Consolidating currencies & markets (credits, ikons, curios, crystals)

Hey all,

Can I propose a bit of a big project, but one that I think would help enormously in making all the various side-systems of economies in Lusternia a bit easier to see and interact with? I really like the idea behind the new CURIOMARKET commands, but good gods is it difficult to navigate (which probably is the result of CURIO commands being super complex to navigate).

I'd like to suggest that we consolidate all these different trading systems and currencies into a standard syntax, with in-built help information, so that it's a lot clearer about how to make use of them. I'd also like to suggest that for objects which are being physically traded between characters (ikons, curios, crystals), this should be integrated with our existing shop system so that we aren't making completely separate interfaces for no good reason.

Here are some example commands I'd like to recommend:

First, CURRENCY just to summarise all the in-game money you have attached to this character

<>- CURRENCY
You have the following in-game currency available:
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
|                          | Bound          | Unbound        | Special        |
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Gold                     |                |     13,374,349 |                |
| Credits                  |             25 |            124 |             50 |
| Lessons                  |            180 |                |           2000 |
| Aethergoop               |              5 |                |                |
| Wonder Crystals          |                |              1 |                |
| Tzaraziko Coins          |              2 |                |                |
| Curio Pieces             |                |             76 |                |
| Ikons                    |                |             24 |                |
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
You do not have any of the following: Racetrack Tickets


Next, CURRENCY FULL (or REPORT or DETAIL or whatever works) gives a breakdown for each category

<>- CURRENCY REPORT
You have the following in-game currency available:
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
|                          | Bound          | Unbound        | Special        |
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+
| Gold                     |                |     13,374,349 |                |
|   Carried                |                |         20,000 |                |
|   First Seren Trust      |                |     13,354,049 |                |
|   Auction Escrow         |                |            300 |                |
| Credits                  |             25 |            124 |             50 |
|   With Character         |             25 |            124 |                |
|   Membership             |                |                |             25 |
|   Retirement             |                |                |             25 |
| Lessons                  |            180 |                |           2000 |
|   Unrestricted           |            180 |                |                |
|   Primary Lessonpools    |                |                |            400 |
|   Secondary Lessonpools  |                |                |           1600 |
| Aethergoop               |              5 |                |                |
|   With Character         |              5 |                |                |
| Wonder Crystals          |                |              1 |                |
| Tzaraziko Coins          |              2 |                |                |
|   With Character         |              2 |                |                |
| Curio Pieces             |                |             76 |                |
| Ikons                    |                |             24 |                |
| Racetrack Tickets        |              0 |                |                |
+--------------------------+----------------+----------------+----------------+


To consolidate CREDITS FOR SALE with other currencies, maybe we could have a CURRENCY EXCHANGE RATES (optionally specifying a particular currency for all offers):

<>- CURRENCY EXCHANGE [CREDITS|AETHERGOOP|CRYSTALS|COINS|TICKETS] [FULL]
----[ Credits ]----------------------------------------------------------------
Best price: 24,000 gold per credit (20 available, 870 total for sale)
Best offer: 8,000 gold per credit (120 available, 3000 total offers)
Average exchange rate over 7 days: 21941 gold per credit
----[ Aethergoop ]-------------------------------------------------------------
Best price: 400 gold per goop* (1203 available, 20000 total for sale)
Best offer: 20 gold per goop* (200 available, 10000 total offers)
Average exchange rate over 7 days: 691 gold per goop*
----[ Crystals ]---------------------------------------------------------------
Best price: 125 credits per crystal (2 available, 2 total for sale)
Best offer: 50 credits per crystal (50 available, 800 total offers)
Average exchange rate over 7 days: insufficient data
----[ Coins ]------------------------------------------------------------------
Best price: 20,000 gold per coin* (54 available, 120 total for sale)
Best offer: 250 gold per coin* (2 available, 214 total offers)
Average exchange rate over 7 days: 12039 gold per coin*
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note: * = transfer fee inclusive amount shown
Use CURRENCY EXCHANGE [] FULL to see all market offers.


