NPC Shop Crying Thread

[Synthesis]

 Back by popular demand

[Marauder Moe]

I'm undecided.

Certainly it would be nice to have per-person buy limits, but Zalanthas isn't always nice.  Also, I suspect such a system would be moderately difficult to code due to the persistent data required.

Ideally, you should be selling to PCs or PCs should be clearing out the shop inventory for you.  If your goods are so low in demand that PCs won't buy them from you or from shops, should you really be able to sell them?  PC-based economy isn't really ever going to happen, though.

I suspect the best solution is to look at specific goods/shops/jobs and either adjust those shopkeepers individually (higher limits, more frequent VNPs purchases) or add new NPCs like the salt and 'sid buyers.  Seems more rational than blanket changes to the system.

[Synthesis]

But seriously.

Okay, consolidating the playerbase into a single city without expanding the number of available NPC shops was probably a bad idea...but only in that it generates a perception that some people are gaming the reboot system...when really...the reboots are -usually- random crashes, so there's no way to "game" it, other than stockpiling loot and praying you catch it.  I'm going to assume that crashes are more prone to happen when the resident code-monkeys are tinkering, so -probably- there are certain times of the day where crashes are more likely to occur, and thus certain individuals are more likely to benefit from a crash-based economy...but that's all just guessing, and that's all everyone else is doing, too.

I think we should implement a solution that screws pretty much everyone equally:  turn every shop into the "doesn't get reset on reboots and only generates coins on NPC and vNPC sales" type.  All the common things will be perpetually maxed-out at 5 apiece unless you get lucky (which will be randomly distributed and thereby immune to all criticisms except the "high-playtime" argument, since perpetually camping the shop would be the only winning strategy).

[Marauder Moe]

Actually I do definitely agree that shop inventory/cycles shouldn't be based on reboots.  Though, I suspect that maintaining the dynamic inventory between reboots would also be a pretty big task.

Maybe the VNPC purchasing algorithm should skew much more heavily towards items with multiples in stock and stock limits?  (Side benefit: less VNPC buying 1-off items means more interesting items for PCs to buy.)

[BadSkeelz]

This just means people aren't murdering enough of the spam-crafters currently in game.

Edit I mean seriously come on, they're rich in sid and poor in combat ability. Step up your game, people.

[KankWhisperer]

Have every shop save. Have the value of the item also based on how many are in stock. Sure they will buy the scrab shell, but now they only pay 5. They will continue paying 5 until stock goes down. Then you couldn't just make a fortune on a few high end items because the market is now glutted for a while. Encourages people to find different things to sell or hunt.

[RogueGunslinger]

This just means people aren't murdering enough of the spam-crafters currently in game.

Edit I mean seriously come on, they're rich in sid and poor in combat ability. Step up your game, people.

Crafter's don't usually max out shops. There's usually multiple NPC's to buy crafts and enough crafts to spread it out. The problem is mostly for foragers/hunters/gatherers.

[Narf]

I've always wanted to experiment with the idea of a value based economy where you have a gradual reduction in prices as more and more objects are sold, and then a gradual increase in value of those items as they're bought (by PCs or VNPCs).

In this system shopkeeps would buy an unlimited number of object for a reducing price. Then as time wore on, or PCs purchased the items, the value would increase per some invisible counter. Buy one object, counter ticks up 1. VNPC buys an object, counter ticks up 1. Player sells an object, counter ticks down 1. Price is based on where the counter is currently at, and the NPC keeps buying until PCs aren't willing to sell for that price any longer.

[BadSkeelz]

Grebbers, in other words. They shouldn't really have it easy anyway.

Get a crafty friend. Have them sell your crafts for more coin.

Or play a real role, join a clan or murder merchants.

[Narf]

This just means people aren't murdering enough of the spam-crafters currently in game.

Edit I mean seriously come on, they're rich in sid and poor in combat ability. Step up your game, people.

Murder is hard.

[BadSkeelz]

Crimcode turns off at night.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxPpaDt9teI

[hyzhenhok]

I think the way it currently works is a fine abstraction of the idea of a saturated market. In an ideal world, the game would have a more dynamic economy and rather than being unable to sell your valuable loot at all, you'd simply be selling it for little because surplus supply suppresses the price. The way it currently works is a bit obnoxious, but roughly approximates this idea.

When it's suggested you should try finding somewhere else to sell your greb, or find different greb to sell, it's not a "this is not a problem" excuse. That's exactly what your hunter should be doing if he's trying to make a living off hawking scrab shells but it turns out the market is saturated with scrab shells. Either he should take his pile of scrab shells to a market where they are in demand and not saturated, or he should try making his living off something else.

Reboots, their necessity and the wonkiness they create with shops is a bit of a separate issue. I agree that someone who's sitting on 5 codedly valuable but in reality market-glutted items shouldn't profit because they log in right after a server reset. One suggestion has been that we find a way to save shops over reboots. Another simple thing you could do is simply slash shopkeeper starting money.

[RogueGunslinger]

Grebbers, in other words. They shouldn't really have it easy anyway.

Get a crafty friend. Have them sell your crafts for more coin.

Or play a real role, join a clan or murder merchants.

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

[Clearsighted]

Oh noez, I can't sell my ivory horn, of which there were were approximately ~174 laying around outside the gate.

[BadSkeelz]

Grebbers, in other words. They shouldn't really have it easy anyway.

Get a crafty friend. Have them sell your crafts for more coin.

Or play a real role, join a clan or murder merchants.

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

You can kill them for coin, too.

The docs do (did?) say that if you're getting rich via hunting you're doing it wrong. Selling enough raw materials to actually make money implies you're killing more animals than you really should be when it comes to environmental stability (ignoring for the moment that this harsh dying planet is choked to the brim with huge shit trying to kill you).

