The World of Layonara
The Layonara Community => General Discussion => Topic started by: Simplistic on October 27, 2005, 02:06:00 PM
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I just read a thread regarding a character wanting to sell a few items and offering them at a cheaper cost than the pricing guide. I'm a bit confused at the altercation because a few valid points have been brought up that I've noticed in the game. I completely agree with having a standard for selling items so that people don't drive prices so low that no one can compete ... especially the low level PCs that don't have the ability to gain the resources as easily or crafting levels to make the items as easily/quickly (lowering prices would keep low level people from ever being able to become merchants until they became rally good in the skill).
I'm not sure this pricing guide idea is working though. My example i'm giving happened IC about two hours ago. A player asked me for a cougar bag that I have for sale. I did not know of the pricing guide and offered 800 gold for the item which the player excepted. A second player overheard the conversation and said I robbed him because he bought 3 bags for 750 gold. Now that i've seen the pricing guide. It says I should have sold it for 2000 gold. Sorry about that :o
what i'm curious about is how Layo will control pricing since PCs offer prices in tells that are lower than this pricing guide. Another example would be me buying my iron longsword for 250 gold because he wanted to get rid of it, and I was asking around for one in the game. These are only a few examples of prices that are lower than the pricing guide. Not sure if i'm uder the gun on this but i've been offering healing potions of moderate strength for 30 gold each. I know where I can buy belts of cunning for 1500 and type I & II enchantments for 3500 and 7000 respectiviely.
It seems like this is a deep issue because i've seen people comment in the trade hall about lower prices before. Someone i've made purchases through IC has been repremanded (sort of) for doing something that a lot of people are doing, and I just hate seeing anyone get in trouble for trying to compete with these black market prices that HAVE already ruined this pricing guide concept. Now that i'm aware of the pricing guide 'guideline', i'll adjust my prices accordingly ... and i'll bet I have a hard time finding buyers as well.
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As I understand, the basement prices are there because the economy here on Layonara already crashed once (long before my time?). A problem that I see is that Armor (both tailoring and metal) and Weapon (both ranged and melee) crafting is a static thing that's very popular. Unless you go running around with rust monsters, there's no good way to make these trades which require a lot of practice and items made to reach higher levels disposable. Unlike Alchemy or Scribing or Woodcrafting (I speak of arrows here), which are disposable tradeskills, the results of tailoring and smithing are just going to pile up with no use. On the other hand, someone deeply involved in the scribing trade (such as myself) has a source of income *and* firepower all set to go, and since they're one-use items, all I have to do once they're used up is go make more and advance in xp at the same time.
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Right ... my issue that i'm talking about here has to do with those people going lower than the pricing guide to the point 'L' had to tell this person to adjust his prices accordingly. I understand and respect the concept of the pricing guide and have no issues following it. I just think it has already gone overboard (or under board in this case ;) ) and am curious how this issue is handled.
I've seen this person in game for as long as i've been on this server, and he has always been a helpful and fun PC. He is trying to compete on his own against these lower prices and ends up being the one getting in trouble. In my opinion, he wasn't the one doing the wrong because he is actually advertising making his prices clear while trying to compete with all the people out there selling too cheap and doing it secretively. He became a victim to the problem that already exists on the server. I'm not saying 'L' is wrong because he is only trying to keep things fair for all players. The problem is that the issue is already a deep one. There are prices out there cheaper than what you'll see posted in any trade thread.
People aren't going to turn in someone for selling them an item cheap because they just got a bargain. And sells happen in TELL mode all the time with cheap prices ... so those of you doing the right thing, are gwetting sold out by these 'black market' prices.
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Simplistic - 10/27/2005 2:27 PM
People aren't going to turn in someone for selling them an item cheap because they just got a bargain. And sells happen in TELL mode all the time with cheap prices ... so those of you doing the right thing, are gwetting sold out by these 'black market' prices.
So true...
