Economy - Trade Revamp

Orael · April 2021

This is outlining in more depth/detail the plan for revamping trades.

Basics

Trades will no longer have a lesson cost. All lessons will be refunded (we will potentially allow people to trade lessons for credits, details to be determined).

Players will be able to select up to two trades. One trade inherently at no cost. The second trade will be selected by either using the Demipower SecondTradeSkill or the Endowment of Arts artifact. We will allow players to refund the essence for SecondTradeSkill should they want it. BeauteousThought will be fully refunded to everyone that has selected it and it will be replaced (see below).

When a player selects a skill, they will have access to the entire skillset for the most part. We may link some things to proficiency (certain patterns etc). Most basic things will be available to players initially.

They will start at 0% proficiency.

Trade Proficiencies

Traders will become proficient in a trade by performing the trade, or spending lessons to become more proficient. We will introduce names and tiers for proficiency levels so we don't have to refer to them by percentages etc.

Players can gain up to 5% proficiency at a base level per day by performing the trade. Certain things will be introduced that will increase how much proficiency you can gain per day. Classes will have bonuses towards certain skillsets initially(see below). We may also introduce guild bonuses, family bonuses, order bonuses, artifacts etc that will allow more proficiency gain per day. This will be capped at up to 10% per day.

The demipower BeauteousThought will be changed grant a 0.5% bonus to gaining proficiency, and allow players to reach a higher level of proficiency (105%) than normal.

In addition, players can spend 100 lessons a day to learn an additional 5% proficiency. The difference is that you will only be able to gain up to 50% proficiency through lessons. The same bonuses above would count towards how much proficiency you gain, again maxing out at 10% per day. The lesson cost would remain the same, so at max bonus, you would gain 10% proficiency for 100 lessons.

The likely number for max proficiency gain when we introduce things will be at 6.5%, meaning that with both learning in-game and performing lessons, you would hit 100% proficiency in 8 days. When other bonuses are introduced (mostly for flavor and theme), the fastest would be 5 days.

Skillflexing will be allowed, but when a player skillflexes out of a tradeskill, all proficiency will be lost. This may seem harsh and we may introduce ways to keep some level of proficiency but the goal here is that we want to encourage players to participate in the economy and have to engage with other traders. Promoting proficiencies, whether through shops or directly with players will mean that proficient players will be able to sell their goods and services at a cheaper rate and potentially higher quality than non-proficient players.

Additionally, proficiency will need to be upkept, with it being used at least once a game year. It will decay 10% every year it is not used. This may be changed but the goal here is to encourage players to buy from active traders and their shops.

The overall goal with proficiency levels is that a trader at 100% proficiency and zero artifacts will be more efficient/effective than a player at 0% proficiency and all the artifacts.

Here are a few benefits from being proficient in a skill

Gather things faster and easier
Services will be faster and more efficient
Goods will be of higher quality, cost fewer comms to make, and last longer.

One aspect of proficiency will be that making designs will cost more commodities at lower levels of proficiency. Current design commodity requirements will be the level for 100% proficiency, so players at 0% proficiency will need more commodities to make the items, including special commodities. This may mean that players at lower proficiency are unable to make certain designs because they cannot gather enough special commodities.

Trade Restrictions

We will be removing all trade restrictions. Anyone will be able to select any trade skill, regardless of class. Certain classes will instead give a 1% bonus towards gaining proficiency in that skillset.

Warriors - Forging
Monks - Tattoos
Bards - Tinkering/Brewmeister
Guardians/Mages - Spellcraft
Wiccans/Druids - Lorecraft (Alchemy)

Trans Tradeskills and other mechanical benefits

We will be removing most trans trade items and any other mechanical benefits from trade skills. We want to eliminate mechanical reasons that players will choose trades and instead allow players to pick the trade that they want to do. Most trans-items, and any skill that grants the trader some mechanical benefit will be removed. This will affect some trades more than others. Additionally, for the same reason, we are removing aethertrading. We do not want to encourage players to select specific trades because they can aethertrade while others cannot.

Note: To be clear - this will eliminate benefits that the trader gets, benefits that the trader makes/creates (like kirigami for instance) will be left in that everyone can use.