[hyzhenhok]

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

That's more of a problem of the coded "jobs" being too profitable and economically unrealistic. House Jal doesn't seem to understand the point of having a monopoly given how well they pay indie salters.

Obsidian/glass mining and especially dung scraping seem much less popular than salting, hunting and foraging so I don't think there's a problem there even if they are probably too profitable.

[RogueGunslinger]

I liked the idea of setting prices super low when fully stocked. That makes sense to me, and gets rid of most of my frustration, which is lugging around all this heavy, bulky shit hoping to be able to sell it at some point.

[whitt]

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

Ever seen a PC in game buying Dung or Salt?

[RogueGunslinger]

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

Ever seen a PC in game buying Dung or Salt?

Fair point.

[nauta]

So the people who actually go out and hunt dangerous shit down shouldn't at least have it as easy as a salt-forager, or obsidian miner, or dung scraper? Killing and skinning a scrab to sell its parts should be better money than digging for salt or banging up safe obsidian lodes (and it would be if shops weren't always over-stocked). The very idea that Synth had to supplement his characters hunting job with salt-foraging in order to make some coins is pretty telling.

Ever seen a PC in game buying Dung or Salt?

I bought dung during my Epic Make-a-dung-cookfire Plot of Summer 2014.  It hasn't quite been a year so no IC details, but it was epic.  I actually found it hard to find PC dungists.  I think one dung cookfire, which lasted long enough to cook a few loaves, cost me about four small, and several IG days of preparation work, not even counting the startup cost of interviewing loads of shitcloaks and hunters about how to make the dung thing in the first place.  All told it took about 2 RL months to make the first cookfire.

[Eyeball]

Another simple thing you could do is simply slash shopkeeper starting money.

Why hunt or greb at all.

[BadSkeelz]

To hone your skills for murder.

[wizturbo]

The entire economy is a bit wacky in Arm.  NPC shops shouldn't be adjusted in a vacuum, the entire economy should be tweaked if a project like this is going to be undertaken.

[Asanadas]

I think if you just hyper-increase VNPC purchases from shops, things will sort itself out. Bump up the amount by 2x or 3x to represent the thousands of vnpcs rolling through on errands or other abstract reasons.

[valeria]

In my ideal world, prices would be based on supply and demand. You could totally sell 100+ widgets, but after the 5th the sales price would drop and after a point you'd basically be getting 1 sid a piece.  Now, conversely, the more widgets the shop had in inventory, the cheaper the sales price would be. So by the time it had 100 widgets, your crafter could buy them for dirt cheap. But if you're just using them to craft wangles,the price of wangles is going to steadily drop, too.

I think this would self-regulate pretty well. Are you desperate enough to greb widgets if you can only sell them for 1 sid?  Go for it. I mean, we have weight limits and at some point it won't be worth the dehydration cost of standing in the desert. Or wearing your crafting tools out crafting wangles to sell on the cheap.

It would just require redoing the whole shop code, too. I'm sure it would be a quick and easy fix.

[Clearsighted]

In my ideal world, prices would be based on supply and demand. You could totally sell 100+ widgets, but after the 5th the sales price would drop and after a point you'd basically be getting 1 sid a piece.  Now, conversely, the more widgets the shop had in inventory, the cheaper the sales price would be. So by the time it had 100 widgets, your crafter could buy them for dirt cheap. But if you're just using them to craft wangles,the price of wangles is going to steadily drop, too.

I think this would self-regulate pretty well. Are you desperate enough to greb widgets if you can only sell them for 1 sid?  Go for it. I mean, we have weight limits and at some point it won't be worth the dehydration cost of standing in the desert. Or wearing your crafting tools out crafting wangles to sell on the cheap.

It would just require redoing the whole shop code, too. I'm sure it would be a quick and easy fix.

It'd be the best fix.

[KankWhisperer]

If a shopkeeper has a building just make the selling floor room save. I could be wrong but one merchant in Luir's might already be like that.

Wandering merchants would remain the same. They don't have a big virtual storage space so it kind of makes sense. People can still rush to them for reboots I guess.

As for the coding difficulty,  I believe stock rom/diku mud code came with the price lowering based on inventory out of the box.

[Molten Heart]

NPCs should stop selling unlimited items and only sell a maximum of five.

[Marauder Moe]

I'm not confident it would solve big problems, but turning the 5-item limits into a soft cap with diminishing payouts based on current inventory levels seems like a solid idea to me, if it's easily implemented/enabled.

[valeria]

The "quick and easy fix" thing was a little tongue in cheek.  I don't think it would be a quick or easy fix, because I don't think anything that involves altering the code would be a quick or easy fix.

But in my ideal world, that's how the shop code would work.

[Synthesis]

The more I think about it, the more I think a "fair" system would require at least a few different approaches.

I think PC crafting and selling to NPCs should be treated differently than PC hunting and selling to NPCs, which should be treated differently than PC foraging/gathering and selling to NPCs.

I also think that peak vs. off-peak needs to be taken into account, because there are temporary NPC economic system overloads that occur during peak hours that go away during off-peak hours.  Whether that's ameliorated by increased PC interaction (e.g. selling to PCs instead) is debatable.

PC crafting, I think, is okay in its raw mechanics.  That is, PCs can craft a sufficient number of different types of things profitably that even with a 5-item limit, few people are actually hitting the point where they legitimately cannot sell anything they can craft because every shop is full of 5 of every type of thing they could possibly craft.  The problem is that with the increased PC density, most shops seem to be running out of coins faster than PC and vNPC sales can keep up--at least, during peak hours.  That's a relatively simple fix, though.  PC crafting deserves a higher income, because a) you're sacrificing some pretty massively useful skillsets by rolling with a crafting guild or subguild (generally) and b) you more-or-less need an apartment to store raw materials and as a "workshop."

