How should clans adapt to the time change?

[Quirk]

Seems a few people misunderstood me on the "twink" issue.

Before I begin though - is the character you're speaking of the same one as in this thread, spawnloser?

http://www.zalanthas.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6501&start=75

I couldn't help but notice that his crafting's halved since the last time he was invoked.

In any case, if you're making more sid than would be reasonable for an independent of your skillset to make you have to stop and think whether it makes sense. You have to police yourself. The economy was not designed to cope with people being logged in all day long crafting busily. A reasonable rate of crafting for someone who logged in two hours per day might be entirely inappropriate for someone who was logged in twelve hours per day. Given that most of the world is dirt poor, it doesn't make sense to be selling a dozen items for a thousand sid a month either - unless of course you're selling to PCs. If you're selling your wares chiefly to PCs you have a much better model of the market - there will be a limited number of diamond necklaces you can sell before the people who want them that month and can afford them have them. If you're selling to NPCs, the market model isn't detailed enough to have the shopkeeper start refusing silk shawls on the grounds that they don't sell enough silk shawls to warrant keeping a large stock of them. Perhaps this could be fixed by having all shopkeepers endowed with a rather smaller purse for purchasing goods, so that all crafters together selling to that shopkeeper can make a maximum of a few hundred sid in a given week.

Meanwhile, you have to police yourself. Just because you can do something code-wise doesn't mean you should.

Quirk

[spawnloser]

*sigh* I pull estimates from my ass, knowing roughly what I mean and certain numbers without fail (because those are the ones I kept track of), but if you want raw data that can be argued or not...here we go, Quirk.

Average sell value of the items that were crafted: 600 obsidian.

100,000 / 600 = 166.6 total items crafted over 3 months of play
= 55.5 items per month
= 1.851 items per day

That is an average.  I played an average of over 5 hours a day, which means one item every 2.7 hours or every 162 minutes.

Granted, this is without expenditures for food and water, but this was before the thirst code was tweaked so only purchased water once (I remember the exact instance) and subsisted on travel cakes (as there were IC reasons to scrimp and save which I will not elaborate on).  For these reasons, the above figures probably wouldn't be altered too terribly much.

So, Quirk, satisfied with this explanation?  I think I'll copy it and save it to a text file for the next time an arguement about how broken the economy is when it comes to independants.

Now, on to making shopkeepers have less money...there is a problem in that.  Certain crafters could never sell an item for what it is worth...ever.  Some items could only be sold once or twice a week because the shopkeeper only had enough money at reboot and every two or three days later, unless someone bought something from them.  That would make it hard to the point of impossible...I'm just advocating making it more taxing on the indpendants money pouch.

[Bestatte]

That would put a real dent in many crafts though, Quirk.

Take clothworking for example. There currently exists no method (to my knowledge) of gathering raw materials at no financial cost and weave them into cloth, so the clothworker can then turn that cloth into clothing and sell at a 100% profit.

In fact, a relatively new clothworker (in my experience, a clothworker with anything less than 15 days play time) will -lose- money selling clothes to the NPC shops, unless they only make very specific objects and sell only those objects. Unfortunately the shopkeeper will only buy 5 of any given item, so their profit will be less than the cost to buy new cloth.

A -truly- independent clothworker, who has no benefactor and only whatever customers they can drum up themselves, will be very much the starving artists of Zalanthas. Most of the things the new clothworker produces, no one wants to buy except for the shopkeeper and a few PCs who are run by players who want to encourage the clothworker to do well with their "pity purchases."

Armorcrafters and jewelers and woodworkers and weaponcrafters can all get their materials for free, at some (or at great) risk to their health if they pick a hunting primary class. Clothworkers cannot. They -must- buy their materials, or find someone with the sids to give them the materials or coins to pay for them.

A clothworker can spam-craft day in and day out, for hour upon hour, and he will still come out in the red while he's new.

Edited to add: Yes I realize that a clothworker can have some kind of hunting primary class, go hunting, and sell off the skins and shells and meat for coin, and then buy the cloth with the coin. But -one- length of linen will cost many real-time hours worth of collected skins, and a new clothworker will likely ruin that length of linen. An armorcrafter or weaponcrafter can turn all those skins or chitin into armor, or ruin them trying, but at least have enough "stuff" to keep them busy for quite a long time.

