I am not super in-tune with all the reasons, no, but disengagement on either side of the market coin is a good point.
Also, rereading parts of the thread, I seemed to miss some point earlier about repair in relation to artifacted items and losing function.
I'd like to point out that there are already repair mechanisms in place, but only artisan consumes commodities. Tailoring and jewelry repair consume a flat amount of gold instead.
I've always like the mechanisms behind the artisan repair, since you don't need access to the design in question, but the repair cost is reflective of the decay timer in relation to the commodities and materials used in the original item.
Since artisan is a base outline for this sort of flexibility and reuse of commodities, would it be possible to see it migrated over to tailoring and jewelry mend/repair? I feel like this would be better than a sellable consumable repair widget, because those will inevitably have a set pattern with set commodities, and those have a terrible tendency of making certain commodities way more valuable than others. If repair is always based on the original design's materials, that allows for a greater breadth of use and commodity utility.
Once that is in place, how repair might be interactive with artifacts might become a more palatable question.
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)
If all you are going to do is make stuff up out of whole cloth, I see no purpose in engaging further with you on this.
It is not going to happen anyways, so it is simply a waste of time on everyone's part if you can't even be honest about your arguments / position.
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)
If all you are going to do is make stuff up out of whole cloth, I see no purpose in engaging further with you on this.
It is not going to happen anyways, so it is simply a waste of time on everyone's part if you can't even be honest about your arguments / position.
I believe this is something you should be directing at yourself.
You included the comment about non-decay being a side effect and could have easily gone through the runes list to disprove my point. As indicated further down in my post I'd gone through it while posting and the vast, vast majority of runes that you included in your broad statement all have directly functional benefits well beyond their non-decay including the ones you specifically cited.
Your entire argument seems to be based on an emotional "I don't like it" rather than on any real reasoning for why it wouldn't actually work.
The end result of such a proliferation of non-decay is that trades become effectively unprofitable, so again, why should anyone spend the just under 300 credits on a trade for the off chance that they might run into someone who hasn't already artifacted away their need for the tradespersons skill.
It's pretty much another route for hitting self-sufficiency, which has been repeatedly noted as an issue, it's just that instead of having easy access to trades so you don't need others, this route removes the need for whole trades.
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)
If all you are going to do is make stuff up out of whole cloth, I see no purpose in engaging further with you on this.
It is not going to happen anyways, so it is simply a waste of time on everyone's part if you can't even be honest about your arguments / position.
I believe this is something you should be directing at yourself.
You included the comment about non-decay being a side effect and could have easily gone through the runes list to disprove my point. As indicated further down in my post I'd gone through it while posting and the vast, vast majority of runes that you included in your broad statement all have directly functional benefits well beyond their non-decay including the ones you specifically cited.
Your entire argument seems to be based on an emotional "I don't like it" rather than on any real reasoning for why it wouldn't actually work.
The end result of such a proliferation of non-decay is that trades become effectively unprofitable, so again, why should anyone spend the just under 300 credits on a trade for the off chance that they might run into someone who hasn't already artifacted away their need for the tradespersons skill.
It's pretty much another route for hitting self-sufficiency, which has been repeatedly noted as an issue, it's just that instead of having easy access to trades so you don't need others, this route removes the need for whole trades.
No, it is completely directed at you.
I hesitated to respond to you because you have a history of attempting to attack the poster instead of pursuing the argument itself, and there was not a lot of point in doing so anyways because the administration has about a 0% chance of deciding to invest the RL months of time it would take to nuke all of the non-decay mechanics currently in place (along with the refunds, headaches, and other frustrations also involved). I decided that maybe it would be worth adding some conversation points; perhaps there was a way of redirecting the conversation somewhere that we could actually come up with useful, productive paths to pursue.
More fool, I.
You say that you want me to defend myself? Of course you do. Your entire hope at this point is to turn this around on someone because you know your argument doesn't have the legs to sway the admin team to make the change you want, and hope that by putting someone on the defensive, debating their own personal situation / past arguments (even if said arguments were never even made in the first place) it will help your position look stronger. I simply don't have the time or energy to waste on that.
If and when you actually want to discuss realistic modifications to the economy, I'll be happy to oblige. But as long as you're stuck on this current path, I just don't see the point. We've now wasted considerable time on this /diversion that isn't going anywhere, and you look set to just go after anyone who disagrees with you on a personal basis to try to cow others into letting you have the floor to yourself.
At least with jewelry/clothing runes, periodic repair to retain the core artifact function sounds okay. Losing the item entirely and just having the rune left over sounds really gross and unpleasant.
Most of my runes are on things I want to stayed runed because they are keepsakes, or someone special made them for me and the design is otherwise locked away somewhere I can't access. I have zero interest in losing those specific things, or having to make sure I log in enough to upkeep them or constantly check every decay timer to check against their decay. If I logged in at some point and they were suddenly all gone and I just had a pile of runes, then there was ultimately no point in any of those purchases.
The bonuses and effects that inflate the rune cost beyond that of simple non-decay are nice too, but the non-decay coming with it is equally important. At least, that's how it is for me.
I hesitated to respond to you because you have a history of attempting to attack the poster instead of pursuing the argument itself, and there was not a lot of point in doing so anyways because the administration has about a 0% chance of deciding to invest the RL months of time it would take to nuke all of the non-decay mechanics currently in place (along with the refunds, headaches, and other frustrations also involved). I decided that maybe it would be worth adding some conversation points; perhaps there was a way of redirecting the conversation somewhere that we could actually come up with useful, productive paths to pursue.
More fool, I.
You say that you want me to defend myself? Of course you do. Your entire hope at this point is to turn this around on someone because you know your argument doesn't have the legs to sway the admin team to make the change you want, and hope that by putting someone on the defensive, debating their own personal situation / past arguments (even if said arguments were never even made in the first place) it will help your position look stronger. I simply don't have the time or energy to waste on that.
If and when you actually want to discuss realistic modifications to the economy, I'll be happy to oblige. But as long as you're stuck on this current path, I just don't see the point. We've now wasted considerable time on this /diversion that isn't going anywhere, and you look set to just go after anyone who disagrees with you on a personal basis to try to cow others into letting you have the floor to yourself.