PC hunting right now, seems to be kind of a mess.

PC foraging/gathering is a mix.  Stones and stone-stuff in general needs to be more valuable (not including gems).  Salt foraging sucks until your foraging is maxed out...at which point there are better things to forage for, honestly.  Herb-gathering would be helped immensely if the the herbalist didn't buy magick components.  (I mean, honestly...why is this bitch selling magick components in the commoner's quarter? Hello?)

[Chettaman]

Have every shop save. Have the value of the item also based on how many are in stock. Sure they will buy the scrab shell, but now they only pay 5. They will continue paying 5 until stock goes down. Then you couldn't just make a fortune on a few high end items because the market is now glutted for a while. Encourages people to find different things to sell or hunt.

Have every shop save most definately. I'm very sure, since they npcs do actually sell their items for whatever price they set, if they were actually able to sell the items we brought them they'd be rich and no one would complain.

The idea of the price going down due to inventory is a good one, though.

But I'm pretty sure if the NPCs could sell the goods we sell them without the game rebooting and fucking them over no one will complain about not having money to mine from these NPCs.

[RogueGunslinger]

The more I think about it, the more I think a "fair" system would require at least a few different approaches.

I think PC crafting and selling to NPCs should be treated differently than PC hunting and selling to NPCs, which should be treated differently than PC foraging/gathering and selling to NPCs.

I also think that peak vs. off-peak needs to be taken into account, because there are temporary NPC economic system overloads that occur during peak hours that go away during off-peak hours.  Whether that's ameliorated by increased PC interaction (e.g. selling to PCs instead) is debatable.

PC crafting, I think, is okay in its raw mechanics.  That is, PCs can craft a sufficient number of different types of things profitably that even with a 5-item limit, few people are actually hitting the point where they legitimately cannot sell anything they can craft because every shop is full of 5 of every type of thing they could possibly craft.  The problem is that with the increased PC density, most shops seem to be running out of coins faster than PC and vNPC sales can keep up--at least, during peak hours.  That's a relatively simple fix, though.  PC crafting deserves a higher income, because a) you're sacrificing some pretty massively useful skillsets by rolling with a crafting guild or subguild (generally) and b) you more-or-less need an apartment to store raw materials and as a "workshop."

PC hunting right now, seems to be kind of a mess.

PC foraging/gathering is a mix.  Stones and stone-stuff in general needs to be more valuable (not including gems).  Salt foraging sucks until your foraging is maxed out...at which point there are better things to forage for, honestly.  Herb-gathering would be helped immensely if the the herbalist didn't buy magick components.  (I mean, honestly...why is this bitch selling magick components in the commoner's quarter? Hello?)

Yes to everything about this post.

Vote Synthesis for staff 2016.

[Tisiphone]

Me, I think we should do away with NPC shops entirely.

Instead, replace them with a brokerage system where PCs sell and buy with PCs. Have NPCs also mildly participate if you must, as a sop to 'realism', buy occasionally putting in buy or sell orders at the median price -10% (so it's never advantageous to buy from/sell to NPCs as compared with players).

Prices would sort themselves out right quick, and we'd see some real 'harshness' or 'grittiness' in this here economic simulation, because the market won't care at all if your 2 hours played indie hunter is hungry.

Don't want to participate in the market? Join a clan. Free food and water really mean something if you have to actually pay for them (or take the ever-present risk of char-death by wandering into the wastes).

Sure, you can make all kinds of arguments that it isn't realistic, because we're not simulating the vast vNPC populations or the natural price distortions that come from having sorcerer-kings up in their towers dictating things on a whim. But fuck that, frankly. It'd finally be fun.

ETA, before anyone gets the wrong idea: I'm not advocating ripping out all NPC sellers and replacing it with folks having to log on at the same time as other people, find them, talk out a price, and have items change hands. A brokerage system removes the need to ever be face to face. A seller places a sell order with the brokerage firm for a certain 'willing to sell' price. That seller hands over the item and the brokerage fee. If the item doesn't sell, they get the item back, but not the brokerage fee. A buyer either comes along and sees something he wants, and pays the price right there (with another brokerage fee, naturally) or doesn't and sets up a buy order much the same way, handing over the 'sid (plus fees) and waiting for someone to come along willing to sell what he wants at the price he wants.

Split it into regional markets and we're good to go. If we absolutely must, set up dirt-poor subsitence jobs in the cities where the city buys clay for 10 'sid a bucket. Other than that, throw yourself on the mercy of the market if you want to eat. Or get a new coat. Or if you don't have the coin, go cry to a scrab and see if he'll butcher himself for you out of compassion.

(Also, if you want to avoid the brokerage fees, become your own salesman and make those face-to-face meets.)

[Synthesis]

A brokerage system might be kind of fun, as an optional thing added to the game.

Buuut...it would render most crafters completely useless, because most PCs don't give a shit about most crafts.  Also, gear doesn't deteriorate (unless your strength is fucking amazing or you're regularly getting WRECKT), so there's not a sustainable PC market for it.  Also, a lot of things aren't craftable at all, which would be a pain in the dick.

Also, listen...a single extensively-branched merchant with a single ranger buddy could ENTIRELY WRECK a brokerage-based system, because they'd be able to offer the absolute lowest prices for all the gear anyone could ever want, and nobody would be able to break them, aside from assassination...but nobody would take the contract because they're getting all their phat loot from these guys.  You'd end up with more-or-less monopolies-until-stored scenarios, with everyone else running around grebbing for scraps or paying shit prices for shit gear that the monopoly doesn't have time to bother with.

That might be kind of amusing for a while, but it could also be highly detrimental, when nobody has rolled a subclass crafter in the last 3 months, because Amos and Derpina are going all fucking Costco on the 'nakki gear market.  Then Derpina stores, and assassins in the 'rinth are provoking people to throw knives at them just to -get- a throwing knife, because nobody knows how to craft them anymore.