To bad there is not a Mistone Trade Commission launching sting operations! ;)
There is always something to say about taking the high road. In the short run you may feel like a sucker, but in the long run you build a respectable reputation that makes it worth it. I myself, have not always taken the high road, but I try to (and usually feel guilty when I do not -- definitely not worth the guilt). ;)
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hahaha ... I love the idea of a stinger operation ... might be fun :)
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make waepons and armor breakable... it will last so many hits + a random die roll and then it will brake. there can be more to this such as a skill that will ad a modifer to the save vs break. This will for shure get the markit moving. make the different types harder to break.. copper will break very very easy.. its so soft it will not last long at all, bronxe is far better then copper, like moving from rubber to plastic. Then iron, iron will last a farely good amuont of time, and with the skill maintain weapon it will last for most of your chars life, if maintained. Adimantium is likly just a bet better then iron, and Mithril if anyone ever gets a mithril anything, it will never break..
This can work for armor and Bows as well. As well s many other items that should ware out over time.
This will get the markit moving all over, people will need new armors, new weapons, new enchantments for these armors and weapons. The big issue i see here is that most wont have the coin to pay for this type of stuff over and over again. Now that is both good and bad. But if it can work id see it put into the game, woud make things very interesting... next time you hit that oger you axe shaft might bust.. oh no!
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Methinks that such suggestions should not be made by wizards who haven't multiclassed into a fighter class, perhaps... ;)
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Weston hates you now
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not sure if it is possible but it would be cool to have the breakable items like you said Logan. And maybe the crafter can take a feat to have any weapons or armor(different feat) they make be tougher. That would help stop everyone who can from crafting. For that adamantium sword with a +2 enchantment that I want some day, I would wait to buy from an experienced crafter with a few feats to help make it last. And it would be horrible to lose my mahogany bow to breakage but that is real. Bows break. crud, I need to use my old oak till I can earn enough for a replacement.
all that said, it sounds impossible to code. But so does a persistant world where I can have a character evolve with the world. But we have it. Thanks to more patient and smarter people than I.
Etinfall
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I think breakable equipment was suggested before but (i think) that it was said that it would be hard to code and would create massive amounts of lag because it would have to run that script every time a battle occurs,
but it would make things very interesting :)
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The economy didn't really "crash" I don't... just some things were too easy to make. Now things are a bit harder to make, and so people are less apt to sell things for ridiculously low prices. There is really no way to police the economy, so players need to do it themselves really.
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This is a common sense issue. People should follow the price guide, as it gives most of the prices correctly. Now if the person doesn't want to buy for the price you ask, don't sell. Sure, you won't gain gold, but you will help Layonara have a stable economy. I don't remember the last time I sold a rod or a bag, why? Because people can buy them at a much lower price.
If we want to fix this issue, then every crafter must do its part and begin selling things for the actualy price.
PS. an iron sword for 250? That guy should get a warning!
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Pssst! ZV here... you can blame me for the pricing guide. I haven't updated it as often as I should and a lot of those prices I pretty much used my guestimating skills to figure out a price. 2'000 is kinda high and I doubt anyone will ever buy one for that much.
Check the title and you'll see it's a "Rough Pricing Guide" not "Accurate Pricing Rules." Just there to give you a "neighborhood" of prices to be in. Of course everyone sells for less and sometimes more, it's to be expected. What hurts the economy is people who turn out 50 million items and tries to unload them all by selling them for dirt cheap. Worry not, sounds like a fine deal you made to me.
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*chuckles* you don't even want to know what I was charged for one piece of diamond jewlery. and it wasn't on the cheap end. let's just say that piece of jewlery could have put Cole into a house (not that he'd ever want to get a house).
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I have been following these two threads with interest. There is some very valid points, and as I can gather, they raises some very emotive issues and questions. I joined this server nearly a year ago, and one of the reasons I did was the advertisment which stated; ' You have a chance to change the world'. SO what Im getting at is this:
Undercutting of prices happens in the real world, it is dealt with in various ways, some less savoury than others. Why cant it be done here, if people are so concerned about the economy, then in game do something about it, threaten, cajoule, dis-credit (all in game, and in character).
