In my view, there's a problem with money in the game. It just doesn't have utility beyond a certain point for the common character.
What can a commoner use it for? Food, water, gear, apartments. That's it. Any money beyond that is good for what? Can't buy a wagon, a house, property, a title, any slaves, gladiators to put in the arena, NPC guards, etc.
Sure, you can play a spice head, a drunk or a whore hound and blow it all that way, but you'll probably only want to do that for one or two of your characters, then move on to some other concept.
Bribes? Rewards? Prizes? How can they motivate a character who won't have any use for the coin? Instead of inspiring strenuous competition, the prospect of a monetary award leaves a lot of characters saying "meh". In order to restore the leverage of these RP tools, characters have to have a reason to badly want coins. They have to be able to do something with them.
Money and wealth is an extremely powerful motivator but this motivation is just lacking in-game. Let's put it back in somehow.
I agree, there should be more uses for obscene wealth.
excuse me, you can buy furniture.
Might I introduce you to the Player-Created Merchant House documents, good sirs?
http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Player-Created%20Clans
These are pretty much the perfect vanity project.
Quote from: TheWanderer on May 29, 2015, 02:16:16 PM
excuse me, you can buy furniture.
And tattoos!
Obscene wealth is something you should possess only with the blessing of the powers that be. That's a discussion for another tthread. I'll make a better post when I get home from work
The only poor people in this game are noble PCs and GMH merchants heheh
Quote from: MeTekillot on May 29, 2015, 02:21:13 PM
Obscene wealth is something you should possess only with the blessing of the powers that be. That's a discussion for another tthread. I'll make a better post when I get home from work
If you salt daily while you practice your crafting skills, after about two days played you have 5 large in the bank.
Need stuff to spend it on.
Quote from: Malken on May 29, 2015, 02:22:30 PM
The only poor people in this game are noble PCs and GMH merchants heheh
This is totally true.
Quote from: MeTekillot on May 29, 2015, 02:21:13 PM
Obscene wealth is something you should possess only with the blessing of the powers that be. That's a discussion for another tthread. I'll make a better post when I get home from work
Maybe not. It's not unknown for Templars to fine or tax commoners simply for having too much money. It's something that could probably be a little more widespread. The only problem I see with it is that PC Templars in Allanak belong to the War Ministry, and taxation sounds like something that would be done by the City Ministry.
I wonder what would happen if PC Templars got a regular report from Nenyuk about how much money we all have in our bank. Would people start hoarding it in their apartments? Would burglars explode in popularity?
The problem is there are easy ways to obtain huge amounts of money. I believe staff, as a way to deal with this, have decided just to make money not that useful at some point, preferring political power to be more valuable. Because after all, you can't eat or drink money when you're stranded out in the salt flats dying, it can't save you when the dragon is coming to eat you. It's not going to make you stronger or better looking. It's only worth what people are willing to give you for it (which may be part of the problem because it's relatively easy to get)
Quote from: Molten Heart on May 29, 2015, 02:24:46 PM
The problem is there are easy ways to obtain huge amounts of money. I believe staff, as a way to deal with this, have decided just to make money not that useful at some point, preferring political power to be more valuable. Because after all, you can't eat or drink money when you're stranded out in the salt flats dying, it can't save you when the dragon is coming to eat you. It's not going to make you stronger or better looking. It's only worth what people are willing to give you for it (which may be part of the problem because it's relatively easy to get)
Which also inflates it in game. I'm always willing to pay players more than a shop for something because they are players. But when you're like, I need five small for this fifty coin item, then I'm icly and oocly like, get fucked and walk away.
Quote from: Molten Heart on May 29, 2015, 02:24:46 PM
The problem is there are easy ways to obtain huge amounts of money. I believe staff, as a way to deal with this, have decided just to make money not that useful at some point
Which is the easiest way to deal with it, but I suggest not the best way to deal with it.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 02:24:05 PM
Quote from: MeTekillot on May 29, 2015, 02:21:13 PM
Obscene wealth is something you should possess only with the blessing of the powers that be. That's a discussion for another tthread. I'll make a better post when I get home from work
Maybe not. It's not unknown for Templars to fine or tax commoners simply for having too much money. It's something that could probably be a little more widespread. The only problem I see with it is that PC Templars in Allanak belong to the War Ministry, and taxation sounds like something that would be done by the City Ministry.
There's taxation, which would probably come from the Trade Ministry. Then there's "value-added taxation", the good old "I have a sword, and legal authority to use it on you if you don't give me some of that coin". I find the second taxation to be more prevalent than the first.
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 02:23:02 PM
If you salt daily while you practice your crafting skills, after about two days played you have 5 large in the bank.
I'm pretty sure you know the risks involved in that.
When it comes to money, there's still tons of things you can do with it, but most of them require a certain involvement in politics.
For instance, coin could theoretically be used to buy slaves for all kinds of useful tasks...but without some political/legal backing to authorize it, that won't happen.
Quote from: wizturbo on May 29, 2015, 02:34:02 PM
When it comes to money, there's still tons of things you can do with it, but most of them require a certain involvement in politics.
For instance, coin could theoretically be used to buy slaves for all kinds of useful tasks...but without some political/legal backing to authorize it, that won't happen.
I would love to know the konami code for buying a slave if.
Being a Templar has to be difficult in that area, because you don't want to find them so icu you cripple them, but you don't want to find them so little they are just like meh.
Delicate balance required.
Quote from: nauta on May 29, 2015, 02:33:04 PM
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 02:23:02 PM
If you salt daily while you practice your crafting skills, after about two days played you have 5 large in the bank.
I'm pretty sure you know the risks involved in that.
Yes painfully so, but risk/reward!
I'd just like to chime in that in large part, this kind of thing is working as intended.
Zalanthas is not America. Money is not power, power is not money. Zalanthas is more akin to medieval lands, or ancient ones. Seeing money as the primary sign of wealth is more of a modern notion.
Quote from: wizturbo on May 29, 2015, 02:34:02 PM
When it comes to money, there's still tons of things you can do with it, but most of them require a certain involvement in politics.
Which means most common characters just won't care. Amos is in a clan, he has his gear from Salarr, he has his food and swill, why should he care if someone offers him 1000 'sid?
Arm is not an economic simulator, thankfully. Think of money as an RP prop. If you really want to motivate another player, offer them what they really want - interesting RP.
Most money is acquired through repeatable tasks (salting, hunting, selling crafted items, etc.). Even if you took all of a PC's coin, you wouldn't be doing as much harm to them as if you took their weapons, or their mount, or their materials.
Of course, the tax base could probably keep their rates low and manageable by voluntarily offering "taxes" to their friendly neighborhood Templar, instead of making the Templar do all the work of auditing them.
