Make NPC merchant limits per-player not per-merchant

[Synthesis]

Stable fees are only a problem for noobs.  Raising them wouldn't do anything about mid-to-endgame wealth.  If anything, you'd just see an increase in people hanging out with their mounts in places that are relatively safe quit-rooms in order to avoid the fee as much as possible.  (Which already happens with noob PCs, when due to skill-suckage, you aren't guaranteed to break even on a daily hunt/forage run, when you factor in stable fees, hunger, and thirst).

[only_plays_tribals]

Yeah that's true. I mean there really is no easy fix for an Econ problem. Raising costs to match the global money volume and increasing availability of desirable and/or required goods/services would realistically have to extend beyond one domain. At least as far as my understanding goes.

[AdamBlue]

Make more things for players to buy, and to spend money on in the high and lower scale of things. Get rid of the monopoly of Nenyuk on apartment buildings and allow wealthy PC's to own apartment buildings, (and other bits of freshly reclaimed land after the last set of natural disasters) set apartment prices, and take in apartment income. Conversely, make them pay for the guards, facilities present on-site, and repairs to the damages of the apartments.
Some apartments remain that, 'just apartments'. However, being a landowner in Allanak is valuable, as it allows you to basically cordon off your own little piece of lawless territory as long as it isn't in view of any guards.
Money is taxed by the Allanaki Government.
Soldiers can obtain warrants from Templars to search owned premises.
Soldiers and Templars can also be bribed to mind their own business.

Suddenly, Templar PCs have money, Soldier PCs have money, Merchant PCs have money,  Criminal PCs have money, and the interesting dynamic between landowners and their renters, criminals and the people they have to bribe, and the operations they run out of a locale.

Some places may become exclusive bars, some places may become secret fight clubs, some places may become sex dungeons, some places may become spice dens that aren't limited to nobility or the 'rinth.

There are already a few 'houses' in game that people claim for themselves in some areas. What I'm saying is that it could be vastly expanded in many ways, shapes, and forms.
Creating a Minor Merchant House shouldn't be the only way for you to be able to 'own land'.

[650Booger]

Yeah.

[Heade]

I mean there really is no easy fix for an Econ problem.

I agree with this. Since long-lived PCs sort of represent the "stars" of our ongoing collaborative story within the gameworld filled with vNPCs who are perpetually poor, I don't see a problem with late-game PCs being wealthy. But I -would- like to see more attractive things for them to spend their sid on, hence...

Make more things for players to buy, and to spend money on in the high and lower scale of things. Get rid of the monopoly of Nenyuk on apartment buildings and allow wealthy PC's to own apartment buildings, (and other bits of freshly reclaimed land after the last set of natural disasters) set apartment prices, and take in apartment income. Conversely, make them pay for the guards, facilities present on-site, and repairs to the damages of the apartments.
Some apartments remain that, 'just apartments'. However, being a landowner in Allanak is valuable, as it allows you to basically cordon off your own little piece of lawless territory as long as it isn't in view of any guards.
Money is taxed by the Allanaki Government.
Soldiers can obtain warrants from Templars to search owned premises.
Soldiers and Templars can also be bribed to mind their own business.

Suddenly, Templar PCs have money, Soldier PCs have money, Merchant PCs have money,  Criminal PCs have money, and the interesting dynamic between landowners and their renters, criminals and the people they have to bribe, and the operations they run out of a locale.

Some places may become exclusive bars, some places may become secret fight clubs, some places may become sex dungeons, some places may become spice dens that aren't limited to nobility or the 'rinth.

There are already a few 'houses' in game that people claim for themselves in some areas. What I'm saying is that it could be vastly expanded in many ways, shapes, and forms.
Creating a Minor Merchant House shouldn't be the only way for you to be able to 'own land'.

I really like the above idea, and would like to see other options for money-sinks that players would enjoy, and thus attract them towards spending it.

The problem with changing the supply and demand side of things is that, when you try to make things more difficult for mid-late game characters to get sids, it makes it impossibly difficult for the early-game characters to make sids. They can't have that eureka! moment where they get a small come-up. And a global discovery cap on foraged items would just reinforce the old reboot rush for those capped items that has been OOCly jarring in the past, and a major OOC barrier for noobs who don't know how the mechanic works, or have the time to exploit it.