Trades and Shops

Every trade skill will have a way to sell their goods or services in a shop. Tattoos, enchantments etc will all be able to sell their goods in a shop. This will include things like engraving services or piping services.

Prospecting Skillset

A new prospecting skillset will be introduced. We're not going to go into more nitty-gritty details here but will summarize the skill. Prospectors will be able to produce various metal commodities by either mining it through veins of the metal or panning for them in the rivers and waterways. They'll be able to turn metals into alloys as well by combining them in various ways. We will be introducing more base metal and alloy commodities (such as copper, bronze, and titanium) as well as skills such as dowsing to find metal veins.

Proficiency will allow prospectors to mine/pan faster and for more metals as well as refining them into allows better.

Agriculture Skillset

A new agriculture skillset will be introduced. This will be a skill set that allows players to gather/create a variety of commodities such as fruit, veggies, milk, and meat. You'll be able to gather cows and slaughter them for meat and tan their hides for leather, shear sheep for cloth and gather spinnerets to make silk. Gather fruit and veggies and maybe even grow your own trees/plants to harvest them. You'll require a variety of equipment that other trades will have to make for you (such as nestboxes, buckets, baskets, looms or tanning racks).

Proficiency will allow you to get more commodities from your efforts in a faster time.

Specific Changes to Current Trade Skills

Alchemy/Lorecraft

Alchemy will be combined with Lorecraft to become one skillset - Alchemy
Brewmeisters will no longer use Alchemy
Liniment, Antidote, Mending, Restoration, Sanguine, Phlegmatic and Melancholic will be removed (unless I'm missing use for them, like antidote)
MagicInk will be added from Brewmeister
PhilospherStone will be removed
Proficiency will increase how amalgamation speed, how much power it uses, and how many sips you get per batch.

Artisan (Potential name change to Carpentry or something better)

Prized Skill will be removed
Low Proficiency will increase commodity costs to build designs and maintain them
Proficiency will increase how much furniture they can fit in a room
Packaging sold in shops will consider the creator's proficiency in regard to room use.

Bookbinding

Low Proficiency will increase commodity costs (including origami)
Proficiency will reduce balance times and magicink costs to make.
Vellum will be made riftable (apparently already is)
Ensure that all books are sellable in shops, including Omnibus etc.
MagicTome will be removed
Languages will be removed from Bookbinding and moved into a Lingualism mini-skill
Lingualism will be unlocked for 250 credits and will allow players to spend 100 lessons to learn up to 5 languages (from various NPC's that speak the language)

Brewmeister

Brewmeister will no longer require alchemy
All drinks from Cooking will be moved to Brewmeister
Brews/Ales/Spirits/Wine/Colddrinks
MagicInk will be moved to Alchemy
TeaCeremony, Belch, BeerBelly, PukeMaster, StandingDrunk, Steelgut will be removed.
Proficiency will increase sips created, as well as lower balance times and power usage. It will also increase decay times.
Proficiency may increase alcohol potency (not sure if good idea)

Cooking

Refinement, Dietician and Herofete will be removed (Herofete will remain on wondercorn)
All drinks will be removed from Cooking and added to Brewmeister
Brews/Ales/Colddrinks/Spirits/Wine
We will add 'piping kits' that will be sold in shops that allow players to pipe onto their own food, in color if we can.
Low proficiency will increase comm usage
Proficiency will improve preserving, satiation and balance times (power costs?)

Enchantment

Proficiency will be linked to either Tinkering/Spellcraft
It will increase enchanting speed, decrease power cost, and maybe more charges per enchant
Develop a way to sell enchants through shops so players can enchant their specific piece of jewelry.
This could take the form of enchanters enchanting cubes with specific enchants that they can use to sell in the shop. This would not allow players to use the cubes to use the enchantments themselves, only to apply it to other items

Forging

MasterArmour will be removed
Padding and weapon/armour enhancements will be given a way to sell in shops.
Low Proficiency will increase comm requirements
Proficiency will reduce time to forge items
Will increase commodity recovery from smelting (this may already be 100%)
Will make items last longer

Herbs

Remove Herblore and Smoking
Proficiency will increase balance recovery and how many herbs you can harvest per HARVEST

Jewellery

Remove Refinement and Tierstone
Make powerstones at 100% riftable (they will always decay outside a rift)
Allow engraving services at a shop
Low proficiency will increase comm costs
Proficiency will make gemcutting more efficient
Proficiency will increase decay times and prestige.
Proficiency will make melting more effective.

