Economy Feedback - wood

[Shabago]

As a test trial gets under way for finding the right balance for the game economy, having direct feedback from you all, on the ground, will greatly assist in this. As mentioned in the staff announcement, there have been changes to wood items in game, with the intent to reign in certain prices.

Please avoid going into specific items or shops, and stick to overall feed back, avoiding potential IC info or outing your current PC.

[mansa]

I haven't logged in yet, but to clarify...

Is the intent to reduce the multiplier that Allanak had on wooden items, so they aren't worth 800 coins in Allanak but 25 coins in Tuluk?

[Patuk]

I think the degree to which wood prices have been slashed in the south is a bit steep. Certainly the wooden chests and shields we all know and love sold for prices well beyond what should be reasonable, but those are issues with those specific items more than wood in general. Spears in particular seem barely worth making now, which is a bit annoying of an issue to have; a game with a wide selection of paneled chest available but no spears seems like the exact opposite from how most PCs would prefer to spend their coin.

[Brytta Léofa]

Disclaimer: I last played a serious crafter in 2012.

I got excited on the assumption that this was a shift the *other* way--such that nobody in 'Nak could afford wood stuff and you could make massive profits bringing down wagonloads of lumber.

I'm guessing that the issue was that:
1) this was happening already
2) but it's not logging crews; it's like 5 individuals working alone
3) so it works out being kind of lame rather than kind of cool.

[williamson]

As a test trial gets under way for finding the right balance for the game economy, having direct feedback from you all, on the ground, will greatly assist in this. As mentioned in the staff announcement, there have been changes to wood items in game, with the intent to reign in certain prices.

Please avoid going into specific items or shops, and stick to overall feed back, avoiding potential IC info or outing your current PC.

I think it would be helpful if we understood the goal of the changes. Could you tell us what you're wanting to accomplish?

[Brokkr]

We want you to be poor and die in loneliness and misery, with your mate stealing the last of your hard won sid in a massive act of betrayal, running off to spend it on spice and booze with your best friend, but not before paying off the local Arm of the Dragon Sergeant to make sure you are brutally murdered.

Oh...oh...you meant with this?

How do we return to RL year 2000 sense of how expensive things IG should be (not just items in the shops, but how much for services between PCs, etc.)?   *not the real defined goal, obviously, but directional

[X-D]

I am seeing no issue right now. Risk verses reward. Since there is no risk to getting wood...Or VERY low, The reward should be low. As well supply and demand...with the above having been the case there is a high supply because the risk has been low and the reward high.

I see staff trying to find this balance to be a good thing...Who knows, maybe risk will go up in the future and the numbers will need to be rebalenced again.

[RavingTregils]

I am seeing no issue right now. Risk verses reward. Since there is no risk to getting wood...Or VERY low, The reward should be low. As well supply and demand...with the above having been the case there is a high supply because the risk has been low and the reward high.

I see staff trying to find this balance to be a good thing...Who knows, maybe risk will go up in the future and the numbers will need to be rebalenced again.

Could let the wood fight back. Chop a tree - it throws a branch at your head. Maybe knock you out.
Forage wood - you might get a snake instead...poisonous one at that.

Put a whole new spin on the value of wood.

[Patuk]

How do we return to RL year 2000 sense of how expensive things IG should be (not just items in the shops, but how much for services between PCs, etc.)?   *not the real defined goal, obviously, but directional

You mean, when the median account age wasn't twenty years? When people knew fuck all about the game? When crafting was extremely new and people didn't know to use it well?

I don't think that's a feasible thing unless the playerbase is replaced with newbs wholesale.

[Inks]

Yes. That past isn't coming back. Nor was it that glorious. This is an old game and it is where it is.

[Shabago]

In this harsh realm, life is a constant struggle, and death may occur over a drink of precious water.

Only seeing the one direct question thus far, beyond general feedback. The reply feeds into the quote above, from the home page.

The intent for everything, not just for wood, is to have the economy match the theme. Unless you're a Noble or a well-to-do GMH member, you should absolutely not have tens of thousands of coins in your account/stash, unless you've spent a career or life-time earning it, rather than the RL week or two it currently is.

Once all the shops, items and various other factors that go into the economy are adjusted - Pulling in enough coin for your food, water, rent and some small profit beyond it to save up, should be the norm. Making coin actually have value, a struggle to get expensive things, etc.

[Dan]

A brief coin sink of some sort might help the transition. Optional but beneficial way to expend coins. I wiill try to brainstorm.

[Patuk]

We have an entire thread dedicated to Halaster asking the community why they do (or don't) play, and the most common refrain there is people not having the time to do a slew of things. Making it take even longer for characters to establish themselves is a bug, not a feature.

[ShaiHulud]

We want you to be poor and die in loneliness and misery, with your mate stealing the last of your hard won sid in a massive act of betrayal, running off to spend it on spice and booze with your best friend, but not before paying off the local Arm of the Dragon Sergeant to make sure you are brutally murdered.

Death to all but Metal.

[Inks]

Make glass and sid mining far less profitable, if you want an easy suggestion.

Everytime I used to go to morins all you could see in the weapon and armor shops was obsidian items.

But my pcs usually feel the crunch as is, don't really want to treat the game like a second job just to get by. Pretty sure that will cause less people to play, not more. That being said, sell price of some things is so broken. Elvish longbow for starters.

[Hauwke]

I don't even know why that's an item still, how do you even tell its elvish? That would be the same thing as having a dwarven hammer. It's archaic and dumb.

[Dune Bunny]

After playing for a bit and trying out a few of these affected items today, I can say that this isn't that bad of a change at all, from the perspective of a crafter-heavy player.

It looks like a few of the egregiously profitable items have been nuked, but honestly, they might be a little deserving. (Anyone remember those -very- inexpensive to make 300 'sid hairpieces? It's been a year since those died, so I can talk about it!  )

I truly don't believe there should be any concern about this, relative to the 'grind' of the game. If a select 3-4 items are the make or break for a character's wealth, then I believe it's good that things are being spread out like this. But a few of the items I worked with today only saw a tiny drop in price (roughly 10-15%, but still very profitable) as compared to the few super-seller items.

I'm very much a fan of a more diverse, spread out economy instead of striving for a career of making a few of X and racing the other X-makers to the shops to get rich.

[Shabago]

Make glass and sid mining far less profitable, if you want an easy suggestion.

But my pcs usually feel the crunch as is, don't really want to treat the game like a second job just to get by. Pretty sure that will cause less people to play, not more. That being said, sell price of some things is so broken. Elvish longbow for starters.

Can you or Patuk (or others) expand on why this would cause someone to not play?

I realise text tone is difficult, so I'll state plainly I'm not attempting to come off as rude or ignorant here, but how will seeing your bank account/stash show "1-2k" and growing little by little be game breaking compared to seeing it at "10-20k" and growing?

Is it a need to have ankheg armor right out of char-gen, inside of a week?
Is it a mentally satisfying comfort that *if* something happens to come along that you want, you have the coin stashed away for it?
Is it a 'swag' issue to claim riches over others?

The very same amount of play time put in now or the very same amount of play time after all the changes go in, will bring about little change beyond bloated and anti-theme bank accounts, so far as I can see thus far? But, that is the point of this thread. To see or hear what areas I could miss or be blind to, but I'd need some greater details as to why it would affect such things?

Further adding, as was discussed in discord but not here - these changes aren't set in stone. Play-ability will continue to be a factor, and if various changes are too punishing on some players, they'd be adjusted.

[Greve]

The discrepancy in wood prices only really seemed to affect certain types of items. Shields and chest, yes, we all know about that and it ought to have been addressed years ago. Glad it was finally brought up. But things like weapons and more ordinary wooden items never appeared to have an unusually skewed price in the south. Like you couldn't get 300 sid for a wooden nose-ring in the Allanak bazaar. It was mostly shields and chests causing problems. Don't know why those two item types in particular were so overvalued, but they were.

