This is what's wrong with the game's economy.

[crymerci]

4000 'sids per year?
That amount is not impossible for a good 10 day old hunter/crafter.

(I didn't post this to pick on you, Cenghiz, because what you have said is no doubt factual.)

Ok, 4k a year.

A noble's Senior Aide (and we're talking way more than a 10-day character here) makes between 1500 and 3 large a year.
A mid-level officer in a guard corps (say, Sergeant or Lieutenant) would be in the same range, or perhaps even lower (again, this is probably a 30+ day old character).
Beginning nobles in some houses might have stipends only slightly larger than 4k.

There is no way an independent hunter or crafter should even begin to approach the affluence of these types of positions.  Maybe when they reach 50+ days, or 100+ days, and start attaining Durg or Pearl status.  But 10 days?  No.

[Cuusardo]

I had a character with somewhere close to 115 days, who had pretty high status within the clan.  There was no way in hell she could afford 4K a year.

[Halaster]

I agree with this, only to a point.

The Noble Aide, or noble, or House guard may bring in slightly less cash - and the noble may only get slightly more.  But one huge difference to consider is expenses.

An independent has a LOT more expenses to cover.  Most noble aides, nobles, guards, etc. have a lof of their things paid for.  Their room and board is paid for.  Most of their food is paid for.  Most of their water is paid for.  Most of their equipment is paid for.  A much much larger majority of their money goes to extra spendable cash.  Wherein an independent is spending much much more of their money on these basic necessities.

Now, things still may not be 'right' even after considering all this.  But, it's something still to consider, in my opinion.

[crymerci]

That's certainly true, Halaster, and a crucial difference between independents and clanneds.  

But in Cenghiz's original post that I quoted from (perhaps I should have quoted more) he was saying that 4000 was the amount that he'd be willing to pay in rent per year for a more secure lock.  So that's disposable income.

[Delirium]

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

If you're playing an indie responsibly then it is highly unlikely you're going to be filthy rich. You're going to be far from that.

Once you've gotten very skilled and have been around for a long time, then yes, you're going to have a much easier time surviving, but you're still not going to have a totally ridiculous amount of cash in a short period of time unless you go around raping the land of every flower, stick of wood, rock, and creature that moves.

Not to point fingers at anyone, but.. anyway. Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean you should.

[Gilvar]

I'd say independants have a greater potential for wealth because there is money in danger. A noble's aide will not be crisscrossing the known world peddling exotic wares, whereas an independant merchant/crafter might be.

4k a year would not be bad at all for a master crafter, someone who can make things that nobles would buy for 500-1000 sids. Like a tailor who makes a beautiful silk robe that sells for 1000. If he made 4 of those robes or similar works and peddled them in the much larger worldwide market, they'd have a greater chance of making good money.

[Miee]

I'd say independants have a greater potential for wealth because there is money in danger. A noble's aide will not be crisscrossing the known world peddling exotic wares, whereas an independant merchant/crafter might be.

4k a year would not be bad at all for a master crafter, someone who can make things that nobles would buy for 500-1000 sids. Like a tailor who makes a beautiful silk robe that sells for 1000. If he made 4 of those robes or similar works and peddled them in the much larger worldwide market, they'd have a greater chance of making good money.

But isn't that crafter exactly the person that Kadius would want to hire?  If that crafter expands and hires other crafters to service the nobility, the upstart clan would then pose a threat to the House, wouldn't they?

[Gilvar]

Kadius may want to hire them and may be succesful, but not all independants seek to expand their business with more crafters, and go towards the orginization type thing.

The point I was making is that skilled people, willing to take on the dangers of the world, can make however much money they want. Limitations are usually offered by Houses with positive bonuses in return. Like you may make less (or 10 times more) in a noble house, but you also get a certain degree of safety, and the other perks. Guaranteed income is another.

There is no guarantee in an independant life. You could be robbed tomorrow on your trip to SuchandSuch. Its really a toss-up. There is potential for extreme wealth or great failure, etc.

This is not to say noble/merchant houses don't have the same opprotunities.

[creeper386]

From a hunters perspective at least, I've never acctually made any money from them, but it's fairly easy to keep fed and watered with a hunter character. And about ten days, could probably keep yourself equiped with some things if you have some crafting skills.

Still, a good portion of money coming in is extra coin specially by ten days when most of your stuff is already payed for.


Creeper

[Agent_137]

Being a hunter is by definition not a lucrative occupation.  If you are selling massive amounts of hides and becoming ludicrously wealthy than you are overdoing it.  If you are struggling at some points but in general managing to get by, then you are truly enjoying the experience of playing a hunter in the harsh world that is Armageddon.