Like the real world world, distribution of wealth is not even, there are some in game characters that have untold gold, while there are those that dont have two pennies to rub together. Everyone strives to achieve something in game aside from the excellent RP that takes place. It is often crafting items that they hope will make them rich, and with riches come better items, but without the demand, the supplies become ushiftable, so in order to shift them, the prices come down. I can understand peoples concerns regarding fragile economies, and like wise I can sympathise with those that spend long hours crafting to find that their dream of betterment is not being achieved.
Whats the answer? one solution may be to somehow limit the amount of storage available to individulals, so there is not a large surplus of on-hand stock. If I remember correctly in medieval times, most individual weapons were made to order, tailored to the individual, and not picked off a shelf like a tin of beans. All surplus stock would be passed through the pawn brokers, to distribute to the armies. (and maybe here they could offer a slightly better price than they do, maybe introduce a merchant like script like that used by the ox seller), with they pawn brokers offereing more realistic prices. Limit people to one or two trades, reduce the jack of all trades situation we have at the moment, this will then force people to RP trade, create supply and demand and revitalise the economy.
Only my thoughts on a very prickly subject.
Pete
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and on the note of storage, houses are freaking huge! whatever happened to one-roomed cottages and log cabins?
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As for small houses -
I like large houses. It gives me the opportunity to share my house, or to, without DM intervention, build an inn and tavern with rentable rooms, a stage, a merchant area, and a bar filled with home crafted drinks to create an excellent player driven RP even the like of which has not really happened before ....
As for limiting trades -
Sometimes, the only reason I even play is to go out and do some crafting stuff. I like the fact that I can make my own sandpaper, or pies, and that my character's tradeskills have evolved with him. Had I had to pick two or three tradeskills on creation, I would have taken weaponsmithin and armorcrafting. I would have never have been able to take up woodcrafting by being inspired by Enzo, and I would never have been able to take up cooking to supply for the Leilon Arms.
As for limiting storage -
Okay, maybe there is a point here, but what about keeping things for sentimntal value? What about Quin's iron sword that he named Andraia? The sort of thing he doesn't want to just throw away, sell, or give away on a whim. He wants to keep it, and cherish it, and pass it on to someone. What about all the instruments that Acacea made for him, and that aventurine ring he made and wanted to keep? His Toranite flag? And the necklace and bracers he got from an old quest. What about his old version armor? His journal? His clothes? His fishing-pole? Yeah, you may keep one person from storing that many adamantium ingots ... but what about we who are role-playing?
As for following a set pricing guide -
Not selling if they won't pay, and I mean no offense when I say this AR7, is one of the most horrible ideas I have heard in a while. I think one of the greatest things of selling ANYTHING is the amount of interaction that goes into it. I like it when they haggle, or offer other things. I have been known to make an item for someone virtually for free if they show the effort to come with me and learn how I made it and role-play well. Mind you, it was not something particularly nice, or hard to come by, but it was something they could not have made themselves. Something they would have to buy. The pricing guide is out of date, it was meant as a loose guideline, and it offers only a shelf price. If we all HAVE to abide by any such guide, then I hope crafting is removed all together, and things are just on NPC vendors, because it may aswell be that way if we cannot haggle, barter, or work for our items.
As for player merchants doing something about it -
YES! This is what should be done. Talk to them, threaten them, make good RP out of it. Discredit them, call them a filthy Corathite that curses all their equipment. Refuse to help them, refuse to associate with them, try and undercut their deals. Don't just come whine about it. Maybe there is a reason they sold that low. Maybe they don't know the price. Maybe they ARE trying to run you out of business. Deal with it.
As for turning out 50 million items and selling them dirt cheap -
Yeah, here is a problem. It's one of the reasons I like the cooking tradeskill. No one cooks, so we can charge what we want for drinks, pies, and other more or less useless in a mechanical sense, but lovely for RP purposes. Set your price and people will pay it, especially if they are in a hurry.
Anyway ... that's my rant.
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Just to chime in with something sortof related:
Part of the problem that leads to 'Market Crashes' and such is that there arent a lot of ways currently to remove gold from circulation.
Houses are a good way to take large chunks out at a time, but with the limited number available, the gold is soon replaced. Decorations for said houses work the same way.
What needs to be implemented are recurring ways for gold to be taken out of the market, to make the remaining gold have more value.
