Economy - Trade Revamp

24

Comments

  • i bet if he had been giving away something useful, like curatives or kirigami or a candy, it would have been snapped up. Trades are not made equal and this is known. if anything, keeping a limit on which trades people can have keeps the discrepancy - choose what will sell (consumables) or what if crafty and fun but no one needs to buy it (food, furniture).
  • While I'm not well-versed in trades enough to offer much of an opinion on the rest of it: why would you name a languages skill/miniskill 'lingualism'? It's not, at a glance, a word in English. Why not Linguistics, or possibly just Languages?

    pronouns: they/them
  • Ashipedia said:
    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.
    That looks like it would let you maintain 12 trades with a single slot as long as you switch one per day and craft one thing from each of them once you do so? In theory, with a second slot you'd be able to maintain all 16 we'd have after the overhaul even with that loss because you could have the remaining four on a three-day rotation which would be enough to recoup the 10% loss.

    Given discussions about consolidating the trades which could leave us with just 13 trades after the overhaul, you could maintain all of them without loss by having one in your second slot and rotating the other slot daily. Which seems like... you just need to top up one thing in a shop each day and there is no negative.
  • An alternate proposal:
    • Remove the combat relevant trans skills and unlock all trades. 
    • Give all the tradeskills an active skill that that lets them bless other players (Perhaps a bonus to aligned class/tradeskills ie. warrior forgers).
    • Players get to choose one (+1 with artifact) tradeskill to specialize in. Respeccing has the same cooldown as classflexing. Perhaps this spec choice also confers other benefits (faster harvesting, etc)
    • Flexing out of your spec doesn't remove it. It's just an inactive bonus.
    The gist of it is: Everyone gets something like oldschool coal runes which allows them to grant a temporary buff to their allies for a comm outlay, but they can use whatever tradeskills they'd like to craft whatever items.
  • Esei said:
    While I'm not well-versed in trades enough to offer much of an opinion on the rest of it: why would you name a languages skill/miniskill 'lingualism'? It's not, at a glance, a word in English. Why not Linguistics, or possibly just Languages?
    By the way, linguistics is the scientific study of how languages work, not learning new languages. The best way to upset a linguist is to confuse the two.
  • edited April 2021
    If you're going to remove aethertrade, I propose that the NPC that you'll be introducing be the next goop trader.

    Every day, they will ask for a certain item(s) from a particular trade and once you fulfil that order, they give you goop as a reward. Then allow players to decide, regardless of what trade skill they have, to choose what to do with the goop, do they purchase scarves, candies, or artifacts.

    For example, today NPC asks that he needs a chair (should be public design, not made by private cartels) to fulfil an order for their clients. Everyone can now look for artisans and the artisans themselves can work on the items, there's your engagement. The goop reward will be lower, perhaps half of what a unique tailoring item would give so that it won't be flooded.

    Next day, NPC ask for a set of swords of this design so forgers have a chance to work and earn, then so on and so forth.

    This way, this can probably solve player engagement, the feeling of the importance of that trade, and some sort of sink on commodities.

    What do you guys think?

    Edited for corrections.
  • Please make magic tomes and philosopher stones items that anyone can buy from the crafter and use. Can remove the charge from the tomes and reduce the stone's sip bonus if needed, but I am very attached to my stone, it's a really neat item that just screams alchemy is cool.
  • Sapphira said:
    i bet if he had been giving away something useful, like curatives or kirigami or a candy, it would have been snapped up. Trades are not made equal and this is known. if anything, keeping a limit on which trades people can have keeps the discrepancy - choose what will sell (consumables) or what if crafty and fun but no one needs to buy it (food, furniture).
    Sure, kirigami and wetfold both look like more effort than they're worth to stock when they appear to be quite readily available. Seeing a similar look with curatives, some of the shops I'm popping into are individuals variety shops that are covering a decent selection of needs.

