Economy

[musashi]

While we're guessing at each other's intentions, I'll hazard a guess that most of the people complaining about indies are players of GMH agents, nobles, or templars who somehow feel stymied or disadvantaged because boo hoo, they can't get what they want, and darn it, the docs say that they should be able to get whatever they want. 

To save you the trouble of guessing at my intentions, I play independent characters almost exclusively, have never been in a higher up GMH, noble, or templar role, and have high play times. I would stand to be most affected by the changes I suggested. I'm not suggesting them because I want to have an advantage over anyone, I'm suggesting them because I think they would bring the game back in line with the documentation and go a good step of the way towards fixing the problem the economy situation IG faces.

[musashi]

musashi, we can go back and forth with hypothetical scenarios all damn day without proving anything.  You wanted examples, I gave them to you, I don't agree with your counter-examples.

If all you've got left is arguing over hypotheticals, the discussion is basically over.  As I said, at this point it's merely "uh-huh" vs. "nuh-uh."

Fair enough I suppose. But you never had anything other than hypotheticals yourself so if that's the case, you never raised anything beyond a simple "nuh-uh" to begin with.

[Synthesis]

musashi, we can go back and forth with hypothetical scenarios all damn day without proving anything.  You wanted examples, I gave them to you, I don't agree with your counter-examples.

If all you've got left is arguing over hypotheticals, the discussion is basically over.  As I said, at this point it's merely "uh-huh" vs. "nuh-uh."

Fair enough I suppose. But you never had anything other than hypotheticals yourself so if that's the case, you never raised anything beyond a simple "nuh-uh" to begin with.

Clever, but inaccurate.

[Synthesis]

While we're guessing at each other's intentions, I'll hazard a guess that most of the people complaining about indies are players of GMH agents, nobles, or templars who somehow feel stymied or disadvantaged because boo hoo, they can't get what they want, and darn it, the docs say that they should be able to get whatever they want. 

To save you the trouble of guessing at my intentions, I play independent characters almost exclusively, have never been in a higher up GMH, noble, or templar role, and have high play times. I would stand to be most affected by the changes I suggested. I'm not suggesting them because I want to have an advantage over anyone, I'm suggesting them because I think they would bring the game back in line with the documentation and go a good step of the way towards fixing the problem the economy situation IG faces.

I was just being a little snarky at Sinna, although I'm flattered that you took me seriously enough to respond at length.

[Synthesis]

It's really too late to look at the economy at this point but if I had to I'd start by looking at clan salaries as my base. Assuming that these groups are the major employers in the land I'd base the prices of things around what a clan member gets paid. Food and drink prices would be reduced greatly. A bottle of whiskey would no longer cost you more than 10% of your salary. Apartment rent likewise for basic hovel-like apartments. Weapons, armour, etc. would also be lowered some in line with the average person's earnings though I'd like to make these things coveted so a person would have to save for each piece they wanted.

Then I'd drastically cut the earnings from mining, salting, hunting, etc. until they come more in line with clan salaries. I'd make it so especially risky hunting / grebbing got it's due reward but no more racking up tons of 'sid easily. I'd cut back on merchants abilities to make piles of coin by selling piles of crap. I'd close the loopholes that can be exploited to make tons of 'sid from certain shops. Subguild tailor in a certain location would no longer be the tap of infinite wealth. Sorry 'bout that elementalists too. I'd make it so that organised hunting / grebbing / merchanting would still be a nicely profitable enterprise for a group but solo working these angles wouldn't make you a rich man unless you worked some risky high-end stuff. Groups would have to be registered with the territory they work in and pay tax / bribes.

All in all I'd cut your average character's ability to make large amounts of coin off at the knees. I'd leave noble stipends as is so they can make use of coin as an asset. Synthesis rightly points out that coin is not really an asset in this game. It should be though. One of the reasons it isn't is because there's a total glut of easy coin available and it takes away something which should be a useful lever for rich characters. It would also help to make clans more attractive to people as they'd at least be getting paid an average wage instead of having to live in a world where prices are completely inflated due to certain groups' ability to reap masses of 'sid very easily. Also receiving clan gear would be a valuable, coveted thing given the reduced amount of easy 'sid floating around.

