The Out-of-Wack Economy

[number13]

Can we talk about some of the stranger things a PC can do in game to get money?

As it stands, a PC can take a leisurely stroll out the gate, spend a little bit of time spamming forage in a safe location (or just picking up a couple of different respawning items), and then wander back with objects that sell for absurd amounts to NPC merchants.  The NPC then vends these items at prices that no PC would ever pay.  It's also possible to take trips between one location and another, buying certain items for insanely low and selling for insanely high.

It's fine and good to be able to make coins via these methods, but the discrepancy between effort and amount earned is incredibly bad for PC interaction. Nine times out of ten, it to the benefit of a player to sell to an NPC merchant, rather than haggling out more interesting deals with other players. Not to mention, these sorts of activities make it a billion times more profitable to be an independent. There's no way that, say, an Allanaki noble living on his stipend alone can outspend even the laziest PC forager/crafter.

The two questions are: Is it an actual problem, or are things fine the way they are?

If things are not good, how can they be fixed? How much work is it to fix them?  Let's say a Foo-Fruit can be picked up easily, sells for 200 coins without haggling, and vends for 300 coins (a price no PC would pay for a 'free' object).  Would an effort at fixing all the prices for these (many, many) objects be too large a task?

[James de Monet]

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45280.0.html

[Fujikoma]

I don't know how other people play, but I've always preferred to sell the fruit of my grebbing to other players, it can give an excuse for interaction when there wouldn't otherwise be one. Also, vendors I've found tend to get filled up quick, only so much you can make before you're looking for a PC merchant to sell stuff to (even then, PC merchants, I've found, tend to pay a better price and highly appreciate large, bulk transactions)... Then again, I don't know where you're playing...

[Harmless]

Fix things out of whack one at a time, have templars and so on identify rich indies and tax them?

[Morgenes]

If you are aware of specific issues, report them via request.  Include specifics of where to get the items and how to make an insane profit on said items.

We will look at it and reply.

[X-D]

Meh, I am fine with that...gives my raiders somebody to raid.

No, I am not kidding...A good raider usually picks on unclanned and likely low skill PCs...grebbers are usually that and they make a good living.

Oh sure, you might go through a few grebbing PCs and never have a problem...but that means you are just the tregil nobody spotted...yet.

Same applies to the PCs making trips. If there is not a large sum of money to be made doing that, People will not...Think of the raiders man! Oh, and the gypsies...and thieves OH MY!
And Nenyuk...That banking house would go broke if it was not for the piles of grebber coin...For them grebbers  and cross country traders are likely the best investment.

[AmandaGreathouse]

Meh, I am fine with that...gives my raiders somebody to raid.

No, I am not kidding...A good raider usually picks on unclanned and likely low skill PCs...grebbers are usually that and they make a good living.

Oh sure, you might go through a few grebbing PCs and never have a problem...but that means you are just the tregil nobody spotted...yet.

Same applies to the PCs making trips. If there is not a large sum of money to be made doing that, People will not...Think of the raiders man!

I don't play raiders, but having had run ins with at least one of X-D's more infamous raiding pcs... I concur.

Also, there are possibly reasons in many of the cases you're thinking of for why they are the way that they are. When the thread that got linked earlier was open and active, I sent in info on a few items thinking they were overpriced or wonky. Only to be told the reasons -why- they weren't. And they made a lot of sense (thanks Nyr!). Couldn't hurt to put in a request, but I think you'll likely be pleasantly surprised in many of these cases at the thought that went into the pricing on them and the reasoning why it is what it is.

[number13]

Oh sure, you might go through a few grebbing PCs and never have a problem...but that means you are just the tregil nobody spotted...yet.

There's very safe places to greb up ridiculous amounts of salable items.

[X-D]

If you say so....Though unless you have found an apartment where you can forage salt or something....and even that is not safe.

Still, well dressed PCs are marks, Well dressed unclanned PCs are bigger marks...it matters not where they got the coin.

Besides, In the end, every PC in this game ends the same two ways and coin does not matter. 

BTW, I have successfully raided PCs in at least 3 different lawful taverns, several apartments. I have happily watched Templars shake down unclanned grebbers for 500+ coins just for the honor of bowing to them. I have seen wondrous cons by gypsies and elves sneak away with everything they could off some unclanned grebber in a tavern...while meanwhile some burgler was having a great time in the apartment.

After posting all this, I really do not think the economy is out of wack, I think it is nearly correctly balanced.

[number13]

Also, there are possibly reasons in many of the cases you're thinking of for why they are the way that they are. When the thread that got linked earlier was open and active, I sent in info on a few items thinking they were overpriced or wonky. Only to be told the reasons -why- they weren't. And they made a lot of sense (thanks Nyr!). Couldn't hurt to put in a request, but I think you'll likely be pleasantly surprised in many of these cases at the thought that went into the pricing on them and the reasoning why it is what it is.

