Zalanthas Economy - driven by PCs & VNPCs

[Koala]

I would like to start a new discussion regarding to our problematic economy, which I believe -if improved- will add more realism and bring balance to Zalanthas . I think that with the current shop code, our economy is not fully functioning. On the contrary, our economy is suffering to a degree that we are losing some pc to pc interaction. An example would be saying that some independent pcs in the game can generate unrealistic sums of money within an unrealistically short amount of time, whereas our clanned pcs cannot (please don't take it as indie vs. clanned, this is just an example for the sake of the argument).

Here is my suggestion for solving accumulation of unrealistic sums of money that might worth considering it:

SHOPS AND INDEPENDENT MERCHANTS

Given that these two suggestions are implemented, I believe there can be a solution.

- Every shop and independent npc merchant should save their items and available money after each transaction takes place and their list should remain as it is regardless of crashes or regular reboots.

- Each item (or combination of items, or a special type e.g. bone weapons and armors) has to have a demand & supply equation (determines the current price level), which will change according to vnpc (a predetermined number, but adjustable if needed) and pc (adjusting continuously) buying & selling decisions (inflation & deflation).


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:arrow: Here is a basic example:

For simplicity, lets assume that this example bothers only a shopkeeper who is selling weapons (not capable of crafting), a pc weapons crafter (this will represent the player effect on the economy), a group of vnpc weapons crafter (this will represent the predetermined supply for the economy), and the rest of the world who are demanding weapons.

At the initial moment (time=0): According to the supply & demand equation for weapons the market price for sellers (shopkeeper) is 100 sids and for buyers (customers) is 200. The shopkeeper has 0 units of weapons but 1000 sids to invest on new weapons (this will change in each period - if he doesn't buy new weapons he won't be able to meet with the customer demand and lose some possible profits). The pc weapons crafter arrives and sells 2 units weapons to the shopkeeper and earns 200 - 2X, X= (unit cost of material, time spent, and skill). The group of vnpc weapons crafter arrives and sells 8 units. First realized supply is 10 units of weapons.

- Note that at t=0 there is only two slots available for pc crafters, the remaining open slots were filled by the rest of the crafter population (controlled by AI).

Second moment (time=1): Now the shopkeeper has 10 units of weapons. At this moment the shopkeeper won't be willingly to buy new weapons for 100 sids, he would rather prefer to pay 50 sids (calculated by the supply & demand equation) for each new item brought by the independent weapons crafter. At t=1 virtual customers arrive and buy 6 weapons and pc customers arrive and buy 2 weapons. In total they spend 1600 sids on that transaction. First realized demand is 6 (predetermined) + 2 (pc determined) = 8. The shopkeeper's inventory (value 100*2=200, possible gain 200*2=400) started to accumulate by 2 units of weapons.

Third moment (time=2): The pc crafter arrives with two more weapons (he was able to sell two units at t=0 so he expects the same). The shopkeeper wishes to pay 80 sids for each of the 6 weapons he is going to buy, because he already have 2 units of weapons and knows from t=1 that the demand was 8 units. Plus he has usual 1000 sids for new investment accumulated from t=1 (1600 - 1000 = 600, wage earned at t=1, for the shopkeeper). Now there is a 40% fall in shopkeeper's demand for buying new weapons. He used to demand 2 units from pc crafter and 8 units from vnpc crafters and now will demand 1.2 (=1) unit and 4.8 (=5) units correspondingly (assume that the demand & supply equation always round up or down the ratio if exists). As a result of this the shopkeeper will spend 480 sids on buying 6 units of weapons. His new inventory will value 200+480=680 with 85 sids/per unit cost.

To continue the shopkeeper has to decide on his next step:

=> He can still choose to sell for 200 sids.
=> He can decrease the price and generate new demand.
=> He can increase the price at the cost of losing some customers.
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We can solve this problem with different methods; one is by assigning probabilities to each option and let AI (the shopkeeper) to decide what is going to happen next. To maintain such huge information might seem a little difficult but it is not, especially not for Zalanthas. Not much information is worth for keeping the track of it. The theory of expectations in economy suggests that people mostly care about past two periods. With that simplifying assumption we can get rid of the data concerning the past periods (after second period) and base our decisions by looking at just two periods.

