First,
- I have only started this game and reading about it for 3 days
- Although I read a lot, maybe I missed some points hat I\'ll be repeating/contradicting
- English is not my native language
So I already apology if I don\'t get myself understood, if I look rude or so (it won\'t be wanted)
So here are the little results of my brainstorming :
(it\'s rather long, but I structured it the best I could)
I/ A few axioms :
What we must always keep in mind :
- the more possibilities you give to players, the better it is (even though they seem useless at a first sight). The more obligations, the more boring.
Where I start from :
- monsters and wildlife don\'t carry gold on them (except very few \"advanced\" species)
- money must not be boring to earn
- no official \"social support\" for beginners (which would be anachronistic)
How economy should work :
- the economy is based on crafting, and many jobs are necessary to transform a raw material into a useful good
- prices must evolve depending on offer/demand (which means that players acts must have consequences)
- the system must be self-regulated to avoid inflation (which means trading rules must be self-sufficient)
II/ How to earn money : practising jobs :
II-A/ Learn a job
- Jobs would not be chosen when creating the character.
- You would have to find a NPC master inside the game, and this master will give you your first skill points to practise your job.
- You can learn as many jobs as you want, but the more jobs, the longer to progress in each.
II-B/ Self practising a job
You can work on your own :
- buy your own tools
- buy your raw materials (if necessary)
- sell your production to anyone, at any price (including NPC merchants, but they would buy it for peanuts)
(like in any other RPG : boring, not very lucrative but you have freedom)
II-C/ Join an official confraternity
- There is one official confraternity for each job.
- You must find an official recruiter. Once you\'ve signed in, you are given a special card. You can only sign in for a single official confraternity.
- This card gives you access to restricted areas. At their entrances a NPC guards checks no intruder comes in.
- This card gives you access to official wholesalers that guaranty a minimal buying price.
- Your recruiter gives you missions (call them \"quests\" if you want). There would be 2 kinds of missions :
a) career improvement : single missions logically following one another, happening at definite times, representing the evolution of a worker\'s career. (for instance : \"you need to learn new methods, go and see this guy who\'ll help you\" or \"it\'s been a long time you\'ve been working here, here\'s a pass to a new restricted area\"...). You would this way go from novice to apprentice, good worker, master... And the longer in the confraternity, the harder the mission but the better the reward.
b) daily events : random missions chosen from a pool of daily events (20 would be widely enough, but the devs can add more when they have time). These missions would represent hazards of life, and would need team work to accomplish them. (for instance : \"the kingdom needs lots of copper for making new armours, bring me back 2000 pounds copper before the end of the day\", and all players who would help for at least 10 pounds would be rewarded if the huge number is reached. Or else : \"trolls took control of this area, go and kick their ass\" but the trolls would be powerful enough so that players would need to team up). The reward would be the same for all players.
- If you resign, you lose all those advantages, but you can sign up into another official confraternity, where you\'ll be considered as a novice.
II-D/ Join a player merchant guild
Only little difference with self practising your job, except that you team up with other players in order not to waste too much money. The organisation of such a guild is free, but tools could be added to help them to develop later on. Just a few ideas about those tools :
- A chest to which all members of the guild would have access to. The guild leader/council would decide a price for each item, and when you deposit/withdraw an item you get/give this amount of money. The advantage is that no money is lost by selling to \"official sellers\", whose buying prices are much lower than selling prices.
- NPC sellers, whose selling prices would be freely chosen by the leader/council, to which all other players would have access.
II-E/ Ways of improvements
I didn\'t think about how practising your job would improve your skills. However the idea of the master can be developed, with, for example, the necessity to go and see a master every 10 skill points, this master can either be a NPC or a player, and without seeing him your skill would increase much more slowly (like in real life, you can\'t \"invent\" a job on your own, you need to be taught)
(but this point of detail is NOT the matter of my thread)
III/ Prices evolution
III-A/ Official prices
- The system must be able to count how many of each item the sellers (a total all over the kingdom) have : let\'s call this the \"item stock\".
- Every time a player buys such an item, the number of items bought is removed, every time one sells such an item, the number of items bought is added to the item stock.
- Every day at a definite hour, the item quotation is changed. The new quotation is calculated as inversely proportional to the item stock : the more items, the lower the price ; the fewer items, the higher.
- The buying price for all NPC merchants is calculated then as a percentage of the official quotation : 50% or 70% of it for instance.
- The selling price for all NPC merchants is calculated then as a percentage of the official quotation : 130% or 150% for instance (these percentages would depend on the item : 110% for raw materials, and 250% for rare armours for instance)
NOTE : off course all merchants won\'t buy all items, they\'ll be specialised as weapon merchants, armour merchants, clothes ones and so on...
III-B/ Parallel market
- Any player can sell his own production to anyone he wants, at any price.
- See \"II-D/ Join a player merchant guild\" for few ideas of further development (only to be added once the game is released)
Conclusion :
Advantages :
- jobs wouldn\'t be as boring as sitting and crafting, of stupidly mining all day long
- anyone could learn as many jobs as they want, even though it slows down their learning (this to avoid having dozens of hardcore gamers able to practise any job, which would be illogical)
- beginners can easily find a job to earn money
- this mission system seems to me very logical as long as role-play is concerned
- the difference between buying/selling prices at NPC would explain how the government makes money (cause taxes and so are impossible to apply)
- daily events would team up players and disadvantage solo XPing (but this would still be possible)
- the system is automatically balanced (don\'t sell when the quotation is too low, or use merchant guilds to not waste money) and doesn\'t need a gamemaster
- gamemaster would only have to add from time to time new daily events to the daily events pool (but they are easy to imagine)
- players are not forced to join the system, the can build up their own trade if they get a wonderful idea
- we could see powerful lobbies rising up, if all farmers joined in the same guild for instance
- possibility to evolve, by adding NPC sellers for guilds for instance... (to be seen when the game is released)
Drawbacks :
- Need to count every single item that is bought/sold by a NPC merchant (this problem is most important for raw material that would come in huge quantities : to solve this, for instance, when mining players would find pieces of copper, but they would need to get 2 pounds before being able to sell it : forbid too small quantities trading)
- players could use the prices evolution like a stock exchange : to minimize this the difference between buying and selling prices at NPC merchants must be big enough.