To help understand what exactly you can do differently with each currency, let's have a CURRENCY OPTIONS command, which clearly spells out what you can do with them and any specific numbers about how it will be converted or randomized:

<>- CURRENCY OPTIONS CREDITS
Credits may be used in the following ways:
----[ Conversions ]-------------------------------------------------------------
  CREDITS CONVERT  TO LESSONS
    Currently awards 6 free lessons per credit converted. Credits must be bound.
  CREDITS CONVERT  TO BOUND Credits
    Converts unbound credits to bound.
	You will gain a bonus 2.5 lessons for the next 632 credits converted.
----[ Purchases ]----------------------------------------------------------------
  ARTIFACTSHOP
    Spend credits to purchase items listed with the ASHOP commands
  TELEPORT AETHERPLEX
    Spend credits at the aetherplex shops to purchase manse (housing) or ship upgrades
  CUSTOMISE
    Spend credits to uniquely customised the look or behaviour of your items
  HELP CUSTOMBEASTS
    Spend credits to obtain custom mounts and pets.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

<>- CURRENCY OPTIONS COINS
----[ Games of Chance* ]---------------------------------------------------------
  SPIN WHEEL
    Travel to the Wheel of Tzaraziko on Avechna's Peak and gamble your coin in
	exchange for bonus lessons, experience, divine favours, goop, more coins or
	sometimes artifacts. Approximate chance:
	  70% chance of standard prize (avg 1-4 credits worth, eg. gold, goop, blessing)
	  25% chance of superior prize (avg 5-20 credits worth, eg. coin, present)
	  5% chance of awesome prize (avg 100 credits worth, eg. artifact)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* These results are highly unpredictable, and should be attempted with the understanding
  that no refunds are available for unlucky outcomes.

Specifically as relates to curios:
- Do away with 'Partials'. We can virtually calculate how many pieces of a set we have, and the manual activity of creating a partial first doesn't seem to add anything useful to me.
- Add a command to quickly show duplicate pieces that are currently owned (because we are likely to want to trade/rub these always)
- Add a command to quickly show missing pieces for a collection (because we are likely to want to source & buy these)

To consolidate curio/ikon trading back into the shop system, and bring it up to date:
- Add curio pieces and ikons as items that can be stocked in city & manse shops for sale, and priced for sale in gold or credits
- Add a shop upgrade item that allows city & manse shops to manage buy orders for items, ikons and curio pieces.

For example:


<>- PRICE CURIO PIECE 2819 2 CREDITS
You have listed your Middle Centre Ear curio piece for 2 credits, and it has been
removed from your curio list.

<>- WARES
  Proprietor: Radiant Soul, Elryn Greythane.
--------(Item)-------(Description)----------------------------(Stock)-(Price)-
         vest62135: a green leather vest of the white tree         6    8500gp
         ikon68944: the Calico Cat of Improbable Jests             1    2000gp
         ikon68769: a Lord of the Oceans                           1   **ANY**
         curio2819: Middle Centre Ear (Face)                       1       2cr
         curio5950: First Candle (Light)                           1   **ANY**

<>- PROBE 5950
********************[ SILVER CANDELABRA FIRST CANDLE ]*********************

                         ID: 5950
                  Curio Set: Silver Candelabra (#81)
                       Part: First Candle (#811)
                 Collection: Light (#18)
                       Type: Damage Enhancement Bonus
                      Power: 1 Divinus & 1 Electrical

               Listed Price: Any curio piece
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

And to handle buy orders, which would either use generic nouns for tradeskill items or specific ikon/curio ids as per the current markets:

<>- PURCHASE 2 TRADEITEM JEWELLERY ENERGYCUBE FOR 2000 GOLD WITH 20 MINMONTHS
You have created a new buy offer for 1 Jewellery EnergyCube at 2000 gold.
You have specified a minimum number of months remaining as: 20.
You pay a list fee of 200 gold to your shopkeeper, deducting 2200 gold in total.

<>- PURCHASE 1 TRADEITEM TAILORING GLOVES FOR 200 GOLD WITH 100 MINMONTHS AND 3 WARMTH
You have created a new buy offer for 1 Tailoring Gloves at 200 gold.
You have specified 'minimum number of months remaining' as: 100.
You have specified 'minimum warmth factor' as: 3.
You pay a list fee of 200 gold to your shopkeeper, deducting 400 gold in total.

<>- OFFERS
  Proprietor: Radiant Soul, Elryn Greythane.
--------(Type)----(Details)-------------------------------(Quantity)-(Price)-
        Jewellery: EnergyCube                                     2    2000gp
        Tailoring: Gloves                                         1     200gp
             Ikon: Princess Marilynth                             1  200000gp
            Curio: Lower Centre Ear (Face)                        1       3cr


Now, yes, I'm aware this isn't as easy as it all sounds - and it's not a small request... but goodness, one of the things that is most confusing about Lusternia is how to keep up with all these artifacts and systems and different economies... and I think this consolidation exercise would be very much worth it!

Comments

  • I would love to be able to just buy and sell curios/ikons in the shops like everything else.
  • Thanks for this! Love the idea of a standardized set of commands for economic transactions and for summarizing character value.

    It may be worth asking, though, for each proposed change, and for the effect of multiple changes together: Would this make the system simpler or more complicated?