What are the possible benefits of such a model?

- Out there, in the economy, there are items that can be sold at high prices to shops. Most of those items have less or no demand at all (I am talking about pc demand here and I agree that there is some vnpc demand, which we should take into account), but still you can sell 5 units at a time. This creates unrealistic high sums of money supply in the economy (IRL this creates high inflation and we can also implement this if it is going to be worth doing it). This absurd money in the economy breaks all the balances and helps some people to earn more then they should. The model I discussed above may help to stop circulation of that absurd money by lowering the number of such units that a shopkeeper demands from players within the limits of the reasonable and player & AI driven economy.

- Also, in the economy, there are items that are highly demanded, but still we can only sell 5 units at a time. Generally this type of items has lower prices (because of high demand). Thus implementing the model may move the economy to a place where people craft more of highly demanded items, which should be the normal case.

- In the long run, the items that are not demanded at all will disappear from the economy; the items that are highly demanded will open new crafting and supply options.

I know that what I suggest here needs a lot of work and requires a good amount of database interaction. So, please throw your ideas and improve my initial attempt so that it can be implemented one day, if you think it is worth to consider.



P.S: This is just a very simple model that may solve some of our problems and it obviously needs much more study and brainwork. I would like to hear from you on how we can enhance the model and create a suitable one for both code restrictions and playability. Also take into account that all the numbers that I gave were for the sake of the argument, we can always adjust and make it look more realistic.

[Ghost]

Sounds like a good idea to me.  Though I have not played a merchant at all, I think this would add realism.

[Anonymous]

I don't like it. There are already two things in place to simulate supply and demand. 1-the somewhat arbitrary five-item cap and 2-the fact that now, shopkeepers only have a finite amount of money to buy stuff with.

The way I see it, the VNPC population would have a much larger influence than the PC population and I think the VNPC economy would be roughly stable, barring extreme in-game events like (as hypothetical examples) the burning of major parts of the grey forest, mantis infestation in the obsidian mines, salt work feeding frenzies, and war in general.

What I'd like to see much more than your model of micro-economics (i guess that's what it's called, I'm not a finance guy) is major game events like these having real economic effects and therefore creating a huge demand for PCs to fill before it gradually corrects itself.

[spawnloser]

I'm with the guest.  There are things that currently simulate supply and demand, and I voted that I thought there were other things more important to do right now.

Thing is, for people to get good at making anything, they have to produce a decent quantity of that type of thing.  What you're suggesting would eliminate any economical way to get rid of the gross quantity of crap that people have to produce with their crafting skills while they try to get good enough to make the better stuff...or in the case of merchant characters, you would make it even more difficult for merchant guild characters, ESPECIALLY those in the south, which need all the help they can get, frankly.

Matter of fact, I think this would make an already difficult class to play even more difficult...maybe realistic in some ways, but I would maintain that it is also not in others, both of these in comparison to what we currently have.

Really, I would love to see more PC-PC interaction for those that are grebbing, logging, mining, crafting, and etc.  There's only so much stuff that people want to buy of the type of thing that any PC is making.

[Djarjak]

I think this is a nice idea, but having seen half a dozen of mmorpg implementations of this fail, I'm not certain that the scale of Armageddon MUD is really suitable, either. You would need to compensate for a few other factors in your model before it were truly feasible.

1) You just have no idea how many people die in strange places with weapons, armor, and other items that are not craftable. Or how many people find these (note: 'finding' them by killing someone is valid, here), can't sell them, and just junk them because they've no need of them personally.

2) For weapons and armors that are craftable, you still have a limitation of skills and materials to consider while interpreting supply.

3) You still have to take the contribution of VNPCs into account, or the whole model crashes. Hides and skins and bones have hundreds more uses in the world than just armormaking and weaponmaking. The PC demand for these, alone, is insufficient given that tents, buildings, bedding, ad nauseam would also rely on these supplies - all things that are still used by PCs but created by vnpcs.

These are just a small handful of the considerations that would need to go into something like this.

[Quirk]

I'm utterly unconvinced that PCs are representative of the VNPC world in their buying habits.