[Quirk]

Average sell value of the items that were crafted: 600 obsidian.

100,000 / 600 = 166.6 total items crafted over 3 months of play
= 55.5 items per month
= 1.851 items per day

That is an average.  I played an average of over 5 hours a day, which means one item every 2.7 hours or every 162 minutes.

And you don't see anything wrong with selling a couple of 600+cost of materials items every day? This is *exactly* what I meant about self-policing. There's no way a shopkeeper should let those expensive items stack up, considering how small the percentage of people is of people out there with the sid to afford their purchase. It's "broken" because certain people are willing to take advantage of the system. Making it more taxing on the independent's money pouch hurts everyone independent including those crafting realistically. Forcing people to sell to PCs if they want to offload the big expensive items sounds to me eminently sensible - it's preventing people becoming obscenely rich through crafting more expensive items than the market can stand, while not hurting those who're scraping by.

And Bestatte, your example of clothworking says to me that there need to be more cheap bits of rough cloth on sale in certain places to help newbie crafters, not that shopkeepers should be capable of paying thousands of sid per week for the finished article. I think there's some latitude to be given for the starving newbie crafting just to survive - it's the experienced and skilled artisan who could flood the virtual market with silk shawls who has to tone down his money-gathering efforts.

Quirk

[Anonymous]

What I'd really love to see, is to have "weaving" and "spinning" introduced to the game. All those strange bits of hair and wool you see in the shops could be used to spin into yarn, then weave into cloth, then sew into clothing. Give combat-oriented/clothmaker combos more versatility and more justification to go out there and bring things back. Make buttons from chitin, strips of leather can be used for trim, etc. etc.

[Bestatte]

Blech that was me in the "guest" post. I timed out my login while I was posting it.

[spawnloser]

Quirk...let me clarify something that you seemed to miss.

I said an average of more than five hours a day...and looking back at figures, that average should actually be eight hours a day.  (90 RL days of character life, 30 days played at death means played 1/3 of that time.)  I don't feel like going back and recalculating...but that estimate allows for other things like failures and such eating up a bit of the profit.  Now...since the actual estimate is getting closer to one every two days than one a day, I don't see much of a problem.  In fact, for example, for a crafter to make a pair of pants and a shirt in one week is not a big deal...and in fact, VERY doable.  Using nothing but needle and thread, I know people that can make an entire outfit in a day...granted, that is with modern tools, but seriously, how different can a needle, thread and linen be now compared to a time when technology was like that of Zalanthas?  Until the staff tell me that crafting an item every two IG days is unreasonable, I will do it again with my next crafter character.  You can bitch and moan all you want...but that isn't the problem, the problem is how easy it is to get by with little expenditure of cash and the potential pay out.

[Krath]

I do not see a problem with selling one or two 600+ obsidian items to a shopkeeper a day. I mean, Virtual people will buy them, and hell some people like nice things, however, if I remember correctly the actual PC population of armageddon is about 1% of the total population, so who is to say they are not being bought virtually, or some fancy-pants noble is not buying mass quanities of baskets to try to work designs on them, or silks to decorate his room.

Basically, if it is ICly justified for your character to do it, then do it and fuck anyone else that gives you their opinion(unless it is an immortal).

[Quirk]

I do not see a problem with selling one or two 600+ obsidian items to a shopkeeper a day. I mean, Virtual people will buy them, and hell some people like nice things, however, if I remember correctly the actual PC population of armageddon is about 1% of the total population, so who is to say they are not being bought virtually, or some fancy-pants noble is not buying mass quanities of baskets to try to work designs on them, or silks to decorate his room.

Basically, if it is ICly justified for your character to do it, then do it and fuck anyone else that gives you their opinion(unless it is an immortal).

Because there are a very limited number of virtual people with the sid to buy these things, and most of their needs are catered to by all the virtual crafters.

Think what would happen if there were no shops, and you were selling only to the PC population. You'd sell a fair number of middling cheap weapons and cheap cloaks and armour and jewellery. You'd sell very few thousand-sid-or-over-sid pieces of armour or clothing each RL week, and the people who bought them would be unlikely to want new ones next week. The same principle applies on a larger scale to the VNPC population, it's just that the code doesn't model the market forces in much detail.

