Furthering commerce and trade on Zalanthas

[Patuk]

I don't want to come right out and say that there's some really suspicious stuff going on based on a few variables (I'd have to dig deeper and get more data), but there are a few people that are using certain commands at an order of magnitude higher than randomly selected players on at the same time (within a very short period of time, at that).

[Barsook]

You guys don't need an auction house to have an auction. Make your stuff, announce it in bars, and voila. Auction. It's far better to do it all IC.

[Desertman]

Hey yo, Nyr, my main man, it seems staff has really been looking at these economic "opportunities for improvement", and might be tossing around some ideas for making some changes to better the game.

I don't suppose you might want to leak a little bit of the inside info on maybe sort of what could possibly be getting taken into consideration at this time as far as potential updates/changes?

Thx, your one true love, Desertman.

[Maso]

It seems unfair to imply that there are '0' legit merchants! One person shouldn't be able to flood the market of a massive city anyway...

Also, I tried once to do the going to one area, getting stuff and taking it far far away to another place to sell it thing. It didn't go well. My dude rode all the way North (was a big deal for him) and came back with a log and 6 branches to sell in Allanak. Couldn't sell them to any NPC's in Allanak or Red Storm (because they were all at max). Managed to sell two branches to a PC (tried to sell to a LOT of PC's)...It was really pretty fail.

Also...singlehandedly crafting 100 of something is really not that much of a big deal. Have you ever been on Etsy? Or made your own stuff IRL? I'm not talking about making 100 beds...or big things. But a 100 small things - not really that much of a big deal.

Personally, I'd rather be able to sell more stuff, but get considerably less for it (like just enough to break even or whatever). It would just be more satisfying.

It seems an issue that's a bit all over the place...like there are flaws all over. There isn't really one solution. And blaming it on the players for just trying to do their best with whatever scenario seems unfair. It's a vicious cycle anyway. People flood the market because they've had to sit on their stuff for RL weeks because someone else flooded the market last time...and on it goes. I don't want to see it become easier for Indie merchants to make money, but it would be nice to see them be able to complete the intended cycle of their function (buy - make - sell).

The same kind of applies to the 'black silk braies' situation, which is there were a few random items that could make a merchant a bucket load of coin if they sold it to the right person. This was a definite flaw, however the flip side of the coin was that the rest of the stuff they could craft could (/can) only be sold at a loss.

[Desertman]

It seems unfair to imply that there are '0' legit merchants! One person shouldn't be able to flood the market of a massive city anyway...

Also, I tried once to do the going to one area, getting stuff and taking it far far away to another place to sell it thing. It didn't go well. My dude rode all the way North (was a big deal for him) and came back with a log and 6 branches to sell in Allanak. Couldn't sell them to any NPC's in Allanak or Red Storm (because they were all at max). Managed to sell two branches to a PC (tried to sell to a LOT of PC's)...It was really pretty fail.

I highly recommend creating your market before you attempt to take advantage of said market.

For example, get someone to order branches and logs from you IG before you travel across the world, risking life and limb, to gather logs and branches hoping to find a buyer after the fact.

I see your point and agree it seems like that would be a pretty easy sale after the fact, but, there isn't really anyone to blame here. If I go kill beetles, and no one wants my beetle shell, maybe I should have got someone to order beetle shells before I went hunting. *shrug*

[Nyr]

It seems unfair to imply that there are '0' legit merchants! One person shouldn't be able to flood the market of a massive city anyway...

I didn't say there were 0 legit merchants.  I was saying that there are 0 merchants with any appreciable amount of 'sid that got that 'sid by planning trade routes and figuring out pricing and doing commodities/crafted goods trading.  And you're right, one person shouldn't be able to flood the market of a massive city anyway, but that could be what is happening, and that in turn could affect all other PCs.

Also, I tried once to do the going to one area, getting stuff and taking it far far away to another place to sell it thing. It didn't go well. My dude rode all the way North (was a big deal for him) and came back with a log and 6 branches to sell in Allanak. Couldn't sell them to any NPC's in Allanak or Red Storm (because they were all at max). Managed to sell two branches to a PC (tried to sell to a LOT of PC's)...It was really pretty fail.

See above point, and also previous points about clanned people having more opportunities to handle this than not.  Additionally, if you just grab a bunch of stuff and take it far away without checking the market (again we're back to looking at not just the NPC market, but the virtual market and the PC market), you're gonna have a bad time.

