What if clans didn't give unlimited free food?

[Synthesis]

I think there needs to be some sort of serious negative you take IC'ly for selling items off of the shopkeeper NPC in the backroom.

There needs to be some sort of measurable and meaningful negative associated with going that route so that players are naturally pushed towards marketing items they have crafted themselves.

If there is no negative to selling directly off of the shopkeeper NPC instead of using your hunters and crafters...there should at least be no/minimal gain to doing it. (Much less gain than if you DID use PC hunters and crafters.)

How about this system?

1) You don't have a crafter or hunters available to make Lord McFluffypants his diamond greatsword.
2) You go to the NPC shopkeeper and buy a diamond greatsword off of him for 18,000 coins.
3) You deliver the diamond greatsword to Lord Mcfluffypants.
4) You deposit 18,000 coins back into your personal account.

With this system you do not make any profit off of using the shopkeeper NPC to fill orders.

You can still fill the orders. You can still bypass hassling staff to load the items. You can still bypass having to deal with Lord McFluffypants hassling you constantly like a vending machine.

What you can't do is profit from going the easy route.

YOUR crew did not craft this item. YOUR crew did not pull in the materials.

All you did was deliver the item to the client on behalf of House Salarr for another (VNPC) crew.

The only profit you stand to make is if Lord Mcfluffypants decides to tip you. Your other profit is also that you just made Lord Mcfluffypants happy with you, so you made a good political contact.

Now, if you DO have good hunters and crafters in your staff because you are doing well as a leader and Lord Mcfluffypants DOES buy a diamond greatsword from you that YOUR crew did craft....you get all of the normal profits and everyone is happy.



That seems like a pretty good incentive system to me.

All of the negatives regarding staff being hassled are gone. All of the negatives regarding not being able to fill orders quickly is gone.

You have a measurable positive for using PC crafters and hunters to fill orders. (Actual IC profit.)

Eh, technically the production cost to your GMH is more or less the same, whether the item is loaded on an NPC or whether "your crew" got the loot.

I don't see why the GMH upper-level management would let you keep more of the profit for yourself, just because "your crew" got the shit, as opposed to a vNPC crew, unless "your crew" is some sort of crack-squad of hunters that is uniquely capable of grebbing otherwise impossible-to-find items.  And if that's the case, the item produced from said impossible-to-find items shouldn't simply be loaded into an NPC shopkeeper's inventory in the first place.

[Molten Heart]

Clans should give free and unlimited food only to those members of their clans that are entirely wrapped up in plots that keep them from realistically taking care of their characters basic needs (food/water). Leave those jobs (cooking/hunting/growing food) for the npcs/vnpcs and the PCs can spend their time taking care of the fun business.

Who wants to do all the maintenance work if there's cool stuff happening?

[bcw81]

Nope, we're not doing a flame war guys. Sorry.

I've moderated some posts for this thread. Please keep it civil.

[Desertman]

I think there needs to be some sort of serious negative you take IC'ly for selling items off of the shopkeeper NPC in the backroom.

There needs to be some sort of measurable and meaningful negative associated with going that route so that players are naturally pushed towards marketing items they have crafted themselves.

If there is no negative to selling directly off of the shopkeeper NPC instead of using your hunters and crafters...there should at least be no/minimal gain to doing it. (Much less gain than if you DID use PC hunters and crafters.)

How about this system?

1) You don't have a crafter or hunters available to make Lord McFluffypants his diamond greatsword.
2) You go to the NPC shopkeeper and buy a diamond greatsword off of him for 18,000 coins.
3) You deliver the diamond greatsword to Lord Mcfluffypants.
4) You deposit 18,000 coins back into your personal account.

With this system you do not make any profit off of using the shopkeeper NPC to fill orders.

You can still fill the orders. You can still bypass hassling staff to load the items. You can still bypass having to deal with Lord McFluffypants hassling you constantly like a vending machine.

What you can't do is profit from going the easy route.

YOUR crew did not craft this item. YOUR crew did not pull in the materials.

All you did was deliver the item to the client on behalf of House Salarr for another (VNPC) crew.

The only profit you stand to make is if Lord Mcfluffypants decides to tip you. Your other profit is also that you just made Lord Mcfluffypants happy with you, so you made a good political contact.

Now, if you DO have good hunters and crafters in your staff because you are doing well as a leader and Lord Mcfluffypants DOES buy a diamond greatsword from you that YOUR crew did craft....you get all of the normal profits and everyone is happy.



That seems like a pretty good incentive system to me.

All of the negatives regarding staff being hassled are gone. All of the negatives regarding not being able to fill orders quickly is gone.

You have a measurable positive for using PC crafters and hunters to fill orders. (Actual IC profit.)

Eh, technically the production cost to your GMH is more or less the same, whether the item is loaded on an NPC or whether "your crew" got the loot.

I don't see why the GMH upper-level management would let you keep more of the profit for yourself, just because "your crew" got the shit, as opposed to a vNPC crew, unless "your crew" is some sort of crack-squad of hunters that is uniquely capable of grebbing otherwise impossible-to-find items.  And if that's the case, the item produced from said impossible-to-find items shouldn't simply be loaded into an NPC shopkeeper's inventory in the first place.

You don't keep more of the profit. You keep the same profit you would keep with the current system.

The only change here is you don't keep ANY profit for using the NPC shopkeeper.

[Nyr]

Seems to be mostly circular arguments here now so I'll go ahead and lock this.

Recap 1:  We could make some changes to how cooks work.  No, it is not that easy.  Starting out a sentence with "why not just" does not make it easy.  It's not a bad idea, it just isn't something that is a priority or something that can be done easily.

Recap 2:  We do still trust players to appropriately handle the proposed NPC merchants with stuff on them as we mentioned earlier when we said we were going to implement it.