    Several of these commands read to me like they might make great help files, though they may be too much clutter for a command. For example, adding HELP CURRENCY and HELP CURRENCY OPTIONS would be incredibly helpful!

    The idea of sellable ikons and curios in shops is great! 

    It may improve both the Plex and the curiomarket if ikons and curios just being sold for gold get moved to the Plex and the rest remain on the curiomarket. I wonder if selling items for credits in player shops is realistic to code and if it would inadvertently offer opportunities for abusing alts. 

    That said, it might also be interesting to make the curiomarket a physical place, like the Plex, with somewhat different rules. Special shops specific to selling curios or ikons could work as a great goldsink. 
    Arix said:
    Tzaraziko died for your spins
  • Devora said:
    It may improve both the Plex and the curiomarket if ikons and curios just being sold for gold get moved to the Plex and the rest remain on the curiomarket. I wonder if selling items for credits in player shops is realistic to code and if it would inadvertently offer opportunities for abusing alts. 

    That said, it might also be interesting to make the curiomarket a physical place, like the Plex, with somewhat different rules. Special shops specific to selling curios or ikons could work as a great goldsink. 
    I'm sure there are going to be quirks with a lot of the code - credits/ikons/curios going directly into player inventories is definitely a bit different to just dropping on the ground - but I hope that isn't insurmountable. And I'd expect it is no more encouraging of alt abuse than transferring gold between alts via shops, which would also be clearly against the rules, except with a bit more transparency in terms of shop logs. And while I didn't make it explicit, of course there's an assumption that only unbound currencies would be able to be used in any shop/exchange systems.

    On the idea of separate shops for curios/ikons, that could work too. :smile:

    I think I prefer updating the primary system to work with new variants, rather than having completely separate systems in general, but I don't really mind as long as it's a bit more 'in-character'. If most of the dynamic trading economy in Lusternia is happening via invisible transfer commands which are mostly out of character and don't involve shops, goldsinks, character effort or interactions... then I think we're missing an opportunity to make the game itself more interesting and engaging.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Ikons and curio pieces do not exist as physical objects.  Thus, selling them in shops will not work.  There is nothing to actually sell.

    It is all a database kind of thing afaik.  The curiomarket hooks off of it, but you would have to rewrite shops OR rewrite ikons and curios to hook them into the shop structure.
    image
  • Well, technically clothes, jewellery, weapons and gold don't exist as physical objects either. :wink:

    But yes, I'm not underestimating the size of code change required to update shops to handle these systems. I just think the change is worth it. If they've been coded so that they aren't compatible with the rest of Lusternia's mechanics, then that's unfortunate because the fix is a bit bigger, but that doesn't mean it isn't doable.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Well, technically clothes, jewellery, weapons and gold don't exist as physical objects either. :wink:

    But yes, I'm not underestimating the size of code change required to update shops to handle these systems. I just think the change is worth it. If they've been coded so that they aren't compatible with the rest of Lusternia's mechanics, then that's unfortunate because the fix is a bit bigger, but that doesn't mean it isn't doable.
    They do.  You can PROBE them.  You cannot probe an ikon or a curio piece, they have no presence.  They're not an actual in-game object which your character can interact with (and thus "physical").  Things are sold in shops by dropping their actual object and pricing said object.

    The exception to this are shop rifts, where it takes the item out of your inventory and destroys the item, putting it into a database (the chervil in your rift doesn't actually exist either).  That helps reduce item bloat tremendously (too many items actually crashes the game, so if all these millions of curio pieces and ikons actually existed we would have a lot of trouble logging in).  But then the rifts had to be specifically coded: "This is the item that can go in the rift, write it to work with shops, hook it from the rift to the shop, etc".

    There are... a lot of curio pieces and ikons.  Trying to get that all hooked up to a shop just seems prohibitively time-consuming.  The curiomarket fulfills its intended role way better than hunting for pieces in shops anyways (and, like I've said, anyone who's having trouble with it is more than welcome to ask me for some help).  Fragmenting the sale of pieces into a lot of disparate shops is a lot of coding headache for little useful gain.

    I can see why you might want to put ikons in shops, but the coding for that just also seems more difficult than just... putting a small ikon trading market together.  Doesn't need to be anywhere near as complex as the curio market since you're not doing pieces of sets of collections, each ikon is its own whole thing.
    image
  • More things to sell in shops would be good though, adapting curiomarket so that there are limitations that require a shop involved would achieve this. (i.e selling can only be done in a shop, checking the market shows the shops the curios are at, you have to be in the right shop room to buy)

    You could also potentially add, effectively, vouchers to bookbinding(ikons) and artisan(curio pieces) with some nice theme behind them.
    You could use a blank voucher to remove an "ethereal item" from your list and link the voucher it. Those could then be sold in shops as they're now a tangible item and the recipient can use the voucher to add one of the linked items to the relevant list.