By the way, I've always wondered why obsidian items were not similarly valued in the north. It's honestly harder to get obsidian than wood, and there are far fewer items that can be made from it. You would think that wood, given its relative ease of acquisition and transportation, would be uncommon but not absurdly rare in the south, whereas obsidian in the north would be truly exotic as noone in their right mind is transporting cartloads of it up there. Anyone with an axe can chop down a tree, but to obtain the same volume of obsidian would take a team of laborers a whole week to collect, and any objects larger than a dwarf's head would require a rare and prized obsidian vein while literally each and every baobab tree could make half a wagon.

Just always struck me as odd. The big money was always in transporting northern materials southward, never the other way. You can take an obsidian sword to Tuluk right now and any given shop will probably offer you little more for it than they would in Allanak.

If I'm being perfectly honest, the world is not big enough to warrant a gigantic gulf in values between one city and the other. It's an aspect of the game that feels like it was modeled after Dark Sun where one city has barely heard of the other's existence, so anything brought from there is wildly exotic and unique. Even if you don't twink out and speedwalk along, you can travel from Tuluk to Allanak in, what, two in-game days? There's no reason anything from there would be worth a massive amount of money. It's like goods from medieval Yorke being transported to medieval London. The entirety of the Known World is about the size of Ohio, we've been told, and there are whole corporations that have specialized for literal centuries in transporting goods from one end to the other. Nothing can possibly be worth ten times as much in one place as it is in another. It just doesn't make logistical sense.

So if you can no longer slap together a wooden fucking chest that any one of thousands of northern woodworkers could make in half an afternoon and sell it for eight million bucks in Allanak, that was certainly a good move.

[Inks]

The discrepancy in wood prices only really seemed to affect certain types of items. Shields and chest, yes, we all know about that and it ought to have been addressed years ago. Glad it was finally brought up. But things like weapons and more ordinary wooden items never appeared to have an unusually skewed price in the south. Like you couldn't get 300 sid for a wooden nose-ring in the Allanak bazaar. It was mostly shields and chests causing problems. Don't know why those two item types in particular were so overvalued, but they were.

By the way, I've always wondered why obsidian items were not similarly valued in the north. It's honestly harder to get obsidian than wood, and there are far fewer items that can be made from it. You would think that wood, given its relative ease of acquisition and transportation, would be uncommon but not absurdly rare in the south, whereas obsidian in the north would be truly exotic as noone in their right mind is transporting cartloads of it up there. Anyone with an axe can chop down a tree, but to obtain the same volume of obsidian would take a team of laborers a whole week to collect, and any objects larger than a dwarf's head would require a rare and prized obsidian vein while literally each and every baobab tree could make half a wagon.

Just always struck me as odd. The big money was always in transporting northern materials southward, never the other way. You can take an obsidian sword to Tuluk right now and any given shop will probably offer you little more for it than they would in Allanak.

If I'm being perfectly honest, the world is not big enough to warrant a gigantic gulf in values between one city and the other. It's an aspect of the game that feels like it was modeled after Dark Sun where one city has barely heard of the other's existence, so anything brought from there is wildly exotic and unique. Even if you don't twink out and speedwalk along, you can travel from Tuluk to Allanak in, what, two in-game days? There's no reason anything from there would be worth a massive amount of money. It's like goods from medieval Yorke being transported to medieval London. The entirety of the Known World is about the size of Ohio, we've been told, and there are whole corporations that have specialized for literal centuries in transporting goods from one end to the other. Nothing can possibly be worth ten times as much in one place as it is in another. It just doesn't make logistical sense.

So if you can no longer slap together a wooden fucking chest that any one of thousands of northern woodworkers could make in half an afternoon and sell it for eight million bucks in Allanak, that was certainly a good move.

Sorry my statement was off topic, I very much like these current selling/ buying price changes. I was spitballing some other ideas to balance economy such as reducing the amount got from obsidian/glass mining, and saying that for a non crafter character, you wouldn't want to have to put in 4 hours a rl day just making coins to afford rent and water. I am all for this and other economy changes.

One of my pcs lived with a glass miner who had 70 k + in the bank in very little time, and I basically had to ignore the ridiculousness of that.

Also for the last 2 rl years, all I saw sold weapons/armors in Morins was obsidian items. In fact for a time I would swear people were ordering obsidian forearm plates and barbute helms from Salarr because they would sell higher in Morin's than Salarr charged for them.

Sorry for the off-topic earlier, I approve these changes, is my feedback. But some items need to be reduced further such as certain bows.

[Greve]

Also for the last 2 rl years, all I saw sold weapons/armors in Morins was obsidian items.

That's mainly because there are very few crafting recipes for wooden armor and weapons, nor any demand for them whatsoever from PCs.

And that's another thing, actually, while we're at it. Obsidian is still somewhat valuable in the south, at least to the point where it's worth crafting stuff out of it, while wood is practically garbage in the north. I suppose that's not so strange, given the fact that Tuluk sits right next to the world's only actual forest, but still: considering the size of the world and the fact that a considerable portion of it is covered in trees, there's no convincing reason why wood should be all that valuable. Just looking at the way that it actually is (you can tell because of the way it is!), wood should not be some unusually prized commodity.

[williamson]

As a test trial gets under way for finding the right balance for the game economy, having direct feedback from you all, on the ground, will greatly assist in this. As mentioned in the staff announcement, there have been changes to wood items in game, with the intent to reign in certain prices.

Please avoid going into specific items or shops, and stick to overall feed back, avoiding potential IC info or outing your current PC.

Over the years, there have been a lot of staff members who have tried to adjust the economy of the game. From my recollection, they usually think that players have too much money. There have been various modifications to influence player behavior. The result has greatly changed how characters are played. However, it is my experience that players who actively work at becoming wealthy will do so if cleverly played.

Here is an example:  I once played a Tuluk assassin (before accents and hand tattoos) who immediately went to Lord Reynolte and asked to become a spy for him. We agreed I would go to Allanak and spy for 500 coins/RL week. I promptly made my way to Allanak and into the 'rinth. There I found the Guild boss and told him I wanted to spy for him. Again, I arranged to spy for another 500 coins/RL week. The Guild boss wanted me to go work for Lord Oash who was hiring guards. Once again, I arrange to work for 500 coins/RL week. Within 2 RL weeks, I was making 1500 coins/RL week. The only skills I needed were listen, contact, and the ability to talk. It required no sparring, hunting, or crafting. However, this was the same amount I earned from my weekly stipend as a Dasari noble. Was this character making too much money? Was the character hurting the game? I guess it's a matter of opinion. However, I'd wager that Lord Reynolte enjoyed having a spy, the Guild boss enjoyed having a spy, and Lord Oash enjoyed having a guard. The character wove a story through three different clans and much interaction.

Thus, changes to NPC merchant prices primarily affect what are now called the "heavy mercantile classes". Allow me to describe my first and last merchants.

My first merchant was in the late 1990s in a new clan called House Kadius. In those days, merchants had listen, scan, haggle, value, ride, pilot, and cavilish. No crafting skills and no fighting skills. They also got "skinning" but it wasn't a skill. You could either do it or not. My first week or so I tried to go hunting near Tuluk. I attacked a tregil and it whipped my ass and nearly killed me. I realized that hunting was going to work as a reliable way to make money. Turning to the helpfiles, it mentioned that most merchants made money by moving goods from one location to another. So, I priced everything in Tuluk and made my way to Luir's and Allanak to do the same thing. I soon recognized a way to haul goods from one city-state to the other and make a nice bit of money. So, I started doing it... a lot. I hired guards, founded the Kadian Falcons, and regularly made trade runs between Tuluk and Allanak. As my haggle improved, so did my profits. Eventually, I could make about 3000 coins/RL day.  I did this every day. What did I do with all this money? I hired people. I hired guards, lots of them. Eventually, I had a Captain of the Guards who hired them for me. I had a Head of Intelligence who hired and planted spies for me. I had hunters and a Vivaduan to provide everyone with water. There was no paymaster, no free water, and no free food. Everything was provided by PC activity. To my knowledge, I was the first character who used wealth as a form of power instead of magick or combat prowess. Each IC year, I would make a regular donation to Garrick the Red. It started as 10,000 coins but eventually reached 25,000 coins. If an independent merchant tried to compete with me, I'd mention their name to the Great Lord about how it might reduce my next donation. They would be dead in a few days. I recall at one point having 20 active PCs working directly or indirectly for me. The payroll was all handled in-game. Over time, I didn't even have to leave Tuluk or drive the wagon. I established a pyramid scheme where I only had to receive the shipments from the junior Kadian family members. Eventually, I amassed over 500,000 coins in savings. I used this incredible sum to purchase a legal contract from a Tuluki High Templar to start a legal trade war with House Kohmar. To lead the attack on their compound, I hired everyone in the Guild and every mercenary I could find. Kadius won the war but my PC wasn't around at the end. At my prime, my typical routine would be to summon some of the guards and the Head of Intelligence. We'd gather the daily cargo and drive the wagon down to Allanak and back. During the drive, I'd get the updates from all the spies, hunters, and rundown on local rumors. I'd give out various orders, sell everything, and roll back to Tuluk.

