Problem: The Economy

Ejderha

Economy:

In an effort to provide some constructive feedback, I have written up some ideas about economic changes. They’re a bit rough and I’m posting them before overly reviewing them, because now it’s dinner time.

As noted directly and indirectly in the Leaving thread, the Economy in Lusternia has some real challenges. Some people like @Enya have posted on this, and I encourage them to join/post more here in a thread focused on that issue, like @Xenthos did for the family system.

I am not an economist. I might have used a word or phrase wrong, but I think the ideas are sound, certainly as places to start discussions.

What's wrong with the Economy? Many things. There is minimal reason or need to participate, the benefits are low if not illusory, and it is only barely saved from rampant inflation by illogical band-aids and the buffering backstop of the credit market. It's a game that wanted almost everything to be player made, except the currency, which is generated in the traditional, boring, nonsense way it is in all MMO's. Like any economic problem, there are many causes and complications as to why this happens, but in my view, the following are the most important:

1. Gold is generated by mobs merely existing in the world (traditional MMO trap)
2. Gold can’t be used to buy very many useful things, and the cases where you can buy useful things (buying credits on the credit market for example) it is a revenue neutral activity for the economy.
3. Despite inflationary pressures from the above, commodity prices are very low (partly because supply is high). 
4. Low commodity prices, low value of gold, and high competition make traditional economic activities mostly not-profitable. Doubly so for people who spend money on aethershops or trade artifacts. Most people should just sell the credits and never bother.
5. Competition is high because the actual labor time is zero for most trades, you can shop the competition easily via aetherplex, and the low value of gold means people don’t care -that- much about their profit margins. See also #2 re: low commodity costs.
6. There are only so many trades.
7. Long running pressure/reward systems in the game have created a glut of permanent items, so that it is relatively trivial to opt out of the economy, and never need to buy clothes/jewelry/weapons/armour/etc ever again.
8. Arbitrary rules like the gold cap were introduced to try and curb inflation, which it has done to an extent, but in a way that is super nonsensical and disenfranchising to players rather than empowering. Also, super not-transparent.
9. The only things stopping rampant inflation are the lack of interesting ‘real’ things to buy and the relative stability of the credit market, which provides a bit of ceiling to inflation.

I don’t think there’s a fast solution to this. I would consider the following proposals:

1. Fundamentally change the way gold enters the economy.

a. Remove gold drops from all non-sentient creatures (At least to start)

b. Replace those drops with sensible creature parts (claws, teeth, hides, hair, feathers, meat, etc). The more directly economically useful the better. There might exist different tiers of these items, and/or different mobs by level might drop different amounts etc. All of these items have  decay timers (appropriate to the material). BONUS - add skills to extend those timers for the investment of non-gold currencies (power, probably, in the form of reserves). Tailors can spin hair into string (which lasts longer), trackers can dry hides, I don’t know. Do cool stuff.)

c. Creature parts can be traded in to vendors in the villages for gold. HOWEVER, the amount they PAY for those parts is inversely related to the number of that part they have already purchased, from EVERYONE. Let this get very low if something is over-farmed.

d. Village tithes change from contributions to discounted purchases. Gold flows from the capital to the villages for comms based on controls from Trade Ministry. This gold (perhaps not literally, but in a handwaving fashion) is what funds the villagers to buy more creature parts. I would artificially increase village comm prices so you have some room to discount them for cities, but you could also just have them adjust dynamically based on supply and demand and make the city handle the margins more carefully.

e. Remove all ‘gold throttle’ mechanics, but remove also all ‘denizen gets more gold over time to encourage people to kill/beg’ mechanics.


