How NPC's can fix the economy....

[Geckolous]

Greetings all!


I've been following the discussion on the Economy Poll, as I've been wondering for a while how we could implement the economy we want without the pitfalls of other MMO's.


Eventually many players want to make goods and sell them - and the more who do, the better the economy and the game gets. There's been suggestions that people may be able to set up stalls in the future to help with this. Please don't! It'd be unfortunate for Hydlaa to be overcome with a million stalls all selling much the same thing!






We already have the framework for buying and selling goods in place. Our NPCs, although mostly useless business wise at the moment, can be the backbone of our economy with a few small changes.....

• Continue to limit what NPC's buy to their profession / trade.
• Internally, make NPC's pay for goods from their 'default' provider (item's the game simply gives them)
• The difference between the NPC's cost of supply and their lowest sale price is their minimum profit.

Nothing too shocking so far... Make NPC's work a bit more like a business first, then we can link players into the same system....

• Don't allow players to sell to NPC's and get cash straight away. (Counterproductive? Read on!)
• Get NPC's to sell players goods for a commission (eg 10%).
• Let the player set the price the NPC is to sell for, and
• Only have the NPC accept if their commission will be more then their minimum profit above.

Set a couple of rules for the NPC to follow....

• They can only buy new goods from their 'default' supplier (the game) if they have less then x units in stock. (Eg less then 4 ores etc)
• They only sell their own goods for the double the average price (as measured for the past week) or similar.
• They will always sell the item with the lowest price first. (So out of 10 Iron Ores, the lowest price is sold first).

An example:

• You could go to Trasok and buy ore.
• Since Iron Ore has been selling for 100 Tria, and no one's sold Trasok any recently, he's charging 200 Tria.
• You buy it anyway, and get enough to make steel stock.
• You go to sell the stock back to Trasok for someone else to buy, and set a price of 2000 Tria.
• You get nothing.
• You go kill something...
• Someone buys your steel stock, and Trasok sends you a message (/tell player Trasok here, your steel stock has just sold. I've got 1800 Tria for you)
• You go back to Trasok and collect your money, less his commission. (eg 10%)

Using NPC's like this will make sure goods can be brought to craft into other things, so no one will need to be a master miner-smelter-axe maker anymore.

The prices will float according to supply and demand - no adjustments needed once it's set up.

Everyone will know where to go to buy and sell a particular product. If I want to buy ore, I should go to a smith, not to a random shop in the back of Oja or a stall halfway to the Bronze Doors.

Income is delayed. This is good, as it gives time to RP and experience variety. Or for those who want to, it means running a business making stocks will require the captial to keep purchasing until the sales happen.

As PS gets 1000's more players, we won't need to set up "shop areas", get flooded with 100's of auction messages or the like. At the same time, goods can and will be sold for the best price, from central and well known locations.






What do you think?

Could this work now?

Will this still work in 2 years?

How would it change our game?

[Hrothbert]

Sounds great, I got lost a little in the beginning but the example at the end made up for it. I think though that anything that is sold to an NPC should be able to be bought by the next player. LIke all the weapons looked from the rogues and such, when sold to an NPC they should now be in that NPC's stock not just disappear into oblivion. that is one thing that bugged me the most especially if I accidently sold a crafter sword and only got the standard price for, that is where the price setting would come into play. Anyways I think it is a good idea.

[Geckolous]

Thanks Hrothbert!

I agree, it doesn't make sense that goods vanish on sale, and their value isn't linked to their quality.

Far more useful to have goods exist from start -> finish..... someone mines ores, another buys it, creates stock and sells it back... someone else makes a weapon out of it, etc etc. It'll make for far more realistic interactions and prices!


Oh yea - missed point from above. Inflation can be controlled by NPC's charging a higher commission % on particular items. This will force people to pay more for them, while the seller gets the same / less then otherwise.

[Hrothbert]

Thats a good way to control the inflation, and the only problem is that the ores that are sold/bought/smelted/sold/ and then useless similar to Platinum at the moment and the only thing gold was good for was for shields other than making money with it. The only other thing is that some of the uses of said ores are planned just not implemented yet.
 Also someone had mentioned in the other thread that this had started from that weapons need to wear out and/or break to make buying new ones more needed otherwise there will become such a surplus of weapons at the NPC and noone buying them, Prices then get too high for newer players, and crafters go out of business because noone is buying the swords, so they don't buy the stock and smelters wont buy stock and so on and so forth.

But like I said the system that is in place already has possibilities for this sort of mercantile system. I have heard it said many times before and will say it again, Planeshift has lots of potential and wil eventually be realized with future updates and player input.

