People's Prices vs The Zero Pricing Guide

[miltonyorkcastle]

other than the fact that someone has to collect the taxes and boot people who don't pay them (which really means more coding, or more 'policing' by DM's), that's a good idea, Logan.

[Ar7]

Zhofe, I didn't mean it like that. I haggle and drop prices quite often, heck I have even crafted things for free, but those were simple things and for special people. But when I said don't sell, I meant that one should not drop his price to rock bottom just to get rid of the item.

Let me make an example. I am selling an iron sword for 2500 gold pieces, during the haggle I drop the price down to 1750. Yet I refuse to go any lower and won't sell below that price. Now I may ask for resources instead, but gols wise, the bottom is 1750. Yet as was said in the first post, there are some people who will just say, ah heck, I'll sell it to you for 250. That is what I was talking about!

[Zhofe]

Right, I stand corrected and apologize for any offense.

I agree that dropping prices too low is extremly detremental to the world.

[Rasterick]

Taxes, yes I like taxes....   *Begins to write a bio for the tax collector of Layonara*   Taxes would remove large amouts of gold from circulation, what we have here is a near reverse inflation like economy, and where goods are available in such large numbers, their price cannot not be maintained at the original price.   Medieval times, maintained an economy based on little competition between trades, where settlements could maintain a blacksmith, there was only one, he was superceded by his son, or his business died with him. Movement between towns was limited to travelling merchants and a few wandering tradesmens, hoping to find work. No one moved in and undercut his prices, what we have here is here is too many cooks (or weaponsmiths, tinkers etc) that is not to say that people are to stop crafting, but be prepared to expect resistance if you try and unbalance the economy.  Also to reach the exulted heights of master craftsman, took many years, often a lifetime( In RL my uncle was a balcksmith, he had to do an apprenticeship, which took five years, he then worked for his tutor, gaining valuable experience for six years, before moving away and starting his own business) we have a situation here, where people reach that in a  few weeks, it just didnt happen like that, why not make the levelling for craftsmen trades harder to acheive, we discourage levelling in EXP levels, why not discourage levelling in trdaeskill stats in the same way? Although some may not think so, they are to easy to acheive. This would not be all that difficult to implement in terms of coding as it would just be a balancing of the current level values.  So to summarise all my points liek I was tort at skool:

Introduce taxes, make the post of tax collector available to a player/players, and his/her/their job would be to collect these taxes. (A chance here for some great RP opportunites)
Reduce the amount of trades a player can specialise in; say one maybe two. Its foolish to attempt to become a tinker if six already exist, especially if competion in pricing is frowned upon.(we have a situation here in the UK where everyone going to university wants to do an IT related subject, and we are facing a shortage of engineers)
Reduce the amount of storage available to people. or make it taxable.
Make crafting level harder to acheive, or even spread out the items a player can make between various levels. e.g Lvl 1 knives and tools(copper) lvl 2 Axes (copper) Lvl 3 Swords (copper) Lvl 4 Knives (bronze) etc etc......
Encourage teamwork, instead of player x gathering woood for arrows, iron for arrow heads, feathers for fletchings. Have him pay players A, B and C to do it for him, this will lead to a greater distribution of wealth.
Make the pawnbrokers offer more realistic prices for crafted items, this will also remove excess items from circulation.
[/list]  Most of all, and this applies to everyone, continue working to make this place the best RP Persistant world in the NWN community, enjoy yourselves, see you all in game later.

[Harloff]

As far as I understand the economy of medieval Europe, prices where held artificially high by having trade communities, these trade communities agreed on prices and trying to trade outside one was illegal. Probably the trade community would kill you if you tried to trade without their permeation.

In some ways we are trying to do the same thing here by agreeing on minimum we try to hold he economy with in certain limits. This is of course a difficult task since some will be interested in dumping prices in order to get all the trade. So the problem is that someone intentionally dump prices, and the solution must be that we all try to have higher standards and not to do business with these people. No matter how tempting it is to get items for free (or extremely cheap at least).

The issue we are addressing isn’t that there is too much gold circulating, that would result in devaluation and could be solved by taxes. Taxes wouldn’t help here since people dumping prices has nothing to with the circulating amount of gold but the number of items available.

A solution could of course be limiting the number of traders, but the result would be that we would get a few people having all the trade and therefore they would be extremely rich.

