Economy Systems

I know we've discussed the economy ad nauseum before, but I'd like to look at specific proposals for new economic systems. If you have an idea, please feel free to share. As I've said before, I'm a little leary on farming mechanics to produce commodities, but I'll keep an open mind!
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Comments

  • (starting here because comm generation is the beginning of the flow, the irony of talking about farming is noted)

    Issue:
    As far as trading goes there doesn't seem to be much/any relationship between generation and sinks.
    Generally, comm generation is mostly a factor of time, the only exceptions being fail-comms and herbs, there is a base-line of comms constantly entering the game which can be increased by players but otherwise it's just constantly stockpiling.
    A similar thing appears to have happened with fail-comms, some are in high demand and don't ramp up to meet that, other are oversaturated to the point they're worthless.

    Other games solution:
    It's farming really, players will go out and farm the comms that have value (i.e the ones needed) to make a profit, meanwhile they won't go around gathering that many worthless ones because they're just not valuable. Comms gained from mob drops and the like end up providing a source of gold because they can be sold for gold and that provides a floor on their value.

    Possible Lusternia solution:
    To get it out there farming can work. You see it in a diverse collection of popular games such as FFXIV, GW2, Warframe, EVE, etc. I've spent days farming in GGXIV because of how profitable it is and then traded the gold I made for the other comms I needed.

    Alternatively, building intelligence into comm generation might work.

    When the game goes to generate more comms it would do something like:
    • Check stockpiles in orgs and player shops
    • If on average the comm is below a certain threshold then more of that comm will be generated (variable relative to how far below the threshold the comm is)
    • If on average the comm is above a different threshold then less of that comm is generated (again variable to the point that basically nothing is entering the game)
    • Potentially: Checks playershop pricing, if the value of a comm has gone outside a certain range, raises a flag for the admin to reconsider the thresholds and generation rates (i.e if a comm is worth 1 gp, too much is probably being generated)
    This would apply to fail-comms as well (if kept), right now for example, it might increase the chance to fail on gemcutting and I would expect it would basically give a 100% chance to generate salt (as the salt drought would trigger an increase on it's side of the rng and the sulfur flood would trigger a reduction on the other)
  • edited April 2019
    Issue:
    Shops aren't great, they're overly abundant on the one hand and will never pay for themselves because the market is crazy. Undercutting is to a point that people are selling things for a loss.


    Solution:
    Auction house, Market, etc.

    Give each organisation a market room with the following features:
    • You can put up sale offer at a price, leaving the items at the market until they're sold or reclaimed.
    • You can submit a buy order for an item stack for a certain price, you must leave enough gold in your bank account for that org to cover the price. (option when creating the order to just deposit the right amount, withdrawing from your bank account checks if you'd go under your buy order requirement and doesn't let you if you would)
    • Players can only have a limited number of "market slots" for sale offers and buy orders (potentially a combined limit).
    • Offers and orders are attributed to the organisation in the system, each transaction has a tax on it given to the organisation they originated from.
    • Part of the gold is also sunk out of the game to pay "courier fees" if you're not at the right market room. (Buy orders debit your bank account so you'll have some left over if they're filled at your market)
    It's more available, the fees and taxes would provide a gold sink, and this would mean rather than shopping for whats available, people can just list what they're after and then trader players can spend their time fulfilling those requests.

    edit: There's potential here to charge people credits for more market slots.
  • Issue:
    Opting out is a thing.

    It's relatively trivial to get to the point where you effectively have permanent enchants through a combination of permanent items and curios with regulators. Rune a cube and you really only need to get charges. For me the charge limits on different items are also pretty irrelevant because it's not going to come up.
    Weapons, armour, clothing, furniture, it seems like you should count yourself lucky if you get a customer for the hundreds of lessons that you sink into the skills for some trades. All of the costs attributed to this seem liable to primarily impact newbies, i.e the one's less likely to have the money for it.
    Some trades do get consumables but it's a big ask to invest so heavily into these skills for the low payoff it seems you get.

    Armour and weaponry is a basic requirement but if you rune them then the first one you buy is also the last one you'll need to buy. This is kinda an alien concept in gaming. In DnD my starter weapon can be fine for a while but eventually I'll need to be looking at upgrades (magical, +x, useful effects), some other MMOs have the ilvl concept which is always going up so you're always chasing it, BDO has a system where you increase the level of an item but that drops its max durability which needs copies of the item to raise it again, and so on.

    Was going to suggest a consolidation and reduction of lesson investment as one potential option. Got to forging looking like this...