A great many PCs seem to wear their armour to bed, for starters. Small household objects aren't in much demand among the PC populace: even if every other house in Zalanthas has an oil lamp, it's the rare PC that buys one. PCs would almost always rather have one superbly expensive item of clothing they can wear all the time than a wardrobe of cheaper clothing.

Hence, aggravating the nonsensical PC supply and demand blips as per your suggestion seems to me a way to skew the economy further from realism. Instead I'd suggest that most shops should stop buying items from PCs entirely (how do you suppose your local clothing emporium would react if you brought in a new garment you'd made yourself and offered it to them to sell?) except for the odd pawnbroker/secondhand shop/odds and ends place, and instead PCs would have to rent stalls a la LoD's idea here, which could produce a certain amount of VNPC income in addition to that contributed by PCs. For items where PC demand is low, the VNPC demand could be tweaked up a bit, whereas in areas like arms and armour where almost every new PC stops by the shops to pick up something, the VNPC demand could be lowered.

What would be the effects of this? Well, firstly, making huge amounts of sid out of selling to shops would become a thing of the past. Next, any independent wanting to become truly rich from crafting would have to interact with and sell to the PC market on top of their VNPC income, and a modest living could still be made from sectors of the market that would be impractical to rely on PCs for. Moreover, it would be possible to link VNPC incomes to set variables so that by, say, increasing the wooden goods index a little to simulate a shortage in 'Nak, the 'Nak VNPC demand would go up and make them more profitable.

[Malken]

I have yet to meet an independant merchant that totally skews the balance of the economy in-game due to his or her large amount of accumulated wealth.

At some point, you're just going to realize that no matter how much wealth you have in your bank account, merchants from Houses still have a lot more advantages over you..

I don't think it's really a problem like in other muds, because no matter how much wealth you may have, there are so many people above you that maybe, sure, once in a while you'll see a wealthy independant wearing silks, but beside that, when's the last time you saw an independant merchant walking around with his own bodyguard and wagon?

[veryalien]

I'm with the current system along with some tweaks.

I can tell you as an independant losing a mount can cost a huge sum of money. This risk is real and offsets the big profits one might gain by stumbling on the body of a dead noble.

The problem I see now is with vendor prices that are unrealistic. Wine should cost more than water. Feathers should cost less than arrows.

[Malken]

That's true.. I often see things like..

1) Something really useless for 1200 obsidian coins.

Of course, I'm just trying not to reveal any IC info, but if you've played the game for a while, people know that some really cheap items can sell for a fortune elsewhere..

I try to typo or bug things like that, but I'm never sure where it should go.. But even if I do both, I often see the same items on sale after a reboot, weeks later, at an obvious insane price.. Fixing things like that would certainly help the economy as well.

[Ava]

Someday--even if it's ten RL years from now--I think it would be a beautiful thing if nearly all of the objects in-game were generated via the crafting system.

Make really, really smart NPCs who are capable of taking on hunter-gatherer roles: hunting, mining, salt-grebbing, etc.  Make more NPCs who work in, say, the Kadian estate, crafting from dawn to dusk.  Make them wander home to the rows of NPC tenements at night and sleep, then go back in the morning.

Obviously this is a hunormougus task that would generate a whole slew of interesting issues, including PCs getting overwhelmed with the number of NPC actors.  But it could be done very incrementally, it adds realism, and it enables PCs to codedly affect the economy in lasting ways:
- Overhunting actually does annoy Powerful Forces.
- You really can poison the entire water supply of House Oash, given enough dried kalen fruit and eye of anakore.
- Merchant houses have no hard-coded advantage (a library of freely loadable objects) over independents, beyond their already-deep pockets.
- Long-distance trade becomes vitally important, not just an interesting way to entertain your employees and the Byn.
- All you creepy gemmers out there can kidnap House Jal's most talented pipe-shapers, resulting in mass hilarity in the streets of Allanak.

It's, like, SimEverything. And it would be beautiful. Although it might take a Beowulf Cluster of ginkas.

[leaf]

The largest concern seems to be hunters and crafters who spend their entire time online hunting out an area or buying out components and crafting them, then bulk selling them to merchants and flooding the market.

