pawn shop limit per character and not overall limit.

[lonnarin]

Although Im biased a little... it was pretty annoying to find Yew Hunter Longbows dropping from creatures like petty coins. It takes a "lot" of crafting to make this item, and a whole list of hard to get crafting items just to make it ( Dusts of appearance, a dozen sight essences, Clairvoyance... blah blah ).
On one trip we actually found three of them. Three on one run. This item is Yew ( +3, basically Mithril)... and a speciality item to boot.

Of course, I didn't complain when my Mithy Longsword dropped.... which would be equally hard to get the CNR and make for Weaponsmiths... so I'll shut up now.

EGADS!  Yes I remember with Farros he quickly found a longbow that was even better than Yew, like the grandpappy of flights of fancy.  Man, I remember the days when two 20th levellers going to getyew used to cause a ruckus.  And now better than yew finished items are dropping like flies.  And we still admonish our players for selling more than one mithral or yew item per month!

*blinks*  Guess people of a certain level are technically forced to stockpile to some extent.  You'd be INSANE to throw yew or mithral into a trashbin, and even to donate it.  But if you  sell it off for a fair price at a quick enough interval as you find them, you're a bad bad man.

Does the 1 yew/mithral item per month guideline apply to guilds? or just the lower to middle class and independant crafters?

[Dorganath]

As an entrepreneur, you never never can rely on "changing customer behavior."  If that is in your business plan, rethink it.

The real "fix" is to make the game reward the behavior you want.  The game rewards crafters that sell their makings to pawn shops.  The game rewards looters that sell their loot.  Nothing wrong with that.  However, the lower levels are impacted to a degree that is not pleasant.

I'm not in complete disagreement, but "legislating by mechanics" is invariably inflexible, as special cases do always exist, and is terribly time-consuming.  For every attempt we've made and all the hundreds of man-hours we've spent over the years to "encourage" the behavior we've wanted, one element or the other has found away around our encouragement, making us spend even more time to counteract the actions of of a few who invariably ruin the experience for the masses.

Further, we have rules here on the server that are specifically aimed at "changing customer behavior".  There are rules against swearing and cursing, as well as rules against the explicit RP of sex in-game regardless of location.  Griefing, muling...all of these things we have asked players to not do, because we all know that left in an unstructured, uncontrolled environment, the behavior of people will degrade. The rules and mechanics do not reward anyone for not doing these things. There is only admonishment and penalty if one does them.

In any case, mechanically limiting who can pawn where doesn't reward anyone, it simply ridgidly enforces that which we want people to do anyway.  And if people would be considerate, then we could spend our time on improving the experience for everyone as well as on making the next game far better than we can make it in NWN.

[aragwen]

Does the 1 yew/mithral item per month guideline apply to guilds? or just the lower to middle class and independant crafters?

 
 This request applies to everyone. Guilds included.
 
 But I have to tell you, dont be fooled, not like these items sell frequently.
 I think in Raven Trade we might have sold five yew items in total and I not sure about the mithril, but I dont think we sold much of that either.

[twidget658]

Thought I would bump this to re-visit.
 
 

One aspect of this discussion that I'd like to bring up is the impact of penniless pawn shops on low-level players who are new to Layonara. When you're just starting out (Levels 1-4) and you want to buy yourself the basic copper armor/weapons at the merchant, I think it would be quite frustrating to find nowhere you can sell your low-level loot for coins.

 
 
 Most of the older players that create new PC's know someone IG or know the system to sell CNR and what not to get coins. What about the new players that do not know the system yet. They are trying to get coin and see a pawn shop. They try to sell whatever they can to get just a little coin, but the pawnshops are out of money.
 
 After the last couple of server resets, I hopped around looking at pawnshops. Within 30 minutes, there were pawnshops expended.
 
 

The real "fix" is changing player behavior. Mid-to-high level characters who dump all their junk in Port Hempstead and run out the pawns are indeed being inconsiderate to other characters and their players.

 
 

And if people would be considerate, then we could spend our time on improving the experience for everyone as well as on making the next game far better than we can make it in NWN.

 
 Apparently doesn't work as easy as just asking and relying on people to govern themselves.
 
 I propose (select all that apply):
 

• 1) A system similar to the chests where it shows who sold what.
• 2) The pawns shop only buys a limit to an item. (Max. 10 polished fire opals)

Maybe that character shouldn't be making 20 platinum chainmail armors or atleast not stockpiling them until he can hit the pawnshop for a large take in trues. Same could be said for gemcrafter who polishes 50 stack gems to just in turn sell them to the pawnshops and rake in trues that way.