Poisons

Remove Immunity
Proficiency will increase how many applications you get
Proficiency will reduce balance times.

Spellcraft

Remove MagiCrown
combine Guardian/Mage enchanting to be available to all
See Enchantment for proficiency bonuses

Tailoring

Remove Refinement
Splendours will remain, but tailors will be able to make them for anyone.
Allow the selling of padding/thermal/depadding services
Allow selling of enhancement knots
Allow mending services in shops
Sell embroideryKits to allow players to embroider items (in color if possible)
Low Proficiency will increase comm requirements
Proficiency will increase decay times and prestige

Tattoos

Remove TattooMaster
Tattoo traders will be able to prepare skin on anyone and give them tattoo armour (up to 16% resistance) This means it will no longer be limited to monks.
Need to design a way to sell tattoos in a shop (see Report 115 for one example)
Proficiency will decrease time to tattoo
Selling in shops could not last as long as getting it from a tattooist
Low proficiency will increase the amount of tints required.

Tinkering

Remove RoseGlasses
Offer a way to sell miniature repair services
see Enchantment.

Shango · April 2021

WHY? Who asked for any of this? Yes, ungating trades to classes we all did....but none of this.

Adding more scarcity with 'proficiency' nonsense, which is JUST grinding shit. #1 complaint in EVERY game, especially MMOs, is the need for pointless, mindless grinding. Encouraging MORE of that, is very much the wrong direction.

Removing the main reason many would pick up a Tradeskill, that mechanical benefit at trans, also bad. WHY. Who's complaining about that, beyond not being able to put down a Trade due to mechanical value conferred?

Minimalism is not the answer. Tell me this is a late April fools joke, as the one IC caused a few bugs?

Orael · April 2021

I'm going to refer you to the overview post that explains why we're doing this.

Basically, the idea here is you're building proficiency to prevent grinding as much so you can sell things cheaper and more efficiently.

Shango · April 2021

It's the wrong way to go about it. Keep the trade restrictions lifted, that's a great thing that everyone has requested, vocally, for years. Not the rest of this.

Shango · April 2021

Lessons don't matter, proficiency does....massive time wasting to grindgrindgrind as though that was EVER a fun dynamic of interaction for any game instead of just a chore. THEN if you dare to Skillflex out as even with all possible opened slots, refunded or not...you get dunked back to 0% and thus wasted your time entirely. THEN.....you can just spend lessons to up proficiency ANYWAY. So why, lesson sink?

Lysandus · April 2021

I also am baffled about the removal of aethertrading. Why not create more aethertraders link to a specific trade that way everyone can earn goop? How would we earn goop now?

Edit: I do hope that you won't treat aethergoop as a premium only currency as you need to pay money for it.

Sulwh · April 2021

Orael said:

I'm going to refer you to the overview post that explains why we're doing this.

Basically, the idea here is you're building proficiency to prevent grinding as much so you can sell things cheaper and more efficiently.

So the overarching vision is to:

Have players grind to build proficiency that will reduce grinding in the long term. And then since proficiency will drop every year, players will have to continue to grind in order to grind less.
Players will have to specialize in a game that does not have the population to support specialization.
Instead of allowing all trades to aethertrade, no aethertrading will be allowed by any trades so aethergoop will essentially become a premium only currency.
Remove all mechanical incentive for players to trans a trade skill, so that only players who are interested in the creative aspects of the game will fully trans trade skills, further increasing scarcity.

Did I miss anything?

Lysandus · April 2021

my other concern will be trade skills like forging, with the introduction to runes and customization to no-decay items, changing your weapons has become non-existent. Since all weapons deal the same amount of damage unless you have damage artifacts, what's the point to change weapons unless you switch to another specialization?

