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I realize there is a topic covering NPCs at the moment, but in an attempt to keep that one on track I was wondering if someone could answer my question/comment here.

I sold 9 elven bows about three days ago to the elf in Tol Vanima. I've been checking back in Vanima twice a day(morning/night here) since and he never has any money to buy the bows with. I understand no merchant has infinite money in his pockets, but exactly when does the coppers reset? It would seem like a lot of people would have to be selling things for the merchant to have nothing at all for such an extended period of time. Is there a bug or problem or do I just need to travel to Vanima more often?

In any event, I suppose I can begin trying to sell them about towns or just store up while I put in some carpentry practice. THanks in advance for any answers...

Merchants will dry up if players don't buy things for them. The hope is not, however, to get players buying more from NPC's, but instead to buying and selling to eachother more and using the NPC's as crutches less often.

The NPCs get a small amount of copper after a random time. However, they are merchants, no cornucopiae. In future, the merchants will have more attractive goods in stock, we'll see if this improves the situation.

Aeghohl, the problem is that you can't find customers for most of your goods as long as you don't reach a certain craftlevel, and even than there are too many craftmen and too few customers.

either you don't have the good items, or can't offer the quality like other famous craftmen. As long as you are not very good you can live just by the npc merchants.

p.s. and with the new craftmenship and the changes there it is even more worse and bad for them. It can't and won't work.

for example a carpenter. if you are not aThalodos, Faladron or Erart you has no chance to get your items sold. The peoples just want the best ware and best quality. the smiths have more than enough handles, some even are carpenters too and make their own handles. to be able to sell items like cups, bowls and so on is nice, but not everyone is good enough in roleplay to buy "useless" items like them, and often they already bought them from others.

you want sell shields? you need to find a smith who sells iron, if there is no, like it is, you have to melt iron on your own. as a carpenter. and shields are not well liked because twohanded weapons are much better.

Want to sell battlestaffs? The faladrons and erarts were faster. Want to sell bows? who is an archer these days? every archer is a carpenter on his own. and so on.

and now it is even damn hard to make anyxthing off good quality because of the changes, hurray!

You tell us what is wrong. But how should we make it better?

Galim wrote:and now it is even damn hard to make anyxthing off good quality because of the changes, hurray!

Can you explain this last remark of yours? Is it harder than before?

Concerning "the others were faster": What do you suggest? You know, "we" have always an open ear for good proposals.

Another spoiler concerning the new merchants: They will pay fair prices for the goods they buy (no 2 copper piece-bullshit), but also demand fair prices for the things they sell. There will be a constant flow of copper into their pockets from the outside, not much, but enough so a newbie can sell basic goods to them. And (best of all), one will be able to sell every product somewhere (note: not intermediate products like ingots or raw materials).

I will try to explain it. Before the changes you didn't lose the ressources when craft something and fail. so you got 10 branches and made 10 staffs. every 20 staff you had perhaps one of good quality, which could be sold. now you lose the items when you fail. that means 10 branches are perhaps 3 staffs. that means you have to collect more branches and carve more wood to get the same amount of staffs like before the changes. just to have the same chance to make something of sellable quality.

That means: More work, more stress, less success, less chance to make something that you can sell to players or even npc.

oh, and now you need food after a short time of work. together with the less foodvalue of apples that means you have to slain pigs or pay your last money for expensive food from cooks.

you earn less money with your ressources and have to pay more for food or the ressources. That means a craftmen who isn't very good can't afford it to buy his ressources now.


solution: raise the chance to get more often items of better quality than used, bad or rotten

p.s. for beginners who just start it is even worse. just imagine, i spoke of craftmen who are good. a beginner have to mine the iron, melt it, and smith something out of it. at the current system he won't earn or having much success for weeks or perhaps even longer.
and it is frustrating to mine and work for hours just to get a useless nail or sicklehead

The same by smithing. you need for an amor between 4 to 7 ingods. now it is so that you can have fail attemps in a row by smithing an item. If you have 10 fail attemps then you loose 60 iron ingods. Who shall make this ingods now? and what shall be the price for a good and new amor? Or a very good and new?

solution: raise the chance to get more often items of better quality than used, bad or rotten

Has my vote as long as one does not try to craft something he just "learned".

@Durin: How high is your usual rate of success (successes/tries)? Below 50%?

Has my vote as long as one does not try to craft something he just "learned".

