Hello Peeps,
I recently found PlaneShift when i was looking around sourceforge.. thought that it was worth a look, and i must tell you that i think it looks great .

I do have a few ideas, most of them have been voiced on this forum in one way or another, but i wish to clarify a few points.

ok, here we go..

1)  Religions
Firstly they have to be well thought out, everything from ranks to rewards, Deities to factions, allowances and penalties, forms of worship and types of faith etc.

2)  Underground organisations
err.. you know what i mean .
Thieves guilds and assassins guilds.  And they cant be 100% player controlled.
Why?  OK.  Heres a little story:
Grimnar the dwarf decides that Elliensi the Lemur needs to be put out of her misery.  So he finds out how to contact a certain organsation, and pays up, and they kill the victim.

ok great.  but it wont work.  Why does our dwarf want the other person dead? There is no reason.  Perhaps the character has somethign that the dwarf wants.  Perhaps that item is worth a lot of money.  But if it is, it will be worth less than what he is paying the guild to go and get it for him.  Why would the guild do that? They have the item, and even if the dwarf hasnt payed the full amount yet (or even anythign at all) the item is worth more.  So why not sell the item instead?

That is a small example.  Player run thieves guilds and assassins guilds never work out, unless there is someone at the top with unlimited funds so that the guild has no need of profit.

3)  Fluid Economy
A lot of MMOG economies go stale quickly, because supply is unlimited (through npc stores who sell at constant prices with unlimited stocks) and demand is limited.  What you need is a fluid economy, where only the most common items are sold at NPC stores.  You should be able to sell uncommon items to these stores (for high prices to be sure) and these stores should then be able to resell these items at prices hugely inflated to what they paid.
But most trade should be done between players

What does this achieve?
Well, assume i can sell this item called a Leaf of Fallium (some form of curative reagant) to the local adventurers store for 10 trias, and then that store will sell it for 50 trias, then that will get me set up fairly quickly (i know i have a buyer, and if i need it later, i can get it again).  But at the same time, a player character has a store (or at least a bank vault with heaps of items in it for sale) and he will buy this leaf for 15 trias, then the player with the leaf will sell it to him over the store based purely on how much he can get for it.  Now that player can go to the store.  If there are no other leaves of fallium there, then he can inflate his price to 70 trias since there is no competition (but there is likely to be competition soon, since these items are not unique, merely not common).  Thus the merchant is limited, because everyone knows what price they can get it at the store for, hence the merchant is likely to sell it at, say, 35 trias.  Therefore, the money doesnt go to the NPC store (where it vanishes from the economy) but into a player characters hands.  Its a triple win situation: firstly the player who finds the leaf, gets an extra 5 trias to what he usually would.  Secondly the merchant player gets a profit of (35-15=20) trias, and also the next character who wants to buy one of these leaves can, for 15 trias less than if they had to buy it from the store.

4)  Quests
The idea behind quests is that the player cannot gain rank (or skills or items or whatever) without completing these quests.  The player should also get some reward for completing the quest, but that reward should be no more than 75 percent of what that item could be sold for (if it is an item quest), or 75 percent of the bounty on that monster (if it is a monster quest) etc.

What does this do:
a) player is reward twofold for completing quest, firstly with dosh and secondly with rank or skills or whatever.
b) guild is helped because they get 25 % (or whatever the kept percentage is) of the loot, and hence are able to continue to operate.

Why would players do a quest where they can get more from selling the object than taking it to a guild? Because they need to complete the quest to gain rank or skills.  In most other games, the player received no other reward, which made completing the quest... more boring, less rewarding.
Why would the guild offer a reward for completed quests? To get more people.  If you offer 90% of the reward, then u are going to get more followers than a guild who offers 40%.  Thus if u have 100 people, and they have only ten, you make 1000% compared to 600% (if u take my meaning).

This also boosts the economy.

5)  Jobs
Jobs need to be more than just previous vocation that teaches skills.  They need to provide money.
I should be able to go to the local blacksmith (if i am a dwarf skilled in smithing) and say to him, i will work for the next week of real time, and the smith works out how much u will be paid, and skills u will learn from it in that time.  The player will be unable to touch his character during that week (unless he/she decides to forfeit the lost time and any money/skills promised).
The reason for this might be that the player hears that a huge bounty is being offered for a certain item, and the player knows where one is, and wants to get the bounty quickly b4 someone else.




Ok, sorry about the long rant, and dead horse ideas

Thats all folks.
Later,
me.



the distinction between genius and insanity is in other peoples\' perception