Contrast this to my last merchant...

Most recently, I played another merchant character. His goal was to form his own minor merchant house. I noticed that the staff regularly said that independent merchants don't have the skill or knowledge base to make what the GMHs can. To get around this, I planned to work for all three GMHs as either a full crafter or a master crafter. I made it through two of them. As I worked in the GMHs, I gathered all the information I could about how they made things. I quietly stole the best tools and kept them tucked away within my backpack. I developed a way to precisely measure things and made detailed drawings of fancy tools and equipment. Along the way, I found an old object of isilt that someone sold in Luir's. It was his prize possession. I recognized that with Tuluk locked up, isilt had nearly vanished from the game. The monopoly once controlled by House Jurrik of Tuluk was open to competition and I planned to learn how to make isilt and sell the raw material to the GMHs. Making isilt was going to be the foundation of my own minor merchant house based in Allanak. I slowly stockpiled coins to use once I broke out on my own. I amassed 35,000 coins in savings. I was waiting for a newbie noble or templar to turn up. Once I found one, I planned to become their right-hand man and use their protection to shield myself as I build my minor merchant house. I estimated that I'd be able to make about 2000 - 3000 coins/ RL week with one active PC hunter. I planned to pump most of the money into my noble or templar sponsor. Then Tuluk reopened and I presume House Jurrik would actively defend their monopoly. I stored and moved on to cooler deserts. My usual day in my prime was to go to the crafter's hall and make things. I would be told what to make by my PC boss. I also loaded and unloaded a ton of raw materials from the House wagon. I'd also design things for them. I spent over half my time inside the House compound or wagon crafting. Eventually, I had one PC dwarf who worked part-time for me. I bet I crafted nearly 2000 objects.

Both of these merchants lived about 9 - 10 RL months. I consider my first merchant a home run and my last merchant a successful bunt. Which of the two do we want to see more of in the game? Which merchant is more fun to play beside and work for? From Brokkr's comments, I was hoping for more of the first. However, from Shabago's comments, I think we may get more of the last.

If the staff's goal is to reduce PC wealth, I suggest the easiest way is to increase the tax at the bank. Personally, I don't like the idea because I think the game has more plots and is more interesting when wealth easily flows between characters. What good is a 100,000 coin bounty if no one can deposit it or buy anything with it? Why even try?

Thanks for reading!

-Williamson

[Maso]

Can you or Patuk (or others) expand on why this would cause someone to not play?
Is it a need to have ankheg armor right out of char-gen, inside of a week?
Is it a mentally satisfying comfort that *if* something happens to come along that you want, you have the coin stashed away for it?
Is it a 'swag' issue to claim riches over others?

Can you or Patuk (or others) expand on why this would cause someone to not play?

Potentially just adding to the grind and monotony of certain activities. There are some players that clearly adore crafting, selling and making a ton of money. Maybe they find it relaxing to sit around crafting a lot, maybe they get something from the progress/success induced dopamine hit of making bank in a sales run.. whatever it is.. some people really like it - fine. Others, don't so much and it can definitely feel like something of chore.

Is it a need to have ankheg armor right out of char-gen, inside of a week?

- Nope, but that's a pretty hyperbolically framed question. :p

Is it a mentally satisfying comfort that *if* something happens to come along that you want, you have the coin stashed away for it?

For me it's this one. I generally like my character to get somewhere between 5-10k saved, then I feel.. 'safe-ish'. Then I try not to touch that, and I live my characters hand to mouth, making small amounts of money or scrounging for food/water.  Not quite sure why that is, but it takes me a good while to get there, not a week, maybe a RL month or two. But then I know if I have a sudden need for something reasonable, or I need to bribe someone, or I get so wrapped up in RP that I can't make enough hand to mouth that I can draw down on that, OR that if RL comes and kicks me in the face, I can use that to keep my rent and stuff going until I can play again.

It's basically a safety net. And I usually find the process of getting there to be a chore. And when I have to draw down on it and then build it up again.. it's a whole other chore.. because I tend to play my characters a lot less skill focussed and a lot more social/RP focussed - what little time I do have to log in and play, I want (and need) to be spend socialising with other PCs or doing a number of things that are not crafting/selling. So when I do have to make some significant money.. well yeah.. I want to spend as little time as possible doing it.

So whatever % changes you make to the economy just represent changes to the % of time I have to spend doing something chore-like. I don't think you will be able to rid me of that desire/need to have that. That said, my last PC's 'nest-egg' was 3k. So that's not too far off what you guys seem to want, but that took me longer than I would have liked too, pre-economy changes and she was not a city-based character with city-based outgoings. I should point out that I do not sell tents, chests, shields or any of those 'big ticket' items. Just play normal PCs who make a range of normal things and not mass production.

I do find enjoyment in the early stage of getting my character on their feet, of them genuinely being poor and struggling to survive, trying to eek out living on shitty crafts and begging for scraps. But eventually that gets old and I do want to move on from that phase and that is part of my characters development for me. It's part of them growing up and learning how to stand on their own two feet.

Is it a 'swag' issue to claim riches over others?

Nope.

--

I probably would have just leaned into the inflation. Hiked up stipends considerably, hiked up all paymaster wages, hiked up apartments, stables, food, water and the prices of GMH goods. That's generally how inflation goes, no? Now your 20k doesn't look so good, but PCs get to keep their sense of value.

The hardest part of a big economy change is going to be getting PCs to adjust the PC to PC economy and mindset. How much should a bribe be? How much should poisons cost? How much should this bag of random hides be sold for? How much is a Byn escort? How much should you tip a dancer? How much should an assassination be?

[Inks]

I like the inflation idea too. Would be considerably easier to do (from an untrained layman's perspective). But I am absolutely fine with obsidian and wood items dropping in value in each place too. But some wildly overpriced bows need more considering they are just made from agafari and baobab!

[Halaster]

For me it's this one. I generally like my character to get somewhere between 5-10k saved, then I feel.. 'safe-ish'. Then I try not to touch that, and I live my characters hand to mouth, making small amounts of money or scrounging for food/water.
...
It's basically a safety net.

I think part of the point might be this mindset, in a way.  Not that you're wrong for having it, but the typical Zalanthan isn't supposed to be that wealthy.  Most of them live day to day, meal to meal, and don't have the luxury of even considering "saving money" or having a "safety net".  At least, that's supposed to be one of the themes of the game - harsh survival, and clearly for most of us it's not really like that.  Part of it is inflation and scope-creep, part of it is that as a whole we all know how to play this game better than we used to.  Sure we get a slow, steady trickle of new players but the bulk of the playerbase has been around a while and knows easily how to get rich.

When I first came back to the game from my super-long hiatus (yes, I'm calling it that now, heh) one of the first things I noticed was just how stinking rich everyone seemed to be.  1,000 coins seemed a lot less valuable now than it once was.

Shabago is trying to introduce a healthy market correction.  And I honestly feel like it's not going to be as huge of an impact as some people seem to be worried about.  And as he said, if it's "too much" it can be adjusted again.

Thanks for those stories, Williamson, they were very well done and I had a hoot reading them and going down Nostalgia lane.  In my personal opinion, the reason for why your 2nd merchant was merely a successful bunt vs the homerun of your 1st is because now the crafting system exists and is a huge part of the game (plus some of the glass ceilings in place now).  Back then crafting was barely existent, if at all.  The crafting system has fundamentally changed the game more than most other systems, mostly for good.