I felt bad for pagerolling Boggis' excellent comprehensive fix here, so I'll quote it again.  This is really what needs to be done, I think.

[ianmartin]

Let's leave things how they are, if you want to live a life of poverty, then do so and be as 'realistic' as you want and do what you wish.
I also know that thinking outside of the box of what you can and can't do is what created the BYN, created the Silver Ginka and other
great works and organizations in the game.  Having a mindset that we are all doomed to live lives of poverty and mediocrity doesn't help
the advancement of the game one iota, neither does sitting in a tavern for hours on end drinking or fake drinking and talking about the
high prices of furniture and rugs and fire insurance for ladybugs.  Personally, I find THAT unrealistic, especially when you're a city guard or
what have you.  WE define how the game runs and the documentation is there as a GUIDE not as a BIBLE.  To me, staying poor and
wanting others to stay poor is simply pushing a slave mentality on the rest of those who wish to have some form of standing/respect and
perhaps a little empire of their own.

[Schrodingers Cat]

WE define how the game runs and the documentation is there as a GUIDE not as a BIBLE.  To me, staying poor and wanting others to stay poor is simply pushing a slave mentality on the rest of those who wish to have some form of standing/respect and perhaps a little empire of their own.

I disagree.  We define the details, the names and the places and where and how the battles happen but on a basic level it is the staff that define how the game runs, I don't think you'd argue with that.  They set up the systems and players use the systems as a framework to role-play out their character's lives.  The documentation is a baseline of how things are and should be, it provides the foundation.  I think that when the reality of gameplay doesn't in fact match up the documentation, this a signal that something is wrong.  I think that the problem is figuring out what that problem is and addressing that.

Many of us are resistant to changes, but sometimes they aren't as bad as we think.

[musashi]

musashi, we can go back and forth with hypothetical scenarios all damn day without proving anything.  You wanted examples, I gave them to you, I don't agree with your counter-examples.

If all you've got left is arguing over hypotheticals, the discussion is basically over.  As I said, at this point it's merely "uh-huh" vs. "nuh-uh."

Fair enough I suppose. But you never had anything other than hypotheticals yourself so if that's the case, you never raised anything beyond a simple "nuh-uh" to begin with.

Clever, but inaccurate.

Wasn't going for clever. The suggestion has never been implemented before, so prediction as to how it will affect things is going to be hypothetical by default.
But that doesn't really mean much. When discussing something like this, all you can do is apply some logic and past experience to deduce a likely outcome.

Like when you said that the encumberence of the coins would be a pain for people going out and fighting, and I pointed out how it probably wouldn't be, because people already have a way to get around carrying heavy things by packing them onto their mount. That's hypothetical, but it isn't sloppy guesswork, it can be nearly assured that's what would happen because that's the logical thing to do, and that's what people do already with heavy stuff they don't want to carry while fighting, ie ... past experience.

Sure you can disagree with that and assume that people will carry their coins in their backpack at extremely heavy and not ever think to pack them on their mount to avoid the problem ... but at that point, you aren't really contributing to the topic anymore, you're just being contrary.

But at this point, I'm explaining how logic works to you, and if we're that far gone already, there's no point in further discussion, because you really are at the nuh-uh stage.

[Synthesis]

Packing heavy shit on your mount no longer works very well for hunting, unless you plan only on skinning very light things, because you'll be unable to unpack your bags at the end of the day due to encumbrance issues.  Still a pain in the ass, whether you're fighting with it on your back or not.

p.s. the desert isn't the only place people get into fights

[musashi]

It's really too late to look at the economy at this point but if I had to I'd start by looking at clan salaries as my base. Assuming that these groups are the major employers in the land I'd base the prices of things around what a clan member gets paid. Food and drink prices would be reduced greatly. A bottle of whiskey would no longer cost you more than 10% of your salary. Apartment rent likewise for basic hovel-like apartments. Weapons, armour, etc. would also be lowered some in line with the average person's earnings though I'd like to make these things coveted so a person would have to save for each piece they wanted.