Also...singlehandedly crafting 100 of something is really not that much of a big deal. Have you ever been on Etsy? Or made your own stuff IRL? I'm not talking about making 100 beds...or big things. But a 100 small things - not really that much of a big deal.

I'm struggling to thing of one small thing that one could create in real life that could be hand-made, starting from raw materials, created by one person, all using primitive hand tools only, and produced at a breakneck pace in order to have 100 over a short time period...and it not be made out of paper and created with scissors and glue.

And blaming it on the players for just trying to do their best with whatever scenario seems unfair.

I'm not blaming it on all players, nor am I blaming this entirely on players, as I said we were looking at tweaking the system.  I am, however, definitely going to point a finger at the ones that are exploiting it. 

I'm not talking about people that make about 20 or even 50 offers vs 5 to 10 barters over 48 hours.  I'm talking about people that make about 500 or even 800 offers vs 100 to 200 barters over that same 48 RL hour period.  The worst offender is crafting upwards of 500 items in that same time frame.  The ranger I'll have to look at more closely and weigh out exactly how much is being killed/skinned, but it's not looking pretty either.

It's a vicious cycle anyway.

When you've got people going beyond roleplay to maxing their IG bank accounts as quickly as possible, you're talking about a vicious cycle for everyone else.  Those few are having a blast.

[Dalmeth]

Well, you're close to right, but not quite.  We do have tools to identify that, which is why I said what I said (there are a handful that make too much money without the social and political stuff to back it up).  Everyone else is scattered in enough of a range that I don't see cause for alarm.

There are valid points here--if one learns how the system works and exploits that to a great extent (and I would say that it is exploitation in most cases--people just hoarding things and selling them and crafting things and selling them solely to make money for some reason that seems vague to observing staff), some people will end up making that particular "part" of the game (selling to NPCs) more difficult for other PCs that want to dabble in it.  Those few that abuse that system and flaunt their indie wealth by hogging more than their share of apartments and spend their idle time spamcrafting into the wee hours of the morning to eke out sales all the day (while you, a much better roleplayer, can barely find a place to sell your single crafted chest) can just plain piss you off.  Here you are trying to eke out a living with your PC playing a concept that you enjoy...and this asshole (whom you assume is there, you know it 'cause you see them out there being a jerk, and if they're doing it and you see them, well, there have to be others) is just piddling away.

The thing is, they aren't really exploiting the system.  They are using it as designed.  You call it an exploit because it isn't functioning as you want, but you would need to redesign the system to get it to function as such.  All you do by adding more restrictions and regulations is make it more complicated to participate, and thus exclude some part of the population from participating.

By the way, getting the coin from the merchants technically counts as social/political support.  So any attempts to limit these money-hogs is more akin to spanking a hamster caught in a cage too small for it.

Lastly, building hundreds of new NPCs and hundreds of new shop files is definitely not the solution for shops--holy cow!

My attempt in my previous post was to liken the relationship between PCs and NPC shops to the modern discussion of password encryption algorithms.

You keep telling people to make their passwords more complicated before they can gain full access, in the hopes of getting less participants at the higher levels, but you also squeeze the amount of people willing to participate at all.  What you really need to do is just get a better system that requires more footwork to crack.  Because the current system is made to be convenient and facilitative, there will always be someone who will help themselves because people don't like making their lives genuinely complicated.

The only way you can do that is to add more shops, and if you randomize their availability, you add further necessary footwork.  

In the interim, though...would it kill you to not make as much money as you or your PC desires by selling crafted stuff to NPCs?  That's what it looks like this is boiling down to.  You can make money in various ways in Zalanthas and only one of those ways is to sell crafted stuff to NPCs; there are many other ways to make 'sid in Zalanthas without worrying about quotas in shops or quotas with regards to a certain script or two.  You can't buy everything you want whenever you want to; you can't sell everything you want whenever you want to.

I've done this.  It's not fun.

What do you do all the time you're not crafting?  Do you go out and buy drinks?  At 200 'sids per in-game month, most jobs can't handle more than five or six.  Drinking with your friends and, god forbid, buying food from the taverns can drop your coinpurse much faster, leaving you to spend four or five hundred coins in a single RL night of play.

And none of the, "jobs," around town pay out that well.