With respect to the pawnbroker giving more gold, that would of course remove items from the market. But all people producing things would become richer. And it would as far as I can see only lead to people exploiting this.

I simply can’t see any other solutions than we all agree upon a certain price level and follow these prices.

[Rasterick]

Harloff - 10/29/2005  12:56 PM
I simply can’t see any other solutions than we all agree upon a certain price level and follow these prices.

Maybe an incentive to this, reduce the profit margins, say by adding a sales tax, fixed at the % level of the recommended retail price of the item (pricing guide). Selling the item for to low a price would cut the profit to almost zero.

[errk]

I agree with Harloff, I think this should be controlled by the rough pricing guide.  Which in turn should be kept up to date..   This world is simply to ‘small’ (no offense L to allow a ‘market economy’ to be set free.  Any ‘senior’ crafters can easily flood the market with powerful items, knocking the ‘laws’ of supply and demand completely out of balance.

ZV did a great job creating it. but I think all crafters or guilds should be responsible for keeping it accurate and up to date.  For example, cougar bags can be made by many aren’t really that powerful.  So maybe they should have their price reduced. I suggest dropping the price to say, 1000?

But if you’re making items just to gain skill in your craft, I personally feel that you should dispose of the items if you can’t find anyone that will purchase them at ‘ZV-minimum’ price.  Or, if you thinks a price is set to high, suggest a new price..  

And as to taxation.. I think adding a ‘sales’ tax would be impossible unless all items where forced to be sold through vendors or such.

But I was surprised to find out that the sheriff made house calls every month or so.. We’ve all seen robin hood movies, right?  I’m pretty sure this is how the local Baron/Lord/Patron/King funded the local guard and maintained the streets.. a tax of 1000-5000 gold or so per house/RL month wouldn’t seem to unreasonable. Maybe even a town tax of 1-5 gold every time you passed through the city gates?

Collecting taxes would of course this would be time consuming to govern from a DM point of view, but like Rasterick said, I’m sure there are players out there that could serve as tax collectors for the queen.. a character created for RP purpose only.  Wandering the towns and being a nuisance demanding in taxes and monitoring the ‘black market’ trade..  But also helping new players find their way or giving mini-quests where the reward might be these craft items that are trivial to make for some, but impossible for others..  say a cougar bag for retrieving som items at the far reaches of Mistone or Rilara.

I must add that I’ve only played here for a couple of months..  I might not know what I’m talking about..

[LoganGrimnar]

a vendor could be added to each town, and when you talk to him it brings up a list or all the addresses he controls, you click on your address and then it shows you the owner, and what they need to pay, then click pay taxes and it will take the coin from your inventory. Now you might think "oh well people could just not go to the tax vendor", yea okay shure.. but if you dont pay taxes for a set amount of time(some exceptions may apply) your hose is taken from you and put back on the markit.

Now that i think about it... this dosent really have anything to do with pricing of gear... but its still a grand idea!

[Zen]

OK enough about this stuff! I guess its time for all to hate Zen now!
There are many master crafters here and some that cannot do much. I like the Idea that Classes are required to do a craft.

1/ All my monk can do is Tinker/Talylor/Wood/Fish&cook. Even if I want to make arrowheads I cannot mine the ore.

2/ As far as the magical crafts maybe make limits to what a PC of a class can do. While all can scribe, maybe they can't Make the parchment they need ... or Arcane users cant make cureitive potions at all but, can make cure scrolls. Clerics can't do Alchemy they can however still do the things at the "Holy pools" and can make Protection enchantments, but not Damage ones. etc etc down the line.

3/ only those that can use traps can make them. Like how Music Instruments are now.

4/ Limit Mining to Fighters but, not Palidens or Rangers. and Gem mining not available to Monks/mage/sorc. & Clerics.

5/ (this one is cutting my throat) Druids and Rangers suffer alignment shift if they harvest more skins/beatle&spider parts than are needed for static quests or to stay alive (sorry DM's)

6/ Also make certin races better at some crafts and some not as good (ie. Hlaflings can produce twice the amount of food if cooked in a kitchen). And not just for Dwarfs and Elves. Sea Elves=Fishing and Wemics=Leatherwork but not Cloth and Halflings=cooking&brewing etc.etc.

7/ I say no to taxes but, a charge to enter a craft hall/smithy/kicthen/temple (I think thats all of them) Like how the Jutebox works will solve that problem.

