Economy Updates: Commodity Production

Estarra

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2897
Date: 1/23/2019 at 17:21
From: Estarra the Eternal
To  : Everyone
Subj: Economy Updates: Commodity Production

In order to create a more dynamic economy in-game, commodity production has been adjusted in villages. Basically, a perfect economy would see all commodities produced need to be used. However, we aren't aiming for perfection; rather, we are aiming for commodities actually being of value and even dealing with occasional scarcity. Just be warned that this will be a painful process for those who are used to cheap, limitless supplies of commodities, but I hope you will understand how much more healthy game play.

We are not looking for an overnight 'fix'. Changes will be incremental and slow. Eventually, we will look at capping commodity stores in cities and communes and making commodities quickly decay in stockrooms.  However, we are not there yet. First, we are looking to adjust commodity production in villages.


Villages will now be slower to produce commodities and tithing has been reduced. We will continue to monitor village production and will tweak in the future, either increasing production if it appears commodities aren't being produced fast enough or further decreasing production if it appears there is still a glut of commodities.

Commodity quests have not been touched and will still affect commodity production in the village the quest is performed.

Xenthos

We still need real and actually doable village quests for metal / veggie / fruit comms that can be done like other things.  If you introduce scarcity with no way of acquiring these things short of raiding other orgs, you are not putting us in a better situation.

Telling someone that the only way to get the iron for their sword is to raid Rockholm every hour for a ten hour stretch will not make anyone involved happy.

Estarra

We'll look at adjusting as needed, including quests. However, I think a better solution for the one you mentioned is just to be able to purchase excess commodities from a village commodity shop. But, anyway, we can look at creative solutions to scarcity issues when and if it comes up.

Xenthos

Estarra said:

We'll look at adjusting as needed, including quests. However, I think a better solution for the one you mentioned is just to be able to purchase excess commodities from a village commodity shop. But, anyway, we can look at creative solutions to scarcity issues when and if it comes up.

You cannot feasibly do that now.  The scarcer the resource, the more expensive it gets.  You also cannot buy more than ten commodities from a village store at a time, and every time you make a purchase the price jumps even more.

There is a reason people do not like to go shopping at village comm shops, the only way you can really make them worthwhile is spamming quests to bring down the price and then buy a little bit as a "bonus".  But since you cannot do that for certain comms, like metals, people end up being filtered to orgs where things are actually relatively stable.  Again, when you have a sword that takes 200 iron to make, buying ten at once simply does not get you anywhere.

Remember that you also did drastically raise the comm costs of certain things (like forging and artisan crafted goods) a while ago, and forging is very very metal heavy.

Edit: Note that I am not arguing against changes, but this is something that I consider to be required in order to make those changes actually beneficial instead of just making things worse.  We need a player-driven way to adjust the creation of those comms just like we do for all the rest, then the passive can be hammered.  Move the burden onto people to actually do things, that's great.  It is less great to reduce the passive creation and not allow for actually feasible active generation though.

Enya

I'll think about posting at length to rehash the points explaining this but: Adjusting up or down to any degree, including giving everyone infinite comms or reducing the comms virtually to zero and everywhere in between won't meaningfully fix or update the economy. They can, however force people to fiddle with a system they manifestly are frustrated by.

In/Out adjustment initiatives can make it easier (or harder) to put in different types of changes, and may make the economy more (or less) responsive to those changes, but don't touch any of the fundamental issues that made the game economy go stale. In the context of a broader plan or idea, barring specific problems like @Xenthos brings up, this is a GOOD CHANGE! On its own, it doesn't do anything but create some annoying edge cases. 

Estarra

Just to reiterate, we aren't looking for a one and done 'fix' but incremental changes to make the economy healthier. I'm very open to ideas for using or producing commodities outside of the current format, so please post them here!

Charites

We've heard a few questions about Forging commodity costs, so wanted to chime in quickly.

