Gameplay scaling of shops with the growing player population

[Barsook]

I believe the item for item barter needs to be expanded myself.

Three things I think it needs.

#1 Items a shop is willing to take should be expanded. I can understand an armor shop not taking weapons or backpacks etc..but you would think they would take bone, cured hides etc...they would just not resell such items because they use them to make more armor.

#2 To go along with #1, You should be able to offer multiple items...offer shopkeeper 1.hide 2.hide 2.shell for shield.

#3 Haggle should work with this bartering.

Myself, I love the item for item barter, and have had plenty of reason to use it, be it tribals that have no real need of coin (and would not use nenyuk anyway) to Pcs that simply are things like say, raw goods hunters...yes they try to deal with PCs on selling the raw good, but RP wise it simply makes more sense for the hunter to roll in with 6 carru hides because he wants a pair of boots and gloves. Then there is simply the feel of it, more archaic. This would also help solve the shops running out of coin.

+1

[Rumor]

I like some of the ideas going on in here, especially combining bartered items to acquire a single item.  I'd rather see solutions go in that direction than to generate more outlets for coin via selling to NPC's.  Even still, "solution" isn't really the word I would use since it's fairly debatable whether this is working as intended to contain the economy or if it's not up to date with the upward trending population. 

Personally, I'd prefer to see a few more market/bazaar merchants buying things that others buy, but at much cheaper prices.  It would give people the option to unload the weight and get some minor coin in the process if they were impatient.  These bazaar merchants could perhaps sell their wares randomly to passerbys at a faster rate.

[Delirium]

I'm down with making less if PCs can sell more. It sucks when you RP being out in the wastes for a month, finally coming back in with a load of tanned hides to trade, and then not being able to sell them due to Joe Kadius filling up the shop with hides for some extra side-pay, and nobody in the tavern wants them.

In a desert world, where resources are scarce, somebody would buy those hides, even if it was for a rock-bottom price.

[BuNutzCola]

I'm for any idea that increases the chances for PC's to make coin, personally.

But Bunutz! It's so easy to make a great fortune already!

I know this, and it is possible to make great deals of coin. And Zalanthas is a harsh world where everyone should be struggling for survival.

But if plots are a pickup truck, coin is the diesel that runs the bitch. It's not really all that hard, if you're trying to drive plots and shake things up in small ways, to blow through an obscene amount of money. And I'm not talking about "Here mr. templar, take this 5,000 'sid to kill amos" (which is perfectly fine) But just little things, like regularly hiring the Byn (which imo should be done by almost any non-badass) to escort you from point a to point b, or guard on said grebbing trip. It gives them something to do beyond "kill mob x", provides opportunities for interaction.

Even just finding someone remotely in your circle of trust to hand a bunch of shit that pc's inevitably obtain and say "Go sell what you can, keep half, toss the rest in an alley" promotes interaction. The street urchin finds the discarded belongings and feels they've struck it rich, the errand-runner has the chance to take more than his fair share of the coin, the leader-esque pc gets a bunch of crap out of his room/apartment/pack.

IMO, more coin is never a bad thing, no matter how it comes around. Not saying we should all have twenty large in Nenyuk, and, in fact, if you're doing it right, your pc should be on the verge of poverty most of the time, but only because he's driving plots in game.

(In reading back over this, could have perhaps been its own thread. Mrm)

[Maso]

I love the idea of being able to barter multiple items for a single item. Also the other way around...You have a shield but you want 6 hides? ALSO, haggling for multiples.... being able to make an offer for a bulk amount of something. ALSO...haggle skill being taken into account when trading item for item. Currently you could haggle an NPC to buy X hide for 200 (when they want to pay 100) and then buy something for 200....but if you offer them the same hide in a trade for something worth 200...they'll just be like "Get outta here, punk!"

Very tired. Hope that makes sense.

[Barsook]

I love the idea of being able to barter multiple items for a single item.

[Booya]

So do I, and both ways. And for haggle to work with them.

I also get what you're saying Bunutz, I just think that that amount of wealth is already easily enough attainable as things are IG, to those great players that use their sids for this.

And yes, if you have lots of sid hire the Byn whenever it makes sense to do so!

[Maso]

So basically...a complete overhaul of the shop system...

Can we have by tomorrow plz, staff?