The Only Koi · April 2021

While it seemed that perhaps removing the mechanical aspect of the trades will not force a player anymore to favour a certain trade, we have enjoyed these mechanical benefits for a long time now. Can these become available as artifacts or benefits from other mechanics like research or what have yous? Or instead those people who will get refunded can use the lessons to buy those mechanical benefits?

Aeldra · April 2021

re aethertrading: as I posted on the overview thread, I would urge to reconsider on this, especially given what impact it'll have for the 'not so rich' people of the game and how much it will lock away aethercandies etc. I do hope that this is reconsidered.

for the other points:

yay no more skill restrictions, riftable craftables (powerstones, am looking at you)
not so yay for only having two tradeskills. Maybe a needed change, but certainly not one that am thrilled about.
People love their roseglasses/immunity/herofete/etc and would sad to see them go completely, maybe they could be a 'pick one of X' mini-skillset or something like that?
yay for being able to buy things through shops. Tracking down people as an off-peak player can be really frustrating.
is it implied that tattoos will now 'decay' ? If so, that is a real dreaded change that I would 100% urge against. I understand wanting to make tattoos as viable as the other skillsets, but getting your tattoos is such a major hassle. If the route is chosen, I would ask to consider to making it possible to upkeep them somehow.
the new skillsets sound interesting and yay for having a way to generate commodities, looking forward to those.
With the flexing technically gone, so is a lot of use for having most of the trade artifacts aside of the two you are using, same for the multitool.

Also, one thing I would also want to point out, is the disparity between skillsets that's not addressed:

enchantment cube recharges are very time consuming and not very rewarding
cooking offers no mechanical benefit aside of 'feeding' people
jewelry falls into here as well
tailoring/forging provide very long-term items and will thus be very scarce unless people really embrace being a tailor/forger RP-wise

Basically I fear that anything that is not mostly a 'consumable' source will be very scarce and a lot harder to find then it is now, if people optimize for profit.

edit: fixed bad formatting

Fillirriqili · April 2021

It sounds like the fact that proficiencies replace lesson cost will lower the barrier to entry for tradeskills, especially for new players. If I'm reading it right it means we no longer have to toss up between investing in a trade or learning guild skills/etc, and now *everyone* can freely pick one. In theory this means the pool of 'active' players per trade should increase, and you no longer have to wait around for x person to wake up with their shears or other artifact, because everyone took the 'popular' tradeskill for the superitem/skill that came at trans. Newbies can join the crafting game without trading their bashing attack, or other miniskill, and I feel like that's a good thing.

The loss of aethertrades will be felt negatively though, as discovery of this has made the Lusternia pvp scene much easier to get into, and provided access to 'the' bashing attack of choice for everyone and allowed equality in my perspective. I wonder if it would be possible to incorporate a tradeable item into each of the new skillset branches instead? Or put the refining skill into a common miniskill to open the access.

Pash · April 2021

I do appreciate that people will be able to select whatever tradeskill they want, though the introduction of proficiencies concerns me as it introduces a new "grind" that people will have to undertake. How quickly will proficiencies go up, and how long will they be maintained? Will people have to log in every day and do X amount of work to keep things tippy top, or will it be more forgiving for people who might only be able to log in a few times a week, but are heavily invested in crafting and giving back to the gameworld?

I'm slightly concerned about the negative impact on the removal of the trans tradeskill options and the impact on PVP, and as Fillirriqili pointed out, the fact that Aethertrading did allow for people to get Aethergoop far more easily to work on their gnomeweapon, which has become the most useful method of bashing. Obviously we had a selection of people who took tradeskills for the trans options, but some of them were genuinely useful; I'm not sure that removing the trans tradeskill level will help encourage conflict -- it's as negative for people who never accessed them and now cannot get those benefits as it is to those who had them and have to get used to not having them.

Perhaps there's a (non-artifact, non-payment) way to incorporate the effects of those tradeskills back into the game world.

Orael · April 2021

Sulwh said:

Orael said:

I'm going to refer you to the overview post that explains why we're doing this.

Basically, the idea here is you're building proficiency to prevent grinding as much so you can sell things cheaper and more efficiently.

