Furthering commerce and trade on Zalanthas

[Barzalene]

I like  Cutthroat and Law & Order's suggestions.

[palomar]

Allow templars more leash to shakedown and "tax" indys without political influence. Indys might need to bribe templars or organizations for protection.

There is already room for this in both city-states (and in Luir's, if you switch "templar" for "Kuraci"). It also happens to some extent, but I'd like to see more interest from the GMH than just random templar-taxing of seemingly wealthy indy merchants. By GMH interest I mean that if they catch wind of some indy dude making thousands of coin crafting the GMH kind of goods, they should raise their concern with the powers that be. GMHs don't like missing out on profits.

That kind of GMH reaction and PC-to-PC interaction creates conflict and potentially plots. Over-taxation by templar PCs for the sake of it will probably just lead to frustration among the targeted players. Part of being a templar/noble/GMH rep is to create/enable/lead, not to push people away.

[williamson]

If someone could weigh in on how much money is acceptable for an indie to make, that would be nice.

If a new player found this thread, we wouldn't want them to think they are doing something wrong by selling stacks of five items to npc shopkeepers.

There is nothing wrong with making too much money. Additionally, as long as an economy exists, you cannot control it. Capitalism wins. I think the point is that there should be more incentive to join the GMHs and that you shouldn't make too much coin by spam crafting. You can usually make a lot more money by stealing and killing than you can by trading. However, they're two ways of making money have a lot of drawbacks. Making a lot of money is fine, even if you're an indy. For example, the last time I played a gypsy I sold someone a handful of lichen for a ton of sids by making false claims about it. I've also made huge bounties by assassinating people. The game simply needs a little tweak, not banking caps or more coded inhibitors.

[williamson]

If the problem of indie crafters flooding the markets is caused by a desire to amass wealth, a potentially good way to fix that would be to put a cap on bank account sizes. I think if Nenyuk was only willing to store up to (for the sake of argument) 10,000 of an indie's coins it would limit the desire to collect coins, force indies that desire wealth to work together and form those cool indie groups that pop up from time to time, and help establish that indies lack clout in society if Nenyuk doesn't want to waste the effort involved in keeping track of a mere indie's money. Indies that disregard the cap would have to carry the money or store it somewhere else, leaving them vulnerable to robbery, or actually buy stuff. Meanwhile clanned PCs would have higher caps, and nobles/templars/GMH family would have even higher caps or none at all.

When you die, Nenyuk keeps all your coins. I'd imagine they want fat bank accounts.

[Desertman]

Why not just have your respective city-state/outpost who are housing Nenyuk impose a tax on all balance inquiries, withdrawals and deposits for anyone who isn't an employee of a GMH or noble house?  Seems like that would take care of some of it.  People in Zalanthas should be living paycheck to paycheck without huge stockpiles of money at their disposal when they want it.  God, maybe it would put more coins in dead character's backpacks and in apartments to be burgled.  Would that be such a bad thing?  And make the tax rate so high that it's just almost, gosh, oppressive?  Nenyuk can't just sit on all the coin, let the God-Kings tax already.

So, in review:  high taxes for indie, no taxes for clannies.  There you have it.

Having made similar suggestions to the banking code in the past I can tell you that this is in general a frowned upon concept.

Why? I still don't know.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Krath, I don't think we should all be walking around on eggshells making sure we don't make too much money. :p

I don't mean to say that if you make more than a clanned character you should be ashamed of yourself.  However, if you make 10x as much as a clanned character, you probably should reconsider your playing habits.

I would think that would depend on a lot of things, actually. I can't even begin to guess how much the ever popular silky braies sell for, but I recall hearing someone brag once about a tailor pc of theirs making around 300 sid off of -1- item they sold. Now if you sell 10 items over the course of an in game month, I don't think that's exorbitant.