    The latter also isn't a given, ease of switching limits the capacity for people to carve out a niche. Personally, when we didn't have skillflexing and if you wanted to change trades you had to completely forget the skill to learn the new one (With the costs that involves) I was actually an artisan and that was actually useful because other people did take consumables/etc and I helped fill that gap for making furniture and instruments. Which also made a bit more money cause people were more appreciative of being able to get their thing crafted tbh
  • Please make magic tomes and philosopher stones items that anyone can buy from the crafter and use. Can remove the charge from the tomes and reduce the stone's sip bonus if needed, but I am very attached to my stone, it's a really neat item that just screams alchemy is cool.
    I'm kinda wondering if those bonuses could actually be migrated to guilds somehow, might be with a guild skin but could be a neat way to repurpose stuff.
  • Ashipedia said:
    I'm not sure if you meant this as a good thing or bad, but essentially, yes. Those of us that have worked RL years to gain multiple trades don't want to lose all that hard work. It also would allow for anyone to maintain 3 trades without losing proficiency. I don't like proficiency overall, but if it's the way we're going, I feel like it needs to be looked at as losing a small amount to change trades. A good point I heard from someone else was just because I bake a cake doesn't mean I forget how to water my plants. So just because I decide I want to make a set of weapons for a novice, doesn't mean I should forget how to sew that same novice a set of clothing. That's my take on it.


    It goes against the stated goals with a minimum 2-3 commands a day that you could alias (track to crafting room, switch trade, craft item). For context, I also have nearly all the trades which I got because of excess lessons and convenience.
    As proficiency decay is yearly not monthly, your suggestion would allow for anyone to maintain 12 trades without losing proficiency not 3.

    Arguably the counter to the point about baking a cake seems like... a professional baker is very likely going to be better at such than a professional tailor. The tailor might be able to bake a cake, but it's likely going to potentially take them longer, not going to be as good, etc.

    Being proficient across all trades seems to be the equivalent of simultaneously being a professional Chemist, Brewer, Bookbinder, Chef/Baker/Pastry Chef/etc, Blacksmith, Gardener, Jeweller/Lapidarist, Tailor/Costumer/Cobbler/etc, Tattooist, and... two other equivalent careers for enchants and poisons.

    Whereas suggestions around being able to craft from trades without proficiency while only having two "proficient" trades allows the Tailor to bake a cake, just not as good as the pro.
  • edited April 2021
    Hey there! Tikki here! So, just running through some various opinions on my part. I'll also note that I'm writing this as I read, so if I miss anyone making similar points or addressing said points or if some things may seem a bit disjointed, I apologize!


    - RE: Trade Proficiency:
    So much nope in this. Limiting the amount of trades players have already feels horrible in and of itself, but throwing in the idea of Proficiency just feels punishing. I love crafting, I love picking up new crafts, it's something Tikki does for reasons in character and as I only currently have 3/4 slots, I switch fairly often between certain ones to take care of certain tasks. It feels nice because multiple times I've had Luce or someone ask me 'Hey can you do this?' because, even if they may have that skill themselves, either they're not flexed into it, or they want Tikki to feel happy, since that's one of the big things that makes them smile, helping others.

    I'm sure that the idea behind Proficiences and limiting the amount of trades people have is to make it so Frank who has Cooking and Artisan would go and ask Steve who has Tailoring to fix up his suit or Cromzlor who has Jewellery to make him a ring. Which is a good concept, wanting to increase crafter to crafter engagement. The theoretical execution here though feels incredibly punishing and disheartening to people who have picked up more than two tradeskills for this very exact same reason. If the idea is to get people to engage in the economy and engage with other traders, I can only speak for myself when I say that this is making me want to do the exact opposite and just not bother with Trade at all. Especially the idea of an upkeep. Not only from a point of 'People sometimes can't get on every day', there are times when people just can't manage to get on for weeks. I know if I was busy enough where I couldn't get on and came back to not knowing how to even fry an egg, I would be incredibly upset.

    I can tell the heart was in the right place with this, ala wanting to try and get people engaged, but to me at least, it feels disheartening, punishing, and pushes me away from wanting to do tradework. I do not support nor do I think this part of the purposed Revamp should be a thing.