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:38:28 PM
Which means most common characters just won't care. Amos is in a clan, he has his gear from Salarr, he has his food and swill, why should he care if someone offers him 1000 'sid?
Because I can blow that 'sid on an apartment, more interesting booze, buying fancy useless vanity items (my first character collected figurines), new tattoos, expensive dates...
You're right in that all anyone really needs is food, water, and gear. Once you get those locked in, then you can really start having fun and buy things that give your character character.
Quote from: Patuk on May 29, 2015, 02:38:14 PM
I'd just like to chime in that in large part, this kind of thing is working as intended.
Zalanthas is not America. Money is not power, power is not money. Zalanthas is more akin to medieval lands, or ancient ones. Seeing money as the primary sign of wealth is more of a modern notion.
I doubt you remember the early days of the game when money could actually still be used to create new things instead of the
static, unchanging generally player-unchangeable structures we have now. Interesting times and I miss them.
I think the current state of affairs largely came into being with the gelling of the nobility. The nobility is supposed to be able to lord its luxuries over the commoners, but can't if the commoners can earn all the luxuries themselves.
The answer to that would be to have luxuries that are only available to the nobility while still giving commoners something to strive for. Houses and hovels instead of estates. Carts instead of wagons and argosies. A couple of ragged subordinates instead of an enormous household staff. Not simply cut a major motivator out of existence.
I feel in the case of wealth...
Players are confusing their OOC desire/knowledge with what would motivate their common character ICLY.
OOCLY you know that your character isn't really hurting for coin cause you got that bad ass raptor armor and all the water/food you want.
ICLY 1000 sid is 1000 sid, and that should motivate a character who spent their lives in poverty.
I always hate how it seems that players can't separate their OOC knowledge from their IC.
Yea you can make a ton of money salting... but should you? At a rate, once you've used it to cover the basics, you should not be out there abusing it. ICLY if you're character is sleeping in a nice apartment and has GMH level access to water/food... you shouldn't be salting.
I see salting as as "I accidentally spent my starter coin on these boots... shit I need a mount." Type thing. It's already punishingly boring OOC.
I cannot honestly envision myself ever not wanting 1000 coins. Maybe it's because I always play straight-combat characters with no crafting ability.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:02:17 PM
I cannot honestly envision myself ever not wanting 1000 coins. Maybe it's because I always play straight-combat characters with no crafting ability.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:43:25 PM
Quote from: Patuk on May 29, 2015, 02:38:14 PM
I'd just like to chime in that in large part, this kind of thing is working as intended.
Zalanthas is not America. Money is not power, power is not money. Zalanthas is more akin to medieval lands, or ancient ones. Seeing money as the primary sign of wealth is more of a modern notion.
I doubt you remember the early days of the game when money could actually still be used to create new things instead of the static, unchanging generally player-unchangeable structures we have now. Interesting times and I miss them.
I think the current state of affairs largely came into being with the gelling of the nobility. The nobility is supposed to be able to lord its luxuries over the commoners, but can't if the commoners can earn all the luxuries themselves.
The answer to that would be to have luxuries that are only available to the nobility while still giving commoners something to strive for. Houses and hovels instead of estates. Carts instead of wagons and argosies. A couple of ragged subordinates instead of an enormous household staff. Not simply cut a major motivator out of existence.
Something tells me what you call the old state of things was caused by a high character attrition rate and less OOC knowledge about the game, not because nobles were different.
Even as a combat character, there's always better armor and better weapons to buy. There are also other skills you could spend money on. Hire an elf to teach you their language. Buy more mounts as extras. Go buy shitloads of food from somewhere so you can be sure you won't go hungry. Plan for emergencies. Have an emergency fund built. Bribe some guards for a quick escape from a city should you need one at some point. Buy lots of alcohol/spice and store it away because usually items tend to have greater barter value then money does.
Quote from: Patuk on May 29, 2015, 03:19:36 PM
Something tells me what you call the old state of things was caused by a high character attrition rate and less OOC knowledge about the game, not because nobles were different.
It wasn't that nobles were different, it was that they didn't even exist yet (as PCs). I remember the introduction of the first noble PC, Thomas Oash.
Quote from: AdamBlue on May 29, 2015, 03:22:45 PM
Even as a combat character, there's always better armor and better weapons to buy. There are also other skills you could spend money on. Hire an elf to teach you their language. Buy more mounts as extras. Go buy shitloads of food from somewhere so you can be sure you won't go hungry. Plan for emergencies. Have an emergency fund built. Bribe some guards for a quick escape from a city should you need one at some point. Buy lots of alcohol/spice and store it away because usually items tend to have greater barter value then money does.
Sounds more like prudence than raw, powerful greed. Where is the outlet for greed?
One of the main problems I see with money is that it has become more of a social construct and less of a material construct, which is ironic, since money is in essence the representation of every material construct in the game.
The reason for this? We have a full proof system in place that lets everyone from the richest merchant House family member to the poorest most pathetic street urchin stash away their money with 100% security any time they want.
You want to see money and fortunes and wealth start to mean something in game and start actually moving plotlines and driving real conflicts....make banks give you tickets for the money you deposit, the same way stables do for mounts.
Right now it doesn't matter if someone has 200 coins or 200,000 coins...you will never get your hands on it. If they have a few hundred coins, or tens of thousands of coins...it means absolutely nothing to anyone who might go after them for it. Going after them or starting anything over it is a pointless practice in nothingness because even if you kill them, the money is not and never will be on the table in any way to be a driving force in the plotline.
So what happens? People who are too weak to realistically hold onto vast fortunes hold onto them anyways, because even if you could kill them, there is no reason to.
Quote from: Desertman on May 29, 2015, 03:34:02 PM
So what happens? People who are too weak to realistically hold onto vast fortunes hold onto them anyways, because even if you could kill them, there is no reason to.
You could always torture them in to giving it over. In fact, it'd probably be better to torture their loved ones so the mark can go withdraw his money.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:38:42 PM
Quote from: Desertman on May 29, 2015, 03:34:02 PM
So what happens? People who are too weak to realistically hold onto vast fortunes hold onto them anyways, because even if you could kill them, there is no reason to.
You could always torture them in to giving it over. In fact, it'd probably be better to torture their loved ones so the mark can go withdraw his money.
Not a horrible idea for the extremely small percentage of the playerbase that would fit the criteria necessary for this to take place.
For the vast majority of everyone else in the game that doesn't have a family that isn't virtual and out of your reach and also has a vast fortune...my previous idea is still on the table.
It would be so much easier of PCs didn't treat every single shakedown like a pickpocket stealing their bone swords in the Gaj. This is unacceptable! I'm being repressed! You'll have to kill me first!
