Excess PP as currency

[Glaciusor]

A problem people are often pointing out now is that with the new training system Tria and PP will soon be both useless. How about having a magical vendor of some sort to spend PP (and an appropriate amount of Tria) at to get interesting items like rings or neck items that increase specific skills or stats, or special uncraftable potions. Perhaps an item you can use to gain a special buff like, say, +20 sword for 10 minutes. Personally I'd love to see the neck and ring slots be useful. Even the extremely rare Ring of the Past is underpowered compared to the current stat caps.

As far as making this fit into the story, you could say this vendor learned how to take the "essence of learning" from people and channel it into items to further increase their power, and then the Tria is a cost for this service. You could then have "Crystal of <stat/skill> Essence"s, which would raise a stat or skill for a time. These buffs should either be more powerful or more long-lasting than ones you can get through potions and the like, because they are harder to obtain; I'd prefer longer-lasting but lower strength personally. This would provide incentive to actually obtain them. You could even make some interesting ones that apply effects like a small movement speed increase or cause your weapon to deal additonal Way-aligned magical damage, or even just some cosmetic ones that give you an aura of some sort.

Similarly, a sink for excess Tria will certainly be needed, and a vendor like the above might be appropriate. Perhaps they could sell (among other things) special, unenchanted neck and ring items that the magical vendor could then infuse with "essence of learning", making something of permanent power but at a much, much greater cost. This would not be a game-changer in the sense that people can all of a sudden carry 3000 weight and smite dlayos with a single hit, but it would give a way to drain the economy of excess Tria and give the players who want them something else to shoot for and then play with. As I've learned from various other MMOs, players like shiny things!

The benefit of adding these vendors, apart from initially keeping Tria and PP from becoming useless, is that their inventory can be expanded over time to include other desirable items, potentially special glyphs, cosmetic items, furniture, magical weaponry... this way, there will *always* be some sort of goal for players to strive for, and will keep the Tria from becoming worthless.

If this sort of system is considered seriously, I'd be willing to devote some of my time in helping to create and test it.

[Bonifarzia]

(...) This would not be a game-changer in the sense that people can all of a sudden carry 3000 weight and smite dlayos with a single hit (...)

I don't know about carrying such heavy weight, but the dlayo smiting thing is really not that hard
On topic: Creative ways to spend PP on something constructive would be welcome, but i bet it won't be easy to come up with a well-thought system. Especially if some characters sit on mountains of PP earned years ago. On the other hand, I would really not mind losing a few hundred thousand PP in case they get capped. Oh, and potions of speed have been around very long ago, but i guess they never made it to the rp server. Maybe a certain paladin did not like them? 

[Glaciusor]

Yeah, people with high PP would have an advantage, but then again, people with 100M tria also would... that's the problem with changing any actively-played game :/.

Potions of speed, if stackable, would certainly be unfair... that said, a bunch of other games have speed bonuses that are rather small. I'd think people doing the Winch quests might want speed boost, as would miners and herbalists . If this effect had an aura (probably some sort of particle effect around the player's feet) it could be detected for PvP purposes, and I'd imagine many tournaments would bar their use, which is what I'm guessing that certain paladin didn't like >.>.

I was just listing effects I could think of not yet on PS (or not commonly known about). Effects like these probably wouldn't be all that difficult to expand upon in the future too provided adequate thought and testing was put in first; they could be used to add variety to the game instead of just being "ok, I want all the strength I can possibly get so my axes deal tons of damage". I could see use in a crystal that increases strength while decreasing movement speed or vice-versa, for example.

[Orinoco]

Governments generally remove excess currency from their economies via taxes. Every so often, say once a week or once a month, character tria and PPts accounts could be reduced by some amount. Might even make it progressive: some one hoarding 100M tria might take a 10% hit, while some newby with under 10,000 tria might not see any tax. Come back to the game after an extended absence, you might have no more money than a non-taxed beginning player.

That would reduce, but not eliminate, any advantage old timers might have in purchasing buffs or enhanced effects with their accumulated wealth.

[Volki]

How would they tax every player? I don't see how the government would be realistically capable of that.

[Glaciusor]

I'm firmly against this for 4 reasons:
- Players who don't play often will see harder hits to these values than players who just sit here playing constantly.
- The rich players are rich because they spent months/years accumulating wealth and likely be quite angry to see their hard work vanish because the new players decided it's unfair.
- Taxes IRL are used to benefit society (in theory...). Taxes in this case serve no beneficial purpose other than reducing incentive to actually make money.
- Progression Points are earned by practicing some skill... it doesn't make any sense to have a tax on this.

If Progression Points could be spent at a magical merchant however, there is a concern that older players have an advantage, and it's not necessarily because they worked hard to gain them (they may have though), but because they spent a crazy amount of time hunting or crafting and had nowhere to spend them. It might be prudent to apply a one-time "tax" on PP across the board, increasing the percentage of PP taken based on how many the player has, in the case of this. I think maybe even a hard cut at, say, 10,000 PP might be good. This would help make the playing field more level.

However... on another thread, Eonwind mentioned the thought of eliminating the use of PP altogether, and train stats as you use them. Things like "using a weapon increases strength", "casting RW increases will", "running increases endurance". The more I think about it, the more this makes sense. Having a magical merchant would be cool, but on the other hand this would bring stat training in line with skill training, and completely eliminates the needs to find trainers. The downside though is this also almost completely removes the need for tria.

[cdmoreland]

Tria is the driving force of a market economy. Players have always (in my few years ingame) paid more for goods from other players than NPCs will pay. Miners sell their ores and gems at whatever price the market will bare.

A real increase in the player base will drive the market and increase prices.

[Rigwyn]

Having things taken away against you will is not fun.

I think the idea of adding luxuries for a price is the right way to go.

[Volki]

...Property tax.

[Rigwyn]

Well, subscription based services tend to give you something you want while draining your pockets.
ie.

Renting or Owning a guild house ( with property tax, as you suggest )
Maybe renting special weapons or magical equipment that disappears if you stop payment?
Maybe having more disposable goods like potions, but perhaps things that last a bit longer?

[Volki]

It would be nice to have more effective potions. Right now, the only way to heal oneself adequately is spamming Crystal Way.

Putting extra costs on magic items seems to take the "magic" away from the items. And who rents magic? That sounds strange, and I don't see how it could be roleplayed.

I suggested property tax because it seems like something the Octarchy would do. It also seems necessary, given that there is limited space in a closed world like Yliakum. It would also prevent inactive guilds from owning empty houses.

It would be interesting if players could own their own houses or quarters, smaller than guildhouses, and pay rents to an NPC official or owner.

[bilbous]

i want to live inside of a portable hole

[poezza]

taxing the houses to check for inactive guilds is a good idea.. especially with the predictions of auction prices to be over the top...
I'd rather see a small but active guild own a house for a low bid instead of an empty guildhouse... some of the houses are owned by guilds I've never seen IG..

[Glaciusor]

Just bear in mind many of those houses hold treasures and memories... this is something that should have been implemented at the start but now is difficult to do. It would however ease server load; I believe I was told every item in a GH adds to server load and old GHs are packed with them sometimes.

Implementing a property tax might not be a bad idea for new house sales, but however you go about it, the rare or GM-only items in the houses would cause problems...unless items could keep track of their owners. If they could, items could be returned to the storage of the item owner upon a reclamation of a house. Guild storage could also be used potentially as a place to dump items following a seizure of a house (if we had such a thing).

Just some food for thought.

[poezza]

Yeah, that's true... but if those memories were really that important to those guilds and their members.. wouldn't they still be around?