I personally would like to avoid adding anything that's difficult or impossible to be ICly explained to another character. And such a mechanic could almost only be explained IC by saying "luck" or something of the sort, but if you know how the mechanics work, it's really not luck at all.

I would much rather see the rate at which merchants "sell to a random passer-by" increased to allow for a greater number of people to sell to a merchant, or somehow scale the "sells to a random passer-by" to the number of players logged in, so that they sell to random vNPCs more when there are more players, and less when there are less players. This would help to ensure that a high number of players in the game wouldn't make merchants consistently out of sids and full up on item types, while still limiting it so that during low-pop times, a single player isn't able to endlessly generate wealth off of one type of item. It would also be a more permenant fix that would scale with the growth of Arm as a whole, which I'd very much like to see. It could even be tied to more than just player numbers. The number of X classes/subclasses could have an effect on the scaling as well.

[Inks]

I feel like the economy is alright. Put a cap on RS tailor though.

Also OP thing would break the economy more.

Put a limit on new GDB topics per player though.

[Heade]

Put a limit on new GDB topics per player though.

Lolz. What would you put that limit at? I don't think many people would break even a small daily limit.

[Inks]

Put a limit on new GDB topics per player though.

Lolz. What would you put that limit at? I don't think many people would break even a small daily limit.

Pretty sure only one player would break the limit 

[zztri]

As long as there's infinite supply, there's going to be problems.. So I don't think this could be handled.

Limiting players? Why? To create a new profession; middle-party? The moment such a thing happens I'll offer people in the taverns to sell their excess items for a cut.

Making price degrade with the amount the merchant already has? Much more logical. Let's say a gold nugget costs 10k 'sids. The merchant will buy it for 5K 'sids and sell for 20K sids. When someone sells the merchant third gold nugget, the merchant offers only 4K 'sids - 10% lower and sell for 19k 'sids - 5% lower. It would go on until the merchant decides gold nuggets are worthless because he already has 196 of them and sells them for only 5 'sids, until he offloads a few of the stock.

But it won't work. It will end up with a lot of things becoming dirt-cheap quickly and the quicker people will win. Others will keep selling though, why not?

How to stop this deflation? Make forageable gold nuggets a limited amount, so after 14 is foraged, even if the character wears special foraging gloves, wields a shovel, dons the special foraging googles and casts 'detect minerals' he can't find more.

Same should have to be done for animals. To stop deflation for steel-embedded skeet chitins, skeet should spawn a fixed amount.

But that wouldn't work, skeet would be extinct in the first few hours of the game. Why doesn't it happen in real life? Yeah it happens for some animals but a lot of animals are immune to humans' capacity for genocide. Why?

Let's take rats as an example. With all the technology, experience, studies, cats, poisons etc. we can't get rid of rats. Because.... they hide. They have lairs that are not easily accessible. They propagate in obnoxious amounts, a momma rat will give a litter of 8-10 in a about 20 days, too lazy to google but the it should be about right. That's roughly half a rat a day per female rat!

But our skeet... they stay in the open and they don't reproduce. Hell, I didn't see one single female animal of any kind. I don't know if they're even coded.

So in the end, no matter what you do, all you can is to cause more problems. If a complete overhaul of foraging, chopping wood, picking cotton, digging clay and animal spawning isn't to be redone from scratch, problems will arise.

Still, I agree with the option of merchants asking for/offering less if the item is already plentiful as the best.

[Boogerbear]

It seems like the problem is people not having anything useful to do with all that 'sid.

Bribe and bribe and bribe and indie merchants will still get assassinated.

[Mercy]

Not sure if this train of thought would be considered derailing and require a new thread but here goes all the same.

I'm only on my second character here, so take what I say with a grain (mountain?) of salt. Based on my brief experience with things, I feel like a combination of item 'quality' and degradation would go a long way to remedying stagnant economy. Granted, I can also see it being both tedious and annoying so maybe that's why it's not already a thing.