I would ask that we all give it a little time, see how it works out.  The game is in need of some change, and this I think is going to be a good one!

[JustAnotherGuy]

To be honest, I've taken advantage of the wood prices a handful of times and I always felt it was excessive how much could be made rather easily.  For anyone that is experienced in the game, starting a character in the south, heading up north to get logs and craft a few basics chests (which takes little time to skill up to, especially with tools), and then head south and sell with massive profit, is rather easy.  The only "risk" is going from Allanak to Luir's, MAYBE from Luir's to wood due to some spawns that happen in those areas, but if you made a buddy that can get you there and back, and you toss them a few coins, still easy.

The easiest way to make coins in the game is with player interaction, and personally that is the best way to make coins.  Even with a change to wood prices, players will still make a bunch of coins easy.  I think the issue is that people don't want to go through the steps, the monotony, to do it.  Personally the game should be harder to make coins, it should be difficult, and if you want to do the minor "safe" money making grind, then you'll be like every other vNPC grebber out there trying to make coins for a meal.  We're not playing "Heroes" of Zalanthas, we're playing Survivors that can end up making an awesome story of their struggles.

Personally I want to know more about the furniture changes.  Gimme more content!

[triste]

The wood market used to be truly obscene without merchant inventory persistence. Now that we have inventory persistence,  I've seen cases where if you have 2-4 active woodworkers it can actually be quite a pain to make money due to full merchant inventories.

Given the north south conflict and that woodworkers have to go between north and south to make money, there should be even less of a problem. Don't like woodworkers? Great, you now have an excuse for killing them for being on one side of the shieldwall or another. Even if they aren't a Nakki or a Tuluki, well, false accusations are in theme aren't they!

IMO we need to fix other crafts to be more profitable, like clothworking. Woodworking pays so much because of the regional material factor, but clothworking has been excessively nerfed with the justification that you can get cloth anywhere. But I find this to be terribly unfair to characters who are stuck in cities, and this is in part why people are probably considering nerfing woodworking.

[Maso]

I totally get that, just trying to answer the questions in earnest. 

But there's also an element of balancing theme and the 'Zalanthan' mindset with the player mindset and enjoyability of the game.. I guess?

That said, I'm curious to see how it plays out.. it's basically an economic experiment which is pretty interesting. :p

Personally I think there will always be a couple of 'sand kings or queens' around, and there should be. Gotta have slum lords too. Most people seem pretty damn poor most of the time, from where I am anyway.

[mansa]

Whenever I think about the economy, I always go to the base level.  Where does the raw materials you work with come from?

For woodworking - go out and "use movement points to create wood items"
For stoneworking - go out and "use movement points to create stone items"
For jewelrymaking - go out and "use movement points to create precious stone items"
For clothworking - go buy cloth, and then craft it into other items.
For weaponcrafting - go kill a beast, skin it.  AND/OR gather wood AND/OR gather stones
For armorcrafting - go kill a beast, skin it.  AND/OR gather wood AND/OR gather stones
For cooking - go kill a beast, skin in.


The tricky one here, for the most part, is clothworking, as you have to buy the material in order to work with it, so you're at a loss before you've even started making coins. I do know that the staff recently introduced a clothing type - sandsilk - that can be gathered by players, so maybe we should invest in sandsilk items as a potential profit making scheme...

For the rest of the crafting skills, a single player may be able to produce the raw materials out of nothing, and then convert them into valuable items.



Regarding wood changes - I haven't played enough to get my opinion on it, yet...

[triste]

Yeehaw, thanks for indirectly backing me up Mansa, gives me hope people actually read what I post here even if I don't get credit ever.

Fix clothworking and you fix the economy whining IMO.

And if you think someone is too rich? Beat them up for their money or extort them for money depending on your strategy.

[triste]

And because I am a good-idea-machine...

Reiteration of previous good idea with in game anecdote:

Literally this is what the solution to the woodworking problem is.

Woodworker: Wow these woods sure are safe! I can chop wood until I am near totally exhausted! WELL. Guess it's time to sit on my butt and rest.

Raider: Well look at this sitting tregil...

(One in game hour later,  that raider suddenly has a new inix, tons of wood money, and that woodworker is nearly dead on foot or... well, dead)

This happened exactly to me about a year ago. Think you're the most elite woodworker ever and this wouldn't happen? Well try getting blasted fifteen rooms away from your mount by a Whiran and it will happen. I was never more pleased by Whirans than when I was raided by one as a woodworker who COMPLETELY DESERVED IT.

New good thought, sorry if someone said this:

Woodworking and lumberjacking are some of the dangerous professions IRL, and this is without kryl, yompar and Whirans. In fact it is the MOST dangerous job in North America. Throw in a chance of a tree or branch falling on you now and then and possibly doing enough damage to even kill. Problem solved, realistically to boot.

[Dar]

We have an entire thread dedicated to Halaster asking the community why they do (or don't) play, and the most common refrain there is people not having the time to do a slew of things. Making it take even longer for characters to establish themselves is a bug, not a feature.

I'm sorry, but being insanely rich is not being established. Not having a choice of "I need to go greb to have sid for food/water, so I have to end this rp scene in a tavern" is important. But I also don't remember having such a choice set before me in decades at least

[Dresan]

I strongly disagree with Patuk

There is just a big difference between coded grind and wealth in game. You cannot compare rolling a 35 year old hunter who cannot ride, and not having the money to buy the very best gear salarr can sell. One is a coded mechanic that adds tedium and the other is a theme.

Additionally if this were a game where gear mattered more then skills or stats I might agree to a point but it is not. Gear in particularly weapons is nice to have not must have for accomplishing things in this game. Whats worse is that the knowledge of what is good and what is bad is often known through OOC sharing of information. Its very hard, if not twinkish to experiment with gear in this game, it generally makes gear a matter of preference for those of us who haven't become good friends with a staff member.

In fact if we look at past arguement, the biggest problem with money in the game is that we quickly run out of things to spend it on. People make coins too fast without having any crafting skills or being one of the merchantile classes. Everyone and their mothers having 10k in the bank and the best gear money can buy has been great demerit to many aspects of the game especially for merchant classes, because the money they generate doesn't matter as much. Then there are people that even need to go as far as having to 'RP' being poor, by junking coins or nobles invoking noble birthright of influence rather than just plain old wealth to get their way.

I've argued before that we need more money sinks in the game such as promoting the use of spice in game but this is also a better way to look at it, people are too rich, and making everyone poorer will be good for the game.

Furthermore in a perfect world, things would be balanced as shown below:

• Store/NPC loaded stuff--- Always available,  affordable, servicable but POOR gear quality/function
• All PC made stuff------Somewhat common, prices negotiable, GOOD gear quaility/function, will disappear from stores at steady pace due to PC and vNPC demand.
• GMH----uncommon, expensive, you need a know a noble, templar or someone with status to be talk to an agent. BEST gear quality/function. This stuff should disappear extremely quickly from stores do to VNPC and PC demand.

The merchants working for the GMH houses should only be selling stuff they can craft which should be Good qaulity stuff, but not the very best. Everything in general should be following the example above. Unfortunately stuff made by PC is often considered crap compared to the comon stuff you can buy at any shop. Not to mention, the shops often have good GMH gear anyways after someone died, because the vnpc sell code seems random rather than prioritize expensives and good quality stuff. 

In reality managing to wipe out a raider camp and finding a chest with 1000 sid and good gear should really be something worth celebrating about in this game, but it isn't. I think by making balancing wealth attainment in this game, it'll actually be beneficial to the game, especially when people are looking for a change and want to play something other than a combat capable character. And heck even if people don't play merchantile classes, the game will carry on fine with the poor quality stuff sold in stores.

[Brokkr]

When I think back to 2000, the advice you would get if you were struggling to survive would be to join a clan.  So far here, the feedback seems to be mostly from the perspective of someone not in a clan.  Or at least, that aspect isn't really elaborated on much.  If you don't have time to be successful as an independent, in terms of generating what you need for survival, it would seem the obvious answer would be a clan, whether that is a House, MMH, tribe, or whatever form the group takes IG.