If this is done It will force us to deal/barter/trade with each outher and allmost take Gold out of the economy as it should be in that time. As to some Items sold by merchants now, the prices should be higher (ie. food)

If one is to limit craft by race, class or gender, I would consider looking at our RL history. What were the tribes of man capable of doing at their certain period of existence, and what was their currently level of understanding.
Elves would lead the way in mithril.(Elven chain and plate)
Dwarves would lead the way in adamantite.(Dwarven axes and hammers)
Wemics, ogres and giants are perhaps limited to bronze, but they could be taught to work with iron.
Humans would be at the iron stage, though they would know how to harden iron enough to make steel, thus able to make plate mail.
Gnomes are difficult to place as they move constantly between crafts. Though anything of gem-based or using dust would be something gnomes would excel.
Brownies and Halflings I could see, excelling in food and brews.

Class specific crafts,
Priests would know papermaking and scribing; healing potions and essenses(alchemy), cloth making (robes and curative poultices) Then have crafts specific to the deity based solely on the domains chosen upon character creation.
Druids crafts would be based solely on nature and what is provided in nature. Hide armor (but not leather, as it uses acid salts), wood craft and weaving. Also anything plant based would work well for them as well.
Fighters would be access to armorer and weaponsmith, smelting and mining.(unless racially factired in as well, at which point perhaps a bonus to the craft)
Rangers would be access to armorer(leathers and hides) and weaponsmith (bowyers and fletchers), tinkering for the making of arrowheads, tailoring for making of thread and cloth.
Paladins woudl also have access to armorer and weaponsmith (I would approach it towards the more heavier of armors and weapons)
Rogues I believe would have their tinkering for traps, for tools, alchemy for poisons, trap components, oils and other things.
Mages would most defintiely have access to alchemy, scrolls. They may use the enchantment bowl but not the altar.

Think the best plan to keep supply down. Would to have crafts specific to races as that was what they are famed for, augmented by the class(es) that they are. Perhaps in the race category, where has modifiers to specific stats and skills, a race could have modifiers towards different crafts.
The biggest challenge would be for humans, they would not have the modifiers the other races have, either for the positive or the negative, but they would have the versatility to be able to learn anything, given they find a teacher.
Layonara Online is a great fanstasy world in which to play. To include the idea of Artisans in the cities, each city having its own specific fame for a particular craft. Would no doubt be an incentive to have players venture the characters to the specific city where such a craft could be taught. This could also be used to limit where certain items can be found for purchase and to craft.
One could also limit the level of a craft to specific crafthouse.
Limit Hlint to craft level 10, and in order to go beyond that level a character would have to go to a city, to maybe go to level 20, and to the capitol to take a craft beyond 20.
Could have general skill in all crafts to lvl 10, then out of the given crafts limit the number of crafts that go to lvl 20 to maybe five crafts max, and only one craft can exceed 20.

Within a character's perception, would rather go to a druid to aquire wood or plants first, then go to a gnome or dwraven priest(with earth domain) for gems or gem dust, to an elf (mage) for an enchanted ingot of mithril, a general mage (enchanter) for something else enchanted, et cetera.

[PsychicToaster]

Quick economics input here:

The basic (perhaps too basic, but this isn't an advanced economics class) principle is that if a price is too high, some buyers will not be able to buy.  If a price is too low, some sellers will not be willing to enter the market because it isn't worth their time.

That's not a bad thing.  That is how the market regulates itself, however it does take time.

Artificially holding prices high means more sellers are interested in selling their goods than buyers are in buying at that price.  Imagine how many new players would be unable to purchase a new weapon if the price rose to 4000 gold for a basic iron weapon.  I'm sure the weaponsmiths would love to sell their weapons for that much, but far fewer potential customers make up that new market.

Artificially holding prices high through cooperation of sellers is more commonly refered to as a cartel.  Cartels only work when *everyone* cooperates, or few enough suppliers don't that it doesn't impact the market too greatly.  Cartels break up on their own fairly often simply because there is no incentive to cooperate when quickly dropping your prices means you can steal the entire market away.  The only time they work is when one supplier is physically unable to capture a large sector of the market.  For instance, if someone decided to start selling iron weapons for 500 gold they would get every customer lined up around the city for the chance to get one.  However, being able to provide for everyone in the game would be a daunting task and probably hardly worth the effort.  