    Weaponsmith - Clubs, Blades, Bludgeons, Axes, Swords, Kata, Polearms, (Scabbards)
    Armoursmith - Leather, Shields, Scale, Chain, Plate, Greathelms, Greatshields, (Padding)
    IDK - Miniatures, Constructs, Standards
    Master Smith - Smelt, ArmourEnhance, WeaponEnhance, Masterarmour, MasterKata, MasterWeapons.

    But now my question is really, how many of those skills actually have value? Even on my alts I'm pretty I've always ended up with a masterweapon immediately, and now I should be able to rune that well before it decays.

    Solution(?):

    Depends on what trades are meant to be, if trades should make a profit for people that invest in them then opting out is in direct opposition to that so solutions that wind that back are needed.

    If trades shouldn't expect to make a profit then the investment should be looked at for a better player experience.
  • Pysynne said:
    Remove all "you can have second third tenth tradeskill" items. Force players to seek out players for goods and services. Being self sufficient is pretty much a nonstarter to any sort of economy.
    Not just items though, you'd need to restrict the trade skills themselves. I like the concept.
  • @Estarra

    I have some general observations as a designer/shop owner who has tangoed quite a bit with the current iteration of the commodity system.

    First is that I don't think any significant or useful change will occur without some honest discussion and perspective on what people really need/use. Shopkeepers always like to hold onto excesses, and this reflects in the Trade Ministries themselves - the sort of people who are liable to commodity hoard and be protective of those stockpiles are the exact same people who are likely to end up in these positions. Perceptions of how much of any given commodity is "enough" is likely to be all over the place, and may have more grounding in paranoia than in reality.

    We really all need to be on about the same page with what we think is appropriate storage for a "rainy day", and what's actually out there.

    For a bit of extra perspective on that, check out play production 441, "The Poultry Shortage, Act 1" - it's a good lampoon on commodity hoarding and like behaviours that still remains relevant.

    Having said that, I've been very much engaged with commodity generation since the last series of changes. And contrary to what seems to be the general reaction, I think it has ripened the opportunity to produce way more commodities than in the former system.

    The old system had a higher passive production via village tithes, while turning in an unfinished commodity item would generate one commodity in the village shop, as well as add one commodity to the village's tithe.

    In the new system, village tithes were dramatically reduced, but the player turn-in feature was buffed. Not only does turning in an unfinished commodity produce one for the village shop and add an extra commodity to the village tithe, but it instantly spawns a finished commodity of the same time right in the hands of the engaging player.

    Whenever I write about commodities produced by player initiative, this is precisely what I'm referring to. Every commodity turn-in now produces a possible three available commodities, rather than two like in the previous system.

    Village prices also shift and fluctuate with available inventory, but each is different, and some shift and change in price with far fewer commodity turn-ins than others. Notably, there are a fair few villages that will drop their gem prices to 1gp per upon reaching a "ceiling" of 100 gems in stock. So this makes gems really easy to produce, with it being very easy to collect a minimum of 50 rockeaters within an hour. You can do turn-ins until they are below 1gp per and then buy all those for 1gp until they push below 100 gems in stock in the village shop. At the same time, you will instantly produce a gem commodity for yourself with every turn-in, AND you will earn gold while doing it.

    Commodity turn-ins are a significant portion of my own income, and they spin right around to buy more of the very commodities I drive into absurdly low prices, which I can then cart away to craft things at a minimal cost to myself.

    But on top of that, all that production also increases the village tithe. Since I usually just produce comms in my own city's villages, or in allies, that makes a bunch of extra commodities I won't use, but will be available to everyone else I am aligned with.

    So any commodity that has a high player initiative production value goes through the roof, while all the commodities with few/no turn-ins face a disparity in production. We get lots, and lots, and lots of some commodities and a tiny trickle of others.

    Worse, the daily credit system encourages lots of extra player commodity production of this flavour.

    Worse, villages themselves are pretty poor means of production without player turn-ins to empower them. I've speculated that the mining villages might actually produce more metals if we all made agreements with each other to ignore miners crying for help, and just constantly kill-farm them to turn in their ores ourselves. I can't prove that would work, since it hasn't happened yet, but the fact that the general spread of numbers I've seen supports this seems like a bad thing.

    If you want to control commodity production more, village passive production should be adjusted to be more useful while production via player initiative should see more restriction.

    I'd increase the capacity of each village's stock of a commodity from 1,000 to 10,000 as a suggestion, and also adjust all the ceilings for price changes on that commodity accordingly. This would make it much more difficult to wildly manipulate village purchase prices for easy and quick gains. This would also leave plenty of room for dailycredits to still include commodity generation as an avenue of activity. This would also make village commodity prices much more stable across the board, and likely encourage more purchasing from villages on the whole over time. Village prices would be a lot more likely to reflect "real" prices that players perceive as the actual value of any given commodity rather than feeling too high too often, etc.