Forging commodity costs are something We're currently reviewing as part of our project to improve the Design system. We completely agree that with the changes to how weaponry works, their minimum commodity values make very little sense - this is something We want to fix.

As We've mentioned, We cannot give a timescale for these changes, though We can tell you that they will definitely not be coming out until after Ascension - to avoid clashing with the Challenge of Beauty.

Xenthos

Estarra said:

Just to reiterate, we aren't looking for a one and done 'fix' but incremental changes to make the economy healthier. I'm very open to ideas for using or producing commodities outside of the current format, so please post them here!

I still feel like the easiest change is just making farmers & miners non-greedy.  It requires no coding changes afaik.  There was concern about taking stuff from your own miners and turning it in at the same village, but this is already currently possible (murder your villagers, unenemy yourself, turn in the comms).

If still concerned, add a villageSource flag so you can make it not able to turn in at the source village (whether begged or killed).

Past that I had an envoy report for some ideas for other questable sources, I can try to find it when I get home.

PS I am very happy to hear about the comm cost review!

Bairloch

I like the idea of scarcity and an economy where you can actually help by providing comms when there is a scarcity. The question is, how do you get them? If Gaudi has Dairuchi and Dairuchi is scarce on wood, how do you get the wood to sell them? Is the only way to go and buy it in say, Stewartsville, where there is a glut and it's cheap? That's great, I love that kind of mechanic, the "trucker" profession, if you will. The only problem is, if the two are controlled by enemy states. Then you've turned an economy quest into a combat quest, as the opponents will see you there "raiding" their glut to help your scarcity. And they will fight you for it. Because keeping you scarce is good for them.
Like I said, I love this concept, I'm just concerned about the execution. Other than putting in an entire new set of resource gathering mechanics (not a good use of time), I can't see a way to fix that.
Now, it's possible I've made a lot of assumptions and I'm way off. I'm only going on what I've read here. I just don't want what could be a cool, non-combat way to help your city/commune become just another PvP driver.
My 2 cents.

Saran

Seems a relatively straight-forward way to push people back into this aspect of the economy would be to look at non-decay as it's a pretty big factor in opting out of the economy. From memory I was at a point where my only real gold sink was curatives and even that wasn't really that impactful.

So like... you could make non-decay items instead become unusable at the end of the normal decay timer and require an item from the trade to repair it, adding time to its decay timer. Similarly the repair commands trades have would let you extend that timer before the decay happens.

You could alternatively have some item that all the runes and descriptions get attached to, which then pops out when the item decays, if it's attached to another replica of the original item then it applies the customisations and items to it.

Either way, you'd also make the summoned weapons craftable instead and then you've introduced a regular reason people need to interact with various trades and take comms out of the game.

Bairloch

Saran said:

You could alternatively have some item that all the runes and descriptions get attached to, which then pops out when the item decays, if it's attached to another replica of the original item then it applies the customizations and items to it.

I'm always a fan of decay as an economic driver. Here in Lusternia, we have so much that never decays, though. I'm as bad about this as anyone. I've got my gnome goggles, my bandolier, my saddlebags, etc. etc. I was thinking of getting an aethersuit so I wouldn't have to worry about my clothes always decaying.

But then I logged into one of my (many) alts that I haven't played in a (long) while. Everything was gone. And, y'know, getting it all back wasn't that bad. I saw some new styles, visited some shops I hadn't before... it was good.

So how do we balance the "annoyance" of decay with the fun of discovery and the need for an economic driver? Man, if I knew that, I'd be running my own game. But I do love this idea from Saran. The "enhancer" doesn't decay, but the sword/armor/lute/whatever does. That's neat, in my opinion. I think it's an elegant solution, though probably not easy. Most good ideas aren't.

Xenthos

What about something along the lines of the following (numbers can be adjusted):

1) Stop having village prices change every time someone buys something or does a commquest.

2) Instead, prices change at the turn of the month.

 - If 0 of a comm in stock, the prices goes up by 2 gold.

 - If between 1 and 50, it goes up 1 gold.