Umn, I don't understand what you wanted to say with that, sorry. The new learned items ARE less often good quality than the items you learned long ago

I just recently discorved the old but new losing items when you fail to craft them scheme. I got to say I like it, because now it cuts into the profits of master craftsmen and others so goods sell for higher and higher. As a master craftsman, because I havent been able to reach any of the higher levels yet, I can make depending on the product 9-5 out of 10. And so if my losses get cut by half then the things I do create and sell will have to be increased to cover my losses. Its a great concept, but I request the gm's make it so certain things wont dissapear. Like Cut Gem stones, the raw ones thats fine but when they are cut they are just to expensive to have dissapearing up on ya

Is Erart a gemcutter too? whoch different crafts do you do with him? o_O

Hey, well my proposal to fix things would be that carpentry would have sub groups, as in, handles, staffs, bows and musical instruments. You only get better in each sub group you practice. As in, if you only make handles you only get better in handle making, and you don't learn anything new about staffs, bows or musical instruments. You can do the same for all crafts. I think this would be a really good enhancement, as each craftsman can specialize in something different and not everyone can become the great craftsman then.
The downside is that if you implement this you would need to drain craftsman stats and rework how skills work.. But that is how to solve the problem.

too bad that some sub groups wouldn't be trained by peoples than. like the group with the bowls, combs and so on. because you can't sell them and would starve because you wouldn't have an income. same with the group of flail and fishing rod.

Well maybe, but those groups can be used.. Fisherman are around and the flail is used by farmers all the time. infact the bowls are used by cooks, infact they probably need alot if they want to make lots of soups.
They wouldn't make as much money obviously, but if no one invests time in learning them, no one will sell them, and the price for them would be adequate enough... Stephen would invest in it

Garett if you wish to do that to carpenters do that to every diffrent occupation.

And Galim no I do not cut gems, I buy them and it wouldnt be pratical that a gem would be thrown away just because it didnt fit correctly on a specific branch.


Edit. Skipped that sentence Garett

Galim wrote:you want sell shields? you need to find a smith who sells iron, if there is no, like it is, you have to melt iron on your own. as a carpenter. and shields are not well liked because twohanded weapons are much better.

Eliza buys metal shields for 15 coins.. and round shileds for 20

Galim wrote: Want to sell bows? who is an archer these days? every archer is a carpenter on his own. and so on.

You can always sell carpenters thread... who is an archer? do you need a list? The only reason why all are carpenters is so they can make arrows.. had cheaper arrows been implemented...


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You didn't understand what I wrote

IF you wanted to make yourself clearer.. i might have.. along with all the others who didn't understand a thing

I don't understand the need for the whole NPC changing right now. Let me try to explain why.

NPC's never had and hopely will never have goods of high quality to sell. For example one will never be able to buy a heavy metal armor or a full leather armor from a npc. Players will always have to trade with players to achieve those items. Crafters who are able to craft the good items like heavy armor will never sell them to npc's because there are enough players who need their goods and pay much better for them.
Newer players will always have to sell their goods, which are handles and sickle heads or something. No one needs them, at least not that much of handles and sickle heads they have to craft to earn a little skill to make better things. (For example, I noticed you can smith 70 sickle heads or needles and don't even see your skill )
Where should they sell then despite to NPC's? I often see things laying around to rot because no one needs them probably. Before the whole island is full of rubbish, NPC's should better buy that Too much reality may hinder here.

As the current system works now it seems we want to depends more on all players instead of NPC. Example, if one was just a tailor, they would need a collectors of raw materials and some of workers who make final products. So the economy system doesn't just depend on the final products but the raw resources as well.

With the loss of rawmaterials when you fail you can't afford the expensive rawmaterials anymore at the moment. Not as a not so good craftmen.

Reading this post i am lead to believe that the NPC copper balance has been changed again?...if not mostly ignore post.

It has been my observation that the current set up with npc's seems to work relatively well. They are a source of new coin into the game and the only thing worth buying from them is "once off" items, potions until we get druids and arrows for example as no one can afford to make arrows at a decent price.
So now the npc's coin "dries up" now what I play a character with the basic skills to scavenge a living from undead and bandits in time. Now having no out let to sell the very basics. I am left with out coin to buy expensive armor's and staffs from player crafters.
So then one is left with the option of taking up a craft as well, which unless one excels in it people are unlightly to buy your items any way.
There are only two smiths of note on the island and they are good, people wait to buy from them. A new smith is going to have to obtain enough skill to make good quality items before he will even get a foot in.
The end result is we make the game harder again to secede in increasing the gap between new and old players further and basically saying unless you are prepared to master a skill dont bother worrying about character advancement as far as money or possessions go.
Once again it appears in a game that is not supposed to be skill based the emphases is shifted to reward "masters". I have no problem with master’s becoming hugely rich, yet with out NPC coin readily available the rest of us are destined for poverty.