Again, no real argument here as to why it wouldn't work.
Time taken is always a factor in any change and realistically if the admin have decided to continue down the path of making trades irrelevant through these mechanics then arguably their other path is to potentially start making trades cheaper to the tradespeople which also involves refunds. Sometimes the way things are has to change, we've seen the guild overhaul because despite years of "there's no way it'll ever happen" it was determined to be necessary for the health of the game.
Economy is now finally receiving some focus, there is a pretty notable impact of non-decay within the economy of the game, particularly in the context of concerns about the lack of profitability of trades and the self-sufficiency people are reaching. Even if the intention of the relevant artifacts was to make non-decay so readily available, that doesn't mean that it was the right choice. If the argument is that it would take too much time, how much time is it going to take to go through all of the trades and find ways to incentivise players engaging with them?
That disengagement is the thing that I've been trying to bring up (for years). The goal with fixing the economy should be to improve engagement and the desire to engage with the system and more importantly each other, not to try and force it.
It is fully possible for all players to be required to consume commodities via inelastic goods their characters require to play the game. In other words, make everything decay and eliminate stockpiles so that all characters must engage with whatever supply mechanic is created. The problem is that the option to participate in a system that may or may not be fun devolves on the player, and it's a choice between logging in or not. I think we can all basically agree that this isn't a good extreme, but neither is the other: all goods being totally unmoored to the need to DO things or interact with each other.
My basic point is that there actually isn't a solution to the problems in the economy along that spectrum of solutions, that merely turning up or down the flow of commodities IN and sinks OUT doesn't make the economy any more or less meaningful, engaging, or dynamic. Moving this lever up and down has been the extent of the conversation for a long time, and it manifestly doesn't work: things always eventually settle back into a status quo that everyone appears to agree sucks.
In a real sense, the economy needs to be dissected and rebuild from the ground up in ways that don't just echo real world economies or (more historically accurate to Lusternia) aren't just a riff on what Achaea has done, which was a riff off what tabletop games have done. It's important to think of how these things will work in practice, and what purpose the mechanics play in the game.
So that's my question for posters: What should be the POINT of a Lusternian Economy, in terms of things that make the game better for players? What features that exist accomplish that goal? What would need to change to make the system worth repairing?
In a real sense, the economy needs to be dissected and rebuild from the ground up in ways that don't just echo real world economies or (more historically accurate to Lusternia) aren't just a riff on what Achaea has done, which was a riff off what tabletop games have done. It's important to think of how these things will work in practice, and what purpose the mechanics play in the game.
So that's my question for posters: What should be the POINT of a Lusternian Economy, in terms of things that make the game better for players? What features that exist accomplish that goal? What would need to change to make the system worth repairing?
Preferably each tradeskill would have something that people can use
on a regular basis. Bookbinders are great in this regard; kirigamis
and wetfolds especially, but origami in general is a pretty good design.
Theoretically I could make a permanent
kirigami and permanent wetfold, but I'm not sure why I would. They're
pretty darn cheap to make as-is. That also means that there isn't a lot
of profit margin, though... and that's another problem, none of these
goods have any real ability to generate a profit because someone else
out there (with artifacts, or just plenty of on-hand commodities) is
going to be able to undercut you (going for either no profit, or only
the very barest for them, which is way below cost for you).
Is there a way of embedding a profit into some of these tradeskills? Bookbinding books have an inherent gold outlay, but that just gets baked into the cost "bring me the comms + the outlay". So there are flat costs, but it's still not really a "profit" thing.
At least with jewelry/clothing runes, periodic repair to retain the core artifact function sounds okay. Losing the item entirely and just having the rune left over sounds really gross and unpleasant.
Most of my runes are on things I want to stayed runed because they are keepsakes, or someone special made them for me and the design is otherwise locked away somewhere I can't access. I have zero interest in losing those specific things, or having to make sure I log in enough to upkeep them or constantly check every decay timer to check against their decay. If I logged in at some point and they were suddenly all gone and I just had a pile of runes, then there was ultimately no point in any of those purchases.
The bonuses and effects that inflate the rune cost beyond that of simple non-decay are nice too, but the non-decay coming with it is equally important. At least, that's how it is for me.
My suggestion along that line was that current non-decay items would still have a decay timer, but when it hit zero they don't disappear instead getting a "broken" condition. This would mean that more sentimental things which may not necessarily be functional, you can potentially just leave them in your inventory with the broken status, but for actual functional things you'd need to get them repaired which are often the more big ticket items in a trade. (Aside from artisan heh)
The place of enchantments within that specifically is a bit weird, but the consideration is also on incentivising Enchanters to engage with the trade so having them drop off and adding the ability to have the enchantment applying scrolls in shops should work for both sides. Also incentivises repairing ahead of time a little so you don't lose the enchant and need to get the scroll.
I'm also not super fussed about cabinets/weapon racks/etc losing their effect because they provide a way for someone to take a break and stow their stuff away safely, but when you're actively logging in and have stuff ready in your inventory that's when decay should be hitting. Like, you'd want a sword to decay when you're swinging it around all day, but an outfit you stow for special occasions is kinda less concerning especially because you'd probably also got your regular armour that you're wearing which is decaying.
I'm the reverse as far as runes go, it's their actual effect that I'm interested in. Like, you could do what other IREs have done and just make them powers attached to the character and it really wouldn't make a difference to me aside from not being able to hand out my buffs.
The place of enchantments within that specifically is a bit weird, but the consideration is also on incentivising Enchanters to engage with the trade so having them drop off and adding the ability to have the enchantment applying scrolls in shops should work for both sides. Also incentivises repairing ahead of time a little so you don't lose the enchant and need to get the scroll.
Sure. Even if not that, having the hexangle and pentangle appliable to talismans that could then apply to weapons would be one more shopcounter option.
Enchantment might do with having some anchor other than power(stones). I can pick up enchantment, but don't because it seems so mindnumbingly boring. You can short charge stuff and recharge them from a cube, sure, but eventually you'll need to tackle that cube. The Gloves of Mastery doesn't even speed up the process! They just reduce the stones needed. I suppose the whole point is to ensure a base time cost function, but I'd rather spend more mats and be done sooner. I think only herbs might be more boring in that regard.