 
 

• 3) Pawnshops only used for PCs under level 10. Over this level, they know enough to how to get coins without the pawn shop. (Maybe Mistone under lvl 10, Dregar lvl 11-20, and Belinara lvl 21+)

[Ravemore]

Pawn shops are a pain in the rear and frustrating. The argument that more gold would deteriorate or collapse the layo economy is sound when based on RL economic principles, but we have to admit this is not RL. Perhaps we should exercise a controlled experiment in order to collect some data in order to make a more informed decision, and I am assuming this has not been done before as I have only been playing since 2006... If the experiment fails, it would be easily corrected within a month or so by restricting the pawnshops to previous levels and natural depletion of reserves.

Lets raise the coin thresholds on all pawnshops by 500%. After 30 days take a look at the state of things via player surveys. What is the player satisfaction levels? What is the assessment of flow of goods by crafters? Are there significant increases in donations to causes and religions? Has the level of RP between players increased due to exchange of coin for info and missions? Have players been rat holing their money? Has there been changes in frustration levels? The data from these multiple surveys can be analyzed and graphed and we would have concrete data instead of argument one and argument two supported by assumptions that both seem logical at face value...

[lonnarin]

The other side of this coin (no pun intended) is that would effectively raise the amount of gold being put into the economy without another means to remove it.  The over-abundance of gold is in fact one of the problems in the economy right now.

I certainly wish I had that "problem".  None of my characters have over 20k in the bank right now, and two of them are lvl 20.  And considering landmarks cost 1 million true, +3 jewelry costs 100,000+ true and mithral weapons cost 70,000+ true, that puts me in the rugged "craft yer own" crowd.

Maybe if players who were interested in opening guild-halls and the like could open their own charity.  Siphon off all those iron items into something that helps further the goals of themselves and their friends, rather than the imaginary NPCs who seem to get mysteriously struck my invasions and natural disasters every time there's noticeable economic inflation.

[lonnarin]

Well the thing is, sure you can donate.  Bjorn, Ozy and Goldwin donated MILLIONS of true worth that Dorand's temple holds in his coffers.  But what exactly does that get you?  No new temples, no new crafthalls, no new anything I have noticed sice we were donating furiously.  And so we quit donating.

If you want people to donate, there must be discernible and visible rewards for such behavior.  Otherwise it's just tossing items in a trashcan that has a value above it.  Perhaps if receipts totaling 1 million true worth of donations would yield sainthood in the faith, or some form of special recognition.  Maybe every 5 million true in the pot, it gets deducted and a new temple appears, or at least a few new cleric NPCs in locations appropriate to the deity .

In any case, it would also be interesting to split the pawnshops a bit.  Make one for armor/weapons, another for gems and another for miscellaneous items.  I'm guessing that the gems pawnshop will be constantly empty, and everybody else will be happy.

Perhaps as an alternative to pawning gems, some Berylite cleric NPC could put a bounty on them and trade players xp, good pts, healing kits and potions?  Kind of like how you can trade the scrap metal in Fallout 3 to various NPCs for useful items back.  Have a Voraxian cleric NPC who trades iron or bronze weapons for healing supplies, have a Lucindite who trades fro spell scrolls, etc.  Then at least when the pawn shops were broke, there could be other places to siphon all of that "junk" to.  I'd definitely enjoy trading items for kits!  They make up at least 70% of my expenditures as it is.

We could also disallow cut and polished gems and their dusts from being pawned.  Pawn shops only accepting finished products like jewelry.  THAT would solve 90% of the broke pawnshop problem.  Metal ingots as well.  Make people sell these items to the crafters instead of leaching the pawn system dry every 5 minutes after the reboot.  Mark all unfinished CNR goods as stolen.  Doesn't take all that much time and coding, just a click of the applicable properties box in the item database.  We can politely ask the playerbase again and again not to rush the pawnshops with gems till we're blue in the face, and 99% may even obey that standard.  But it's the 1% who rushes the pawnshop every reboot who ruins it for the other 99%.

[lonnarin]

As for the time old saying "there's too much gold in the player economy..."

Central: Players Online: 19 • Uptime: 07:08:31 • Level Average: 24
West: Players Online: 5 • Uptime: 07:08:31 • Level Average: 20

I would dare say that we should rethink that a bit.  With so many super-epics running around, they really SHOULD have a lot of gold.  A LOT of gold.  How many of these players have +3 jewelry?  They've been able to wear it since the high teens, but it's not available very often, and when it is, it's usually priced at over 100,000 true.  So of course they're going to hoard their gold.  Just in the off-chance that a bidding war will ensue in the Tradehall and they can finally get that nice item they've been pining for for years of Real Time.