    As long as the vouchers are searchable in shops for the item they contain seems like it'd be fine.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    edited October 2018
    There are 10 pieces per curio, and over 400 curios.

    That's over 4,000 different pieces you're trying to split up into different shops to make people go searching through, and then making people own a shop in order to be able to sell (plus nixing the buy option entirely, when the buy option is the best part of the curiomarket-- shops can't buy, after all).

    I don't think that would be "fine"...
    image
  • Xenthos said:
    There are 10 pieces per curio, and over 400 curios.

    That's over 4,000 different pieces you're trying to split up into different shops to make people go searching through, and then making people own a shop in order to be able to sell (plus nixing the buy option entirely, when the buy option is the best part of the curiomarket-- shops can't buy, after all).

    I don't think that would be "fine"...
    1. I'm actually proposing to add buy orders to shopkeeping - I agree it's a fantastic feature, and I think it should be part of the general economy (again - let's just make buying/selling interfaces consistent across all the different commodity types).
    2. I thought all shops (including city ones) could be searched now via PORTAL syntax? Regardless, if game shops aren't working well as markets, shouldn't we try and improve them to be as usable as possible, rather than abandoning a rich in-character system in favour of a wholly OOC one?
  • Xenthos said:
    There are 10 pieces per curio, and over 400 curios.

    That's over 4,000 different pieces you're trying to split up into different shops to make people go searching through, and then making people own a shop in order to be able to sell (plus nixing the buy option entirely, when the buy option is the best part of the curiomarket-- shops can't buy, after all).

    I don't think that would be "fine"...
    This mostly looks like an argument for reworking shops tbh.

    If it's unreasonable for someone to need to go to the aetherplex or directories to search for the item they're looking for and it's unreasonable for shops to be the way to sell things, then the current state of shops is logically unreasonable.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    edited October 2018
    You have to pay to link your shop to the portal syntax, and I don't think there's any way to make the shop syntax useful for the game at large.  You're stripping out the ability to participate from everyone, to just the people with shops.  Like I said, that's not beneficial.  Curio completing works better with more people participating, arbitrarily limiting it just to people who can afford to run a shop is simply not good.

    Trying to shoehorn things into shops that are not intended for shops is just a coding headache that makes the thing less useful.  I'm not sure how you can say "everyone can use the market" is worse than "if you want to list buy/sell orders you must own a shop".  Shops are okay for what they do, they just don't need to have everything thrown into them.  We need to make things easier to use, not harder and more complex. :/

    Edit: And, again, having to search between potentially dozens of shops to try to get pieces one at a time from one shop to another is also far harder and much more annoying than just being able to buy off the currently existing market.
    image
  • @Xenthos I don't necessarily want to lock anything behind shop ownership. Personally, I'm more than okay with all players being able to buy/sell goods on a common market without owning their own physical shops, whether that is for items, artifacts, ikons, curios, crystals, credits, whatever. Actually, my thinking is that if shopkeeping is too expensive or too inconvenient for trading these rare but desirable items like curios, I'm guessing they are too expensive and inconvenient for trading every day items too... and there's not going to be much incentive to use them. (Maybe that explains why the city shops seem pretty dead these days?)

    My point is that it seems that a pretty significant proportion of interesting trading that occurs in Lusternia now revolves around these shadowy currencies and "non-physical" markets. And instead of being part of the immersive world that has been built, they sit in increasingly esoteric systems and syntaxes that are wholly outside of the systems that seem designed for trader type characters. That's fine for what it is, but I think it could be better if we draw those systems back in to the character driven markets, or at least consolidate them so that they are all visible in the same way. Even to the point of completely redesigning those in-character market mechanics so that they are working well, if you're suggesting they currently aren't.

    I'd love to go even further and make sure tradeskills are somehow still engaged with the primary trading games, but maybe that's for another time.


  • Again, these seem like arguments to abolish shops in their current incarnation. Again, if you're trying to argue that it's too complex, too hard, the same logically applies to shops in general.

    Also, I don't know about other orgs, but Serenwilde seems to have had a decline in interest in shops for quite a while now. Providing more things to sell, more incentive to use shops could be part of improving the economy issues people have raised in the retention thread.

    And with the "we should make things easier" argument... well there's a button in Secret World Legends that automatically buys more health potions no matter where I am, even if I'm in combat at the time, something like that would super make bashing a lot easier. (Not actually suggesting this, but the curiomarket is a bit weird when you consider we can't bet or bid on things outside the right rooms)
  • @ElrynGreythane oh, I would super expect if there isn't a requirement or a significant benefit to curio selling working through shops then it won't happen.