Also, let's be real - getting an error message when you sit on a throne and don't get an ego boost because it needs a touch up would be grin-inducing (other artisan things aside).
The place of enchantments within that specifically is a bit weird, but the consideration is also on incentivising Enchanters to engage with the trade so having them drop off and adding the ability to have the enchantment applying scrolls in shops should work for both sides. Also incentivises repairing ahead of time a little so you don't lose the enchant and need to get the scroll.
Sure. Even if not that, having the hexangle and pentangle appliable to talismans that could then apply to weapons would be one more shopcounter option.
Enchantment might do with having some anchor other than power(stones). I can pick up enchantment, but don't because it seems so mindnumbingly boring. You can short charge stuff and recharge them from a cube, sure, but eventually you'll need to tackle that cube. The Gloves of Mastery doesn't even speed up the process! They just reduce the stones needed. I suppose the whole point is to ensure a base time cost function, but I'd rather spend more mats and be done sooner. I think only herbs might be more boring in that regard.
Also, let's be real - getting an error message when you sit on a throne and don't get an ego boost because it needs a touch up would be grin-inducing (other artisan things aside).
Hexs and pents being included would be neat but they’re a bit limited as they only work on mate and guardian stuff yeah?
A healthy way to make charging faster could be having trade tools or something in artisan, they could make an apparatus or something for enchanters that gives the effect might be single use.
Kinda imagining a throne line where you try to focus on your superiority but get distracted by how dusty, scuffed, and uncomfortable your throne has become.
++ for artisanal enchantment apparatus. Something useful (but not mandatory) that you can obtain from another tradesperson to improve own trade output.
Maybe something like this could be done with needles, too. I think right now needles are only used to make piercings? And they have a very low cost, so their decay could be tweaked high to increase creation/consumption. Why do needles have no use in tailoring? Maybe they could be required for padding - no need to make them necessary for everything, but enough to increase that sort of cross-need.
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.
*shrug* with appropriate balancing it would likely be a small drain on the gold from people that regularly bash.
You just pulled that out of your butt. You have no idea what it would cost, because you actually do not have a plan. You have some ideas that may or may not work.
Further, we don't even know that the admin have an economic plan as opposed to a plan that simply effects the economy. The difference being an actual enconomic plan would have stated goals to reach with target numbers.
So you say, it would likely be a small drain on the gold from people that regularly bash. What about those who hate to bash. Should they just quite now? When was the last time you regularly bashed?
Do you actually think the admin made changes to the cost of bashing when they changed the meta last time? Or the time before that? Because they did not adjust for the costs of bashing.
Those that struggle would have incentive to participate more in activities that generate gold.
The flip side of this is they may deincentivized from playing the game at all of forced into activities they have little interest in joining. Most of these threads seem more about forcing people to play 'their gamestyle'.
What are the activities we'll be incentivizing non-pker's to do? What about non-hunters? Should we move to a system where merchants have to hunt for most of their comms personally? Should the really good comms be gated behind demi?
How about all comms are dropped form corpses and merchants have to buy from other players and wait for other players to have time to hunt for them? After all that would be more interactive and dynamic.
Begging functions as a fall back if someone doesn't have enough money to maintain their stuff.
So now we'll force people into influencing even if they don't like it or don't want the skill? I assume you don't really mean it in that way, but, explain to me why so many of these encon threads read like, "As a merchant I want to do merchant stuff, I don't want to have to work hard at it like say Faragan does, but, here is a whole list of things that I want other players to have to do, that I probably won't bother with since as a merchant I really don't have to hunt or pk.
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.
Yeah, right. Just like a 25% tax is fair and 'effects everyone equally'. People do not do the same things in game, do not have the same goals, nor perform the same tasks. As a single example, decay effects casual players vs heavy players disproportionally by orders of magnitude.
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.
If you mean crash as in crash the server, then sure. If you mean crash as in cause people to stop playing then you can't say that because exactly that has happened in the past.
What makes you think there isn't some scarcity now? AFAIK there is less available milk in the game then there was in the time period you seem to be pointing at. Best I can tell less, fruit and eggs as well.
We probably have more metals now then then, but is there some reason that wouldn't correct over time?
What makes you think that there are cheap and bountiful comms now? What exactly is the line where a comm is cheap as opposed to not cheap? How do we know?
More importantly, explain exactly to me what scarcity does and what it accomplishes? Why is scarcity good for the game. Try not to be vague.
It would also be helpful if you can point to what commodities being more scarce brings to the playing experience? Is there something I am missing, will the game be better if we start telling newbies,
"No commodities for you. Maybe in time when you figure out the tricks?"
"Be sure to log in when the month changes!"
"Hey you spent an hour looking for rockeaters, but that person who brought credits off the website who doesn't give a damn about costs of goods, just bought up comms to 200 each!
"Or, you can buy them really overpriced in the plex (which is what I suspect would happen) and then make things no one wants to buy from you."
"Hate to break it to you kid, you can do everything right, but this isn't real life and many people price their goods to beat their competitors and many don't care if they lose money doing it." Points at 60k level 40 miniaturized figurines.
You can do all sorts of things to comms and comm generation that won't change much how merchants and wares are brought and sold in game.
That disengagement is the thing that I've been trying to bring up (for years). The goal with fixing the economy should be to improve engagement and the desire to engage with the system and more importantly each other, not to try and force it.
...
So that's my question for posters: What should be the POINT of a Lusternian Economy, in terms of things that make the game better for players? What features that exist accomplish that goal? What would need to change to make the system worth repairing?
Just quoting this over because I do feel like these are all good points, it's just really hard to actually provide answers to them - especially when there is bound to be variance in answers between players.
In some ways, it might be easier to look at things that make people disengage.
I know there's a lot of people who only pick up tailoring for themselves, and avoid helping other people out at all costs. And I kind of understand where they're coming from. Finding something as simple as a white leather coat without any insignia or patternings in the listings can be pretty tricky, especially if you don't know all the search options and tricks. You can invest a lot of time going back and forth with a potential customer only for them to get frustrated and go about their business otherwise, or you might find something that seems fine and make it, only for them to finally find some previously missed deficiency.