[Geckolous]

Yes, it would only work on products that have a use

One solution would be that the NPC's can sell to 'external' buyers (The game itself). Limit these make believe buyers so that the frequency of their purchases is linked to the price - example: Iron Ore on offer for 5 Tria gets sold 'externally' within a minute (if a player doesn't buy it first)... the same ore if offered for 1000 Tria would have to sit there for a week on it's own (no other ore supplied) before an external buyer would have it.

The lower limit of an items cost is already set above (if commission is less then what Harnquist etc could get normally, they won't take it).

There wouldn't be an upper limit... but you need either a player to buy it, or a lot of time!

There may be situations where hardly anyone is making an item (eg Gold Shields) and they could then be sold for a lot to "external buyers"... but as soon as a cheaper one is put up for sale, it sells first, and effectively 'resets' the timer / chance for the more expensive one to sell.



So for items with further resale use (ore's without a point), we can have the game buy them. It'd start by buying the cheapest on offer, and buy less often if the goods are more expensive.

This will also deal with any goods stocking up (eg swords etc until they break down faster), as over time the game will buy them. Balance it out by having the game purchase items faster if there's a surplus.


example rules:

• As soon a player purchases an item, reset the timer for that item.
• If an item's listed at the minimum price, it gets sold externally a set time (eg Iron Ore = 1min, Gold Shields = 30 min)
• If an item is listed at double the minimum price, it takes double the minimum time for the game to buy it, etc.
• If there's four times the amount items on hand then would be ideal (eg 400 short swords), the game starts buying twice as fast

So all items get purchased eventually.

Items that are priced excessively (eg a Coal Lump for a million tria) will effectively never sell... because they'd need no one else to supply the same item for an excessively long time.

[Beniel]

The question is, do we want the NPCs to be the backbone of our economy? Wouldn't it be better if we had players that RP'd as merchants instead? I've heard the concern about Hydlaa becoming crowded with stalls (which has happened in other MMORPGs) but if we depend on NPCs as our merchants, it means that you can't really RP being a trader or merchant anymore. In answer to the concern about flooding cities with stalls, there are so many different skills you have to get up (swordmaking, axemaking, knifemaking, etc,) and so many steps to make weapons and any other commodities, this will hopefully mean we won't have a ridiculous number of stalls. There are people/guilds that already run stores selling and buying weapons and the like, and this seems like a much better way for the economy to be run, by players, instead of being mechanised.

Well thats just my two trias worth

[Geckolous]

I would assume there would still be a lot of interest in trading directly, because of the commission involved...

If I'm selling an expensive item, I expect a NPC would charge me a respectable commission (10-30%). I'd rather trade directly if I could, because I'd get all the money, not just most of it.

The advantage of having the NPC system above is that if I can't arrange to sell directly (eg no one's interested who's online), then I can sell to a NPC for a respectable (if not ideal) price.
It also means that if I want to buy items for crafting, I don't have to find a player who'll collect them for me. Of course, if I happen to find someone, so much the better (it won't cost as much, again with the commission).

So player trading remains the best market. NPC's will simply become a backbone, something that we can build from a lot easier then arranging an entire supply chain

[Beniel]

Hmm, so what you are saying is that NPC trading would be a way of getting rid of access items? The thing is, how can we ensure that trading with players is the best way to make Tria, compared with selling to NPCs?

[Geckolous]

So long as trading with NPC's has the NPC take a commission, it'll always be a better deal to trade direct with another player.

For example, say you've made a fantastic crafted item worth 100,000 Tria....
Being an upmarket item, NPC's insist on charging 25% commission to sell it for you.

So if they sell it, you get 75,000 Tria.
But if you sell it directly, you'd get 100,000 Tria.
(Either way, they person buying it has paid the same)

[Il Dio del Nulla Assoluto]

I think this is a good way, but lacks of something: this can work with metallurgists and crafters, but i don't think warriors and mages will earn enough, because when you kill something you don't earn nothing. Infact when you kill a monster, for example a trepor, you get 10 progression points and a trepor heart (value: 160) or a trepor wiggly feleers (value:80) or sometimes both. But you get also 10 progression points that requires 300 trias for be used, that you cannot reach in anyway also if you loot an heart and a wiggly feleers, so warriors and mages haven't trias for training and more less for buy items. Same if you kill Tefusangs, and with rogues, at least me, i see always some red words like 'Rogue has nothing to be looted'.
This will be resolved simply making loot at least 31 trias for each progression points that monsters gives.

Is this right or i'm missing something?

[Hrothbert]

You ate correct but Tefusang tend to give better loot than progression points as well you always seem to get more progression points than needed and never enough money, which as some have said elsewhere is rather realistic. I do find that continuous hunting/mining gets boring but at least with hunting rogues you get to loot the named weapons that are very interesting to have and see what they add/take from a characters stats or abilities. I think the problem we are most talking about is getting the economy on track