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:11:09 PM
In my view, there's a problem with money in the game. It just doesn't have utility beyond a certain point for the common character.
What can a commoner use it for? Food, water, gear, apartments. That's it. Any money beyond that is good for what? Can't buy a wagon, a house, property, a title, any slaves, gladiators to put in the arena, NPC guards, etc.
Sure, you can play a spice head, a drunk or a whore hound and blow it all that way, but you'll probably only want to do that for one or two of your characters, then move on to some other concept.
Bribes? Rewards? Prizes? How can they motivate a character who won't have any use for the coin? Instead of inspiring strenuous competition, the prospect of a monetary award leaves a lot of characters saying "meh". In order to restore the leverage of these RP tools, characters have to have a reason to badly want coins. They have to be able to do something with them.
Money and wealth is an extremely powerful motivator but this motivation is just lacking in-game. Let's put it back in somehow.
In theory you could acquire things with obscene wealth, you just can't do it without staff intervention. The reasons are fair I think. Lets talk slaves.
You can't just account for the cost of buying the slave, you need to account for the cost of housing and feeding and making sure the slave stays a slave and doesn't become an ex slave. So how do you do that? You need a place to house them, nenyuk isn't an option so you need a building. Can't you buy a building? Well yes, probably, but once again staff are needed to account for the fact you are probably trying to buy one in a market that is in heavy competition (cities being walled in means places to put buildings or buy existing is extremely limited) Plus it is very likely there are taxes and upkeep associated with owning a building and suddenly that wealth you thought was obscene isn't as much as you though. I would liken this to real life lottery winners. Owning stuff that is expensive and upping you standard of living costs money. A lot of money and unless you can have a steady obscene income, you probably can't actually pull these things off. So the barrier to entry to these absurd purchases is staff. They help determine what is possible and what steps you'd need to actually pull it off. Just about everything in your list could probably be accomplished with time and effort, but the expectation that I should be able to take fifty thousand coins and walk into the corner store and buy the whole building isn't taking the world as a whole into account.
Quote from: Desertman on May 29, 2015, 03:40:28 PM
Not a horrible idea for the extremely small percentage of the playerbase that would fit the criteria necessary for this to take place.
For the vast majority of everyone else in the game that doesn't have a family that isn't virtual and out of your reach and also has a vast fortune...my previous idea is still on the table.
Strip them naked and start junking their gear?
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:43:00 PM
Quote from: Desertman on May 29, 2015, 03:40:28 PM
Not a horrible idea for the extremely small percentage of the playerbase that would fit the criteria necessary for this to take place.
For the vast majority of everyone else in the game that doesn't have a family that isn't virtual and out of your reach and also has a vast fortune...my previous idea is still on the table.
Strip them naked and start junking their gear?
I'm not sure what this accomplishes? I'm not against it in theory, I just want more details because now I'm curious.
Well, you're trying to coerce them in to giving you the money, right? If they don't have a (VN)PC family to torture, I'd start with physical assets next. Expensive clothes, weapons, gear, mounts, etc. Of course if they have 200,000 sid in the bank that might not move them... Which is when you move on to toes. Then fingers. Then facial features. Then eyes. There's a lot to work with in the persuasive line.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:48:27 PM
Well, you're trying to coerce them in to giving you the money, right? If they don't have a (VN)PC family to torture, I'd start with physical assets next. Expensive clothes, weapons, gear, mounts, etc. Of course if they have 200,000 sid in the bank that might not move them... Which is when you move on to toes. Then fingers. Then facial features. Then eyes. There's a lot to work with in the persuasive line.
contact Templar
psi Lord Templar, there is a man making me go to the bank right now to get money out for him. I will be meeting him at the intersection of Youarescrewednow Road and Whatabadcriminal Way to hand over the money. I will bring a bag with dung in it, please have your soldiers there to kill this guy. I will give you 3,000 coins instead of my 200,000 coin fortune.
Or....
You arrive at the bank. There are soldiers here. You are now safe. Tell the guy to screw off. Rebuy your gear. Put out hits on him. End of his criminal career. Really the only way this works is if the victim chooses to willingly go along with being the victim. Otherwise, it's almost as easy as just walking away and yawning.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:48:27 PM
Which is when you move on to toes. Then fingers. Then facial features. Then eyes. There's a lot to work with in the persuasive line.
SHAMELESS ADVERT: Get your missing digits, eyes, ears, and nose
today in the new expanded scar-givers at a change locdescs near you!
Something to consider, yes. Hopefully the mark gets the message that if you can reach them once, you can reach them again. Anyone trying to execute this plot should probably choose their marks carefully and be sure to pay off the Templarate in advance. Heck, the Templars might have some marks in mind.
Alternatively,
RICH PCs UP AGAINST THE WALLQuote from: Talia on May 29, 2015, 03:52:26 PM
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 03:48:27 PM
Which is when you move on to toes. Then fingers. Then facial features. Then eyes. There's a lot to work with in the persuasive line.
SHAMELESS ADVERT: Get your missing digits, eyes, ears, and nose today in the new expanded scar-givers at a change locdescs near you!
And to think you guys warned me that "cutting peoples hands off will probably make them store" :)
I think the question of how to rob someone whose wealth in the bank is irrelevant.
Regardless of whether you can rob them or not, a 'rinth rat or a poop digger or any other extremely low status commoner should not be able to slowly accumulate thousands upon thousands of coin like is currently possible. Either Nenyuk should outright refuse them at some point, or their account should be seized by the templarate for "suspicious activity." No returns allowed, of course. The city's case is against your money, which is guilty until proven innocent. Just kidding, it's just always guilty.
A big pile of money should be as much of a problem as it is a blessing for most characters. If you pick up a dead newbie's backpack and find 1000 'sid, it should lead to some interesting play questions and dilemmas for your character. Right now, you just head over to the bank and stash it and then keep playing like nothing happened.
I'm not saying it's impossible to get to their vast fortunes in the banks if you want to go through a lot of effort in terms of bribing the right people ahead of time, picking out very specific people you think might go along with the plotline, and then hoping it all comes together.
It's possible.
However it is much more likely you are going to tell them to go to the bank and get their money out for you and they are going to walk away and tell a Templar to go kill you because you are a criminal.
With my system, every decision they make is made with the very real understanding that their fortune is very much on the table and is part of every consideration and decision they make.
Your system could possibly include their fortune in the equation, if everything goes well. My system ensures it's in the equation every time for every decision being made by everyone involved. I prefer my system.
It sounds like you are all jealous of my salting empire, I'm using some of my vast fortune to put hits out on you jealous jerks!
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 04:01:28 PM
It sounds like you are all jealous of my salting empire, I'm using some of my vast fortune to put hits out on you jealous jerks!
