Armageddon General Discussion Board

Over time, I've been noticing various things about the "economies" of the various centers of population. After putting a few observations together, I've started to wonder about the merchant class.

- reboots are far less frequent than they used to be
- shops have less coin and run out quickly
- purchase limit on items of a given type
- competition from subguild crafters and subguild hagglers introduced

These changes all seem to stem from other things. Values for arms and armors taken through conquest was nerfed (gith, removal of the Black Moon). Shops had their starting funds reduced from tens of thousands in some cases to a few hundred or less, presumably to discourage chain hunting and the like. A limit of five items was put in, possibly to keep crafting under control.

All of which must have taken its toll on the true merchant. I can't see how the independent merchant can generate large sums of coins the way they used to be able to. With the competition of player-produced items, the shops running out of coin so quickly, the long times between reboots, and so forth, it hardly seems to matter that they can trade at advantageous prices. Buy something in one city, then wait for days or weeks to finish selling in another?

The competition with subguild crafters to be the first to sell can be pretty fierce at times, I suspect.

Has anyone been able to run an independent merchant recently and be able to build up a large sum of coin quickly (e.g. tens of thousands of coins)? This is the sort of income that's needed to buy a property, set up shop, hire guards and in general launch various plots through the motivation of coin and in general give the merchant a raison d'etre. I sense that the merchant class has lost this ability to a large extent.

PC merchants should be selling to PCs. That's where the real coin is. Every time I find a good PC merchant, that person is like a godsend (Teksend? Muksend?) to my character. Concentrate on getting PCs what they need and you will rule commerce.

PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

I don't think being a PC crafter should be quite as difficult as it is. It should be challenging, sure, but it should be easier to carve wood for a living than hunt scrab, yeah?

Quote from: jstorrie on December 27, 2007, 02:39:33 AM
PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

PC merchants are middlemen. Just like in RL, the supplier, NOT the manufacterer, makes the monies selling to the end user. Most PC merchant indies try to stick to the crafting end, though, and that doesn't work.

Indy merchants are all about connections. Crafting comes only later.

Any truly successful merchant is all about connections.

I don't agree.. The suppliers are the hunters, in my opinion. Then the PC merchants buy from them and craft items out of the materials to be sold to shops and wealthier PCs.

But I agree with the OP, my rangers and warriors most of the time always end up with 10000+ coins in the bank easily if I pick the right subguilds for them, and there's plenty of subguilds for me to choose from that'll turn me into a wealthy commoner.

Strange to say this, but pick a Merchant class if you plan to play a very social role.. Otherwise, if you're after quick cash, play something else than a merchant class PC.

I had a d-elf merchant about a year ago that was churning up -absurd- amounts of coin, buying/selling only to NPCs.

I don't have exact figures, but if I went all out, I could've probably been scaring up around 8K per reboot.

About a year ago the game didn't stay up for 5 days on a regular basis.

These sandstorms are getting pretty unplayable in certain areas.

I wouldn't mind seeing a daily, quick, automatic reboot at a specific time.

Quote from: jstorrie on December 27, 2007, 02:39:33 AM
PC merchants generally can't make anything interesting enough to sell to other PC merchants for a while, though; they rely on those NPC shops to scrape by until their skills get up.

PC merchants don't necessarily have to craft at all in order to sell to other PCs, though it's surely helpful. There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

Quote from: Mood on December 27, 2007, 04:43:36 AM
I wouldn't mind seeing a daily, quick, automatic reboot at a specific time.

Good idea.

I tried a merchant-crafter-middleman-direct sales role recently. For a group (not a "clan"). The only time the money was good was right after reboot, IF I was lucky to get there in time. If the group had to rely on PC sales, the group would've starved to death. PCs with enough sid to spend on things, can only use so many 20-sid pieces of chitin at a time, and can only carry a few blocky chunks of stone in their pack, worth only 5-10 sids to the seller. In the meantime, the seller has to pay for an apartment to store all ths stuff in, because there's no way he can carry around anything and everything that anyone -might- want to buy in a week's time, just in the hopes that someone would actually buy it.

So honestly the crafter whose primary source of income is selling the things he makes, will find MUCH more sid selling to shops than he will to PCs. At least, on the first day after reboot, and in many cases within the first hour and not after that.

I did pretty well by the way in the shops. Not nearly as well as I could have, if a couple of those shops actually had the money on reset that they offered for some of the things. I ended up selling "green widgets" for 50 sids after the NPC offered 400, simply because he NEVER had more than 50 sids on him, and I couldn't find a PC who wanted to buy it, and it was just wasting space in a box.

I think merchants are a lot of fun to play and just awesome how they currently are.

Quote from: Gimfalisette on December 27, 2007, 05:02:08 AM
There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

Seconded, thirded, and forfeited. There is a vast and mostly untapped market for <<stuff you can't get in my character's starting location>>.

I think the problem is not just merchants / crafters - but it is (and as we've discussed before) rebooting and the shops.

I had a hunter recently who could not sell a set of carru antlers (worth less than 40sid) for four RL days.  When all you got is 25 sids in your belt, you need that cash for stable fees, water, an ale maybe. 

Let us not forget the off-peak merchants who rarely have steady PC customers to sell to.

I will conceed that the shops need to have more money, I just wish that players could not spam out selling so much. That is where the problem comes in.  People selling and no one buying.  But then realistically it's hard to reapproach the whole economy in time for the game going down such as certain items costing way more than they should to be tailored or purchased.

Shops shouldn't have more money.

But they should regenerate money on their own.

Or there should be more reboots.

More reboots would totally screw up an already totally screwed up economy. It's like pouring more money in because you can't fix your economy by other means.

I feel bad for anyone that can't make enough to survive on Armageddon because they either don't play enough to do so, are newish to the game, or just plain unlucky in being logged on when there's a crash or a reboot, but realize that for every one of you, there's probably ten characters making a small fortune at any time. If you increase the reboot or chances for said characters to make even more money than they already are making, then maybe you'll be helping up that one guy who is struggling but you're going to screw up the rest of the game by making the rest even more wealthy than they should be to begin with.

If you don't believe me, just go to your next local auction and you'll see all these tribals and nobodies bidding over 1000+ coins per item like it's nothing. Heck, I've even seen a tribal tip a bard nearly 800 coins once.

Easy solution.



Kill them and take their money.

Also, that sort of thing should be dealt with by the immortals.

It's not supposed to be that easy to be an independent merchant and rack up so much wealth in coins.  I personally think it's ridiculous that indies can still make more than merchants of the Houses, who are supposed to be the dominant figures in the economy of Zalanthas.  Even despite all the complaints about shops lacking coins, it's still possible.  Logically, common people should be climbing over each other to get these lucrative jobs with the merchant Houses, but because it's so much easier to get richer as an independent, they don't.  Independents SHOULD have a lot more trouble finding buyers for their goods.  A- Independents don't have the reputation earned by the Houses over many generations, and B- Goods made by independents are not of the same caliber of quality as those produced by merchant Houses.

As a result, the merchant House clans suffer due to lack of interest.  I've noticed that even nobility and templars will often buy from independents because they feel they're getting a better deal, even though the merchant Houses are known throughout the known world for having the best of the best quality goods out there.  I know that not every noble and templar out there does that, but I have seen it happen.

Yes, I understand that indies have complete freedom, with no one to report to and no one cutting in on their profits.  In my opinion, the economy is skewed.  If all the NPCs and VNPCs behaved the way PCs do, Zalanthas would not be the way it is in the documentation.  Merchant Houses would have crumbled by now and the economy would be dominated by independents.

It's more a matter of keeping a PC alive rather than gaining wealth or paying for an apartment when reboots get to be 7 days in coming.

Yea agreeing with Enigma, I have very little sympathy for the woes of the independent merchant.

It should be hard as hell to become an established merchant.  I've had two PCs make it as merchants (though neither were guild merchants), one who couldn't craft anything was successful and the other who did sell his crafted goods was wildly successful, so much so that I could afford a nice apartment for myself and an apartment for my PC brother who was on the dole, and still have enough money for extras and to give my brother an allowance so he seemed successful to others and I was still making profit.

The trick for me was to make/sell stuff that PCs actually wanted and were willing to pay for.  Both of those PCs were in situations were they could obtain or make stuff people -really- wanted and shops did pay well for.

A newbie who is guilded merchant should have a hard time achieving this, and would feel extremely lucky to get a job with Kadius, Kurac, or Salarr who could show them the ropes and train them.  A merchant who can't keep up or find a way to survive in the tough world of Zalanthan economics -should- starve to death or just barely scrape by.

Expecting that a merchant PC should be easier than any other guild is a fallacy and goes against the nature of arm where survival let alone success should ever be easy.

I think you may be missing the point.

So Ender, you're saying that all guild-merchant PCs should be required to join a clan, and should not even attempt to be independent, and any attempt should be made SO impossible that only a really stupid newbie who didn't read any of the docs would bother trying.

Of course that means if a newbie who -has- read the docs, makes a guild-merchant, hoping to be clanned, expecting to be clanned, and the market is already saturated for clanned guild-merchants and none of them are hiring new ones OR none of them play during that guy's play time, then oh fucking well, sucks to be a newbie, thanks for playing try again some other day?