Naw, I can already guess what the reasons are for the pricing for various items. But I think the standard should be, "Would a PC buy this item for close to this price?"

In many cases, the prices for weapons, armor, tools, and cures are actually reasonable. Some issues: objects of certain materials are wildly overpriced in one city state or the other, and most can already guess what I'm referring to. Personally, I think the premium tacked on it way, way too high, but that's just me.

The prices for certain objects would never be paid by a PC. Broadly, the NPC herblists wares are overpriced. It would be nice to be able to buy stuff from the herbalist to use for herbalistic thingies. But I never will, because most of the prices are inflated far beyond the value of what you can earn or do with the objects.

[number13]

If you say so....Though unless you have found an apartment where you can forage salt or something....and even that is not safe.

The location is safer than an apartment, assuming the raider is bowing to RP considerations.

edit: i'll just put in a request concerning this one particular location. I'm sure there's others.

[X-D]

Whenever I hear that I wonder if the grebber is bowing to the same considerations.

But no matter, In the long and short term, how much coin an indy/commoner has means very little....let them have at it, generally it is the newer players that take  advantage anyway.


Edit
That is the best bet anyway....There are places flagged wrong in game still, bugging or putting in a request tends to be helpful.

[Maso]

I'd like to be able to sell 150 Foo Fruit (my haul for the week, or the fortnight) for 2 'sid each. But since you can only sell Foo Fruit five times or even only once...if you are lucky...Then I guess I wanna sell it for 200 'sid. :/

[musashi]

My perspective:

The problem we always run into is that the more restrictive you make buying and selling things in the NPC market place in terms of price, or quantity ... the more you end up just pooping on the off peak and low play time people when what you wanted to do was poop on the people who are logged in a lot and spam selling.

I liked one idea I heard in a different thread, I think it was something Lizzie posted. Basically, have NPC vendors pay realistic rates for items, but only buy X number of them in a given time frame from each individual PC. So Bob can sell five, Amos can sell five, etc etc. Doesn't make perfect sense from a strictly IC perspective, but neither does the fact that some player characters are logged in more than others. -- I think that would go a long way to helping keep income levels of player characters proportionate with what their virtual counter parts should have.

[number13]

Ideally, as you sell Foo-Fruits in a particular city, the cost of Foo Fruits would decrease. Or as PCs buy Foo Fruits, the cost increases.  (Virtually, the vendors sell to each other and to NPCs, equalizing the price across a particular region). Off-peak would handle itself -- there would be less PCs buying, but also less PCs selling.

It would be a pretty big change to the vendor code, but there are probably ways of making it less painful. Like a variable for each item and each class of item (so that dumping Foo Fruits on a market also somewhat decreases the cost of meats, as there's more food to go around) that is multiplied with the base cost of the item.

So vendors could accept 150 Foo-Fruits, but by the time you're selling the 50th, the price has dropped dramatically, and will stay low until and unless PCs and virtual NPCs buy those 50 Foo Fruits.

[musashi]

The problem with that is that it does nothing to address the basic issue: Some people play for 1 hour a day, and some play for 6. The one playing for six is going to be the one to have the time to greb up tons off stuff, sell it till the price drops, and leave nothing but low prices for the off peakers/low play time people who log in after.

[Uberskaapie]

Whether or not a PC would pay for some item that they know OOC is easily available doesn't have anything to do with the IC economy.

When I started playing I was obsessed with trying to figure out the safest way to get the richest, but I (and many others) got over it once I realized that's not how you win this game. Exploits exist in armageddon - if/when the one you're referring to gets closed, there will still be other places to spam forage. Luckily, as a playerbase we don't all fall into that trap, otherwise everyone in Zalanthas would be a Foo Fruit Farmer. They're not.

[Maso]

Different maximums for different kinds of items. e.g. the craft shop is happy to have a 1000 feathers in stock, but they would only bothing having a couple of antique letterpress machines at any given time. No max per character...just enough to go around and more realistic pricing. If you want to make a living off grebbing fruit...then it's going to be slow, arduous and incredibly boring. Then digging up food goes back to being something poor and desperate or wild living people do. Ginka farming becomes a more attractive career.

It's not -just- about money. It's about satisfaction. There's nothing quite like the frustration of not being able to sell your hard earned stuff for anything at all.

[Fujikoma]

I'd like to say I really don't see a problem. That said, I'd also like to say I haven't been playing long and don't really know shit, well, except how to make some decent cash and some simple tactics for increasing the likelihood of survival (which I'm not sharing, because then they'd be less likely to work). In the end, it's not about the sid, it's about that special feeling your character gets when they mean something more to someone other than just being a fresh pair of boots. The cash is a side benefit.

In the end, if I'm understanding X-D correctly, if you run around flashing your cash and wearing all silks you're going to start to look like an attractive target, regardless of how safe your grebbing is. The risk/reward factor begins to slide towards the favorable side of the scale and eventually someone will separate you from the fruits of you labors by many different means, and it will probably get you killed without powerful allies. They needn't catch  you at work to do it.