Quoted from http://www.armageddon.org/rp/subguilds/hunter.html

In my mind, I think it's fair to replace "hunter" with "indie."

And to me, if I see a rich indie, it means he's taking high risks. Which means he's gonna die sooner than me. And that's perfectly fair.

And sure, some indies will luck it out, end up rich and safe. But most won't.

And I will say that I've seen quite a few wealthy and safe indies, and while I don't know the whole story, if I had to bet, i'd call twink.

[Armaddict]

With Agent, here.

You complain once you see the -successful- indie.  But do you know how many -other- indies died before they could reach that successful state?

[Anonymous]

There is no way an independent hunter or crafter should even begin to approach the affluence of these types of positions.

I agree.  I'm also glad to read notes from posts from staffmembers.  The problem isn't with the economy, in this case, the problem is with PCs who are overdoing it.

If changes are made to the economy and distribution of prey wildlife the people that will suffer are the ones who try not to ride halfway around the known world and back, limited only by kank stamina, slaughtering all they find.  People who play hunters who go back in after a wound, or take non-coded fatigue into account should probably find life as a hunter is barely worth the risk.  My opinions.

[Angela Christine]

I'd say independants have a greater potential for wealth because there is money in danger. A noble's aide will not be crisscrossing the known world peddling exotic wares, whereas an independant merchant/crafter might be.

Exactly.

A stonecarver that goes out and finds his own stones will make more money than one that buys stones or hires grebbers to go get stones for him, but he will also face much more danger.  A desperate young stone carver just learning the buisness may be willing to take that risk, because he doesn't have much in the way of choices.  An established, comfortable stone carver will probably start buying stone, or hire a few other people to go with him when he digs up his own stones,  for the sake of saving his own hide.  

Generally you can find cheap, undesireable materials near the city where you are fairly safe, and more valuable materials farther out where you need to take significant risks.  The high-danger materials craft into more valuable products, making it possible to make a very good living.  A while back there was a place inside the scaen where you could find high quality alabaster and marble with almost no risk, and this made it a little too easy for an independant stone worker to make money, because the main restraining force was competion and reboots, but the powers that be eventually decided the lucerative location was "tapped out" and sanity returned.    

The staff is pretty good about that, if a certain kind of trade is too easy, too safe and too lucerative, they will often realistically adapt it. A safe and easy form of wealth will become popular with other people like VNPCs, so the resource will be depleted.  Or raiders and predators may notice the constant traffic and move in, making the route more dangerous.  PCs can help.  If you notice that you can buy a vest here and sell it for double at a shop half-way accross the bazaar, then that should probably be bugged, because unless the first merchant is an idiot he'd walk accross the bazaar and sell it for double himself.  If you notice that a shop sells a backpack for 100 and that same shop is willing to buy it for 150, that is probably a bug too.  If you find a shop that buys small grass baskets and then trys to re-sell them for hundreds of 'sids that may be a bug too, because no matter how exotic grass is no one will pay that much for a grass basket when they can get a bag that holds the same amount of crap for 1/100th the price -- and if no one will buy it then the shop can't make a profit.  Yes, these are actual examples of things I have bugged.  I've bugged a lot of economic things that seemed hinky to me, some of them were changed instantly and some of them were not changed at all.  If it hasn't changed after a few weeks I assume it is working the way it is supposed to work, perhaps there are things behind the scenes that I don't know about, and it is ok to keep raking in the cash.


There is an OOC factor in how much money you can make, especially as an indepent but also if you work for a house on commission.  The more hours you spend logged on, the more money you can make.  Someone who plays 100 hours a week will make money faster ICly than someone who plays 20 hours a week, and they will also have slightly higher expenses.  On the old, messed up time system where a year was three weeks I would think 4000 a year was a little high to be willing to pay for rent.  But with the new and improved time system a year takes six weeks, so 4000 is still high but it isn't completely unreasonable.  There are a lot of ways an independant can earn 1000 per OOC week, without  twinkery, if they spend a lot of time online.   The fact that an OOC week is just half a month . . . well, that is a different issue.