    - RE: Trade Restrictions:
    This is a wonderful idea! Letting folks be able to choose from more trades will open up more opportunities for players to engage. Especially when it comes to trades that were locked by City v Commune. With my opinion of disfavour towards Proficiences, perhaps the bonus instead could be having things crafted by those specific classes last 10% longer before decaying for example?


    -RE: Trans Tradeskills:
    I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, okay sure. On the other it does feel kind of punishing as well. My biggest one for example, I love using Herofete, it's not a 'for me' kind of thing, I do it for other people, I do it for RP purposes over Combat, because Tikki likes feeding folks. I don't think that trans-items/skills should be removed at all. I don't personally think that they're so much what makes people pick a tradeskill, so much as they're what make people feel like Transing a tradeskill is worth it. Taking that out, to me, feels needless.


    -RE: Aethertradering
    Oh good golly do I not like this one either. To an extent I do agree! People do often select specific trades because they can aethertrade while others can't. I can see that as a problem. But rather than making the wholesale solution 'Remove them' how about instead:
    1) Have the existing traders accept more types of items that seem appropriate! (For example, Gioia accepting Brewmeister or Alchemist items)
    2) Keep the limit of 1 trade per weave per person, but instead of having them vanish after 3 trades, perhaps have somewhere set up to be an Aethertrade-Hub, where the traders reside so you don't have to hunt them down all the time. If you're still wanting to keep them only showing up at certain times though, it'd be easy do just have them close up shop for a little while and then announce they're back open like the do now for when they show up!

    Obviously just suggestions and I'm sure someone smarter than me could point out faults. But I do think that it would be an easier/better idea than trying to add in new traders for each craft. It'd be easy enough (from an IC standpoint, idk anything about programming it) for the Gnomes to say 'Hey we're opening a shop and broadening our horizons so you can too! We now accept <etc. etc.>'.


    RE: Trades and Shops:
    Also another fantastic idea! Having ways for more traders to be able to hock their wares even when not online is great! I'd look forward to seeing how that manifests ICly. Magical wands that lasers a tattoo on your arm? The possibilities on that are endless.


    RE: Prospecting/Agriculture
    Yes please! These feel like wonderful ideas absolutely positively. Not only do I love these from an RP aspect (BEING ABLE TO MAKE MY OWN GARDEN OF FRESH FRUITS AND VEGGIES?! HOME COOKING?! AAAA) but being able to produce your own comms for yourself and for others is a beautiful beautiful thing. I'm passing over the Proficiencey part, because as noted I'm very much opposed to the Proficiency idea as a whole.


    RE: Specific Changes
    I'll try to bullet point my takes on this that I haven't already addressed in other mentions, such as disliking the idea of removing Trans Skill Items/Abilities such as Herofete, or my dislike of Proficiency. So I won't be hitting every single point brought up in each list.

    - Bookbinding: I do like the idea of divorcing languages from Bookbinding to be a Miniskill, it opens up being able to learn new languages to anyone. However I haaaate the idea of putting it behind a gate of credits. Think of, for example, someone who wished to play a character that was raised by a race different than their own, and they ICly knew the language. But they can't afford the 250 credits to actually speak it. Yes 250 credits isn't that much time OOCly, but for some people it's a long time ICly doing work that they'd much rather be RPing. I don't think that putting it behind a credit wall is good or fair.

    - Cooking: Piping Kits is a fantastic idea, Shulamit's original proposal for them was brilliant.

    - Enchantment: I support the idea of adding a way to enchant through shops. My hope though is that the idea mentioned with specifically enchanted Cubes isn't to do away with the 'Neutral' cubes that we can use to recharge, but simply be an additional use to them for shops.

    - Forging: The idea of being able to pad and add weapon/armour enchantments via shops is a good idea yeah.

    - Jewellery: Oh golly yes, please let 100% Powerstones be riftable. That's a brilliant idea. I support the engraving services as well, of course.

    - Tailoring: Splendours for everyone feels neat! I support the idea of the tailoring services via shops as well. Embroidery Kits is also an fantastic idea, thanks again to Shulamit for the original proposal.

    - Tattoos: I support the idea of being able to do tattoo armour on anyone and sell tattoos.