2. Add a reserve currency

a. We already have most of what we need - credits are the bulwark against which inflation hits. But the real key to reserve currencies in MMO games is for the exchange to NOT be revenue neutral but to remove currency - gold - from the game at a stable and predictable rate which then CANNOT be used for trades with other players. Credits are currently a replacement currency, like Stones of Jordan, not a reserve currency. But, you guys, this is SO easy. You already have ways of making bound currencies, so they can’t be reused. You could do this a few ways, but my preference at a glance would be to set a gold rate at which players can purchase BOUND dingbats from the game, not each other. I chose dingbats because it’s a little less dangerous in terms of raw power, but you could also do bound credits. 

b. Imagine a world where you did do credits. Let’s say the admin set a price of 15000g for 1 bound credit. The credit market would go lower, but not that much lower - unbound credits are still better than bound credits for many purposes. In the meantime, it would make credits more accessible for newer players, less about hitting your ‘buy credits’ alias at the right time, put a floor on speculation, and take that gold entirely out of the game. Again, I would do dingbats first, because I think it would be safer, and because it would less directly compete with website sales.


3. Change the way runes work when attached to items.

a. To whit, remove the effect of runes whereby items they are attached to become permanent. Instead, items decay as normal, and when they do, the rune resets to the player like any artifact. This would also solve the ‘I must buy pliers’ problem. Do this for clothes, jewelry, weapons, armor, etc. Force people to participate in the economy.

b. For that matter, I would look at abilities like masterarmour and spendors (and any other similar) and change them as well. Perhaps they stop full on decay, but after #decay months they become in disrepair until repaired, which would only cost a fraction of the original cost. Or, make them decay too, and make the trades have to make their own stuff over again.

c. This suggestion will probably be unpopular, because people like convenience and having your stuff not-decay is super convenient. You know why it’s convenient? Because it allows you to opt out of the economy, never having to shop/buy/seek tradespeople/track decay etc. That is actually not good for the game. When I log in and realize I don't -have- to do anything, because I have no economic needs? That makes for more boring gameplay.


4. Introduce alternate currencies

a. Much like #1 above, but applied to sentient denizens. Why does everyone use the sovereign as their currency? If Castellan Krokani have their own currency, and to really ‘use’ it you either have to buy from them or use a currency exchange (make it an npc, run by supply and demand as your way to actually manage inflation rather than artificial caps, and add an exchange tax to take some money out of the economy).

5. Currency crisis. Remove sovereigns altogether. Let players mint coins in their city/commune, and let us f up our own economy so admin aren't to blame No, but, seriously. There might be a way to give economic control to players, allowing more finite creation of currencies so they circulate in controlled ways. 

Enya

I agree with your problem statement and like some of the solutions offhand. Will post tomorrow after i can think, but the only thing really missing is some general treatment of the trade skills and what place they would play. I don't think that nixing non-decay will do it. 

Karlach

Curbing future inflow isn't so much a problem as the massive existing stockpiles are. Short of doing a market crash and reset (which would annoy a lot of people who accumulated wealth over time) create meaningful dumps to expend vast amounts of currency and commodities.

Also I strongly disagree with suggestion 3, people rune vial and pipes for a reason, and is a common source of low level credit purchases for IRE.

Saran

With runes and nondecay there’s also customisation.

Maybe that can be bundled up and stored in something (the heart/soul of <short name> maybe?) that you can apply to transfer it to the new item when the previous decays or is destroyed?

edit: would require an exact match so a longsword can only be applied to a longsword

Ejderha

I don't have as much of a problem with vials and pipes tbh, and I totally agree that existing gold is a problem. Customization might be a bypass but even then it's a higher expense. The runes whose main purpose is nondecay, like pipe runes or the rune for cubes I also have less trouble with. Getting a free nondecay with every vitals/regen/buff/resist rune is just silly.

Arix

what about items where someone paid for the nondecay feature?

Ejderha

I mean obviously you can't take that away. You could stop offering it, or stop allowing it to be a side effect at least.

Arix

It's not that, I made my tinderbox nondecay, barely getting the credits in before it decayed, because of dumb RP reasons. (First thing I ever made, and then they changed nondecay rules so  I wanted to keep it)

Arix

Oh, and what about dingbat vials?

Ejderha

Of all the things that could be non-decay, vials and pipes are on my list of benefit outweighs the cost. Also, anyone can make them, so it doesn't even really feel like an 'economy' item outside of true newbies. I hear what you're saying though, and maybe there's an argument for purity.