I think in the end it comes down to a question of how reasonable what your characters are doing is. And, tbh, I think that one of the biggest things that could be done to help all this would be to double all crafting delays. Because then you literally make twinking take twice as long, but someone who's not.... won't really have to worry about it so much. Double the delay on 5 items, barely noticeable, double the delay 50 items, irritating, but not bad, double the delay on 500 - *brain explodingly shitty*. Then, I've been in favor of increasing crafting delays while allowing you to send psi messages for... years now, really.

Even if you're only making 1 of these items per rl day, these 300 coin type items, over the course of 2 rl weeks, you've made more than 10x the amount a clanned pc makes.

Now imagine a merchant pc whose player spends 10 hours a day logged in making only a single item per rl day and doing that. And how far under average that actually is?

I think the solution would be a good combination of things, really, given time to think about it:

Increase crafting delays.
Increase clanned pay (as it is, even if you only log in for 1 IC day per RL day, in most places if you're not drinking the cheapest drink, you can't get a drink once an IC week on that)
Add in the 'account errors' for anyone not in a clan who accrues more than 10k sid in the bank. Yes it can happen now, but it's mostly manual and it's very sparing. I would like to see this more. 10k is worth more than the life of a commoner. Sorry.


I think if all those were altered, it would cause people to craft fewer things even in spamcrafting sessions (lowering sid for indies), give clans more appeal and at least allow clanned pcs to get a drink once a week without resorting to that piss warm ale, and keep people's sid to more realistic levels for those without huge organizations to back them. In fact, not having huge organizations with a number of political ties to back them regularly screws over tribals and is a part of -why- they don't use the banks, so I think that would be a very -good- reflection of the game world's realities and improve things a -lot-.

[Twilight]

Independents should be able to make more than clanned, following conventional financial theory.  They are taking more risk, rationally they should be getting more reward.  First, they have to actually make a profit, not just put in some time.  They have more risk from a political perspective.  If they are travelling, or gathering their own materials, that is typically more risk.  The living quarters they have access to have more risk associated with them than secure clan compounds.  They have more risk because they don't own the monopoly on their respective goods.  And on and on.  They definately should have the potential to be making more than a GMH employee.

I think it would be neat if GMH PC leaders got an automated list every week from the mud that listed out the sdesc of everyone who sold over, lets say 10, items to one of their shops in the region they are responsible for in the last week.  Just a sdesc, a number of items, and how much sid the GMH forked over for those items.  Not a list of everyone, just a list of those people that did it frequently enough to catch the House's attention.

[Marauder Moe]

Krath, I don't think we should all be walking around on eggshells making sure we don't make too much money. :p

I don't mean to say that if you make more than a clanned character you should be ashamed of yourself.  However, if you make 10x as much as a clanned character, you probably should reconsider your playing habits.

I would think that would depend on a lot of things, actually. I can't even begin to guess how much the ever popular silky braies sell for, but I recall hearing someone brag once about a tailor pc of theirs making around 300 sid off of -1- item they sold. Now if you sell 10 items over the course of an in game month, I don't think that's exorbitant.

Yes it is.  3000 coins a month is a lot of money.  How effecient your crafting recipes are doesn't excuse it.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Krath, I don't think we should all be walking around on eggshells making sure we don't make too much money. :p

I don't mean to say that if you make more than a clanned character you should be ashamed of yourself.  However, if you make 10x as much as a clanned character, you probably should reconsider your playing habits.

I would think that would depend on a lot of things, actually. I can't even begin to guess how much the ever popular silky braies sell for, but I recall hearing someone brag once about a tailor pc of theirs making around 300 sid off of -1- item they sold. Now if you sell 10 items over the course of an in game month, I don't think that's exorbitant.

Yes it is.  3000 coins a month is a lot of money.  How effecient your crafting recipes are doesn't excuse it.

And people who roleplay grebbers who go out and salt/pick cotton/whatever for 10 IC days a week, making an average of, let's say, 30 sid a day beyond the cost of food and water?

300 sid. Multiply that by the 14 RL days in 2 weeks. 4200 sid.

And that's taking a break at dusk, going out at dawn or early morning, RPing realistically through the course of the IC day and just simply doing what your PC would do if they were a grebber/miner/salter/etc.