There should absolutely be a hint for anyone who first selects a trade with patterns that tells them that HELP DESIGN SEARCH is a thing. This is a game changer, and there's very little reason not to be bludgeoning people over the head with it!
But I think we also need a way for any old person to look at the pattern listings for any trade, not just people with the trade. Maybe there can be some location or office in each org for that, and people can selectively have their private cartel listings included in that, as well as indications of who can be contacted within those cartels to have items made. People using this office the first time can be similarly given a hint about HELP DESIGN SEARCH. Being able to research on your own, within the game environment, would be pretty healthy for everyone imo.
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?).
You are just losing me here. Are you not asking that pretty much everything decay? So how many times a RL month am I going to have to seek out a merchant? If it is an enchantment do I also have to seek out a jeweler? Do I have to sit there while they scribble down what the design looks like? Am I screwed if the design is gated in a way that needs specific designers? Do I have to hope my org has a jeweler or am I stuck logging out until one is available? Don't think that happens? I can't tell you the number of times people have turned down offers of free items to wait for someone who had designs more appropriate to their org.
And nothing you have proposed addresses undercutters as far as I can tell.
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.
A bit of apples to oranges. There are tons of items in Lusternia. The numbers of things here is a huge factor in what will work and not work.
Your FFXIV is designed that way specifically because the gaming market has moved away from exactly the sort of decay Lusternia has. Enough players hate it that it is not common at all in modern game design.
Instead, the market embraces items tied to level,which isn't going to help much here. Or wear and tear., which is a nightmare for small pop games unless implemented as a gold sink where you just run over to npc vendors or somesuch.
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.
I think you're overestimating the impact of decay. Most players aren't that artied out and even if the artied out ones suddenly had to deal with things decaying they're not likely to buy stuff from you, over the merchants who will always undercut most merchants or their friends who will just give them what they need.
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!
What does a healthier economy look like? What are the actual tangible goals here? I am not being facetious. I don't doubt your sincerity here, but it is impossible to give good feedback without some actual plan. This whole thing feels like, "We'll know it when we see it" or "I think I see land that way, start paddling."
@Estarra there are decades of papers and dozens of postmortems on failed economies. This whole thing feels like you're trying to reinvent the wheel.
Could you start with why comms aren't implemented as an actual gold sink as opposed to a wealth generator? Why you think that would be bad?
1215 Asp waterbreathe (a thin jade band) 10 2000gp
135 flame waterbreathe (a clover-etched onyx brooch 6 8000gp
1310 Collected waterbreathe (a turquoise tortoise brooch 14 9000gp
I happen to be the one who made those for the Collected before gifting @Ein's order the shop. So I know they've been there for RL months. If I had to guess I put them in that shop back in October...number sold in about three months, zero.
@Xenthos has already commented on this. Enchantment is backwards in that the people who don't care what the enchanted item looks like aren't going to speak up as having issues, but the people who really care what the enchantment 'looks like' see the enchantment as secondary.
The entire system would be much better even if enchantments were sigils which you attached to items so that the enchantment could be moved to the jewelry.
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.
I am not aware of much lack of specific enchantments so much as a lack of specific enchantments on 'what I want it on'. Sure sometimes people forget, but every time someone asks me for a waterbreathing enchantment it seems there are some for sale. Though sometimes you might actually have to enter a city...they grow them there.
@Estarra I don't see how you're going to be able to really address the economy without the metrics I suspect the game simply does not gather. For instance can you call up a report on how often people try to get waterbreathing rings (for instance) and the search fails to return any? Or are you limited to scripted inventory searches which only show you the items available?
Do you know the difference in comm availability vs comm inaccessibility (example: Ixion probably has a bunch of comms, but being mostly inactive, he doesn't sell them or make crafts out of them, meaning they're currently neutral in impacting the economy).
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?
Cubes are to spellcrafters what herbs are to herbalists. Tune out, stock up and sell out. If a spellcrafter is making gold as a merchant it is likely because of recharges.
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.
It would be better for them to change things to be more interesting and give people more options then to punish players for playing in the play style they enjoy.
The point of the new credit reward system should primarily be IMO, "Here is a carrot to get you to log in and play for even a bit to get a reward, while encourging players to stick around for a few hours."
While I know you didn't suggest this, this idea could lead to, "We'll force you to influence awhile, hunt for awhile, maybe pk for awhile, oh, and you who never does quests, log in for a constant reminder how you're not really welcomed here."
This is a mud, for some it is an escape from work. One reason I don't like to write in game books and arent as activate on the forums as some, is I write a lot at work and writing is what I would like to take a break from when I play...but no, I have to jump up and down on the forums hoping that the changes will wind up a bit more effective. If I wanted to do this sort of crap, I wouldn't have turned down the envoy invite.
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)
You probably should address that more to me than to him, no? The auctions are gold and credit sinks. They are not lotteries. If you want an even chance, ask for a lottery, but shame on you for trying to shame someone who is actually using the few gold sinks the admin will give us.
You can't have auctions separated by years and expect people who don't play hard for all those years to just walk away with everything.
You have no idea how many auctions I sat though before walking away with something.
I am serious about lotteries/raffles. Earn a ticket for each x points you get and once a month bid points against 10 items (maybe you only get those items for the month). If you don't win your points get refunded...eventually if you keep playing you should have enough points to win something.
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.
I'm going to tell you a secret. Spellcrafters aren't really that rare. Most time they just don't answer unspecific requests, because:
1) I have no interest in stocking your shop.
2) Many of us don't want to sit with some random player while face-palming that they don 't know what they need (may not know what they have) and then sit around while they then go off to find a jeweler or go shopping for items. Some people seem to enjoy this sort of interaction, I believe they call themselves tailors or perhaps jewelers.
3) Mages and City Guardians have the least trade choices. So even by default they're likely to have Spellcrafting.
4) Once players are getting hundreds of credits a RL month pretty much any active mage or city bard is going to be pressured some (not forced, but pressured) to pick up spellcrafting as it is one of three trades available to them that gives a benefit while hunting, or pk, or hell even trying to make some gold (or even to have less outflow of gold).
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.