Rent is a good way to drain off some of that excessively excessive income.  If you are able to earn 1000 per OOC week, 6000 per IC year, then you can live like a king if you are willing to sleep in the Gaj.  But if 4000 of that goes on rent, then you are left with just 2000 a year in "disposable" income, which is still pretty good but not quite so outlandish.  Personally I've never offered more than 1200 a year (except for the automated apartemts which charge an astounding 1386 per year) but I can see an established independant easily offering 2000 a year for a room that wouldn't get broken into on a daily basis.  A reasonably secure room lets you take off your armor when you are hanging around in town, and change into something more comfortable.  A reasonably secure room lets you have several sets of clothing, so you can maintain different personas depending on what you are doing, where you are going, and who you are doing it with.  You might want a nice set of linen clothing for dealing with nobles, a comfortable set of clothing for dealing with commoners or just hanging out in the tavern, a set of shabby rags for when you have to meet a contact at the edge of the labyrinth, and a  set of light armor for when you must go outside the city entirely.  A reasonbly secure room gives you a spot to leave your tent, ropes, and other survival gear when you are in town -- a tent is usually too heavy to comfortably carry around all the time, but too valuable and hard to replace to leave unguarded in a hovel.  A reasonably secure room lets you maintain a significant inventory for trading with other PCs, and trading with PCs is much more fun than trading with NPCs -- I'd rather trade those three scrab shells to a PC but if I can't find a PC, I can't carry them around with me, and I can't leave them in my room because my room gets robbed every day, then I'll sell them to an NPC.  A reasonably secure room makes the game more fun and more exciting.  (I don't consider the "how many times will I get robbed this week" game to be exciting, just annoying and anxiety inducing).  

I don't mind burglars, really.  I've had characters leave some money and a few shiny tokens in their rooms with the express hope that a burglar would take those things, and leave the pile of stinky hides, sticky leaves or spiral carved incense burners and my damned furnature behind.  So far I haven't had much luck with that stratagy, but I live in hope.  :roll:  I often leave some coins in my inventory hoping that pickpockets will take that rather than stealing the dagger off my belt, because money is more useful to them and less of a hassle for me.  I don't have an OOC crusade against thieves, they have to make a living too.  A certain amount of theivery is just part of the cost of doing buisness.

So you earn big money so you can spend it on a secure store room.  You don't want luxery, just security.


Hmm, there's a thought.  Maybe the cities (and towns, for that matter) could have the Zalanthan equivilent of storage lockers.  A big warehouse with, say, 10 doors all leading off the main room.  A guard, employed by the warehouse, stands in the main room and may rent out the lockers too.  The main room is large and open, rather than  a narrow hallway with one or two doors per "room" of hallway.  The guard doesn't actually guard any of the 10 storeroom doors, he just watches and because of that watching the crimcode difficulty is quite high (it is very difficult to pick the locks without a witness seeing you).  A watchman, not a guard.  Behind each door is a storeroom, the sort of thing a small time merchant might rent.  It is not all that big, it has little or no ventilation, and you are not allowed to live there.  Codewise, it saves items left in the room but it is not a quit room.  Most people that rented a store room would also rent a sleeping room for their personal effects and entertaining in town (unless they are travelling merchants, a traveling merchant might want a storeroom in every town but an appartment only in his hometown) and the combined rent would be significant but the rent for each one wouldn't be outlandish.  That way apartments wouldn't be all about storage.


Just a thought.


AC

[Carnage]

I had an indie with one foot in every door.

The key is that you're a one man business. My guy was the crafter, hunter, salesman, and quartermaster. For this reason I was able to keep things open. Furthermore, I went after easier prey and was able to manipulated the focus of a few pretty skilled dwarves into helping me hunt for free, meaning I could take down bigger and rarer game with little to no danger for myself. Then I managed to stumble into a cave full of semi-precious stones, which gave me a larger source of income.

Tie that to the fact he had a silver tongue, as well as a few other non-clanned, non-coded jobs for a couple of houses, and he game out pretty good. The key to it was not being a fucking moron and that silver tongue, as well as finding idiots. People readily believed he was a nice guy giving them the best prices when he was charging them out the ass and usually getting twice as much as he expected for things.

All in all, it wasn't hard but it took great attention to details, a bit of deception, and a keep cool sort of personality that managed to pull it all off. If anything, he was more of an experiment to see the difficulty of it and what it took. I stopped playing him more and more due to RL circumstances and finally retired him because things were too easy.

[Pantoufle]

Last time I played a noble I would spend literally 12,000 coins every real week on average (no joke).  On top of this I had free, QUALITY food, free housing the likes of which even the richest commoner could only dream of, and slaves to do my every bidding.  There is no way you can tell me some independant or House-paid servant could ever come even remotely close to this (even if (s)he's cheating).  I'm sorry, I think things are just fine the way they are.

[Lazloth]

I agree with Panty.  Additionally, there is that nuance of blue blood vs nouveaux riches:  regardless of the weight of the purse, social class factors in.

[Incognito]

I dont have much experience with hunters, but I can tell you right off the bat - a merchant making 4k sids per year, would probably deserve every coin - coz it takes a helluva lot of time, patience and in-game strategy to get raw materials, stash them somewhere, craft finished goods out of them, and finally branch your way into newers crafting skills.