 - If between 50 and 99, no change.

 - If between 100 and 249, goes down 1 gold.

 - If 250+, goes down 2 gold.

This would make villages more stable for bulk purchases, and price fluctuations will be spread out over time.  Should slowly adjust towards what people think is a "good" rate for them; if considerably below org shops, I would expect it to get bought out and then start going up again until a stockpile has been rebuilt.

Right now, the only time it is really worth buying in a village is when you are doing the quests to drive prices down.  Otherwise, you can only buy a handful before prices fly past your commshop's rates, so why even bother?

Saran

Bairloch said:

Saran said:

You could alternatively have some item that all the runes and descriptions get attached to, which then pops out when the item decays, if it's attached to another replica of the original item then it applies the customizations and items to it.

I'm always a fan of decay as an economic driver. Here in Lusternia, we have so much that never decays, though. I'm as bad about this as anyone. I've got my gnome goggles, my bandolier, my saddlebags, etc. etc. I was thinking of getting an aethersuit so I wouldn't have to worry about my clothes always decaying.

But then I logged into one of my (many) alts that I haven't played in a (long) while. Everything was gone. And, y'know, getting it all back wasn't that bad. I saw some new styles, visited some shops I hadn't before... it was good.

So how do we balance the "annoyance" of decay with the fun of discovery and the need for an economic driver? Man, if I knew that, I'd be running my own game. But I do love this idea from Saran. The "enhancer" doesn't decay, but the sword/armor/lute/whatever does. That's neat, in my opinion. I think it's an elegant solution, though probably not easy. Most good ideas aren't.

Yeah, I've got like... aethersuit, runed instrument, bandolier with full runed vials, enough curios to have all enchantments all of which have regulators connected along with a runed cube, fesix backpack, envirofinity vacuum, a couple runed pieces of jewellery, non-decay in some spots of my manses.

There's still consumables like curatives and food, but it's a lot of potential comm/gold sinks that I've just artifact'd away, and from memory most stuff that's not a "consumable" can be made non-decay at this point. Which also leaves some trades kinda empty if they don't have a consumable.

Xenthos

I have a permanent centaur steak.

I really, really do not like decay.

Everiine

Xenthos said:

I have a permanent centaur steak.

Saran

Xenthos said:

I have a permanent centaur steak.

I really, really do not like decay.

*shrug* with appropriate balancing it would likely be a small drain on the gold from people that regularly bash. 

Those that struggle would have incentive to participate more in activities that generate gold.

Begging functions as a fall back if someone doesn't have enough money to maintain their stuff.

It also would be a drain that affects everyone equally so it's effectiveness wouldn't be relative to say... how interested people are in expanding their manses or the like. 

Bairloch

I must be begging wrong. I've only ever gotten a pittance from it.

Xenthos

Bairloch said:

I must be begging wrong. I've only ever gotten a pittance from it.

Because begging's gold got nerfed to 20% of what it used to be a while ago (maybe almost a year at this point?).

Mobs slowly generate gold the longer they've been alive / unbegged from, so if you keep begging from the same ones you'll get almost nothing.  If you beg from ones nobody has touched in a while you'll get more, but it's still only 20% of what it would have been.  You're supposed to get your gold via doing quests now (like killing things & turning in their corpses for example).

Bairloch

Been begging for years, never got anything. Must just be begging popular mobs. I recently headed up to Tosha since I heard that was good, but that would have been after the change you mentioned.

Jolanthe

Making decay a central economic driver is icky. Everyone who's been gone for long usually has had the same thing to say on that matter - looking for and re-obtaining stuff is one of the #1 motivation killers for engagement. Is that not why we implemented those welcome-back packs, even before tinkering with the economy?

Making commodity production more player-driven rather than reliant on passive production via villages does seem like a good idea, but there are huge gulfs in player potential to produce commodities.

