Lions, and tigers and... /me, oh /my!

 

  !

 

I concur with Zunna and CheatCat

The way I see it, the biggest problem with the in-game economy right now is this:

• Crafters are constantly producing goods in massive amounts, in order to train.
• There very little demand for player made goods.  Usually people buy one good set of armor and weapons, and that's it for a long time.
• Because there are so many more goods produced than players can use, players sell their goods to NPC merchants, who are an infinite source of tria.
• Tria used to leave the economy through training.  That's no longer the case.  There are almost no tria "sinks" to take money out of the economy.  (Pterosaur travel, stat training, buying ingredients from NPCs, purchasing mounts, etc. make a tiny dent compared to the amount of money flooding in from selling crafted goods to NPCs).
• With so much tria flooding into the economy and nothing taking it out, tria becomes pretty much worthless.  Prices of goods rise arbitrarily.

In order to fix the economy, in my opinion, two major changes need to occur:

• Demand for player made goods needs to rise, causing people to actually want to trade.  Goods like food and potions need to be more useful, so people actually want them.  Gear should probably wear out faster, to give an incentive to people to actually buy fresh gear every once in a while.  Maybe introduce a way for smiths to improve the quality of looted weapons, to make them viable relative to 300q crafted gear.  Stuff like that.  In addition, NPC-bought goods shouldn't be so effective, or should be more expensive.  Nobody is going to pay 1000 tria for a high quality player-made mana potion when you can buy 5 50q mana potions for that price and get way more bang for your buck.
• There need to be tria sinks taking money out of the economy.  The pterosaur is a great example, but there need to be more, and on a greater scale.  Methods of doing this could be a topic all on its own, but a few ideas off the top of my head are charging monthly rent for player and guild houses, renting rooms at a tavern before you log out granting you a "well rested" bonus to XP and practice gains next time you log in, renting or selling high quality crafting tools which help you make higher quality products, allowing players to leave an offering to Dakkru before exiting the Death Realm which reduces the duration of the Curse tenfold, etc. The point is, when there are more things to spend tria on, it becomes more valuable, and therefore people are willing to work or trade for it.

I like every bit of this and think it is extremely relevant ^

Since when skill training has been changed we knew one of the main tria sink would be gone, but rebalancing the tria sink was a major task. In the next updates you will see a few action to rebalance a few factors:

• armor and weapons will wear out more quickly
• there will be ways to spend your trias to get long therm benefits from NPCs (sort of blessings to buff stats)
• in the future, once implemented a few weapon styles will be taught by NPCs for a price

One more consideration about consumable items like potions: we balanced their effects so it's worth ot use a better quality one that a fewer quality ones since the HP healed over time are bigger, this is due to the delay between each consume of such potions. If you can take your time and don't need to hurry up you may have time to consume all the 50q potions you need, otherwise a higher quality potion will help you stay alive longer.

This generates much interest and potentially 

--

Those of us who have been discussing reviving the economy know that it's going to take a lot of work and patience, as well as more implementation of actual game mechanics as well as luring more people into the community.

Which is all the more reason to set up a good roleplay base for it to be structured upon, yes?

I could possibly agree with your sentiment, but I do not agree that that sentiment applies to any aspect of PlaneShift. 

Then they should get in touch with me by posting, if they are still active players, and suggest a merging of ideas, perhaps. 

There is currently no market nor economy at all, really.  Just the bare scraps remaining of the old one.  Most people just work to get their own supplies for sake of necessity.  But it's both time consuming and ICly conflicting (in a lot of cases) to have to always do your own gathering.

Plus it would be nice to revive the player based economy.  And what better way than to plan it out around an organized and long-term-planned RP idea?

~[OOC Topic]~



Greetings, mates!

So, as I re-acquaint myself with Planeshift, and worm my way back into activity with the loyal community, I've decided that my first main project is to take a much more active part in an idea that's been floating around behind the scenes.

Reviving the Player Economy!

  (Wait, what!?)

Hear me out. 

I realize that our community, in its current state, is too small to see a fully functioning economy in action.  However, there's the potential for a grand scale RP (and functional economy) here that could be started off small and built on over time as the community grows (again).

So then, what I'm posting here about is pretty simple:  Those of us brainstorming behind the scenes want people who are interested in being gatherers/suppliers, and we want people who are interested in being merchants (buy from suppliers, resell to customers).  There's also probably room for people who want to be involved in the politics and bureaucracy of the long term plot weaving, considering the idea involves an honest mercantile association(*) aspect as well as an ulterior motives/"black market" aspect.

I'm personally voting for the Syndicate and Asmo (brilliant player and leader that he is) to be in the thick of the power-center of it all, and the guild that handles the nitty-gritty details (especially regarding ulterior motives ).  The actual execution and participation of the mercantile aspect is proposed to be cross-guild, though.

So far, I have brainstormed this:

Grand Scale Idea for a multilayered, cross-guild Mercantile Association ( * = -subject to change- ) & Syndicate Black Market RP idea.  Mercantile Association is a full scale and outwardly legitimate operation run in part by both honest parties and people with ulterior motives, with the latter using the former to keep from being caught in doing "x".

Mercantile Association* handles Code of Ethics, Licensure, and records keeping ~ purchase/sales history for registered merchants; association* taxes; wholesale > resale price differences/taxes; registry and records for suppliers (i.e gatherers and middle-men), as well as quantities delivered versus costs to the association*; etc.  >Fill in other relevant responsibilities as brainstormed.<

Syndicate, which dabbles in anything involving power and money, would be at the heart if it all, doing what they do best while keeping their noses seemingly clean by hiding in the perfect place of all... in plain sight.

And certain select merchants would be part of the Black Market ring... which could be set up in a number of different ways.  One idea is to have a secret location (probably one that could be moved easily).  Another idea is to have no real location at all, but being spread out among said select merchants as a process of taking orders from people who could show a “legitimate customer” mark or something to that effect... and making special deliveries later.

So! 

Post your replies and I am looking forward to what people have to say.