It really is not exorbitant. It depends highly on what you play, how much you play, and so on.

You don't even -need- to craft anything to make that much. You can do automated jobs and make that much if you have high enough play times. And I don't think that capping it all back to try and scale everything to what someone in a clan makes is the appropriate way to handle it when the clans don't just pay in coins but in food, water, shelter, and political protection as well as possible bonuses.

[Marauder Moe]

I don't reallly care which automated game system you used to get that money.  It's still a lot.

(Also, you do realize that in your example, that person is playing 15 hours per RL day, right?  You really think that's not ridiculous?)

[greasygemo]

Well if 3000 coins a month is a lot of money then how come making 5 to 10 of certain items can earn it?

The problem seems to lie more with the fact that, who wants to rp that they took a whole month to make one valuable item or two, then go try and sell it only to find a couple people made 500 five Sid pairs of pants and sold all the shops out.

It doesnt make sense that a shop would pour our coins on trash then when that elegant, beaded and ruffled azure-feathered lace gown comes in its like, sorry, we bought a hundred pairs of beige pants. No dice.

Im all for junk shops.

Also, im all for IC enforcement of merchant licenses and possible rules.

What about a limit on number of items that can be sold by a pc in any given shop?
If people are abusing by spamming barter everywhere, setting NPC shops with a timer might break it up without forcing staff to waste time policing the stores.

Say three items then shopkeep says, "Hey, im trying to run a business here. I think we're done for today."

[bcw81]

Obviously what we need here are more tiny outposts throughout the Known to crop up with small, specialized markets like Cenyr. I know we used to have things like this way back when, back when we still had Mal Krian, but now that we have a rising number of players maybe we can get some of them back?

[Marauder Moe]

Well if 3000 coins a month is a lot of money then how come making 5 to 10 of certain items can earn it?

Nail, head?

[AmandaGreathouse]

I don't reallly care which automated game system you used to get that money.  It's still a lot.

(Also, you do realize that in your example, that person is playing 15 hours per RL day, right?  You really think that's not ridiculous?)

You are XX years, 1 months, and 131 days old,


You have been playing for 10 days and 5 hours.

So... in a little over 21 days.... 10 days 5 hours.

Yeah. I'm unemployed and not in school. It's ridiculous, but not as far-fetched as you might think.

I'm sure it might -seem- like a lot of money, until you get into the very simple:

Alright, 30 coins. Take 10 off for the cheapest drink in the bar. 10 IC days a week. That's 100 sid per IC week.

x14

So that's 1400 sid just in ale to have a single one of the cheapest drink in that amount of time after you kick your feet up at the end of the day.

No, it's really not that much.

If you were playing, say, 2 hours a day, yes, that would be a ridiculous fuckload of sid.

But I can tell you from experience 'a lot' depends a lot on how much time you spend logged in.

[Booya]

I don't think that capping it all back to try and scale everything to what someone in a clan makes is the appropriate way to handle it when the clans don't just pay in coins but in food, water, shelter, and political protection as well as possible bonuses.

Except your indie can still sell to other PCs, and so can still become rich. A clanned PC can't unless they're breaking rules and risking their cushty place.

The problem seems to lie more with the fact that, who wants to rp that they took a whole month to make one valuable item or two, then go try and sell it only to find a couple people made 500 five Sid pairs of pants and sold all the shops out.

It doesnt make sense that a shop would pour our coins on trash then when that elegant, beaded and ruffled azure-feathered lace gown comes in its like, sorry, we bought a hundred pairs of beige pants. No dice.

If you were pretty much guaranteed the NPC would buy your ruffled dress, because you hadn't made all your personal allowance with beige pants, that would work wouldn't it?

If people are worried about having a surplus of gear that they've made to practice on, you can always junk what you make anyway, pretending there was a tear or wonky hem or something.

[Withered Ocotillo]

So this thread appears to have degenerated into a debate on how much money a PC can make before he is responsible for ruining the economy for other players.