May I be the first to say:

No.

I really think you're missing the point. No one expects crafting to be easy. And for me, I'm personally talking about crafters, since -anyone- can try to be a merchant, but only people with the coded crafting skills can be crafters in this game. I've tried being a jeweler, did pretty well at making jewelry too. But I had to rely on the NPCs to sell the jewelry to them, if I had any desire to live on the proceeds. Because no one wanted the pure crap I churned out when I was first learning how to make jewelry except the NPCs. In fact, most people didn't even want the good stuff once I learned how to make that. I had in my possession something worth 1000 retail according to one shop, for almost the entire year that my jewelery PC existed, because I couldn't find ANYONE to sell it to. And the shops couldn't afford it, even if I lowered the price they offered to pay by half.

I tried the same with being a tailor; no dice. I couldn't GIVE away half the stuff I made, and you can't forage for cloth. You have to buy it.

I even went the full-merchant route, in a clan. I ended up retiring the character, it was such drugery, because there wans't a damned thing I made that the clan actually needed, and I had no one to teach me how to make anything they -did- need. I got paid, sometimes, when the PC boss happened to be around, but it was just totally pointless.

Wow, straw men back to back!

I truly believe that most of the problems with guild_merchant stem from the set of starting skills the class receives and how they do not vary by location.

I'd love to see, in Arm 2 or whatever, the general 'merchant' broken down into 3-4 classes/specialisations that you could pick, i.e. merchant-that-crafts-luxuries, merchant-that-crafts-leather-and-armour, merchant-that-crafts-wood-and-weapons, etc.

Merchants are very limited with where they can get work right now unless they're very well branched--why would a southern branch of Salarr or Kurac hire a merchant that can... chop trees and sew cloth? Often it has nothing to do with not wanting to hire that merchant PC and everything to do with having no coded use for the poor guy at all, from a crafting standpoint.

Quote from: Lizzie on December 27, 2007, 10:05:02 PM
So Ender, you're saying that all guild-merchant PCs should be required to join a clan, and should not even attempt to be independent, and any attempt should be made SO impossible that only a really stupid newbie who didn't read any of the docs would bother trying.

Not what I said at all.  I even stated I had two independant merchanty types that were quite successful, and they weren't even merchant classes.  Both struggled in the beginning, immensely.  Both almost starved.  One was on the verge of dying of thirst at one point.

One of which actually made the majority of his money off running a tailor protection racket, only hiring and supporting tailors but was not actually a merchant or even a subclass tailor.

For me it was all about being diverse.  Not pigeonholing myself because of my skills, and finding all sorts of ways to make money through PC and NPC interaction.  I found a way to bring in capital without working for a clan, used it to invest in tailors, and found a way to turn a profit from that.

What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be -easy-.  A successful independent merchant should be a very hard and therefore REWARDING accomplishment.

I have to agree with the starting skillset thing.  If you're starting out in the south, you're going to have a tougher time getting started as a crafter because of the vast difference in available materials.  This forces guild merchants to pick a crafting subclass so that they'll start out with more marketable skills.

My other beef with the merchant guild is the fact that there's one skill that branches some other valuable skills that make absolutely no sense as to why one would branch those from that.  It makes playing a guilded merchant much more problematic and difficult, perhaps unnecessarily, even though there is a way to at least try to circumvent the problem.

Food for thought for Armageddon II merchants.

Quote from: Ender on December 27, 2007, 10:35:06 PM
What I'm saying is that it shouldn't be -easy-.  A successful independent merchant should be a very hard and therefore REWARDING accomplishment.

You're right.  But, many of the problems discussed here arn't due to IC struggles.  There is nothing rewarding and everything frustrating to come up with a PC who should be a perfect fit in Zananthas... only to have him/her struggle due to OOC factors.

The reason any Indy PCs need to make more money is because they have to pay for more crap.  A PC joining a clan gets networking, stable income, matterials (and a wide variety at that), shelter, food, water, and succurity (don't RP like having a cot in a secure location is something to be taken for granted)

The thing is, every indy PC represents the majority of society:  those not lucky enough to work for a house!  If a PC is looking down on joining a house -- let the IMMs handle the poor role-play;   if a PC is racking up (and keeping) tons of cash -- maybe some NPC should bring it to the attention of a Merchant house that So and So is starting to affect the monopoly of the house.  If an Indy PC is starting to have more networking and power than a Merchant House -- let the NPCs and IMMs provide a more realistic situation.    

But don't undermind players trying to play Average Amos by making life absolutly impossible w/o joining a clan.  (Including cirtain PC clans who suddenly become 'conserned' when Average Amos suddenly starts selling 10 sid junk on the street corner)

The base complaint here seems to be that merchants can't "quickly" rack up "tens of thousands of coins."

Seriously. That's a problem?

The problem is when you see merchants making more money via NPCs in a RL week than nobles receive in their yearly stipend.

Quote from: Cale_Knight on December 28, 2007, 03:15:47 PM
The base complaint here seems to be that merchants can't "quickly" rack up "tens of thousands of coins."

Seriously. That's a problem?

The problem is when you see merchants making more money via NPCs in a RL week than nobles receive in their yearly stipend.

No. I don't accept that a rich merchant is an outrage in game terms. Merchants are all about making coin and using it. That's the point of the class. And it what gives them some sort of ability to influence the game, through divesting that coin. The problem so far as I can see is that they cannot make large sums of money anymore (without grinding for RL months the way any other character can). Between changes to the game and competition from subguilders.

The other classes all have their own ways of influencing the game, be it through strength of sword and bow, the power of magick, the ability to sneak their way past everything. Sometimes in combination with positions of power such as nobility or merchant house appointments.

What do the independent merchants have, though? They will never be strong fighters or great wielders of magick or prominent hunters or whatever. They're about economic power. Why has the ability to wield economic power been squelched?

Yes, someone posted about making 8k a reboot. Did that person stop to think that he was probably leaving the majority of shops in one or more cities 'sidless for the next six days? There's really only room for one character to be doing such a thing out of the entire player base, at any given time.

Quote from: My 2 sids on December 28, 2007, 02:29:49 PM
if a PC is racking up (and keeping) tons of cash -- maybe some NPC should bring it to the attention of a Merchant house that So and So is starting to affect the monopoly of the house.

It doesn't take an NPC or imm intervention to notice this on most occasions.  In my experience, if a Merchant House family member is well connected
and knows the slightest about what's going on, then they take note of these threats to their seat at the top of the merchantile food chain, and if
they so desire, they can take appropriate action.  And we all know what that can mean.

Maybe the argument here is that independent merchants need time to become powerful economically, just the way other classes need some time to become powerful. That would be fine if it were true. I don't see how it is.

Can anyone put forth an example of a successful independent merchant operation since House Kohmar? Meaning one that ended up with more than a kiosk in one city or village somewhere?

No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

Quote from: Adiadochokinesis on December 28, 2007, 04:26:42 PM
No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

It's not even just that, it's also that you can find an NPC to buy just about anything in Armageddon, including all the "newbie crafter" stuff that your brand new 2-hour-old PC can make, and there isn't any PC who is willing to buy the same stuff. It's the shift of power that bothers me most. If I can spend 4 RL weeks actively seeking PC customers to buy the sandcloth clothing I've spent all my starting sids on making, and *must* end up joining a clan just to afford water, OR make a fortune selling this stuff to NPCs, then something is very very wrong. I shouldn't be faced with the choice: Make a whole lot of sids by ignoring the PCs, or starve by ignoring the NPCs.

You see, that is the problem. Those are the only two options an independant crafter has. They can either get rich off NPCs, or starve off PCs. They can join a clan, but then they wouldn't be independent. And if my understanding of the game history is close to accurate, some of these Greater Merchant Houses didn't exist until some *independent* PCs got together to create them.

Quote from: Lizzie on December 28, 2007, 04:37:09 PM
You see, that is the problem. Those are the only two options an independant crafter has. They can either get rich off NPCs, or starve off PCs. They can join a clan, but then they wouldn't be independent. And if my understanding of the game history is close to accurate, some of these Greater Merchant Houses didn't exist until some *independent* PCs got together to create them.

This is a problem, and there are several factors affecting it. First off, there's the limited availability of items for useful recipes.  If my character gets a good piece of leather,  my crafter should be able to make it into a variety of items, even if it overlaps with available recipes of other items.  In fact, I think it would be good if every large piece of leather in the game could be crafted into the same pair of generic, leather pants or other clothing items and things of use.  Secondly, there is the limited need to buy new things as your current items lose their utility.   My characters usually settle on a set of  armor and weapons and never buy anything else for the rest of their lives.  Honestly, they never have to.  If any piece of armor gets damaged, they just take it to the tailor and get it repaired like new.  So, maybe no more repairing like new.  Also, I'd like to see an effort to get at least one item per town per month that reflects that town's particular flavor added in as something only craftable by PCs.  As these new items are added in, you're going to have people who want to try them out, essentially creating fads.  In addition, you eventually get a large body of objects that can only be made by PCs.  So, PCs looking to have that extra piece of flare will have to go to PC crafters.  The simple fact is, something needs to change if we're going to have the independent crafter be something more fun than it is now.