What if crafting complex items, or performing difficult tasks took a longer time to make and had a resumable timer on them. Suppose, for example, that making an elaborately beaded cloak takes nearly a full IC day to complete (let's say 1 RL hour). You could work on that while emoting or talking, but not walking. So, you put 15 minutes into it. Then, the next RL day, you put 15 more minutes into it. Then the next RL day, 15 more... until finally you finish it and sell it for 300 coins. It prevents people from logging in for an hour, taking an RL hour with irritating but not ultimately significant delays to produce 15 cloaks.

What if raw hides were worth almost nothing, or couldn't be sold at all, but cured hides were worth a sustaining wage? But, it takes an IC day to cure and treat a hide - as above.

It would make anti-social crafting less appealing, so that more crafters would be in houses where they could socialize with others doing similar things, and it would make spam hunting/selling less profitable without removing the need entirely.

[Malken]

Well, with your idea, Leaf, I still think that people with more time to be online would make more money than those with less time, which is pretty much the way it goes with hunters and crafters.. A hunter who has a lot of time to play during the day will certainly be wealthier than one who only has an hour or two during the evening..

The way your suggestion goes, people who can log and idle would just make their crafts while being away from the screen and go socialize once they are done..

I think it's pretty much the way it goes right now, and there's not much to do about it.. A beggar who can play 10 hours a day could be wealthier than say, a House merchant that works on commission and only get to play an hour a day.

[Koala]

I don't like it. There are already two things in place to simulate supply and demand. 1-the somewhat arbitrary five-item cap and 2-the fact that now, shopkeepers only have a finite amount of money to buy stuff with.

What I was trying to point out that this arbitrary five-item cap is not a good way to represent the supply and demand link. I believe that something has to be done in order to improve our economy. This is maybe something closer to my proposal or something completely different, but the way I see is that we need a change.

The way I see it, the VNPC population would have a much larger influence than the PC population and I think the VNPC economy would be roughly stable, barring extreme in-game events like (as hypothetical examples) the burning of major parts of the grey forest, mantis infestation in the obsidian mines, salt work feeding frenzies, and war in general.

Thats a fully correct statement. We, pcs, represent a small or perhaps a tiny amount of the total population behaviour, but still we have an impact on the economy. As I suggested in my initial proposal, there can be two variables, which in total determine the supply and demand. One will be driven by us and the other will be predetermined by the IMMs. This predetermined variable can always be adjusted according to your hypothetical examples. Yes, I agree, this will be pain in the ass to determine these predetermined values, but once it is done, it would make a living Zalanthas economy.

What I'd like to see much more than your model of micro-economics (i guess that's what it's called, I'm not a finance guy) is major game events like these having real economic effects and therefore creating a huge demand for PCs to fill before it gradually corrects itself.

Like I said, changing the predetermined value (will of course be handled by IMMs) according to those major events and creating a huge demand for pcs will be an easy thing to do once the main coding problem is solved.

[Koala]

Thing is, for people to get good at making anything, they have to produce a decent quantity of that type of thing.  What you're suggesting would eliminate any economical way to get rid of the gross quantity of crap that people have to produce with their crafting skills while they try to get good enough to make the better stuff...or in the case of merchant characters, you would make it even more difficult for merchant guild characters, ESPECIALLY those in the south, which need all the help they can get, frankly.

Very good point indeed. Frankly, I don't want to add more problems into the game world and I am only looking a way to create a living Economy.

At first thought, the problem you pointed out could be solved by carefully setting the predetermined value for those crap items that people have to produce with their crafting skills. This is a fine point, I agree, but perhaps if it is done with care, we may even make things easier for those crafters.

Really, I would love to see more PC-PC interaction for those that are grebbing, logging, mining, crafting, and etc.  There's only so much stuff that people want to buy of the type of thing that any PC is making.

I am with you here and I think we all want to see more pc to pc interaction in the game. Please, throw some more ideas to improve what I proposed or come up with a new one and allow us to contribute. Lets combine our forces and together create a living Economy .

[spawnloser]

Heh, I've got nothing right now.  I just know what my problems with the proposed idea were.

[Koala]

1) You just have no idea how many people die in strange places with weapons, armor, and other items that are not craftable. Or how many people find these (note: 'finding' them by killing someone is valid, here), can't sell them, and just junk them because they've no need of them personally.