    This would be an easy and approachable fix that wouldn't require a huge restructuring of the system. It might not fix everything by a long shot, but I think the current system is overly rewarding for people who know how to game it properly.

  • I think my proposal did forget one important aspect - village tithes are modestly affected by commodity holdings in the village shop. This is presently very small - we're talking like an extra 10-15 commodities per weave if you've got 900+ of the given commodity in the village shop versus <100. If village holding capacity for any commodity goes up to 10,000 and you're worried about this adversely affecting tithes in odd ways, you can just remove this portion of the tithe equation.
  • LavinyaLavinya Queen of Snark Australia
    I would be pretty furious if I lost the access to all my trades, not to mention all the trade arties I own, second/third trade....

    I think people who undercut and don't care about making a profit hurt the system more than those with multiple avenues to sell/craft for themselves. Because honestly, no matter what systems are in place or changed, if people keep selling things for less than it costs to make them, the issue will remain. And I say this as someone who has access to the arties that make things cheaper to make (like the trade curios), I still can't match prices without making a loss. In the real world, those people would go bust but alas, here they can just go bashing/sell credits/keep topping up their funds in other ways so the losses don't matter.



  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Well, some things are just fundamentally skewed by artifacts.  For example, enchantment charges cost me nothing to make except the time spent hovering over my cube.  I can sell them for 1 gold and make a profit if I really want to (doesn't seem worth it, but I could). 
    Gems seem to be basically free too if you have enough artifacts; kill 100 rockeaters, turn them in wisely and you can end up with 150-200 gems (using the gold you get from turning in rockeaters to buy gems that show up in the village's comm store back).  Especially with the chisel curio (15% chance for 2x gems) and the jewellery hammer (also a big buff to gem creation).
    What's "below cost" for one person isn't necessarily below cost for another.

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  • Xenthos said:
    Well, some things are just fundamentally skewed by artifacts.  For example, enchantment charges cost me nothing to make except the time spent hovering over my cube.  I can sell them for 1 gold and make a profit if I really want to (doesn't seem worth it, but I could). 
    Gems seem to be basically free too if you have enough artifacts; kill 100 rockeaters, turn them in wisely and you can end up with 150-200 gems (using the gold you get from turning in rockeaters to buy gems that show up in the village's comm store back).  Especially with the chisel curio (15% chance for 2x gems) and the jewellery hammer (also a big buff to gem creation).
    What's "below cost" for one person isn't necessarily below cost for another.

    Pretty much this. And a cook with a spatula is pretty much impossible to compete with for a cook that doesn't.

    In many ways I'm kind of the moustache-twirling villain here because I seem to be everything Saran says is wrong with the economy, but I think you'll find in all such games there will be people undercutting the market simply because it's a game and -you can-. That truth is a running gag in many online gaming circles.

    People who have/juggle multiple trades control more of the market, but they also make it more functional when it is this small. If you want to argue that's bad, you can go ahead - I'm not interested in running a horse in that race and am just fine with focusing wholly on design if I can't make all my things myself.

  • Other games have some things that address this to a degree because all of the comms have a minimum cost.
    Some even have mechanisms where if you try to sell something for the same or lower than the money you'd get it for in shop they will at least warn you and some won't even let you do it. BDO seems to have the reverse as well, whenever I try to sell something to an npc that I could sell for higher to a player I get a warning.

    Perhaps there's an answer there to undercutting?
    • Create a system that dynamically determines the value of every comm.
    • Implement a rule whereby anything that generates comms cannot generate gold. (i.e Rockeaters, cows, sheep, etc never drop gold. Village comm quests only give you comms)
    • Add methods for mobs to buy non-village comms (or add them to markets but they're not generated) relative to the determined value.
    • Drop in a mechanism tied to pricing comms in player shops, if you list something for too low (as far as the system is concerned) Bob's goons/the Gnafia/etc will rock up at some point relatively soon after and buy out your entire stock before sending you a message to drive home how much money you just lost.
    This would mean you'd choose between generating gold and generating comms, if the comm is hitting oversupply it's easier for the player to sell the comm to a mob to get gold (removing the comm from the game) but if the comm is selling for above the determined minimum then it's more valuable for the player to sell it to another player.

    You could maybe extrapolate that with crafted items, determine the combined value of the comms used to craft one instance of the item with a markup relative to the investment needed (i.e MasterWeapons have a much higher built in markup than a club) and that's the value for all of them. Infusions and the like also drive the value upward.
    Single crafts should work for the goons rocking up to buy out your undersold merch laughing at how much money you just lost, the multiple crafts are still an issue though.