Then I'd drastically cut the earnings from mining, salting, hunting, etc. until they come more in line with clan salaries. I'd make it so especially risky hunting / grebbing got it's due reward but no more racking up tons of 'sid easily. I'd cut back on merchants abilities to make piles of coin by selling piles of crap. I'd close the loopholes that can be exploited to make tons of 'sid from certain shops. Subguild tailor in a certain location would no longer be the tap of infinite wealth. Sorry 'bout that elementalists too. I'd make it so that organised hunting / grebbing / merchanting would still be a nicely profitable enterprise for a group but solo working these angles wouldn't make you a rich man unless you worked some risky high-end stuff. Groups would have to be registered with the territory they work in and pay tax / bribes.

All in all I'd cut your average character's ability to make large amounts of coin off at the knees. I'd leave noble stipends as is so they can make use of coin as an asset. Synthesis rightly points out that coin is not really an asset in this game. It should be though. One of the reasons it isn't is because there's a total glut of easy coin available and it takes away something which should be a useful lever for rich characters. It would also help to make clans more attractive to people as they'd at least be getting paid an average wage instead of having to live in a world where prices are completely inflated due to certain groups' ability to reap masses of 'sid very easily. Also receiving clan gear would be a valuable, coveted thing given the reduced amount of easy 'sid floating around.

If clan salaries should be the base for determining cost (and that isn't a bad idea, though maybe a lot of work to go through and set), then the benefits of having free food, water, storage space, and backing should be factored into that as well, if you see what I mean.

Amos the indie ranger should be able to make a bit more money than Malik the clanned ranger assuming they both do the same amount of work.

But at the end of the day Malik the clanned ranger should have more free coin to spend in his pocket because he doesn't have the expenses Amos the indie ranger has.

That kind of thing.

Other than that I think it's a really nice idea, but very idealistic and sparse on the details.

Like saying: If I could do healthcare reform everyone would have access to all the medicine and doctor care that they need, and we'd pay for it with social insurance.

[Boggis]

I really don't think we need to do away with banks. Banking organisations of one form or another existed in many ancient societies and these were typically open to taking money from anybody who had it. Was a moot point with the lower classes mostly as they were dirt poor all their lives but some commoner merchants with enough business acumen could do very well for themselves (slave trade, exotic goods import, etc.) and banks would gladly take their coin. Money is money at the end of the day and sneering at the nouveau riche is something best left to aristocrats.

In Ancient Greece they recognised the difficulties and dangers in carrying money around and would offer exchange notes for travellers which would allow them to deposit their coin in one port and then exchange the note in their destination port in return for their money back. Coinage just isn't portable in any kind of large amount and any society would recognise this and come up with a solution. Nenyuk is a bit of an OOC crutch in that they haven't really explained how it all works but with a bit of fleshing out it could be a perfectly workable IC solution to a universal problem with coinage.

[spawnloser]

I think clans should have 'free apartments' in their compounds.  Have them accessible from outside the compound.  They are only free to those clanned for that GMH/noble.  This gives them better places to live than the communal barracks.  You KNOW one of the biggest reasons that clanned bitch about this is because of how much they have to work for an apartment, because they all have to have one.  Hell, maybe more than one, some of these people.  (I hate you people that get like a half dozen apartments with ONE character, by the way.  Oh, and, "I have too much stuff for one apartment," bullshit?  Yeah, you have all that stupid trash why?)  There, now that's a proper coin sink.

[musashi]

Packing heavy shit on your mount no longer works very well for hunting, unless you plan only on skinning very light things, because you'll be unable to unpack your bags at the end of the day due to encumbrance issues.  Still a pain in the ass, whether you're fighting with it on your back or not.

p.s. the desert isn't the only place people get into fights

Your original point was about fighting, not about having to unpack it later and put it somewhere which is a difficulty everyone deals with already by either travelling light and not taking in more than they can carry, or by storing what they don't immediately need in an apartment or clan hall; and you have to be severely loaded down before that becomes an issue to begin with. 1-2k in coins would not render you unable to go on a hunting trip by any means.