One the one hand, we've got rockeaters. I can easily gather up 100 rockeater corpses in an hour, get 100 gems just from the turn-ins, then turn around and buy gems at 1gp per under the current system. Gems are GGEZ.

On the other hand, we have fruit, the most useful and commonly used food commodity. Need it for many things, for pretty much anything sweet that isn't simply sugary, for anything with nuts, for wine, the list goes on and on.

You can produce one fruit comm by killing twenty scrumhogs and then doing a lights out puzzle. But wait! If you do that once, you can't do it again as soon as the scrumhogs reset! No, you need to help the other farm brothers produce vegetables and grain before you can do fruit again. It's that, or wait until the entire quest resets.

The only other way of producing fruit I know of is killing furrikin farmers and taking it from them. Otherwise fruit production in most villages outside of Estelbar and Acknor is already rather low.

Even if you just did something as simple as allow us to turn-in the white lemons from Clarramore to produce fruit, that'd help a little bit. More new comm quests would be a huge positive. That or adjust them - for the effort it takes, getting that fruit basket in Vesucia should net you waaaaay more than a single fruit comm. I say 50 would be fair.

Meat, comparatively, is much easier to produce, which is comical when compared to real world food economics.

Jolanthe

Tangent: I've always liked cows as a theoretical model for production in Lusternia because they are versatile. You can use them to produce milk, meat, or leather, depending on how you turn them in. There's a fair number of them, but if you want a lot of any one thing, you need to make a conscious decision to forgo the other options. This is a good and engaging mechanic.

The IC explanation for rockeaters producing gem commodities is that they can't digest them, or digest them very slowly, so they are extracted from the rockeater's stomach after being slain.

But why only gems? What if there were a chance to get ores, or an assurance you could get metal ores to exchange in based on what region that rockeater was in, what strata it was eating, etc? This could be especially interesting in the undervault, and could create that same sort of production versatility for the rockeater rather than leaving it as simply a mass gem production mechanism.

Food for thought!

Everiine

Re-introducing a limited scarcity factor isn't going to crash the game. We know this, because there used to be scarcity in some form or other before changes to mechanics flooded the game with cheap and bountiful comms (comparatively). That's one of the reasons I remember designs having their comms suddenly doubled to an obscene amount, because there wasn't scarcity any longer. Re-balancing will mean a small hit to the way we are used to things, but we've been there before and survived just fine.

Saran

Jolanthe said:

Making decay a central economic driver is icky. Everyone who's been gone for long usually has had the same thing to say on that matter - looking for and re-obtaining stuff is one of the #1 motivation killers for engagement. Is that not why we implemented those welcome-back packs, even before tinkering with the economy?

There's a pretty significant difference between the decay that lead to the welcome-back packs and having to buy some new armour every couple of RL months as an active player (looking at the aetherplex some weapons you might need to only replace once an RL year?).

Realistically that sort of time frame isn't that dissimilar from patches in ffxiv where you generally have to go out and grind for your new gear rather than just popping quickly to a shop. It's like... what four commands to replace something, if doing that every couple of months is going to kill your motivation and engagement then you're probably not engaged in the game already. If the concern is actually for returnees you can just include the Bob-made items in the welcome-back packs as that's what they're here for.

It's probably also worth noting that decay is a thing that has always been part of the game, non-decay lets you escape that and I think that's a contributing factor to the current state of the economy, it's pretty similar to self-sufficiency but it doesn't just reduce your need for other players, it effectively negates your participation in an otherwise necessary part of the economy.

Jolanthe

Saran said:

It's like... what four commands to replace something, if doing that every couple of months is going to kill your motivation and engagement then you're probably not engaged in the game already. If the concern is actually for returnees you can just include the Bob-made items in the welcome-back packs as that's what they're here for.

Depends entirely on what you're looking for. Finding waterbreathe/walk can be quite arduous at times as is. If everything was available all the time, you might have a point! But it definitely, absolutely, is not.