[Nyr]

For example, let's take a look at the maximum number of duplicate items an NPC shop will buy before refusing to buy more. With the number set at five, a single character can often fill a shop to capacity in one visit (especially a crafter or hunter-themed PC). I've always imagined that the reason this limitation exists is to prevent players from accumulating too much wealth from the sale of a single item type. With the intent of limiting sales for the individual player, what this code more often does is allow one player to sell five items of a lucrative item after a reboot, and then every other PC in the game will not be able to sell that item type until the next reboot.

This isn't true, though.  We have a virtual economy in place now.  It's not perfect, but it handles this scenario slowly over time.  You mention that below, but it's important to note that the above scenario is one of the things intended to be handled by this virtual economy.

The code effectively "controls" one PC's sales, but then bans all other PCs from making profit from that item, or a group of items. This limitation has existed for a long, long time, but at one point Morgenes did some work on the code to beef it up and make it less restrictive. He implemented shop code that would give NPC stores a chance to sell a random item from the available item list, every so often. This not only had the chance of opening up the duplicate item slots, but also gave shopkeepers a chance to get more coin with PC interaction. And this brings up another issue: the limited amount of coin per shop.

Looking at the coded starting coin for shops, certain shops get easily flooded with far more PC sales than PC purchases. This leaves a lot of them without coin, which is perfectly reasonable if scaled appropriately to the number of PCs in the game. If someone would argue that these shops are still working fine even with the extra player load, I would ask them if they still felt the code would work adequately if we had 100+ players at peak. At some point, I feel that the increase in players will make NPC shops nearly incapable of purchasing items beyond the time after a reboot. The percentage of scripted sales for shops is not increasing to the percentage of the growing playerbase. How can we address this problem? I don't believe that just increasing the cap of sold items from 5 to 10 or more is going to fix the problem.

When we have 100+ players online at peak (not just once or twice, but as an average thing), it will definitely be worth it to review systems like this and make sure they scale appropriately.  As it is, the only times we have had more than 100 players online in the past have been HRPTs and the odd RPT event that hits that high.  If people are buying and selling crap during HRPTs, I am much less concerned about their merchant needs.

The code that Morgenes created seems like it was on the right track with creating a virtual population that purchased NPC items. I'm wondering if all that's needed is to increase the frequency at which these items are purchased by the virtual population. We could limit these "virtual purchases" to duplicate items, to prevent the script from becoming too aggressive and absorbing everything a shop has to sell, or at least give a much smaller percentage chance that non-dupicate items will be purchased. Maybe the percentage chance of an item getting a virtual purchase goes up with each duplicate of that item in stock (up to the current max stack of 5).

We already tweaked it several times in the past because it was selling too often.  It's easy to change.  I do not see a reason to change it at this time, however.

Additionally, as another issue that comes up with the current-day shops, you have stores that sell only one of a particular item. The item will not appear in the store again until the next reboot. There is no Morgenes script that gives a small percent chance of these items appearing on the store shelves again. These items were rare back in the lower playerbase days, but have become extremely difficult to find with the bigger player population and longer reboot times. I really like the idea of items that are rare and not in stock frequently, but having one possible item per reboot in what could be a month's wait for the next one, with more players than ever shopping the NPC stores, may not be the kind of item behavior that was intended with this code.

If there any cases where a shop in-game sells these "rare items" that are

a) not craftable
b) not able to be purchased in any other way (i.e., from a GMH PC)

then those instances may need review, and we may need to see why they are limited in load.  You can bug those in-game or idea it or what-have-you.  It may be that those rare items are rare, and that's that, but at least we can look at the shopkeeper and the like.

Having been away from Armageddon MUD for a few years, the store overpopulation issue is one of the code mechanics I've noticed that has surprised me the most. I'm not accustomed to seeing this many players in the game, and I can definitely see how the NPC shops have been hit in a way that makes them feel far less of a resource to PCs than before. And while this can be a good thing in games that have a player-driven economy based on PC crafts providing most in-game items, Armageddon is not one of these games.

Actually, Armageddon is a hybrid system.  There's a player economy which can be affected by the virtual economy, and vice versa.  You can get everything you need from PCs, whether they be crafters, salesmen, grebbers, or the like.  When you can't find a PC, you can go to the shops.  If you can't get to PCs or to the shops for a handful of "rare" items, well, it depends on what this rare item is, why it's rare, etc, and that's where we can look at those cases via idea/bug.

