Time for Chain Mail

[Herihi]

I'm confused as to how a change to supply and demand with npcs would result in such a case?

[Gilrond]

The point is not to make a 100% realistic economy (it's not an economy simulator), as well as not to make things unusable. It should be something practical and something that makes the game enjoyable, where one can earn a living using a diversity of professions, and not only by working on ore, or bringing the population of maulbers to zero for the sake of piling up expensive hides. And obviously most common expenses (such as training) should be tied in to any kind of economy implemented. The situation where only the crafting elite can afford trainers is not good.

[Herihi]

I still can't picture why you think crafting is the only money maker.  I can make 200 to 300k in a good long hunting trip as well.  You can also make plenty mining as well. And last I checked dropping the price of smelting in half would still give you a nice good profit.  The only time you have trouble earning tria is 1. you are new and don't know what is a good job to make it, or 2. you are not actually doing anything constructive when you train.

Let's go over all the ways you can waste time training while doing nothing constructive.  1. Sitting around casting spells over and over while not hunting is a waste of time and is grinding, if you run out of tria and PP doing that you get what you deserve.  2. Using low quality weapons such as 50q or 1/50q weapons in defensive stance so you can get a ton of hits in on a creature is a waste of time, and if you run out of tria and PP while doing it you yet again get what you deserve.

If you actually hunt to hunt while you also train you make more then enough to pay for training.  If you aren't getting the PPs then find bigger targets.  The game isn't meant to make it so easy that you can just stand around while training.  You actually have to work at it.  Making the excuse that you have to stand around to push a button 200 times because it's just so hard to train while doing other things and it takes too long is lame.  Levelling should be hard and it should take a long long time.   

[Rigwyn]

The value of goods is based on what buyers are willing to pay and what sellers are willing to accept. Currently we have a static economy where the NPCs determine the price of those goods that they sell and buy.

For example. If Harn will pay 2,000 for a Q300 sword, then vendors will not sell these swords for any less - unless they are doing you a favor. Harn's willingness to pay this much puts a floor on the price of swords. Since he does not sell Q300's however, he does not place a ceiling on the price. Players are still at liberty to raise their prices. Last time I checked, the going PLAYER set price was about 10,000 for a q300 sabre. This price represents a balance between what vendors are willing to accept and what players are willing to pay. If Harn sold q300 swords for 8,000 then nobody in their right mind would pay any more than 8k for a sword.

Now say we had a fully dynamic economy. How would the NPC's know what price to buy and sell goods for? They would need to know what prices players have been buying and selling at. To do this, the NPC would need to be aware of all such transactions and base its price on that. But how would it do that?

Say you had it look at all transactions where items were traded for money (player to player). You could have it look at all these transactions and base its prices on these... but then players could intentionally make transactions with the intentions of driving the price up or down.... then suddenly buy or sell all their stuff in one shot and make a killing -- thus leaving the prices for these goods in an exaggerated state.

Say I drive the price of gold up to 500,000 tria per ore by BUYING MY OWN GOLD ORE from one of my ALTS or from another player account that I made for 500,000 each repeatedly. Harn sees these transactions and decides that based on the number of transactions, 500,000t must be the going price for gold. Once he does that, I take my guild house that is lined with gold ore, and sell it all to him in one shot at 500,000 per ore!  Now I walk away will a huge stack of tria and leave behind Harn with his inflated prices. Likewise, I could drive the prices down so that he is selling gold for 1 tria, then jack it way up and sell all my gold.

To prevent this abuse you would need a market where the seller cannot chose the buyer. You put your merch up on the market and let buyers bid for your stuff. While it is still possible for people to buy and sell their own stuff at inflated prices, they are less likely to succeed because other players will get in between on both the buy and sell side. The fairness of this kind of market will improve with the size of the market.. but its still open to manipulation by those who can throw enough money at it to move the price.

Hope this help,
Rigwyn

[Gilrond]

The number of professions you listed is still very limited, and doesn't cover many other cases (healers, farmers, artists, alchemists and so on). Right now professions aren't really balanced.

Now, about magic and using some spells over and over without loot. Doesn't new magic update promote that kind of behavior even more than before? Currently the only sensible way to train magic is to use spells from your current realm (using lower realms spells will significantly slow down your progress, and using several realms down will practically completely halt it). In many cases the only available spells in certain realm are either half broken (i.e. can't be used for hunting), or aren't even intended to be used for hunting. So players inevitably will be in situation where they will have to cast spells over and over without actually hunting anything, whether they want it or not. (I'm not even talking about situations where some realms have no spells altogether).

[bilbous]

Every way ought to have a decent combat spell at first level. Every realm ought to have useful spells. We are not there yet. Lots of things need to be done but there are not enough people, myself included, willing or able to get their hands dirty actually doing them. All this gnashing of teeth isn't too productive. I suppose it makes us feel better.

[Herihi]

I understand the manipulation of markets and how it works but that doesn't explain how it would make things worthless and all players would there by leave since they don't get anything for the goods the sell.  Once the price goes down to a low amount no one will sell them, but then after a point the prices will go back up because there is a demand again for them.  If all the players leave and never sell to npcs then the prices of all goods would skyrocket. 