I also want to point out that some of the things you listed actually add to the economy, especially aethersuits. I wear many, many more different clothes now that I have an aethersuit, since it counts as an artifact and doesn't affect layering. Artifact hide the aethersuit, then you can wear literally whatever else you might want for show! It's great. I'd be pretty disappointed if that lovely bit of functionality went away.

Everiine

I don't know much about enchanting, but is the lack of specific enchantments directly tied to an already existing scarcity of comms? Or because people just aren't making them? Estarra's post is just about adjusting the availability of comms. What we do with them is up to us.

Enya

No, the lack of specific enchantments is (I suspect) because enchanters don't have any reason to bother making them so they don't... or don't pick enchantment at all. 

Incidentally, I think that allowing layering of armor and clothing would make a wider range of tailoring abilities see more use. 

Saran

Jolanthe said:

Saran said:

It's like... what four commands to replace something, if doing that every couple of months is going to kill your motivation and engagement then you're probably not engaged in the game already. If the concern is actually for returnees you can just include the Bob-made items in the welcome-back packs as that's what they're here for.

Depends entirely on what you're looking for. Finding waterbreathe/walk can be quite arduous at times as is. If everything was available all the time, you might have a point! But it definitely, absolutely, is not.

I also want to point out that some of the things you listed actually add to the economy, especially aethersuits. I wear many, many more different clothes now that I have an aethersuit, since it counts as an artifact and doesn't affect layering. Artifact hide the aethersuit, then you can wear literally whatever else you might want for show! It's great. I'd be pretty disappointed if that lovely bit of functionality went away.

If you are having difficulty locating any item, as has been pointed out, that would be because it is so unprofitable to sell them, let alone have the trade skill they're in. 

Looking at enchantment more specifically, it looks like the magic bear is going for 30 credits? That's what ~300 credits, combined with a regulator and cube with an extra 75 credits to make the cube non-decay, that effectively negates the need to have a Spellcrafter once you're set up. On top of that, you've also reduced your need for jewellery stuff to practically zero (some people might still need power stones). So yeah, why should anyone invest the lessons into Spellcraft on the off chance someone might need one of those specific enchantments?


Also, I'll negate you with myself regarding aethersuits, I got mine customised to an outfit I am happy with and proceeded to ignore not only tailoring but the armour side of forging as a result of their existence. Given previous threads, I'd also expect this economic driver probably also doesn't apply to others that are opposed to nixing non-decay.d
Similarly, with the glamrock you could wear whatever you like regardless of layering, and that appears to still respect the economy aspects of decay.

Xenthos

Saran said:

Jolanthe said:

Saran said:

It's like... what four commands to replace something, if doing that every couple of months is going to kill your motivation and engagement then you're probably not engaged in the game already. If the concern is actually for returnees you can just include the Bob-made items in the welcome-back packs as that's what they're here for.

Depends entirely on what you're looking for. Finding waterbreathe/walk can be quite arduous at times as is. If everything was available all the time, you might have a point! But it definitely, absolutely, is not.

I also want to point out that some of the things you listed actually add to the economy, especially aethersuits. I wear many, many more different clothes now that I have an aethersuit, since it counts as an artifact and doesn't affect layering. Artifact hide the aethersuit, then you can wear literally whatever else you might want for show! It's great. I'd be pretty disappointed if that lovely bit of functionality went away.

If you are having difficulty locating any item, as has been pointed out, that would be because it is so unprofitable to sell them, let alone have the trade skill they're in. 

Looking at enchantment more specifically, it looks like the magic bear is going for 30 credits? That's what ~300 credits, combined with a regulator and cube with an extra 75 credits to make the cube non-decay, that effectively negates the need to have a Spellcrafter once you're set up. On top of that, you've also reduced your need for jewellery stuff to practically zero (some people might still need power stones). So yeah, why should anyone invest the lessons into Spellcraft on the off chance someone might need one of those specific enchantments?