    Simplest solution seems to be to remove the proc to get extra copies out of a craft.
    Maybe swap the benefit around so that with say cooking, instead of getting multiple for the cost of one, you can cook <#> <recipe> with trans cooking and the artifacts(maybe trans arts too) you'd be able to cook 50 copies of a recipe at once but still costing the same as 50.
  • Also, when talking about economic systems within games just to make sure people are on the same page, nothing is free unless you go up and press a button to dispense more.

    Bashing is an economic activity where you convert time into exp, you can reduce the time taken and/or increase the experience gain by converting gold/credits into lessons for more abilities or by spending gold to get weapons, armour, curative, and other items.
  • Saran said:
    • Implement a rule whereby anything that generates comms cannot generate gold. (i.e Rockeaters, cows, sheep, etc never drop gold. Village comm quests only give you comms)
    Or make it a choice toggleable on config. Set newbies to always get gold by it before commodities. I think this would also be an important facet in the present system, because right now my commodity farming schemes also earn me close to, if not more gold than in most of the places I'd bash otherwise. It's because so many corpse turn-ins are about the same, and value quantity over quality. (though Icewynd has some nice, distinctly better opportunities). The big difference is in essence generation.

    If people just want the extra gold revenue then they sacrifice the additional commodities for themselves.

  • Jolanthe said:
    Saran said:
    • Implement a rule whereby anything that generates comms cannot generate gold. (i.e Rockeaters, cows, sheep, etc never drop gold. Village comm quests only give you comms)
    Or make it a choice toggleable on config. Set newbies to always get gold by it before commodities. I think this would also be an important facet in the present system, because right now my commodity farming schemes also earn me close to, if not more gold than in most of the places I'd bash otherwise. It's because so many corpse turn-ins are about the same, and value quantity over quality. (though Icewynd has some nice, distinctly better opportunities). The big difference is in essence generation.

    If people just want the extra gold revenue then they sacrifice the additional commodities for themselves.

    Nah, a toggle actually works against this sort of mechanism, economic systems like this work because people generate stuff they don't need and then sell them to other players or back to the game for gold. 

    It's pretty trivial to tell a newbie in hints that they can go somewhere to sell their unneeded stuff and that players might be interested in it for higher prices because that's a concept that's basically omnipresent in MMOs at this point. 

    You're also more likely to have a negative user experience with a toggle because if someone finishes a round of comm quests with it set to gold gen then realises that they've just screwed themselves out of thousands to hundreds of thousands of gold there's going to be aggravation.
    Similarly you'll likely find other players will start complaining about "gold gen'ers" not bringing comms into the game when you have people happy to pay more gold to buy them of the people not generating comms.


    For clarity, I'd implement this with the previous suggestions of more dynamically controlled generation and a market place. Because then people just go check the marketplace sell what they can for a good deal and then just vendor the rest.
  • edited October 2019
    I know this is an old topic, but I really do believe it's one of the most important things that needs focusing on if Lusternia is to thrive as a world, and I want to add my suggestions here (even though, yes, I've harped on most of this before - I've not seen any actual progress made).

    Key Problems

    Key problems that distort Lusternia's economy as I see it, and leave engaging in trade/craft as not very fun:
    1. Accruing wealth is often most effectively done through activities where it is either incidental to other rewards (bashing/influence) or with little opportunity/time cost (artifacts/curios/etc). Tradeskills and crafting are not usually an optimal use of time.
    2. Self-sufficiency (classflex/multi-trades) and artifacts that 'opt-out' of player crafted items or consumables (non-decay from runes, substitute artifacts) have devalued tradeskills significantly both in terms of demand and trade value.
    3. The value of player created items is not proportional to the difficulty, risk, time and overall game benefit. Notably, player designed patterns which (ideally) expand the richness of Lusternia's world have high investment, real-world effort and time requirements, but don't seem to be that profitable in economic terms (despite probably being very rewarding in immersion).
    4. Player to player trading is inconsistent, confusing and heavily weighted in some cases towards certain methods rather than others, examples being manse shops vs city shops with fees/searchability/access differences; curio trades vs aethergoop trades vs credit trades vs ikon trades vs item trades having different syntaxes, transaction fees, search systems, buy or just sell orders, stock limitations, etc.