[LauraMars]

I'm down with making less if PCs can sell more. It sucks when you RP being out in the wastes for a month, finally coming back in with a load of tanned hides to trade, and then not being able to sell them due to Joe Kadius filling up the shop with hides for some extra side-pay, and nobody in the tavern wants them.

In a desert world, where resources are scarce, somebody would buy those hides, even if it was for a rock-bottom price.

I know this feel.

[Potaje]

I'm down with making less if PCs can sell more. It sucks when you RP being out in the wastes for a month, finally coming back in with a load of tanned hides to trade, and then not being able to sell them due to Joe Kadius filling up the shop with hides for some extra side-pay, and nobody in the tavern wants them.

In a desert world, where resources are scarce, somebody would buy those hides, even if it was for a rock-bottom price.

I know this feel.

Perhaps there should be both a Salarri hide buyer and an indipendant along with the kadian, maybe even a Kuraci.

Since Kadius has its own hunters and yet has a hide buyer this seems like it might make more sense. But then there might already be those others in place in both the major cities that I am simply unfamiliar with.

[Delirium]

The hides were just an example, this could be true of anything.

[Maso]

It would be cool if there were GMH related buyers that Houses could put money into, in line with their actual needs, that would buy off PC's. I don't think this should take away with houses making whatever arrangements they need directly with PC's for long term deals or rare one offs or whatever...but it would be nice to be able to cater for the more offpeak folk as well, and could be useful for the houses to have that extra supply of materials. Maybe it could be set up that they could supply a list to the shopkeeper (maybe by giving them 'examples' of things they want to buy) and then be able to pull out the supplies for free, leave one in (the example) if they still need more, or pull them all if that's enough.

So while it's semi-automated, it's still governed by real player needs and the real state of the economy?

[HavokBlue]

It's threads like these that make me feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know how to make money in-game.

[AmandaGreathouse]

It's threads like these that make me feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know how to make money in-game.

I know, right? I had 1 pc before this who made ridiculous amounts of money, but that's because she was able to do things that realistically none of my other pcs have been able to do.

Current pc feels and seems wealthy, but it's actually other people's wealth spilling over to give it a somewhat deceptive appearance.

[LauraMars]

It would be cool if there were GMH related buyers that Houses could put money into, in line with their actual needs, that would buy off PC's. I don't think this should take away with houses making whatever arrangements they need directly with PC's for long term deals or rare one offs or whatever...but it would be nice to be able to cater for the more offpeak folk as well, and could be useful for the houses to have that extra supply of materials. Maybe it could be set up that they could supply a list to the shopkeeper (maybe by giving them 'examples' of things they want to buy) and then be able to pull out the supplies for free, leave one in (the example) if they still need more, or pull them all if that's enough.

So while it's semi-automated, it's still governed by real player needs and the real state of the economy?

I love this idea.

[Tuannon]

It's threads like these that make me feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know how to make money in-game.

Back of the cart boot vendor.

[Barsook]

It's threads like these that make me feel like I'm the only person who doesn't know how to make money in-game.

And

It would be cool if there were GMH related buyers that Houses could put money into, in line with their actual needs, that would buy off PC's. I don't think this should take away with houses making whatever arrangements they need directly with PC's for long term deals or rare one offs or whatever...but it would be nice to be able to cater for the more offpeak folk as well, and could be useful for the houses to have that extra supply of materials. Maybe it could be set up that they could supply a list to the shopkeeper (maybe by giving them 'examples' of things they want to buy) and then be able to pull out the supplies for free, leave one in (the example) if they still need more, or pull them all if that's enough.

So while it's semi-automated, it's still governed by real player needs and the real state of the economy?

I love this idea.

+1

[Maso]

There have definitely been times when I've had a character standing in a shop that sells hide...thinking...damnit *I need more than five* whatever...but they only have five...because they only bought five. And I know there's probably 15 hunters wandering around various timezones who can't sell, and me who can't buy enough...and it gets clunky.

Plus it would just be really cool. Hunters and grebbers could check back to see what was in demand and it would change. And it could be Salarri store in Tuluk looking for a silt-horror shell, and two hunters are both stood there looking at the guy like...how are we supposed to get that? And he's all like "Well, I'll pay six small for it if yeh get it, but I can't tell yeh how." And then they're all like, "Fuck it, let's team up and go south!" "Yeah bitch!" "YEAH".

I dunno. Is that what hunters do?

But, if you were a GMH, you wouldn't be able to -rely- on it 100%, because you wouldn't know if people were out there bringing you shit, you'd still keep relationships open with your normal guys too.