When I think of Epic, I think of somebody sitting in a tower, Lordship over a small realm and leading an army.  But that simply is not the case.  A lot of us out there are living hand-to-mouth (or hand to healkit, rather)  I have 2 lvl 20s with less than 25,000 true in the bank right now.  Who are all these people with "too much gold" that I keep hearing about?  How does one define "too much gold" per level, in a monetary amount?  Could it possibly be that the people who claim there is too much gold out there are simply looking at their own bank accounts and making presumptions about the wealth of the others?

[Dorganath]

A few quick comments...

Most of the older players that create new PC's know someone IG or know the system to sell CNR and what not to get coins. What about the new players that do not know the system yet. They are trying to get coin and see a pawn shop. They try to sell whatever they can to get just a little coin, but the pawnshops are out of money.

This is true, largely because all the older players who know the system get there as soon as they can and deplete all shops.  It's interesting to note that the bulk of complaints I've heard about pawn shops are from older players with newer characters.
 

After the last couple of server resets, I hopped around looking at pawnshops. Within 30 minutes, there were pawnshops expended.

• 3) Pawnshops only used for PCs under level 10. Over this level, they know enough to how to get coins without the pawn shop. (Maybe Mistone under lvl 10, Dregar lvl 11-20, and Belinara lvl 21+)

This is possibly the most reasonable and workable suggestion I've heard so far.

Well the thing is, sure you can donate.  Bjorn, Ozy and Goldwin donated MILLIONS of true worth that Dorand's temple holds in his coffers.  But what exactly does that get you?  No new temples, no new crafthalls, no new anything I have noticed sice we were donating furiously.  And so we quit donating.

...

The fallacy here is that donations alone do not imply an automatic result.  The cost of Toran's citadel in Huangjin came from the millions of True in donations and the efforts of Michaelis Draego.  There's no magic threshold of donations where we go "DING!  Dorand gets a new temple!"  However, if that is an end you want to pursue, it's a worthy CDQ goal once the funds are available in some way.

I believe there are two such initiatives in progress right now, in fact.

But it's the 1% who rushes the pawnshop every reboot who ruins it for the other 99%.

Absolutely true.  That 1% is also likely not reading this thread.

As for the time old saying "there's too much gold in the player economy..."

Central: Players Online: 19 • Uptime: 07:08:31 • Level Average: 24
West: Players Online: 5 • Uptime: 07:08:31 • Level Average: 20

I would dare say that we should rethink that a bit.  

Perhaps you're right.  Let's say then that there is too much gold distributed among a very few, who have then contributed to inflated prices because "someone" will pay them.

With so many super-epics running around, they really SHOULD have a lot of gold.  A LOT of gold.

Also true, but the reality is that there are plenty "super-epics" who don't, and that some of the wealthiest 100 active characters on the server are in fact less than 20th level.

When I think of Epic, I think of somebody sitting in a tower, Lordship over a small realm and leading an army.  But that simply is not the case.  A lot of us out there are living hand-to-mouth (or hand to healkit, rather)  I have 2 lvl 20s with less than 25,000 true in the bank right now.  Who are all these people with "too much gold" that I keep hearing about?[/quote]Again, it is kept among a relative few, but it is also the engine that perpetuates an inflated value of some items, driving a greater seeking of gold.

How does one define "too much gold" per level, in a monetary amount?  Could it possibly be that the people who claim there is too much gold out there are simply looking at their own bank accounts and making presumptions about the wealth of the others?

At least in my case, I'm making informed conclusions based on the database of bank balances and just general observations.  Among the group that knows "how to play the game" and can seem to generate gold very readily, there's a false assumption that sums like 10k, 50k, even 100K are within reach of anyone of mid level or above.  While perhaps technically true, it also makes assumptions about play style, available time, etc.

Maybe I'm a product of the "old days" in which there seemed a lot more trading of goods-for-goods or goods-for-gold among characters rather than the wholesale depletion of free and easy sources of gold like pawn shops.

Admittedly, there is one other dynamic at work here than there was just a few years ago, and that is the fact that our servers now stay up for a week (or more) at a time as a matter of course rather than getting reset (due to need or crash) every 6-12 hours.  But even so and even as the servers got to the point of stability over several days,  no one was dumping polished gems on pawn shops in such insane numbers as to deplete them in mere minutes.  This is a relatively recent phenomenon (last RL year or so).