    Goals to Keep In Mind

    My view on any goals for any solutions to address these things:
    1. We do not have the scope to completely 'undo' (and hence refund) any monetary investment that has already been made, so that removing artifacts entirely or disabling skill-flexing are not going to be part of feasible solutions.
    2. Players shouldn't be punished for engaging in activities they like, even if they are non-trade oriented, so solutions should encourage where possible rather than penalise.
    3. Ultimately any system in a game has to have some element of fun or engagement to it, so any solutions that are theoretically perfect but dismally uninteresting, grindy or painful to use should be avoided.

    My Suggestions

    So, what would I suggest? I know there are plenty of threads with a whole spectrum of ideas that have come up over the past few years, but here are some that I'd suggest (obviously not all of them, if any, might be viable):

    A. Remove direct gold generation as an incidental reward (to address problem #1)

    I think by far the best way to do this is to switch to some kind of item commodity drops from bashing, influencing, aetherhunting, PK and all other activities that are not usually engaged with for the purpose of making profit.

    I know there is resistance to this idea as it seems like it is meant to cut off the wealth rewards of those activities entirely, but that is *not* the point. The intent is to place the scaling of the reward value *within* the main player economic system, and thereby ensure that it is not disproportional to other activities which are intended to generate or refine wealth, and also to engage multiple play styles in profitable interactions.

    I've proposed this idea before, but there are many alternative ways it could be done. Dynamic NPC trade-in can be retained if there needs to be a non-trade avenue of converting those incidental rewards directly to cash (so players don't feel like they are losing that option), but perhaps at a lower return than the approach of identifying a player demand for them. Randomness and rarity can be scaled as necessary, and some playstyle activities that don't currently provide many individual rewards (eg. pkilling org enemies, pro-nation questing, etc) could be included in any item drop system so that traders are seeking out and rewarding all different types of players for specific items of value.

    B. Introduce some form of trade specialisation system with meaningful reward scaling (to address problems #2 & #3)

    Trade 'proficiency' would a new stat that every player has between 0 and 100%, representing one's specialisation in a particular craft or trade (you can only have proficiency in *one* tradeskill at any one time). By plying abilities in a specific tradeskill I can improve my proficiency up to a certain cap (say 5% per in-game month), but it would decrease rapidly whenever I switch to using abilities from a different tradeskill (until it reaches 0 and I start earning proficiency again in the new trade). 

    Above a certain threshold, Proficiency would provide an optional weighted bonus that I receive depending on how 'successful' my crafts, harvests or products are, so I can choose to either have a lot of versatility and self-sufficiency across trades, or I can specialise and receive a bonus to compensate for not always making everything myself.

    For example, above 25% proficiency, you would start to receive the following benefits depending on the type of tradeskill:
    • For design trades (tailoring, bookbinding, jewellery, forging, artisan, cooking, tattoos) - perhaps every in game month you receive a commission based on your proficiency multiplied by how many active players (defined as, say, logged in within the last week) are currently holding/using/have used one of the items stamped with you as the crafter, and a lesser bonus for how many active players are currently holding/using one of the items where you were the designer of the pattern. This formula could be weighted by the number of commodities or complexity of the pattern, so that more advanced/expensive crafts add more.
    • For harvesting/production trades (herbs, poisons, alchemy, enchantment) - perhaps every in game month you receive a stipend based on your proficiency multiplied by how many consumable items you created within the last month. This formula could be weighted by the difficulty of harvest/production as well as the current demand (or supply) of that item.
    This reward doesn't have to be just gold, it could be mixed with other types of rewards, like xp/essence, buffs that affect trade activities, or so on. The intent behind this being that self-sufficiency is absolutely still possible and not directly penalised, but there are rewards that encourage single trade specialisation and inter-player trading and offer escalating rewards for contributing to the economy in areas where there is higher demand.

    C. Add consistent sinks that boost demand for every tradeskill, even for non-decay items (to address problem #2)

    A small suggestion to directly deal with items which have artifact runes attached making them non-decay, is to differentiate the *decay* aspect of items from the *functional* aspect of items.
    For example, let's say that every item has a decay time ('deteriorates completely'), and a functional use time ('usefulness'):
    • Normal item that is destroyed eventually:
      It has 4 months of usefulness left before it deteriorates completely.
    • Runed item which never decays:
      It has 4 months of usefulness left.
      - or -
      It has deteriorated too far to offer any intrinsic usefulness and requires repair.
    While the artifact rune on the item never stops working, and the item can be worn, displayed, wielded and so on forever... once the functional life of the item has ended it would no longer provide the intrinsic properties it once had as a functional item - it becomes essentially cosmetic-only. Clothing and armour would cease to provide damage protection, warmth or prestige; jewellery would not be able to be re-enchanted or have enchantments activated; weapons would not be able to be used with combat skills; and so on.