I know people say this, often along with other things. So let's dig deeper.
Are you off playing some other mud that has an incredible economy? If so, what does it do differently?
There are other IRE games that are closer to what you appear to be requesting? Are they bursting with the type of folks you seem to think we'll gain if we just change things?
You may have answered this before you got to this point if you answered my other questions so let me try to ask this in a bit of a different way.
I don't see how commodities can in any way move the game to the types of interactions you seem to want. Sure it might wind up discouraging other players to even bother with trades, which might have the effect of fewer players plying a trade (which historically hasn't been great for the game). And if there are fewer players playing trades then on average the remaining tradespersons would have more customers.
Apart from the commodity issue, let's address customers, which I think is your main point. So while you cannot be expected to speak for anyone else, how many customers would it take for you to feel that the economy is fixed?
This is critical. Before making a ton of changes we need to first assess if the goal is obtainable.
Secondly, do you know, you certainly may not know, but are you typical? Of the people who have left would they need more? Less? Again, I don't see how you would have that answer, but, did you even consider it?
Lastly, what is the risk to the current playerbase as well as the future playerbase. The changes you ask for are not neutral and may cause people who want to play the game differently from you to leave. Or to put it another way. Why shouldn't some who doesn't want to deal with decay just not pack up and go to another game...say startmourn?
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.
You are pointing as specifics, but your general statements do not follow. Origami doesn't make money because of all the trades is it primed, as in almost designed, to be sold at a loss. Origami is Lusternia's version of Costco's toilet paper. You're far better off selling it at a loss, running your competitors out of business, and hoping while they pick it up they buy something else. Or if you're really lucky, your shop is the one people tend to send novices to, like Faragan's., Dei's, Yendor's, or the others.
I've always like the mechanisms behind the artisan repair, since you don't need access to the design in question, but the repair cost is reflective of the decay timer in relation to the commodities and materials used in the original item.
I dislike that artisan almost always requires non-commodity items when you upkeep a piece. I've torn up other citizen's work and replaced it since I"m the one that usually updates things.
Seems like an added level of complexity requiring the balancing of commodities which honestly, have they ever been balanced?
I still go back to a large part of hiding merchants is not wanting to play syntax games and look up junk. Let's streamline things and make them more fun. If the admin want to code in alternative syntaxes, you can repair this with comms or repair with gold that might be interesting.
Frankly, there will be some who want to push in all their comms into spreadsheets and figure out costs, but, most simply won't or even can't do that. So they'll sell for 'what feels right' or 'to make some gold and I'll keep dropping my prices until things sell."
@Estarra some of this implies to me that you think commodity prices should be highly dynamic? Is this the case? Because I find people really don't want to try hundreds of commodity buys and constantly reset prices on wares. This is why many of us are feeling like you're punishing us for playing the game you design. Players spent countless hours buying commodities early so they don't have to pay much higher prices when shortages occur. It boggles my mind that there is talk for once again punishing players for thinking ahead.
That disengagement is the thing that I've been trying to bring up (for years). The goal with fixing the economy should be to improve engagement and the desire to engage with the system and more importantly each other, not to try and force it.
This is the most important point to keep bringing up again and again. We don't -need- a functioning real world economy. We need an economic system that encourages players to interact and play the game. Don't get so caught up on making the economy work if the ways of making it work are not engaging.
An interactive game is the goal, an economy is the (one of many) tool(s) to achieve this goal.
With any change and any plan the admin should be asking themselves will this change and improve player engagement and interaction in the long run.
Steingrim has way too many posts to reasonably reply to, but a lot of good points. I think the best next step is to have @Estarra provide a clearly stated goal, and what the intent is for that goal to achieve. I similarly don't see how just tweaking things continually is going to be super productive, we will just go through periods of frustration if things are made too difficult to work with.
Probably worth having a real plan; once that is done, can bite off pieces of it a bit at a time (does not need to be implemented all at once).
Side point. Think most people bar a few understand how forced mass decay is a bad idea for any online game.
Decay on "everything" is a kind of horrible idea. There is a massive reason why in every IRE game we shifted away from this. Anyone remember pocketbelts decaying?
It's such a dull task replacing things. It's a massive disincentive for players to return. It can reduce player interaction in that you have to spend more "busy" time replacing needed things instead of interacting with people. Casual players are forced to spend a significant portion of their game play on a unenterprising task to simply be functional.
Yea just imagine how horrible it would be to come back to the game after a short break to have all your herbs, everything in your liquidrift and rift gone, all your items, weapons, armour, etc all gone because of decay. The game just brought out perma beast stables(pokeballs) because people hated having their beasts die so often just from taking a short break from the game. It's a bad idea to go the other way.
I'll not go into this topic too deeply because its already a horse that's been flogged beaten and defiled. Then flogged again.
If the admin want to code in alternative syntaxes, you can repair this with comms or repair with gold that might be interesting.
Actually, you're right. That does sound better. I just didn't think to have both as options.
Side note otherwise: I am definitely an atypical player, I just have fun with this specific aspect of the game and am more tempted to be vocal as a result.
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!
What does a healthier economy look like? What are the actual tangible goals here? I am not being facetious. I don't doubt your sincerity here, but it is impossible to give good feedback without some actual plan. This whole thing feels like, "We'll know it when we see it" or "I think I see land that way, start paddling."
This is probably one of the most important points in this entire thread.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Comments
Also, rereading parts of the thread, I seemed to miss some point earlier about repair in relation to artifacted items and losing function.
I'd like to point out that there are already repair mechanisms in place, but only artisan consumes commodities. Tailoring and jewelry repair consume a flat amount of gold instead.
I've always like the mechanisms behind the artisan repair, since you don't need access to the design in question, but the repair cost is reflective of the decay timer in relation to the commodities and materials used in the original item.
Since artisan is a base outline for this sort of flexibility and reuse of commodities, would it be possible to see it migrated over to tailoring and jewelry mend/repair? I feel like this would be better than a sellable consumable repair widget, because those will inevitably have a set pattern with set commodities, and those have a terrible tendency of making certain commodities way more valuable than others. If repair is always based on the original design's materials, that allows for a greater breadth of use and commodity utility.