Lack of money sinks(taxes, luxury goods, routine or daily expenses to non-player sources), and not just money sinks but incremental and adjusted sinks will cause inflation.  Its that simple.  The government takes money out of circulation all the time.  However in Layo(and nearly every online game out there) there is potentially infinite money, based only on how much time and energy is expended.  So all functions approach infinity over time.  

[scotcar]

Another option would be to increase the price paid by the pawn broker.  That way a real bottom in the market is made as an item that you can sell to the pawn broker for 500 gold will always sell for more than 500 gold.  

You only have the issue of how to drain all that extra cash out of the market then.  Considering how quickly I go through money, I don't think that it will be too much of an issue.

From my personal experience, why would I spend 1000 gold on something that I have a 50% chance of making?  Sure it takes me time but is more rewarding.  Then again, all the basic rings are only good for a few coins as I would not want to buy them when I can save a little more and purchase a better item.

[Ar7]

We already had pawnshops that offered around 250 for an oak longbow and a similar amount for an iron sword. It resulted in players getting extremely rich in days. As they practised their weaponmaking, they crafted tens if not hundreds of swords, so their bank accounts got huge in a very little time. That was actually the first time when we spoke that gold had lost its value.

But if you wish to implement taxes, how about making scripts that run upon onening any town gate. These scripts would remove X gold from the inventory, something like town tax that the village/town/city authorities gather. The amount X would depend on the size of the town, say 25gp for Hlint, 250 for Leilon, 500 for Pranzis?

Not so sure taxes would fix the problem, since then people will have even less gold and that will mean prices will drops even lower.

The only way to solve this problem is to make an accurate price guide and make people follow it +/- 10%.

But then you have the ever-important question, what are our tax dollars (gold) paying for?  Are we getting our money's worth in services?  Who is taxing us?  Why aren't we represented in the decision making process?

[PsychicToaster]

Blahh.  I hate public PCs.

The above post was mine.

ps, this mouse needs to be cleaned.

[Filatus]

If you'd implement a pricing system that would approach the economy in RL, you'd have to calculate the price on the following factors.

- Total price of the needed raw resources (This also includes the relative difficulty on obtaining the resources)
- Number of crafting steps from raw to finished product (added value or profit).
- In Layo's case, I think the spreading of these craftingsteps among multiple tradeskills woud also have an increasing effect on the price. An endproduct that requires crafting from 5 tradeskills is more difficult to make than one that only requires 2. So it should definately be a factor that takes an effect on the price.

Still it won't solve the problem. As long as people craft items for the purpose of crafting, the market will be flooded. If a player comes to a point where he has to throw those crafted items away to make room for newer better ones, he'll be tempted to try to sell them for very low prizes. He could throw them all away, but why not get a little bit of money in the process.

Another problem is that living in Layonara is quite cheap. Players don't have to worry about paying their bills and buying food, except for people living in the Leilon arms inn of course . If you could implement some kind of system that detracts money from the bankvault on a weekly basis, based upon the level of the character, you could balance the availability of money. Such a percentage should reach a certain maximum of course.

An important aspect is making it dependant on the level of the character, since the higher a level you get, the easier it becomes to obtain larger sums of money.

[Crunch]

For starters  I think the economy isn't badly messed up as it is.  However, if you want a change to extract more gold from the players, rather than a town tax a craft hall tax seems more reasonable to me.  If it took some gold for equipment rental on each item you make, people would think twice about making huge numbers of items they don't need.  

The town tax idea would be kind of hard on people who just hang around town socializing and seems counterproductive.

[ZeroVega]

