There's a problem with money in the game

[Chettaman]

There's something wrong with your mom's money in the game.

[Revenant]

If you are earning 100,000 sid a month you should expect an email from staff asking you to detail the exploit you are using. 

I did this once, it wasn't fun (it was, however, justified ICly, he wanted to keep his significant other from hunting, but it turned out to be not about the coin, I still got account notes commenting on it, lol), so I stopped and found better goals and methods for my character that facilitated interaction. It wasn't an exploit, either.

[Malken]

If you are earning 100,000 sid a month you should expect an email from staff asking you to detail the exploit you are using. 

Sure, it's called ivory needles * 5 * 10 shops - any more questions boss? 

[Lizzie]

Re John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"

My unimportant commoner characters:
I try to bank at least 2000 sids. That's in case they get arrested, or become notable enough to gain an enemy that needs someone hired to whack. It's also in case whatever it is my character does for a living, is not doable for a period of time, and the rent has to get paid regardless.

I try to keep no less than 100 sids and no more than 500 sids on hand at all times.

Often I go over that 2000 sid bank, and in a couple of cases, getting to 5000, and even 10,000k, was an actual IC goal of a character. One of many goals, but still a goal. They each had different ideas of what it meant to be "rich" and being rich was a goal.

My important characters (clanned leaders, sponsored roles, special apps that had the means to amass ubersids, etc): generally worked toward maintaining 10,000 in the bank, usually kept between 400 and 800 sids on hand at any given moment.

Some things that would trip up those expectations/goals:
A grebber who gets stuck in continual sandstorms for multiple RL days and has to spend a lot of sids on wasted stable fees and water (since they don't know that there's a storm til they get there, and then they have to turn back).

Roleplay taking priority over utilizing coded skills - being in an "interesting" discussion/event in the city means my character won't be grebbing, and won't be chipping stone or laying silk out at a filthy bar or magicking items into magick items, or any other such thing. Sometimes I don't make use of "money-making skills" for RL days, and that means I have to use up some of the sids I have without earning replacement sids for awhile. See item #1 - having a bank of a couple thousand

Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say (or the other 3 are AFK and not even paying attention), I'll go to the moneymaking project, and make more money. This happens fairly often.

Renting an apartment that's loaded with sellable stuff that my PC doesn't have any personal use for. Instant riches, and my PC would have to be REALLY stupid to not take advantage of that. I do try and spread that kind of thing out - sell off a couple of rocks today, bring 2 of each rough sandcloth item tomorrow, sell off all the training weapons next week, find buyers for all the silk stuff two weeks later. The downside to that is that often, NPCs don't have the sids to pay out.

I really do prefer to sell to and buy from PCs but I have never met a PC who actually wanted to buy this stuff from another PC. In fact I've actually gone into shops wanting to buy an item - another PC would come in to sell the item - and that PC would just ignore me when I ask if I could buy it from them directly. It's like the selling, to them, is not part of roleplay, and they just want to do it and leave the shop so they can get to whatever else it is they're trying to do. LIke they expect selling stuff to be automated and are actually annoyed when someone wants to roleplay the experience.

I have actually tried to sell rubies and emeralds to a Kadian Merchant, or Agent (both, with different characters of mine) and was told they didn't need any. I would've sold them cheap, because the NPCs never can afford to pay out on them anyway so they were just sitting in a bag for RL months, usually. When PCs in leadership roles of merchant houses that make tons of money selling luxury items made out of these kinds of raw materials, say they don't need those raw materials, it really makes me wonder why I bother trying.

[Molten Heart]

The problem in game is there isn't enough cool things one can spend money on. A wealthy Salt Barron should be able to get their own private island fortress in the silt sea with vivaduan slave girls/rukkians slave boys to serve their needs.

[TheWanderer]

Oh. OH! OHHHHHHHHH! Vivaduan girls and rukkian boys do make sense. damn, that's hot

[Lizzie]

The problem in game is there isn't enough cool things one can spend money on. A wealthy Salt Barron should be able to get their own private island fortress in the silt sea with vivaduan slave girls/rukkians slave boys to serve their needs.

In contrast to my last post - and in response to this - I have had characters who wanted to spend LOTS of sids on things that are actually available in the game, but required a PC clan leader to provide it for them. And those PC clan leaders were rarely available, and usually forgot, and a full game-year later I had three times as much sids, and still didn't have the thing I wanted. And it wasn't a "special" item. Just a regular item that had to be loaded up on the clan NPC merchant (I know this, because I used to play a clan leader in that clan). Didn't matter which clan - Salarr, Kadius, and Kurac all gave me the same kind of treatment, with most of the characters I"ve had with tons of sids and eager to spend it on expensive stuff.

