Iron vs. Gold (once again but necessary !)

[Tolol]

Hello @ll, I feel forced to argue for this case once again, even if most of the points have been brought to the discussion already.

see this: http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=27053.0

But due to things happening as they happen, and things happened to me, I have to look at this from another point of view now.

I am still RPing an hard working craftsman, who goes mining and making steel and sells his steel at prices that are depending on several facts:

The need of steel, the work I do ... and notleast the money I pay miners for digging iron and coal for me.

From time to time people stop me and tell me that I am doing wrong with paying iron better than gold. I am always told gold is the more valuable material.

This is definately wrong ! (and totally OOC, by the way)

In RL I wouldn't deny that ... but ... we're talking about Yliakum and here Gold is (in my opinion) worth nothing at all.

Some of my points:

In RL Gold has its worth because it is rare and hard to find, people and governments use gold as deposit or asset and there is also jewelry made of it.

Not so in Yliakum ... it is mined as easy as iron, it is too heavy to use it as an asset on your own inventury and it is totally useless for any crafting ... the only use is carrying it to an merchant to sell it ... pointless.
(maybe somedays it will change, but I'm talking of todays circumstances)

Look at iron-ore now ... once out of the ground it can be used for some skills to be trained, you can make steel of it, craft weapon of it and I am sure that steel is really worth to be used as an deposit because it is useful and beeing used, so even if money looses it's worth ... steel won't.


Now look at the miners "feelings" ... Don't you think it leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you dig gold all day and all you see from that is some Tria in your pocket ? Isn't it a much better feeling, to know that your work comes to honour by your iron made to steel and the steel made to worthy weapon, that will possibly be used by honourable people in honourable fighting ?

Maybe some of you won't agree ... but the closer I look at my own points the more I am sure about storing some steel is better than having hundreds of thousands of tria in your pockets. (the past has shown this already)

"Yeah Tolol," I here you say "but aren't you doing all this just for making money on the shoulders of your miners ?"

No !

It's quite the opposite of that ... My miners are excellently payd ... and the earnings of the steel sales come then once again on a good way, because they help to raise our guild-funds and those afterwards are used to help people and with that help it also helps the community.


---

So what was my intention to write this post, you ask.

Well, first of all ... to those who bother me with those wrong points of "gold is better than iron and has to pay better" - I see this as an totally OOC argument and will in future send those (also totally OOC) with an shortcut to the forums, to read this post.

To those with something in mind:

Is my opinion THAT wrong ?

I made myself a big headache about writing this and also with continuing my business as I do it ... I'm pretty sure to be right with that, but I'm also very interested in your opinions.


You can, as always, have a big laugh on my grammar and spelling, but please don't laugh about the "beef" in this post. I am really serious with this!

So thank you for your time.

Tolol

[John80sk]

It's quite possible to pay miners 240 tria for their ore so long as you sell your weapons for the right price.

[zanzibar]

Please read this post if you are a settings dev.



The price of gold inflates the price of steel.  Miners need incentive to mine materials other than gold.  They will only mine such materials if they can get more money per ore than they could for gold.  Therefore, a miner will always be at a loss if he or she sells his iron for less than 240 trias per ore.

With steel stock, you need some skill in metalurgy.  Also, iron and coal are harder to get to, and it takes more time to make steel than it does to sell gold to harnquist.  Steel will stay in your inventory longer because you need to find someone to buy it.  Therefore, I think that steel should sell for no less than 300 trias per ingot on the players market, just as a rough figure.  That means that a single steel stock should sell for 3,000 trias on the players market if a crafter is buying it from a miner.  Anything less is a ripoff.  However, I'm usually offered only half of that.

Given that stock should be priced at 3,000, then a single dagger made entirely from stock bought on the market should sell for 15k or more just based on the price of gold.

[Tolol]

A big Thank you to Zanzibar and John80sk !!!

---
But this I HAVE to say to end this:

I am highly disappointed !

I think this has been my last post here because nobody is interested a fuck into crafting and business issues.



Well, what could I have done better ?

I could have written about dueling ...

I could have started complaining ...

cursing ...

I could have been aggressive, hostile and insulting ...

and not to forget flaming, giving names ... and all these lingua-highlights that make threads work better and especially worth to be answered here !

But I didn't !

So sorry ... my fault ... never will do it again ...


Thanks to those who were interested ... I'll start to collect my infos in another (not so fine) way ...

Excuse me, but that is what I was pissed off by in the last few weeks and just put together in one Post.

I'm done !

Tolol

P.S. Funny ... I didn't even reach my 42nd Posting ...

[emeraldfool]

If someone is willing to sell their steel for less than 3k, then they should get the better business. That's how economy works.
They might be trading at a loss, but that's their problem.

I think all we have to do is establish the player price tag of Iron ore to be 300, and call anything else a rip-off. Convince miners to sell their iron for more, and harp on anyone who tries to buy iron for less. That should encourage miners to mine iron instead of gold...

That's what I'll be doing anyway. Whenever someone's selling iron ores for like 100, I'll offer them 300.