I peed on a salter once. I will do it again. :P
What we really need is openly lazy Templars. Like reeeaaaaallly lazy. Like moves around on a pallequin, and only enforces the laws that are broken right in front of them (but even then, not if it's all the way across the room or some crazy shit like that).
*contact Templar;
*psi "help I'm being robbed"
*a foreign presence touches your mind
*The fatass Templar speaks into your mind "Are you being robbed within a block of the Ginka? Like a whole block away, or just you know... some of a block. I can't really see you right now, I'm going to assume this is happening far away..."
*you sense a presence withdraw from your mind.
I would fall out of my chair laughing. Yes please.
Ah, found your system. Eh, I'm more in agreement with hzyhenhok, that Nenyuk should maybe limit the amount you can deposit, based on social status. Not entirely sold on tickets.
While tickets are easily stolen (at least until you get a proper belt, robe, and scan skill), I imagine players would just withdraw their fortunes in tiny increments so that each ticket is only worth, say, 50 sid and stuff their belts with them. Though maybe you'll see that as a benefit, since it means chunks of fortunes will be stolen and keep wealth moving around more actively?
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 04:01:28 PM
It sounds like you are all jealous of my salting empire, I'm using some of my vast fortune to put hits out on you jealous jerks!
I'm more pitying than anything. Salting is the worst thing.
Do the salt flats stain your clothes? They should give you salt-crusted and salt-stained clothes, so people always know that you're a salter and treat you accordingly (badly and dismissively). Salt grebbing is waaaaaaaaaaaay down there on the social totem pole.
Quote from: Desertman on May 29, 2015, 04:02:06 PM
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 04:01:28 PM
It sounds like you are all jealous of my salting empire, I'm using some of my vast fortune to put hits out on you jealous jerks!
I peed on a salter once. I will do it again. :P
Which sort of sums up a point I wanted to make, but was having troubles articulating. Yes, codedly people can accumulate coins through rote (boring) methods (although I think staff have tweaked things to make the reward and the risk fairly equal), but the real checks and balance is that sid ultimately will only get you so far in Zalanthas: wealth, as Patuk put it, isn't a matter of the size of your bank account, but rather its your social status - your connections - that counts: a grebber is still a grebber.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 04:08:34 PM
Ah, found your system. Eh, I'm more in agreement with hzyhenhok, that Nenyuk should maybe limit the amount you can deposit, based on social status. Not entirely sold on tickets.
While tickets are easily stolen (at least until you get a proper belt, robe, and scan skill), I imagine players would just withdraw their fortunes in tiny increments so that each ticket is only worth, say, 50 sid and stuff their belts with them. Though maybe you'll see that as a benefit, since it means chunks of fortunes will be stolen and keep wealth moving around more actively?
People would do this to help deal with random pickpockets certainly...which makes perfect IC sense as well. Only a fool would use one Nenyuk voucher for all of their wealth.
That is far from the only consideration on the table. Raiders. Muggers. Killers. Organized crime groups that specifically target the wealthy. The multiple ticket pickpocket thing is at best the most minimal aspect to consider.
Weeeeeelll alright, it's worth considering.
Can we call them receipts or scrips or something, though? Too many tickets in the game as it is, especially leather ones.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 04:17:24 PM
Weeeeeelll alright, it's worth considering.
Can we call them receipts or scrips or something, though? Too many tickets in the game as it is, especially leather ones.
A Nenyuk-stamped leather voucher
Some thoughts on money:
Money translates to power, to an extent. NPCs and VNPCs love money. PCs love money too, but they might not love you, so they might take your money, and then continue fucking you over. Money loses value as a tool for bribes and political influence when characters regularly do things like ask absurd amounts of coin in exchange for whatever. You know why the shadow artist system sucked? I can ask Templar Amos for a contract on Elf Talia, and if Amos doesn't like me, he decides that contract is going to cost me 20,000 coins. At this point, it doesn't matter if I have 80,000 coins in my lockbox and another 20,000 in my bank account, and the highest passive income of any PC in the game, because I'm not going to pay Templar Amos 20,000 coins to kill an elf.
Thus, my coin holds little value because I cannot use it in a valuable manner. I could use my coin to buy influence or bribe a favor out of an NPC templar by working with staff! I had a PC do this once. The Templar took my money and then let the person I'd asked them to apprehend go with a pat on the back. Okay, so now I can't use my money as an indirect weapon and I can't use my money as a bribery tool, so the value of my money has decreased again.
I don't think money becomes meaningless past a certain point, but it loses a lot of value. With the exception of funding minor merchant house ventures or paying for things as necessitated by whatever plot project you're pursuing with staff... It doesn't matter if you have 10,000 coins or 100,000.
I know that staff have discussed making sure Templar Malik and Noble Hardnose have to secure funding for whatever big project they're planning this month, for example, and I'm curious if this is being done in Allanak now that Tuluk has poofed. I think that creating a larger need for money at upper levels of the PC hierarchy goes a long way toward increasing the perceived value of money overall.
Nenyuk limiting your deposit is pretty silly.
Nenyuk wants that indie hunter to deposit as much as he pleases because when he dies, it's theirs.
edit: appending my post from the last page to this one so it doesn't get lost
Some thoughts on money:
Money translates to power, to an extent. NPCs and VNPCs love money. PCs love money too, but they might not love you, so they might take your money, and then continue fucking you over. Money loses value as a tool for bribes and political influence when characters regularly do things like ask absurd amounts of coin in exchange for whatever. You know why the shadow artist system sucked? I can ask Templar Amos for a contract on Elf Talia, and if Amos doesn't like me, he decides that contract is going to cost me 20,000 coins. At this point, it doesn't matter if I have 80,000 coins in my lockbox and another 20,000 in my bank account, and the highest passive income of any PC in the game, because I'm not going to pay Templar Amos 20,000 coins to kill an elf.
Thus, my coin holds little value because I cannot use it in a valuable manner. I could use my coin to buy influence or bribe a favor out of an NPC templar by working with staff! I had a PC do this once. The Templar took my money and then let the person I'd asked them to apprehend go with a pat on the back. Okay, so now I can't use my money as an indirect weapon and I can't use my money as a bribery tool, so the value of my money has decreased again.
I don't think money becomes meaningless past a certain point, but it loses a lot of value. With the exception of funding minor merchant house ventures or paying for things as necessitated by whatever plot project you're pursuing with staff... It doesn't matter if you have 10,000 coins or 100,000.
I know that staff have discussed making sure Templar Malik and Noble Hardnose have to secure funding for whatever big project they're planning this month, for example, and I'm curious if this is being done in Allanak now that Tuluk has poofed. I think that creating a larger need for money at upper levels of the PC hierarchy goes a long way toward increasing the perceived value of money overall.