And to answer you about supply and demand.  It doesn't entirely work the way you stated.  What if Harn saw someone buying gold for 500k each and thought he was the biggest moron on the planet so ignored it.  Or what if he looked around and noticed that no one else was charging that amount and figured these two were trying to "rig" the market.  Even better what if he decided he hated the fact that the guy selling was ripping the other person off so he bought a bunch of gold and began advertising really loudly about the amount he would sell it for.  Then he noticed, uh interesting, only a handful of people are buying and selling for that amount.  They must be cheaters. And your entire reasoning completely missed the part of customer loyalty and choices in who they do business with.  So these two are buying and selling for crazy prices they completely forget to notice that now all others are buying exclusively from Harn.  Harn now has all the customers and is making a killing because he can now charge prices he wants too and everyone will stick with him.  Especially since he was kind enough to keep prices lower while others were trying to rip people off. 

I challenge your assertion about the sabre prices as well.  Sabres sell for 10k each at 300q for just some merchants.  Not all sell for that much.  Hangatyr sells for 10 percent over npc price.  I charge 10 percent below npc price for my swords.  So for one 10k isn't the set price players sell them for.  And two, even those prices are based off of npc prices.  If the npc price for selling a sword went up the merchants would try and get more for the weapons.  NPC prices are still important to the prices merchants sell for even if they are static.  Players would never do business with you again if you sold them a sabre for 20k and they checked with an npc and could only get 6k for it from an npc.

[Herihi]

Gilrond you are missing the point.  It might encourage it for those impatient enough who expect to level up 3 or 4 times a day.  For me it doesn't.  I hunt with fist of the volcano and am happy when it levels up whether it's once a day or I wait 3 or 4 days before it does.  And that is if I even use the spell.  I've gone up 7 levels 2 to 3 months.  Now I could have focused on it more and done it much faster but I got involved in other things.  Either way though, while it takes longer to train if you use spells that are lower realm then you currently are, you can still level while doing other things.  You just need to realize it's gonna take you a very long time to do it.

[Gilrond]

bilbous: All I was saying, that one can't assume that in all cases normal hunting alone is enough to train magic at the same time, at least at present.

[Herihi]

Hunting works just fine for levelling magic Gilrond you just need to realize you aren't going to go from 0 to 100 in each way in a month.

[Jotiles Sorkey]

While I fundamentally agree with what has already been said... any game where the same rules apply to every one the same is fair but not necessarily desirable for everyone. In the case of the in-game economy, this is a whole can of worms that can't be resolved overnight but it also limits the valid choices we have for choosing who our characters are and what we have to do to survive and train.

Should a hunter make less, as much or more hunting as a crafter makes crafting is certianly a question but at the moment a hunter can't even sustain his training or afford his equipment from the spoils gained from hunting. It seems every profession has had the same problem (besides mining) for so long everyone mines and crafts using metal now, so the only real market there is for crafted items is npcs and the values keep dropping there too.

Lets face it, there are severe limitations which bring about imbalance in this regard. Whatever happened to hunting and getting enough loot to not only pay for your training but to give you bragging rights once in a while? I recall getting nice drops from time to time, I use to hunt some mobs and get glyphs and other valuable things. Every profession should have its own advantages and its own economic support system, where is the balance? Why Fish? Why Hunt? Why Cook?

With the quest chain system being the way it is now, I've all but ceased doing any questing because finding teh start or next npc in a chain is nearly impossible and now with npcs running off, it makes it that much harder to pursue. Lets face it the development path ps is on has brought us to a point where crafting is becoming all there is and everyone is doing it because they have to...

As far as the addition of Chain Mail is concerned, I think its great and Plate would be nice too but I can't stop thinking how much a stone labyrinth where groups of fighters and whole guilds can band together to explore and fight impossible foes for untold riches... a place where one might find something really unusual or special that everyone can talk about and pool together to investigate... It would seem that there are many things that can be done to fix the economy but I miss the rp and the ability for my character to have a purpose and aspire to greatness. Lets face it, standing at the anvil for 10 hours a day can't be the best fun possible in ps...

...or is it?

[Gilrond]

Hunting works just fine for levelling magic Gilrond you just need to realize you aren't going to go from 0 to 100 in each way in a month.

In some cases I suspect you won't shift a realm in a few months. I'm not talking about going from 1-100. General progress is very erratic because of missing spells, and normally you'll need to cover your expenses with something besides hunting. Though now situation is a bit better because of the higher prices on loot.

[Gilrond]

I can't stop thinking how much a stone labyrinth where groups of fighters and whole guilds can band together to explore and fight impossible foes for untold riches... a place where one might find something really unusual or special that everyone can talk about and pool together to investigate... It would seem that there are many things that can be done to fix the economy but I miss the rp and the ability for my character to have a purpose and aspire to greatness. Lets face it, standing at the anvil for 10 hours a day can't be the best fun possible in ps...

...or is it?

I agree, having new places to explore would be great. But it doesn't look realistic so far.

[Herihi]

I hunted and trained with red way at the same time.  And not only did I have more then enough to cover my training costs but I made a hefty profit as well.  Not nearly as much compared to metallurgy but I still didn't have any concern about profits.  Now if I had just stood there casting over and over I'd have run out of money.  But I put my spell power up so i could take things out in 4 to 6 hits and if I picked the correct thing to hunt I made more then enough for training.  And yes that was after the changes took place though before the annoying thing about magic resistance , makes it harder to hunt certain things unless you hunt in a group.  But I recently hunted neotins, made 200k profit and levelled red way once.  Now last I checked a level of magic doesn't cost 200k so I still make a good amount even after paying for training.  Plus the PPs for neotins isn't bad either

[Herihi]

I agree Jotiles, the quest chains are a little silly.  It was one thing when they were based off your factions, but now you have to do them in perfect order or never get the next quests.  That's a little silly in my opinion and kind of a waste of time.  I've heard plenty of complaints from new players about not being able to even start questing because they can't get npcs to talk with you.