Anyway, with the dynamic of the servers being up longer, I am going to try and come up with a simple and reasonable system (reasonable in terms of development effort and imposed rstrictions) that will extend the lifespan of pawn shops, or at least of their coffers.  That system, however, will not simply be increasing the amount of gold available to the pawn shops.

[ycleption]

Having different shops for different types of items (or just a different counter), is not going to solve the problem - the same people will rush the "gem" merchant, and make a lot of true, and leave it bankrupt for the rest.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but the reason that gem-pawning is lucrative is because they aren't terribly valuable... that is, their pawn value is less than the single item cap, and they are cheap and easy to obtain in volume. And, of course, they can be split out of their stacks. I've heard of people pawning gold ingots, and (since the crafting change) arrows, for similar reasons.

Most crafts either produce items that are grossly undervalued by the lens compared to the effort to make them, and so worthless to pawn (heal potions, infused wands), or they produce items that are so expensive that the single item cap is exceeded by a lot, and so the effort to craft is also wasted because so little of the value can be extracted form the pawner (Drexia regularly makes items that have a lens value of over 100k, but it's still only 1000 true, even at the good pawners).

So, if its possible, my personal recommendation would be to adjust the single item cap, and maybe even the percentage true return for different types of items. For gems, maybe something in the 50-100 true range, for armors, maybe 2500-5000, maybe potions get double the true percentage of other things, and so on...
I think this would strike a better balance, so that gem crafting wouldn't be quite so lucrative at the pawners, and give a little love to other crafts...

--------
Now, I personally believe that it should be possible to make true from crafting, and so long as try to avoid the pawners around the new characters starting cities, I don't see a problem with pawning gems, or saving some dropped items to make true so long as its done in moderation.

There are other ways to make true, sure... some of them relatively easy, if boring. But, just like many other things in the game, the designers can't make it "fair" for everyone - characters who can solo easily will be able to make true more easily, players who have friends or family OOC they play with regularly will make true more easily, players who have more time to play will make true more easily, etc...
--------

I think all craftable items should be removed.  Jewelry, clothing, weapons etc.

And, of course, the pawn shops don't exist in an economic vacuum. In my opinion, this would help a lot.

Edit:

Let's say then that there is too much gold distributed among a very few, who have then contributed to inflated prices because "someone" will pay them.

I find it interesting that you note inflated prices... certainly some items, notably high level drops and some exceptional items sometimes sell for a ton. Sometimes, I've seen the same item sell for 50k and 5k, only weeks apart; the consistency of prices I think has changed in the last couple years. Overall though, it seems to me that prices are depressed for the bulk of goods. Drexia's prices used to be on the low-average end of merchants. I can think of one or two people who undersold her when I started... I've adjusted a few things since then, mostly downward, but if you look around, most prices have gone down relative to hers. I've even had players in the last year tell me that I really overprice things. I've had other merchants tell me they've seen the same things in other crafts...

[Thunder Pants]

I don't know if this is feasible in the script for the game, but would it be possible for the pawnshops gold coffers to get filled by purchases to the other shops of the given town?

for example, Lue goes to the craft merchant and spends 128 on enchanting oil, would it be possible for that 128 gold to be transferred to the pawnshops gold supply?

the reason the pawnshops are "broken" is because due to lag issues they are effectively only half a shop and they function in no way like an actual pawn shop would.  I understand that we can't have the pawnshops hang on to their inventory, because this would constantly crash the server as their inventories fill up with pages upon pages of junk that people sell.  however due to this constraint we have merchants who give money out, and never take any money in.

[Ravemore]

I don't know if this is feasible in the script for the game, but would it be possible for the pawnshops gold coffers to get filled by purchases to the other shops of the given town?

for example, Lue goes to the craft merchant and spends 128 on enchanting oil, would it be possible for that 128 gold to be transferred to the pawnshops gold supply?

I like that idea....

[darkstorme]

3) Pawnshops only used for PCs under level 10. Over this level, they know enough to how to get coins without the pawn shop. (Maybe Mistone under lvl 10, Dregar lvl 11-20, and Belinara lvl 21+)

I like this idea.

I don't know if this is feasible in the script for the game, but would it be possible for the pawnshops gold coffers to get filled by purchases to the other shops of the given town?

for example, Lue goes to the craft merchant and spends 128 on enchanting oil, would it be possible for that 128 gold to be transferred to the pawnshops gold supply?