Worse yet, you have nothing to talk about.  You're doing nothing, afterall, so you have no news to report, no new opinions on anything because you haven't experienced anything new.  Even if you've been grebbing salt or digging clay all day, it's just been mindless drudgery.  Worse yet, mindless drudgery where you have to fear some staff member is going to peer over your shoulder and say you're not RPing enough.

So you have to emote, too?  Damn.  You want me to teach you what the game world is just so I can justify using the game systems?  That sounds less like being a player of a game and more like being a monk.

I can go be a monk in real life if I want.  They have support groups for that.  It'll be less effort.

[Withered Ocotillo]

You guys don't need an auction house to have an auction. Make your stuff, announce it in bars, and voila. Auction. It's far better to do it all IC.

An NPC auctioneer is no less IC than an NPC barkeeper serving drinks or a Salarr NPC merchant selling weapons. If you actually meant "in person" instead of "IC", then I will say that yes, it's far easier to instinctively judge any player action as "better" if translates to an immediate RP scene. However, I would argue that the longevity and 24hr availability of player-managed shopkeeper/NPCs creates a much stronger presence for said PC or clan in the game on a constant basis, and that the NPC or establishment gradually becomes a strong community magnet. The 1+ hour RP scene of selling off some items to the 10+ people logged in and present at the roleplay event is good, and yet that clan presence can still continue after the auction scene, thanks to the continuous IC sales presence and representation through an NPC shopkeeper that is managed by the players.

The idea of a "live" auction and NPC auction do not have to be at odds with each other. I believe player-loaded NPC establishments that represent a person or clan can enhance the amount of live events that revolve around the owners. The automation essentially allows a particular clan to have a constant "low" sales presence that is still powered by PCs despite automation, and then when the PCs are online, they create a "high" presence. The current way it works in Arm is that a clan's PC-driven sales presence is "off" when key PCs are not online (or not nearby), and "on" when those PCs are online or nearby. The automated auction house idea originally proposed at the start of this thread is not something I believe would have a negative impact on RP opportunities.

[Nyr]

The thing is, they aren't really exploiting the system.  They are using it as designed.  You call it an exploit because it isn't functioning as you want, but you would need to redesign the system to get it to function as such.  All you do by adding more restrictions and regulations is make it more complicated to participate, and thus exclude some part of the population from participating.

I guess you could use that same argument against people sleeping off critical wounds just after combat and not roleplaying the effects of trauma.  "They aren't exploiting the system, they are using it as designed."

We see that as a problem and we are going to address it.  I've already said several times that we are looking at tweaking the virtual economy system, but that comes after reviewing how these people "use the current system as designed."

By the way, getting the coin from the merchants technically counts as social/political support.  So any attempts to limit these money-hogs is more akin to spanking a hamster caught in a cage too small for it.

  I am trying to get your point here but not quite seeing it.

My attempt in my previous post was to liken the relationship between PCs and NPC shops to the modern discussion of password encryption algorithms.

  Okay...I'm trying to get your point here, but also not quite seeing it.

In the interim, though...would it kill you to not make as much money as you or your PC desires by selling crafted stuff to NPCs?  That's what it looks like this is boiling down to.  You can make money in various ways in Zalanthas and only one of those ways is to sell crafted stuff to NPCs; there are many other ways to make 'sid in Zalanthas without worrying about quotas in shops or quotas with regards to a certain script or two.  You can't buy everything you want whenever you want to; you can't sell everything you want whenever you want to.

I've done this.  It's not fun.

I'm sorry to hear that.  What did you do exactly, and why did you find it not fun?  Your examples went off into a theoretical land that seems a bit incredible and unbelievable.

[Twilight]

I think live auctions would work better if mastercrafting supported person-specific recipes.  As it is, the only way to keep a recipe safe from duplication is to make it one time, or to be a member of a clan and have it be a clan recipe.  Otherwise, a person buys it...then replicates it.  Whereas it would be much more doable to have effective auctions by tweaking the crafting code, so that a recipe could be linked to a specific character.  The PC could then build up a handful of recipes...and have auctions for items only they could make, or even once word gets out, having folks come to them directly for a specific item.

Even better if the system could have a way of eventually making those recipes into public ones at some point after that character dies, rather than having them disappear.

[Old Kank]

Give templars access to other characters' Nenyuk account info.  I think the problem will sort itself out in no time.

On a more serious note, I think it would be helpful to flag items by region, and hit them hard there.  For example, gurth shells and silk shirts should be worthless in Tuluk but valueable in Allanak, and vice versa for jozhal skins and stone lanterns.  There's a system for this used for certain material types already, but it seems like being able to narrow it down based on geographic origin might be necessary at this point.