This is with out even touching on fringe characters, who are not a team player as such reliant on NPC coin to out fit themselves with arrows and such.
The result of the wonderful crafting system with quality values is that the game now favors master crafters. Much like on the old sever a new player would seldom catch up to the "big" warriors. Now a new player is always going to struggle to compete in trade, as even if I become a good carpenter the current masters with far more capital and better skill can still sell a "good new" bow for cheaper than i can. It took them 5 logs which they could afford to buy 100 from a player any way. It took me 40 logs which i had to cut and drag around myself.

I feel the npc coin is vital to the enjoyment of this game for many players, especially if we wish to escape the trap of having to "work" for days to simply acquire enough items to enjoy the game. In a set up that is already geared towards long progression and repetition. As such I would be thrilled to hear it has not been changed again.

As the current system works now it seems we want to depends more on all players instead of NPC

A cloak sells for 40 coins, roughly 20 people online. You sell 3 cloaks,
120 coins.
You are paying 3 coins a thread and 2 per wool? you bought 20 of each to make it worth people going for you=100 coins.
Your profit 20 and a lot of raw materials left over. So now no one has the price of a decent sword which is about 120 coppers on a good deal. No NPC's to sell trousers to perhaps.
Poor tailor and two out of work resource gatheres is what i see.
We do not have a game with 200 people online and a constant trade in items going on. We are trying to balance an economy of say +- 100 characters.
Chances are it will either be a very poor populace or a rather wealthy one. I believe wealthy is more fun for players.

We do not have a game with 200 people online and a constant trade in items going on.

That is exactly the problem I see in most of the attempts to make the economy more real.

Like in the UO shard i play , make it a full player economy.

AND!

HISTORY WIPE!(even though thats abit off topic)
-remove ALL old buildings
-make a single outpost/keep or something to start the players off in the new land(only 1-3 buildings to force player based devolopment of the land)
-NO npc besides monsters of course
-Towns normally stay near a body of water when they are just bieng formed in a 'new world'
-all new chara's. make all previously used names unavailable
-make all npc monsters slower + weaker for the first few months to help the fighters establish themselves faster
-make all crafts easier for the first few months aswell (should make specialized system first)

all i can think of for now. Even though it was rather off topic *shrugs*

Durin Silberbart wrote:If you have 10 fail attemps then you loose 60 iron ingods. Who shall make this ingods now? and what shall be the price for a good and new amor? Or a very good and new?

I guess that's up to the one who crafts them.

If it is more difficult to craft something, it will be more expensive. I can't see a problem here. You were just used to the mass production of a non-mass-product.

Martin

Galim wrote:With the loss of rawmaterials when you fail you can't afford the expensive rawmaterials anymore at the moment. Not as a not so good craftmen.

So noone will have good armor or weapons.
Where's the problem, that's what I call a stabilized economy.

If you are too stupid, sorry, to sell your goods, well, then don't produce them.
Take for example a plane: To build planes you need much more money than to build a hammer (for example). Strangely enough, planes are sold very commonly in our world. That is because the price planes are sold at are much higher than those for hammers.

It's simple: More expensive to produce -> more expensive price on the market.

I don't understand what cannot be understood.

Martin

plains can be crafted since a few days, before them it was bugged. plains can be made by carpenters, so the most carpenters make their planes on their own, and new and not so good carpenters who can't make plains can't afford the expensive planes like you described them before.

you can't sell bad quality because the most peoples want the best from Faladron, Thalodos or erart. and the problem is, tools don't get used up. and quality has no influence yet on the work you make with them.

You can try to sell bad quality, but the peoples don't want them, because they want better one and because once they have the better one they don't use up. if tools would use up like weapons, it would be better. peoples would buy more often not so good quality too because it is much cheaper than high quality, and they would also buy high quality because it will stay longer and their work with it would be better.
they would buy bad quality when not spending too much money, and good when they want to do really good work for something. but as long as tools don't get used up, we have no flow of wares, because noone needs new ware. same with materials like bows and so on.

oh, and as long as you can't sell tools or other things to players because you are not such a skilled craftmen like others you won't even earn enough money to buy your rawmaterials AND food.