Oh, one other thing I left out of the OP: If you want to incentivize people to bash other areas, don't increase the gold drops - that makes everything worse. Extra essence is just enough to be interesting without really affecting any economic change (since 99% of the time essence is spent for one's self and cannot be refunded, absent one pretty rare artifact).

Really, I'm just tired of finding 1000 gold coins on mobs that have neither hands nor pockets.

Arix

I mean you could do the thing with the glasswork rune that you mentioned, and just make dingbat vials cost more

Mrak

Does the economy "work" in other IRE games? How would I know if it were working?

Saran

Starmourn seems to have a pretty big focus on trying to make it work

Versalean

Honestly, I think tradeskills need a serious look, and by serious I'm talking tabula rasa. You know what my favourite tradeskill in any IRE is? Forging. Wanna know how many credits I've put into forging in Lusty? 0. Problem is that nobody is going to like the things that are needed to fix the economy. Weapon durability and weapon stats would - all by themselves - fix forging overnight. But the godmin would have to TELLS OFF when that was announced. Herbs. FML. Honestly, you might as well delete Herbs and make a Sparkleberries skillset. I'd still pay the 300cr for it and not miss 95% of the rest of the skillset. (Herbs isn't useless, but honestly it feels like it). The main issue is that even as somebody who doesn't bash for gold it feels cheaper to buy herbs from some other poor bastard than to go out and harvest them myself. That ain't right.

One thing I'll say is that to fix the economy, we are going to have to lose some of the things we love - some of the things we bought for ease and luxury. Things like the cube rune I bought two days ago. Cost me 75 credits. Effing expensive. More than I would ever have had to spend on cubes over the course of this character, but that entire expense took place outside of the economy (you could argue that I had to get the credits from somewhere, but 'genies'), and now you will never for the rest of my Lusternian experience see me on Market looking for cubes. Around a month from now I'll be able to afford gloves of mastery and the whole of enchanting just by trading in lips, and then you will literally never see me looking for an enchanter again. Self-reliance is literallly the nemesis of a economy, and it's what we've got.

I've mentioned genies and lips, and they're the third problem I'd like to mention (obvs include treasure maps and poteens). A wise man told me that Lusty was the Zimbabwe of IRE economies, and they were spot on. When I started 2-3 years ago I came in as a retiree with about 2k credits. I now have a tradein value in excess of 7k after carefully investing in less than 3 promos. I don't keep the best records but I think I can safely say I've spent less than $500 dollars in real cash (Actually, I think it's closer to $300, but cognitive biases, ya'll), which is around 1700 credits worth And my retirement value goes up every single day as I rub more genies, belch more coins, and farm more wonder gems from my corn (when I started playing wondergems were rarer than rocking horse shit. It is now literally a struggle to sell them on Market). I love it, because it makes me feel like King Dingaling, but this state of play has got to be harming the game. And I'm not one of the richest players.

All those farmables have got to go. But, again, I wouldn't care to be the Godmin who had to deliver that message to this playerbase.

Much Love
V

Aeldra

There's so much to be said about this topic, I'll not be answer to everything I'd like to address, but a few things:

First: Personally a very firm NO to removing the non-decay from things. Honestly, half of the runes I bought were partially to preserve the few things of sentimental value that Aeldra got over the years, because they make up a part of who she is. Removing that would mean to having to stash every gift she ever got into a chest or see them decay after a, ultimately, very short time. But then, I don't think the community loses anything from me having a few things permanently preserved because, frankly, aeldra's a sucker for shiny things and with the glamrock, she's always on the lookout on new shiny things to make/wear.

Second: Self reliance. This is a tough one. On the one hand I agree, but at the same time, I do enjoy having the ability to simply have a trade active at one time and make the things I need. Plus, let's be honest, a large part of the playerbase has a next to no interest in helping people looking for tradespeople, even if the tips/payment is generous. At one point in time I decided I wasn't ready to ask for an ooc week to get a certain item anymore and just went with the ugly standard thing that someone sold in a shop, which eventually led me to instead learning the skill so I could make myself a pretty version of it. Can't remove self-reliance without ensuring people can get their must-haves somehow.