[BuNutzCola]

I'm not talking about people that make about 20 or even 50 offers vs 5 to 10 barters over 48 hours.  I'm talking about people that make about 500 or even 800 offers vs 100 to 200 barters over that same 48 RL hour period. The worst offender is crafting upwards of 500 items in that same time frame.  The ranger I'll have to look at more closely and weigh out exactly how much is being killed/skinned, but it's not looking pretty either.

o.O

[Sav]

We're not counting PCs that are selling a few things but obsessively bartering until the shopkeeper gives up and kicks them out, right?

offer thing 25
I'll buy the thing for 20 coins.
offer thing 24
Let's keep the price at 20, shall we?
offer thing 23
Let's keep the price at 20, shall we?
offer thing 22
The shopkeeper is getting pretty pissed at you, bro.
offer thing 21
Let's keep the price at 20, shall we?
OFFER THING 21
The shopkeeper has punched you in the face. You deserved it.

[Erythil]

Hmm, somewhere along the lines they changed the merchant guild helpfile.  And here I was, trying to have my merchants buy in bulk in one place, and sell in bulk in a different place, trying to make unhealthy amounts of profit, and be one of the typically richest types of characters in the game.

Guess I need to update my modus operandi.

Number of players playing merchants that got rich doing this :  0.

Number of players playing merchants that got rich spamcrafting and spamselling in their own city and flooding the market right after a reboot (and in general, just flooding the markets):  a number greater than 0 and less than 5.
Number of players playing rangers that got rich spamkilling, spamskinning, and spamselling back in their city by flooding the markets right after a reboot (and in general, just flooding the markets):  a number greater than 0 and less than 5.

I'll just say that my merchant PC made an incredibly large amount of money working certain trade routes, but there were only 2 trade routes of any reliability that I could discover, and eventually it became apparent that it was too risky for the profit when compared to the money that could be made staying put.  I found trade routes a really fun concept and I'd like to see the buy low/sell high gameplay be more developed.  This would also have some effect on limiting the astronomical sums that accumulate to indies alone, as they'd have to hire people to escort them, and would also make banditry more profitable, as they'd have to actually have caravans laden with goods.  I'd talk specifics about what worked where, but I'm assuming that's information better kept quiet even if we don't think it's working well.

[Ben Arie]

I would like to comment on a few aspects of playing a merchant, which Dalmeth has mentioned in a previous post, and point out a solution that fits in the game world.

First of all, this is the specific quote that got me thinking.

What do you do all the time you're not crafting?  Do you go out and buy drinks?  At 200 'sids per in-game month, most jobs can't handle more than five or six.  Drinking with your friends and, god forbid, buying food from the taverns can drop your coinpurse much faster, leaving you to spend four or five hundred coins in a single RL night of play.

Playing in the city-states, I've been in the popular taverns a lot, and I consider them a major feature in the game. I've seen merchants crafting while sitting at bars, and I think this makes perfect sense in relatively civilized -- and clean -- locales, as you not only get to watch and participate in RP, which makes emotes a reasonable expectation, but it's also incredibly easy to get orders as a merchant, as you showcase your abilities, which can trigger your PC to do cross-world trips for special orders that both make sense IC and earn you some decent coin.

In my opinion, it makes sense that a merchant would hang around heavily-trafficked places, like the vNPCs in the Red Sun Commons do, for example. My mental image of a merchant isn't that of someone who sits in a sound-proof chamber all day, mass-crafting cheap stuff, or dedicating his life to creating masterpieces like they're the next Urist McMoodStricken.

Of course, you shouldn't do cross-world trips unless the order covers the expenses, and still leaves you with a reasonable profit. If Amos from Allanak wants no more than 5 branches from the Grey Forest, maybe to scratch his back with them, then it should be fairly normal to expect plenty of 'sid for such an indulgence. It's just the way Zalanthas works.

As for the issue of money, if you don't have a lot of 'sid from your crafts, you can't realistically indulge in an expensive spiced wine or two each IG night. That is not to say that you won't be able to eventually, when your products have enough quality craftsmanship put into them, and if you really want to, you can just buy that bottle of wine just once, keep it after drinking it's contents, and whenever you want to order it from the bartender, emote it and hold it in your hand, then use it just like any other RP prop. That should also give you the option to use it as an impromptu weapon, but if you don't -want- to, and your are exceptionally cheap, you can just get by with a virtual drink.