We need to think about why people are junking those items. Is it because there is no place to sell, or is it because they don't need extra money? With my past pcs, I had both of the problems.

First, there are not enough places to sell some items. The most common example would be the cloaks. It is very difficult to find a place to sell a cloak, so what do you do? You either store and hope that someday it will be useful... or you just junk, because it has no value. This problem can be solved by changing shops to buy more things. If the shop is selling clothing, than make it a way that is buys all types of clothing you bring in, including cloaks. If that is an armor shop, let them buy all kinds of armor that can be found in the game world, from the very crap ones to the high quality ones. This way we can cover all the items and people won't hesitate bringing those into the city.

Second, they don't need extra cash, because they already have a huge bank account and with my proposal, I am trying to address this problem. The current shop code lets you generate unrealistic sums of money and one way or another, we need to deal with this.

2) For weapons and armors that are craftable, you still have a limitation of skills and materials to consider while interpreting supply.

Interpretation of supply and demand  is a tricky thing to handle and that is why I left it open in my proposal. I said that we need to create a way to handle supply and demand, but I didn't come up with a good solution. Frankly, that is why I made this post, hoping that someone can come up with something and we can build on it. , so I don't know how to respond to this problem you pointed out.

3) You still have to take the contribution of VNPCs into account, or the whole model crashes. Hides and skins and bones have hundreds more uses in the world than just armormaking and weaponmaking. The PC demand for these, alone, is insufficient given that tents, buildings, bedding, ad nauseam would also rely on these supplies - all things that are still used by PCs but created by vnpcs.

These are just a small handful of the considerations that would need to go into something like this.

Yes indeed and I believe that having a five-item cap on such things (hides, skins, bones, stones, etc...) is not realistic at all. And yes, we need to find a way to reprsent the vnpc demand&supply. What I see is that if we set a high number to the predetermined value when calculating the demand&supply, we break the five-item cap and handle things in a more realistic way for those items.

[Koala]

I'm utterly unconvinced that PCs are representative of the VNPC world in their buying habits.

A great many PCs seem to wear their armour to bed, for starters. Small household objects aren't in much demand among the PC populace: even if every other house in Zalanthas has an oil lamp, it's the rare PC that buys one. PCs would almost always rather have one superbly expensive item of clothing they can wear all the time than a wardrobe of cheaper clothing.

Yes, after reading this I see that my claim was wrong. I agree that most of the pcs only have one set of clothing or armor and don't even bother to buy things that every house needs (assuming that you rent a house at all). I think that this problem has to addressed. Sticking with my initial proposal, I would say that if no pc is demanding such items, maybe that is because they are costly to obtain (I know there are some playability issues - you don't want to change your armor each time you go to bed, because it takes too much time). If we decrease the prices of such items, perhaps pcs will start buying new tables or a set of new clothing, I don't know. What I know is that we have the problem you pointed out and it needs some brainstorming.

Hence, aggravating the nonsensical PC supply and demand blips as per your suggestion seems to me a way to skew the economy further from realism. Instead I'd suggest that most shops should stop buying items from PCs entirely (how do you suppose your local clothing emporium would react if you brought in a new garment you'd made yourself and offered it to them to sell?) except for the odd pawnbroker/secondhand shop/odds and ends place, and instead PCs would have to rent stalls a la LoD's idea here, which could produce a certain amount of VNPC income in addition to that contributed by PCs. For items where PC demand is low, the VNPC demand could be tweaked up a bit, whereas in areas like arms and armour where almost every new PC stops by the shops to pick up something, the VNPC demand could be lowered.

I see. LoD's idea is one of the finest ideas that I am waiting to see it implemented. With that we can solve many and many problems and create a huge amount of pc to pc interaction. However, I don't think that we need to eliminate pc to shop interaction at all. Npc shops are crucial and has to stay open for pcs, because not all the items you bring in will be bought by pc shops. Pcs can still supply for vnpc and vnpc can still supply pc via npc shops.

[Koala]

I have yet to meet an independant merchant that totally skews the balance of the economy in-game due to his or her large amount of accumulated wealth.