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:38:28 PM
Which means most common characters just won't care. Amos is in a clan, he has his gear from Salarr, he has his food and swill, why should he care if someone offers him 1000 'sid?
I disagree. Commoners should care about money, because it buys pleasures. That's the one thing available to them without politics. You can buy whores, spice, booze, better clothing, better accommodations, bribe some people to get things you want...quality of life improvements come with sid for commoners. The problem is these virtual things are not represented in-game very well right now. Spice is not habit forming unless the player enforces it, the urge for whores is just virtual, any food makes your hunger echos go away so why eat the ginka fruit, and the really nice clothes are all silks anyway which are outside their social class.
I don't really find there to be a problem with the value of 'sids, there's plenty to do with money. I wouldn't mind if banks had limits or high tax-rates to stop commoners from amassing huge amounts of coins though.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on May 29, 2015, 04:35:25 PM
I don't really find there to be a problem with the value of 'sids, there's plenty to do with money. I wouldn't mind if banks had limits or high tax-rates to stop commoners from amassing huge amounts of coins though.
I would rather see sid harder to get (lowering salt payouts, lowering sid buying prices) than to see folks who do it well to be penalized.
I only played one sponsored role in my life and it was a Kadian and I had more money then I knew what to do with in my Kadius account.
So if nobles or GMH members are poor, shit has changed.
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 04:33:32 PM
Nenyuk limiting your deposit is pretty silly.
Nenyuk wants that indie hunter to deposit as much as he pleases because when he dies, it's theirs.
What Nenyuk wants and what the Trade Ministry of Allanak want are not necessarily going to be the same. Nenyuk wants all your money, yes. The Templarate wants to keep in power. Since money is (to an extent) power, it is in the Templarate's interest to keep commoners poor. As Nenyuk holds wealth for everyone, it behooves the Templarate to force Nenyuk to help maintain the current wealth distribution. Nenyuk, not wanting to be locked out of one of the biggest markets in the Known, cooperates because getting some of the money is better than getting none of the money.
Anyone who can't think of things to do with their money should play a warrior/thug for three RL years, on a measly salary, who had the equipment he really needed within the first three months. You'll find ways to make money, and things to spend it on. Not stuff you need, just stuff you want.
Nobles and templars who cause too much trouble for Nenyuk will suddenly find their bank accounts experiencing financial difficulties.
Blues and Juniors, sure.
Reds and Blacks? No. Nenyuk's essentially a contractor of the Allanaki State. They handle the money, but Allanak mints the money and pays the army. Its the VNPC Templars who would dictate this policy to the VNPC Nenyuki family. This is high level metaplot economics, not something PCs actually have a hand in.
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 04:33:32 PM
Nenyuk limiting your deposit is pretty silly.
Nenyuk wants that indie hunter to deposit as much as he pleases because when he dies, it's theirs.
Sure, if we assume Nenyuk exists as nothing except the magickal lockbox that it currently exclusively represented by in-game.
There are plenty of economic and political reasons why Nenyuk might not want to give every living soul in Zalanthas a free, unlimited, on-demand deposit account. Maybe Salarr and Kadius have an agreement with Nenyuk to hamper indie hunters and merchants. Maybe the Templarate has an agreement with Nenyuk to combat criminal activity and control foreigners. Maybe inflation is a serious concern, and discouraging commoners from accumulating wealth is more valuable than simply acquiring a portion of that wealth. (And no, dead indie hunters are not likely a significant portion of Nenyuk's income. Player population ≠ vnpc population and all that jazz.)
Arguing Nenyuk is an illuminati banking organization that secretly controls the world and is more powerful than any other entity just so we can ICly justify dung scrapers with 100,000 sid in the kitty? That's what I call silly.
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
If you have "too much" coin and hang out in the Gaj, well you realize your dainty slippers are now ruined and you have to buy another pair right? And that breed who puked one seat over from you - that puke surely splattered at least a little bit, and now you need to replace your cloak. Ale all over your lovely leather gloves -
Or you could invest by buying tokens from PCs who go salting, and trade with gobbledigook for cleaning liquid - which you could use virtually on all those virtual puke-stains that don't get coded every time you sit at the bar - and then junk a fresh keg once every RL week.
There are lots of things you -could- do with "disposable income." If you choose not to do those things, then it's on you, not on the game coders to change the code.
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
And frankly, is a drop in the bucket. The distribution of wealth is absurdly skewed towards the Merchant Houses and the Nobility. Their bank accounts don't disappear when a noble or merchant dies. If I were to fathom a guess, I'd say the entire commoner bank accounts of both city's probably make up less than 5-10% of Nenyuk's total holdings. Sure, they profit when Joe Grebber dies, but they make much more money on their real estate holdings and loans. Plus, for all we know there are standing laws in the city-states that say that money becomes state property, and Nenyuk is just getting a cut for administration.
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
And yeah that -is- what happens. It's why they are arguably the wealthiest entity in the game. It used to be in the Nenyuk docs, back when Nenyuk was open as a playable clan.
Quote from: wizturbo on May 29, 2015, 06:22:15 PM
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
And frankly, is a drop in the bucket. The distribution of wealth is absurdly skewed towards the Merchant Houses and the Nobility. Their bank accounts don't disappear when a noble or merchant dies. If I were to fathom a guess, I'd say the entire commoner bank accounts of both city's probably make up less than 5-10% of Nenyuk's total holdings. Sure, they profit when Joe Grebber dies, but they make much more money on their real estate holdings and loans.
Nenyuk is a merchant House. That's what I'm describing.
The point is that as the sole proprietor for financial holdings, every 'drop in the bucket', beyond renting properties etc. amounts to a _lot_ of money.
This is how real banks work as well. They become wealthy through fees, interest, and taking the money that they hold on to.
Quote from: valeria on May 29, 2015, 03:41:19 PM
It would be so much easier of PCs didn't treat every single shakedown like a pickpocket stealing their bone swords in the Gaj. This is unacceptable! I'm being repressed! You'll have to kill me first!
Shockingly, I don't see this that often! Most shakedowns I've done, when I've played characters in a position to do so, were pretty realistic. I may have been lucky and only shaken down the good roleplayers though :)
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
That's not the point. The point is it isn't 2008 anymore. There's no reason it couldn't change, suitable IC and document changes alongside, if there were good reason for it to.
Do I have to say this again?
Zalanthas is not America. Wealth isn't correlated to power.