    Like maybe some people would put their curios up but you can reasonably expect it'll stop when they don't sell (because people will go to the market first and may not even remember that the one they're looking for could be in shops)
  • edited October 2018
    Saran said:
    @ElrynGreythane oh, I would super expect if there isn't a requirement or a significant benefit to curio selling working through shops then it won't happen.

    Like maybe some people would put their curios up but you can reasonably expect it'll stop when they don't sell (because people will go to the market first and may not even remember that the one they're looking for could be in shops)
    Well, I was more thinking that if shopkeeping is too restrictive and more players should be engaged directly, then something along the lines of an aetherplex market where you can set up a 'stall' without owning any shop, and list up to x items for sale. If you want to list more, or set up buy orders, then you'd have to shell out to one of the cities for a shop. But all of them would be connected via the same search/filter/query syntax (that is, you only have to 'go to the market' to actually make a trade, searching and browsing would be via virtual portals). And again, if this is a problem for curios it probably is just as much for any other craft item, so it would work for selling small amounts of gear/equipment/consumable things too.

    I would also suggest that if everyone is now searching for things via PORTAL/CURIOMARKET like syntaxes, just make that standard across all shops anyway, without having to pay for it separately. The whole point is to make buying and selling and exchanging anything in Lusternia more straightforward, transparent and consistent.
  • Saran said:
    @ElrynGreythane oh, I would super expect if there isn't a requirement or a significant benefit to curio selling working through shops then it won't happen.

    Like maybe some people would put their curios up but you can reasonably expect it'll stop when they don't sell (because people will go to the market first and may not even remember that the one they're looking for could be in shops)
    Well, I was more thinking that if shopkeeping is too restrictive and more players should be engaged directly, then something along the lines of an aetherplex market where you can set up a 'stall' without owning any shop, and list up to x items for sale. If you want to list more, or set up buy orders, then you'd have to shell out to one of the cities for a shop. But all of them would be connected via the same search/filter/query syntax (that is, you only have to 'go to the market' to actually make a trade, searching and browsing would be via virtual portals). And again, if this is a problem for curios it probably is just as much for any other craft item, so it would work for selling small amounts of gear/equipment/consumable things too.

    I would also suggest that if everyone is now searching for things via PORTAL/CURIOMARKET like syntaxes, just make that standard across all shops anyway, without having to pay for it separately. The whole point is to make buying and selling and exchanging anything in Lusternia more straightforward, transparent and consistent.
    I'd add in the ability to put up a design that's autocrafted (based on your skills when added to the shop for bonuses) on purchase, if you have enough comms in the shoprift, to shops to really make shops worth it.

    There is the pretty big issue of aethershops though, the sheer number of them provides a massive supply and a simplicity that org shops are negatively compared to.

  • edited October 2018
    Aethershops: cost 365,000 for a fulcrux + 750 credits to turn it into a shop. (shops start off with 250 items max, + 4000 aethergoop for each expansion (+250 items per expansion) to max out at 1000)

    City shops: cost x amount of gold depending on the cities policies + x amount of gold per year for taxes (+ 1 million gold per expansion (+250 items each time) - shops start at 250 items, up to a max of 1000) (+ 1 million gold to then link it to the Aetherplex) The latter 2 of expansions and portal connection, however, are permanent and transfers with owners.

    tying curios to being required to have a shop is a terrible idea, where a lot of the current player base still don't have their own shop, let alone new players that might want to dip their toes into the curio trade.

    As for "setting up a stall"...

    CURIOMARKET was set up to alleviate people being unable to find pieces or not able to meet with the person who has the piece. Once you know how to use it (@Xenthos is really good at explaining it btw) it's really easy to use. So really, putting your pieces on the curiomarket is like setting up your own stall. Your name isn't tied to it, so there'll be no bias of "Oh I don't like them, I need that piece but they're not having my credits" type of attitude. 

    Theres also already a CREDITS FOR SALE - again, selling credits, no names tied to it unless they advertise cheaper credits up on MARKET.


    i agree with @Devora that a HELP CURRENCY / HELP CURRENCY OPTIONS would be a nice feature, though.

    as for shops being dead in the cities, not enough people around to buy for one, no incentive to have a city shop (some taxes are high - I remember paying 7500 gold a year for taxes in Seren, Mag is 5000 and Halli I only paid 2500 - even still I don't make enough from the shop to cover the taxes.) It's also increasingly common for people to have a Doctoral Tam / Endowment / Demigod 2nd grade - so people are making what they need themselves when they can't find person of X trade. I've all the trades myself, but lately I've been making the effort to find someone else first to give them business / checking shops first before I give up and just do it myself.