    This *doesn't* mean they need to be replaced, but rather a mending consumable produced from that tradeskill would be required to extend the functional life further (or restore function). For example, a sewing kit will add to the functional life of any tailored item for a few months when consumed, a polishing kit will add to the functional life of any jewellery item for a few months when consumed, and so on. These kits could also be used on normal decaying items to extend both the functional life and decay time, but perhaps there would be a cap on how many times their life can be extended, unlike runed items.

    This introduces a way of ensuring that runes can still be added to an item to make it permanent, to provide the benefit where you don't need to constantly buy new replacements and you'll never lose that item... but you might still need to invest every now and again if you want to continue to use the item for its original purpose.

    D. Consolidate the player trading systems through a central market, introduce both buy and sell orders, and add transaction fees to every purchase (to address problem #4)

    My suggestion to bring the trading systems and shopkeeping up to date is to make ALL trading go through either a city shop, manse shop or market NPC (Trader Bob), via a consistent set of commands and interfaces. I think this was already suggested by @Saran above, and is a great idea. By adding the ability to place buy/sell orders through Trader Bob, we would allow players who might not yet be able to afford a shop to engage in trade beyond just barking their wares over market channel. Additionally, if rare item drops are implemented for activities like hunting/influencing, this allows a player who doesn't really want to throw themselves into trading through shopkeeping to put up one-off trades and engage more easily.
    1. ANY item, curio, ikon, credit, aethergoop, crystal, and so on can be sold for gold through a shop as we currently do, or alternatively through Trader Bob if you don't have a shop of your own. Trading items for other currencies than gold might need to remain in external trading systems for now.
    2. EVERY market type is now searchable through the same PORTAL SEARCH SHOPS interface (including city, manse and bob), without having to pay for the upgrade specifically for each one.
    3. The number of items that can be sold differs between market types (pay higher ongoing fees to nation to expand city shop capacity, buy upgrade artifacts for manse shop capacity, or live with a fixed 5-item limit with Bob's market)
    4. There is a non-refundable transaction fee for placing an item up for sale, which differs between market types (say 2% of sale price for city shops with half that going into nation coffers, 2% of sale price for manse shops, 5% for Bob's market)
    5. Every market type also allows players to place buy orders for *certain* items (with fulfilment criteria differing per item type), with the total number of buy orders being, say, 10 for city shops, 15 for manse shops, and 2 for Bob's market).
    6. There is a non-refundable transaction fee for placing a buy order, which differs between market types (say 1% of buy price for city shops/manses, 5% of buy price for Bob's market).

  • For D, Starmourn kinda provides a template for this sort of mechanic. There's also the various auction house, market board, etc sort of systems that exist out there. 

    Changing things around a little.

    Have two markets, one is the Commodity Trader, the other is the Marketplace.

    The Trader is under the Ministry of Trade and is for selling pretty much anything that's listed in design listcomms. (i.e herbs, gems, comms, malts.) Village comm shops are potentially also converted to them.
    The Marketplace is under the Chancellor and is really for crafted items curatives, weapons, armour, books, etc. Bob in his Bob-ness has also set up one in the Aetherplex.

    Overall things
    • Listing Cap
      • Each player has an individual listing cap which can be increased through credit purchases.
    • Listing Fees
      • The controlling ministries can set a percentage as a listing fee. 
      • This has a non-zero minimum. The gold below that percentage is sunk out of the game, the gold above is is transferred to the controlling ministry.
    • International Orders
      • The controlling ministries can choose to link their market to other orgs making buy and sell orders visible there.
      • Villages automatically do this to whichever org has currently claimed them.
      • International orders have a small delivery fee, this comes out of the profit of the Seller for a buy order, and increases the price of sell order for the buyer.
    Buy Orders
    • Buy orders are listed on a market when someone wants to buy something.
    • The amount of gold the Buyer is willing to pay is taken as part of the listing, part of this is reserved as the listing fee. 
    • Specific Considerations
      • Villages procedurally generate buy orders for comms they don't produce. (Method for players to generate gold and sink comms out of the game)
      • Designed goods either require a specific design number or perhaps design search parameters. (In the case of search parameters, goods will only be accepted if their design would come up on a design search and the sale require the buyer to agree to complete it)

    Sell orders
    • Buy orders are listed on a market when someone wants to sell something.
    • The Seller deposits the item and lists their price, which is marked up by the listing fee (agree prompt confirms).
    • Maybe, Sell orders for crafted items query the local Trader to figure out a base value for any item to block underselling.
    • Specific Considerations
      • Villages generate sell orders with the same logic that they sell comms for now.
      • The trade ministry can list sell orders as their org using the orgs stocks.