Third: As a shopkeeper and a person who has every trade skill that she has access to without classflex, I must really say most trades suffer from two distinct problems: Irrelevance and boredom. Like, let's take a look:

- herbalism, like... hell. This skill is one of the most boredom inducing skills I've ever encountered. It's just hours upon hours of mindless grind, with little to no surprise or influence on your part. Your main problem is remembering which herb grows where and that's it. I've always paid herbalists that delivered to me personally with extra tips, knowing just how much of a grind it is.

- enchantment. Enchanting cubes falls into the same category. Even with -all- possiblities of making it faster in place, it takes a near age to charge a few cubes, only to get like 6000 gold per cube? frankly, that's like... four, five mobs? Everytime I do cube recharges is merely because people actually need them, not because am turning a profit. Same time invested in doing -whatever- is getting you more money.

- tailoring. Apart of the knots, this whole skillset has turned into a mere cosmetical skillset. splendours are only interesting for acrobatics users these days, and then there's aethersuits too. I'm not sure I mind this too much, but at least it's one of the less grindy skillsets.

- artisan is actually one of those few that I consider fine. It has a good mix of everything, I think some of these things are just too commodity hungry given the keepup if we're looking at commodity availability.

- cooking. Nice skill, except it has so very few real impact. People buy constitution platters and speed platters and that's it. I'd love to see it restored some of it's old quirks, but it's by no means a main offender.

- bookbinding. I feel bookbinding is one of the few that's in a good place. It does get the job done, it has a lot of stuff to sell that people actually want and need and it has uses for the bookbinding themselves.

- tattoos. Another main offender. You -never- need a tattooist after the first time unless you need to change your tattoos. Aeldra's not seen a tattooist since 2 ooc years. A tattooist has only one benefit to themselves and I'll easily say that this one benefit is not worth it. It doesn't generate money, it consumes your time and ultimately is just a service skill to others.

- alchemy. It's whacky, it's money-rewarding, it's surprising, I like it. Main problem is that most of the stuff available to lorecrafters and brewmeisters is slowly getting irrelevant / needs to be updated.

Fourth: On shopkeeping itself / generating money. I would love a change to have intermediate things drop from creatures instead of money, like actually having things to sell to npcs to get money. As with any thing though, it'll be a tough call to allow joe newbie to still generate their coin without their revenue being pushed down to the bottom because jane has already pulled the money out of every merchants pocket all across the basin.

To sum it up... i think this is a really tough one.

Arkh

The problem isn't really that there is too much gold, per se. It's that there is too much gold in relation to the credits circulating the market -- and credit prices are, for all intents and purposes, the way we measure an IRE game's "economic health".

And the availability of credits is always tied to the population of a game. Take Imperian, for example, whose credit prices jumped from 10k to the 30k range as they bled players from retirements (and as the number of established players shrunk, so did its ability to retain new ones). On the opposite side is Achaea, whose larger population also brings in a large amount of credits.

Note, though, that even Achaea is only slowing down the inevitable rise of credit prices. It's because almost everything that's important requires credits. Non-decay? Credits. Artifacts? Credits. Lessons? Credits.

A solution that has been floated around is to finally add a direct gold -> lesson conversion. I don't know about Lusternia, exactly, but a notable portion of Achaea's population changes class so frequently. Right now, these types of people only add to the pressure on the credit supply. Switch them over to gold, and thus kill two birds with one stone: a reliable gold sink, and less pressure on the credit market.

Deichtine

@Versalean makes good points that a huge number of the actual trade skills are pretty borked and not really useful either as combat/utility tools or as an actual trade skill.

Big issue with the economy as a player driven force is that a player can get to the point where there is no need to interact with anyone else.

This may sound a bit odd but if we take it step by step. We can't always apply real world economics to a game but its not a bad idea to look at it this way.

An active economy requires constant trade flow and interaction. Stagnancy is the bane of economists.