If I have 500,000 in the bank and I'm trying to sell an item for 2,000 I am not going to care as much about huge profits. I might let that item go at near cost just to move inventory.
However, if there were things in place to regularly remove gold from the market, that 500,000 could dwindle very fast, making me refuse to sell at anything lower than 2,000 and perhaps require even more.
When you can do a 'red light run' and come out with 500+ gold just from goblin corpses, the value of gold doesnt seem very great.
As far as suggestions for removing Gold from the market, here are a couple:
Add a Potion Vendor. Make his prices for the potions a lot higher than normal so player alchemists can easily continue to sell for the 'current market value', but if you need some potions and can't find an alchemist, you can dump your gold into disposable items. I think a lot of people would use this.
Same goes for a lot of other disposable trade skill items. Arrows, scrolls, oils, baked goods, alcohols. Offer them on merchants, but jack the prices up alot higher than what players sell the items for. This will get those player merchants out hawking their wares more to make sure people know they are an alternative to the Vendors. And will have people constantly voluntarily removing their gold from circulation.
Sell some more of the ingredients for tradeskills on merchants. Sure, we can buy bottles and flasks. But at 1 gold each, thats not making any kind of dent on the market. Offer essences for alchemy. Arrowheads, juice extracts, bow strings, paper, etc. Again, jack the prices up so people really have to want them to buy them from a vendor instead of a player or getting them themselves.
The point of all this being, the people with boatloads of money in the bank are the people more likely to just buy what they need from a vendor.
I understand this is a Low Magic world, which is a good thing. But if the prices are super high, it will still have the same limiting effect as having to wait to find a player merchant, and have the added bonus of removing gold from the economy, thereby making gold as valuable as it should be. If someone wants to go dump 300K on alchemy supplies from a vendor, let them. Thats 300,000 gold that was just taken out of circulation.
It works the same way in real life. With enough money, you can pay anyone to teach you how to do almost anything.
Just some thoughts. :)
-Jester
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Or
make gold drops far less often
create inflation
unleash baby rust monsters that eat gold coins
institute a luxury tax
wait... don't do that... I hate taxes
my serious recommendation is to make gold drops less frequent and far less common
1 or 2 gold from a goblin is more like it... and even then only a few goblins should drop
after all.. bunnies work hard just to keep up with them
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taxes would be a good idea,your taxed by what you have now... but how was it abck then. no way a king wouldent be taxing his people. have taxes on homes, every month you need to pay such and such amount depending on the size of the home... make 3 room homes that have low taxes, or make the huge 2 story mansions have higher taxes. that will keep people away from houses more, and it will remove money. Monthly taxes or your house is taken from you and resold, sounds good to me.
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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.
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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!
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Right, I stand corrected and apologize for any offense.
I agree that dropping prices too low is extremly detremental to the world.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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..
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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!
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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%.
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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? :P Who is taxing us? Why aren't we represented in the decision making process? :P
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Blahh. I hate public PCs.
The above post was mine.
ps, this mouse needs to be cleaned.
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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 :P. 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.
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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.
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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.
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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..
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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.. :)
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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.
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okay, taxes on bank accounts won't work. For that matter, most taxes will prove to be unfair, save for property taxes. Why? Because there are ways around everything. Point and case: The persons that have significant gold to tax also maintain heavy amounts of storage (houses) where they can put their gold, rather than using the bank, and in doing so, will never get taxed if we start taxing banks accounts. The poor younguns and new players will get hosed by the taxes because they have no where else to store the gold. The only reason property taxes would be remotely fair is this: Those that really need large amounts of property are guilds and serious crafters. These are also the ones that maintain the largest amounts of gold. Those that buy the houses (property) know in advance the costs of doing so and would expect to cover the taxes. Advantages of property taxes: 1) This could prove to even out the pocketbooks of the incredibly rich and the "average" adventurer 2) This could decrease the number of persons that maintain houses, thus cleaning up the server a bit. 3) There might be less market floods of goods as fewer people will be able to store large amounts of goods. 4) It might encourage more crafting by orders rather than mass crafting (because of less storage) Disadvantages of Property taxes: 1) It might discourage RP in favor of making money to maintain the house. 2) It requires enforcement. Of course, as has been mentioned previously, there is an infinite supply of money, so no matter what, the economy will inflate. The trick, I think, to keep goods from flooding the market place is this: >> decrease storage
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I think the problem with the economy on layo is that people think of it as a market economy. We don't have and cannot have a market economy, since a large number of people can produce low level items like iron and oak weapons. These items would have no value at all in a pure market economy with so many traders as we have compared to the size of the market. In a market economy the result would be that many traders would go bankrupt. This way the prizes would be balanced.