The "tdesc", "feel", and "change mood" commands are your friends. This game encourages you to get around coded constraints with RP, which spurs creativity.

In conclusion, hanging around in heavily-traficked but -civilized- areas when crafting, and actively participating in RP with others, is a double-edged sword for aspiring merchant PCs.

[Barzalene]

Hmm, somewhere along the lines they changed the merchant guild helpfile.  And here I was, trying to have my merchants buy in bulk in one place, and sell in bulk in a different place, trying to make unhealthy amounts of profit, and be one of the typically richest types of characters in the game.

Guess I need to update my modus operandi.

Number of players playing merchants that got rich doing this :  0.

Number of players playing merchants that got rich spamcrafting and spamselling in their own city and flooding the market right after a reboot (and in general, just flooding the markets):  a number greater than 0 and less than 5.
Number of players playing rangers that got rich spamkilling, spamskinning, and spamselling back in their city by flooding the markets right after a reboot (and in general, just flooding the markets):  a number greater than 0 and less than 5.

I'll just say that my merchant PC made an incredibly large amount of money working certain trade routes, but there were only 2 trade routes of any reliability that I could discover, and eventually it became apparent that it was too risky for the profit when compared to the money that could be made staying put.  I found trade routes a really fun concept and I'd like to see the buy low/sell high gameplay be more developed.  This would also have some effect on limiting the astronomical sums that accumulate to indies alone, as they'd have to hire people to escort them, and would also make banditry more profitable, as they'd have to actually have caravans laden with goods.  I'd talk specifics about what worked where, but I'm assuming that's information better kept quiet even if we don't think it's working well.

This is one of the more exciting ideas.

[Withered Ocotillo]

By the way, getting the coin from the merchants technically counts as social/political support.  So any attempts to limit these money-hogs is more akin to spanking a hamster caught in a cage too small for it.

  I am trying to get your point here but not quite seeing it.

Basically, he is suggesting that players are supporting the economy by actively being a part of it with the shop code. If this isn't the case, then the shop code is not contributing to the economy, which is no fault of the players. So the point being made is:

the natural contribution to the shops made by players = their natural size (hamster)
the inherent limitations of the shop code to contribute to the player economy = the inadequacy of the cage to meet the hamster's natural size

Therefore, spanking the hamster for being too big for its cage is not going to make the cage any bigger, or the hamster any smaller. They simply are what they are, and the results of combining the two will always be the same.

[Maso]

Players -do- contribute to the PC economy through the shop code. The shops basically serve as a middleman for PC's who don't know each other, don't have playtime crossover etc. In an ideal world things would be being bought and sold frequently with a high turnover to allow for a faster paced economy. IMO.

[Nyr]

It is possible to accumulate wealth, occupy more than one apartment, contribute a negligible amount to the game economy, contribute a negligible amount to plots and other players, and simultaneously also create issues with other players in your area using NPC shops by flooding it with your stuff (or spamming up all of your shop-related commands at a rate that is 10 times higher than 95% of other players).

That is what we are seeing and that is what we have an issue with.

[Maso]

So! Items that get tatty and/or broken over time. Requiring those hoarders to spend more to replace them. Buy from the shops that they sell to. Etc etc. Thus they start to contribute to the economy again!

[Nyr]

Replace what?  The stuff they...crafted...from raw materials they already hoard?

[Maso]

Replace their tools, the things they are wearing etc. Meaning they spend money in shops...which while it wouldn't directly open up 'slots' for other player sales, it puts money back into those shops for others to be able to sell.

[Delirium]

Unless they just make those things themselves

While it can be frustrating from time to time, the only thing I'm really prepared to beg for is to do away with the open/closed hours on some of the shops.

It adds far more OOC inconvenience than it does IC realism (and it's clunky at best: you're STANDING RIGHT THERE, now take my sid please).

[Nyr]

We are dealing with two things.

1)  people exploiting/abusing things as is now
2)  tweaks to improve overall

We are looking at item 1 right now.
We will look at item 2 after that.  Or maybe in conjunction with that.

Ok?

[Nyr]

We might be able to do them in conjunction--just saying that we are definitely looking at both, to be clear.  I'm making sure it's also clear that there is such a thing as exploiting/abusing the shop code, just like you can do that to other stuff in the game.