What we have in lusternia is a case where every single valuable trade resource can be made by a single person. I can harvest herbs, I can forge, I can brew potions, I can do cook dust and make enchantments  etc etc. There is no need for me to trade with anyone. I am in effect self sufficent and there are a number of other people like this. T

his lets these individuals dictate the market price. I can sell for what ever I want. I dont have any suppliers to pay for I dont have any distrubution center to support etc. I control the supply and means of production there isnt any part of the chain with any one else in it.(Small exception to some comms only being accessable at a comm store.) This gives me exceptional power in an economic sense.

As a practical example Sparkleberries started out at 40 gold per, I acted in a deliberate manner to slowly push their prices down. I got them to as low at 15 gold each by constantly being able to undercut before I got tired of it. If I wanted I could push the price of every herb and potion down to 1 gold and there isn't anything my competitors could do to stop me.

This state isnt a monopoly but it works like an oligopoly. Power of trade is held in the hands of a very very small number of people who A don't have to worry about supply chains and individual groups, workers or companies requesting more of the pie and also B have a mechanical production advantage to market challengers due to artifacts.


Theres two ways in my mind to fix this.

Solution one is the best way but is the way most people will hate and I recally can't see anyone supporting it.  Make trade skills way way more restriction. This would require big nerfs to the chord and tam artifacts and make more trade skills class dependant. Make it harder to switch from one trade to another and remove the demigod and ascendant +1 trade skill power. Your essentially forcing people to have limited means to production to force them to have to interact with each other to craft stuff. Eg take steam folding out of herbs, make it so an alchemist cant easily be a herbalist so if you want to brew potions you need to get another player to be getting you the herbs etc. This is such a big change I cant see many people going for it to be honest.


Solution two. Wipe out any commodities produced by the mines of old. Add in a big vanishing tax on any comms bought, EG you buy stuff in your city and the city only gets 30% of the gold of the purchase the other 70% just poofs away.  Add in a lot more comm shop only comms in the production of everything. This forces a gold sink into the production of everything. EG I now need 50 leather to brew a potion or something else.

Vivet

Deichtine said:

Solution two. Wipe out any commodities produced by the mines of old. Add in a big vanishing tax on any comms bought, EG you buy stuff in your city and the city only gets 30% of the gold of the purchase the other 70% just poofs away.  Add in a lot more comm shop only comms in the production of everything. This forces a gold sink into the production of everything. EG I now need 50 leather to brew a potion or something else.

I would STRONGLY recommend AGAINST doing all of this at once until you see how much is left over after stripping away commodities added to the economy via mines. This was by far the biggest source of commodities at any point in time, with some players outputting more comms than all of the villages combined on a daily basis (each of those players on an individual basis, too).

It's taking a long time to eat through that, but slowly we see it affecting supplies over time.

I would suggest you take a look at just how much each village produces, and keep in mind that not every org gets to hold more than a couple villages. Holding a village at all does not necessarily promise you will get more of the commodity you want, either (ie, not all villages produce poultry).

The ability to help boost production is also extremely limited based on commodity. Presently, gems are actually the easiest commodity to boost production of (odd as that might seem).

Maybe if there was a lower general output, but more ways to help villages boost production modestly, that would have an overall better effect, as well as introducing new time sinks.

Aeldra

Deichtine said:

Solution one is the best way but is the way most people will hate and I recally can't see anyone supporting it.  Make trade skills way way more restriction. This would require big nerfs to the chord and tam artifacts and make more trade skills class dependant. Make it harder to switch from one trade to another and remove the demigod and ascendant +1 trade skill power. Your essentially forcing people to have limited means to production to force them to have to interact with each other to craft stuff. Eg take steam folding out of herbs, make it so an alchemist cant easily be a herbalist so if you want to brew potions you need to get another player to be getting you the herbs etc. This is such a big change I cant see many people going for it to be honest.

Even if there would be support for this... where would this large group of players come from to provide production chains? I haven't seen any of them . I mean... celest has at most a few people active, so you'd already be dependent on allies to make anything, and even then. I imagine this would easily turn it into even more of a chore to produce anything.

