try it out for a week and see what happens. My feeling is it will rejuvinate the economy, fuel more crafters, and generally boost rp in the game.
All possible ideas to discuss IF needed when the game is more balanced.
The money drops, as they are assigned by now, anticipate an upcoming change to the economy. The monster drops were the very first step and as you can see, the changes won't be too drastic.
Maybe I should elaborate: The dropped copper is just ment to be a candy. The real value of drops is ment to be made up by the items. And now you may say: When I drag 10 daggers home and sell them, I get as much copper as I got from one monster. Here we go: Selling final products, as gained from drops, is hard to impossible. A player once did me the favour and found out that only 1/4 of all final products can be sold to NPCs. 3/4 you can throw away or cast at newbies, but you cannot make money out of them.
So, when items can be sold to NPCs, the dropped copper becomes more unimportant. That is what I called anticipating.
By the way: I am still convinced that Illarion has a bad spawn design. When I hike to the goblins, I can slay and they respawn even faster than I can massacre them. There is a constant stream of bodies created. Same holds for other monsters - camping, albeit forbidden, is strongly encouraged.
I really don't know why you don't just give out money.
I think personally that it has something to do with weight, so you don't just spend 5 hours in there and return home as rich as anything.
So I suggest, put in objects which can't be made, and which have no use except that they can be sold to NPCs for a good price. You can put in weight there as well so people don't just carry all of them.
You can call them trinkets or something like that, some precious thing you can pawn.
Otherwise, make them drop mediocre things (like skulls if they're undead) and have NPCs offer a bounty for skulls.
That way you get the items you want, the fighters get their money, cascade it over the other players, and everyone's happy.