    EDIT: added in cost of shop exspanion of 4K goop
  • @Anitaright so there's no reason to buy a shop but we also shouldn't try doing something that would heavily incentivise owning a shop, similarly looking over the curio and credit markets selling a single piece would cover a couple of years worth of taxes. (Also I'll take the moment to remind people that the cost of each shop is 5k a year so less than that is a small drain on the orgs coffers at 2.5k an ig year).

    Also, when we're talking in another thread about wanting more interaction, I wouldn't rate a system highly for being impersonal.
    In fact some of my more positive memories around curios were when Serens were working together to ensure that we could get the curios that we wanted. A system looped into shops could enable this.



    Plus, economy has also been raised as a concern in the retention thread and it really looks like the economic issues are stemming from things being made too easy. Trying to maintain that ease seems like it'll only perpetuate the issue.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Saran said:
    @Anitaright so there's no reason to buy a shop but we also shouldn't try doing something that would heavily incentivise owning a shop, similarly looking over the curio and credit markets selling a single piece would cover a couple of years worth of taxes. (Also I'll take the moment to remind people that the cost of each shop is 5k a year so less than that is a small drain on the orgs coffers at 2.5k an ig year).

    Also, when we're talking in another thread about wanting more interaction, I wouldn't rate a system highly for being impersonal.
    In fact some of my more positive memories around curios were when Serens were working together to ensure that we could get the curios that we wanted. A system looped into shops could enable this.



    Plus, economy has also been raised as a concern in the retention thread and it really looks like the economic issues are stemming from things being made too easy. Trying to maintain that ease seems like it'll only perpetuate the issue.
    You can try doing something to heavily incentivize owning a shop.  Nerfing / making another system harder to use in order to accomplish that is not the thing to do.

    There are ideas (even some in this thread) of things that can be done shop-wise.  That's great.  We could reduce the mechanical cost of org-shops (I don't see why that cost is even needed), auto-tie org shops to the Plex without a fee, and so on.  Offering other ideas is also good!  But not all ideas are beneficial.  Trying to stick curio bits into them... no.  There are a lot of reasons why that's just not a good idea, as I've been saying, even beyond the coding resource pit that's likely required.

    You seem to be missing the fact that there are now over four thousand distinct pieces out there, and a smaller playerbase.  Pre-market, people were just rubbing the curio bits that they got because it was too inconvenient to try to trade them.  If you didn't complete a set during the month it was released (when other people were), you were pretty much never going to complete that set, too bad for you.  The market enabled actual, productive trading allowing people to finish what they wanted..  Removing that and going to a more inconvenient system of hunt-for-the-pieces-in-all-the-shops simply is not needed.
    image
  • I don't think that's what they're saying, Xenthos. I believe they are talking about a combination of the two. Make everything sold in the same way. They want shops where everyone is capable of having one, and everything is able to have buy or sell orders placed, and everything that can be sold/traded can be sold/traded in the same shop. You might have to go someplace to run your curio market search, but that would be the only "nerf" to the current design. And you would gain being able to use the curio market system that you like so much for anything else you are hunting for.
    At least, that's what it sounds like to me.
  • @Bairloch Yep, exactly!

    I don't understand this fear of having to "hunt for the pieces in all of the shops" as opposed to "hunt for the pieces in all of the curiomarket". There's no suggestion here of removing search syntax or making it more difficult to find things by set, keyword, group, type, whatever. 

    All I'm saying is make it consistent with how you can search for, sell and make buy orders for all the other things in Lusternia. In other words, take the best features of curio trading, and make that a feature of trading generally.

    Buy orders, type filtering, fulfillable searching - I love all these things, I want them to be applicable to all trading, not just curios via an off-market, non-standard syntax.
  • You don't actually have to hunt pieces in the curiomarket for a variety of reasons. One you can filter search (From any location) to just the exact pieces you want. ALSO if you're using buy orders it's literally effortless, you just automatically post buy orders for all your pieces, and there's a single command everyone can do to see automatically what they can fulfill with the pieces they have, and (I think) if mxp is on do the sale with a click. 
  • @Enya Yep - that's exactly what I mean. Why not use those excellent features to improve the other areas of the Lusternia economy that are missing them, and at the same time, move that trading back into character-based systems ? I'm assuming here that curios aren't out-of-character themselves of course. 

    Similarly, even though things like dingbat dolls can potentially be traded between characters (again, I'm assuming these are in-character concepts), there's no integration of that into any market system that I'm aware of - I tried DOLLMARKET but didn't find anything!