I've also noticed a severe lack of independent merchants in the past couple of years, and it's not like the merchant houses have many more than they used to so I'm assuming this is because the playerbase has stopped making those characters. There's always going to be a few around, just as no amount of nerfing and abuse will ever keep the game literally free of guild_pickpocket PCs, but they (indie merchants) have no apparent impact on the game or the economy as far as I can tell.

Crafting generally sucks. It takes quite a while and a LOT of expenses before you can even make something that any player would consider buying, and even then, their first two choices would be an NPC shop and a merchant house. I get the impression that most of the time, when a PC buys something from another PC (non-House), it's because the player wanted to buy something in order to interact and not so much because the character absolutely needed that item and couldn't get it elsewhere. A PC tailor will have trouble making things of equal or better quality than the shops, let alone keeping up with the fashion (not that anyone really cares about that beyond a select few nobles or bards). Weaponcrafters will have a hard time offering anything that Salarr can't do better, and the buyer knows House Salarr isn't going to go out and die to a scrab after taking your order, and that they probably have several PCs who can make the transaction when it's ready instead of having to wait around for one guy. In short, I see very few reasons to trade with an independent merchant other than an OOC motivation to interact and doing it for the lulz.

Shops have been dumbed down so much that noone can really use them. With a select few exceptions, such as Salarr's stores, most of the time if you try to sell something remotely valuable you're met with "I have too many of those" or "I can't afford it". It's pretty obvious that the game has more players who want to sell things in order to make money than there are players who want to buy things, that's how it goes and we thank the vNPC population for making up 99% of any given bazaar stall's customers. They don't put any money in, though, so when nine out of ten players are going to take money out, often by selling the least useful items in the world, then there's nothing left for the next guy who wants to sell his shit. The shop's coffers have been emptied in return for spiny cactus, pieces of crystal and wooden armor imported from the north. So within a day after a crash or reboot, practically every frequently-used shop is drained dry.

But that's not a problem! There's other ways to make money, right? Get a glasshacker and go mining, earn more than a noble. Pick the right plants and sell them in the right places and you're living like a king. Exploit the mindless nature of NPC shops and import wooden shields from Salarr's stores in Tuluk and sell them back to Salarr's stores in Allanak. Everything's fair in love and economics, right? Hell, you can live fairly well off of scavenging in the 'rinth. No need to be poor when looting three corpses (and they're always around because NPCs hate eachother) and make 2-300 'sid. You don't need to be a crafter, you don't have to be guild_merchant, so why not pick ranger or something equally tempting and overplayed? We all know that most merchants' income is largely based on things other than their actual craft, and that the average tailor has fifteen silk garments in his closet although he has sold two all year.

Fixing the economy will bring an automatic fix to the merchant guild.

Quote from: Adiadochokinesis on December 28, 2007, 04:26:42 PM
No. The argument here is that the ability to make money often rests on a variable OOC influence.

AKA reboots.

They used to come every few days. Two or three, MAYBE four or five at the max.

Now they are, pretty regularly, five to seven days in length.

It's not about merchant power. It's not about people making too much money.

It's about how dependent people are on reboots to eat, drink, and live in the game in any semblance of normalcy.

Ideally the game reboots once a week, with the weekly downtime for maintenance.  Those more frequent reboots you were experiencing were either due to crashes, or new stuff being implemented right away for whatever reason the IMMs had for doing it.  You should not be depending on frequent reboots to ensure the livelihood of your PC, because you simply cannot count on them happening more often than once a week.  Perhaps this means it's time for you to seek out other ways in the game to survive.

In response to the comment about independent merchant operations, I have encountered several in the last OOC year alone, where one or more independents have come together and were successful (for a time) in their operation.  They may not have been as large scale as the merchant Houses, but they were hiring and paying people regularly within their operations.  These independent operations did rake in quite a bit of money while they were going on.

QuotePC merchants don't necessarily have to craft at all in order to sell to other PCs, though it's surely helpful. There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

I would consider it wrong for the game to require a merchant to travel the world in order to make a profit. To make the most profit, sure, but it shouldn't be a necessity. Traveling the world alone should be nearly unthinkable for anyone who isn't an experienced badass who can survive those groups of gith, raiders, raptors and whatever else is supposedly threatening travelers (even if the players know they can avoid it all by taking that particular route). Making a living as a merchant in a city should be perfectly possible, you should be able to keep yourself with water and bread on nothing but pottery. Doing the whole Khann thing should be the way to get stinking rich by ways of a dangerous life, not what it takes to make a decent living.

Also, there's really very few things that your character absolutely needs that they can't get in the location that they live in, unless they live in Red Storm or something. They might like to have a beetle lamp or a game of Tek's Tower, but it's not like there's a huge market for things you can't get elsewhere. Most players will just go themselves because of the above-mentioned utter lack of danger in travel, or are friends with someone who's a hunter for House Whatever and moves from city to city every other week anyway.

QuotePC merchants don't necessarily have to craft at all in order to sell to other PCs, though it's surely helpful. There are plenty of characters in Allanak who can't go to Luir's or Tuluk or Cenyr or Red Storm or etc etc to get what they need from those locations, or vice versa characters in Tuluk. All a PC merchant needs in order to trade between cities is connections to other PCs, a knowledge of what's available in the markets and some idea of pricing, haggle, a mount, and the ability to ride from point A to point B.

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 28, 2007, 06:16:56 PM
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

IMO, that's how it should be.  The merchant Houses didn't get to where they are today overnight, and they certainly didn't get there easily.  It shouldn't be any easier for anyone else.

Quote from: enigma on December 28, 2007, 06:22:11 PM

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 28, 2007, 06:16:56 PM
You'd think so, wouldn't you? But if you stock up in Tuluk, travel to 'nak and find the shops have no coin, what happens to your trader then? And the PC market is just too thin to extract thousands of coins, enough to pay guards, maintain a compound and the like, in sufficient time. Especially if you play off-peak.

IMO, that's how it should be.  The merchant Houses didn't get to where they are today overnight, and they certainly didn't get there easily.  It shouldn't be any easier for anyone else.

Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever. And I'm wondering if it's possible at all. I can't recall the last time I saw an independent merchant with a guard or two in tow.

Enigma I don't think anyone is suggesting it should be easy to make it as an independent merchant. In fact I don't think anyone is even suggesting it be a desireable thing. But I do think the primary suggestion is that it should be *doable* without having to pick between getting filthy stinking rich by making use (and abuse) of the NPC merchants, OR starving by trying to maintain game integrity and sticking with PC interaction.

The shop system is not working well at all. It hasn't been working well at least since I started playing, and from what I've read it sounds like it hasn't ever really worked very well. The only "fix" I've read about was that shops now generally only accept five of each item they buy, and some run out of coins until someone buys something from them, or until reboot, whichever comes first. That isn't a fix, it's a temporary bandaid that a game would implement until they can come up with an actual solution.

Only buying 5 of each doesn't even work if the NPC never has enough sids to buy one (I know of 3 NPC merchants, spread out over both cities, who buy things most places won't buy, who offer sids for things I've brought them, and have NEVER had the sids to pay even close to what they've offered). Only buying 5 of each doesn't work if the NPC already has 5 of everything, and has been typoed, bugged, and wished up the wazoo and still has the same stuff it has had for over a year, almost all of which has been sold to her by PCs. (Yes, there is a merchant in the game like that, she has 4 -pages- worth of "list" in the screen scroll, and has had almost that much for over a year). Only buying 5 of each doesn't help if you can't find a merchant who will buy what you make, and you can't find a PC to buy what you make, and you end up stuck with a lot of really nice, expensive stuff that no one wants, and you had to pay for the raw materials to make it all.

IMO the only way the whole merchant/crafter thing could be remedied is if 90% of the things you could buy, or atleast are 'worth' buying, you had to get from a PC. Maybe not directly, but at least indirectly. I myself don't use the merchant guild, simply cause I don't think I'd survive or be able to handle all the time it takes to branch and be able to make exciting things.
The problem I myself see for merchants, is the NPC competition, and not that of other PCs. If the source of inventory for NPCs were actually PC-based, PCs would be better off. Armor deteriorating faster to require frequent repairs and/or replacements would also help the economy. But for that to work, they're have to be more money in the hands of the players. I've never had a char with expensive tastes, simply cause they've never been able to afford it, so I don't know how much money the people who really rack it in have. Usually after I spend my starting sid its me skating by on just enough for food and water, with the occasional spike to get better armor/weapons/etc and perhaps a mount if I don't already have one.
If PCs were able to make -everything- NPCs can make, and then a hell of a lot more and better things, I think PCs would be better off. That's my take on the whole thing, from a poor consumer standpoint. I could be terribly wrong, I'm just the guy on the corner gnawing on a cactus to stave off his thirst after all.