So the overarching vision is to:
Have players grind to build proficiency that will reduce grinding in the long term. And then since proficiency will drop every year, players will have to continue to grind in order to grind less.
Players will have to specialize in a game that does not have the population to support specialization.
Instead of allowing all trades to aethertrade, no aethertrading will be allowed by any trades so aethergoop will essentially become a premium only currency.
Remove all mechanical incentive for players to trans a trade skill, so that only players who are interested in the creative aspects of the game will fully trans trade skills, further increasing scarcity.
Did I miss anything?

1) They'll have to perform the trade once a year or something to maintain proficiency - and that's only to encourage buying from active players vs dormant players (primarily in shops). Proficiency at the moment wouldn't be that much of a grind
2) Players will not have to specialize but they'll be encouraged to specialize. We're addressing issues such as not being able to find traders with various things.
3) somewhat, you still have wondercorn and can buy it in game still. Aethertrading wasn't the only way to get goop.
4) Yeah, we're removing the benefit to have people choose the trade they want to do rather than the trade they need for the benefit. We wanted to remove any potential bias to let players do what they want freely.

Orael · April 2021

I'll respond more in the morning to things, but I need to head to bed now.

Chogan · April 2021

Alternative proposal:

Remove class lock for tradeskills.
Add in a 'proficiency' meter called something like *Merchantry*. This meter goes up when you sell items crafted/harvested by you to other players via a shop or in person. Any single item can boost your merchantry only once. There would have to be a syntax added for official sales in person, along the lines of BUY sword1231231 FROM CIARAN FOR <gold>. Proficiency will slowly decay over time as well.
There is something akin to aethertraders but for crafting where gnomes/whatever lore organization will contact you via tells asking for some randomized item out of your crafting catalog, the reward being comms/goop/whatever. The rate of getting these missions is influenced by your merchantry skill level.

The hope being that the system will reward merchants that opt-in and go hard with crafting/selling. Also giving them a chance to build wealth through crafting and selling through the NPC missions. Crucially, this system is in no way punitive to those who don't engage in it. Mechanically the items crafted by someone with 100% Merchantry and 0% Merchantry are equal.

Sapphira · April 2021

i thought the idea was to allow people to engage as much or as little with the system as they wanted. The trade change cuts me to the cooore. I really enjoyed stocking my shops with a range of necessities that I could make myself. As someone who never changes class, my tam is now completely useless to me as skillflexing trades to do my own work is now going to be a punishment. Are trades also going to be untied from high/low magic? I assume so. As someone who really enjoys the creative aspect of trades, being forced to choose which I want to keep (or be penalised each time for switching) this is very frustrating to me. I'm not sure how making it a grind/must do to stay skilled is the tack anyone really wanted. And of course, if I wanted to be able to take up the new skills of sourcing comms to provide for my crafts, presumably that would also limit my creative outlets.

I'm glad I hadn't yet bought the artifact to give me a fourth trade as planned. I think removing the inherent buffs/bonuses is a great idea, I can even get behind removing aethertraders, but I think those were enough without also taking away the trades from people like myself who like to dabble in all the things, stock their shops sometimes, and design things they can also craft without hunting people down.

The shop changes are great! No more needing to find a person for one charge of a certain enchantment or for tattoos or what have you. Love it. Empower shop keepers! Please don't with the otherhand knock them back with this nerf. I have every trade currently that I can take and the thought of picking up the others is very exciting...except, again, being forced to choose (or suffer everything taking longer/costing more.) That's really unfun. I don't spend hours on hours on my trade, just here and there I like to dabble in different things when stock is low, but in many different trades.

Pleeeeease. Please please. Reconsider this.

Also - i suggest remove brewmeistery entirely and split it between cooking and alchemy as appropriate, it seems silly to remove those things from chefs and have a skillset that literally can only make a handful of things. Especially given it will no longer be class-tied and buffs removed.

And another thought - will teaceremony be added anywhere like the wondercorn? Some of us still made use of them situationally.

Sapphira · April 2021

Sorry more thoughts. I never change class and have no interest in doing so. Depending how this proficiency/costing plays out, this proposed change would make obsolete: My tam, my third trade, allllll the lessons from 6 other trades (i have 8) and all the trade artifacts that go with them. Add in the trade curios that boost production...this feels like a really big swipe at anyone who actually was already engaging in the market system. A lot of people who have multiple trades don't do it for mechanics and likely don't even bother in having multiple slots open for them, but those like me who had them to be self-sufficient or just indecisive in what craft they feel like engaging in at the time, now have to choose favourites.