While this is a neat idea, I'd alter it to be, for example, 32 gold (25% of that which was spent), so that it works as a drain on the economy.  The problem is largely consumables; other than heal kits and crafting items, adventurers don't tend to "use things up" - particularly big-ticket items like fancy weapons/armour (barring a rust monster).  As every monster seems to drop gold, that (in addition to the pawn shops) constantly infuses gold into the economy.  Some means has to be provided to take it out, and if money spent at the merchants was kept in a reservoir for the pawn shops, yet another way for money to leave the economy would be closed off.

[Thunder Pants]

Lets raise the coin thresholds on all pawnshops by 500%. After 30 days take a look at the state of things via player surveys.

the problem with this is adding more gold to the pawn shops will not solve the problem. the problem is not that the pawn shops run out of money, it's that they have no means of refilling their supply of money

if you increase the amount of gold the pawn shops carry then it'll only mean they have gold for an extra few minutes.

the problem is that the people who drain all the money from the pawn shops by selling various items, actually carry more of these items then they can sell to the pawn shops.

for example, lets say the item being sold is a type of arrow (i don't know if CNR arrows sell well, I'm just saying for the sake of argument) since the pawn shops have been out of money for 3 days the character in question has been stocking up on these arrows for 3 days, now when the server resets he rushes to the nearest pawn shop (typically Hampstead or vehl) and sells his items for 1000 gold until the shop has less then 1000 gold, he still has items left, but the shop doesn't have enough money to pay for it so he moves on to the next shop.  increasing the ammount of money that the shops hold doesn't really make the gold last longer, it just means the character spends and extra 30 to 40 seconds selling items to that pawn merchant before moving on

[Pseudonym]

Never read this thread before now. Incentivizing non-pawnshop gold sinks (which I think Pen N Popper suggested waaa-aaay back there) I think is a solution, at least in part. The discounts in a temple that a PC can now receive based upon the level of their donation is a nifty little feature that doesn't get much recognition but I think is a good example of the much requested tangible benefit-for-donation that we have all been screaming about for a long time. I'd love to see more and similar! Cheers.

[Ravemore]

the problem with this is adding more gold to the pawn shops will not solve the problem. the problem is not that the pawn shops run out of money, it's that they have no means of refilling their supply of money

Hmm.. Point taken.

[merlin34baseball]

I think the problem is that it only seems, and I might be wrong, but that the pawnshops do not reset enough. I just started playing a new character and have traveled the entire continent of Mistone looking to sell stuff with all (or at least most, and always the ones who pay a good price are broke) of them being broke for I think the last three weeks, granted we only play one or two days a week with our new characters.

It seems that some know when the reset is (is it only after a server reset?) and instantly run from shop to shop selling stuff.  I have very limited playtime, and so does my son who gets to play once a week. He asked me how come he has to carry around so much stuff for weeks on end because the shops will never buy it from him. All I can tell him is, well, that's how it is.

Being low level again means we need every single true we can get to buy equipment. But when we go three weeks and can't sell anything???

Seems odd to me,
Merlin34

[Lareth]

I was thinking about this as a suggestion for refilling the pawn shop monies for lower level folks, without unbalancing the game by bringing too much money into the system.

Use an entry tax to the city to replenish the pawn shop cash, it could be fairly low and increase by level, so say 2gp / Level each time you enter port hempstead, sort of like having to speak to the master of entry at Prantz.. "That'll be 16 true to enter the city sir.. but ye look as though ye'd be able to afford that easy enough...".

  That would refill the coffers enough that a low level pc could sell some of the things that they find, most of which only go for less than 50gp, whilst not being enough to allow the higher levels to dump off their excess crafting stocks - by the time it would have gone up enough to allow the sale of a stack of fire opals, I would imagine that a the lower level folks will have drained it down.

[Hellblazer]

I like the idea there, the only thing is in two folds. either always have money on you.. or.. have the tolls access directly your bank account. Just in those small instances where you die and find yourself with no cash on you.

[ycleption]

Or, (again, not knowing what possible with the coding) to simply have different "banks" for differently priced items. So maybe the pawn shop has infinite funds to buy things that pawn for 1 true (so the new characters can pawn barley grains to their hearts content), a large but limited bank for things that pawn for 2-25 true, another for the 25-100 range, and so on...

I don't know enough to propose certain values for those banks, but something like that would ensure that pawn shops can pay out for those small values that are important to new characters, while still limiting the larger item payout that inflates the economy.