[roughneck]

Triple the price of rent.

Editted to add some wood relevance: make baobab wood less useful. Make hardwoods very rare, and woods like baobab that are common, spongy and not very useful for quality weapons, armor and other goods.

[triste]

Triple the price of rent.

Are you serious?

_{^{if you do this please continue to have sketchy apartments with sketchy locks that are inadequate for storing materials but are adequate for [redacted]}}

[roughneck]

Triple the price of rent.

Are you serious?

_{^{if you do this please continue to have sketchy apartments with sketchy locks that are inadequate for storing materials but are adequate for [redacted]}}

Ab-so-fucking-lutely

Allanak seems like the type of place to me that it might take a family of 4 all working hard and contributing to be able to afford. Not 1 person with a side hustle making knives out of rocks.

[triste]

Sure, agreed from an economic standpoint. I just best not be seeing negative account notes for smanging in an alley in the 'Rinth with a change like this. Some people have basic needs besides coin!

_{^{* edit and PSA for newer players. Hooking up in public is a naughty no-no in Armageddon just like its a naughty no-no on OnlyFans. I've gotten negative account notes for it once or twice. Don't be like me and my GF who got banned from OnlyFans.}}

[betweenford]

In terms of grebbing, lots of item tables are like... Kinda silly at the higher end. Glass is really easy to get mechanically for the price and usual risk(without pc raiders). Obsidian is largely fine. Salting is alot of inferred(but not actual) risk, would be good if prices on salting were adjusted a little bit to make it *slightly* more viable, maybe also make the area as a whole less stamina intensive(sometimes it isnt even that hot there but holy crap other areas are equally as and eight times as hot dry and theyre not that bad). Finding *certain* gems is absolutely a common occurrence and their prices don't really reflect their virtual rarity or how common they are.

Logging is ridiculously ez unless youre hunting for rare wood to cut.
Clothworking tends to be a timesink but alot of the variety in it isnt "worth" producing, especially when alot of items only make one 30 sid braies or something. Even the silk prices are kinda scuffed in that trend, it isn't worth it to produce alot of silken items when it makes like a 70 sid loss.
Stoneworking is fine but could do with more variety.
Clayworking(with glaze) is absolutely nutso and cool but not alot of npc shopkeepers buy those items.

Toolmaking.......... Can actually get a bit nuts with profit margins, just look at every tool shop lol.



Kinda cool things are being addressed but stuff's all over the place!

[Dresan]

I would agree with increasing rent, but I don't feel apartments have been made worth using for anything other than to store heavy unimportant stuff and privacy for mudsex.

If you gave people cheaper option to mudsex with other people, like a motel they could rent for a session, I bet apartments would become obsolete.

Also at the moment apartments feel like deathtraps. This needs to be addressed before increasing apartment rent makes any sense.

Edit to add: I am okay with someone taking a crafter subclass (instead of a mage/stealth) to be able to make coins relatively easily. Less okay with anything above a light merchantile class being able to do the same, that includes light combat and to a lesser extend survialist(mixed) classes. 

[Halaster]

Triple the price of rent.

I'd rather see more high-end places available without removing/reducing the low-end ones.

[Dresan]

All gear needing to eventually need to be replaced would resolve things. Basically, armor, weapons and even clothing on you would wear out slowly. You can only repair armor a certain number of times before you need to buy a new one, particularly shields and weapons. Great gear would last much longer of course but would still need to be replaced.

Again there would always be gear that is cheap and readily available so you won't be naked or unable to do stuff.

However, I know that people in this game love their virtual stuff in this game, and this would not sit well with them. As evidenced by how much crying there is when  soap is stolen from their pack and they swear upon the heavens to never enter a tavern again, not to mention the recent changes to steal.

[williamson]

Triple the price of rent.

I'd rather see more high-end places available without removing/reducing the low-end ones.

I agree. This is a good way to pull money out of the game and gives burglars more options.

[triste]

All gear needing to eventually need to be replaced would resolve things. Basically, armor, weapons and even clothing on you would wear out slowly. You can only repair armor a certain number of times before you need to buy a new one, particularly shields and weapons. Great gear would last much longer of course but would still need to be replaced.

Again there would always be gear that is cheap and readily available so you won't be naked or unable to do stuff.

However, I know that people in this game love their virtual stuff in this game, and this would not sit well with them. As evidenced by how much crying there is when  soap is stolen from their pack and they swear upon the heavens to never enter a tavern again, not to mention the recent changes to steal.

+1 to armor and weapons wearing out more, particularly if people with high skill in <armor repair> can do better repairs than shops can at masterful levels, thereby making that skill actually useful.

[Narf]

Triple the price of rent.

I'd rather see more high-end places available without removing/reducing the low-end ones.

I agree. This is a good way to pull money out of the game and gives burglars more options.

I'm not sure I understand how making appartments harder to afford will help burglars?

Pickpockets maybe...

[Narf]

For those coming up with their own ideas on how to fix the economy, please keep this in mind:

New Players already have plenty of problems making coin. The problems with the economy stem from more experienced players taking advantage of loopholes in the cost structure. Making things that new players buy a "cost sink" to take away coins is a bad idea. Stick to closing big money loopholes that new players probably haven't figure out anyways.

[williamson]

Triple the price of rent.

I'd rather see more high-end places available without removing/reducing the low-end ones.

I agree. This is a good way to pull money out of the game and gives burglars more options.

I'm not sure I understand how making appartments harder to afford will help burglars?

Pickpockets maybe...

There are 15 rentable apartments in Allanak.
The staff add 5 new fancy ones with high rents.
People who rent these new apartments have less coins.
Burglars have 20 apartments to rob instead of 15.

[X-D]

Brokkr wrote:

When I think back to 2000, the advice you would get if you were struggling to survive would be to join a clan.  So far here, the feedback seems to be mostly from the perspective of someone not in a clan.  Or at least, that aspect isn't really elaborated on much.  If you don't have time to be successful as an independent, in terms of generating what you need for survival, it would seem the obvious answer would be a clan, whether that is a House, MMH, tribe, or whatever form the group takes IG.

Question is, why was that advice in place?
Hint, It was not the price of wood. (still not against working on the economy BTW just pointing out something here)
It was several things that effected the economy. EVEN in clans. Like water...water actually was harder to get, no clan had a "perm" Water source for free water, Almost no clan had a free food NPC, but for the Byn and that provided some of your water too. The wilderness was arguably far greater in danger as well. I mean, nobody really wants to go back to the roaming gith death squads that used to be...but only because of how buggy they were.

If it was me, I would be looking at the changes that put the economy where it is now.

For instance, other then what was already stated above, Let us look at the payouts for all the "scripted" Methods to make coin. Now, I do not have a problem with those existing...but I find that a PC can make WAY too much money per day on any of them but clay digging. When a PC can make over 300 per RL day shoveling dung and then another 300+ on obsidian then another 600+ on glass...and this is just one area and we are not even including salt because it at least carries some risk. I mean really, 1200 a day just on those activities? Then you have areas where a large amount of coin can be earned without the skinning skill bringing in low risk critters, then that buy rather large amounts of wood.

Now I am not saying these things should go away, Or even the payout per item change. But I think there should be much lower hard caps as to how much the npcs will buy from a PC.

There is a LOT more...economy rebalance would be a major undertaking to get back to around 2000. Because we have over 20 years of inflation all over the market. The merchant houses for instance. Both in NPC shops and PCs, the prices have been hiked MANY times over the years.

In 2000 skinning scripts were also MUCH smaller, there was far less to sell off of one animal and higher danger. Today even small, totally safe animals can gain you 100 coins.

And oddly enough...water prices have not gone up with everything else.

Anyway, I say keep pecking at the issue...it might be possible to fix.

(edit)
I do not see changing rent prices helping anything, I bet less then half of the "rich" PC's rent anything anyway. None of mine in the past few years have and knew very few with the same level of coin that did either.

Adding very high end coin sinks could be helpful...And they need not even be big to justify prices...just much more secure.