Every other part of this proposal feels pretty good to me at a glance (except maybe removing gold drops entirely) but this not only stings personally but I feel like it will have the desired result. How many shopkeepers do we have out there, that are like me and have multiple trades they use to stock those shops? If we are nerfed, are there really that many other people out there willing to stock a shop with their wares? It's hard to find some trades already, like tinkering. Are there really that many tinkers who would willingly stay at that trade to stock a shop? Over other more creative crafts? I know currently I flex it to access the enchants people need. But if they're going to be available in NPC shops anyway, why bother having it? I suspect current shopkeepers who like to flex trades will be hit, and everyone else who never cared anyway will continue not caring because they can just buy what they need from Trader Bob.

What is the incentive for non-creative trades? People wanting unique things will be able to access them in those player-run shops - awesome, but why have alchemy, or herbs? I know a lot of my shop-keeping gold comes not from anything creative but from people who can't find avaricehorn or regulators. Obviously it's hard to know without knowing what the NPC shops sell for but if they're not -significantly- higher there's still no way to make a profit, with now scarcity items always being available.

I'm a bit upset but I hope I'm still making sense. This feels like a backward solution and a big nerf to my enjoyment of shopkeeping. I tend to stock things to fill a need. 99% of my designs are public or in the city cartels - which would be readily available also. So even the trades that are creative likely wouldn't generate income for me unless i start filling my private cartels, which generally are designs only for myself or family, private for that very reason. Please rethink the trade limit/proficiency aspect. Cut the huge lesson costs to make them accessible, strip out the buffs, leave them as fun perks to have if you enjoy making things without having to grind to be -good- at something you transcended already.

Mboagn · April 2021

RIP my plans to eventually buy a brand new Mugwumpolis from aethertrading profits

In all seriousness, though, aethertrading has made goop (and, in turn, a lot of Lusternia) so accessible. Removing it would be a great loss. I'm not even talking about my profits from selling refined items*, it's all about adding a huge paywall. Locking goop behind wondercorns (which, themselves, cost 10 crystals / levelling up to Demigod), plus the fact that they can only produce 500 goop per year, is a return to pay-for-perks in a big way.

* My highest profit from refined items is from Cooking, which is around 1.78k gold. To get from worthless value to uniquely refined value takes around 20 RL mintes; in an hour, that's 5.34k gold. Here's the math:

Using the design 'a piece of stew bread' (grain 2, meat 1, vegetables 1)

1 grain = ~14 gold (28 gold total)
1 meat = ~23 gold
1 vegetables = ~9 gold
total for 1 stew bread: 60 gold

Now, I find that I need around 37 pieces of stew bread to make 1 unique. So the gold cost of a uniquely refined stew bread goes up to 2,220 gold. Selling them for 4,000 gold apiece nets me 1,780 gold.

Arix · April 2021

so basicly if I want to be able to make food AND beverages like Arix has done for a long ass time I would have to drop bookbinding for Brewmeister and I would also lose tailoring, will I be allowed to get a refund for my trade artis?

Arix · April 2021

I'm not even a cook for money, I just like to make stuff and give it to people

Jolanthe · April 2021

Lorecraft is going to feel pretty empty as is. If we're gutting Brewmeister of its flavour already, and those who are brewmeisters now can be lorecrafters instead, why not just gut it entirely?

-Lump all amalgamating skills in Brewmeister back into Lorecraft
-Anyone with Brewmeister gets Lorecraft for free

Cooks get to continue to make drinks, but will need to get prepared leaves and malts from lorecrafters still (unless that will come from agriculture instead?). Seems reasonable for maintaining trade reliance and not weirdly dividing food and drink trades entirely.

EDIT: Or hey, just do away with lorecraft at the same time too. There's no reason for a specialisation when there's no specialisations - just put all the remaining amalgamating skills back into alchemy, done.

Jolanthe · April 2021

Another suggestion, but in a separate post for emphasis:

Cooking proficiency should affect portions and satiation - cooking artifacts/pieman can be adjusted to influence preservation time/balance loss between uses.