Actually the problem is somewhere else. Once you have a few larges in your bank account, you slow down (I don't mean that you were overdoing things before that) and finally stop. Pcs don't require a lot of money to survive in the game (because we don't live 7/24 like other vnpcs) and a few larges is good enough to buy you a steady and good life. Also generating this amount of money is easy for almost all guilds, from pickpokets to rangers. And once you stop or slow down what you were doing, pc to pc interaction reduces. If it wasn't that easy to generate this unrealistic sums of money, than such a problem wouldn't exist at all.

At some point, you're just going to realize that no matter how much wealth you have in your bank account, merchants from Houses still have a lot more advantages over you..

How much wealth you have really matters in the game, because if getting rich is an easy task, it is very difficult to find people to work for you. For example, you are a clanned someone who would like to create some nice plot. You need to hire a one or two, maybe more, pcs to accomplish your goals. When it comes to hiring, you realize that you don't posess enough monetary incentives. Even if you posess, the person you want to hire won't be willingly to risk his neck, because of the nice and unrealistic sids he has in his bank account. If independent people would earn less, it would be easier to create and run plots. At least, it would be available for those with low incomes, still supposedly higher incomes than the vnpcs.

[Anonymous kank with wings]

What will prevent the price of items that PCs can find or make from plummeting to nearly zero across the board. I can see crafting become nearly worthless if PC-based demand is the only pressure on the inventory.

What will prevent the price of the few items in heavy demand (like flour) from becoming unreasonbly high?

[Koala]

I can see crafting become nearly worthless if PC-based demand is the only pressure on the inventory.

No. The demand is not purely driven by pcs, it has two components. One is the predetermined value, which will be preset by IMMs and the other will be pc based continously evolving demand. As pcs represent a small part of the whole world, the weight assigned to them should be minimal.

What will prevent the price of the few items in heavy demand (like flour) from becoming unreasonbly high?

If there is high demand for a product, why a shop keeper should sell if to a low price. Eventhough the modern foundations of Economics has not been found in Zalanthas, I see no reason for a shopkeeper not to try to match his supply options with the demand level. If the price of flour go too high for you, than you change to something else (e.g smoked meat). Thus, there is no place -in a living Economy- for arbitrary high prices. Maybe this low priced flour is the reason why food market is stagnated (I have seen players trying to sell food to other players, but nobody bothered buying at all - increase the flour price and lets create some more pc to pc action). Besides that, the sources are scarce in Zalanthas, so economics of scale* does not apply here.

*It means that by producing alot and lowering prices to create high demand you can profit more.

[Quirk]

Sticking with my initial proposal, I would say that if no pc is demanding such items, maybe that is because they are costly to obtain (I know there are some playability issues - you don't want to change your armor each time you go to bed, because it takes too much time). If we decrease the prices of such items, perhaps pcs will start buying new tables or a set of new clothing, I don't know. What I know is that we have the problem you pointed out and it needs some brainstorming.

I'm pretty certain it never will be solved. Most of us are quite happy not to spend our RP time on looking out matching plate sets for our PC's kitchen, and the issue there has nothing to do with price. It's like RPing going to the toilet - it's the rare PC who does so on a regular basis, even though going to the toilet costs nothing.

Supply and demand based on PC habits is inherently deeply flawed.

However, I don't think that we need to eliminate pc to shop interaction at all. Npc shops are crucial and has to stay open for pcs, because not all the items you bring in will be bought by pc shops. Pcs can still supply for vnpc and vnpc can still supply pc via npc shops.

What makes you think your items should be bought by shops? I've a load of second-hand clothing kicking round that I'm pretty certain no shop in the city I live in would give me money for. Of course, in a poorer society, people are less picky, and previous eras had their rag-and-bone men, but if you want a decent price for your used goods, you should have to find a PC willing to pay it. There's no reason for a shop that's supported by the efforts of a number of crafters to outlay money on stock much beyond the price of the raw materials, especially if it's a used item and/or it doesn't belong to their usual lines that they know do sell.

Of course, I wholly support the idea of having a used-goods emporium that makes its money buying low and selling relatively high, but it shouldn't just become a dumping ground for unsaleable goods.

If you've got items to sell, you should have a stall to pitch them from.

