Best Of

Iarae said:

Honestly. I feel like once everyone can take herbs this is going to have the opposite affect as desired. People are going to strip the land barren of any harvestable plants in days.

Iarae said:

Saran said:

Ayisdra said:

Orael said:

Ayisdra said:

Gold Generation

The intention behind removing gold drops was to nudge players towards focusing on making gold from trades rather than from bashing. We have often heard complaints that it is much faster and easier to go hunt rather than make money through trade. We have hoped to move gold generation to quests and corpse turn-ins (and buff both), and, of course, trades. A not insignificant part of the reason was also the ease with which it would allow us to control the flow of gold into the economy.

Instead, we will retain gold drops (through hunting and influencing), aim to control all inputs better, and seek alternative/easier means of making money from trade (more on that later). That means that down the line gold drops might be lessened but definitely not removed altogether. Where needed, quests and turn-ins might still be adjusted too. We have pretty extensive data gathering systems in place for commodities, gold, and goop, and will be monitoring the situation.

Economy 2.0 is purposed as being optional and a person should be able to interact with it as little as they want. However, if you make merchanting the best gold source, it no longer becomes optional. Not everyone wants to quest. Not wants to (will want to) be a merchant. The people that just want to bash (and get their gold from the kill itself, rather than dealing with turnins and hoping someone didn't kill the turnin mob) shouldn't be punished for the not taking part in the economy by having much less gold generation to their choice in activity.

Gold from being a merchant is too dependent on not serve undercutting. A merchant, when the only investment into the trade is time (poisons, herbs, arguably enchantment), can just sell their stuff for 1gp and undercut everyone if they really wanted.

1) Quoting us saying we're not going to remove gold drops, but we may look at them and make adjustments

2) If people are selling things at 1gp, you can buy that stock, and sell it to the NPC that's buying it for more and make gold.

But if you keep/buff gold drops and someone is able to make 10K from that, but a merchant is able to make 15K from selling things, then you still have the same problem (one thing being faster/better at gold generation) just in the other direction.

That's not really the full picture though.

If Caedir spends all his time hunting/begging, his gold/hour might end up being lower but he's also generating exp/essence for himself as well as corpses and esteem that could be offered for further benefits including generating karma for the benefits that it can provide. On top of that Caedir would likely get ticks for daily credits if he isn't capped for the day.
Bob on the other hand might only trade and in turn gain more gold/hour but he also wouldn't be gaining all those extra resources that Caedir got in the same time and would come out of it with just gold.
Someone who does both wouldn't get as much gold as Bob or as much of the extra resources Caedir gets but on the other hand they'd get more gold than Caedir and more extra resources than Bob.

Whch is basically fundamentally how trades and economies appear to work in most games, trades are generally pretty great at making money but you're sacrificing time you could be spending generating other forms of currency along side gold. Even to the point that like, Caedir could potentially sell esteem to Bob who wouldn't otherwise be generating it, improving the gold Caedir earned from his time bashing.

What's stopping Bob from using that extra time he has from just popping out a couple crafted items and going hunting like Caedir to make up the difference? I think you underestimate the amount of time it takes to bash up that much gold as opposed to how quickly someone can simply craft items. I sell esteem in my shop currently and in a day (RL DAY) of nonstop bashing i might be able to get around 30k esteem which at 10g per unit (1 more than I sell for) I'd get 300k. Whereas someone who can gemcut, in a few hours stands to make upwards of 500k to 1mil just gemcutting with a hammer and selling the salt/sulfur they get to people who break goop items.

That's not even mentioning the amount they make selling aethertrading items in their shops/selling the goop items they get from refined items.