Edit:
Side-note I feel should be mentioned: Other than nobles, is there really a large group of PCs that desires luxurious things that have no real use? Maybe having PC crafters be able to create Truly useful things you can't get from an NPC, unless some PC sold it to them, I think merchants will be stuck. That, or PCs need more money to toss at people for those things that look nice.

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 28, 2007, 06:33:59 PM
Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever.

Why?

Quote from: Barzalene on December 28, 2007, 07:18:40 PM

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 28, 2007, 06:33:59 PM
Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever.

Why?

Note that when I said easier, I was referring to making coin, not necessarily staying alive.

Why? What is a merchant good for, if not making coin? Rangers, assassins, pickpockets; they all have their putative functions. But the whole raison d'etre of the merchant class is to, well, make coin. That's what their skills are directed towards. That's all their skills are directed toward, really.

Sure, you could make a merchant character who doesn't care about becoming wealthy, but we're talking about the class and its opportunities here, not individual characters.

Merchants have always been one of those to become wealthy. People who simply live by the fruits of their own physical labors generally do not, if you take medieval society as an example. The rich either harvest their wealth from others through land ownership and rights (nobles) or they do it through trade and commerce (merchants) that magnifies the value of items with relatively little effort spent by the merchant herself, or they do it through plunder (making war on people with something worth taking).

Part of the problem too is that every class can be something of a merchant now, simply by tacking on the right subguild. It makes the merchant class sort of obsolete.

I agree with SM. Merchants, imo, should be providing the salary for hunters/warriors/guards/etc, and thus would need to make more than them. The reason I say this, is cause its a merchant who would be hiring these people for their services. While anyone can do such a thing, its more liking to see a merchant doing so. (Excluding Nobles and the like naturally) 'Pure' hunters who live off the fruits of their labor are poor people who eat and, usually, wear what they kill. A guard is just that, a guard. A guard without a job guarding something isn't a guard at all. So merchants have the most potential to hire and make use of these people, hell a merchant could hire a pick-pocket to make trouble for a rival encroaching on his particular facet of wares, or if he wanted to go for drastic measures he could hire an assassin.

Of course this strays a bit from the whole crafter thing as you do not have to be a crafter to be a merchant and a merchant can employ a crafter if s/he so see fit. In essence though, crafters would still profit.

How to make Merchants work right? Make the profit they garner from barter more and easier, and make the products that can be sold nearly entirely PC exclusivly crafted.

That means that unless the weapon dealer on the block gets a merchant coming in to unload a couple of longswords, there are none in the game that are no used by either another PC, a NPC, or stored somewhere in a lockbox.

Make Merchants the blood of the world and the game will do right.

Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on December 28, 2007, 07:42:56 PM
How to make Merchants work right? Make the profit they garner from barter more and easier, and make the products that can be sold nearly entirely PC exclusivly crafted.

That means that unless the weapon dealer on the block gets a merchant coming in to unload a couple of longswords, there are none in the game that are no used by either another PC, a NPC, or stored somewhere in a lockbox.

Make Merchants the blood of the world and the game will do right.

Basically exactly how I feel, in less words.

QuoteHow to make Merchants work right? Make the profit they garner from barter more and easier, and make the products that can be sold nearly entirely PC exclusivly crafted.

That means that unless the weapon dealer on the block gets a merchant coming in to unload a couple of longswords, there are none in the game that are no used by either another PC, a NPC, or stored somewhere in a lockbox.

Make Merchants the blood of the world and the game will do right.

I said that YEARS ago.

Personally, I think things are backwards now, I suggested that all shops only have VERY basic items, and when I say basic, I mean either items to make other items out of or very low quality and very small selection.

EVERYTHING of better quality should be PC crafted.
Then set up NPC shops that run like pawnshops. they buy pretty much anything, but at a VERY VERY low price and sell it for 2-3 times what its worth.

A merchant class should be able to haggle the prices up to a reasonable range to sell.

Anybody else, if they want the items they either have to pay the silly pawnshop prices or find a PC merchant/crafter.

Oh, and house crafters would also have access to better materials and recipes then indy crafters, this would keep the merchant houses on top.

One thing I've never liked is recipes. In my eyes, if you char is ICly capable of taking some wood, turn them into a chest with a lid that slides open, and knows he can. Then you shouldn't have to OOC play cat and mouse with the code to find out what pieces you need, how many of each, and what wood is gonna give you said pieces.

Why play a guild_merchant when you can play a guild_warrior and make 10x the coins with a glasshacker?

Quote from: Mood on December 28, 2007, 11:21:12 PM
Why play a guild_merchant when you can play a guild_warrior and make 10x the coins with a glasshacker?

Because it isn't all about the coins.

The point of being a merchant should be that the warrior with his glasshacker is gonna be spending 90% on the things you make, so you get all that sid with less effort and relative safety. So rather than going out into the wastes and having to worry about all those dangerous things, you can pay yourself a hunter to go and grab you some materials, then make some armor and a few weapons in the comfort of your apartment and sell it to that Warrior that just came in with a hunk of sid/glass from

Quote from: Xio on December 29, 2007, 12:39:11 AM
The point of being a merchant should be that the warrior with his glasshacker is gonna be spending 90% on the things you make, so you get all that sid with less effort and relative safety. So rather than going out into the wastes and having to worry about all those dangerous things, you can pay yourself a hunter to go and grab you some materials, then make some armor and a few weapons in the comfort of your apartment and sell it to that Warrior that just came in with a hunk of sid/glass from

I'd argue that:

1. The warrior shouldn't be making so much 'sid as he does from glasshacking now.
2. The merchant that just sits in an apartment and makes things for sale shouldn't get rich. Crafting is too lucrative and at the same time too frustrating. It should be possible to earn a consistent living once a trade is mastered (without all the "drops in the dust" failures and such), but not to get rich that way. Characters can get rich because the current crafting system doesn't reflect the actual effort need to make things, for sake of playability. Some people take advantage of this and spew out sixteen silk dresses in a day. The preventative measures against this have been to limit the amount of coin in the shops and to limit the number of a particular item that will be bought. This works better for some crafting skills than others, though.
3. If she can organize a group of crafters and take a cut from their work, then she should get rich. Exploiting the labor of others is the essence of being a merchant. This however is being suppressed by the mentioned measures. It's pointless to try to employ three jewelers when one will be able to saturate the shops single-handledly, for example.
4. Traveling back and forth, buying cheaply in one place and selling at a high price in another, is the essence of being a merchant. But it involves some danger! This however is being suppressed by the mentioned measures.

What solution do I suggest, then? Raise the level of coin in the shops and greatly extend the time it takes to make items. But extend the time in such a way that crafter isn't trapped. Maybe there could be such a thing as "crafter fatigue points".

Quote from: Barzalene on December 28, 2007, 07:18:40 PM

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 28, 2007, 06:33:59 PM
Maybe it shouldn't be easy, but it should be easier for merchants than for rangers, assassins and whatever.

Why?

Because merchants tend to be the richer part of society -- even the docs and starting coins suggest this.

Perhaps not as rich as say a templar or Great Merchant House... but richer than any other average joe.

Part of the issue isn't just the shops, it's roleplay too.

First, hobby-crafting PCs go out and sell to both shops and PCs.  So indy merchants may not be as good as the great merchant houses, but any full-time merchant/ crafter should be reguarded as being better than some byn sell-sword (they can't even keep their crap uniforms clean... how can they be expected to know quality items?)

Second, Clans shouldn't be competeing with indy PCs.  I'm just not sure as to how realistic it is for clans (huge, rich, grand houses) to spot some run-of-the-mill merchant and instantly A) try to hire them   B) try to shut them down  or C) hire away all the would-be people joining the merchant.

Third, I understand why it would be realistic for almost every house to have their own uniforms and crafters and what-have-you.  However, from a playability standpoint it'd be nice if there wasn't so much over-lap.  If EVERY PC has EVERYTHING provided for them by a clan than no PC actually needs to buy anything from merchants.

Quote from: My 2 sids on December 29, 2007, 07:56:46 AM

Second, Clans shouldn't be competeing with indy PCs.  I'm just not sure as to how realistic it is for clans (huge, rich, grand houses) to spot some run-of-the-mill merchant and instantly A) try to hire them   B) try to shut them down  or C) hire away all the would-be people joining the merchant.

The merchant Houses didn't get where they are today by allowing competition to flourish.

Yeah, enigma is right. The merchant houses didn't get to where they are by not MONOPOLIZING THE HELL out of whatever it is they craft, and that pretty much means whatever needed doing to put down. I remember once long ago one of the Great Merchant Houses found something naughty, and went to one of the other Great Merchant Houses claiming that they had been producing something based too closely on something they produced. There was a very real possibility that the two Houses were going to get very ugly over something that seemed to my character at the time pretty small. When I once played a businessman, I had my competition brutally removed, after that business went from decent to spectacular because I was the main provider of sweet, juicy business. This is something the Merchant Houses have been practicing since the friggin dawn of time.