Sorry for writing all my posts like Bill & Ted these days, I think it's California's fault. I don't have an accent though.

[Withered Ocotillo]

A lot of these ideas are great - I am particularly a big fan of the proposed "player/clan-run NPC vendor", where the PCs can load up NPCs with items or money and automate some of the sales.

I've seen this kind of code in other RP MUDs, and in my experience I've actually seen this feature increase player interaction rather than reduce it despite having some automation to it. Player characters (sellers and buyers) are motivated to communicate their wants and ideas for the shop. You get a lot of opinions on service, merchandise offered, ways to improve it, etc. Just the knowledge that there is an actual character responsible for what goes into a shop can transform that shop into a huge community magnet.

[maxid]

The issue is that there are easy (really easy) ways to make money in the game, but not all of them are all that obvious.  People who have been around a while, or who lucked into hanging out IC (or, in some cases, OOC  ) with people who know how can make asstons of money really easily.  Newbies and even young-to-middle range players can sometimes have trouble keeping enough coin on them to stay alive. There's no easy fix for it due to the fact that most 'easy IG money' involves spam hunting/foraging and selling bulk hides/raw materials to specific sellers, which is easy to do if you've been playing wilderness roles for a couple of RL years. 

The people who know how talk about how easy it is and leave those who don't know how out in the dark.  And so some people feel like they're the only ones that don't know how to make money, which makes it frustrating for them especially when you have people jerking around screaming FIND OUT IC and tittering to themselves about how rich they can become if they REALLY wanted to, but they're so much better Rpers than that, etc.

[greasygemo]

Ahhem.. all the money I've ever earned.. I found out how to make it ICly. I'm a super new player as well. Less than a year.

I've told other PC's ICly hey, you know X is worth X to that guy in that place?

A lot of new players don't know a lot of secret things. Why should the merchants who pay top dollar, crafting recipes, forage locations, hunting locations, item values, and general tips financial success be any different?

I tend to try and RP when I craft, because crafting is BORING AS SHIT. Hunting, that's a little harder because, you know, the not dying part, you sort of need to be ready to type charge/flee/assist/rescue all the time.

I also buy good from other PC's and sell the WHEN THEY ARE AROUND AND WANT TO BUY AND SELL. I find this doesn't happen as consistently as I would like, but it's fun when it does. It's just not realistic with a player base that's spread out over the day to make these kinds of connections all the time. NPC/Virtual shops are pretty much a must I feel.

That's just my two sids.

[Irathu]

I have the one true solution to all of this, all of our lovely Lord and Lady Templars and Faithful Lords and Ladies need to get back in there and start bribing the crap out of and investigating all these suddenly super rich commoners, think about it, you got Amos hunter running around with four and five thousand coins or more on him and hes only been hunting for a couple of IG months in said city, if I was them I would start wondering how they made all the coin, who are they in cohorts with, as for the ones that are working WITH the cities, that is where I feel that the GMH's can control it, by say taxing/bribing/or heck even jealously attacking or undermining them because as a GMH or Noble or Templar you don't want your commoners to suddenly become your competition or become as wealthy as you because then they begin to gain power. With money comes power and with power comes corruption and with corruption comes even more power or death depending.

In all seriousness though we can control this overabundance of wealth without it hindering the playerbase infact inho it can enhance the playerbase and add more intrigue corruption and violence.

Just think about it and its my two sids so no offense meant or taken.

[Bogre]

I think a big problem is that so much of the crap hunters/gatherers pull in is just not worthwhile to players. Especially plants. What's the point in buying a 200 sid flower from another PC when you can buy something that works exactly the same for 5-10 sids? This little bit of moss/skull/bone/wood isn't worth much to crafters, but there's a merchant in -x- who will buy it for lots.

Another problem is - it's much, much more convenient to sell to NPC merchants than PC merchants. When you have 5 gurth shell weighing you down, the path of least resistance is to sell them all to the raw goods vendor rather than waiting around for the one PC who wants them to be around. If PC merchants could have stalls it might ameliorate that, but it'd be painful coding what they wanted to buy/sell.

[Maso]

I really don't have an issue with players hoarding shit...if that's what makes them happy. I think there should be more garbage piles around though, I know there are plenty in 'Nak...but elsewhere? I can't get my thoughts straight today.

More apartments! Yeah! Zalanthas!