In other words, his kids have probably grown up and gone off to college RL, by the time the merchant has gotten decent crafting skills :)

Besides, if you've read history, merchants have always been abnormally rich, in certain societies they've always rivalled the riches of the nobility. In others, the ruling noble houses have even borrowed monies from merchants, to inject it into troubled economies during times of war, strife, drought etc. In most cultures it was possible and even encouraged to "buy" nobility titles from the reigning king/queen, for a price. That should give you an idea of how successful merchants can be.

Dont think of merchants as hawkers selling shirts on the bazaar corner. Think of them as entrepreneurs who will keep increasing their profits until they are either assimilated by one of the bigger merchant houses, killed by one of the bigger merchant houses or just retire into obscurity someday.

[Uglyhead]

A tough raider who doesn't have any scruples about ganking other PC's might snatch up an impressive amount of coin, more that 4k even, over the course of a year, provided he lives that long.

[fearwig]

I mean, yeah, who's ever heard of a rich fur trapper/trader? Ha ha... oh, wait...

I agree in some essence, but I think people exaggerate the twinkability of the game in that respect.

[Cenghiz]

Err.. Sorry I was away for long.. But to tell the truth, making 4000 per year was possible for my armorcrafter hunters.
But to make it...

1. Hmm.. Be a freelance programmer and play 12 hours a day when you don't have work to do. If you play much more than other people do, you earn much more. That's the main point.
2. Wander around cities. Learn the prices where something's most valuable and sell it there. Gith and halflings would like you wandering, but you'd earn more.
3. Ride vulnarable with two kanks hitched to you with city A's valuables to city B. Such chars usually lose a lot of kanks to save their lives. I'm against "flee,go back, hitch kank, run somewhere, mount, run somewhere" and I desperately hunt such chars with OOC anger summed up with IC anger.
4. Sell information... That makes you earn as much as you earn with crafting. Some people do lose 'sids and RP their a** to add some spying culture into ARM. Why not help them and earn?

Still, I gave up playing such chars for some time. At the moment with the professions I choose it's impossible to earn that much. I don't know.. Maybe I was twinking.

[drumgor]

Well, obsidian mining seems to be ridicously profitable. Even if you do it in a realistic* way(or so I thought when I did it) you're still making lots and lots of sid. More than 1000 sid per RL week if you play as much as I did(around 4-6 hours a day. I know, I know... I should get a life but he was the first character to be able to survive for more than a full day of playing and I was getting really excited, too bad he found out about that sea of silt) .

* Note: I mean working from dawn to highsun. Resting for a bit during the high sun hour then spenting the rest of the day at a tavern talking with the rest of the patrons. I later switched to just one mining run per in-game day but I was still making lots of money even though not as much as I did before.

[Kill4Free]

Obsidian mining is probably worth a lot more then that
With even a few basic contacts you can realistically make 500 sid in a game day's mining, but the expenses to start an operation like that is rather high, but it pays for itself rather fast.
My estimate, one pile of obsidian breaks down to roughly 400 sid worth of sid, if you know were to sell it.

Also with rich hunters, that isnt unrealistic at all, after all, how much is, say, a polar bear pelt worth in rl, a few thousand cash?  More?  If you got a polar bear ever few days, as well as maybe the occasional deer, with pelts worth several hundred, you can get very rich fast.  There are many beasts in the game that you can get very rich off of fast, bahamets, mekillots, silt horrors, are probably outta the league for most people, but there are tons of lesser ones, that sell for loads if you have good skinning.

[Agent_137]

True, codedly, but . . .

http://www.armageddon.org/rp/subguilds/hunter.html

[Kill4Free]

It still isnt unrealistic, as most of the beasts that provide expensive hides/chitin are large/dangerous, also agressive and carnivorus (only exception really being the carru, and possibly the bahamet), and with less carnivors,
A) Travellers would be safer
B) The prey speicies that they might eat, will thrive, having few natural predators, true they might outgrow their food source, but that is where the ecologically aware hunters come in, and trim the herds down to size, making more pelts overall

Also, you dont need to kill something big once every few days, even a large animal once every two weeks ic,  will still easily get even double the 4000 sid a year quota.

[Kill4Free]

As for the last statement, I really dont understand how it is possible to be not wealthy, if you are an experienced hunter, as from the docs, generally the games definition of wealthy for a commoner, is like 1000 sid a year.  To manage that little, you would only have to kill 1 thing once a month.

I mean, an experienced merchant, provided with a carru body and a duskhorn body (assuming he gets them skinned perfectly) once every week, can make 30k sid+ a year (he will probably ruin some of what he makes though, and he would have to pay a ranger some of that).  And it wouldnt be unrealistic, as he could get it all crafted in about half of an IC day (it would take quite a while to branch everything, and get the skills high enough to be able to do this though, but just to show you why everything rangers bring in are valuable)