Quote from: enigma on December 29, 2007, 10:50:41 AM

Quote from: My 2 sids on December 29, 2007, 07:56:46 AM

Second, Clans shouldn't be competeing with indy PCs.  I'm just not sure as to how realistic it is for clans (huge, rich, grand houses) to spot some run-of-the-mill merchant and instantly A) try to hire them   B) try to shut them down  or C) hire away all the would-be people joining the merchant.

The merchant Houses didn't get where they are today by allowing competition to flourish.

That's just it... there isn't competition. 

Macy's Department store sells Christmas orniments.  If I open some rinky-dink little 500 ft Christmas store (one which in all likelyhood close in 6 months) even if I sell Christmas orniments too... that's not exactly the sort of competition Macy's is going to be worried about.

Trade laws disallow the sort of thing Macy's would like to do to you, though.

That is competition, no matter how small.  I don't understand your reasoning for saying that it isn't.

Quote from: enigma on December 29, 2007, 03:57:07 PM
That is competition, no matter how small.  I don't understand your reasoning for saying that it isn't.

Probably because it would take more resources to snuff something so small out than to not snuff it out.

Quote from: enigma on December 29, 2007, 10:50:41 AM

Quote from: My 2 sids on December 29, 2007, 07:56:46 AM

Second, Clans shouldn't be competeing with indy PCs.  I'm just not sure as to how realistic it is for clans (huge, rich, grand houses) to spot some run-of-the-mill merchant and instantly A) try to hire them   B) try to shut them down  or C) hire away all the would-be people joining the merchant.

The merchant Houses didn't get where they are today by allowing competition to flourish.

They aren't the only merchants around, either.

In fact, if you look at the bazaars, you'll find little independent stands and shops selling weapons, clothes and everything else the Merchant Houses are known for.

Clearly, the big Merchant Houses don't feel threatened by these small-time operations. One independent merchant with a few guards isn't going to have much effect on their bottom lines. Especially when they've experienced how transitory most of these independent operations are.

Keep in mind that the big Merchant Houses have a monopoly, even so. With Salarr supplying the militias, Kurac having spice and Kadius keeping a lock on the silker crowd.

Now if the independent merchant teams up with ten others and they start building an operation into a hundred or more employees... maybe then they'd start being a concern.

Quote from: My 2 sids on December 29, 2007, 07:56:46 AM
Third, I understand why it would be realistic for almost every house to have their own uniforms and crafters and what-have-you.  However, from a playability standpoint it'd be nice if there wasn't so much over-lap.  If EVERY PC has EVERYTHING provided for them by a clan than no PC actually needs to buy anything from merchants.

But what about the merchant PCs in those clans? Is buying something from a PC Kadian somehow 'worse' than buying from a PC indie tailor? I don't really understand your reasoning here. When people get goods from the Great Merchant Houses, unless you only buy from the NPC shops, there's PC to PC interaction going on. Usually quite a bit of it. So how does it hurt playability?

If I'm playing a hunter and I want a certain model of spear, for example, I'm going to have to wait around a LOT longer to get it if I only want to deal with independent merchants/weaponmakers than if I just find the nearest Salarri PC.

Heh not really Fathi. Just hire a sellsword to kill whoever you saw using the spear you want to buy, and pay the sellsword half the price Salarr would charge, in exchange for the sword and the dead guy's head. Plus the sellsword gets to keep anything else on the guy he kills.

Takes a WHOLE lot less time, and be much cheaper, than waiting the 2 game-years Salarr will claim they need to produce the uber-special-ebonwood-obsidian-hued-baobab-engraved spear of doom you ordered that you saw on Mr. Soon-to-be-Dead-Guy's belt.

Quote from: Lizzie on December 29, 2007, 06:46:07 PM
Heh not really Fathi. Just hire a sellsword to kill whoever you saw using the spear you want to buy, and pay the sellsword half the price Salarr would charge, in exchange for the sword and the dead guy's head. Plus the sellsword gets to keep anything else on the guy he kills.

Takes a WHOLE lot less time, and be much cheaper, than waiting the 2 game-years Salarr will claim they need to produce the uber-special-ebonwood-obsidian-hued-baobab-engraved spear of doom you ordered that you saw on Mr. Soon-to-be-Dead-Guy's belt.

Well, in my original post I implied that the spear was a commonly-craftable item, as I said an indie weaponmaker could make it. I highly doubt many people would kill a guy for half the price of what a commonly-made crafter recipe weapon sells for.

If its a commonly made spear, why do you think it'll take so long for an indie to make?

Quote from: Xio on December 29, 2007, 07:00:06 PM
If its a commonly made spear, why do you think it'll take so long for an indie to make?

It... wouldn't?

I meant that I very rarely meet indie weaponmakers to do business with in the first place, and that you're more likely--playing a city PC, mind you--to run into PCs of the merchant houses than independent crafters offering to sell crafted goods.

I feel the reason there aren't a lot of indie merchants is because they can't survive to begin with. My chars have come across tons of starting merchants only to see them fade into the background because they can't npc shops to buy their items and the Houses have an edge over them with merchants who have experience. For a merchant to get better such that they can sell things worthy of grabbing the attention of PCs (with the way Arm is now) they need a lot of practice. If they can't sell anything to shops and whatnot, it is at the least extremely hard to get such experience since they can't afford raw materials nor pay anyone to gather them.

As a newbie, I don't have much to add except this: I personally would love to buy from PC merchants. PCs offer RP, and that's why I'm here. Buying from NPCs is just a chore. I'd buy -everything- from a PC if possible.

But--and maybe this is because I'm a newbie--I don't know where to -find- PC merchants. I started near a message board, and if there'd been a recent note saying, 'Sweetcheeks McGee spreads word that he has all sorts of gear available for sale--for folks looking for the basics and also for more uncommon equipment. Try to find his mind, he'll meet you at the Gaj, day or night. He's a green-toothed, scruffy bearded man ...' I would've held off on buying any start-up gear until finding Sweetcheeks.

I'm not clear on what's considered appropriate for the in-game boards, which strike me as being staggeringly under-utilized, but that sorta thing would really help those of us who can't hardly even find the bazaar! And from what I understand, people tend to die a lot here; just grabbing some percentage of new character cash would be significant, no?

Quote from: Salt Merchant on December 27, 2007, 01:52:58 AM
Has anyone been able to run an independent merchant recently and be able to build up a large sum of coin quickly (e.g. tens of thousands of coins)? This is the sort of income that's needed to buy a property, set up shop, hire guards and in general launch various plots through the motivation of coin and in general give the merchant a raison d'etre. I sense that the merchant class has lost this ability to a large extent.

My last attempt to go the independent route got sidetracked with an offer to be an aide.  I suspect that is not uncommon either.

I think building up tens of thousands of coins "quickly" is not a realistic expectation for any class.  Some people do it, I'm sure, but I suspect it nearly always means abandoning all sense of realistic roleplay (e.g. churning out crafted items at a ridiculous rate) and a heavy reliance on info that your character has no business knowing (e.g. precisely which items to buy here and sell there to cheesily game the economy).

Yes, piles of coins can open up some great roleplay opportunities (which I think some people forget), but a big part of the fun of a merchant role (or any role) is going through the journey of getting there.  It's not meant to be easy.  Particularly the role of an independent merchant should be a struggle.

I think part of the reason we don't see more independent merchants is that it's more challenging, in some ways, than other independent characters.  It requires a much heavier social component.  You need contacts, suppliers, customers, and to keep on good terms with the powers than be.  And if you start to get some success, you have the GHMs either tryng to hire you on, intimidate you, or worse.  It's a challenge, but this is Armageddon.

edited to throw in a missing word

I do believe that merchants have a lot of competitions, and game changes have made them even more difficult, but any merchant who's really out there to make coins would make connections with PC. You could find a PC hunter and buy their pelts, or a weaponcrafter and ship their crafts, or even just a ranger who could help guide your way to your destinations. A merchant without connections needs to find a new occupation, because not only is living off of NPCs low-paying, but it makes for a lot of solo RP, too.

Quote from: flurry on January 01, 2008, 01:14:18 PM
I think building up tens of thousands of coins "quickly" is a realistic expectation for any class.  Some people do it, I'm sure, but I suspect it nearly always means abandoning all sense of realistic roleplay (e.g. churning out crafted items at a ridiculous rate) and a heavy reliance on info that your character has no business knowing (e.g. precisely which items to buy here and sell there to cheesily game the economy).

I think you meant "isn't a realistic expectation for any class".

I agree that churning out crafted items at a high rate is not very realistic.

However, trading is what merchants are about. Why should no merchant have a business knowing what items to buy to sell elsewhere for a profit? Of course they should, that's what they're about. The merchant buys some samples in one place and then tries to sell them elsewhere. It doesn't take many attempts to spot certain properties that make an item profitable, especially with comprehensive use of their value skill. What does prevent the merchant from capitalizing on this is that lack of coin issue and the thinness of the PC market.

If a merchant has to grind for months to make each ten thousand coins, then she can't afford to hire guards or motivate plots with coin. She's almost like a no-guild one-subguild PC then.

Well, right -now- IG, for me, independents are normally the best route to go. Unless It is something I absolutely have no choice but to get from one of the Houses, I really don't want to wait a week to a month (IRL) to get it from said House versus an indy or NPC shop the same or next day.