    - Tinkering: I support the mini repair services, and of course, see Enchantment for the same opinions lol


    Hopefully I've not been to confusing on my wording or anything, I'm aware that sometimes I can ramble. But, all in all there are some very good ideas in this proposal, but also some very terribly painful ones that I cannot support or agree with. Again, apologies if I'm parroting anything anyone else has said or if something I said has already been addressed, I wrote this after reading Orael's initial post, but before reading the rest of the posts here.

  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    A professional baker doesn't lose all their skill because they sewed up a hole in their pants, and become a completely inept baker in an instant, either.  They also don't lose all their skill at baking when they pick a bit of mint off the plant in their kitchen.  The mechanics presented make no real sense at all on a foundational level - you can't just lose all your knowledge simply by doing something else for an hour or two.
    With that said, a lot of the point of this is to encourage players to go to shops and buy from other players, is the sense I'm getting from what Orael has been saying on Discord.  So why not just focus on making shops themselves more appealing?  If it's easier to buy from a shop than to flex and hunt down the commodities yourself, you probably will.  Forget the whole proficiency thing and cap entirely, and focus on the shop aspect.
    Some ideas in this regard:
    1) Making owning a shop easier.  Reduce the costs of buying a shop, auto link city shops to the aetherplex, etc.  Go all in on making shopping convenient.
    2) Goop aethertrading is going away.  So - bring in goop sales at shops.  Let shop owners set a goop:gold rate (like 50:1).  If the shop owner sets that rate and have an item they are selling for 200 gold, I could choose to buy it with goop.  This bypasses the goop transfer fee (a benefit for me as the shopper).
    3) Goop generation was being discussed as a bonus for completing dailies, etc.  A little extra alternative input into the system.  This would be nice for people saving up, and also for people to be able to go shopping at shops with their goop.
    Basically, the point is to improve shopping rather than to nerf having the trades themselves.  By focusing on making the shopping experience more convenient, you achieve much the same end effect but without actually taking anything away from players.
    --------------
    My biggest issues are:
    1) The proficiencies,
    2) The lowered cap on # of trades;
    3) The removal of some of the trade items (such as magictome).
    #3 has been discussed on Discord and could be fixed by simply making these items tradeskill items instead- someone can make the item and sell them for others to use, instead of being self-only.
    image
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    In addition to the prior, Esei had an idea of being able to allow your shop to send a cut of what it sells to the designer.  Basically it would function like this:
    1) Buying from the shopkeeper in a shop sends gold to bank accounts, not to the stockroom floor.
    2) The shop owner can say like, "5%" or whatever of the cost goes to the designer of the designs they picked.
    3) If so set, the gold is split as appropriate between the two accounts.
    This would be another incentive to point people towards using shops, if you want to give recognition / payment to the person who actually put the creativity into the thing being purchased.
    image
  • Something I mentioned on discord but I think is worth bringing up here is how this system will encourage metagaming alts to get around the trade limits.  This could be done in a way that isn't directly against the current rules at the moment.

    For instance, if I own a shop and I have cooking and bookbinding. I could have my friend stock it with jewelery and enchantments. But then I could have my friend's alt also stock it with tailoring and forging items. 

    Another example is if I own a shop with my cooking and bookbinding and my friend has their shop with jewelery and enchantments, we could make a deal that I have my alt stock their shop with herbs and alchemy if their alt stocks mine with jewelery and enchantments.

    I can pretty much guarantee a large amount of this will happen.
  • Sorry for the double post but another thought I had is differentiating between the creative trades and the profitable trades. May take refinement on deciding which trades are under which category.

    But for instance having one slot for the profitable trades (herbs, the two new ones, and possibly alchemy and/or enchantment?) while not restricting the creative trades.
  • Uzriel said:
    Sorry for the double post but another thought I had is differentiating between the creative trades and the profitable trades. May take refinement on deciding which trades are under which category.

    But for instance having one slot for the profitable trades (herbs, the two new ones, and possibly alchemy and/or enchantment?) while not restricting the creative trades.
    Aet does this and it seems to work. I don't think it'd be a clean split for us but we'd probably need to shuffle generic necessities and the like into "profit".