Nenyuk might shut down a templar's bank account if he annoys them? Maybe. But do you have any idea how utterly stupid that sounds? Even a greenhorn teenage jock of a templar is also a sorcerous warlord with half a thousand trained soldiers at his disposal, not to mention supplies and utilities. There is not a single thing a templar needs Nenyuk for, with them having access to the city's funds and people working for them. They can store their heaps of coin in a shed in their quarter and have a pair of stooge soldiers look after it every day of the year without breaking a sweat. Nenyuk has nothing to offer to a self-sufficient state like Allanak. If it annoys one templar too many, it takes two templars and their soldiers to wipe out every Nenyuki in Allanak before the pair should announce that banking in Allanak can now be done by this other family they found.
Obviously, a single templar isn't as influential as Nenyuk is. But even then, don't proclaim that it has much to offer individual templars, or that templars shaking down people's bank accounts is going to provoke a reaction. In Zalanthas, money is nothing at all next to the status and military power of the city's elite.
I'd love to play a Nenyuki family member. Not as a real estate agent, but as a Zalanthian banker. Dream role, but would require a lot of staff support to be realistic...which is probably why Nenyuk is closed to players.
As for Patuk's comments above...some if it is true, but some of it probably isn't. It has massive indirect power. The epitome of behind the scenes power.
Quote from: wizturbo on May 29, 2015, 07:07:13 PM
I'd love to play a Nenyuki family member. Not as a real estate agent, but as a Zalanthian banker. Dream role, but would require a lot of staff support to be realistic...which is probably why Nenyuk is closed to players.
You could try to play a Kassigarh nob- Ohwait.
Quote from: bcw81 on May 29, 2015, 07:11:03 PM
You could try to play a Kassigarh nob- Ohwait.
Naw, noble houses wouldn't be as raw as a Nenyuk family member. I like the idea of having more limited resources :)
There's a couple problems with Arm's economy? I hadn't even noticed.
Snip
Realised how pointless posting here is and that I'm supertired anyway.
I'm with Patuk. Money is a part of power, but not the main part.
Nenyuk's a private contractor of the Allanaki state, handling matters (housing, banking, storage) that the Templarate cannot be arsed to do on their own. It operates at the Templarate's pleasure. It would be economically disruptive to axe Nenyuk and let another house take in, but not impossible.
I view Nenyuk as an analogue to medieval proto-banks like the Jewish communities and the Knights Templar - independent, autonomous, and wealthy (or at least perceived to be), but only so long as the state finds them convenient. On several occasions nobles would cancel all the debts held by Jews and expel them as a means of placating a riotous populace. The Knights Templar were likewise destroyed when, after losing military relevance, the French state desired their holdings.
I'd be skeptical of Nenyuk documents presenting them as "more powerful than any highborne." Nenyuk was last open back in the Halastur and Sanvean days, right? Back then it sounds like any clan that a Staff took a particular interest in had documents prone to wankery. It would give them a grossly outsized position in the game world.
I think the solution ultimately has to be in a coded tweaking of the economy, so that people can actually succeed, and feel the joy of succeeding, instead of artificially limiting themselves.
In a world like Zalanthas, where survival is at a premium, the most OOC and immersion-breaking thing you can do, is go out of your way to earn less sids, or leave sids on the ground. It's only OOC player concerns which encourage such behavior.
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 06:46:46 PM
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
That's not the point. The point is it isn't 2008 anymore. There's no reason it couldn't change, suitable IC and document changes alongside, if there were good reason for it to.
Let me ask you a serious question. Why would it change? What interest would Nenyuk have in not seizing obsidian where they can?
The simple answer is, they wouldn't. They are in the business of amassing wealth. Why this is a point of contention at all is confusing.
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 07:57:26 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 06:46:46 PM
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
That's not the point. The point is it isn't 2008 anymore. There's no reason it couldn't change, suitable IC and document changes alongside, if there were good reason for it to.
Let me ask you a serious question. Why would it change? What interest would Nenyuk have in not seizing obsidian where they can?
The simple answer is, they wouldn't. They are in the business of amassing wealth. Why this is a point of contention at all is confusing.
It would change because the people in charge of the game decided they thought the game would be better if it changed. I don't see what is so hard to understand about this. If they decided it made sense and would help the game, they could make the T'zai Byn the clan with militia powers and give every rinthi PC templar magick. Compared to other changes we have seen over the last couple years, changing Nenyuk's docs would be a very, very minor thing. Nenyuk does currently not touch most PCs besides being a magickal 100% safe lockbox that also teleports your money between cities. It wouldn't be a big deal.
There's nothing to contend here. Some veteran GDB wranglers are trying to score points with the "You can't change it because that would be changing it." I'm aware of the old IC explanation for what Nenyuk is and what is does. It isn't sacred.
Look, cut the value of skinned hides and bone by 50%, same with harvested flower parts.
Much simpler solution, and will concentrate money away from people who shouldn't be wealthy. Same as the changes to salting did.
There's absolutely 0 need to do a ticket system, and not only would it not make sense or be necessary, but half the people complaining are the ones creating the problems they complain about. Full stop.
I'm tired of my rich commoner, I'm tired of my rich commoner.
Alright, so don't go out and manipulate your 15 years of game world knowledge to exploit every loophole to make 10X what 90% of the rest of the playerbase would make in the same scenario.
It's literally that simple.
I'm going to start a chart and make tallies every time someone busts out the 'YOU JUST DON'T WANT CHANGE' line. I think it comes up once a thread now.
Consider for a moment that not only does capping commoner accounts make about zero sense ICly, but that
it doesn't accomplish what you want in game.What happens when you cap bank accounts?
- Nobody creates a Lesser Merchant House.
- People do more stupid shit like carry three extra bags because they rolled high strength.
- People horde money in their apartments.
Wait a minute... People horde money in their apartments... Which means when they die, it remains in circulation... Which means... The overall amount of coin in circulation perpetually increases... decreasing the perceived value of coins?... I thought we were trying to increase the importance of money! Whoops!
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 07:29:13 PM
I'm with Patuk. Money is a part of power, but not the main part.
Nenyuk's a private contractor of the Allanaki state, handling matters (housing, banking, storage) that the Templarate cannot be arsed to do on their own. It operates at the Templarate's pleasure. It would be economically disruptive to axe Nenyuk and let another house take in, but not impossible.
I view Nenyuk as an analogue to medieval proto-banks like the Jewish communities and the Knights Templar - independent, autonomous, and wealthy (or at least perceived to be), but only so long as the state finds them convenient. On several occasions nobles would cancel all the debts held by Jews and expel them as a means of placating a riotous populace. The Knights Templar were likewise destroyed when, after losing military relevance, the French state desired their holdings.
I'd be skeptical of Nenyuk documents presenting them as "more powerful than any highborne." Nenyuk was last open back in the Halastur and Sanvean days, right? Back then it sounds like any clan that a Staff took a particular interest in had documents prone to wankery. It would give them a grossly outsized position in the game world.