Sadly, over the last year and a half, I have only ran into two active PC merchants for the GMH. I use them, because I should from an IC stand-point, but I do so from an ooc standpoint of they can have the order I don't really need filled until two weeks from now while those I -do- need, go to the Indy PC who doesn't need to sift through piles and piles of crap in their House only to find they don't have it and need to e-mail the clan imms and wait for it to be created/loaded into their stock. I'm sure this a good point to many people asking for self-loadable items and such in ARM.2

As for Merchants feeling a pinch as a whole, GMH Merchants feel a pinch from the point I mention above, probably. Independents, on the other hand, rake in enough coin to make a nenyuki get a hard on if they play it right.

Quote from: Salt Merchant on January 01, 2008, 07:42:53 PM
I think you meant "isn't a realistic expectation for any class".

Yes, that's what I meant.  Fixed.

QuoteHowever, trading is what merchants are about. Why should no merchant have a business knowing what items to buy to sell elsewhere for a profit? Of course they should, that's what they're about. The merchant buys some samples in one place and then tries to sell them elsewhere. It doesn't take many attempts to spot certain properties that make an item profitable, especially with comprehensive use of their value skill. What does prevent the merchant from capitalizing on this is that lack of coin issue and the thinness of the PC market.

I should have been more clear.  You're absolutely right that making these discoveries and pursuing these opportunities is part of what being a merchant is all about.  What I meant to criticize is the practice of starting a character with an encyclopedic knowledge of precisely which item to buy where and sell where in an effort to unrealistically generate heaps of sid (which I've seen alluded to on the boards before and seen inklings of in-game).   I don't even understand how that would be the least bit challenging or fun, but regardless it affects other pc's in an annoyingly detrimental way.

QuoteIf a merchant has to grind for months to make each ten thousand coins, then she can't afford to hire guards or motivate plots with coin. She's almost like a no-guild one-subguild PC then.

I think the struggle to get there is part of the fun of it, personally.  And most of the skills are useful way before you get even close to that amount.

If it's taking forever for you to get something from a GMH, then either that's an IC reason for it, or the IMM hasn't gotten around to loading it.  I don't think it would hurt to email that GMH IMM if your order is taking ridiculously long.  It's possible it got overlooked.

Quote from: enigma on January 02, 2008, 01:29:44 PM
If it's taking forever for you to get something from a GMH, then either that's an IC reason for it, or the IMM hasn't gotten around to loading it.  I don't think it would hurt to email that GMH IMM if your order is taking ridiculously long.  It's possible it got overlooked.

I guess this is derailing my own thread, but this has always struck me as one of the most maddening points of the game.

It's nearly totally OOC driven. I can remember times trying to have a key made. It simply didn't matter how much money my character waved in the face of a NPC stonesmith or merchant or whatever. They'd be played as indifferent or superior, when ICly you'd expect them to be crawling up the walls to get that 10,000 coin contract to do a 50 'sid piece of work. It could take RL months for anything to happen when the stonesmith on the site could duplicate the key in one hour of work.

I hope Arm 2.0 addresses this in some way, such as having a scripted locksmith that, when presented with a key, can make a duplicate in the material of choice at a nominal cost. Let accomplished PC woodworkers/stonesmiths make keys too.

I recently had a merchant, a few months ago. The first merchant I have ever played actually. I could easily generate several thousand coins a reboot, and never sell to any shops.

He knew alot of people though, and made alot of connections.

This was after I was very good at crafting and was able to produce the nicer items that PC's want. I agree that in the beginning, before you get good at your crafting, you might as well be furniture, because you arent going anywhere for a long time.

Solutions....

Spam craft.

Make connections for the future while you spam craft.

Sell to shops when you can to get by.

One day when you are a really talented crafter, remember all of those connections, and start selling your uber cool items to PC's for tons...

Twinky, but its the lay of the land. *shrugs*

Quote from: enigma on December 27, 2007, 06:38:44 PM
It's not supposed to be that easy to be an independent merchant and rack up so much wealth in coins.  I personally think it's ridiculous that indies can still make more than merchants of the Houses, who are supposed to be the dominant figures in the economy of Zalanthas.  Even despite all the complaints about shops lacking coins, it's still possible.  Logically, common people should be climbing over each other to get these lucrative jobs with the merchant Houses, but because it's so much easier to get richer as an independent, they don't.  Independents SHOULD have a lot more trouble finding buyers for their goods.  A- Independents don't have the reputation earned by the Houses over many generations, and B- Goods made by independents are not of the same caliber of quality as those produced by merchant Houses.

Ok, so, please feel free to point out flaws in my logic, being as I am still on my first character, a merchant, who is not part of  one of the merchant houses. But, to me, working for one of the merchant houses would have been awesome. I even emailed Kadius about it. But, she is not really doing the indie thing for coin. And, from what I understand, having free food, water, and shelter, as well as job security and a mentor, steady pay, and the safety on not having to (possibly) risk our life every time you want to make a few coins are all driving forces behind joining merchant houses, not to mention the added prestige.

As for my merchant, they are not feeling a pinch, in fact, if I was going about things just for the coin, I could easily make a few thousand sid per week. Because I walked the shops, got to know the selling values of everything she has, which NPC's gave her the fairest prices, Who bought what, and what they paid for it, who sold what, and what they paid for it, and so forth.  If you are having problems selling one thing, sell something else. Ditto for places, if you have problems sellking in one place, go somewhere else.

Yes, the pricing isn't near what you could get from some other PC's for the same thing, but it puts a roof over your head. And, as for the amounts made by the members of various merchant houses, it would also seem neccessary to take into account that your higher-ups make more than you, you have many things provided for you, and then there is the overhead for supplies, storehouses, travel, and the ammenities that are free for you, well, the money for those comes from somewhere.

I like the way it is now. Because if you want to be a successful unclanned merchant, you have to put effort in and actually get to know the economy of the place you are in. You have to be realistic about haggling NPC's or else starve for them not buying from you at fiar prices from you trying to undercut them or overcharge them. There are limits to the things that can be sold to each store. But, if you are using the reboot and people coming along and selling till stores are broke right afterwords as a reason to be upset.... That just isn't right.

Because when people do do this, they are going to spend their money elsewhere, and, as a merchant, your character would know that say, in Tuluk, someone with a lot of coin is likely to buy spice, or a new outfit etc etc.And you learn to sell in the places where the money goes to. Because those are the shops that can afford to buy. And, I know that the reboot is not something that characters would know about, but seriously, my character kinda thinks of about every seven weeks as being like tax time, people have a lot more money to spend, and if you follow the money, you can easily get some of it too.

Next time I play a merchant, I do want to try out a merchant house though, because I would really enjoy seeing what having a clanned charater is all about. And sorry for digging up the thread, but I felt I had a valid point to make.  ;D

Quote from: AmandaGreathouse on March 08, 2008, 04:14:36 AM
As for my merchant, they are not feeling a pinch, in fact, if I was going about things just for the coin, I could easily make a few thousand sid per week. Because I walked the shops, got to know the selling values of everything she has, which NPC's gave her the fairest prices, Who bought what, and what they paid for it, who sold what, and what they paid for it, and so forth.  If you are having problems selling one thing, sell something else. Ditto for places, if you have problems sellking in one place, go somewhere else.

The problem isn't that profitable trades aren't possible in principle. They are. It's that the shops very quickly run out of money after reboot. My merchant character didn't travel much because it took weeks RL simply to sell items brought back from a previous trip. Especially since I refused to mess the game up for other people by logging in immediately after reboot and running around, soaking each shop of coin in turn and selling items to the item limit.

And some items (such as fine silk apparel) simply cannot be sold at all (at least anywhere near full price) because the shops don't even begin with enough coin to buy them.

So much for the trading part of being a merchant. The character discovered one special situation where the purchasing power seemingly was unlimited and started to capitalize on that. But the level of spam crafting necessary destroyed my interest. There is money in being a merchant character, as the crafting skills develop, but in my opinion it's at the cost of reasonable play.

I understand your POV on this completely. In fact, most of my profits come from having a crafting subguild. And I totally understand the thing about shops not having enough coin. My character once bought a silk shirt, and, after being given a different shirt, she tried to sell it back. The shop offered her only a quarter of the price, and even then, could not afford it. I guess, I am just trying to say that, I haven't had to hard a time of it. Yeah, she isn't rolling in the sid, but I play off peak, and she is barely working due to stuff in her personal life and the risk entailed in getting the supplies to craft with to sell.

It has gone from feast to famine (literally in some cases) for players who sold their items to NPCs.

I used to play about a year or two ago and a lot has changed in this regard.

I'm fine with balancing things but at this stage unless you have lots of players who want to buy things from you you're screwed. Every second that ticks away in-game is another second you have to pay for in terms of food/water.

In my opinion if the amount of coin in the game is going to be tweaked this way then lower stabling costs to 5 sid or even 1 sid. It's my biggest expense right now.