It's a lesson I've learned on other muds, as well as could be learned in real life. Walk into a convenience store in an extremely poor neighborhood dressed nicely and flash a big, fat wad of cash without any backup, and if you can make it to your car you'll be lucky, but still terribly mistaken, because you will have been tempting fate.

Some of the neighborhoods I've lived in, people wouldn't give a second thought to giving you brain damage with a two-by-four or slitting your throat for some nice shoes they could sell or a small chunk of cash. But they generally don't bother eachother too much unless someone owes someone money because nobody has anything. Friendly enough people though, just know they'll have no problems knocking you over for being a big-shot. After a while I felt at home there, and a lot of people were looking out for me and ready to come to my aid if anyone started causing me problems.

[AreteX]

If you are out spam foraging in a location that is "safe" you are likely abusing the system a bit, am I right?  If the foraging location is "safe" and able to produce vasts amounts of 'sid you should report it to staff and let them decide what to do with it.

I think a key thing to do for all of us is to just play realistically.  Are you really going to take your beetle, load it up with bags of A and travel through dangerous sands, once every in game week(once a RL day or so) to sell off Bags of A for extra 'sid because the other city's merchants buy them for high profit?  You don't just up and ride from Allanak to Tuluk even if it is possible.  Are you a seasoned ranger?  Traveler?  Or just some grebber who knows some OOC stuff about stuff?  My character wouldn't have the first clue about Luirs, or Tuluk or Allanak, if they had never been before.  How would I even know what to sell and where?  What would even give me the idea in the first place to leave the only city I've ever known for some other city to sell some stuff... braving all manner of baddies.

I don't think there is a problem until someone abuses it and makes it a problem.  Stop selling so much stuff.  Make some 'sid.  Greb a bit... drink some at a tavern, but just stick to your character and what they would do even if you do know you could make OVER 9,000 'sid!

[Morrolan]

If you are out spam foraging in a location that is "safe" you are likely abusing the system a bit, am I right?  If the foraging location is "safe" and able to produce vasts amounts of 'sid you should report it to staff and let them decide what to do with it.

If a foraging location is "safe" that doesn't make it actually safe.

Just do a quick poll: how many grebbers have been doing it for 10 years IG. Not "virtual" grebbing, but actual grebbing.

[Hicksville Hoochie]

If you are out spam foraging in a location that is "safe" you are likely abusing the system a bit, am I right?  If the foraging location is "safe" and able to produce vasts amounts of 'sid you should report it to staff and let them decide what to do with it.

I think a key thing to do for all of us is to just play realistically.  Are you really going to take your beetle, load it up with bags of A and travel through dangerous sands, once every in game week(once a RL day or so) to sell off Bags of A for extra 'sid because the other city's merchants buy them for high profit?  You don't just up and ride from Allanak to Tuluk even if it is possible.  Are you a seasoned ranger?  Traveler?  Or just some grebber who knows some OOC stuff about stuff?  My character wouldn't have the first clue about Luirs, or Tuluk or Allanak, if they had never been before.  How would I even know what to sell and where?  What would even give me the idea in the first place to leave the only city I've ever known for some other city to sell some stuff... braving all manner of baddies.

I don't think there is a problem until someone abuses it and makes it a problem.  Stop selling so much stuff.  Make some 'sid.  Greb a bit... drink some at a tavern, but just stick to your character and what they would do even if you do know you could make OVER 9,000 'sid!

So much love for this post.

While I haven't personally witnessed real any abuse of the economy myself, and am not accusing anyone with my following words; I see enough on the forums to believe there might actually be a problem. The above post says so much on how to fix it. When you make a new PC, let yourself forget all that juicy stuff you know and learned from your last PC - the new PC isn't that PC, and more likely than not, knows nothing about those secret spots of uber-sid. And even if you must go back to it, make it a bit of an adventure for yourself - wander around a bit and miss it on purpose, come back an IG week later and maybe finally find it. Gear and riches are such a teensie part of the possible game experience here - the only way to truly "win" at Arma is to have a blast running well-played, fun characters until some filthy breed takes their boots.

[Potaje]

If by hinting the reference to items that are beyond most pc's willingness to pay for, I think the reason is simply that. Pc's are not meant to readily buy up such things with ease for both game balance and to reflect the special use of the item.

As the example of the herbalist, this shop offers many things that has great and very powerful uses for several guilds, both mundane and not.

Though you could get a lot of coin for such items, they do resale for much more. But in that, itself, makes sense. You get paid well for something you and others likely would not want everyone and their gortok having.

So what seems an unreasonable price is rather reasonable.

[chrisdcoulombe]

Things can be traded.

[Riya OniSenshi]

Things can be traded.

Especially food items.