Also: the amount of refunds that would have to be done would be rather enormous.

Shaddus

Ideas that I'd like to see for goldsinks:

A travelling beast merchant that sells a stock of rare beasts. Can't be collared, rotating stock. 

Renting artifacts with gold.

Ability to purchase power with gold. Powerblocked? Just need a quick burst of power in the middle of a domoth battle? Over your limit of power but you really need 50% for your masterplate? Boom, pay for Power.

Allow orders to set prices for people to buy favors. Your god is inactive but you really need a tf? Pull out the e-wallet at their fulcrux.

The ability to stable beasts for more than 36 months.

Being able to gamble on figurine battles.

Custom hair/beard curios. Maybe a  merchant that sells premade ones as well.

Zimoru your beast for gold. Possible appearances that aren't accessible by normal zimoru.

Customise your beast with gold. Requires admin approval, must conform to what the beast could possibly look like. (Edit to explain what I mean. For instance, an admin wouldn't let me pay 50k gold to turn my "plain, unordinary penguin" into "Snaggletooth, Penguin of Slaughter". They would, however, allow me to customise it into something like, "a muddy, snarling penguin" or perhaps even "an undead penguin of ghastly hues" if I paid enough. Maybe a way to customise your beast using the already awesome set up we have for basic customs, but the admin look at the design and make a quote on how much they'd charge the player to do it, or reject it if it's too close to an actual custom pet.)

Perfumes/colognes, smokeables with custom ambiances.

Custom demigod enter/exit/look/teleports.

Aeldra

Shaddus said:

-stuff-

I like them most of them but... my poor gold reserves. You had me at travellign beast merchant, had me even more at the hair styles and sold it with the rest.

Saran

I mean, the reality is that people are going to be upset cause it's going back and changing things that have us in a pretty independent state... because that's part of the problem.


But a couple ideas that came to mind.

* You could introduce a payment to use the crafting benches.
A "wear and tear"  cost that serves as a minimum which is removed and an amount that goes to the orgs. Guild and Personal benches would need some consideration. It's something small but it's extra money that goes out.

* omg, please give us the option of crafted druid/mage/wiccan/guardian weapons
Don't get me wrong, it's nice to just summon your weapon but it would also be so amazing to have the ability to design them and have choices like the other archetypes do.

* I feel like also making more interactions between trades could help.
Like more "generating", "processing", and "final product" skills spread across trades. (Like you gather a special mat with herbs, use alchemy to turn it into something, and then artisan uses that for something)

Xenthos

Offering gold for Godbuffs would make some RP sense, just like making offerings of gold to a temple for favours.  Set it up with an initial cost, let the God modify it (within reason), and would help address favour distribution imbalances.  Just make sure the gold offering also gives the God some essence too (as if offering directly) -- they are accustomed to giving favours for other offerings, after all.  And make it so your gold TF cannot be more than one day at a time (preferable to interact and do direct offerings if you have that option).

Foehn

My butt cringed when you suggested that clothing and such with runes should still decay. But the more I thought about it, the more I love this idea and some of the subsequent suggestions. I do think there needs to be some consideration for sentimental objects and such, and a means to preserve them, but I'm confident that there can be a separate mechanism for that that can be tailored around abuse. 

The part that really got me excited was moving away from the need for pliers. Then Foehn could do away with all of her seren jewelry and actually sport some glom bling.

Ess

I submitted my first design the other day

I was surprised when I resubmitted a design that I got wrong that I did not have to pay for it again. It was nice but seemed overly generous. I like to be punished for my stupidity to make me get things right the first time!

Karlach

You can actually offer gold now, just requires an active divine to reward it. An automated mechanic for short duration TFs (1-2 days max) would be a neat sink. But thinking over it, the last time we saw dirt cheap credits was the triple junction lottery years ago, and by cheap I mean 8k a credit cheap.