[Koala]

What makes you think your items should be bought by shops? I've a load of second-hand clothing kicking round that I'm pretty certain no shop in the city I live in would give me money for. Of course, in a poorer society, people are less picky, and previous eras had their rag-and-bone men, but if you want a decent price for your used goods, you should have to find a PC willing to pay it. There's no reason for a shop that's supported by the efforts of a number of crafters to outlay money on stock much beyond the price of the raw materials, especially if it's a used item and/or it doesn't belong to their usual lines that they know do sell.

In our modern world, there are already enough factories to supply all the shops throughout the world. This is one of the main reasons why you cannot sell your second hand clothing to any shop in town. Actually clothing is a little bit different in our world than Zalanthas. We all don't want to wear something that belonged to someone else (this shouldn't be the case in Zalanthas), but think about other products such as computers and cars. There exists second hand market for many products, but comparing our world with Zalanthas may not lead us to the correct conclusion. In Zalanthas we have kanks instead of cars and weapons instead of computers . You can easiliy sell your computer on ebay or through some local shop and same analogy also applies to cars. What I am trying to argue here is that even in our modern world we can sell many types of second hand product with all these huge factories selling brand new ones. Why we cannot do the same in Zalanthas?

Of course, I wholly support the idea of having a used-goods emporium that makes its money buying low and selling relatively high, but it shouldn't just become a dumping ground for unsaleable goods.

If you've got items to sell, you should have a stall to pitch them from.

I agree. We also have another problem. Our weapons and clothing doesn't wear out at all (except when you face a half-giant ). So, the code is not capable of determining wheter what you are trying to sell is brand new or your used second hand good. Without having a more detailed wearing out process in game, it is not possible to open such an emporium. If implemented, I fully agree with you that a used-goods emporium would make sense and create interesting opportunities.

And yes, if you've got items to sell, you should open a stall, but with our current code, that is not possible. Maybe after LoD's idea is implemeted this will be smoother.

[Quirk]

What I am trying to argue here is that even in our modern world we can sell many types of second hand product with all these huge factories selling brand new ones. Why we cannot do the same in Zalanthas?

I wasn't saying at any point that you couldn't sell them; just that it's unlikely that you could sell them to the shops that make the items they sell, and it's unlikely that anyone who buys such goods in an organised fashion will give you a decent price. You mentioned eBay, but that's a person to person sale, not selling to a shop.

Selling goods you made yourself to shops at a profit usually requires remarkably more effort than walking in with the item and going "hey, you want to buy this off me at such and such a price?"

I agree. We also have another problem. Our weapons and clothing doesn't wear out at all (except when you face a half-giant ). So, the code is not capable of determining wheter what you are trying to sell is brand new or your used second hand good. Without having a more detailed wearing out process in game, it is not possible to open such an emporium. If implemented, I fully agree with you that a used-goods emporium would make sense and create interesting opportunities.

Clothing does get stained, and shields and armour do wear out. If you can clean the clothing to look good as new, then you might well get a better price for it. But the chief point of a used-goods emporium is not that the goods are shabby, but that they are not new. You may not be able to find the clothing you want in your size, however, or the colour you want.

And yes, if you've got items to sell, you should open a stall, but with our current code, that is not possible. Maybe after LoD's idea is implemeted this will be smoother.

No, of course it's not currently possible. It would require coding. But then, so would the idea you were suggesting.

[Anonymous kank with wings]

If there is high demand for a product, why a shop keeper should sell if to a low price. Eventhough the modern foundations of Economics has not been found in Zalanthas, I see no reason for a shopkeeper not to try to match his supply options with the demand level.

Since food is critical to survival and nearly every food is overpriced as it is, having the last few that permit survival long enough to get on one's feet suddenly go sky high in cost isn't going to be good for playability. I'd rather have newbies stay in the game than prices dictated by an abstract system.

Why are you so sure the prices are all based on supply and demand in Zalanthas anyhow? It's obvious that in Allanak, for example, wheat production is a big deal, with farming communities overseen by soldiers, imports from Red Storm and so on. This isn't private enterprise. I'd be very surprised if that, after all the state supervision and oversight, the price of flour was allowed to be set freely by the shopkeepers.

[veryalien]

Let's face it. The game doesn't have a balanced npc economy. We're not supposed to take advantage of it. A desert dweller shouldn't be depositing coins at the bank. He's not exactly civilized enough to do that.

It's up to your RP though.