Once that is in place, how repair might be interactive with artifacts might become a more palatable question.
You included the comment about non-decay being a side effect and could have easily gone through the runes list to disprove my point.
As indicated further down in my post I'd gone through it while posting and the vast, vast majority of runes that you included in your broad statement all have directly functional benefits well beyond their non-decay including the ones you specifically cited.
Your entire argument seems to be based on an emotional "I don't like it" rather than on any real reasoning for why it wouldn't actually work.
The end result of such a proliferation of non-decay is that trades become effectively unprofitable, so again, why should anyone spend the just under 300 credits on a trade for the off chance that they might run into someone who hasn't already artifacted away their need for the tradespersons skill.
It's pretty much another route for hitting self-sufficiency, which has been repeatedly noted as an issue, it's just that instead of having easy access to trades so you don't need others, this route removes the need for whole trades.
Most of my runes are on things I want to stayed runed because they are keepsakes, or someone special made them for me and the design is otherwise locked away somewhere I can't access. I have zero interest in losing those specific things, or having to make sure I log in enough to upkeep them or constantly check every decay timer to check against their decay. If I logged in at some point and they were suddenly all gone and I just had a pile of runes, then there was ultimately no point in any of those purchases.
The bonuses and effects that inflate the rune cost beyond that of simple non-decay are nice too, but the non-decay coming with it is equally important. At least, that's how it is for me.
Time taken is always a factor in any change and realistically if the admin have decided to continue down the path of making trades irrelevant through these mechanics then arguably their other path is to potentially start making trades cheaper to the tradespeople which also involves refunds. Sometimes the way things are has to change, we've seen the guild overhaul because despite years of "there's no way it'll ever happen" it was determined to be necessary for the health of the game.
Economy is now finally receiving some focus, there is a pretty notable impact of non-decay within the economy of the game, particularly in the context of concerns about the lack of profitability of trades and the self-sufficiency people are reaching.
Even if the intention of the relevant artifacts was to make non-decay so readily available, that doesn't mean that it was the right choice. If the argument is that it would take too much time, how much time is it going to take to go through all of the trades and find ways to incentivise players engaging with them?
It is fully possible for all players to be required to consume commodities via inelastic goods their characters require to play the game. In other words, make everything decay and eliminate stockpiles so that all characters must engage with whatever supply mechanic is created. The problem is that the option to participate in a system that may or may not be fun devolves on the player, and it's a choice between logging in or not. I think we can all basically agree that this isn't a good extreme, but neither is the other: all goods being totally unmoored to the need to DO things or interact with each other.
My basic point is that there actually isn't a solution to the problems in the economy along that spectrum of solutions, that merely turning up or down the flow of commodities IN and sinks OUT doesn't make the economy any more or less meaningful, engaging, or dynamic. Moving this lever up and down has been the extent of the conversation for a long time, and it manifestly doesn't work: things always eventually settle back into a status quo that everyone appears to agree sucks.
In a real sense, the economy needs to be dissected and rebuild from the ground up in ways that don't just echo real world economies or (more historically accurate to Lusternia) aren't just a riff on what Achaea has done, which was a riff off what tabletop games have done. It's important to think of how these things will work in practice, and what purpose the mechanics play in the game.
So that's my question for posters: What should be the POINT of a Lusternian Economy, in terms of things that make the game better for players? What features that exist accomplish that goal? What would need to change to make the system worth repairing?
This would mean that more sentimental things which may not necessarily be functional, you can potentially just leave them in your inventory with the broken status, but for actual functional things you'd need to get them repaired which are often the more big ticket items in a trade. (Aside from artisan heh)
The place of enchantments within that specifically is a bit weird, but the consideration is also on incentivising Enchanters to engage with the trade so having them drop off and adding the ability to have the enchantment applying scrolls in shops should work for both sides. Also incentivises repairing ahead of time a little so you don't lose the enchant and need to get the scroll.
I'm also not super fussed about cabinets/weapon racks/etc losing their effect because they provide a way for someone to take a break and stow their stuff away safely, but when you're actively logging in and have stuff ready in your inventory that's when decay should be hitting. Like, you'd want a sword to decay when you're swinging it around all day, but an outfit you stow for special occasions is kinda less concerning especially because you'd probably also got your regular armour that you're wearing which is decaying.
I'm the reverse as far as runes go, it's their actual effect that I'm interested in. Like, you could do what other IREs have done and just make them powers attached to the character and it really wouldn't make a difference to me aside from not being able to hand out my buffs.
Enchantment might do with having some anchor other than power(stones). I can pick up enchantment, but don't because it seems so mindnumbingly boring. You can short charge stuff and recharge them from a cube, sure, but eventually you'll need to tackle that cube. The Gloves of Mastery doesn't even speed up the process! They just reduce the stones needed. I suppose the whole point is to ensure a base time cost function, but I'd rather spend more mats and be done sooner. I think only herbs might be more boring in that regard.
Also, let's be real - getting an error message when you sit on a throne and don't get an ego boost because it needs a touch up would be grin-inducing (other artisan things aside).
A healthy way to make charging faster could be having trade tools or something in artisan, they could make an apparatus or something for enchanters that gives the effect might be single use.
Kinda imagining a throne line where you try to focus on your superiority but get distracted by how dusty, scuffed, and uncomfortable your throne has become.
Maybe something like this could be done with needles, too. I think right now needles are only used to make piercings? And they have a very low cost, so their decay could be tweaked high to increase creation/consumption. Why do needles have no use in tailoring? Maybe they could be required for padding - no need to make them necessary for everything, but enough to increase that sort of cross-need.
You just pulled that out of your butt. You have no idea what it would cost, because you actually do not have a plan. You have some ideas that may or may not work.
Further, we don't even know that the admin have an economic plan as opposed to a plan that simply effects the economy. The difference being an actual enconomic plan would have stated goals to reach with target numbers.
So you say, it would likely be a small drain on the gold from people that regularly bash. What about those who hate to bash. Should they just quite now? When was the last time you regularly bashed?
Do you actually think the admin made changes to the cost of bashing when they changed the meta last time? Or the time before that? Because they did not adjust for the costs of bashing.