Nenyuk isn't more powerful than any highborne. They are wealthier than any highborn. In the context of the game world (beyond just PCs) wealth translates to a fair amount of power. Look at House Kassigarh in the north. They went from being bottom-rung nobodies to the top of the ladder absolutely rolling in dosh. It's plainly stated that they can make or break other groups with their wealth.
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 08:56:31 PM
I'm going to start a chart and make tallies every time someone busts out the 'YOU JUST DON'T WANT CHANGE' line. I think it comes up once a thread now.
Consider for a moment that not only does capping commoner accounts make about zero sense ICly, but that it doesn't accomplish what you want in game.
What happens when you cap bank accounts?
- Nobody creates a Lesser Merchant House.
- People do more stupid shit like carry three extra bags because they rolled high strength.
- People horde money in their apartments.
Wait a minute... People horde money in their apartments... Which means when they die, it remains in circulation... Which means... The overall amount of coin in circulation perpetually increases... decreasing the perceived value of coins?... I thought we were trying to increase the importance of money! Whoops!
Quote from: BadSkeelz on May 29, 2015, 07:29:13 PM
I'm with Patuk. Money is a part of power, but not the main part.
Nenyuk's a private contractor of the Allanaki state, handling matters (housing, banking, storage) that the Templarate cannot be arsed to do on their own. It operates at the Templarate's pleasure. It would be economically disruptive to axe Nenyuk and let another house take in, but not impossible.
I view Nenyuk as an analogue to medieval proto-banks like the Jewish communities and the Knights Templar - independent, autonomous, and wealthy (or at least perceived to be), but only so long as the state finds them convenient. On several occasions nobles would cancel all the debts held by Jews and expel them as a means of placating a riotous populace. The Knights Templar were likewise destroyed when, after losing military relevance, the French state desired their holdings.
I'd be skeptical of Nenyuk documents presenting them as "more powerful than any highborne." Nenyuk was last open back in the Halastur and Sanvean days, right? Back then it sounds like any clan that a Staff took a particular interest in had documents prone to wankery. It would give them a grossly outsized position in the game world.
Nenyuk isn't more powerful than any highborne. They are wealthier than any highborn. In the context of the game world (beyond just PCs) wealth translates to a fair amount of power. Look at House Kassigarh in the north. They went from being bottom-rung nobodies to the top of the ladder absolutely rolling in dosh. It's plainly stated that they can make or break other groups with their wealth.
Good post overall, but to nitpick one isolated comment: I don't see using one's strength to carry extra bags counting as stupid shit. It's completely IC and logical to take advantage of one's greater strength to make their life easier. High wisdom characters, as far as I know, don't agonize about needing less fails to advance. High endurance characters don't agonize about having more stamina and being able to walk farther.
Quote from: bardlyone on May 29, 2015, 08:48:33 PM
Look, cut the value of skinned hides and bone by 50%, same with harvested flower parts.
Much simpler solution, and will concentrate money away from people who shouldn't be wealthy. Same as the changes to salting did.
There's absolutely 0 need to do a ticket system, and not only would it not make sense or be necessary, but half the people complaining are the ones creating the problems they complain about. Full stop.
I'm tired of my rich commoner, I'm tired of my rich commoner.
Alright, so don't go out and manipulate your 15 years of game world knowledge to exploit every loophole to make 10X what 90% of the rest of the playerbase would make in the same scenario.
It's literally that simple.
Nothing is that simple. First off, if you think people are getting rich off of bones, hides and flowers, I'm going to have to say you're wrong. If anything there's more money to be made in cooking skinned meats. But that's beside your point, which is that people who know the system should stop exploiting it to gain an advantage and the economy will be fine. That will simply never happen. You can't just say "stop doing A" and expect that to be enough incentive to stop people from trying to gain an advantage over others. That's not how people work. Competition is very deeply ingrained in many people. They will use any advantage they can if it's within the games rules(or not). Therefore if you want people to change the way they play the game, you must change the way the game can be played.
And guess what, staff are already doing that. Changes to forage code made it so there's no more bundles of purplish salts for salters to get rich on. It's a good start, but I don't think we'll be seeing any nerfs to skins/bones/herbalist merchants because those fucking merchants accept too little as is.
Know what usually rustles my jimmies? Subguild crafters selling gem-encrusted combs for bank, or woodworkers crafting up chests to sell willynilly, or how about tailors bringing it ridiculous coins... And they all do it "on the side" or keep it a secret from everyone while they mainly roleplay being dirty, gritty Bynners or some shit. Those are the types of things I can't help but roll my eyes at. Salters, and food-cookers, and those people who know exactly what sort of items to buy and sell to make a profit in different places across the known never bothered me as much as those types.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on May 29, 2015, 09:16:35 PM
Quote from: bardlyone on May 29, 2015, 08:48:33 PM
Look, cut the value of skinned hides and bone by 50%, same with harvested flower parts.
Much simpler solution, and will concentrate money away from people who shouldn't be wealthy. Same as the changes to salting did.
There's absolutely 0 need to do a ticket system, and not only would it not make sense or be necessary, but half the people complaining are the ones creating the problems they complain about. Full stop.
I'm tired of my rich commoner, I'm tired of my rich commoner.
Alright, so don't go out and manipulate your 15 years of game world knowledge to exploit every loophole to make 10X what 90% of the rest of the playerbase would make in the same scenario.
It's literally that simple.
Nothing is that simple. First off, if you think people are getting rich off of bones, hides and flowers, I'm going to have to say you're wrong. If anything there's more money to be made in cooking skinned meats. But that's beside your point, which is that people who know the system should stop exploiting it to gain an advantage and the economy will be fine. That will simply never happen.
Oh my. If only there was a way to encourage people to eat all that cooked meat they're racking up huge profits with, rather than selling it!
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 08:17:06 PM
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 07:57:26 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 06:46:46 PM
Quote from: Tetra on May 29, 2015, 06:19:25 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on May 29, 2015, 05:39:08 PM
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 29, 2015, 05:27:40 PM
The inner workings of Nenyuk are not really something we can delve into on the GDB but when you consider that the any Great Merchant House has vastly more money than the highborn and Nenyuk manages all that money in both cities, they're not just pushovers who count your coins for you. Their biggest opponents in either city state are going to be Kassigarh and Valika respectively, and even those houses are going to operate as carefully as they can in regards to Nenyuk.
Yes, but this is all extremely vague and virtual. Frankly, the "Nenyuk takes all the commoners' money because they keep it when the commoners die" is a shallow story made to justify the current workings of banking & money within the game. If/when the banking system is altered, there's no reason it could not be retconned or clarified.