But we have none of the mechanism that limits the number of traders. Furthermore, for many items there are no production cost, which means that you could sell items for 1 gp and still make a profit.
My point is that it is fine that people RP that we have some kind of market economy, but we must all be aware of the fact that if we had a market economy most items would be absolutely worthless. Which means that none of us can be interested in having a market economy, of course one could make quick money on dumping prizes but the rest of us can follow the prizes down if we want to.
This problem cannot be fixed by limiting the storage, implementing taxes or restricting crafts. I think the system is fine, and the economy will be stable as long as people don't try to dump prizes. This is in my view the only problem we have with economy that is.
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Here's an idea...
BE RESPONSIBLE PLAYERS!
Good googaly almighty splatrat fizzle bum flatular circles in the SKY!!!
I CANNOT understand people who will do things like this... Crafting is fun and all.. but PLEASE think about what your doing when you make 100 items... I mean... I'm not lauging any more when L had to ask people to craft in bunches of less than 100.
We all run around.. camping, killing, rushing, making laps, and then expect the DM's to run around and fix all the trouble we cause ourselves. Each thinks.. this one time won't hurt.. or .. I'm really the only one who does it so it's not going to cause much trouble.. or... Hey, there's no rules against it.. or... Pssh! Your just jelous that my PC is stronger than yours.. or... Hey, it's just a game and doing this makes me happy so back off.
Stuff breaks cause WE break it... continualy.. complain about getting it fixed and continue breaking stuff till it IS fixed.. and then complain cause we can't break it any more. 100 gold should be a ALOT of money... 100 gold is more than most peasants see in a years time may be more... I run around with about 800 gold.. and a little more if I need to save for armor.. I buy food and Inn rooms constantly to keep my money down.. I by lots of usables to keep that savings low. I don't pick up EVERY bit of gold I see, I don't sell everything I can to the pawnshop. If I craft alot.. it's for MY use.. Learning to adventure continualy without TONS of crap in my backpack is TOUGH but it's nessesary to bring the Layo economy back to a healthy level.
The trouble here lies not in our governing body of DM's... but in our own selfish desires to intake as much gold and items as possible. Please... let's back off the freakish gold piles.. live day to day as adventurers should. Really established adventurers SHOULD have a larger gold deposit.. it's natural.. but come on... It's overboard.
Lets take some personal responsibility. don't do it just cause you can, or cause there's no rules over it. Please think about others.
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Exactly, Doc. Exactly.
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I love crafting, I make mostly arrows and bolts. You spend quite a bit of time gathering the items needed (wood, feathers, metal) and there are many steps in the process where you can fail (of course for the higher level crafters this is not an issue). With arrows and bolts you use them up faster then you make them the same goes for scrolls and potions (these are consumable items). Other items not so; swords, armor, rings amulets and such. Now the system already tries to handle this as in, it is harder to make non consumable items (I think). I think that it is true that there is an issue at hand. This can be handled by us the players. We just need to act in form with our classes and characters. Would a ranger or a paladin really amass huge sums of money would a rouge really spend countless hours perfecting gem crafting. These kinds of things can be said for most classes. So it is up to us to deal with the issues at hand. We dont need the DMs to step in and save us from ourselves. And you dont want that. If I was on that staff I would initiate a massive run of breakins and "clean house" of the huge stores of stuff we have stored away :) Then a quick change in the scripts to make all crafting much much harder and a depletion of CNR. That would solve the issues we keep complaining about. But then we would lose one of the fun parts of this world, the abiltiy to make your own stuff. We had better do this on our own :) that is what this thread should be about. How de WE fix this?
