Time for Chain Mail

[Herihi]

They were thinking about that kind of thing in the summer of code project.  There is one for adding demand and supply to the npcs market.  Would be interesting if they did.

[bilbous]

If you want to do something immediate that would be of great benefit in the chain mail system it would be to allow any container to be used for pour the molds. The forges are already too busy. It might make more sense if you could not store the molten ore and it had to be poured as part of the melting but as it is it seems needless.

[Rigwyn]

Heh.. Well at least iron/steel is worth something now. Before it was worth less than the stone its smelted from.

As for having a real dynamic market I think that was already tried, sploited, and canned. A tiny economy is very easy to manipulate when you have huge discrepancies in wealth and resources.


If you ask me, the high profitability was probably put in place to encourage testing and/or to promote this feature. I wouldn't expect these prices to stay this way for too long xD


Its encouraging to see these recent changes and additions to the game. Looking forward to magical armor \o/

[Pakarro]

A tiny economy is very easy to manipulate when you have huge discrepancies in wealth and resources.

A rl sidemark: This seems to work for any economy under these circumstances....

[Aramara Meibi]

how are there discrepancies in resources? anyone with a pick has an infinite supply at their fingertips. that is, of course, unless stillwater occupies all the mines.

[Rigwyn]

how are there discrepancies in resources?

Well Joe Miner might have 15 million in plat ore sitting in his guild house and another 5 million in tria jingling in his pocket while Sara Nobody is quibbling over the 10 percent *Stillwater tax* on her 20k of ore  that she just broke her ass mining. In Planeshift, we have a small population that consists of both exceedingly rich and poverty-stricken players. Its not too hard to own a large enough chunk of resources/money to manipulate.

When you have a relatively large amount of money, you can manipulate a dynamic economy by buying or selling stuff at exaggerated prices . Buying huge quantities of bread from a friend or one of your alts for example, at prices 20x higher than normal would make it look like there is a high demand for bread. This would cause NPC's to raise their prices. Once the NPC does that, you could just sell him your bread at the higher price. Likewise, NPC prices could be forced lower - setting up an opportunity to buy at a huge discount. Since NPC's have limitless money and resources ( they are not bound by time like we are ), they could be exploited pretty badly... You could put a limit on how much they can buy and sell, but then players could max those limits - denying other players the ability to trade with the npc -- making themselves the only buyers or suppliers.

This is just a simple example for the sake of illustration and does not take into consideration any of the tactics that the game could use to detect and counter any manipulation.

[Aramara Meibi]

it also doesn't consider the fact that we can easily get rid of NPCs and any complex programming trying to run a dynamic economy, why try to simulate it when we can have the actual thing?

but then again, without any real implicit danger, no real need to buy up food or weapons, no commodity would have a value at all.

[Gilrond]

If you'll get rid of NPCs you simply won't find enough customers for your products. At least it seems to be so.

[Aramara Meibi]

If you'll get rid of NPCs you simply won't find enough customers for your products. At least it seems to be so.

which tells you a little something about the real value of those items you've been making.

[novacadian]

If you'll get rid of NPCs you simply won't find enough customers for your products. At least it seems to be so.

An interesting experiment to let the real market dictate things might be to stop the npc purchases altogether and to allow character to character teaching.

Just the thought of it conjures up many potential abuses; yet all in all it could have a deflationary result.

- Nova

[bilbous]

Any changes such as are being contemplated here really ought to come with a skills wipe. No sense letting people trained up under the more generous npc system take advantage of people who have nowhere to sell their training product and no means to pay for their training. Everyone in the same boat for that.

[Aramara Meibi]

and what's wrong with a skills wipe? will it affect your RP? nerp.

I'm still working out a system where players can train others, it's a rough sketch for now, but i think it can be done in a way which will limit abuse. And what's wrong with a little abuse? People are inherently evil, it should be expected.

[Gilrond]

which tells you a little something about the real value of those items you've been making.

Yes, given the demand. But to be fair, all other prices should be different as well in such case. Training for example. I'm gladly for characters trainers who won't rip off students like Ferryd and Barrin do

[verden]

So the concept is to "limit" abuse because "what's wrong with a little abuse anyway?" As someone who knows first hand the history of this system, I have to say, I am not impressed. The players cannot be counted on to keep RP going on this system, but somehow they will take the place of NPC trainers? I don't think so. This project didn't start up yesterday and the only long term hope for this system is if the developers stick to brininging their project to completion with regards to how this system is intended to work.

[tman]

If we allow NPCs to continue selling things but stop them from buying anything the world will run out of tria.  Hunting will become useless, since you can't sell the loot.  You could hunt tefusangs and riverlings for hides, but seriously who's going to buy hides when they can't make any money selling leather armor?  Smithing would grind to a halt, because what's the point of training your smithing skills up when everyone with a decent sum of cash already has 300q weapons and armor?  Nobody's going to buy your stuff.  If there's nobody hunting, there's no reason for cooks.  If there are no smiths, there's no reason to go mining.

If you take out the NPCs, this game turns into a 3d chat room.