Also, I'll negate you with myself regarding aethersuits, I got mine customised to an outfit I am happy with and proceeded to ignore not only tailoring but the armour side of forging as a result of their existence. Given previous threads, I'd also expect this economic driver probably also doesn't apply to others that are opposed to nixing non-decay.d
Similarly, with the glamrock you could wear whatever you like regardless of layering, and that appears to still respect the economy aspects of decay.

No it doesn't.  Put your clothing in a clothing rack and reset your glamrock whenever it times out with a script.  Non-decay is all over Lusternia all over the place, and the reason it exists is because people didn't like it and kept asking for ways to avoid it.  "Decay day" was always horrid for me, and for many others as well.

I would be very surprised if "everything, including artifacts, are now going to start decaying" ever gets implemented or seriously considered, tbh.  It feels like a lot of time wasted on a discussion that isn't going to actually... go anywhere.  There are artifacts that stop decay (temporal freezer, wonderbelt), there are artisan things (weapons racks, clothing cabinets), there are shop stockrooms, there are artifact runes (for clothing, jewellery, even pipes and vials), with a main selling point being "non-decay".  And if none of that tickles your fancy, there are artifacts you can buy outright (curios, surfboards, the spiderweb enchantment, and so on).  Or perhaps you just like something so much that you dish out 50 credits to make it non-decay via the Customize command.

And no, the difficulty of finding certain enchanting items is not because of "energy cubes".  An energy cube can't make you a waterbreathe.  It's because Enchanting is ridiculous.  It's limited to certain classes, and then certain subsets of enchanting are only available to certain types of enchanters (split amongst Cosmic and Elemental), so even if you find an enchanter it could very well not be the one you need.  Stocking those in a shop is problematic because someone might loathe the ring or bit you enchanted, too, so there is a disincentive to stock with goods that may just not move because people don't like the thematic you chose (I had an envoy report in to allow enchanters to stock raw enchantments that people could then attach to whatever they liked, but that was unfortunately turned down-- I think that one would have actually been useful for enchanters though).

Jolanthe

Xenthos said:

 (I had an envoy report in to allow enchanters to stock raw enchantments that people could then attach to whatever they liked, but that was unfortunately turned down-- I think that one would have actually been useful for enchanters though).

That's really too bad.

I should probably also add that when some of these enchantments are available, they're only on pieces less practical than rings or brooches, and they're like 10K-25K gold each. Nevermind how the designs usually don't jive with me. You might say, "but go ahead and just buy them!" to which I'll say, "Nah, I can log out and play something actually fun".

And if that's considered A-Okay, then we'll just roll that way.

Tangent:

As it has escaped my mind otherwise, I would encourage the administration to keep the governance system in mind during tweaks. As of right now, no one really runs with commercial over religious or conquest. Balancing against the existence of commercial governance and adding incentive to using it as a choice, rather than leaving it feeling like a non-option.

Across quests in general, it'd be good if rewards focused primarily on just one reward type or another. If you have a credit quest, it should earn you very little gold along the way - the credits should be the primary objective. In a theoretical quest where you might get a hundred or so commodities at the end, it'd be equally important to minimise gold production along the way. Right now you just go for whatever blanketly earns the most karma/essence/gold and it all feels samey same, or you just focus on the few that get you the most of everything for efficiency. Encouraging quest variety with reward variety, rather than bundles of similar ikons/gold/etc increases choice and agency.

Saran

Xenthos said:

Saran said:

No it doesn't.  Put your clothing in a clothing rack and reset your glamrock whenever it times out with a script.  Non-decay is all over Lusternia all over the place, and the reason it exists is because people didn't like it and kept asking for ways to avoid it.  "Decay day" was always horrid for me, and for many others as well.

I would be very surprised if "everything, including artifacts, are now going to start decaying" ever gets implemented or seriously considered, tbh.  It feels like a lot of time wasted on a discussion that isn't going to actually... go anywhere.  There are artifacts that stop decay (temporal freezer, wonderbelt), there are artisan things (weapons racks, clothing cabinets), there are shop stockrooms, there are artifact runes (for clothing, jewellery, even pipes and vials), with a main selling point being "non-decay".  And if none of that tickles your fancy, there are artifacts you can buy outright (curios, surfboards, the spiderweb enchantment, and so on).  Or perhaps you just like something so much that you dish out 50 credits to make it non-decay via the Customize command.