[Dresan]

I know I am derailing a bit but imagine:

• If crafted gear was not only GOOD in regards to quality and functionality but potentially GREAT if you can make custom gear. 
• On top of that if it was also convinient if you could make it because gear would need to be replaced.
• As being one of the few ways of being relatively well off in terms of wealth because easy means of making money disappeared.

There would be such a positive impact to the game beyond re-enforcing the poorness theme. Off the top of my head, an raider/weaponcrafter or armorcrafters would be a solid choice for combat heavy characters, soliders would be a much more desirable class to choose, there would probably be more crafting sub-classes in the game them mages and merchants classes would have a much more important coded role in game equal to other classes.

[mansa]

Triple the price of rent.

I'd rather see more high-end places available without removing/reducing the low-end ones.

In terms of Renting Apartments / Warehouses.
The current rental program is for 125 in-game days, which is roughly 8 real-life days.

Your character needs to do activities to generate obsidian coins every week to renew your rent for one more week.
This means that in addition to hunger/thirst satiation, you need to do activities to generate coin to meet the character's rent, if they have an apartment/warehouse.

So, there is a balance required, as some players have longer playtimes than other players, and the goal is that players don't have to "do chores" in order to enjoy playing the game. 

When they change the prices of (expensive) tent items to become cheaper, your 10 minutes you may have spent crafting enough tents to pay for your rent now needs to be spread out to other crafts, OR make a decision to to downgrade your apartment / warehouse OR make a decision to join a clan that has it's own warehouse and stop paying rent by yourself.

[Delirium]

But there's also an element of balancing theme and the 'Zalanthan' mindset with the player mindset and enjoyability of the game.. I guess?

This is very important, IMO. Not every character concept works for being in a clan, and not every player enjoys being in a clan. Being able to have a "safety net" is almost less of an IC thing and more of an OOC thing. Having to constantly pursue coded means of survival and money-making means that you have to step away from scenes and roleplay that may very well be what draws you to the game. One of ArmageddonMUD's strengths has always been that it caters to a wide variety of playstyles. While coded actions are still roleplay, and while scraping for survival is absolutely a theme of the game, there are also playability issues to consider, such as:

a) low playtimes impacting your ability to make money
b) that money being a means for you to be able to actually let a scene play out and develop interpersonal relationships and carry on stories
c) that money being used to further plots, support other PCs, and in general, participate in the game.

Please be very careful about punishing PCs who have low playtimes by forcing them to spend those hours they do have available "dealing with things" (a.k.a. making money, doing maintenance chores, etc) rather than getting to enjoy the game, which for many, the meat of the game comes from interacting with other players.

Yes, some people are happy playing Armageddon as a survival simulator, but that shouldn't be forced on those who are more socially oriented. Especially since the "survival" aspects often mean they can't socialize.

I think it is an easy trap for staff to fall into conceiving of an ideal gameworld setup where everyone has to rely on everyone, and interaction is forced between people, but going too far in trying to force that will only end up in frustrated players who may just decide not to log on at all-- especially if they're offpeak. Forcing too much reliance on other PCs makes for a worse gameplay experience and not a better one. If people want to interact, they will interact. If they don't, they don't. Those who want to interact will only be punished if it is harder to get basic ends met so that they can sit down for interaction rather than be forced to go off doing survival-oriented stuff.

I've been worried ever since this trend of splitting up skills too widely between classes began, and while I do think it's good to have specializations, it feels like things are going too far. We do not have a large playerbase. We *need* to be able to make money off NPCs and through coded interactions so that we can actually interact with other PCs in a non-combat or non-chore/crafting scenario when the opportunity arises.

"Sorry buddy, I can't come talk to you, I will literally starve if I don't forage a few more roots." <- not fun.

[Narf]

(edit)
I do not see changing rent prices helping anything, I bet less then half of the "rich" PC's rent anything anyway. None of mine in the past few years have and knew very few with the same level of coin that did either.

Adding very high end coin sinks could be helpful...And they need not even be big to justify prices...just much more secure.

I agree. I don't know about other places, but there are a bevvy of unrented apartments in Allanak. Adding more apartments, or making the existing ones more expensive would just make even more empty apartments.

[Dresan]

So, there is a balance required, as some players have longer playtimes than other players, and the goal is that players don't have to "do chores" in order to enjoy playing the game. 

I would argue that the balance here is the question of did the person choose to play a merchantile class or has a crafter sub-class. I believe grind should be cut in half so they master their skills quickly and without tedium. If the person has those crafting skills they should be able to make good amounts of money to afford finer things in the game.

If the person chose to play a raider/mage then they should not need to train ride skill for the 100th time all over again, but they shouldn't complain that their class/subguild choices are having a hard time generating wealth to afford the very best stuff the game has to offer easily.

[triste]

And then you have that Raider/woodworker who is making LOADS of coin because they can do both.

Back on topic now, are we!

Keeping it short and sweet in the hope someone listens:

Realism is always the answer. Armageddon succeeds when it does this.

I think I am the only one here who cited stats here, and to repeat: Logging is the most dangerous job in America. We're talking about the most militarized, crime ridden country in the world, and the fucking trees are deadly. Make it the same IG. There is my "Economy Feedback - wood"

[JustAnotherGuy]

Whenever I think about the economy, I always go to the base level.  Where does the raw materials you work with come from?

For woodworking - go out and "use movement points to create wood items"
For stoneworking - go out and "use movement points to create stone items"
For jewelrymaking - go out and "use movement points to create precious stone items"
For clothworking - go buy cloth, and then craft it into other items.
For weaponcrafting - go kill a beast, skin it.  AND/OR gather wood AND/OR gather stones
For armorcrafting - go kill a beast, skin it.  AND/OR gather wood AND/OR gather stones
For cooking - go kill a beast, skin in.


The tricky one here, for the most part, is clothworking, as you have to buy the material in order to work with it, so you're at a loss before you've even started making coins. I do know that the staff recently introduced a clothing type - sandsilk - that can be gathered by players, so maybe we should invest in sandsilk items as a potential profit making scheme...

For the rest of the crafting skills, a single player may be able to produce the raw materials out of nothing, and then convert them into valuable items.



Regarding wood changes - I haven't played enough to get my opinion on it, yet...

Just a heads up, you can create all of the cloths IC, one of them is in the cloth working help file.  No need to buy them.

[Tranquil]

I think these changes are good steps so far, but if you wanted to really limit people from getting 70k in their banks despite just being a normal grebber, I would recommend changing up the coin 'loopholes' as people have mentioned already in this thread instead of focusing on simple crafts sold to NPCs that don't really net enough coin to make your PC rich.

For example: selling 20 of the same thing but they're dyed in different sets of color. Or, how glass mining can net you 3000+ coins in an IG day of effort. Tailoring in Red Storm is also quite a limitless source of coins which is easily abused and I'm sure has been abused by most players already.

Logging is already quite balanced, since it's the boogeyman of every economy woe. It used to be bad in the past, having played a few lumberjacks -- but nowadays, I feel it's devalued wood to be almost not worth gathering for woodworking recipes. Not to mention there's many different types of kryl, yompar, carru, gortok ready to eat you alive in the Grey.

My final conclusion and piece of feedback: focus less on what keeps PCs alive, focus more on what makes PCs offensively rich with little to no effort or real interaction.

[Dresan]

Realism is always the answer. Armageddon succeeds when it does this.

I think I am the only one here who cited stats here, and to repeat: Logging is the most dangerous job in America. We're talking about the most militarized, crime ridden country in the world, and the fucking trees are deadly. Make it the same IG. There is my "Economy Feedback - wood"

If you are going with this angle, then instead of making it "dangerous" wouldn't it make more sense if quality cutting logs, and quality stones from boulders are turned into actual skills like 'skinning' which only certain classes-subclasses get, everyone else without the skill would have little chance of doing this profitably. I know its already a bit like this already with forester but I am okay with going all the way and just making them skills which rise very quickly.

I look at some of the trees just outside my window and I would not be able to cut them down myself, i need a professional to come do it. That said, I won't deny I am pretty biased with making mundane subguilds a much more attactive option in game.

[Citizen Puddi]

Yes, some people are happy playing Armageddon as a survival simulator, but that shouldn't be forced on those who are more socially oriented. Especially since the "survival" aspects often mean they can't socialize.