The flip side of this is they may deincentivized from playing the game at all of forced into activities they have little interest in joining. Most of these threads seem more about forcing people to play 'their gamestyle'.
What are the activities we'll be incentivizing non-pker's to do? What about non-hunters? Should we move to a system where merchants have to hunt for most of their comms personally? Should the really good comms be gated behind demi?
How about all comms are dropped form corpses and merchants have to buy from other players and wait for other players to have time to hunt for them? After all that would be more interactive and dynamic.
So now we'll force people into influencing even if they don't like it or don't want the skill? I assume you don't really mean it in that way, but, explain to me why so many of these encon threads read like, "As a merchant I want to do merchant stuff, I don't want to have to work hard at it like say Faragan does, but, here is a whole list of things that I want other players to have to do, that I probably won't bother with since as a merchant I really don't have to hunt or pk.
Yeah, right. Just like a 25% tax is fair and 'effects everyone equally'. People do not do the same things in game, do not have the same goals, nor perform the same tasks. As a single example, decay effects casual players vs heavy players disproportionally by orders of magnitude.
If you mean crash as in crash the server, then sure. If you mean crash as in cause people to stop playing then you can't say that because exactly that has happened in the past.
What makes you think there isn't some scarcity now? AFAIK there is less available milk in the game then there was in the time period you seem to be pointing at. Best I can tell less, fruit and eggs as well.
We probably have more metals now then then, but is there some reason that wouldn't correct over time?
What makes you think that there are cheap and bountiful comms now? What exactly is the line where a comm is cheap as opposed to not cheap? How do we know?
More importantly, explain exactly to me what scarcity does and what it accomplishes? Why is scarcity good for the game. Try not to be vague.
It would also be helpful if you can point to what commodities being more scarce brings to the playing experience? Is there something I am missing, will the game be better if we start telling newbies,
"No commodities for you. Maybe in time when you figure out the tricks?"
"Be sure to log in when the month changes!"
"Hey you spent an hour looking for rockeaters, but that person who brought credits off the website who doesn't give a damn about costs of goods, just bought up comms to 200 each!
"Or, you can buy them really overpriced in the plex (which is what I suspect would happen) and then make things no one wants to buy from you."
"Hate to break it to you kid, you can do everything right, but this isn't real life and many people price their goods to beat their competitors and many don't care if they lose money doing it." Points at 60k level 40 miniaturized figurines.
You can do all sorts of things to comms and comm generation that won't change much how merchants and wares are brought and sold in game.
In some ways, it might be easier to look at things that make people disengage.
I know there's a lot of people who only pick up tailoring for themselves, and avoid helping other people out at all costs. And I kind of understand where they're coming from. Finding something as simple as a white leather coat without any insignia or patternings in the listings can be pretty tricky, especially if you don't know all the search options and tricks. You can invest a lot of time going back and forth with a potential customer only for them to get frustrated and go about their business otherwise, or you might find something that seems fine and make it, only for them to finally find some previously missed deficiency.
There should absolutely be a hint for anyone who first selects a trade with patterns that tells them that HELP DESIGN SEARCH is a thing. This is a game changer, and there's very little reason not to be bludgeoning people over the head with it!
But I think we also need a way for any old person to look at the pattern listings for any trade, not just people with the trade. Maybe there can be some location or office in each org for that, and people can selectively have their private cartel listings included in that, as well as indications of who can be contacted within those cartels to have items made. People using this office the first time can be similarly given a hint about HELP DESIGN SEARCH. Being able to research on your own, within the game environment, would be pretty healthy for everyone imo.
And nothing you have proposed addresses undercutters as far as I can tell.
A bit of apples to oranges. There are tons of items in Lusternia. The numbers of things here is a huge factor in what will work and not work.
Your FFXIV is designed that way specifically because the gaming market has moved away from exactly the sort of decay Lusternia has. Enough players hate it that it is not common at all in modern game design.
Instead, the market embraces items tied to level,which isn't going to help much here. Or wear and tear., which is a nightmare for small pop games unless implemented as a gold sink where you just run over to npc vendors or somesuch.
I think you're overestimating the impact of decay. Most players aren't that artied out and even if the artied out ones suddenly had to deal with things decaying they're not likely to buy stuff from you, over the merchants who will always undercut most merchants or their friends who will just give them what they need.
What does a healthier economy look like? What are the actual tangible goals here? I am not being facetious. I don't doubt your sincerity here, but it is impossible to give good feedback without some actual plan. This whole thing feels like, "We'll know it when we see it" or "I think I see land that way, start paddling."
@Estarra there are decades of papers and dozens of postmortems on failed economies. This whole thing feels like you're trying to reinvent the wheel.
Could you start with why comms aren't implemented as an actual gold sink as opposed to a wealth generator? Why you think that would be bad?
That's my experience with the way artifact armour currently impacts the game. I"m much more likely to accessorize than before.
I happen to be the one who made those for the Collected before gifting @Ein's order the shop. So I know they've been there for RL months. If I had to guess I put them in that shop back in October...number sold in about three months, zero.
@Xenthos has already commented on this. Enchantment is backwards in that the people who don't care what the enchanted item looks like aren't going to speak up as having issues, but the people who really care what the enchantment 'looks like' see the enchantment as secondary.
The entire system would be much better even if enchantments were sigils which you attached to items so that the enchantment could be moved to the jewelry.
I am not aware of much lack of specific enchantments so much as a lack of specific enchantments on 'what I want it on'. Sure sometimes people forget, but every time someone asks me for a waterbreathing enchantment it seems there are some for sale. Though sometimes you might actually have to enter a city...they grow them there.
@Estarra I don't see how you're going to be able to really address the economy without the metrics I suspect the game simply does not gather. For instance can you call up a report on how often people try to get waterbreathing rings (for instance) and the search fails to return any? Or are you limited to scripted inventory searches which only show you the items available?
Do you know the difference in comm availability vs comm inaccessibility (example: Ixion probably has a bunch of comms, but being mostly inactive, he doesn't sell them or make crafts out of them, meaning they're currently neutral in impacting the economy).
Cubes are to spellcrafters what herbs are to herbalists. Tune out, stock up and sell out. If a spellcrafter is making gold as a merchant it is likely because of recharges.