    I think there's a great opportunity here to make some of these trading systems part of the game, rather than outside of it and operating at a player-to-player level. There are some exceptions where that makes sense of course (trading some virtual currencies like credits is usually out-of-character), but in most cases, I'd like to think explaining to a potential player how the economy works in Lusternia doesn't require complex understanding of how 10 different currency systems are accessed and how 5 different market interface systems can be used. Ideally not "here is how you can buy from NPCs, here is how you can buy from shops, here is how you can buy crystals from players, here is how you can buy goop from players, here is how you can buy curios from players, here is how you can buy ikons from players", etc.

    If I had a magic wand that didn't break things, I'd love to look at more substantial economic changes - for example,
    • make increasing numbers of trades made in nation shops give some sort of temporary boon to an organisation rather than just being a drain on gold to encourage and reward mercantile characters,
    • use tradeskill specialization to replace influence/bashing/aetherspace gold generation by requiring skilled characters to transform random item drops into purchases to encourage more interdependence and improve the profitability of tradeskills,
    • give tradeoff customisation/prestige effects to functional tradeskill items to encourage selecting a well-described or thoughtfully mixed item for its secondary benefits rather than purely lowest cost
    - but I'm less convinced about the impact these sorts of changes would have on the game more broadly and so want to concentrate on improving older systems with new functionality that is already shown to be working.
  • @ElrynGreythane Curio and Curiomarket are not the most intuitive to navigate. However, it should be kept in mind that curios aren't really a newbie thing and lumping them into a system that players must use (right now you can ignore curios entirely) may itself be a overwhelming.

    I don't have any opposition to having more detailed personal reports. Though I personally see little value in having a readout for curios or ikons. Doing so probably would give some value to new players in that it may prompt them to look up those things. But once you have either I have not ever had a need to know the number. Including those sorts of numbers can be a possible source of lag depending on how the base system is set up.

    As someone who are here (well not here but in Achaea) when the credit market went live, I'd feel a bit neglectful for not pointing out that the credit market directly led to the inflation of credit prices. Prior to the credit market, Achaea had decided that credits were worth a set price and while there was some variation based on your willingness to wait on a good deal, or a buyer's impatience that price on credits was very stable.

    "- Do away with 'Partials'. We can virtually calculate how many pieces of a set we have, and the manual activity of creating a partial first doesn't seem to add anything useful to me."

    But it does. It creates the category 'partials' which can help refine searches, limit information returned, and act as a notation of which curios you are interested in finishing. If anything it would be nice to do partial of one and perhaps change the term 'partial' to some more informative and intuitive one. It also stops accidental rubbing and trading of pieces you wish to keep.

    "- Add a command to quickly show duplicate pieces that are currently owned (because we are likely to want to trade/rub these always)"

    It would be nice to be able to do CURIO SUMMARY x on all curios and not have to resort to a non-filtered curio list. Unless @Xenthos I've missed a way to summarize just poteen pots for instance.

     
  • Saran said:
    Also, when we're talking in another thread about wanting more interaction, I wouldn't rate a system highly for being impersonal.
    In fact some of my more positive memories around curios were when Serens were working together to ensure that we could get the curios that we wanted. A system looped into shops could enable this.



    Plus, economy has also been raised as a concern in the retention thread and it really looks like the economic issues are stemming from things being made too easy. Trying to maintain that ease seems like it'll only perpetuate the issue.
    Selling curios in a shop would be more personal? I don't see how. The most personal comment I get from a shop is the very rare and unusual, "You may want to restock x. I brought you out."

    To the admin, moving curios into a shop to increase interaction seems like a very unlikely long-shot and poor use of coding resources. There may be valid reasons to move curios into shops, but interaction is not likely one of those.

    @saran Market still provides for the occasional getting together to trade pieces. But I guarantee you, if i put pieces into a shop then players can drag their sorry arses over the shop and buy them without wasting my time.

    As to where the economic issues stem from I'd say it is more the lack of supply lines and tradespeople wanting to be the sum of their entire supply chain. That coupled with the no real business downside of underselling just causes markets to collapse. Economy collapses because people don't need to sell for a profit.

    However, if your answer is to make buying and selling painful in the game the result will likely be that some will simply stop playing, just like they did during the first big potions drought.

    Any solutions need to not be on the backs of players who have no interest in playing traders or waiting for trades people to get to them. If people log into lusty and can't get what they need, many will just log back out.
  • @Xenthos I think the gold cost on shops is meant to be a gold sink, but gold sitting in an org seems much less a problem or issue than in the hands of players. I think we should try removing shop taxes.
  • Steingrim said:
    @ElrynGreythane Curio and Curiomarket are not the most intuitive to navigate. However, it should be kept in mind that curios aren't really a newbie thing and lumping them into a system that players must use (right now you can ignore curios entirely) may itself be a overwhelming.