Quote from: Xio on December 29, 2007, 12:39:11 AM
The point of being a merchant should be that the warrior with his glasshacker is gonna be spending 90% on the things you make, so you get all that sid with less effort and relative safety. So rather than going out into the wastes and having to worry about all those dangerous things, you can pay yourself a hunter to go and grab you some materials, then make some armor and a few weapons in the comfort of your apartment and sell it to that Warrior that just came in with a hunk of sid/glass from

The problem is the merchant can't afford to buy things from the glasshacker wielding warrior. I think that's what people are complaining about. The economy has been tweaked but not balanced.

Here's a thought, why not setup wholesale buying grounds for different merchant houses? This will fix the issue for good. You have hides, go to the local Kadius warehouse and sell your hides, at a market price. If too many people are selling supple hides then lower the price on the supple hides. If PC merchants are buying lots of supple hides then raise the price. Leave a factor in that slowly stabilizes prices between reboots.

I realize this requires a lot of programming but it's the only way to fix things so that the NPC market compliments the PC one.

Many of my PCs would absolutely have loved to buy things from PC merchants, but could never really afford it. The monthly earnings from clans, even in those highly valued aide positions, seemed to just barely be enough for drinks at taverns and the occasional bribe. I just don't know how to make money as a clanned character, but then, you all know that I suck at this game.  ;)

Quote from: Akaramu on March 08, 2008, 07:12:23 AMI just don't know how to make money as a clanned character, but then, you all know that I suck at this game.  ;)

You aren't the only one.

There are plenty of ways to make more money as a clanned character.  You just have to find them.

Around a month or so ago, I walked into a "parts store" (the shops that buy and sell hides, chitin, bone, etc), looking for a certain type of raw material that isn't all that hard to get if you're a hunter, but pretty expensive if you're not and need to buy it.

I watched another PC walk in, open his pack, LOOK AT ME, get all the stuff he was selling from his pack, and sell it ALL to the NPC merchant within a matter of seconds.

I -would- have paid more than what this PC got from the NPC merchant. I -would- have provided him with some RP, and possibly (probably) the opportunity to continue making BETTER future profits from me than he could possibly have gotten from the NPC.

I mean, it's one thing to need to sell stuff off in a shop - and just get rid of a few bits of crap that you've been carrying around awhile. It's another thing entirely to forgo roleplay in exchange for automated sid-collecting.

I was disgusted by this experience, and have to say that unfortunately it isn't the first time I've had one like it.  Another time I had spent RL days trying to unload something via RP with other PCs...finally brought it to an NPC shop, sold it, and less than a RL hour later, saw someone else walk out of that shop with the item I sold. As if players of PCs would rather pay more getting things from NPCs, than spend 15 minutes RPing out a sale with another character. As if players of PCs would rather earn less from NPCs, than spend 15 minutes of RPing out a sale with another character.

It's just really disheartening and makes me wonder if I should just stop trying, and join in with the automatons who make their fortunes by neglecting the PC population.

QuoteIt's just really disheartening and makes me wonder if I should just stop trying, and join in with the automatons who make their fortunes by neglecting the PC population.

Don't. In my experience I have found that there are a lot of nifty things that one could get in what could have essentially been a PC-only market, and there are still a lot of these items that are sold to NPCs. But I think a lot of people have the idea that NPCs are simply more convenient, and this may be true, but there is also the idea that most people on Zalanthas probably don't care about how quickly they can get rid of something (in most cases), but how much they can snag for it. And if that is true, more PCs should be buying and selling things from each other.

I'm feeling a pinch, yah, I think I pinched a nerve from carrying the 60K of coins my merchant has.  :P

Doesn't anyone feel odd role playing a commoner who makes an absurd amount of coin?

I always try to keep the amount of coin I make in context with my PCs background and current situation. Anyone with enough experience in this game knows how to use the code to make a lot of money, don't you people get bored doing it over and over with each new character?

I -could- have made tens of thousands of sids with some of my characters, but it didn't make sense for them to be that rich so I didn't try as hard. Instead, I spent more time "tavern sitting" or hunting, or hanging around various watering holes chatting with the locals. I also experimented with lots of raw materials, knowing full well how badly I sucked at crafting with those particular materials, just so I could bust a bunch of them and have to spend more sids buying more :)

Quote from: Lizzie on March 09, 2008, 09:25:40 PM
I -could- have made tens of thousands of sids with some of my characters, but it didn't make sense for them to be that rich so I didn't try as hard. Instead, I spent more time "tavern sitting" or hunting, or hanging around various watering holes chatting with the locals. I also experimented with lots of raw materials, knowing full well how badly I sucked at crafting with those particular materials, just so I could bust a bunch of them and have to spend more sids buying more :)

That's true until you realize that you see the same 2-3 PCs days in and days out, and eventually, you just stop going where they are sitting because you just have absolutely nothing left of interest to chat about, so at some point I prefer to just hide in my little hole and craft me a few things to pass time, or I just log out. The time I found my current character the most exciting to play is when he was actually struggling to make coins and when he was trying out different "recipes" and ways to make money. These days, I don't try "hard" either to make money, actually, I'd say that I probably spend 1/10th of my time online crafting, yet with the way the economy is on Armageddon, it's quite easy to make a profit if you just know what to do and if you have the skills to do so.

Sure, I could spend 0/10th of my time not crafting and just socializing, but where I currently play, the area is often so empty or with always the same PCs, like I said, that sometimes I just avoid PCs on purpose just because I know I have absolutely nothing of interest to share with them. It's probably a personal problem of mine, though, or a bad choice of class selection for me, and I'm not sure if it has much to do with this thread.

Quote from: enigma on March 09, 2008, 04:34:58 PM
There are plenty of ways to make more money as a clanned character.  You just have to find them.

And play during the right times, and hope they are IC  ;)

Of course if the PC doesn't mind getting involved in shifty dealings or leaving the city despite not being allowed to, then it's easier.

But, back on track.

/end of derail

Heh, my first character is a merchant and I'm awful lol.

Tried crafting and only wasted most of my starting money destroying hides. Still haven't successfully made an item.
Tried gathering outside and (apart from verging on death 3 times and losing my mount) broke even on salt gathering after rebuying the water I used.
Tried selling items to npcs, but they don't want them.
Tried selling to PCs and nearly got killed for lacking a license (that I can no longer afford).
Tried to join a house but haven't seen a house PC to join with in 15 played hours. And got the boot (on pain of death) from the only tavern that ever has any players in it.

Not here for sympathy or tips - this PC will either die of thirst or I'll figure out this damned game.

sounds like your having a great time.

Quote from: Shimrod on March 12, 2008, 09:51:40 AM
Heh, my first character is a merchant and I'm awful lol.

Tried crafting and only wasted most of my starting money destroying hides. Still haven't successfully made an item.
Tried gathering outside and (apart from verging on death 3 times and losing my mount) broke even on salt gathering after rebuying the water I used.
Tried selling items to npcs, but they don't want them.
Tried selling to PCs and nearly got killed for lacking a license (that I can no longer afford).
Tried to join a house but haven't seen a house PC to join with in 15 played hours. And got the boot (on pain of death) from the only tavern that ever has any players in it.

Not here for sympathy or tips - this PC will either die of thirst or I'll figure out this damned game.

Quote from: X-D on March 12, 2008, 10:12:57 AM
sounds like your having a great time.

Does sound like quite a lot of fun.. THATS THE SPIRIT!

Quote from: Shimrod on March 12, 2008, 09:51:40 AM
Not here for sympathy or tips - this PC will either die of thirst or I'll figure out this damned game.

Welcome to Armageddon :) Your PC may die of thirst, AND you will have figured out some stuff about the game. I do hope you'll roll another character when your current one dies, and try out some other aspect of Zalanthas. Joining the Byn as a warrior is, of course, highly recommended for anyone and everyone; it's part of the quintessential ARM experience. Extra points if your character is named Amos.

For me, Armageddon isn't about "winning" and gaining thousands of sids every other week. I think the reason why I play the game is because it is kind of challenge. And "needing to gain <whatever> amount of money to do <whatever>" is kind of challenge to me. If I need money so desperately, I'll try everything what would my character do - visit all merchant in this city, speak with every passing-by person to try to sell more, travel to another city, try to sell there... and eventually there is a success... or not. My char might beg or join the clan or steal or murder or whatever else would fit his personality. And this all I'd miss if I'd just stand up and go to sell to the nearest NPC anytime I need money for a new dress.

Just in my opinion, of course.

Quote from: Spoon on March 09, 2008, 09:21:33 PM
Doesn't anyone feel odd role playing a commoner who makes an absurd amount of coin?

Yes, so I don't.  After a few thousand sid I don't see the point.  Unless it's being used to generate plots, it's just a number. I also think the presence of unrealistically wealthy characters can be a real drag on the roleplay of other characters.

At its best, wealth can cause plots to flourish.  At its worst, it squelches conflict and struggle. Achieve it realistically and use it wisely.

Quote from: flurry on March 12, 2008, 01:36:34 PM

Quote from: Spoon on March 09, 2008, 09:21:33 PM
Doesn't anyone feel odd role playing a commoner who makes an absurd amount of coin?