Whether it's ICly justified or not, it's abusing the system to make more sid than your character should realistically be able to. You can abuse any bug in an "ICly justifiable" manner, but that doesn't mean that it's not bug abuse.

And spawnloser, your revised calculations don't make for a big difference. Ninety days played RL on the character, a hundred thousand sid at character death, and I think we can assume that at least the first week or two RL didn't see you making a thousand sid an RL day. This would be consistent with you selling two six hundred sid items per RL day, and as your post on income claimed he was making ten thousand sid per RL week by the end, and with Saturday downtime that can be spread over only six and a half days, that would make for items being sold at a faster rate than that, at least 2.5 items per day assuming every item profited you 600 sid.

My complaint is that you're assuming things about the market that are untrue - chiefly that it has an unlimited capacity to soak up expensive items. Those items you're selling to Kadius or Salarr for six hundred sid are being resold for much more. This would be partly solved if shopkeepers lacked the sid to buy those very expensive items and you had to find PC buyers; you'd be dealing with a realistic market.

Quirk

[John]

100,000 / 600 = 166.6 total items crafted over 3 months of play
= 55.5 items per month
= 1.851 items per day

2 items per day is (IMO) perfectly reasonible.

subsisted on travel cakes (as there were IC reasons to scrimp and save which I will not elaborate on).

That's a pet peeve of mine that I do my best to ALWAYS avoid. If I can, I will NEVER eat a travel cake. I'm not saying it's bad RP, but it's a pet-peeve of mine.

it's abusing the system to make more sid than your character should realistically be able to.

How do you know what's acceptable then? 300 'sid items might seem like a lot to you, whereas it might seem like nothing to someone else. Halve all those figures and you still have 50,000 'sid in 3months. Is this still twinky? IMO 50,000 'sid in 3 months is a lot of 'sid. Too much? Maybe. So maybe I only sell 150 'sid items. I'll still earn 25,000 'sid in 3months. Is this a lot of 'sid? Yup. Considering what House employees get. But 150 'sid isn't an expensive item IMO (for PCs. I personally think the whole PC-economy is broken, but I can't see how to fix it). And 2 items per OOC day IMO is perfectly acceptable. So we have 2 perfectly acceptable aspects, that when added, lead to an unrealistic amount. Self-policing fails in this situation. It's quite easy to survive on 300 'sid a week when your an independant. That's 2 days pay. Everything else is profit. This is a problem, yet I can't see a solution. I should only sell 2 items a week? It's unrealistic for me to spend that whole time not working.

[spawnloser]

Quirk, what John said.  Just because you think an item is expensive at 600 'sid doesn't mean everyone else would.  For example, my current character rarely spends less than a thousand 'sid on anything when it comes to buying from other PCs.

[Quirk]

But 150 'sid isn't an expensive item IMO (for PCs. I personally think the whole PC-economy is broken, but I can't see how to fix it).

What you're missing is that an item that you've sold to a shop for 150 sid will likely be resold for 300 or more (assuming you don't have ungodly haggle skills, which may skew things further). It's that final sale price which counts for how expensive it is. If you sell items that resell for a reasonable couple of hundred sid, you're likely making under a hundred sid per item. So, say we halve it again - and you're making 12500 sid per 3 months. That's still quite a lot as a House guard on four hundred sid an RL week would be making only about 5000 sid in that time, but you're paying for your own food and water. By that stage you're a well-to-do merchant who could quite reasonably be making more than many House employees, but you're still not on silly sid.

spawnloser, I have to point out that your current character is not the typical salaried House guard/struggling independent if you're paying that kind of sid when buying from other PCs. Most of the playerbase doesn't have that sort of money - it's rare for non-nobles and non-Family members to have the income to afford that.

Quirk

[spawnloser]

Oddly enough, I did have an ungodly haggle.  Most items, after haggling, sold for nearly 2x what any normal schmuck would get.  Once, I actually succeeded at haggling something in such a way that I could sell it back to a shopkeeper for more the same price that I bought it for...which was cool, since I didn't want it after purchasing it and figuring out that it was no good for what I wanted it for.

