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Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

What are the items that people are having issues with? Because we still have issues with, say lorecraft stuff being generally available, but that's all part of the herb-based economy and has no specific integration with the separate village commodity issues. All the profitable lorecraft things are just halfway up the skill tree, so there's not even a particular need to try to transcend it in order to get the most out of it. It still doesn't get picked up much from what I can see. That's what has stood out to me, but I'm not always around or have an ear in the right places these days.

I kind of feel like the big problem is if we say "nothing is profitable enough to bother with", then the next question is, "well, relative to what?" And I think this is especially where aethertrading is really acting with negative leverage on the game. Literally, no other trade venture is as profitable. How would you even begin to try to make the other aspects of trades as profitable without severely nerfing aethertrading in kind?

Jolanthe

2

Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

Orael said:

Just to hopefully clear the air here - part of the reason for this thread is we can determine what the players in general want, so we can aim our goals appropriately.

There has been a lot of requests here to make things more active/engaging but then on the flip side, people want to have the option to not engage in the economy at all (mostly by having non-decay, self-sufficiency etc). Those seem pretty polar opposite goals.

Here are a few more questions that could use some answers in general.

1) Is the economy actually a problem for everyone or just a certain subset of players (like newbies etc)?
2) Should trading and economy be pushed as a viable gameplay route (ie, Merchant players that can make money as their IC identity and role)
- Is this currently an option?
3) Is there a route to allows players to both engage or not-engage as they see fit (ie Opt-in?).
- Is this a worthwhile path?
4) Would a better option just be just to nuke the economy and not even worry about it and only fix the commodity issues and call it a day?
- This option would be along the lines of just making basic supplies available in a shop. People can choose to have shops, but they'll have to understand that literally nobody has to or will engage with them outside others that choose to. The only worry about a glut of things would be to preserve db space rather than any economical issues?

Initial reactions:

1) Newbies really struggle to find resources, especially things like people willing to tattoo. If you don't play for a while and come back to half your stuff decaying, that's painful. New player or old, there are so many things to acquire you spend a good deal of time acquiring consumables.
2) It sucks to say this, but in my view, no. I really don't see how 15 trades will be fairly balanced, not even considering the low/highmagic/class restrictions.
3) Not sure.
4) See #2, nuke it and focus on commodities and their interactions (e.g. research upkeep).

Zagreus

2

Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

Who besides Saran thinks that mass decay of everything is a good, compelling game design for Lusternia and would make their gameplay more fun?

Xenthos

3

Re: Could lusternian lore benefit from being codified and made accessible to new players?

Even as someone who felt like he had a grasp on a lot of the lore once, I feel like I can never hope to get caught up on lore from my time away. As a new player I don't think I'd even try. There's just too much to know where to start, or to feel any hope it'll ever get you anywhere. That said, while having a "summary of all the lore in a digestible form" would help a lot with that, who's going to put it together, and who's going to maintain it (the much harder part)?

Lendren

5

Re: QUOTES 8: THE QUOTING

Revelrous Afrit Dahyu, Lazula of the Sands says, "Kill him, my pets."

Afrit drops a putrescent globule.

A putrescent globule bubbles and churns wildly for a moment before releasing a torrent of blistering hot liquid directly at Afrit.

Afrit sipped a potion of healing.

A putrescent globule lashes out at Afrit with a watery tendril, wrapping it around his head. Afrit struggles fiercely against the tendril as he fights for air.

Revelrous Afrit Dahyu, Lazula of the Sands says, "No, not me!"

Eritheyl

3

Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

I made nondecay everything that I could because, well, here's an example. If your stuff decay, you need to:

buy 5 vials
buy 5 teardrops
attach each teardrop to each vial
link each vial to a potion (health, mana, bromide, ice, slush)
buy tinderbox
buy pipe
buy pipetank
attach pipetank to pipe
put steam in pipe
buy armor
wear armor
buy clothes for each clothing slot (for warmth and prestige)
buy 6 enchanted jewelries (acquisitio, mercy, kingdom, perfection, beauty, avaricehorn)
buy 2 enchanted scrolls (healing and protection)
buy 8 regulators
attach each regulator to a jewelry piece
buy enchanted cube
charge enchanted cube
buy 10 rings, 2 bracelets, 1 necklace, 2 earrings, 2 anklets (for prestige)
wear all your clothes and jewelry in the right order because of clothing layers

I probably forgot a lot of things; this is just off the top of my head.

...

...

...

Yeah, just nondecay things.

Mboagn

5

Re: Keeping Divine Orders Alive

Lawrence said:

This and purely RP gods would be great

If god roles became purely RP, I'd apply for Ephemeral in a heartbeat.

Alarin

1

Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

The true cost commodity of Lusternia's economy is time. The time players invest into producing said commodity. If you take the smallest block of time needed to do a game task - say 5-10 minutes and figure out how much gold can be produced in that time. You've got your basic unit of measurement to figure out how much something should cost.

Isser

2

Re: Upcoming Economy Rework and Goals

Upping the rate of comms generation from villages slightly, else dropkicking the upkeep costs on Research projects, would be a good start, either way. Finding that 'perfect balance' may very well be impossible and require constant tweaks, sadly...but at least there are options to level the matter a bit.

Shango

1

Keeping Divine Orders Alive

The one thing I've always said was "Man, it'd be so cool if I could join <enter dormant Divine name here> Order. While some have devoted followers who have both remained in the Order and managed to remain active, not all do. So I had a couple of ideas to maybe lessen the need for an active Divine in order for their followers to keep the Order going.

1. Allow the Order hopefuls to join an outside sect via game mechanics, such as Aetolia's Congregation system which allows the use of JOIN CONGREGATION OF <divine> which automatically makes them a part of that congregation.

2. Adding the ability to give Divine favours to other mortals into the Veneration skillset (hey, if a Divine deemed you worthy of not only making you one of their Avatars, but also allowed you a cult, why not?).

I write this in hope that we can keep a few more Divine Orders active, even if the Divine themselves become dormant. I'd love to know what you guys think!

Alarin

2