[Tisiphone]

Wait, you mean you're afraid people might have good reasons to assassinate each other?

[BadSkeelz]

The player base is worrisomely prone to protecting characters who really should be assassinated.

[Synthesis]

I think a brokerage system would also be fun with a sort of Craigslist-style approach where you could post requests to be filled, with haggle ranges.

The problem with "fill requests" is how do you get the code to recognize what the person is asking for (e.g. if someone wants a scrab shell, do they have to explicitly type, without error "rough, chitinous shell," or can they type "scrab shell," and the code will either ask for clarification or figure it out for them).

I suppose a prototype system could simply be set up to provide offers on common items.  For example, the "deal merchant" hawker-dude could have a pre-set, limited menu of common raw materials (shards of obsidian, chunks of obsidian, chunks of grey stone, chunks of jasper, lengths of bone, chalton hides, scrab shells, jozhal hides, branches, logs, scrab guts, beetle carapaces, tarantula fangs, silt-flyer claws, various bird feathers, etc. etc. etc.) and players could generate requests from that menu.

A more complex system could employ phrase recognition to search out the exact item sdescs...although I -suppose- this could be abused (e.g. you could search for 'demon blood' and it could reveal that you've been corrupting your soul all these years by drinking those long, muscular tubes, and that scrabs are actually hellspawn), but it certainly would be helpful to just be able to search "scrab claws" and have the script ask you if you meant "a rigid, angular leg."

And then, of course, if you want to offer items for sale, you can just have the item in your inventory.  If it's multiples, you can offer them singly or as a bundle deal.

I think this would be -really- awesome as an optional addition to the marketplace, to supplement NPC sales, because it could solve the problem of it being so difficult to make face-to-face deals when people have Real Life Shit to attend to.

[The Silence of the Erdlus]

NPCs should stop selling unlimited items and only sell a maximum of five.

Say that <raw material> is needed by cheese witches to make a component they need. If there's only five available in the whole city (or in the whole known, in that store) then that cheese witch better hope the game reboots often or no more cheese witches get rolled who will snatch up that raw material--- or opportunistic elves who realize this bottleneck in the economy and buy the items before anyone else can and resell them for exorbitant prices. Imagine that this is a shitty piece of flint or bone we're talking about and things get weird.

[aeglaeca]

This isn't by any means a fix all solution, but maybe the imms could think about putting in additional shopkeepers/more coin outside the safety of Allanak in encampments and stuff. Along the lines of obsidian selling for a lot up north and wood selling for a lot down south, goods that have to travel can be marked up, essentially. This already exists to some extent with the existing locations of Morin's, Luir's, Blackwing, Cenyr and Storm. Maybe the mul outpost could start purchasing, as well as the encampments. Added bonus if they cycle through wanted goods they'll pay more for.

I guess what I'm suggesting is give shopkeepers located outside of PC hotspots more coin to buy by clearing goods out of their shops quickly. For PC crafters and grebbers the real money could be in purchasing escorts to sell in dangerous far off locations along the lines of the Silk Road. (The historical Silk Road, not the drug marketplace.) There could be actual caravans and thus raiding opportunities.

[Jihelu]

If I ask staff if I can sex a merchant does that make the prices lower for me?

[Gaare]

I like NPCs with limited purchase capasity.

There is always some decision to be made between hunting avaliability and sell price. If you reduce NPC beasts to spawn less, that creates a lot of protest. 

NPCs buying everything offered is extremely bad idea for me either. I hate every hunter manage to survive a few days play to have thousands of sids in Bank. That's far from realistic, and a bit depressing. Your ranger finds himself swimming in coins, gives little struggle for fight.

The simplist solution is reducing NPCs to buy limiled raw material, I guess.

Call them first-lvl: Very little number of NPCs would buy them and in limited number, like three or four.
Mid-level would be like tanned leather, and so.. Those would be bought more NPCs and maybe, more of same time.
Third-level would be items made from one direct raw material. Like stone -> Pipe. They could be bought by NPCs in larger quantities
More difficult the item, it would  be bought more by NPCs.

----------------

Other than that, one may simply add more dangerous NPCs around.. I like the Gith idea.. Or Mantis.. So, hunting would be rather more dangerous and RP-rich. People would have things to chat about ,escape from, hunt to survive, etc.

[Case]

I remember when sid hacking was a really common job

I would love to see more scarcity and difficulty in getting things. It creates tensions. Tensions are great! Food, water and any and all gear. It does feel right now it's easy to get whatever you want.

[Revenant]

Increase vNPC buy rate by 2-3X, implement broker without ripping out NPC shops, lower salting profits a smidge, problem solved.

Also, please let them buy more than five of each, for decreasing price. I think it would be nice if these merchant occassionally rotated out some stock to ship it to their cousin on the other side of the known to rip people blind with, you'd see more variety of goods.

Everything else? No. I think it's crazy talk.

[Chettaman]

someone said it the other day - a lot of people are just taking advantage of the code.

Please. Please don't lower salting profits. *tear
Not gonna lie. anything without a crafting subguild is pretty tough to make any money at all.
Until purple salts returned!

I remember literally deciding between things I ''needed'' - and food or water. That was until... IC. and thank ''you'', by the way. And then life got easy. Making money was actually really very difficult without a crafting subguild.

and I promise you guys. The NPCs actually do sell stuff. Whenever they emote, ''the dood sells to a passerby'' I'm always the idiot that /just/ keyed in ''buy #20'' and ended up buying a new 1000 coin spoon instead of that shield I was looking at.