Once a staff member tells the community that players are a major part of the problem with the economy, could it have gone in any other direction?

[RogueGunslinger]

Staff never said that. They said they were looking into it. As for how the discussion devolved into a debate on indies and hunter making to much coin compared to clanned people. Welcome to the GDB Hate-Cycle.

[Morrolan]

I think if Nenyuk was only willing to store up to (for the sake of argument) 10,000 of an indie's coins it would limit the desire to collect coins, force indies that desire wealth to work together and form those cool indie groups that pop up from time to time, and help establish that indies lack clout in society if Nenyuk doesn't want to waste the effort involved in keeping track of a mere indie's money.

I'm not sure the magic number is 10,000, but that does seem reasonable.

I think this would actually be a really good idea. No standard, personal bank accounts bigger that 10,000.

You can have more coin, but you have to store it somewhere. Or pay someone else to bank it for you. Or store it with your clan boss in the clan account.

[Molten Heart]

I think if Nenyuk was only willing to store up to (for the sake of argument) 10,000 of an indie's coins it would limit the desire to collect coins, force indies that desire wealth to work together and form those cool indie groups that pop up from time to time, and help establish that indies lack clout in society if Nenyuk doesn't want to waste the effort involved in keeping track of a mere indie's money.

I'm not sure the magic number is 10,000, but that does seem reasonable.

I think this would actually be a really good idea. No standard, personal bank accounts bigger that 10,000.

You can have more coin, but you have to store it somewhere. Or pay someone else to bank it for you. Or store it with your clan boss in the clan account.

I was thinking of hiring a half-giant to carry it around, but then there's the need to hire a dwarf to follow him around to make sure the money doesn't get "lost".  Surely creating an upstart indy banking merchant house would have many more challenges.

[Marauder Moe]

But I can tell you from experience 'a lot' depends a lot on how much time you spend logged in.

Sorry, but it's still a lot.

Clannie Joe gets 300 coins a month no matter how much he plays.

[RogueGunslinger]

300? Lol. Some don't even give you that.

[Morrolan]

I was thinking of hiring a half-giant to carry it around, but then there's the need to hire a dwarf to follow him around to make sure the money doesn't get "lost".  Surely creating an upstart indy banking merchant house would have many more challenges.

You could always store your money with certain northside organizations. They could lend it out.

But that's neither here nor there. We're looking at more fundamental questions:

• Why do people want massive bank accounts?
• Is it good for the game economy and more generally, the game?

[Marauder Moe]

Speaking for myself, my characters that had large bank accounts primarily kept them for emergency bribes.  One of them felt the need to be able to bribe as high as a red robe at a moment's notice.

Large bank balances by themselves don't affect the game's "economy".  We don't have an economy.  For the most part, money just magickally appears and disappears with little accounting for it.

People who rapidly increase their bank accounts without appropriately elevating their social status are a problem.  In theory the social systems in the game could correct for that (taxes/bribes, theft, assassination) but it seems that they don't do a particularly great job of it and may need some more code and/or policy help.

EDIT: And when rapid income unreasonably stifles the livelihood of other players, that's a problem.

[Booya]

I'm not hating, I like playing Indies and having them around.  

I once played a sidekick to an Indie PC that worked the north/south trade route, as well as taking and filling orders from loads of PCs, and from all corners of the Known, it seemed like. They worked to try and ensure the Templars, Nobles and GMHs were happy, and had a caravan that was totally raidable, though unfortunately nobody did during my stint as sidekick.

It was great, and they were filthy rich.

[Delirium]

Lots of money: lots of money to spend on players (bribes, gifts, plots, PC purchases).

If you're just sitting on piles of money for no reason other than to have it, and you're not a dwarf with a related focus: USE YOUR 'SID.

Actual $$ amounts, meh, I've had over 80k, I've had characters who rarely topped 1k and if they did, felt insanely rich.

5-15k is a reasonable average for an established indie PC who has to frequently grease the wheels of the playerbase.