Yes, so I don't.  After a few thousand sid I don't see the point.  Unless it's being used to generate plots, it's just a number. I also think the presence of unrealistically wealthy characters can be a real drag on the roleplay of other characters.

At its best, wealth can cause plots to flourish.

That's exactly the point. I believe an independent merchant character should be able to do these things; bribing templars with significant sums, hiring bodyguards, financing expeditions, paying for a compound, contracting assassins and so forth, in a timely way. An independent merchant should be especially good at raising the money, for exactly this purpose, because he can't really do anything else well.

I'm not claiming that the independent merchant should be able to do it overnight or without some effort. I'm not claiming that if you slog away long enough in-game you can't amass 60,000 coins as a merchant (although carrying it with you is out of the question, since it weighs 600 stone). I'm claiming that the independent merchant's ability to generate coin quickly enough to finance the above has been badly damaged by changes to the game.

(I also don't understand where this idea that it's unrealistic for some merchants to get very wealthy comes from. In any system with unrestricted commerce, you'll always find individuals like this. Even in China, "rich peasants" appeared the moment they started instituting reforms).

All I can really say on this issue is that the economy is totally fucked.   There are so many aspects that do not make sense, it's futile to even attempt.  If we don't know how the wealth was accrued, we have to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the "realism" of their wealth.  I have had characters offered thousands of 'sid to single jobs.  I've accrued massive amounts of wealth, for specific purposes, and I've given away thousands of coins to NPC tribe members...

The most important thing, to me, is making sure that coinage is put back into the player-base.  If you have a 5000 coin stipend coming from a virtual source try to make sure you give that money to PCs instead of spending it all in shops.  Many times I am loathe to keep money in the Nenyuk bank just because it makes it unaccessible to  the player-base.  I'd rather have a safe in my room or hide caches of coin and valuables all around.

Anyhow... I'm not sure what an "absurd" amount of coin is... But I guess, by definition, it would bother me.

Quote from: X-D on March 12, 2008, 10:12:57 AM
sounds like your having a great time.

Nah, I'm having a rockin' time actually.

Quote from: Salt Merchant on March 12, 2008, 05:26:08 PM
That's exactly the point. I believe an independent merchant character should be able to do these things; bribing templars with significant sums, hiring bodyguards, financing expeditions, paying for a compound, contracting assassins and so forth, in a timely way. An independent merchant should be especially good at raising the money, for exactly this purpose, because he can't really do anything else well.

I'm not claiming that the independent merchant should be able to do it overnight or without some effort. I'm not claiming that if you slog away long enough in-game you can't amass 60,000 coins as a merchant (although carrying it with you is out of the question, since it weighs 600 stone). I'm claiming that the independent merchant's ability to generate coin quickly enough to finance the above has been badly damaged by changes to the game.

(I also don't understand where this idea that it's unrealistic for some merchants to get very wealthy comes from. In any system with unrestricted commerce, you'll always find individuals like this. Even in China, "rich peasants" appeared the moment they started instituting reforms).

If your indie merchant gets rich enough to start hiring, bribing, and building, you're going to get noticed by the GMHs.  If your indie merchant ends up better dressed than a noble (or his/her aide), and having a swanky apartment, you're going to get noticed by the nobility.  Chances are, they're not going to like what they see.  I think of it sort of like the mafia and any other organized crime groups (even though in this case it isn't necessarily crime).  You infringe on their business, or make them look bad, they're going to take action.  And I think this is why indies in Zalanthas are so stifled, and IMO they should be because of the way the society works (and the economy should.)

You could be one of those merchants who sells things that the GMHs don't, which leaves... uh... wagonmaking (broken), cooking and toolmaking.

Make 60k on skeet pies and toolmaking and you will have basically won Armageddon.

Extra points for killing the skeets yourself, as a merchant guild?

Wagons and cooking (catering/gourmet food at least) are indeed handled by some of the GMHs.

Quote from: enigma on March 13, 2008, 03:13:35 PM
Wagons and cooking (catering/gourmet food at least) are indeed handled by some of the GMHs.

Double extra points to whoever starts up "Porqi's BBQ Wagon."

Quote from: enigma on March 13, 2008, 12:38:31 PM
If your indie merchant gets rich enough to start hiring, bribing, and building, you're going to get noticed by the GMHs.  If your indie merchant ends up better dressed than a noble (or his/her aide), and having a swanky apartment, you're going to get noticed by the nobility.  Chances are, they're not going to like what they see.  I think of it sort of like the mafia and any other organized crime groups (even though in this case it isn't necessarily crime).  You infringe on their business, or make them look bad, they're going to take action.  And I think this is why indies in Zalanthas are so stifled, and IMO they should be because of the way the society works (and the economy should.)

I disagree with your first point. The GMH's will only take notice if you intrude on their turf in a significant way. If you start dealing in spice, you can expect Kurac's notice. If you start selling large quantities of arms to militias, you can expect Salarr's notice.

There have been several instances of indie merchants starting up their own little houses in the past, before the money supply tightened. Even if the GMHs would step in, as you say, then what's wrong with that? A good chance for struggle, assassination, plots and roleplay is born.

So far as the second point goes, nothing says your independent merchant has to flaunt his or her wealth openly. A little discretion, a few bribes and they can live in veiled luxury.

Quote from: Salt Merchant on March 13, 2008, 09:34:18 PM
I disagree with your first point. The GMH's will only take notice if you intrude on their turf in a significant way.

Different members of GMHs have different interpretations of significant.

Quote from: enigma on March 13, 2008, 10:28:49 PM

Quote from: Salt Merchant on March 13, 2008, 09:34:18 PM
I disagree with your first point. The GMH's will only take notice if you intrude on their turf in a significant way.

Different members of GMHs have different interpretations of significant.

Well, if GMH agents start throwing fits over an indie merchant selling a few weapons or a linen shirt, I would call that a player perception problem. After all, the cities are full of independent NPCs doing exactly that. Which leads to the question (1) why is the agent singling out the PC, and (2) why the agent is tolerating the existence of the other little stalls, shops and small-time vendors.

One problem I've noticed with the economy being so out of whack:

When you want to hire an independent mercenary or whatever to do a job for you...you have to spend an exorbitant amount of coin to make anything remotely risky worthwhile from a cost-benefit analysis.  I mean, if Joe Ranger can hunt duskhorn and pull in 500 'sid a RL week...why would he risk his tail going into Somewhat Dangerous Area X to get Rare Tooth Y so that Bob the Merchant can make a Super Cool Longknife?  Substitute any number of activities, and it becomes a serious problem.

People have become so content with farming 'sid from NPC sources that there really isn't any incentive toward helping plots forward by dealing with PCs who need things to get done.

Quote
People have become so content with farming 'sid from NPC sources that there really isn't any incentive toward helping plots forward by dealing with PCs who need things to get done.

I certainly don't look at it like this...

I think there are a lot of reasons that the economy is fucked up (ever spend 200 'sid on ale in the -Rinth- and not get drunk?), and having such a messed up and unbalanced economy leads to a sort of OOC inflation.  Unfortunately, solutions may end up becoming problems...

NPCs -are- the major source of coin in the game.  Whether they load with it, or they are traded for it (like delicious goudra), there are few ways to get coins aside from NPCs (and I'm including the ones that buy things).  Truly, the coin in the game comes from NPCs or the Staff (through Noble and GMH stipends).  There is nothing inherently wrong with making coin off of NPCs.  IMO, in terms of the game economy, it is more important that pay attention to where you PUT your coins than from where you GET them.

Anyhow, all I really have to say is put your coins into the PC economy, it's good karma.

I don't have any problem with subsistence NPC 'sid farming (ha, you could make this into a whole sustainable 'sid agriculture running gag).  However, when everyone is running around easily making rent payments -and- putting away enough for all their custom loot simply by foraging/logging/mining/hunting/selling crafts to NPCs...why bother with doing something risky for a PC?

On the plus side, I imagine playing a pickpocket or burglar is quite a lucrative business these days, with all the cash and loot in circulation.

Quote from: Spoon on March 09, 2008, 09:21:33 PM
Doesn't anyone feel odd role playing a commoner who makes an absurd amount of coin?

No. But then I've never gotten the chance  :-\

With the initial expenses of:
* 5 sets of clothing
* 2 sets of armor (for outdoor chars)
* Weapon(s) (for outdoor chars)
* 1-2 mounts
* Furniture

And such regular expenses as:
* Water (preferably a cistern or barrel so I don't need to constantly refill).
* An apartment.
* Renting for a mount or two (for outdoor characters depending on the sort of character and how many goods I bring in a trip and how far).
* Daily meals (and no, I never eat travel cakes unless I'm literally forced to through a bad cooking skill ;)) with some spices mixed in when you're lucky.
* Some cheap wine for the meal
* A mug of ale each night I'm in a tavern
* A whore once every blue moon (limited to whore PCs, otherwise its all virtual)

I find my ability to earn too much 'sid non-existent. And if I ever do get comfortably well off (never happened yet!) then I'll develop a spice addiction and/or gambling addiction.