If you guys played any guild that couldn't craft and didn't join an organization you'd see how difficult it is to survive in this harsh world.
It makes sense that people who can make things, people who know a trade, make money easier than people who don't. What /is/ odd is how often they don't spend their money. You know what I'm talkin' about. *wink-wink* You/re an independent and you always have water but the white-robe's never seen your face. (some really devote person should take care of this problem more often) You go to the tavern /every day/ but you're never tempted to spend a coin on drinks or something tasty instead of the raw meat you're too afraid to cook. (yeah, I know. Cooking sucks) There really should be a more noticeable penalty for eating raw meat.

Someone said it the other day. We're just taking advantage of things and not roleplaying our characters well enough. And take away those purple salts again! I really enjoyed the struggle when they were gone.

[Incognito]

This is a direct consequence of the closure of Tuluk.

More PCs playing in fewer locations = overstocked shops and shopkeepers.

While we wait for a solution to emerge, I would simply like to highlight that this "issue" is something that could potentially drive away new players - very fast.

I mean - they start up on Arm - read up docs - finally manage to get someone to teach them the ropes and manage to craft/greb/skin something - and then find that they can't sell it.

If I were new to a game - no matter how cool it was - I'd really expect the game admins to have some workable system for this - otherwise I'd just be wasting my time!

Its a different thing that older Arm players know the ropes and have multiple sources of possible income - and are addicted enough not to mind this, but I'm quite sure it'd be a deal-breaker for many others.

[Revenant]

someone said it the other day - a lot of people are just taking advantage of the code.

Please. Please don't lower salting profits. *tear
Not gonna lie. anything without a crafting subguild is pretty tough to make any money at all.
Until purple salts returned!

I remember literally deciding between things I ''needed'' - and food or water. That was until... IC. and thank ''you'', by the way. And then life got easy. Making money was actually really very difficult without a crafting subguild.

and I promise you guys. The NPCs actually do sell stuff. Whenever they emote, ''the dood sells to a passerby'' I'm always the idiot that /just/ keyed in ''buy #20'' and ended up buying a new 1000 coin spoon instead of that shield I was looking at.

If you guys played any guild that couldn't craft and didn't join an organization you'd see how difficult it is to survive in this harsh world.
It makes sense that people who can make things, people who know a trade, make money easier than people who don't. What /is/ odd is how often they don't spend their money. You know what I'm talkin' about. *wink-wink* You/re an independent and you always have water but the white-robe's never seen your face. (some really devote person should take care of this problem more often) You go to the tavern /every day/ but you're never tempted to spend a coin on drinks or something tasty instead of the raw meat you're too afraid to cook. (yeah, I know. Cooking sucks) There really should be a more noticeable penalty for eating raw meat.

Someone said it the other day. We're just taking advantage of things and not roleplaying our characters well enough. And take away those purple salts again! I really enjoyed the struggle when they were gone.

When I was playing guild Merchant, got absurdly wealthy, decided, well, what am I going to do with all this? I mean, it was just like, a big scoreboard screaming "You win!", pretty neat, at first. But then, if you look at it logically, ok, you know, in the future, you'll need supplies like, X, Y, and Z, because you have plans to outfit your own army of anarchists, but nobody's out there grebbing much, because shops get filled to capacity and no one is buying any more of grebbed goods. This tends to discourage grebbers. Well, X and Y can only be grebbed, and this problem seems systemic, unless...

Aha! Grebber Amos, in his filthy rags, with his missing teeth and supply of strange meat dwindling approaches me with D. Now, I really don't need D, why would I buy it, and at a serious markup? Well, there's a chance Amos might be the next go-to guy for strange bits, including X and Y, it's highly possible I'm pissing my money away, however, but what need do I have of it? What I WANT is for Amos to become accustomed to trading with ME, so that when he becomes capable of acquiring X and Y, which he can, with the right training and equipment, all of which cost coin, he won't sell out to someone else who happened to be around because he knows I pay premium rates and sometimes give him nice things. BAM. You do this with enough Amoses, eventually you get a thing going, supply chains, transport routes, no matter where you are in the known, you drag that shit to you with gravitational force, and, word gets around.

That's IC, the OOC of the situation is you're pumping coin into the player economy and making certain character concepts actually viable. One of the first lessons I learned was someone leading by example, I didn't know what they were doing at the time, but Materi did the same thing with one of my characters, and it taught me the basics of how to survive on the sands and what to watch out for. If Amos gets killed? Well, hopefully those coins weren't stashed away in Nenyuk, the gear's still there, so I suppose there's that, and the wealth distributes, to shakedowns, raiders, scavengers, or just general conmen who convinced Amos to attack that beetle. If you're rich, fucking spend a little more, it's quite healthy and can generate a lot of activity and plots.

I think the biggest barrier to trade is having to buy a license for three small in order to sell some rocks to another player for sixty sid. That's why we do that shit on the downlow.

[Incognito]

Also, please see this thread on a proposal for an auctioneer - to help alleviate Zalanthan economy glitches.

http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,45280.msg744900.html#msg744900

[Desertman]

I would like to see other markets in the game beefed up a bit to counter balance the closure of Tuluk as a major trading hub no longer being available.

The markets in Red Storm suck for trading. The markets in Luir's suck for trading. The markets in Cenyr suck for trading. (All compared to the otherwise much more active/larger/full markets of Allanak and formerly Tuluk.)

By beefed up I mean, "More shops that buy more types of things and have more money to buy those things.".

I like having a reason to travel between these areas and make trade, but honestly, there isn't much reason usually.

Allanak's markets are fine in my opinion.

I don't necessarily want  it to be "easier to make money". What I want is for there to be any reason at all to travel to those places to make trade, which is accomplished by ensuring there is a reason to go there for said trade.

[flurry]

For some shops, it seems like the prices are set at a level far beyond what a reasonable PC would consider paying. One shop in particular comes to mind (which I've already bugged). That makes the shop very attractive to sellers and not at all attractive to buyers. That is, until the shop's coins run out. Which they do. Quickly.