Artifacts retain some utility and use but are no longer the main focal point for profit in cooking - instead, keeping and maintaining your proficiency is the surest means of boosting your ability to generate profit from your inputs.

Nikka the Fink · April 2021

Rather than removing philosopter's stone, as Alchemy is pretty sparse on skills and it is a cool alchemy reference that many people will recognize from elsewhere, can we rather keep it and make it an item that can be sold and used by everyone? It can be made less powerful as needed.

Esano · April 2021

I think this proposal emphasises the wrong problems with the economy. Currently, it's possible for established players to outcompete new people in all trades, but that's not really because of skillflexing. Skillflexing just makes it easier for an individual to outcompete in all trades, but it doesn't matter to that newbie if it's one person outcompeting them in everything or if it's ten people each outcompeting them in a separate one of their possible choices.

The big problem is that artifacts (and curios) provide drastic benefits that massively warp the profit ratios of certain skills.

The only part of the proposal that addresses this is the vague statement that "The overall goal with proficiency levels is that a trader at 100% proficiency and zero artifacts will be more efficient/effective than a player at 0% proficiency and all the artifacts.". But again that doesn't matter if there's going to be someone at 100% proficiency with all the artifacts producing puritydust at less than a quarter of the cost. You're never going to sell any dust.

Individuals possessing multiple trade skills is a smaller problem than artifacts.

If you do address the artifact disparity, I can understand the idea behind stopping individuals from stocking their shops with every trade at full efficiency. It feels like an awkwardly artificial limitation to force shopkeepers to not just fully stock their own shop but it's understandable. But I don't think it needs to be a dramatic difference. Even a 10% difference in price is enough to make people pick the cheaper shop, or have shopkeepers seek out someone with proficiency to stock their shop, while allowing cartel-owners to sell unique designs from multiple trades without being completely priced out.

Sapphira · April 2021

i could get behind changing/nerfing/removing trade artifacts and curio rather than forcing people to not enjoy all the trades. Definitely feels like it would better address the reasons people can sell things so cheap where newbies can't, keeping a more competitive market.

Orael · April 2021

We could look at trade artifacts as well and adjust those, we didn't because we didn't want to nerf too many things here.

We're not trying to make it hard to build proficiency here. I had initially thought that building with proficiency would take about 15-30 minutes a day, but we can reduce that if people feel like requiring that much effort to build proficiency daily is too much. The reason for maintaining proficiency is really just to promote buying from active players and their shops rather than dormant player's shops. It's not meant to be a hardship. I don't think asking someone to do something with their trade once every 12 days is too much here.

The revamp and emphasis on shops here is what we're doing to allow this to be opt-in, so if you're not interested in spending time finding someone, you can just seek out a shop, purchase what you want, and then go about your day.

We can potentially look at bringing some trans trade items back as artifacts or something (kind of like how herofete is a part of the Wondercorn) but the reason for their removal is to remove as much potential bias when selecting trade skills as possible. By reducing them down to pure trades, players can freely choose a trade they want, rather than a trade that provides them the most benefit. I understand that not all trades are equal and it'll undoubtedly mean certain trade skills will be selected more, but it also opens up opportunities for players to really benefit from selecting from those less relied upon trades (less competition).

The only thing we're really making hard and discouraging is being able to do all the trades. We're not preventing you from doing so though, and are adding mechanics and things to encourage players to work together for a mutual benefit here. You'll be able to work with other players to sell items from your shop or directly buy from them to turn around and sell in your shop as you currently can do. We realize that it's really the largest competing goal here between encouraging engagement and encouraging the merchant playstyle. As I said earlier, I'm not sure any other way around it.

Uzriel · April 2021

I noticed all drinks are getting moved from cooking to brewmeister, how is that going to work with private designs that are part of a cooking cartel? Cooking is mostly just a fun rp skill with very little mechanical need, kind of sad to see things being taken away from it.

And I saw others ask above, but I'll echo again asking how the existing trade artifacts are going to factor in.

Being limited to just two trades seems extremely limited. Especially if 2 more trades are being added (a total of 16 trade skills!) I can just imagine how difficult this is going to make things even for somebody wanting to specialize.