    Like... the buff from origami (reworked into a generic comm), dust from cooking, instruments, etc. You might need to do something like... forging becomes two, one that creates generic weapons/armour/etc and one that basically lets you sorcelglass that stuff with creative trades designs.
  • edited April 2021
    Here are my lingering questions. As tone and intention don't come over well in text, nothing should be construed as being accusatory, or reflect my opinion on anything, just things I don't understand or need clarification:

    The removal of aethertrading will eliminate a significant amount of goop in the system. You folks probably have a better idea how much than we do. In that vein,
    • Will artifact/skin goop costs be looked at, and possibly adjusted?
    • What will happen with candies? Some of the buffs are important/tertiary to other design goals, e.g. GK/EZ
    • The removal of sticky goop means what, exactly? Does it get converted to not-sticky, or is it going to be converted at some rate to another currency?
    • Will valuation be removed, or is there some other plan for that mechanic? (Asked by Ashira)
    More on the subject of artifacts,
    • What happens with trade curios? (I'm sorry, is that what a crucible curio is? Not sure)
    • What happens with trade artifacts?
    • Is there any thought to cost-adjusting tam and like artifacts. Classflexing is not nearly as important as tradeskill flexing.
    • If powerstones are riftables, will powerplex jewels be looked at in terms of their cost?
    • Similar to the last point, what will happen with powershells?
    Trade/skill specific questions:
    • The justification for removing poison resistance from Nekotai was that it was already too hard to apply poisons, but ultimately the skillset got to keep the free swallow on Scorpionspit. With Immunity being removed from Poisons, isn't there justification to envoy a return to immunity on the Nekotai skillset? There might be other examples, but what thought has been given to how the economy/trade proposal affects combat skills?
    • Will there be any skillset compensation for monks losing the mechanical benefit of tattoos? (Don't hit me with the delete monks comments pls)
    • What consideration is made for skills whose wares aren't purchased on a regular basis? Artisan seems to suffer tremendously from these changes, because nobody is going to use their trade slot, or kill their proficiency in order to rarely sell someone a weapon rack, a chest, or an instrument. Forging, Tailoring, and Jewelry seem to suffer from the same problem to a lesser extent.
    • What happens with piercings?
  • edited April 2021
    There's too much reading for me in comments for early morning but if you're going to remove Magic Tome, please at least code in Libram to be used by AC to replace magictome. 

    Edit: Disregard someone told me it's already working
  • Kephera demipower will need to be looked at, as currently it boosts your armour to 22% if you have the trade. Which is a mechanical benefit. Also, it's a stealth nerf to acrobatics monks who will lose the extra armour they get from master tattoos (if this is intentional, that is cool, just want to make sure it's intended).
  • Well I can't edit my original comment any longer, so here's an update:

    What consideration is made for skills whose wares aren't purchased on a regular basis? Artisan seems to suffer tremendously from these changes, because nobody is going to use their trade slot, or kill their proficiency in order to rarely sell someone a weapon rack, a chest, or an instrument. Forging, Tailoring, and Jewelry seem to suffer from the same problem to a lesser extent. - On this, I heard on the discord that forgers are making picks for the new trades, e.g. Are there other similar solutions?

    New questions:
    • Will there be any kind of compensation or adjustment for situations like Kephera? (As Nikka mentioned). Does their bonus stay, or if it gets removed, what do they get in exchange, if anything?
    • What effect will the shop overhaul have on stock size?


  • I like most of these changes. I think there's some clarification that could help sell it. I think it was mentioned that 'grinding to upkeep proficiency' = practicing the trade once a year? That seems reasonable and removes the thought of 'grinding'. Make one weapon a year, one ring a year, etc.

    As long as we are refunded *credits* and not *lessons*, I have no real gripes here.
  • In relation to divorcing trans abilities from trade skills, how is this going to affect armour? Splendours give 16%, Master Tattoo Armour gives 18%, and Master Armour (plate, etc) gives 25%. Are those going to get reduced to the lower versions of Great Robes at 12%, Tattoo at 14%, and Forged at 20%? Also aethersuits granting whatever your highest armour ability is (ie if you have both Tailoring and Forging transed, you get the 25%).