It's another reason why some PCs end up stupidly rich. They are saving up for just one fancy thing - that they know is "gettable" that the PC has promised will be available as soon as they come up with the sids. And then they put the order in - and the item never arrives. Meanwhile, they're still making coin, and it just keeps building up, and the things they WANT to spend it on, aren't showing up.

[ABoredLion]

Anatomical based choice of gicker class for better slaves? Noted. If only everyone didn't find them positively disgusting for the most part.

[Chettaman]

wish up, request tool more stupid things with your coin.

[Molten Heart]

Anatomical based choice of gicker class for better slaves? Noted. If only everyone didn't find them positively disgusting for the most part.

I added the gender difference using this song as a reference: http://www.armageddon.org/original/type/Songs/search/Ladies%20Love%20a%20Stone%20Mage

[John]

Re John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"

It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.

[Synthesis]

Re John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"

It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.

Yeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting.  I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.

You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either.  I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.

[Nyr]

Moderated a post.  Note that saying someone's a troll is pretty much trolling.  It takes two.  Report a post if you think someone is trolling; otherwise, keep it to yourself and roll your eyes privately.

[Eyeball]

Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say

It's odd how no one seems to make the connection between this and lack of motivations in the game (other than plotting your neighbor's doom). Throughout human history, greed has been an incredible motivating factor, but in-game, not so much.

[Nyr]

Moderated a post.  Note that saying someone's a troll is pretty much trolling.  It takes two.  Report a post if you think someone is trolling; otherwise, keep it to yourself and roll your eyes privately.

moderated another.  ya'll need to read

[John]

Yeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting.  I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.

You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either.  I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.

Sarcasm is a great tool at conveying information when used well. You've failed to actually convey any information. Are you saying that you want to create a character that can spend all day foraging (inevitably skill up) without actually successfully becoming rich? If so, you've got plenty of materials you could trade that won't make you rich (thanks to the 5 item limit). So maybe you want to create a characger that spends all day foraging salt (which negates the 5 item limit) and yet remain poor. That's fine. Here's the expenses you've got:

• Water - 45 'sid per trip
• Food - Varies
• Mount - 25 'sid

But let's assume you've gotten so good at foraging that this is no longer an issue. That's fine. You've still got expenses:

• Shitty apartment - 500 'sid per IG month
• Cheap Ale - 20-30 'sid per IG day

Then you've got days where sandstorms will stop you from going outside of the city. But depending on how often you play, that could simply be staving off the inevitable. So here's a question: Why not play poor rich? Throw your money around, buy ridiculously expensive bottles of alcohol and quickly find yourself short on coin. Buy spice and get caught doing it. Buy a deck of cards and gamble huge sums of money with all the other rich salters. Be lazy and don't go out every single day to forage.

And if, even after doing all that, you're still playing so frequently that you're still getting rich and you don't want to play a rich character, maybe pick a different material to forage? Because the people who have a few hours a week to devote to Arm aren't getting absurdly rich going into the Salt Flats. They're getting by. What they'd truly be struggling to do is get by on any other material because those are significantly more difficult to get by on. Consider playing a salter to be Armageddon on easy mode and instead play a different type of character that better fits what you want to play.

Of course, this is assuming you're complaining that you can't play a poor salter. You've failed to actually convey any real information in your post of sarcasm so this is all based on a hypothetical meaning I've attributed to your post.

[nauta]

Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say

It's odd how no one seems to make the connection between this and lack of motivations in the game (other than plotting your neighbor's doom). Throughout human history, greed has been an incredible motivating factor, but in-game, not so much.

I think a while ago Patuk pointed out a historical fact that is pretty relevant here, namely, that wealth (and thus greed) has only until fairly recently been a matter that concerned coins and money.  Of course, in fantasy worlds you have dragons sitting on massive piles of coins, but I'm inclined to think that most (healthy, thus no dwarves) people in Zalanthas would view wealth as more a matter of resources, social status, and political connections than the size of a bank account, and thus the greedy would pursue those, rather than coins.

[Synthesis]

Yeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting.  I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.

You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either.  I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.