[Boggis]

Other than that I think it's a really nice idea, but very idealistic and sparse on the details.

I'm in work - don't have the time to be putting too much thought into the nuts and bolts Just saying how I would approach it to begin with if it was a project of mine - certainly a pile of complexity would end up being added. Also, don't have access to all the details of item prices, clan salaries, data on how much people earn and how, etc. Without that we're just tossing vague numbers around. It looks like a really big, time consuming project that would involve a lot of trawling through a wide variety of data just to get to the point where we'd understand how things work currently and see where the imbalances are. And then would come the re-design and balancing which would be a nightmare to get right. It's all doable but probably not worth the investment for something that's going to end in the (reasonably) near future.

[Cutthroat]

WE define how the game runs and the documentation is there as a GUIDE not as a BIBLE.

It's neither a guide nor a bible. It's a foundation to base your roleplay on. The further you stray from the docs, the more of an "exception" your PC is. Exceptions don't fit in well with the majority of PCs, NPCs, and vNPCs. You are allowed to play the exception, provided you also accept the consequences for doing so. That has been defined many times before.

I really don't think we need to do away with banks. Banking organisations of one form or another existed in many ancient societies and these were typically open to taking money from anybody who had it. Was a moot point with the lower classes mostly as they were dirt poor all their lives but some commoner merchants with enough business acumen could do very well for themselves (slave trade, exotic goods import, etc.) and banks would gladly take their coin. Money is money at the end of the day and sneering at the nouveau riche is something best left to aristocrats.

In Ancient Greece they recognised the difficulties and dangers in carrying money around and would offer exchange notes for travellers which would allow them to deposit their coin in one port and then exchange the note in their destination port in return for their money back. Coinage just isn't portable in any kind of large amount and any society would recognise this and come up with a solution. Nenyuk is a bit of an OOC crutch in that they haven't really explained how it all works but with a bit of fleshing out it could be a perfectly workable IC solution to a universal problem with coinage.

I support other possible changes to the banking system, but I agree doing away with it entirely for unclanned PCs is not such a great idea. I think a few things need to be hammered out about how Nenyuk runs:

How does Nenyuk operate worldwide? (edit to clarify: Why can Amos deposit 3000 coins in Allanak, go up to Tuluk and withdraw 3000 coins?)
How does Nenyuk make money from their banking system, aside from claiming dead people's loot?
How do they keep track of people with accounts? As in, what is preventing Malik from withdrawing from Amos' account?

I think clans should have 'free apartments' in their compounds.  Have them accessible from outside the compound.  They are only free to those clanned for that GMH/noble.  This gives them better places to live than the communal barracks.  You KNOW one of the biggest reasons that clanned bitch about this is because of how much they have to work for an apartment, because they all have to have one.  ... There, now that's a proper coin sink.

I think this is an interesting idea, although it would take a lot of building in this game to start. It could essentially be set up like dormitories. Perhaps a consideration for 2.Arm, but it would really cut down on the amount of spending clanned people have to do and make clanned life more appealing.

[musashi]

Other than that I think it's a really nice idea, but very idealistic and sparse on the details.

I'm in work - don't have the time to be putting too much thought into the nuts and bolts Just saying how I would approach it to begin with if it was a project of mine - certainly a pile of complexity would end up being added. Also, don't have access to all the details of item prices, clan salaries, data on how much people earn and how, etc. Without that we're just tossing vague numbers around. It looks like a really big, time consuming project that would involve a lot of trawling through a wide variety of data just to get to the point where we'd understand how things work currently and see where the imbalances are. And then would come the re-design and balancing which would be a nightmare to get right. It's all doable but probably not worth the investment for something that's going to end in the (reasonably) near future.

Yeah, I know what you mean. In theory it would be awesome but it seems like we would have to scrape everything we have now and rebuild from the ground up to create something like that.