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Melee weapons and armor are far easier to craft than anything involving paper which includes woodcarving because of sandpaper. There are a lot more steps in bows and arrows, or scrolls, than there are in armor and weapons. Because of that materials are more widely spread around the crafting towns and require more time to collect. Even if the copper and iron are guarded it is not difficult to find a group willing to help because of the perks of gold and xp involved in just the collecting of resources.
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Sell things for thier Lens of Pricing values. *He shrugs.* 'Swhat I do. And, on the subject of spending money and living like adventurers should, I offer up my character as an example (however egotistical I may be, I actually built Pyyran to be the archetypal adventurer, so rawr). To provide something specific, Pyyran once sold a great big pile of gems and gem dusts, along with a few scrolls, and laid hands on something like three hundred platinum (3k gold, for those of you who've never played a PnP game where you had to keep track of the weight of your coin. @.@). In the space of three realtime hours, I was nearly broke, after the purchase of two boxes of skeleton's knuckles and a set of lesser gauntlets of ogre power, among other things. And they were fair prices; expensive, that is. Four hundred for a box of knuckles... May not seem like much, but if you convert all of those knuckles into Moderate potions, you end up losing money, as set next to the prices of the Temple of Ilsare. Light potions are a different story entirely, but still. It turned out to be something like twelve gp for each knuckle, with the fancy boxes thrown in for free. (Eleven point four, actually.) I'd give you the rest of the math, but my point is already across. The gauntlets... Well, self-explanitory. I'm going for reinforced clothing, next. The point I'm trying to illustrate is that Pyyran doesn't hang onto money. He doesn't even really hang onto much of anything else, aside from those few treasures he particularly values. And gems. Always gems.
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OK I would go by the lens but it does not go over well with 98% of the players. Example: the lens prices 99 iron tipped oak arrows at a little over 8000, but when trying to make a deal for a new ring I was offer 2000gp for 500 arrows! I researched it a little and found the general price for the arrows to be 1500 to 2000 (still a far cry from 8000). Example two: Try the lens on say an uncut diamond, it will say about 800, but the first one I found I sold (no auction) for 8000, and that was not my price it was the person I said "hey you want to by a diamond" to. The lens needs to be fixed :)
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"...The lens needs to be fixed..."
The lens works... sadly though we are hitting a brick wall with nwn limitations (or a total bejesus amount of coding time and/or reviewing every item on every update). There is only so much the team can do. We need help from the players--you guys/gals know what is right and wrong, deep down you do know. *shrugs* Sorry, but it is true.
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I agree with that statment. As we said earlier, the fix here is up to the players. A fix that we can do is to follow the lens pricing, no auctions, no inflated value, no discounting the value of items just stick to the lens. So we can sell at the lens price or trade. But we can only do this if everyone agrees. Coding a dynamic picing system for the lens would be easy, keeping the prices updated would be a nightmare.
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For example take the current auction going on for a pair of boots of striding +2. What does the lens say the price should be on that item? Right now the high bid is 69000gp. Of course I have done the same thing, I sold an emmy for 55k two rings and five lion bags, way too much and I felt ti was not right. Then I had a lesser Ioun stone up for sale adn was offered over 300k in gold and goods. I could not do it, so I thought with my characters mind this lead me to sell it for far less to a character that I thought could put it t best use. We have to think with our characters minds.
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PsychicToaster - 11/8/2005 1:48 AM
Melee weapons and armor are far easier to craft than anything involving paper which includes woodcarving because of sandpaper. There are a lot more steps in bows and arrows, or scrolls, than there are in armor and weapons. Because of that materials are more widely spread around the crafting towns and require more time to collect. Even if the copper and iron are guarded it is not difficult to find a group willing to help because of the perks of gold and xp involved in just the collecting of resources.
This is not true, there is a reason why so many people are high level wood crafters and no one is above level 17 in smithing. The huge difference is that you need only two pieces of wood in order to make a bow but for a short sword you need 5 ignots of the chosen metal, which in the case of adimantium means at least 15 nuggets....