Sarcasm is a great tool at conveying information when used well. You've failed to actually convey any information. Are you saying that you want to create a character that can spend all day foraging (inevitably skill up) without actually successfully becoming rich? If so, you've got plenty of materials you could trade that won't make you rich (thanks to the 5 item limit). So maybe you want to create a characger that spends all day foraging salt (which negates the 5 item limit) and yet remain poor. That's fine. Here's the expenses you've got:

• Water - 45 'sid per trip
• Food - Varies
• Mount - 25 'sid

But let's assume you've gotten so good at foraging that this is no longer an issue. That's fine. You've still got expenses:

• Shitty apartment - 500 'sid per IG month
• Cheap Ale - 20-30 'sid per IG day

Then you've got days where sandstorms will stop you from going outside of the city. But depending on how often you play, that could simply be staving off the inevitable. So here's a question: Why not play poor rich? Throw your money around, buy ridiculously expensive bottles of alcohol and quickly find yourself short on coin. Buy spice and get caught doing it. Buy a deck of cards and gamble huge sums of money with all the other rich salters. Be lazy and don't go out every single day to forage.

And if, even after doing all that, you're still playing so frequently that you're still getting rich and you don't want to play a rich character, maybe pick a different material to forage? Because the people who have a few hours a week to devote to Arm aren't getting absurdly rich going into the Salt Flats. They're getting by. What they'd truly be struggling to do is get by on any other material because those are significantly more difficult to get by on. Consider playing a salter to be Armageddon on easy mode and instead play a different type of character that better fits what you want to play.

Of course, this is assuming you're complaining that you can't play a poor salter. You've failed to actually convey any real information in your post of sarcasm so this is all based on a hypothetical meaning I've attributed to your post.

You're taking it too seriously, man.

My point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.

There are plenty of things to blow your 'sid on, if you're getting too rich.  If you grind your alcohol-tolerance skill, you can drop 200-300 'sid in the Gaj just to get a slight buzz!  One time I left all my pockets open on purpose and went AFK, and my friendly local pickpockets relieved me of EVERY ITEM IN MY ENTIRE INVENTORY THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE STOLEN.  I mean, we're talking like 2,000 'sid down the tubes, bam!

[John]

My point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.

The only skill grind that has no opportunity to spend more than the minimum amount of 'Sid is the forage and tailor skill. Every other skill gives you ample opportunity to engage in other players to give that 'Sid to. Will there be PCs to get your supplies at first? No. But if you consistently reach out and prove yourself to be a long lasting character, the people you need will eventually exist. Many people who think they're playing a jeweler actually play a grebber/jeweler. If you're not playing a character that's totally self sufficient your ability to accidentally make large sums of 'Sid decreases significantly.

[Synthesis]

My point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.

The only skill grind that has no opportunity to spend more than the minimum amount of 'Sid is the forage and tailor skill. Every other skill gives you ample opportunity to engage in other players to give that 'Sid to. Will there be PCs to get your supplies at first? No. But if you consistently reach out and prove yourself to be a long lasting character, the people you need will eventually exist. Many people who think they're playing a jeweler actually play a grebber/jeweler. If you're not playing a character that's totally self sufficient your ability to accidentally make large sums of 'Sid decreases significantly.

Every skill grind has the potential of making you lose more 'sid than you gain, if you do everything completely wrong and you have no idea what you're doing. (I.e. if you're a clueless noob.)  Even sneak and hide technically are costing you 'sid every minute you're doing it, in terms of food and water status.  I'm not sure what your point is, here.  If you trade with players for your raw materials, usually you will make VASTLY MORE coins, especially once you branch (or if you start with) armorcrafting.

To reiterate:  my point is that the vast majority of repetitive actions required to skill up (especially combat skills) will generate coins as a by-product (especially at the (advanced) level just prior to mastery or branching).  People generate those coins because it looks bad to just junk the shit that you crafted, and it looks bad to just leave the animal carcass on the ground without skinning it.  (Although, I totes feel ya people, with the scorpions--keep letting those little turds linger until reboot.)

I'm not sure what you think my opinion here is, but it's more along the lines of "meh, no big deal."  I'm not offering a prescription or a solution...I'm just making an observation about the way things are.

[Eyeball]

I think a while ago Patuk pointed out a historical fact that is pretty relevant here, namely, that wealth (and thus greed) has only until fairly recently been a matter that concerned coins and money.

Oh good grief. Do you honestly believe greed for gold and silver and coins made of such didn't exist until capitalism? Read about all the ancient traders, the Silk Road, and so forth. What do you think motivated them? Read about Rome and how money changed hands in their political system. The term "crass" comes from the legendary greedy, money-grubbing behavior of Crassus! Read about the long history of piracy. Read about Venice and the other trading republics. The most important act of greed in history was when Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, if you believe the Bible. It's ridiculous to assert lust for money is anything new. I didn't reply earlier because I didn't think people would actually believe him.

