NPC Shop Crying Thread

[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.