And no, the difficulty of finding certain enchanting items is not because of "energy cubes".  An energy cube can't make you a waterbreathe.  It's because Enchanting is ridiculous.  It's limited to certain classes, and then certain subsets of enchanting are only available to certain types of enchanters (split amongst Cosmic and Elemental), so even if you find an enchanter it could very well not be the one you need.  Stocking those in a shop is problematic because someone might loathe the ring or bit you enchanted, too, so there is a disincentive to stock with goods that may just not move because people don't like the thematic you chose (I had an envoy report in to allow enchanters to stock raw enchantments that people could then attach to whatever they liked, but that was unfortunately turned down-- I think that one would have actually been useful for enchanters though).

Non-decay has primarily been a side effect of artifacts because in Lusternia you attach the runes to stuff for the effect. Legit if the purpose of all of those runes is to make things non-decay they should probably just introduce a free customisation onto all of them, nuke most of the trades, and then just put some generic replicas in a shop somewhere.
I'm also not super empathetic to your decay day horrors when you've repeatedly noted how wealthy you are in game, dismissing many suggested solutions as pointless because you're not interested in them while asking for more shiny toys to buy at gold auctions. (As a note @Estarra, the last gold auctions really annoyed some of the players I talk to because of this)

The storage items you suggest support your non-decay belief also don't actually stop it completely, they slow it down unless you're expecting not to ever use it?
I'm also curious as to what artifact runes you actually consider to primarily be for non-decay?

Just searching for rune in the shop, the summer and winter runes are advertised as such but came around because of weather and the figurine rune probably. The clearest is the stasis gem, which is the one that actually makes the artisan storage items permanent. But not really seeing anything that doesn't have a pretty clear benefit that's not just, you don't have to whittle a pipe once a month.

As far as enchanting, all of those reasons for rarity, they're reasons why you would expect Spellcraft to be pretty common for Guardians and Mage, aside from the self buffs included in the skill. You could easily charge a bunch of money to people for enchanting if it's so difficult to find people and turn a decently significant profit. Realistically, the only reason people wouldn't be taking advantage is because there really isn't that much demand. Tinkerers can just as easily cover the more necessary parts.

Seriously, with regulators and cubes I have not needed a Spellcrafter in what... 5-10 rl years and that was only because I transferred everything over to magic items.

Saran

Jolanthe said:

Xenthos said:

 (I had an envoy report in to allow enchanters to stock raw enchantments that people could then attach to whatever they liked, but that was unfortunately turned down-- I think that one would have actually been useful for enchanters though).

That's really too bad.

I should probably also add that when some of these enchantments are available, they're only on pieces less practical than rings or brooches, and they're like 10K-25K gold each. Nevermind how the designs usually don't jive with me. You might say, "but go ahead and just buy them!" to which I'll say, "Nah, I can log out and play something actually fun".

And if that's considered A-Okay, then we'll just roll that way.

Lol, you say this realising that one of the most common complaints for why people have already been leaving the game is the crappy economy right?
The people that were interested in engaging with trades that would have made your life easier, already left. 

Why should anyone spend the hundreds of credits it takes to trans a trade for maybe one customer every few months? if that. That's actually a question I'd really like to hear an excuse for, because honestly this all rather sounds like demanding other people invest a decent amount of money while complaining about something that might actually make it worthwhile to them.

How about next we have a rune that you can attach to the cooked buff food that makes them reset once eaten? Maybe an upgrade to liquidrifts that make a single sip infinite? Have the cube runes just generate charges so they can't run out? Ooh a rune that refolds origami once you use it?

That way, you can make all trades actually equal because you can only ever need any of them once.