[Krann Omins]

really wasn't a need for the cursing or getting upset. I often find myself similarly frustrated. the answer you will generally get is you are a tester, game is alpha blah blah blah--likely leading into how in future gold will be craftable into X,Y or Z items... as you said: the point is for NOW, and rp suffers..as people suggested above: it would be up to the players to try & shift the market, of course fat chance of that-- the same issue comes up with longsword & claymore's inflated npc prices compared with other weapons...and daggers worthless npc price-- i forget dagger takes what? 5 stocks to make? 8-9 iron per stock 40-45 iron ores total? 2 trias each ore?--80-90 tria value. Npc offers to buy dagger: 40 trias... i know npcs usually only offer to buy things for 80% of the price they sell at, but that's a 50% loss for doing the work of crafting it... i mean rp around that? i guess we could always rp that harnquist is a nutjob, but otherwise?--otherwise people get stuck somewhere between rp reasons to ignore your very intelligent post, the contents of which i fully agree with by the way, or tester reasons for the same... I mean just look at crafting & repairs: there are multiple ways to improve quality of stock--by the way i still say 50/50=100%, 300/300=100%; they should be the same quality, hit for same amount, one would just take less % damage per time it's damaged & thus would last longer. --anyway back to what i was saying, several ways to improve stock quality--why even bother? as i understand it players have to learn to not let thesemselves accidentally make weapons over quality 300/300, being that it's not allowed to use or sell for use weapons over 300/300, so they must get sold to npcs at the prices like 40tria for a dagger.. by the way.. it costs 40 tria to buy a weapon repair kit... and daggers sell to npcs for 40 --meaning you could buy one for 50... if you have bought a dagger (spent 50) & now it is damaged --you can buy a repair kit for  cost of 40 trias, meaning you have now spent 90 trias & have a dagger that could be 49/49 rather than 50/50.... OR you could sell your dagger for 40 trias, spend those 40 plus another ten to buy a fresh new dagger aat 50/50 for a total spending of 60 trias instead of 90. Not to mention Harnquis will buy it at the same price even if quality were 0/50...

Not really sure where i was going, those are just the related thoughts sparked from reading your post

[zanzibar]

As testers, we are entitled to suggest solutions to ballance issues.


Progress is just slow.

[lordraleigh]

Just another thing to point about balancing, as a reminder:

1 gold ore(240 tria) costs almost the same as a farmer's monthly wage (250 tria) and still they are very easy to find around.

[zanzibar]

Gold used to be only worth 1/10th of what it is now.  The price was increased to make money-making easier.  Money-making needed to be made easier because levelling up was made more expensive.  Levelling up was made more expensive because making money became too easy.


*sigh*

[Parallo]

1 gold ore(240 tria) costs almost the same as a farmer's monthly wage (250 tria) and still they are very easy to find around.

Why did you think there were no farmers around?

[lordraleigh]

Why did you think there were no farmers around?

Of course a farmer could own his farm instead of being a hired workforce, and due to the shortage of farmers, the price of food would naturally rise up due to the lack of supply and excess of demand, and he would become filthy rich because of it.

[emeraldfool]

Why did you think there were no farmers around?

Of course a farmer could own his farm instead of being a hired workforce, and due to the shortage of farmers, the price of food would naturally rise up due to the lack of supply and excess of demand, and he would become filthy rich because of it.

But without farmhands he'd be screwed, because any old person could use their 250-tria wages to buy a pick and hire Harnquist to train them, and then they could become farm-owners.

Basically, if this were real, the economy would've crashed and burned long ago, and people would be eating each other's brains by now

[Garon]

Why did you think there were no farmers around?

Of course a farmer could own his farm instead of being a hired workforce, and due to the shortage of farmers, the price of food would naturally rise up due to the lack of supply and excess of demand, and he would become filthy rich because of it.

But without farmhands he'd be screwed, because any old person could use their 250-tria wages to buy a pick and hire Harnquist to train them, and then they could become farm-owners.

Basically, if this were real, the economy would've crashed and burned long ago, and people would be eating each other's brains by now

Some of us are progressives and already eat each other's brains

I think that the system pretty balanced right now (although not very realistic), although players could do more to balance it.  Yliakum is probably suffering from a huge inflation of gold stores (meaning that gold price would either drop or we're paving the streets with it) and trias among adventurers.  No longer the poor adventurer, we now have lots of spending money and make good tourists.  Someone needs to capitalize on that ~

I wouldn't mind seeing gold dropped to 120 trias apiece:  since it is the main influx of money, that would drop the prices of everything, except training, meaning that the economy would become relatively stable if not recessive.  Something else I wouldn't mind seeing is a) a use for gold, and b) NPC merchants having a measured wealth of how much they'll spend, with it going up when something is bought from them and down when they buy something, going up at random or predetermined times due to assumed npc-npc selling.  After all, Harnquist doesn't have bottomless pockets, as far as I know (if he does, I want some).  Or make them not buy something or lower their buying price if they're getting too much of it.

[emeraldfool]

Yeah, GW's economy is based a lot on what you're talking about Garon - The NPC price for almost everything changes depending on how many sales and how many purchases there are. When a lot of people sell, the price goes down, when a lot of people buy, the price goes up.

However that might not work too well in PS, seeing as how the majority of stuff aren't available in-store... Which doesn't make sense seeing as how Harnquist would have about 50,000 tonnes of gold by now, with no golden items to show for it

By now his hut should be a golden palace, and he should be decked out in bling...

[zanzibar]

It's interesting to see how much control the devs have over the economy simply by regulating the value of gold.