    Org Shops
    • Shops are linked to the orgs Marketplace.
    • The owner gets an increase to their listing cap.
    • Owners and shop allies can make specific listings available through the shop.
    Manse Shops
    • Refunded or perhaps they work like org shops
    • If the manse is connected to an org, the owner can also apply to connect it to that orgs market
    • Manse shops by default are connected to Bob's Marketplace

    Bob's Marketplace
    • Higher listing fees than orgs
    • Will accept any orgs linking to his market.
    Probably more things, but there's a start.
  • @Saran - Nice improvements there! I especially like the addition of a number of sinks (gold via 'international' delivery fees, and comms via village buy orders), that's quite clever. :) 

    I'm not sure about getting rid of manse shops or making them superfluous (I think they represent a good potential item store upgrade option for revenue, especially if you really like shopkeeping and want to buy the ability to transcend orgs/upkeep fees).. but whatever works. It's still a huge improvement over what we have now. 
  • @ElrynGreythane i'd see "physical" shops sort of system as more a thing for people who like the idea of it. Like if someone wants to run a cake or clothing shop they can do that. People who want to make money more quickly would likely spend the credits on more slots so they can have more stuff up.

    Paying to get away from the gold sinks would probably defeat part of the point of implementing the sinks, but if implemented as part of a broader overhaul you'd be implementing a variety of options there'd be opportunities to create more efficiencies.

    For example, if there was some kind of mechanism to convert corpses into materials you could have arti's like the spatula to increase the output.
  • edited October 2019
    So to add to my original post above I have another suggestion, perhaps a little controversial because it directly affects artifacts and curios, but I think it's a significant enough impact on the goop economy to talk about. Especially if aethertrading is intended to be expanded as a key part of the economy system.

    E. Set diminishing returns for aethergoop-generating artifacts (to address problem #2)

    At the moment, there is a significant legacy advantage to being around for the right promotions or being able to buy into the right generation artifact. That obviously can't be taken away wholesale, but I would propose an adjustment that means that stacking generator items doesn't have quite the same impact that it currently does:
    1. Significantly increase the aethergoop rewards from genies, poteen pots, treasure maps, urtraps, etc (especially if they don't give any other reward). So instead of genies giving 3-5 aethergoop per RL day for example, maybe they instead give ~25 aethergoop per RL day. Wondercornucopia would stay as it currently is at around 500 goop per in-game year.
    2. At the same time, implement a new 'affliction' to represent being oversaturated with aetheric energy, called... I don't know... 'Aethergoop Infused'. This debuff lasts until the next in-game month after which it is cleared completely, but while it is active goes up by one level every time a goop reward from a generator item is received.
    3. For every level of Aethergoop Infused you have that month (from level 1 to level 4), the next goop reward you earn is reduced as a portion of the aetherstuff diverts to powering up your existing aethergoop reserves. You receive only a certain percentage as new, generated aethergoop (eg. 50% at level 1, 25% at level 2, 10% at level 3 and 0% at level 4) with the remainder converting up to that amount of your existing goop to 'energised goop' (choosing any bound goop first, then unbound goop otherwise).
    4. Energised goop can be used exactly like unbound goop and converts back to unbound goop at the end of the game year, but while it is energised it can be traded to players for 0 gold (instead of 10 gold per goop).
    5. If the trading bonus alone is not enough, another option is to allow energised goop to be used in additional bonus ways - perhaps you could exchange energised goop for lessons at a 2 goop : 1 lesson ratio, or maybe when it is used in aethergoop crafting it reduces the other commodity costs involved by a certain percentage.
    I realise this might not make sense, so as an example let's say I have (250 bound, 1000 unbound) goop, with 4 genies and 2 ur'traps.
    • [Infused L0] At the start of the month, I rub my first genie, and get 27 bound goop (100%). So now I have (277 bound, 1000 unbound) goop. 
    • [Infused L1] I next rub my second genie, and get 13 bound goop (50%), plus 13 of my existing goop converted to energised. So now I have (277 bound, 1000 unbound, 13 energised) goop. 
    • [Infused L2] I rub my third genie, and get 5 bound goop (25%), plus 20 of my existing goop converted to energised. So now I have (262 bound, 1000 unbound, 33 energised) goop. My
    • [Infused L3] I rub my fourth genie, and get 2 bound goop (10%), plus 24 of my existing goop converted to energised. So now I have (240 bound, 1000 unbound, 57 energised) goop.
    • [Infused L4] I spring my first ur'trap, and get no new goop (0%), but 15 of my existing goop converted to energised. So now I have (225 bound, 1000 unbound, 72 energised) goop.
    • [Infused L4] I spring my second ur'trap, and get no new goop (0%), but 17 of my existing goop converted to energised. So now I have (208 bound, 1000 unbound, 89 energised) goop.
    So overall, I've still gained 47 goop directly, but have also shifted 42 of my bound goop back into unbound because of my generator stacking. For the rest of the game year, I can also save 890 gold if I wanted to sell that 89 energised goop to another player (or I can wait and build up more energised goop over the next few days).