 Of course, in fantasy worlds you have dragons sitting on massive piles of coins, but I'm inclined to think that most (healthy, thus no dwarves) people in Zalanthas would view wealth as more a matter of resources, social status, and political connections than the size of a bank account, and thus the greedy would pursue those, rather than coins.

What are coins, except a medium of exchange for these things? Money means you have resources. Money means you can buy social status. Money means political connections. Or at least it should if humans in-game resemble humans in real life.

[aeglaeca]

I've had a reasonably wealthy character, but I never really felt comfortable with the level of wealth. At ~10-15k in the bank, an 800 coin per month rent can make you very nervous if you're only taking out and not putting in, which can easily happen if your PC has a lot of obligations and thus isn't spending time making coin. Rent, stable fees, and miscellaneous purchases can add up over time pretty quickly, and some of the higher end gear for sale by the GMH can take big chunks out of that easily.

On clothes, from a combatant POV:

Changing out of your armor is a pain in the ass.

If you're wearing heavy armor, good luck carrying the set with you while wearing regular clothes. You might need three to five bags to cram it all in there and since you're not wearing it on your back, suddenly said heavy armor is super encumbrance armor. Want to leave the armor at home? Hope you don't get called to do anything important for the 1.5 RL hours you have an IC off day, because then you'll have to spend 10 minutes running across town to your apartment to get your gear, never mind actually changing /into/ it. Do you use a clan locker? Good luck putting all your gear in your locker, man, because it's probably not gonna fit! (If it's heavy armor. Or giant armor. I have it on pretty good authority one set of regularly sized light armor fits fine. As long as there's nothing else in said locker. And the storeroom isn't crammed full of other stuff.)

Plus, the number of slots you end up covering with armor or uniform-related stuff really grows over time. REALLY grows over time. Head, face (sunslits/wrap), neck, chest, arms, hands, waist (quiver), belt, three weapons, about (most uniforms), legs, boots. Once my PC went an indeterminate amount of time without a breastplate because I'd accidentally removed/put it in a storage container and didn't notice because of the sheer amount of other stuff said PC was wearing. If I took my sunslits off, I was guaranteed to forget to put them back on when I needed them to be on.

My point is... I pretty much don't expect anyone who wears armor to ever not be wearing armor, because changing out of it is OOCly a pain in the ass. At least it is for me. I don't know how others feel about this. I suspect if I ever play a PC for which a fashion statement is a relevant thing, that this particular point will make me headdesk on a regular basis.

This doesn't preclude purchasing other clothes that will sit unused in storage. My PC had, in fact, purchased clothes that sat unused in storage. This PC just didn't buy many sets, because what was the point?

If you want to put more coin sinks in the game, they have to be minimally useful sinks. Clothes were just extra paperweights, or would be if commoner Zalanthans used paper.

/clothingrant

[John]

Synthesis your saying you will make more money if you buy raw goods rather than forage for them? Your going to need to explain that one because on it's face it seems nonsensical.

As for your observation that using skills generates wealth: no shit. This isn't discussing gaining wealth. This is discussing gaining ridiculous sums of wealth. Your average ranger or warrior isn't going to be able to achieve that through hunting thanks to the 5 item limit.P

[Synthesis]

Synthesis your saying you will make more money if you buy raw goods rather than forage for them? Your going to need to explain that one because on it's face it seems nonsensical.

As for your observation that using skills generates wealth: no shit. This isn't discussing gaining wealth. This is discussing gaining ridiculous sums of wealth. Your average ranger or warrior isn't going to be able to achieve that through hunting thanks to the 5 item limit.P

Uh, the ability to generate mass quantities of coins goes something like merchant/armorcrafter, ranger/armorcrafter, ranger/master trader.  You can make a metric fucking shit-ton of coins just doing rangery stuff.  If you -haven't- been making a goddamn mountain of coins in the process of skilling up your rangers...either you aren't trying, you aren't curious at all, or you're just really, really bad at playing rangers.  (Plus, rangers branch 4 crafting skills, without even having a subguild!)

And yes, if you pay 1 or 2 dudes to forage for you instead of doing it yourself, while you focus on crafting and selling the garbage they bring you, the profit potential escalates very, very quickly.  Especially if they're good players who are just slumming it for fun.

[John]

Synthesis: killing things generates lots of wealth
John: really?
Synthesis: Combining combat classes with crafting classes generates lots of wealth.

John: Paying for raw materials will cost more then foraging them for yourself
Synthesis: no, it makes you more money.
John: How?
Synthesis: Well you can still make lots of 'Sid even if you pay for the raw goods.

I think I'm done here. This seems to be arguing for arguing's sake.