Maybe set limits on how much money you can borrow based on your level, as opposed to just all or nothing? Like starting out you could borrow enough for a little bit better sword or something, which may prove useful to you, but would be pretty much worthless to anyone who has been around a while. Only after the player has invested enough effort in the character could they borrow sizeable sums of money, and perhaps only if they have a good credit rating?

Originally posted by Aduin
The real good way to avoid this abuse, is the idea to implement some kind of time restriction, so your charecter has to have been arround for 2-3 or more weeks before you can take out a loan.

I agree, to a point. If the only criteria is time, then it would be possible to create a character on a second computer and just have it sit around for that amount of time. The only solutions are either having the player invest work in bettering the character before they can get a loan by setting a minimum level, or doing it on a player-player basis. Both of these have their drawbacks, but neither is really easily circumventable.

Originally posted by Aduin
And then, if a certain ip has two or more of these banned charecters, their ip should just be banned from the game, so they can\'t play period. This is complicated, and there is still the room for a person to do it once, but it should help to cut that down a bit.

I have no trouble changing my ip; in fact it\'ll change on its own periodically. Doing it by ip would be silly.
Your idea of requiring collateral is much better. If in order for a player to borrow money they have to have made at least that much money, it would be silly to create a character just to give their money to another character, as it would probably be simpler to just make that amount of money with the primary character, particularly when the character is of relatively high level.

Originally posted by Kiern
...and if you did not have high skills in those things you\'d end up looking stupid (ex. falling over while trying to do a handstand)

Or perhaps, rather, in the pertinent skill, ie acrobatics, diplomacy, etc. Though of course you shouldn\'t need much diplomacy to wave properly But probably to actually look really good when you bow, and, more importantly, to know when to bow, though I\'m not sure how that would be expressed in game.  What would be really cool is if most skills had some moderately trivial actions associated with them, and just some general ones, and you could bind keys to perforing them. It\'d be a bit more work and a bit more data, but if you\'re using a skeletal animation system it shouldn\'t be too much. The hardest part would probably be coordinating handshakes between two characters...

On the other hand, if actions weren\'t skill based, it might be good to allow player scripting of actions. That way a bard could actually make up a new dance if he wanted, or whatever. Again, with a skeletal animation system it\'s not that much additional data, and I think it could be presented in a way that a sufficient number of people would be interested in making some. Though I suppose we have to worry about obscene gestures, then...

I\'d personally love \"Sim Economy\"... for one thing, it\'d make many issues deal with themselves, and for another it\'d add a whole new level of realism. Shop owners could set up inventory lists and say \"Buy n units of item x from this person for this price every week,\" and then that person would have a guarunteed sale of it, if they could make it... or they could go around hunting down bargins each week. The latter type of business owner would make more money, probably, but may be less fun to play for most people. Most serious business owners would probably have some sort of mix of the two. Then, on top of that, you\'d have to pay NPC wages and upkeep on the building (and possibly a lease, depending) and all in all it\'d take a bit to keep a business running. That way, they wouldn\'t be scattered far and wide, because they\'d lose money, and there would be (moderately) interesting things for business owners to do to improve their business. Perhaps you should also be able to open something more like a pawn shop, where people come with whatever, and you set a price and buy it from them and then sell that item. You\'d more likely find more interesting items at that type of shop, but you\'d go to the others for more standard items.
In any case, the proprietor of a store would also be able to talk to customers whenever they are there, which the more serious roleplayers would find interesting, particularly if the store was moderately busy.

At the very least, I think, we should have guild colors and personal colors. That really shouldn\'t take up much space at all (maybe 8-24 bytes per character, tops) and shouldn\'t be difficult to implement, and those colors can be worked into all of your garments, and it\'d add a lot of individuality to the game at little cost. A guild crest on top of that would be cooler still. If we are going to have guild crests, though, I think they should definately be run by the dev team when the guild is created. Perhaps the crests could be embroidered/etched onto your clothing/armor in your colors (no guild colors)?

I think it\'d be better if they just had moderate operating costs, so that having a shop in the middle of nowhere would actually cost you money to keep it open, but if your shop is getting patronage, then you\'ll make money off it still.

That might be workable, actually. The question is whether it is desirable. I actually think it very well might be. *shrug* When you talk you pick your language, and only people who know the language can understand you. We could even work it like in FF10, which, though it was amazingly inacurate from a linguistics point of view, still gave a very good impression of the feel of listening to a language you only half understand. And even if people start to figure out the mappings, well, if you sit down and seriously pick at a sentance you heard in a language you only kind of know, you can get more information out of it. I think it has the potential to be really cool.