If prices are set at a happy medium, so that the shop is attractive to both buyers and sellers, then the coins flow in both directions.

[Revenant]

Yes, the markets in Storm and Luir's could use some serious beefing up. Seems like someone nerfed the market in Luir's, I guess because, it's not supposed to be a place to stay? Well, kind of sucks, can't get into outpost life unless you have a particular set of unmentioned craft skills.

Storm's market is shot to pieces. The merchants buy for high prices, but have little coin. Cenyr I've visited a few times, but never really got any clue how existence was supposed to be sustainable there.

Blackwing buys some things, for usually hideously marked down prices. Likely not a place you're supposed to stay in long unless you weasel yourself in REAL good with the d-elfs. I don't even think they have a water seller, could be wrong, though.

[catchall]

A lot of things would be improved immediately and naturally by the idea many have endorsed so far -- lifting item buy limits and implement a diminishing sale price as inventory grows, and making all shops save.  The VNPC buy rate should probably also be adjusted upward with maybe a slightly more sophisticated algorithm to chose the item.

That way if there really are items that are too common and too easy to make money on, for whatever reason, people will sell them to the market until the price falls to where it's no longer worth their time.  And the price will remain permanently depressed as long as people are still selling in large quantities.  That way, even if there is some common leaf that normally sells for 200 sid a piece, you could easily end up in a situation where it rarely sells for more than 10 sid, and the price stays that way because grebber after grebber makes the same decision--better to get some coin than no coin.  This is far better than a 5-item max where you wait for one of the five items to be sold off (and 4 or 5 items are both "a few," so the task is extra-tedious), and then go sell for 200 sid if your timing is good, or make nothing if your timing is off.  The current system rewards luck and tedium.  With a dynamic pricing system, players have meaningful choices -- sell the goods here and now, try transporting them elsewhere, or wait and hope prices rise again.

I'm not trying to get all "invisible hand of the market" here, but a system like this self-corrects for a lot of the things that bother us.  I'm a bit leery of allowing the sale price to players to drop too much with growing inventory, lest new PCs log in to a flooded market and fully outfit themselves with 30 sid or something, but there would be definite benefits to letting the price drop as well, maybe with a minimum of 20-50% of the normal selling price or so.  If price can drop, than those flooded shops become a business opportunity.  If you are in a crowded area of the world where shops are always full, you can ease that pressure by buying up goods and transporting them somewhere they are in demand, making a profit for yourself.  Instead of a staffer just manually deciding "Wood should fetch a good price in Allanak," and setting some values accordingly, the game would actually create trade routes automatically in response to player activity.  Abundant items would actually be abundant and be treated as abundant for good in-game reasons.  Merchants and traders would have a different and changing economic landscape to interact with every day, and would have more opportunities to respond intelligently to market trends.

[RogueGunslinger]

I'm going to start murdering shopkeepers.

[Desertman]

I don't think we want a system in place where the shopkeepers save permanently and lower their prices based on inventory and start dictating the overall economy of items in general.

Some items need to have artificially inflated values, and some need to be artificially depressed to reflect the realism the world is shooting for.

We all know that meat is easy to get in game. It's very easy to get. Anyone can go get so much of it they literally could feed ten families. It's not hard.

What happens to the perception that, "The world is harsh and people are starving and this is a super hardcore setting in terms of survival.", when the grocers in all of the towns are selling really nice meat for 4 coins a piece because the market has been deflated by every hunter in the game selling them dozens of the same meat?

And that's just one example.

I don't want to see NPC shopkeepers change their value for things based on PC supply. Especially not saved between reboots. That has the potential to make a lot of things become very "out of whack" when stacked against the documentation based on the actions of the comparatively (compared to the entire population of the world) tiny number of PC's in the game.

[Lizzie]

Agreed with Desertman. Also, plugging (again) my idea: to limit the quantity of items sold TO NPCs per PC, rather than per shopkeeper. Amos has 20 shards of flint worth 10 sids each, 54 lavender silk dresses worth 190 sids each, 18 tregil-carved wooden chests worth 400 sids each, 9 pairs of black silk gloves worth 140 sids each, and 492 gith cloaks worth 5 sids each.

There are 2 shopkeepers who will actually buy the cloaks (which are pocketed) and chests (which are containers).
There are 4 stonebuyers.
There are 3 clothing buyers, but only 2 of them buy silken goods.

Anything that nets the seller more than 200 sids each, is limited to one per seller per shop. All other items are limited at 5 per seller, per shop.

So: Amos has max haggle. He *could* theoretically sell those dresses for 280 sids each. But then he'd only be able to sell 2 of them, in total, because of the net max. So he sells for what the shopkeeper offers: 190 sids each. And he can now sell 5 to shop 1, and 5 to shop 2. Ten total, instead of two at the haggled price. Same with the chests - he can either low-sell for 199 sids each and then sell 10 of them, or he can sell just two; one to each shop, at 800 sids total.

This would be true for EVERYONE who sells to NPC shops, with clan-based exceptions (Kadian not allowed to sell to Kadian shops, or whatever IC rules exist).

In this way, there is no rush for reboot, no one has to wait a RL month to sell just one garnet to the rock-seller because someone else happens to always be there when he "sells to passersby," thus making it possible for the NPC to buy just one more garnet til either someone else buys a garnet or game reset.

It also makes people decide HOW they want to run their transactions, and perhaps consider grebbing/skinning/looting a little more prudently, because stockpiling still won't net much, and accepting less coin will encourage more player-to-player commerce.

[chuci]

Sounds sorta doable until you run into

"Sorry, I only buy two feathers from each person."

Same issue exists with 5-item limits, of course. I have a feeling that would have changed by now if it were easy to code.