[Quirk]

Once, I actually succeeded at haggling something in such a way that I could sell it back to a shopkeeper for more the same price that I bought it for...which was cool, since I didn't want it after purchasing it and figuring out that it was no good for what I wanted it for.

Did you bug that?

Quirk

[spawnloser]

Why should it be bugged?  If you are charismatic enough, and know how to haggle, you should be able to convince someone to give you your money back.

I can understand if I had gotten more money than I bought it for, but not same amount.

[Quirk]

Once, I actually succeeded at haggling something in such a way that I could sell it back to a shopkeeper for more the same price that I bought it for...

That sounds to me like you were getting more sid than he was selling it for, hence buggy.

But, while haggling to get a full refund may make sense in game, haggling to sell an item to a shopkeeper that he can make no profit on does not. The code won't distinguish between an item you bought a moment ago and an identical item you made yourself. Shopkeepers can't stay in business that way - the maximum selling value attainable with haggle should be less than the resale value.

Quirk

[spawnloser]

Oops...that was supposed to read "for the same price" but I was rethining how I wanted to say things and somehow that more didn't get editted out when I was removing something else I was writing.  I got the same amount back that I paid...not more.  I...shouldn't say more, as that reveals how haggle works a little too much, but from what I have seen of haggle...it probably is very possible for someone with a high enough skill who is patient enough OOC to make profit off of a buy/sell transaction...however, that would take some work and would probably be a bit too time consuming for your average powergaming twink.

So far, the discussion has focused on money. I'm interested in what people think about periods of time.

Specifically, the Byn requires a year at the Runner level before becoming a Trooper. Formerly, that meant spending three weeks of RL time. Now that is doubled to six weeks. That doesn't seem fair to new players wanting to join the Byn.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for the Byn to suddenly change its recruitment policy by promoting Runners after a half year.

What do you think?

[My 2 sids]

the Byn requires a year at the Runner level before becoming a Trooper. Formerly, that meant spending three weeks of RL time. Now that is doubled to six weeks. That doesn't seem fair to new players wanting to join the Byn.

On the other hand, it doesn't make sense for the Byn to suddenly change its recruitment policy by promoting Runners after a half year.

I'm guessing the time required for learning skills has changed the same, so that would mean it would now only take a person half a year to be at the same skill of a "one-year" person under the old system.  That being said I think some of "recruit" times should be changed accordingly.  As for the "sudden change"  I say, think of it like a Soap Opera.  We are told this is the way it is and this is the way it has always been.  Or simply say the change was made from the higher ups of each clan, no one need question why any of the higher ups do anything.

As it stands, there are two options:

1. Keep the skill level standard constant, and cut the trial period in half

2. Keep the trial period constant, and double the required skill level for promotion

I can see both options from an IC perspective. The Byn could go either way, depending on how badly it needs leadership at the Trooper/Sergeant level. From a player perspective though, 6 weeks seems an awfully long time to be cleaning latrines.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

1. Keep the skill level standard constant, and cut the trial period in half

2. Keep the trial period constant, and double the required skill level for promotion.

There is no skill-level required. IC leadership abilities and time spent are the determining factors.

[Angela Christine]

There has always been the tradition that especially promising recruits may graduate a little early (depending on experience, some are not required to go through the recruit phase at all).  So even if the offical recruit period was not changed, the powers-that-be could opt to use "early graduation" more often.


AC

I'm thinking along similar lines, Angela. If the official trial period isn't changed, it would be nice to see promising recruits being given a little more leeway for early graduation.

[Tlaloc]

For now, the Byn will not be changing its recruitment policy. If you wish to join the T'zai Byn, you must go through a year as a Runner, first. If you wish to enter the Byn for training, you must stay through the year as a Runner.

There is no, nor ever has been, a required 'skill level'.

I can think of no IC justification to lessen the time required for Runnership. I personally feel there should be no changes in regards to IC time. If you were paid once a month before, then you get paid once a month now.  If you had to stick it out as a Runner for a year before...you have to do the same now. Harsh? Maybe. But thats Armageddon.

Furthermore: a six week Runnership is a much bigger, and better deterrent for the habitual Byn-quitter/Rejoiners, heh.

[Twilight]

IC justifications mean absolutely nothing in the face of one simple OOC justification:  Fun.

At least in this case, IMHO.  If it is no longer fun, because of this change, what is the point?