Edit: I also wonder how many people bought a cord/tam not to swap class skills but just to play around with trades.

Sapphira · April 2021

My tam is 100% for trade swapping.

Also remove brewmeister entirely, it's lacklustre. Split it between cooking (drinks/teas/malts) and alchemy (magicink), seems much better than preserving a very blah trade already, and solves the mess of cooking cartels.

Edit: Also tinkering, just merge it with enchantment. Let's be real, both brewmeister and tinkering were the ugly cousins of alchemy and spellcraft.

Ashipedia · April 2021

RE: Proficiencies and trade flexing

Instead of making you lose all proficiency for flexing trades, you get 1 free trade flex per weave. Any additional trade flexing costs you 10% loss to that trade. I think this is something people like me, who have a ton of trade skills, could live with. I don't mind being locked into 2 active trades at once so long as I can still use trades I've worked RL years for.

Saran · April 2021

Sapphira said:

Every other part of this proposal feels pretty good to me at a glance (except maybe removing gold drops entirely) but this not only stings personally but I feel like it will have the desired result. How many shopkeepers do we have out there, that are like me and have multiple trades they use to stock those shops? If we are nerfed, are there really that many other people out there willing to stock a shop with their wares? It's hard to find some trades already, like tinkering. Are there really that many tinkers who would willingly stay at that trade to stock a shop? Over other more creative crafts? I know currently I flex it to access the enchants people need. But if they're going to be available in NPC shops anyway, why bother having it? I suspect current shopkeepers who like to flex trades will be hit, and everyone else who never cared anyway will continue not caring because they can just buy what they need from Trader Bob.

What is the incentive for non-creative trades? People wanting unique things will be able to access them in those player-run shops - awesome, but why have alchemy, or herbs? I know a lot of my shop-keeping gold comes not from anything creative but from people who can't find avaricehorn or regulators. Obviously it's hard to know without knowing what the NPC shops sell for but if they're not -significantly- higher there's still no way to make a profit, with now scarcity items always being available.

I'm a bit upset but I hope I'm still making sense. This feels like a backward solution and a big nerf to my enjoyment of shopkeeping. I tend to stock things to fill a need. 99% of my designs are public or in the city cartels - which would be readily available also. So even the trades that are creative likely wouldn't generate income for me unless i start filling my private cartels, which generally are designs only for myself or family, private for that very reason. Please rethink the trade limit/proficiency aspect. Cut the huge lesson costs to make them accessible, strip out the buffs, leave them as fun perks to have if you enjoy making things without having to grind to be -good- at something you transcended already.

There's kinda another question around like... people stocking multiple trades and how things will work. Which is like... how much do individuals covering multiple trades make it harder for other people to actually get into things?
I think Isser ran into the issue a couple of weeks ago where he'd made a bunch of food and couldn't even give it away before it decayed, that's before you're even just trying to sell things where I've had a lot of fun with the apathy of bothering because everything I'd stock for the pixie is well and truly readily available.
On top of that, the design stuff is likely going to make stocking massively easier and a more secure investment which without something seems like it'd compound those issues. If I kept all my trades with just those changes I'd probably easily be able to stock basically everything in the pixie pretty trivially.

As for creative/non-creative, I kinda find non-creative potentially appealing because it's just... easier to get into them. You don't need to worry about designs, you're just generating useful stuff for sale. It seems potentially more accessible as a lower time investment sorta thing. The new trades seem like they could also be newbie-friendly for like ways for them to make more... assured money.

Uzriel · April 2021

Saran said:

There's kinda another question around like... people stocking multiple trades and how things will work. Which is like... how much do individuals covering multiple trades make it harder for other people to actually get into things?

I think Isser ran into the issue a couple of weeks ago where he'd made a bunch of food and couldn't even give it away before it decayed, that's before you're even just trying to sell things where I've had a lot of fun with the apathy of bothering because everything I'd stock for the pixie is well and truly readily available.

That's kind of a poor example, there's little mechanical reason for people to need food, much less buy it. Most people that take cooking take it for aethertrading, they enjoy designing cooking, and giving away food/drinks to people. Mechanically it can make dust and that's it.

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