To elaborate:

Each item would be given a quality level which determines how effective it is, and how quickly it degrades. Both just from existing in the world, as well as from use. (I'd recommend the rate of degradation either be severely reduced or halted while offline, to prevent people logging in after a break and their items disintegrating in their hands suddenly). While I have seen armor take damage, very rarely, the only item type I've ever seen need to be repaired are shields. It makes sense that weapons would become damaged and break over time, especially considering the materials used (bone, chitin, obsidian). Even clothes wear down after a while from being worn constantly, snag a corner there and so on. Armor should probably wear down at a much faster rate than it does currently just from standard combat. And I feel like almost all items should have some sort of passive degradation, which is obviously much slower at higher quality levels.

Put a hard cap on quality of items sold by merchants. Have repair skills and npcs lower the quality of an item when it is repaired, as it becomes more hackneyed and makeshift.

Could additionally give PCs control over the quality level of the item they wish to craft, as they reach higher skill levels. Higher quality pieces requiring a mark-up in materials. With intentionally low quality perhaps costing a reduced amount when compared to a low-skill crafter making the same item at the same low quality.

With quality also being a factor into price (maybe give materials quality also?) it'd make starting out for independents a lot harder, as not only would they struggle to make as much money, they'd also have to be spending their profits on maintenance and upkeep. Puts an emphasis on seeking out highly skilled crafters when you need something good and also gives the option of getting a shittier (hah, shit-tier. woo I'm child) item for something you plan to use infrequently or only once. And for prim and proper PCs, gives them reason to replace their wardrobe when a fray appears in the sleeve. Or their sofa cushion starts to deflate. Can't be having that.

I will say, I have no idea how difficult this would be to add to the current framework of the game. Honestly, it sounds like a pain in the ass with the level of depth I have envisioned. Also, no clue if anyone would actually enjoy this system. I would, but I'm a masochist sooooooo.

[Synthesis]

Not sure if this train of thought would be considered derailing and require a new thread but here goes all the same.

I'm only on my second character here, so take what I say with a grain (mountain?) of salt. Based on my brief experience with things, I feel like a combination of item 'quality' and degradation would go a long way to remedying stagnant economy. Granted, I can also see it being both tedious and annoying so maybe that's why it's not already a thing.

To elaborate:

Each item would be given a quality level which determines how effective it is, and how quickly it degrades. Both just from existing in the world, as well as from use. (I'd recommend the rate of degradation either be severely reduced or halted while offline, to prevent people logging in after a break and their items disintegrating in their hands suddenly). While I have seen armor take damage, very rarely, the only item type I've ever seen need to be repaired are shields. It makes sense that weapons would become damaged and break over time, especially considering the materials used (bone, chitin, obsidian). Even clothes wear down after a while from being worn constantly, snag a corner there and so on. Armor should probably wear down at a much faster rate than it does currently just from standard combat. And I feel like almost all items should have some sort of passive degradation, which is obviously much slower at higher quality levels.

Put a hard cap on quality of items sold by merchants. Have repair skills and npcs lower the quality of an item when it is repaired, as it becomes more hackneyed and makeshift.

Could additionally give PCs control over the quality level of the item they wish to craft, as they reach higher skill levels. Higher quality pieces requiring a mark-up in materials. With intentionally low quality perhaps costing a reduced amount when compared to a low-skill crafter making the same item at the same low quality.

With quality also being a factor into price (maybe give materials quality also?) it'd make starting out for independents a lot harder, as not only would they struggle to make as much money, they'd also have to be spending their profits on maintenance and upkeep. Puts an emphasis on seeking out highly skilled crafters when you need something good and also gives the option of getting a shittier (hah, shit-tier. woo I'm child) item for something you plan to use infrequently or only once. And for prim and proper PCs, gives them reason to replace their wardrobe when a fray appears in the sleeve. Or their sofa cushion starts to deflate. Can't be having that.

I will say, I have no idea how difficult this would be to add to the current framework of the game. Honestly, it sounds like a pain in the ass with the level of depth I have envisioned. Also, no clue if anyone would actually enjoy this system. I would, but I'm a masochist sooooooo.

I had a long reply for this, but the TL;DR is "Fuck That."  I have plenty of fucking chores to take care of IRL.