  • So, like, I'm not exactly a huge fan of the proficiencies concept either.

    But.

    I feel like people are knee-jerking over it and perhaps considering parts of the proposal in a vacuum.

    Proficiency isn't necessarily going to stop you from swapping around trades as you like - it's just going to make it more expensive to do so (generally via commodity costs, but in the case of herbs it would be time to invest in harvesting, etc).

    If you have to drop and swap, it's totally doable. But if you really care about making as much money/profit as possible, it is going to give you pause for thought. Those willing to make the sacrifice and stick to their trades of choice only will harvest the benefit of competitive edge in producing profit, but people who just want to casually make their own stuff aren't stopped from doing that. They just won't make as much bank with a shop, and someone who wants to really roleplay merchant/shopkeeper will be inclined to look for those who are most proficient and build a proper network.

    We don't know how commodity costs or whatever will scale, so it's hard to judge whether or not the difference will be too punishing. We have room to spitball thoughts over that if we care to.

    It should also be pointed out that removing aethertrading is part of this proposal, and that would free up a lot of stress on the current rate of commodity consumption. If that goes through, then the biggest commodity sink per year will easily be research upkeep unless commodity costs scaling to proficiency is truly dramatic.

    People really only care about aethertrading as a means for obtaining goop, from what I've seen. No one appears to actually be attached to the refinement process and the mechanics behind it - just the end reward of goop or aethergoodies you don't want to melt down. If we come up with some other means of getting those, like a secondary daily system, then that just sorts itself out, yeah?

    Then agriculture and prospecting gets added on top of that, so hey, might have some potential.

    I think there's also one unexplored avenue here - the potential for wanting tradespeople with low proficiency versus high proficiency.

    ---

    Let's consider jewelery, for example. Right now jewelers don't really make much money by actually making and selling jewelery - they get it from gemcutting (this might be liable to change if enchantment motes are added and people can slap them on whatever finished jewelery pieces they like, but that's another discussion entirely). High proficiency jewelers might get more than 3+ gems per gemcut even without the hammer (hammer itself might need to be changed tbh, it's too OP) while the lowest proficiency only ever gets one variant of cut gem per gemcut. HOWEVER, they have a much, much higher chance to roll for sulfur or salt. Now, if aethertrading goes the way of the dodo this might seem useless, but there's still a chance to implement some other item or object that can utilise them - at this point, a high proficiency jeweler who really wants more salt and sulfur might be inclined to seek out a low proficiency jeweler to trade with, rather than dropping their proficiency to do it themselves. Good? Bad? I'm unsure, but as a flight of fancy it seems like it could be potentially interesting.

    Could apply similar features to obtaining tawdry and lower grades of bad prestige of clothing in tailoring (though, again, if mob drops disappear entirely then no one might want to beg, then who cares about tawdry clothing?)

    Perhaps another alternative is we might look to ship proficiency - while I don't like ship proficiency either, it has a more interesting sliding scale sort of mechanic, wherein you can globally amass X% of proficiency across chair, turret, and grid, but getting too high across all three might ultimately result in decay in one. That said, ship proficiency also has an artifact to negate that penalty entirely, so I am very sympathetic to those who cynically wonder how long it would take before we end up with an artifact that ignores trade proficiency.

    I feel like there are ways to do this right, but also lots of ways to do this wrong, and the vague nature of the proposal in its current condition makes it easy to run away with every last potential negative endpoint.

    Is there really no way to bend this to make it work? I feel like there might.


  • Also, regarding artisan as pertains to Tau's concerns:

    My own suggestion would be to have proficiency gain related to commodities being expended. In the currently proposed system, I feel like building a throne should make you hit max proficiency for the day all at once. It's expensive. Furthermore, there should never, ever be a circumstance in which crafting several plain wooden stools should gain you more proficient than building an actual throne, RNG be damned.

Sign In or Register to comment.