What we need is more raw goods traders. Especially traders who buy wood and hides. Allanak should pay top dollar for wood products.

We also need to increase the rate at which VNPCs buy products, to keep up with the increased economic pressure of removing an entire market (Tuluk) from play.

Up the frequency with which people can sell things, lower the profits.

[Lizzie]

Sounds sorta doable until you run into

"Sorry, I only buy two feathers from each person."

Same issue exists with 5-item limits, of course. I have a feeling that would have changed by now if it were easy to code.

What we need is more raw goods traders. Especially traders who buy wood and hides. Allanak should pay top dollar for wood products.

We also need to increase the rate at which VNPCs buy products, to keep up with the increased economic pressure of removing an entire market (Tuluk) from play.

Up the frequency with which people can sell things, lower the profits.

You change the message: "I don't need any more of that right now." Pretty much like how it is already. There's playability, believability, and realism. I put those in that order because that's how I feel the priority should be. The system as it is right now, is only playable for some. It isn't playable at all for others. It isn't realistic at all, and it's not all that believable. Make the function of NPC selling more *playable* and tweak it for believability. Realism has no place in a fantasy world, so it's a moot point

Your idea also hurts the new player and rewards the veteran. The new player doesn't know how to stockpile. It also rewards the person who needs the coins the least, and punishes the one who needs it the most. The guy who only HAS one hide - can now suffer the consequences of a glut in the market caused by the guy with 10 hides.

[chuci]

I think both ideas can coexist peacefully, but only 2 per of any item seems too low.

[Desertman]

I don't like the idea of shopkeepers only buying a certain amount from certain people.

It doesn't make sense that in Zalanthas a shopkeeper would only buy "X amount of resource from Y individual because.", "I want to make sure everyone gets their fair share.".

They would buy on a first come first serve basis, and in general, I prefer it that way. It creates a competition.

What this game needs is more reason for conflict and economic competition, not more code designed to create a system where everyone, "Gets to sell equally and fairly and don't have to compete with each other.".

But, that's just my personal preference.

The guy with 10 hides worked harder. Got there first. He deserves to make the money. The guy with his 1 hide needs to work for the guy with 10 hides. Why? Because the guy with 10 hides is better. If the guy with 1 hide doesn't like it, he should get rid of the guy with 10 hides or stop crying. It's Zalanthas. (My mindset.)

[Revenant]

I don't like the idea of shopkeepers only buying a certain amount from certain people.

It doesn't make sense that in Zalanthas a shopkeeper would only buy "X amount of resource from Y individual because.", "I want to make sure everyone gets their fair share.".

They would buy on a first come first serve basis, and in general, I prefer it that way. It creates a competition.

What this game needs is more reason for conflict and economic competition, not more code designed to create a system where everyone, "Gets to sell equally and fairly and don't have to compete with each other.".

But, that's just my personal preference.

The guy with 10 hides worked harder. Got there first. He deserves to make the money. The guy with his 1 hide needs to work for the guy with 10 hides. Why? Because the guy with 10 hides is better. If the guy with 1 hide doesn't like it, he should get rid of the guy with 10 hides or stop crying. It's Zalanthas. (My mindset.)

Armageddon is not a meritocracy (outside certain tribes).

[Desertman]

I don't like the idea of shopkeepers only buying a certain amount from certain people.

It doesn't make sense that in Zalanthas a shopkeeper would only buy "X amount of resource from Y individual because.", "I want to make sure everyone gets their fair share.".

They would buy on a first come first serve basis, and in general, I prefer it that way. It creates a competition.

What this game needs is more reason for conflict and economic competition, not more code designed to create a system where everyone, "Gets to sell equally and fairly and don't have to compete with each other.".

But, that's just my personal preference.

The guy with 10 hides worked harder. Got there first. He deserves to make the money. The guy with his 1 hide needs to work for the guy with 10 hides. Why? Because the guy with 10 hides is better. If the guy with 1 hide doesn't like it, he should get rid of the guy with 10 hides or stop crying. It's Zalanthas. (My mindset.)

Armageddon is not a meritocracy (outside certain tribes).

Armageddon is not. Zalanthas is, with the exception of certain Houses and tribes.

Those who are the most skilled, and the most fit for survival rule and dominate. Those who are not, get the scraps.

I like it that way.

(Also, I had to look up meritocracy. It is basically the idea that those who are the smartest/most skilled/most capable succeed right?)

[Revenant]

I don't like the idea of shopkeepers only buying a certain amount from certain people.

It doesn't make sense that in Zalanthas a shopkeeper would only buy "X amount of resource from Y individual because.", "I want to make sure everyone gets their fair share.".

They would buy on a first come first serve basis, and in general, I prefer it that way. It creates a competition.

What this game needs is more reason for conflict and economic competition, not more code designed to create a system where everyone, "Gets to sell equally and fairly and don't have to compete with each other.".

But, that's just my personal preference.

The guy with 10 hides worked harder. Got there first. He deserves to make the money. The guy with his 1 hide needs to work for the guy with 10 hides. Why? Because the guy with 10 hides is better. If the guy with 1 hide doesn't like it, he should get rid of the guy with 10 hides or stop crying. It's Zalanthas. (My mindset.)

Armageddon is not a meritocracy (outside certain tribes).

Armageddon is not. Zalanthas is, with the exception of certain Houses and tribes.

Those who are the most skilled, and the most fit for survival rule and dominate. Those who are not, get the scraps.

When's the last time you saw a sponsored role? Some of these characters would be utterly demolished if  they didn't have a priveleged family name.

EDIT: Further, aides. Yuck. Instant immunity to near everything, privilege to extend that to others. It's a mess of crap.

[Desertman]

I don't like the idea of shopkeepers only buying a certain amount from certain people.