It's been a long time since any permanent plots of land for sale were a thing in Lusternia, maybe it's time for a new roadside tavern or island in the middle of somewhere, and watch people trip over themselves throwing their giant gold reserves at buying as many tickets as possible in a hope to own it.

Aeldra

Ess said:

I submitted my first design the other day

I was surprised when I resubmitted a design that I got wrong that I did not have to pay for it again. It was nice but seemed overly generous. I like to be punished for my stupidity to make me get things right the first time!

that may sound easier for native speakers, but there's people ( like myself ) who simply make language mistakes that despite many years of english as a foreign language I just can't get into my head right in designs ( aphostrophes come to mind ). I try to avoid mistakes as best as I can, but there are simply things in my designs that will be plainly obvious to a native speaker, but will be really obscure to me. So, I'd rather not be punished for not having english as my native language, thank you.

Saran

Aeldra said:

Deichtine said:

Solution one is the best way but is the way most people will hate and I recally can't see anyone supporting it.  Make trade skills way way more restriction. This would require big nerfs to the chord and tam artifacts and make more trade skills class dependant. Make it harder to switch from one trade to another and remove the demigod and ascendant +1 trade skill power. Your essentially forcing people to have limited means to production to force them to have to interact with each other to craft stuff. Eg take steam folding out of herbs, make it so an alchemist cant easily be a herbalist so if you want to brew potions you need to get another player to be getting you the herbs etc. This is such a big change I cant see many people going for it to be honest.

Even if there would be support for this... where would this large group of players come from to provide production chains? I haven't seen any of them . I mean... celest has at most a few people active, so you'd already be dependent on allies to make anything, and even then. I imagine this would easily turn it into even more of a chore to produce anything.

Also: the amount of refunds that would have to be done would be rather enormous.

In theory, some would likely gravitate towards the trades that have fewer users because rarity and need would drive prices up along with ensuring a customer base.

Personally, I'm pretty much at a point where I do not need another player for trade stuff, it's really just a tattooist because of how it works and maybe a forger just because I don't have that yet. This is without Spellcraft thanks to those magic item curios and clockwork regulators.
Realistically, without some limitation that's just always going to happen.

For refunds, a new archetype is on the horizon and maybe we could finally get stuff like floristry or pyrotechnics, sure they're not a buff but people seem to typically respond to the suggestion for stuff like that positively so they'd likely encourage people to spend gold.

Ess

Aeldra said:

Ess said:

I submitted my first design the other day

I was surprised when I resubmitted a design that I got wrong that I did not have to pay for it again. It was nice but seemed overly generous. I like to be punished for my stupidity to make me get things right the first time!

that may sound easier for native speakers, but there's people ( like myself ) who simply make language mistakes that despite many years of english as a foreign language I just can't get into my head right in designs ( aphostrophes come to mind ). I try to avoid mistakes as best as I can, but there are simply things in my designs that will be plainly obvious to a native speaker, but will be really obscure to me. So, I'd rather not be punished for not having english as my native language, thank you.

I am feeling ashamed now! Curse my imperialist ways.

It is testament to all those who do not have English as their native language that I never even think of it as an issue!

Portius

Karlach said:

You can actually offer gold now, just requires an active divine to reward it.

Did they ever get rid of the restriction that you can only offer 1000 gold per command with it? If that is still there, it should go away if people are supposed to be offering gold.

Shaddus

Here's an idea, partially from another ire game It may be rough/painful, but try this in this order.

Anyone who has a trade that is able to have designs can now submit their own designs, at a 5k gold cost. These designs are private to that person. Maybe gate this beyond Virtuoso or so skill level. 

Delete non-org cartels. Anyone who was in that cartel when It is deleted gains a copy of that design in their repertoire. Deeded cartels' designs are added to their org' s list.

Personal designs decay. You have to pay a small fee every 90-180 days or so for each design you wish to keep. Decayed designs become inactive and can't be made until re-upped.. If a design is inactive for 180 days, it is deleted.

Designers can pay gold to add a noun to their design. You want to make a wall mirror as an artisan? Add "mirror" to your designed wallfeature for 10k gold before you submit it.