    I understand the sentiment, but don't really buy the argument. Collectible fragments of artifacts that have bonuses when fully assembled isn't a hard concept in itself. We already have a plethora of crazily detailed functional items that you can ignore if you don't want to engage (I only recently learned what a pipetank is, personally, and I bet there are 20 other item types that would benefit me but I haven't learned about yet). If we can improve buying/selling things to show what we are interested in, I think the addition of a single additional item type is manageable. The problem for me is really that the system doesn't really have a 'simple' interface for your collections (with a more complicated one that you can get into when you want to become a serious collector), which is what I kind of think making them into 'tangible' objects that exist could help to work towards.


    I don't have any opposition to having more detailed personal reports. Though I personally see little value in having a readout for curios or ikons. Doing so probably would give some value to new players in that it may prompt them to look up those things. But once you have either I have not ever had a need to know the number. Including those sorts of numbers can be a possible source of lag depending on how the base system is set up.

    That's fair. I'm not even sure they count as currencies (I was thinking about ikons being consumed for bonuses, but I've never wanted to do so myself). I agree it's a better approach to leave them out.


    "- Do away with 'Partials'. We can virtually calculate how many pieces of a set we have, and the manual activity of creating a partial first doesn't seem to add anything useful to me."
    But it does. It creates the category 'partials' which can help refine searches, limit information returned, and act as a notation of which curios you are interested in finishing. If anything it would be nice to do partial of one and perhaps change the term 'partial' to some more informative and intuitive one. It also stops accidental rubbing and trading of pieces you wish to keep.

    That's actually a better idea than mine! I get what they're usually used for, but I guess I found the concept of them pretty confusing, and that they obfuscated a simple understanding of what pieces you had. Instead of having just to check the list of pieces, I have to also check the list of partials with a very different interface. I was thinking of having that be handled without having to manually manage constructing partials (ie, just tell me how many pieces of the set I have, plus how many duplicates), but I like your idea of flagging which pieces you want to keep and which you don't care about. Especially if it can be made smarter.

    "- Add a command to quickly show duplicate pieces that are currently owned (because we are likely to want to trade/rub these always)"
    It would be nice to be able to do CURIO SUMMARY x on all curios and not have to resort to a non-filtered curio list. Unless @Xenthos I've missed a way to summarize just poteen pots for instance.
     
    Thanks for the detailed feedback overall by the way - very much appreciate the time to provide such aathoughtful response! :)
  • As to where the economic issues stem from I'd say it is more the lack of supply lines and tradespeople wanting to be the sum of their entire supply chain. That coupled with the no real business downside of underselling just causes markets to collapse. Economy collapses because people don't need to sell for a profit.

    However, if your answer is to make buying and selling painful in the game the result will likely be that some will simply stop playing, just like they did during the first big potions drought.

    Any solutions need to not be on the backs of players who have no interest in playing traders or waiting for trades people to get to them. If people log into lusty and can't get what they need, many will just log back out.
    In a functioning economic system, supply lines should be taking care of themselves because they should be sufficiently rewarding so players are encouraged to engage with them.

    Similarly, through mechanisms like auction house taxes you bump up minimum costs, especially where refinement stages exist that require the participation of multiple players.

    One of the few incentives to sell for a profit beyond comm costs is shop taxes, aethershops remove this and given there are now a couple hundred of them. Couple this with the self-sufficiency issue it's really not all that difficult for someone that wants to, to drive the market down because the only thing they might need to do is charge for the comms.
  • edited October 2018
    CURIOS LIST COLLECTION <collection>  
    (Ex. CURIOS LIST PIECES REDGENIES, CURIOS LIST PIECES PUPPIES, etc.)

    CURIOS LIST PIECES <string>
    (ex. CURIOS LIST PIECES POTEEN, CURIOS LIST PIECES GENIE, CURIO LIST PIECES DONKEY (some curios have a NONE collection but if you put in the SET name (stuffed donkey for czigany toy curio, then you'll get a return of pieces for that set only), CURIO LIST PIECES FEATHER (this one will show *all curios that have the string you input, not just the curio collection of))

    this is is in regards to listing doubles. They still don't sort out to see if you have doubles together as it goes by numerical value, but at least you can narrow your search down via that.
  • NochtNocht Glomdoring
    Curio pieces don't exist as physical objects as Xenthos said, if they did there would be so many of them and you'd get littered rooms and inventories. The curiomarket is indeed the solution to not being able to have them in shops, plus it's a nicely centralised system that aims to make trading more convenient. If searching or managing them is still too much hastle, ideas for ways to filter more and better are welcome. Same for sorting. I also like the suggestions for finding duplicates and missing. Do submit these ingame, because we're not always having the time to comb through the forums / entire threads to pick out goodies we like or think the players will benefit from.

    PS: I didn't comment on the other currencies because I'm less familiar with the technicalities of them.
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