....

"Sorry buddy, I can't come talk to you, I will literally starve if I don't forage a few more roots." <- not fun.

If you've never invited a friend to share cheap wine and stomp around in the clay pits or brought up shoveling shit as a first date-- you're def missing out.

I kinda see what you're getting at, but I'm having trouble thinking of any methods of making money that can't be turned into a social event of some sort.

[Delirium]

Yeah because spamming forage makes for a really engrossing scene... 

[Citizen Puddi]

Yeah because spamming forage makes for a really engrossing scene... 

Touché!

That does give me an idea tho. c:

[X-D]

Realism is sometimes the answer. Armageddon sometimes succeeds when it does this.

Fixed that for you.

Realism balanced for playability usually succeeds. Realism for the sake of realism usually does not or simply does not matter at all. ESPECIALLY since most of the time the people putting it in don't have the faintest clue what is real anyway.

Let us take a couple that were put in for no reason having anything to do with playability.

Torches and such blowing out. Now first, Candles, fine, Torches, NOT realistic at all. Torches do not blow out IRL...sorry. Secondly, All it ended up doing is forcing everybody to get light items that do not blow out. So in the end, unless that was the point.....

Second, Shops closing at night...realistic...debatable, Most places outside the US where I have been that have arm style bazaars do not close. Oh sure This street taco shop might be closed after 9pm, but the one across from it is only open from 9pm...so game wise, just leave the silly thing open. But aside from that, it just means people, for the most part, log back off or idle in apartment or whatever till the shops open. Added nothing to the game IMO and likely had a net negative affect.

Anyway...
I did have a sort of on topic question.

Is the wood rebalance part of a longer/larger ongoing economy rebalance?

[mansa]

Anyway...
I did have a sort of on topic question.

Is the wood rebalance part of a longer/larger ongoing economy rebalance?

Yes.

This is a response thread about the latest updates in the economy work announcement.

https://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,54533.0.html

In Summary,
The items in the game have been created by over 100 staff members, over 30 years, and they have ranged outrageously in terms of weight, cost, materials, bonuses, and crafting recipes.

Shabago has been spearheading a project since 2019 to harmonize a lot of the objects, align the bonuses, and to put the items values into more meaningful values for the gameworld.

[Dresan]

Yeah because spamming forage makes for a really engrossing scene... 

Hmm..

At high levels, it doesn't take much effort to gather food and water, the only things you need to survive in this game. Not to mention, its easy gathering materials(location dependant) to fuel for other profit making skills like jewerly making.

Other than that, I am okay with forage/cook not being a the money-making combo, rather just being basic survival. Assuming the game cuts skill grind time and you chose a crafter sub-class then not sure you need to spam forage all that much to generate good profit.   

In short, if you didn't choose a crafter sub-guild or merchant class you shouldn't be spamming more, you should just be poor and live your life accordingly.

My final feedback: The economy in this game is broken because you can choose powerful combos like scout/mage or raider/slipknife and still expect to be as wealthy as someone who invested in a crafter sub-guild or merchantile class without any RP effort. This needs to be fixed, and it looks like the staff are moving to that direction. Good for them, I hope to see more, including remove all the loop holes for get quick rich schemes.   

[lostinspace]

Is the issue that lumberjacks are too safe while working, or is this even an issue with acquiring logs? Logging doesn't seem any safer/easier than obsidian/gem mining. In the south you can mine obsidian/gems inside guarded gates with a barracks to rest when you get tires and a stable for your mount when you're ready to haul it back and make 100 coins a chunk.

It sounds like this is specifically targeting the value increase you get going from log -> shield/chest which is a good change. The big issue with these is the variety of types act as a loophole for merchant limits.

The best fix in mind, would be to make merchants smart enough to not buy a kalan-marked chest/shield if they already have 6+ inix-marked chests/shields. Or maybe just only allow them to buy one of each type.

[Brokkr]

Is the issue that lumberjacks are too safe while working, or is this even an issue with acquiring logs? Logging doesn't seem any safer/easier than obsidian/gem mining. In the south you can mine obsidian/gems inside guarded gates with a barracks to rest when you get tires and a stable for your mount when you're ready to haul it back and make 100 coins a chunk.

Please put in a request on where you can do this and I will fix it.

[creeper386]

I think there is an issue with comparing modern lumber industry dangers to the game. Modern lumber industry is dangerous due to the large amount being processed and the machinery involved. Certainly it's not completely safe cutting down a tree, especially if you don't know what you are doing. But with a little knowledge and as long as a guy next to you isn't also cutting down a tree I wouldn't say it's comparable to industrial style tree farming.


What should be dangerous is the environment around the trees, I've always been on the understanding that it'd dangerous but maybe not enough?


I agree I'd like to processed goods being the value, boards and poles and inherently the end products. I haven't wandered through the Bazaar in Allanak yet but I kind of don't want to see cheap ass wood products there.

With efforts put into to make the world more alive and more dangerous. I'd hate to also see less incentive to then make those trips in terms of the value of items not worth it. Already there is almost no demand for PC merchants moving goods around. Because you can't really sell them to PCs and now if you can't sell them to NPCs is there going to be even less "imported" goods now then their were?

[Jihelu]

I'll give some of my own opinion on this

Note: The last I played a full crafter (Artisan/Apothecary) was right after the changes to the economy where the shops wouldn't reset every patch.

Here used to be my money making machine: I'd pay a dwarf to go fetch me logs. I'd pay 200 per log, 300 per big log. I'd then take those logs and turn them into shields, and make like 1k per log total (Assuming I didn't fuck up)
I'd then do this as many times as I could and store excess logs in the borsail craft-y room because my bastard has no shame.
Then...they changed the economy a bit and my method sucked ass. Absolutely was not worth it to even buy logs after that for npc purposes, and no one really wants non clan weapons. So logs became worthless.

Then I started making all my money off of brew lmao. Everyone wants cures and I've got a big ole fucking word doc of every plant in the game (That I personally attained, I was a busy bee) so I was the alpha apothecary god.
Then I got kinda bored of that because the amount of plants I needed were insane. I'd regularly have 100 bimbal on my herb table, go down to 30, then back up to 100 in the span of irl days. Was nuts.

More recently:
I had my master forage -not craft- class pretty good at doing mining, and I was well traveled. I went to go get some logs for someone. Note: Forage does not help woodcutting so uh, it fucking sucks to get.
Anyway, there's a lot of potential dangers in woodcutting.
I was harassed by:
Players
Kryl
Raptors (Me like the red desert path)
Gith (Pah path aint much safer)
Yampar
Carru
A gortok one time

Wood costing more in the south is a combination of me having to deal with all this bullshit. AND travel across the known to do it. I think wood being kinda pricey, not sure how much they lowered it but it seems like a lot from what people are saying, is fine. There's no more 'I make 1k per log off shields and do it every wipe' shit you can do (Trust me I wish there was ) so I feel like wood being worth a bit ain't too crazy.
But that's just like, my opinion.

AND apparently mounts don't have infinite stamina anymore, so you can't even just sprint the trip anymore like you used to be able to.

[Nao]

I don't think the economy is as broken as you all seem to think it is.

If you skip the 'cheesy stuff' that your PC probably shouldn't be doing, it can be pretty hard to make money already. Especially if you're unclanned or your clan doesn't provide water. I've had to resort to pretty damn boring coin-griding just to afford water on a PC a few years ago. I would rather have spent that time roleplaying, but that coin had to come from somewhere. More recent PCs didn't get stupidly rich, either. Selling items to shops does not work nearly as well as it used to because they don't reset after reboots anymore, and

• The shop already has five of these or
• The shop is out of money.

It's also pretty frustrating if you need to come back to the same store at ten different occasions until you finally manage to sell an item. Maybe prices for PCs selling to shops should be reduced and the rate of VNPC sales increased to make up for that.

I'm a bit worried that more restrictions will force me to either spend the majority of my time on a new PC 'grinding' just to afford necessities and basic armor, or mine glass/obsidian and shit out candles or chests on a PC that really should not be doing any of these things. Maybe this is because I rarely play crafters.

Is it mostly mercantile classes and the crafting subguilds that get stupidly rich?