It doesn't make sense that in Zalanthas a shopkeeper would only buy "X amount of resource from Y individual because.", "I want to make sure everyone gets their fair share.".

They would buy on a first come first serve basis, and in general, I prefer it that way. It creates a competition.

What this game needs is more reason for conflict and economic competition, not more code designed to create a system where everyone, "Gets to sell equally and fairly and don't have to compete with each other.".

But, that's just my personal preference.

The guy with 10 hides worked harder. Got there first. He deserves to make the money. The guy with his 1 hide needs to work for the guy with 10 hides. Why? Because the guy with 10 hides is better. If the guy with 1 hide doesn't like it, he should get rid of the guy with 10 hides or stop crying. It's Zalanthas. (My mindset.)

Armageddon is not a meritocracy (outside certain tribes).

Armageddon is not. Zalanthas is, with the exception of certain Houses and tribes.

Those who are the most skilled, and the most fit for survival rule and dominate. Those who are not, get the scraps.

When's the last time you saw a sponsored role? Some of these characters would be utterly demolished if  they didn't have a priveleged family name.

I thought I covered that with the bolded part?

[Nyr]

Yes, the markets in Storm and Luir's could use some serious beefing up.

This is something that should happen over time.  A more correct analysis would be "the markets in Storm and Luir's could use staff review seeing as how Tuluk has been closed for PC play."

Seems like someone nerfed the market in Luir's

Never ascribe to active change that which can just as easily be anecdotal or the result of other changes--such as the above, what with closing a city-state for play.

A bunch of specific stuff

I've edited that out, you'd benefit from bugging, typoing, or idea'ing these things in game (specifically if you have behavior you would expect to happen, but it does not happen that way).

Storm's market is shot to pieces.

I've edited out some of the other stuff you've mentioned here because it's also specific in-game stuff, but once again, you can bug/typo/idea these in-game.  Expect to be patient about it.  We DO want to make things better in the outpost areas (see the discussion about that when we closed Tuluk), but we'd rather do a larger chunk of several things at once rather than one or two tweaks.  

Cenyr I've visited a few times, but never really got any clue how existence was supposed to be sustainable there.

It isn't supposed to be sustainable for players.  If you're a PC, you are 99% likely to be an outsider to this area.

Blackwing buys some things, for usually hideously marked down prices. Likely not a place you're supposed to stay in long unless you weasel yourself in REAL good with the d-elfs. I don't even think they have a water seller, could be wrong, though.

While Blackwing Outpost might see changes, you'll likely sooner see changes to more well-established enclaves and outposts rather than this one that is much more elven-centric.

[Desertman]

I always liked the way Blackwing felt both in terms of how it functions for tribal elves and how it functions for outsiders. I feel the economy is reflected very realistically there in my opinion.

I like the place though. I would like to see a few more concepts in game in there that would promote more travel to the outpost. I'm not sure how to accomplish that. I think it would be good for both outsiders, and the elves that call the area home as well though.

A reason for groups to make trips there from time to time so that the elves get to interact with the groups, if they choose to, and the groups have more of a reason to interact with the elves.

[KankWhisperer]

I still like the save shopkeepers idea.

However in my mind only the buy price would be significantly affected by supply.

If inventory =< 5, buy price = normal.
else
buy price = normal * 5 / inventory

Likely some min that's normal / 50?
If normal < 1 then isn't interested.
Increased number of items virtually sold.

Sell price would not be affected by inventory. Or if it did you could have it on a different scale like 100 items drops it 1%.

I also had proposed wandering merchants remain as is.

[Revenant]

Whoops! Sorry to post something that needed so much editing, I'll be more careful in the future. Good to know these things. I have bugged and idead a couple things today or yesterday that I thought would be neat. Thanks for the response, Nyr.

[Chettaman]

Save shop keepers.
Seriously, you guys. That's /all/ that needs to be done.

The shop keepers sell their goods. I'll say it over and over again. They sell their goods. They do it so much that they make profit. You sold them a leaf for 200 coins. They're selling it for 575. ... they're SELLING IT FOR 575 coins!!
-- Yes. After they've sold it you can sell just /one/ more leaf. But they can sell something else now.
-- No. You can't sell more than /one/ more leaf. BUT YOU CAN SELL SOMETHING ELSE NOW.

If you stand around a shop keeper enough you'll notice they get rid of their goods at a pretty good rate.
This;
-- still has people competing to sell things.
-- still gives the shop keepers the ability to buy sold goods.
-- doesn't, and I'm sorry, give you the ability to get rid of all of the stuff you have stock piled because you're a hoarder and a penny-pincher. The simple solution to having all of that stuff stockpiled is to use it or lose it. You penny pincher. Use it or lose it!

Having merchants save their goods will save this economy and even make it more realistic, obviously.

making merchants buy an infinite amount:
--Isn't a terribly bad idea if the reboot will make everything go back to Merchant #1030 having 1000 coins.
-- Combining it /with/ saving merchants will completely destroy the market because they /won't/ reboot back to having 1000 coins and they will have all the items that had previously. Which means the number of things they buy will constantly be worth 1 coin or some such.
-- My suggestion for having merchants buy infinitely /and/ save is to make them sell their own goods at an increased rate. But this would make it difficult if a merchant were selling a badass shield and you were looking at it for like 10 minutes because that shield and your amount of coins... you're a haggler or something... you're making a decision is what I'm saying. If you took too long that shield would be gone for good. It's not that bad of an idea. But I like simply saving merchants way more.

Reboot = Sold goods:
-- What if the reboot caused all of the items the shop keeper bought... to sell and generate actual coins for the shop keeper /after/ the reboot?

[chuci]

re: that last idea - If you think the shopkeep rush is bad NOW....

[Revenant]

I hate using vendors and strongly prefer the player economy. It's essential to use vendors, however, if you're playing guild merchant.