But I wonder if even in a brand new system ... we wouldn't still be plauged by the problem Vanth and Lizzie identified early on with the schism that develops at high play times. I'd like to really tackle that problem, before doing anything else with the economy, because I think that problem is one that keeps these threads spawning every other month.

[ianmartin]

I don't know about y'all, but musashi and synthesis have crazy GDB skills and WAY too much time on their hands.  You guys should seriously be staff members.

[ianmartin]

Not saying that staff members have time on their hands, noone get me wrong there please.

[Boggis]

Really not sure how to limit high playtime people's earning potential. Some people love the wealth grind. If things were re-designed to greatly reduce the earning from simple stuff maybe they'd be forced to go after risky things to make more 'sid and that'll take a fair sized cull from that group probably. For those who want to really grind out the simple things over and over and over. I don't know. I'd like to think that most players here wouldn't be interested in doing that. I mean it's like mining on EVE. Sure you can do it solo if you want but really gets old very, very quickly and you're kind of missing the point.

For low playtime people I wouldn't be opposed to some kind of offline earning equating to them having some form of menial job. Could be capped to prevent somebody not logging in for months or something and coming back as Joe Millionaire. Could kick in if you play < x hours per week. Would free up these low playtime people to just RP and not have to worry about eking out a living codewise and playing. Potential for abuse is there no doubt but could have a policy that if you're caught abusing it the offline earning flag is turned off on your account for good.

[Synthesis]

Packing heavy shit on your mount no longer works very well for hunting, unless you plan only on skinning very light things, because you'll be unable to unpack your bags at the end of the day due to encumbrance issues.  Still a pain in the ass, whether you're fighting with it on your back or not.

p.s. the desert isn't the only place people get into fights

Your original point was about fighting, not about having to unpack it later and put it somewhere which is a difficulty everyone deals with already by either travelling light and not taking in more than they can carry, or by storing what they don't immediately need in an apartment or clan hall; and you have to be severely loaded down before that becomes an issue to begin with. 1-2k in coins would not render you unable to go on a hunting trip by any means.

My original point is that it would be a pain in the ass.  Maybe that wasn't a good example, so I'll grant you that.

However, your argument that it wouldn't be a pain in the ass is defeated by your own intent:  if having to carry around all your coins -isn't- a pain in the ass, why would it serve as a negative incentive to accumulating them?

Granted, the magnitude of the ass pain is positively correlated with the number of coins, but then the question becomes:  how much is too much?  Aaand then we're back to square 1, where we argue about how much coin it takes for an independent PC to reasonably get along.  The quick answer, and probably the correct one, is that nobody knows.  It's dependent on each player's knowledge of the game and their ability to be manipulative in-character.

However, if some sort of "bank cap" were instituted, I'd suggest that 10,000 coins is about the reasonable level to have on reserve.  This isn't based on anything other than the fact that that's the point where I feel that my characters are usually reasonably safe from catastrophic losses. Maybe I'm a weenie and I'm playing it a little too safe, though.

Also, the idea that the fundamental problem is the disparity between high and low playtimes is something that only you and Vanth brought up.  I've generally been tailoring my comments for the -rest- of the problems I've seen griped about in the thread.  And yes, the four (I believe it was four) that I mentioned have all been brought up by other posters in this thread.  I'm not merely inventing them for the sake of arguing with myself on the internet.

[musashi]

Serious props for having Terry Pratchett in your sig Boggins, btw. Just noticed that.

Well I think that putting a cap on the amount of money someone is able to attain could be a good way to go about it. I men we do that with skills and it seems to work out just fine. But I don't like the idea of a hard cap. Like, just a flat: You can only have x amount of money maximum.

But something on a sliding scale where the more money you aquire, the more challenges you face for having it, would be a step in the right direction.

The banking thing is one possible way to go about it, but I'm hardly married to that idea. Anyone else have any ideas along those lines? I think that in all the previous threads about the game's economy we've beat the "make resources more finite" and "let low play time people make automatic money" ideas to death and not gone anywhere.

Why not explore options in a new direction?