[Jihelu]

Nao brings up some good points that I think my post neglected, especially after the economy rework.

'Shop no money' is a much bigger issue now that the shops don't reset their inventory. Less likely to be able to sell to them and less likely able to actually sell something to them even if they aren't full

[Brokkr]

I'd be interested to know which shop you are seeing the no money problem at currently.  More often, I am seeing the opposite on nearly all of the shopkeepers, with the exception being those that don't do virtual sales.  Since coin levels also save over reboots, along with inventory.

[Jihelu]

I'd be interested to know which shop you are seeing the no money problem at currently.  More often, I am seeing the opposite on nearly all of the shopkeepers, with the exception being those that don't do virtual sales.  Since coin levels also save over reboots, along with inventory.

Since I haven't played crafters since the economy changes, I haven't sold enough to really deal with it.
After the changes in the brief time I played, I always noticed the Kadian jeweler and I believe the Salarr weaponsmith was almost always out of coin when I wanted to sell things.

[williamson]

I'd be interested to know which shop you are seeing the no money problem at currently.  More often, I am seeing the opposite on nearly all of the shopkeepers, with the exception being those that don't do virtual sales.  Since coin levels also save over reboots, along with inventory.

I've also noticed the Kadian jeweler and Salarri archery shop both in Allanak were usually out/low on coins.

[Brokkr]

The script that changes out the Kadian colors from time to time I believe is what is impacting that NPC, which is a very specific issue.

As for the other two, you sure you've had this problem in the last...3 months or so?  I ask because the Allanak Salarri archery shop NPC has well over two hundred thousand coins, which seems adequate.  While the Allanak Salarri weaponsmith has well over a million coins and should think about absconding to a seafront villa.  Not asking about historical problems because outside of a few fringe cases like the Kadian jeweler, this issue can exist temporarily, but it is unlikely over time.  Rather, interested in recent (since a few months after the save change) issues.

[williamson]

The script that changes out the Kadian colors from time to time I believe is what is impacting that NPC, which is a very specific issue.

As for the other two, you sure you've had this problem in the last...3 months or so?  I ask because the Allanak Salarri archery shop NPC has well over two hundred thousand coins, which seems adequate.  While the Allanak Salarri weaponsmith has well over a million coins and should think about absconding to a seafront villa.  Not asking about historical problems because outside of a few fringe cases like the Kadian jeweler, this issue can exist temporarily, but it is unlikely over time.  Rather, interested in recent (since a few months after the save change) issues.

This was > 6 months ago.

[oggotale]

Why not take the ease of wood as an opportunity to make woodworking may more dangerous instead?

Look at that! Those are some nasty fucking beasts are in trees now, fuck a lot of lumberjacks have been eaten alive recently.

Similarly I think the baddies could be increased for other non crafting forage money-makers too (e.g. spice)

[creeper386]

I mean, if you make wood cost less, which honestly since the shop updates pretty much wood items were always full in all the shops that sold them ...

And you make it dangerous. Who is even going to got get logs? It's dangerous AND no one really needs them?

[Nao]

The script that changes out the Kadian colors from time to time I believe is what is impacting that NPC, which is a very specific issue.

As for the other two, you sure you've had this problem in the last...3 months or so?  I ask because the Allanak Salarri archery shop NPC has well over two hundred thousand coins, which seems adequate.  While the Allanak Salarri weaponsmith has well over a million coins and should think about absconding to a seafront villa.  Not asking about historical problems because outside of a few fringe cases like the Kadian jeweler, this issue can exist temporarily, but it is unlikely over time.  Rather, interested in recent (since a few months after the save change) issues.

I've had more problems with getting 'I have too many of that already' than shops that are out of money. It's just tedious to repeatedly check every gem or weapon merchant in Allanak just to sell that bag of stuff you have and free up some storage capacity.

The specific Kadian issue is also a problem. It affects all the Kadians, and they don't seem to have more than 1000 coins or so at any time. That makes it impossible to sell even that one fancy, expensive item that you 'found' somewhere.

[Maso]

I've had more problems with getting 'I have too many of that already' than shops that are out of money. It's just tedious to repeatedly check every gem or weapon merchant in Allanak just to sell that bag of stuff you have and free up some storage capacity.

So much this. I'm not actually sure how anyone makes a ton of money selling stuff like chests/shields/tents etc when the shops rarely have the capacity to buy even one of anything popular.

The specific Kadian issue is also a problem. It affects all the Kadians, and they don't seem to have more than 1000 coins or so at any time. That makes it impossible to sell even that one fancy, expensive item that you 'found' somewhere.

Have had this issue with both the Kadian jewellery store and the the clothing store.

[oggotale]

I mean, if you make wood cost less, which honestly since the shop updates pretty much wood items were always full in all the shops that sold them ...

And you make it dangerous. Who is even going to got get logs? It's dangerous AND no one really needs them?

I mean to say leave it as profitable but turn up the risk.

To balance things also make every other coded way to generate sid risky (bye bye tailors)

[Maso]

To balance things also make every other coded way to generate sid risky (bye bye tailors)

I mean.. sandsilk is pretty damn risky. :p

[JohnMichaelHenry]

Have to reiterate Maso's earlier point about some of us just not wanting the game to become a crafting grind. Sure, I can make those thousands of coins you all are talking about, but to do it, I have to ignore RP. (or maybe I just am bad at playing Arm) If I do what is recommended roleplay, i.e. sleep at night, go get some breakfast and load up on water, go greb some rocks (example) come back in the city, sit on some bench somewhere, make a few items, sell them off, go talk to some friends and have a drink at the tavern, getting rich isn't going to happen. If some people LIKE to build up 10k in their bank account, they are going to figure a way (crafting grind) to do it, no matter how difficult it is. The end result is the people that would like to play the game without the grind end up being forced to. Blech.

[creeper386]

I mean to say leave it as profitable but turn up the risk.

To balance things also make every other coded way to generate sid risky (bye bye tailors)

I think the issue is since the shops are constantly full of all the wood items that would have made money anyways, I wouldn't imagine a huge market for wood now even before prices dropped.

I know my last character, sold all of two wooden shields in Allanak. PCs aren't buying them. I don't seem to see inventory change on any consistent basis to indicate they sell to random VNPCS or anything. So whoever sold shields to the merchants when the change first went live probably were the only people to make money selling shields.

[Brokkr]

X sells to a passerby.

Removes an item from the shopkeeper inventory, adds coins.  So yes, most shopkeepers, although not all, have virtual sales turned on.

[creeper386]

X sells to a passerby.

Removes an item from the shopkeeper inventory, adds coins.  So yes, most shopkeepers, although not all, have virtual sales turned on.

I'll have to trust you on it. Never noticed it in the bigger shops in the Bazaar and maybe it's just because they have huge inventories but they seem pretty static. Perhaps PCs just sell to them more then I noticed.

[X-D]

X sells is a thing...if I was to send a staff kudos, that would be it.

[Dracul]

Ideally I would think that wood should get more expensive each city south you go.

Morins has an automated system and is the local industry. Tuluk markets are nearby, and luirs is a dangerous trek down the north road, but then allanak is farther, and even despite any dangers, red storm is quite a haul for wood.

The reverse should also be true with obsidian.

[ItsMeg]

luirs is a dangerous trek down the north road,

Is it?

Also you presume Obsidian can only be found in the south. It's definitely more common there, but it's not necessarily unique to there.

[Hauwke]

luirs is a dangerous trek down the north road,

Is it?

Also you presume Obsidian can only be found in the south. It's definitely more common there, but it's not necessarily unique to there.

Often not codedly, but you have gortoks roaming in big packs, Carru screaming across the road to smash heads and the occasional kryl sleeping. That's plenty dangerous to me.

[ItsMeg]

Often not codedly, but you have gortoks roaming in big packs, Carru screaming across the road to smash heads and the occasional kryl sleeping. That's plenty dangerous to me.

Fair enough. Last time I played any amount in the north with a wilderness character North Road was pretty heavily patrolled for carru, gortoks were scant to be seen on the road and kryl never ventured that close to the edge of the Grey Forest. But that's cool if it's become more dangerous.