The point of the new credit reward system should primarily be IMO, "Here is a carrot to get you to log in and play for even a bit to get a reward, while encourging players to stick around for a few hours."
While I know you didn't suggest this, this idea could lead to, "We'll force you to influence awhile, hunt for awhile, maybe pk for awhile, oh, and you who never does quests, log in for a constant reminder how you're not really welcomed here."
This is a mud, for some it is an escape from work. One reason I don't like to write in game books and arent as activate on the forums as some, is I write a lot at work and writing is what I would like to take a break from when I play...but no, I have to jump up and down on the forums hoping that the changes will wind up a bit more effective. If I wanted to do this sort of crap, I wouldn't have turned down the envoy invite.
You probably should address that more to me than to him, no? The auctions are gold and credit sinks. They are not lotteries. If you want an even chance, ask for a lottery, but shame on you for trying to shame someone who is actually using the few gold sinks the admin will give us.
You can't have auctions separated by years and expect people who don't play hard for all those years to just walk away with everything.
You have no idea how many auctions I sat though before walking away with something.
I am serious about lotteries/raffles. Earn a ticket for each x points you get and once a month bid points against 10 items (maybe you only get those items for the month). If you don't win your points get refunded...eventually if you keep playing you should have enough points to win something.
I'm going to tell you a secret. Spellcrafters aren't really that rare. Most time they just don't answer unspecific requests, because:
1) I have no interest in stocking your shop.
2) Many of us don't want to sit with some random player while face-palming that they don 't know what they need (may not know what they have) and then sit around while they then go off to find a jeweler or go shopping for items. Some people seem to enjoy this sort of interaction, I believe they call themselves tailors or perhaps jewelers.
3) Mages and City Guardians have the least trade choices. So even by default they're likely to have Spellcrafting.
4) Once players are getting hundreds of credits a RL month pretty much any active mage or city bard is going to be pressured some (not forced, but pressured) to pick up spellcrafting as it is one of three trades available to them that gives a benefit while hunting, or pk, or hell even trying to make some gold (or even to have less outflow of gold).
I know people say this, often along with other things. So let's dig deeper.
Are you off playing some other mud that has an incredible economy? If so, what does it do differently?
There are other IRE games that are closer to what you appear to be requesting? Are they bursting with the type of folks you seem to think we'll gain if we just change things?
You may have answered this before you got to this point if you answered my other questions so let me try to ask this in a bit of a different way.
I don't see how commodities can in any way move the game to the types of interactions you seem to want. Sure it might wind up discouraging other players to even bother with trades, which might have the effect of fewer players plying a trade (which historically hasn't been great for the game). And if there are fewer players playing trades then on average the remaining tradespersons would have more customers.
Apart from the commodity issue, let's address customers, which I think is your main point. So while you cannot be expected to speak for anyone else, how many customers would it take for you to feel that the economy is fixed?
This is critical. Before making a ton of changes we need to first assess if the goal is obtainable.
Secondly, do you know, you certainly may not know, but are you typical? Of the people who have left would they need more? Less? Again, I don't see how you would have that answer, but, did you even consider it?
Lastly, what is the risk to the current playerbase as well as the future playerbase. The changes you ask for are not neutral and may cause people who want to play the game differently from you to leave. Or to put it another way. Why shouldn't some who doesn't want to deal with decay just not pack up and go to another game...say startmourn?
You are pointing as specifics, but your general statements do not follow. Origami doesn't make money because of all the trades is it primed, as in almost designed, to be sold at a loss. Origami is Lusternia's version of Costco's toilet paper. You're far better off selling it at a loss, running your competitors out of business, and hoping while they pick it up they buy something else. Or if you're really lucky, your shop is the one people tend to send novices to, like Faragan's., Dei's, Yendor's, or the others.
I dislike that artisan almost always requires non-commodity items when you upkeep a piece. I've torn up other citizen's work and replaced it since I"m the one that usually updates things.
Seems like an added level of complexity requiring the balancing of commodities which honestly, have they ever been balanced?
I still go back to a large part of hiding merchants is not wanting to play syntax games and look up junk. Let's streamline things and make them more fun. If the admin want to code in alternative syntaxes, you can repair this with comms or repair with gold that might be interesting.
Frankly, there will be some who want to push in all their comms into spreadsheets and figure out costs, but, most simply won't or even can't do that. So they'll sell for 'what feels right' or 'to make some gold and I'll keep dropping my prices until things sell."
@Estarra some of this implies to me that you think commodity prices should be highly dynamic? Is this the case? Because I find people really don't want to try hundreds of commodity buys and constantly reset prices on wares. This is why many of us are feeling like you're punishing us for playing the game you design. Players spent countless hours buying commodities early so they don't have to pay much higher prices when shortages occur. It boggles my mind that there is talk for once again punishing players for thinking ahead.
This is the most important point to keep bringing up again and again. We don't -need- a functioning real world economy. We need an economic system that encourages players to interact and play the game. Don't get so caught up on making the economy work if the ways of making it work are not engaging.
An interactive game is the goal, an economy is the (one of many) tool(s) to achieve this goal.
With any change and any plan the admin should be asking themselves will this change and improve player engagement and interaction in the long run.
Decay on "everything" is a kind of horrible idea. There is a massive reason why in every IRE game we shifted away from this. Anyone remember pocketbelts decaying?
It's such a dull task replacing things. It's a massive disincentive for players to return. It can reduce player interaction in that you have to spend more "busy" time replacing needed things instead of interacting with people. Casual players are forced to spend a significant portion of their game play on a unenterprising task to simply be functional.
Yea just imagine how horrible it would be to come back to the game after a short break to have all your herbs, everything in your liquidrift and rift gone, all your items, weapons, armour, etc all gone because of decay. The game just brought out perma beast stables(pokeballs) because people hated having their beasts die so often just from taking a short break from the game. It's a bad idea to go the other way.
I'll not go into this topic too deeply because its already a horse that's been flogged beaten and defiled. Then flogged again.
Side note otherwise: I am definitely an atypical player, I just have fun with this specific aspect of the game and am more tempted to be vocal as a result.
This is probably one of the most important points in this entire thread.