[Aaron Goulet]

musashi, we can go back and forth with hypothetical scenarios all damn day without proving anything.  You wanted examples, I gave them to you, I don't agree with your counter-examples.

My only concern is that you seem to think that commoners dropping 12-15k is perfectly normal.  Again, that's the entire problem in the first place.

The banking thing is one possible way to go about it, but I'm hardly married to that idea. Anyone else have any ideas along those lines? I think that in all the previous threads about the game's economy we've beat the "make resources more finite" and "let low play time people make automatic money" ideas to death and not gone anywhere.

Why not explore options in a new direction?

I'm still an advocate of the bank idea, and I think it would go well with some of Synthesis' suggestions, rather than being an alternative.  Make wealth harder to hoard and harder to accumulate.

Another thing I'd like to see is the value of raw materials lowered and the value of crafts increased.  There are so few independent merchants as it is, because quite frankly, you don't need a merchant to get rich anymore.

[Synthesis]

musashi, we can go back and forth with hypothetical scenarios all damn day without proving anything.  You wanted examples, I gave them to you, I don't agree with your counter-examples.

My only concern is that you seem to think that commoners dropping 12-15k is perfectly normal.  Again, that's the entire problem in the first place.

The banking thing is one possible way to go about it, but I'm hardly married to that idea. Anyone else have any ideas along those lines? I think that in all the previous threads about the game's economy we've beat the "make resources more finite" and "let low play time people make automatic money" ideas to death and not gone anywhere.

Why not explore options in a new direction?

I'm still an advocate of the bank idea, and I think it would go well with some of Synthesis' suggestions, rather than being an alternative.  Make wealth harder to hoard and harder to accumulate.

Another thing I'd like to see is the value of raw materials lowered and the value of crafts increased.  There are so few independent merchants as it is, because quite frankly, you don't need a merchant to get rich anymore.

I don't feel like commoners "dropping" 15k is normal, no.  I think it is acceptable that they have 15k to fall back on if they are beset by hard times, though.  There is a difference between having the ability to casually drop a 15,000 'sid bribe and the ability to replace your 6,000 'sid set of gear if a burglar steals it all while you're dressed in your civvies for the Fale party.

Trying to drop that much 'sid on a bribe just makes you look desperate, anyway.  Sort of thing that will get a fellow put in his place with a quickness.

[ianmartin]

Here again, what you're saying is:

1.  You can never amass wealth
2.  You will always be poor, ha ha ha on you, my clanny can outspend you again
3.  Forget any dreams of owning anything of your own, just sit around the tavern all day gabbing with us
4.  Waaa waaa waaa, it's not fair, I have no sid of my own.

You know what?  Leave things the way they are, lots of people are enjoying it as it is.  When you finally wrap your head around the fact
that amassing wealth is not the know all end all, then your future characters will be better off because you at least have some idea of how
to make it.  In case noone has noticed, since the events of the HRPT, things have gotten a WHOLE LOT more expensive.  So let's keep the
status quo.  We shouldn't have to make everyone suffer so a few players can get the RP the way they want it.  Point is that it's working for everyone.
Focus on how to bring more people in than finding ways to push some of the playerbase away and limiting the number of new players that want to join up.

[musashi]

@ Synth: To clairfy on my end, I didn't mean to imply that it wouldn't be a pain at all no matter how much coin you had to carry, I meant, like you said, that how much of a pain it would be, would be contingent upon how much coin you were amassing, and that would serve as a self regulating tool for keeping the commoners from amassing more money than the ultra rich, reguardless of how much time someone has to dedicate to playing.

It seemed to me like you were suggesting that even having to carry a large or two around would be so bad that a character would be unable to function. That was what I was disagreeing with.

But make it more than a large or two and unless you're a half giant or a mul, I agree that it will start to seriously be a detriment to your PC in terms of encumberence.

So I agree that in such a situation, how much is too much would be entirely dependant on the character in question and how clever or inconvieniced they were willing to be. I'd be alright with that, because I think that it would keep that disparity between high and low play times to a minimum.

.... and ianmartin please stop with the strawman/trolling. No one supports the positions you're crying out against.