  For those that don't think the Layonara Economy is suffering, take a look at a few stats I have.
   About a year and a half ago, people would offer what was a fair price for gems. I sold an Emerald for about five thousand gold, and once sold two diamonds and a ruby for about the same amount. That was back when 20 players was a huge number to see on.
   Maybe half a year after that diamonds were selling for 5'000 a piece. Now that was fairly surprising, but the economy was booming, more players, more crafters, and more hours put into adventuring. (Gold was being pulled in via adventuring and pretty much just swapped hands with players.)
   Within the past 6-8 months here's what's happened. Oak bows could be made for about one gold per piece (the cost of a bow string). Then sold for 200+ gold at pawnshops. Most people would fill up an ox with 40 oak branches, and mass craft them. They'd end up with 40 oak longbows... then they'd sell em. Care to do the math? 8'000 gold... and people could make a run like this in 30-50 minutes.
   So we then had low level people with tens of thousands of gold. No big deal right, they bought houses and most of the gold was sucked out right? Wrong! It continued until finally fixed (which took a while). By that time pretty much all of the houses on West had been bought with hundreds of thousands of gold in surplus.
   It was then that diamonds became more desireable as more and more people made it to level 12 and beyond. Diamonds started flying outta the Market Hall, and prices went up... 8k, 9k, 10k, all the way up to 15k for some buyers.
   Then a little light bulb went off in someones head. "I want an emerald" the person said. And the bidding began. It started small 1k, up to 5k, then to 10k, and 20k, that was cool, 30k, and 40k came and I started to sweat... then it hit the 100k+ mark, more than a house... the economy was screwed...
   Loads of gold meant people could charge huge prices. Loads of gold meant people could pay those huge prices. People figured out how to camp... again, and diamonds, mahogany, oak, and iron are screaming into circulation. Prices fall when a crafter needs to dump off his items. Which means low/medium grade items are sold for dirt cheap and high grade items are put up on a bidding block and sold for a tenth of a million gold...
   Trust me folks the economy is broken. We have a great player base here, but lets face it, there's no way to get however many hundreds of players we have here to all agree to fix it. Sadly it's just another one of those things that falls to the big guy upstairs to do.
  ZV-
  PS: Just remembered what I wanted to say. Taxing people when they go into towns sounds good but what if... the person has no gold. Will it be based on level aswell? If you tax people's bank accounts, what about those who have to leave for extended periods (I doubt LFFF would like to return to find his accound whittled down by a few thousand). If you tax people's property, it poses the same problems. Will it go by level? What happens if you start taxing a person that doesn't make enough to pay them? Just seems to me like another topic for GMs to get complaints over.

[errk]

Personally I think the economy might be broken, but not that broken. That emeralds go for 100k boggles me a bit because if a low lvl. Player finds one, he is set for some time to come with a complete set of weapon, armor and fancy jewelry or maybe a house even.  It’s like winning a lottery.  But that just proves that many high level players are holding vast amounts of gold to afford the bid rally in order to acquire the most powerful items in the game.  (Note: I don’t blame the players who do this.  Heck, I would if I could.. )

I believe taxing bank accounts would help balance the economy and it makes sense in game as well (there is a war going on.. ).  A 1-2% cut every month would take thousands from the extremely rich, but wouldn’t affect the less fortunate that much. ..  and if someone was to leave for longer periods of time, one could withdraw all gold from the account..  (This would be a way to avoid the tax collector, but if put into routine, they would start asking questions IG maybe)
Taxing homes to me sounds reasonable too.. Maybe this could be called maintenance instead. The larger the house, the higher the monthly rate is.  (If the house itself could change appearance as to how well it was maintained, that would really be neat.)
I don’t think one should initially be kicked out of their house (Imagine the trouble of someone losing 50 crates of stuff) but maybe be put into debt..  this could turn into CDQs or such where one would be put to work or someway be forced to put up with the money..  forced to sell one of those fancy swords or face the facts and move into a smaller house. But eventually yes, the player would be kicked out of the house, or the house falls apart?)  I’m not sure, but I assume there is a lot of housing where the players have been gone for a long time..  

As to taxing town gates, I think that would merely add some RP spice, and not really affect the economy.   If you have no gold, then maybe you could be allowed to enter regardless.  And some towns might charge a bit more.. and some would charge nothing..
--
But..  what I really wanted to say was: the information to follow the pricing guide (or lens?) should be expressed stronger.  As long as most players are made aware of this I’m sure they would follow and tell others to do so as well.  Someone selling for much lower would eventually be identified, and informed to stop doing so.  I still feel that one would be allowed to step outside the pricing guide if RP was involved, such as helping the crafter or simply being friends with him/her.  But if someone starts underbidding in order to make the sale, or just simply dumping out items on the market just because they can make them, then more harsh actions should be taken.  Did someone say sting operations?

.. upp.. this post grew more than I expected.  Again, I’m no expert here ..this is just my point of view..

[jrizz]

well said on the taxing issue. it would control the amount of gold in the game for sure. There are millionaires running around! the gov should get a cut Oh but I would oppose a sales tax or price hikes due to taxation. So a set price guide must be in use for all items. Discounts can occur for return customers or for other events but going above the set prices should not be done.