    Obviously the exact numbers and percentages can be adjusted if this doesn't quite work, but the idea is that after gaining about 4 generator items, you no longer keep gaining stacking aethergoop generation. At the same time, we don't want to punish people who have a LOT of generators already, so the combination of free transfers plus conversion of bound goop to tradeable goop over time should still provide a benefit for obtaining a higher number of generator items if you wanted them.

    Ultimately though, I think this starts to impose sensible limits on how much of this particular currency is being generated out of thin air for every day going forward, boosting the rewards for players obtaining their first couple of generators quite a bit, but shifting the rewards of heavy stacking into other areas rather than linearly accumulating goop generation.

    Edit: Fixed a couple of numbers in my example, because I can't do maths. :(

  • B. Introduce some form of trade specialisation system with meaningful reward scaling (to address problems #2 & #3)

    Trade 'proficiency' would a new stat that every player has between 0 and 100%, representing one's specialisation in a particular craft or trade (you can only have proficiency in *one* tradeskill at any one time). By plying abilities in a specific tradeskill I can improve my proficiency up to a certain cap (say 5% per in-game month), but it would decrease rapidly whenever I switch to using abilities from a different tradeskill (until it reaches 0 and I start earning proficiency again in the new trade). 

    Above a certain threshold, Proficiency would provide an optional weighted bonus that I receive depending on how 'successful' my crafts, harvests or products are, so I can choose to either have a lot of versatility and self-sufficiency across trades, or I can specialise and receive a bonus to compensate for not always making everything myself.

    For example, above 25% proficiency, you would start to receive the following benefits depending on the type of tradeskill:
    • For design trades (tailoring, bookbinding, jewellery, forging, artisan, cooking, tattoos) - perhaps every in game month you receive a commission based on your proficiency multiplied by how many active players (defined as, say, logged in within the last week) are currently holding/using/have used one of the items stamped with you as the crafter, and a lesser bonus for how many active players are currently holding/using one of the items where you were the designer of the pattern. This formula could be weighted by the number of commodities or complexity of the pattern, so that more advanced/expensive crafts add more.
    • For harvesting/production trades (herbs, poisons, alchemy, enchantment) - perhaps every in game month you receive a stipend based on your proficiency multiplied by how many consumable items you created within the last month. This formula could be weighted by the difficulty of harvest/production as well as the current demand (or supply) of that item.
    This reward doesn't have to be just gold, it could be mixed with other types of rewards, like xp/essence, buffs that affect trade activities, or so on. The intent behind this being that self-sufficiency is absolutely still possible and not directly penalised, but there are rewards that encourage single trade specialisation and inter-player trading and offer escalating rewards for contributing to the economy in areas where there is higher demand.
    I don't think this really works as is.

    The design trades part seems like would interact with the permanency issue.
    Someone else investing their credits in a rune, for example, looks like it would give you permanent income for some of them as long as they're active, others like bookbinding books and tattoos would just do that by default.

    The design bit also seems like it could actively reward undercutting, if the income is high enough giving out free items could pay off in time, enabling the trader to give out more free items for greater profit, etc.

    Similarly, the harvesting/production trades seem like they'd encourage flooding the market with consumables which would, in turn, devalue them. Herbs seems like it could be particularly hit by this.


    Excluding trades from skillflexing is really just the simplest way to knock back self-sufficiency.

    Alternatively if anyone can do everything something more like the FFXIV model may work. Which is basically... self-sufficiency is possible but takes significantly more time than trading with other players.

    There crafting an individual item takes more time and can involve a series of steps, it's a significant time investment to be able to do everything because you have to level the skills up, and there's a lot of interdependence between trades because there's also processing steps between raw materials and what crafted goods need. (Like, Woodworkers might need orichalcum nails as one of the mats when crafting a certain item, which Blacksmiths craft from orichalcum bars, which are crafted from orichalcum nuggets, etc)

    That's before you get into crafting "High Quality" gear which then just increases the time investment so that being self-sufficient could mean signing up for hours of work to craft a set of gear.
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