Decreasing The Importance of Fighting

[Sangwa]

From PS's site:

9. You have the option to live as an adventurer or as a normal citizen - both paths will be rewarded in the game.

Currently PS has only 2 real needs: becoming stronger than others or crafting something more awesome than the others. It also fails to reward people who spend time roleplaying sociable or scholarly characters. These are my opinions on how we could change it:

• Implement hunger and thirst. This will make people visit the tavern as well as give a purpose to cooking other than combat. Make it simple;
• Reward players for spending time around talking (through system, not with GM's). If you have a way of telling if they're afk or not, you could count the time where they are in non-fighting or crafting zones and are not afk and reward them for that. Make the PP bonus small enough to demotivate anyone from hanging around pressing a random key each 5 minutes;
• Ignore fighting for a while and make some items for the sake of aesthetic. It's more important to flesh out the characters right now than it is to improve the weapons and spells.

[Gilrond]

I'd add a smith as a popular path now. Simply because it pays off. Other crafts are underdeveloped. In order to provide other paths, economy needs to be more diverse. Herbal, harvesting, alchemy, leather working, tools making and etc. Since smithing now almost entirely focuses on weapons and armor, more warriors are natural result of that. Such things as fishing or farming are totally marginal in comparison at present.

[Sangwa]

Well, most smiths I've seen around are also fighters.

[Perlam]

there are other paths that pay off:

smiths
mages
(cooks, but that doesn't pay off much)

merchants who sell and resell, that pays off too

err.. out of ideas atm

[Phantomboy86]

there are other paths that pay off:

smiths
mages
(cooks, but that doesn't pay off much)

merchants who sell and resell, that pays off too

err.. out of ideas atm

Smith was stated
a mage is a warrior, though i'd like to see someone play themselves as a travelling magician.
Cooking yeah.. though i've heard it isnt nearly as profitable

To get items to sell you either need to be a cook or a warrior.

FISHING AND HARVESTING! If they've got the items ALREADY there, the least they can do is make them useful. >.<

[Sangwa]

So, all you're giving me is careers that walk around the fighter career. It's kinda lame.

[Sarva]

Metallurgy has nothing to do with fighting and they probably make more trias than any other job.

Some players , like Dannae, make some trias by selling their in game art. Either by working on commissions or selling items like greeting cards. Jaycol use to make money selling greeting cards and maps. True you aren't going to be earning millions of trias to cover heavy training costs but if you aren't training a lot I'm guessing you can make enough to get by.

I have known players who made trias from being a taylor and writing out descs of clothing in books and selling the books. I know people who make trias as authors creating in game books.

As has been mentioned merchants can make a living buying and selling goods.

Cooks can make trias by selling food to people like those in the Champion's Cup who can use food to heal. Food does heal health and replaces stamina and you can eat food while on the run so there is a value to eating food. The higher the quality of the food the more health and stamina that is restored.

It helps if the players support those who are trying to make trias in different ways, like buying art or books or "clothing" or greeting cards. Maybe hiring a poet or singer or bard to come perform at an event you are throwing.Or Pay a cook for catering your event, or just buying food maybe for that long run out to BD and back.

Of course don't forget the miners who sell the ores to the metallurgists.

when people were trying to earn trias for the guild house auction in January I saw most people mining and doing metallurgy, not hunting or fighting. sure as a hunter you might get lucky and loot a high value item but the more sure bet is metallurgy for earning lots of trias.

[Gilrond]

The problem with metallurgy so far, it's disconnected from smithing in a sense. I.e. the quality of the produced stock doesn't affect the quality of the item (so I'm not sure what's RP reason is to pay money for high q stocks). So metallurgy is used only to be able to make more complex stocks / alloys. Quality is somehow not playing right there.

And as we discussed before, crafting needs balancing i.e. more practice points (don't confuse them with PPs) for higher items in the skill group, for example 1 for sabre, 1.1 for shortsword, 1.2 for longsword and so on. This will allow more advanced crafters who can make broadswords or even platinum steel swords or whatever to advance their high levels with more reasonable speed, and will give some incentive to make more complex items. Now, there is no incentive to train on broadswords or etc. Hammering handles produces the same advancing speed.

[Sangwa]

Great naming of residual markets Sarva. Well besides the greatly challenging metallurgy.

[Bonifarzia]

I think Sangwa's concerns in the introductory section of this thread are well justified.
An economy and progression system with a broad diversity of ways to earn a living is certainly desirable.
Clean and fair progression curves for each of these areas will be needed in the long run.
But it seems already a big challenge to design few of them for moderately well balanced difficulty curves.
Maybe it is more important to focus on those elements that are already available and add complementary content later.
My guess is that development will probably cover a bit of both, so let us see what the future will hold. 

[Sangwa]

I disagree $Bonifarzia, mainly because the developers have been leaning on fighting for a long time now and it hasn't been providing much novelty or points of interest. Even those markets Sarva mentioned all serve to, sooner or later, provide either tria or resources for fighting: cooking is creating potions, metallurgy is creating tria for training, books... Well, the books I've sold the most are related with weapons and I've seen others selling those related with magic (which is fighting.) All revolves around fighting, unless by some odd chance you get to have a guild auction when your guild doesn't actually have a guild house already or if you like levelling metallurgy and weapon crafting for the autist fun of it (i.e. without trading with others).

Including other needs, such as hunger, thirst, the need for social recognition (with items of value) and whatever would certainly diversify PS's experience and mind set. Rewarding players for sticking around others actively would also be a great way to balance out IC lifestyles as well. Currently a character that fights trepors all day can improve his intelligence, while a character that writes books and discusses points of view gets 0. Just awarding these characters for being active would be a great motivation, no matter how small the reward is (1 pp each 20 minutes, if need be).

It's all fine if you want to excuse the current blind focus, but I think we'd be better off with only a quarter of the retarded "I must kill the offender" and "I must be an offender!" types of characters. And that will only help with the right motivations and needs.

[Perlam]

Sangwa,

In the past i have sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting, i made quite a bit with selling those goods, since there was a need, so i created a market...

Gotta be creative, i think...


Grtz, Perlan

[edit: no, i am not gonna share what my money maker was]

[Sangwa]

So you sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting? What goods were these? What did you use the money on?

I have a character that makes most of his tria by sellling books, card readings, etc. Creativity is certainly a good ally, but not everyone is willing to give it away, specially with the current educational systems making it so scarce. It's ridiculous to ask every player to create his own market and to make it work.

My advise: gotta be reasonable and allow for real, capable easily eastablished markets that do not linger around fighting or stat raising only. Creating a food market would help in many ways: taverns would be populated, food would have a chance to exist without replacing potions.

[Bonifarzia]

I disagree Bonifarzia [...]

Including other needs, such as hunger, thirst, the need for social recognition (with items of value) and whatever would certainly diversify PS's experience and mind set. [...]

It's all fine if you want to excuse the current blind focus [...]

I am not looking for excuses here, nor do i second a focus on repetitive, stultifying actions for practice and progression.  The second of above quotes summarizes it quite well. But it is a long way to get there.

[Perlam]

So you sold goods that had nothing to do with fighting? What goods were these? What did you use the money on?

Like i said: i am not gonna share what my money maker was
Secondly: it's not polite to ask people what they are spending their trias on...

Grtz, Perlan

[Edit: concerning art like Sarva stated; i never got paid for the numerous sculptures, landart pieces, decorations and conceptual art pieces i have made, but it's a hobby, and a means to amuse friends and the few passers-by for me]