Saying Nenyuk keeps all te money in the accounts of dead commoners isn't shallow, or a story. It's exactly what happens.
That's not the point. The point is it isn't 2008 anymore. There's no reason it couldn't change, suitable IC and document changes alongside, if there were good reason for it to.
Let me ask you a serious question. Why would it change? What interest would Nenyuk have in not seizing obsidian where they can?
The simple answer is, they wouldn't. They are in the business of amassing wealth. Why this is a point of contention at all is confusing.
It would change because the people in charge of the game decided they thought the game would be better if it changed. I don't see what is so hard to understand about this. If they decided it made sense and would help the game, they could make the T'zai Byn the clan with militia powers and give every rinthi PC templar magick. Compared to other changes we have seen over the last couple years, changing Nenyuk's docs would be a very, very minor thing. Nenyuk does currently not touch most PCs besides being a magickal 100% safe lockbox that also teleports your money between cities. It wouldn't be a big deal.
There's nothing to contend here. Some veteran GDB wranglers are trying to score points with the "You can't change it because that would be changing it." I'm aware of the old IC explanation for what Nenyuk is and what is does. It isn't sacred.
It's not hard to understand that elements of the game change.
It's hard to understand why you think it would be advisable or in any way connected to changing the value of money in-game. Nenyuk holds money, it has little connection to outlets you can spend your money on.
Well this did add all those new taste and smell echoes...
Re: Havok's point about carrying bags of 'sid, I think he was lampshading how people would start prioritizing strength on their merchant just so they could carry all their coins around in bags (which has a couple of problems with it).
Quote
Nenyuk isn't more powerful than any highborne. They are wealthier than any highborn. In the context of the game world (beyond just PCs) wealth translates to a fair amount of power. Look at House Kassigarh in the north. They went from being bottom-rung nobodies to the top of the ladder absolutely rolling in dosh. It's plainly stated that they can make or break other groups with their wealth.
As far as we know everything Kassigarh accomplished was with the permission of the Templarate. Kassigarh's wealth would not let them stand up to the actual state, just like Valika in the south couldn't simply buy their way to victory if they somehow came into conflict with the Templarate. The banking houses have enough 'sid to fuck with players cause all of our characters are pretty inconsequential. This doesn't mean the banking houses are actually that powerful in the grand scheme of things.
Man I should get off the GDB and get back to work and start playing Arm and stop worrying about esoteric features of the game that amount to jackall in actual gameplay terms.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on May 29, 2015, 09:16:35 PM
Know what usually rustles my jimmies? Subguild crafters selling gem-encrusted combs for bank, or woodworkers crafting up chests to sell willynilly, or how about tailors bringing it ridiculous coins... And they all do it "on the side" or keep it a secret from everyone while they mainly roleplay being dirty, gritty Bynners or some shit. Those are the types of things I can't help but roll my eyes at. Salters, and food-cookers, and those people who know exactly what sort of items to buy and sell to make a profit in different places across the known never bothered me as much as those types.
I don't really mind this so much as people who play pcs whose looks are totally divorced from their lifestyle. (I don't give a damn if you want to play an fme with perfect pale skin and ample breasts and no muscle tone - just don't be a warrior/thug in the byn and get beat on for 6 IC years and not change your desc to reflect it. Same as extremely muscular pcs who are actually merchant and nothing about them reflects or explains it, etc.) That said, with regard to the point you initially made about people and advantages, next time people are advocating making the game harder for new pcs, think about all the newbie posts about surviving long enough to join a clan being a major goal, or not knowing how to do, well, anything, and how you would survive in that situation if you didn't have years and years of meta experience. I dunno. Someone's fond of playing devils advocate. That someone is me.
I don't know where people are getting the idea that salt grebbing gets you rich. Maybe if you play 16 hours a day and don't mind spamming forage while trying not to fall asleep from boredom you can do okay.
Remember, not everyone has the availability to even play every day. People with the time and inclination to pour 40 hours a week into acquiring wealth on Arm are naturally going to wind up being rich. I understand those players probably want a more challenging experience when it comes to wealth.
But those of us who don't have that kind of time to pour into the game either take lots of risks to stay afloat or may have spent quite a bit of their time struggling to make the rent. When those players are struggling, guess what they don't get the time to do anymore? RP freely and interact!
Please consider everyone - not just the most hardcore and experienced group of Arm codemasters out there.
Quote from: In Dreams on May 29, 2015, 10:56:13 PM
I don't know where people are getting the idea that salt grebbing gets you rich. Maybe if you play 16 hours a day and don't mind spamming forage while trying not to fall asleep from boredom you can do okay.
Remember, not everyone has the availability to even play every day. People with the time and inclination to pour 40 hours a week into acquiring wealth on Arm are naturally going to wind up being rich. I understand those players probably want a more challenging experience when it comes to wealth.
But those of us who don't have that kind of time to pour into the game either take lots of risks to stay afloat or may have spent quite a bit of their time struggling to make the rent. When those players are struggling, guess what they don't get the time to do anymore? RP freely and interact!
Please consider everyone - not just the most hardcore and experienced group of Arm codemasters out there.
And this is exactly why salting can make you rich, because if it took hardcore playing then it would penalize the part time players and that's not right.
Weren't the noble families in the middle ages exorbitantly rich because they were land owning and tax collecting? I feel like a lot of the problems with the Armageddon economy are because it was established by a teenager who designed the MUD, and only minimally added to by a series of people, few if any of them with economics or historical degrees geared toward economics. I know that Armageddon's history is nothing like real world history, but it seems we draw from the real-world for inspiration so I think it bears looking at how economics worked and continue to work if we want to figure out how we can make Armageddon's economy somewhat realistic while still fun.
magick
To my knowledge, the noble houses receive income two ways. The houses are issued stipends by the city government in exchange for services rendered to the city state. This is likely supplemented by income generated by the unique specialty of each house.
The city can afford to issue stipends because everything is being taxed. Water is being taxed. Every family of clothspinners or band of swords for hire are being taxed. The merchant houses, small and great, are being taxed. I imagine even the noble houses pay taxes and families like Valika and Kassigarh benefit from their involvement in this process on many levels. Borsail, for example, can't beat down a bunch of commoners under the guise of 'tax collection' but Valika might be able to swing it.
One area where it gets tricky is individual wealth. The average Oashi might have more money in his account than the average Salarri, but whereas the total worth of House Oash might be 2,000,000 coins, House Salarr might be worth 20,000,000.
Having not played Arm seriously in 2 years (ish?) I'll just have to base this off my tangential knowledge through chitchatting about such things and previous play. On a previous character I had something like... I don't know 130,000 sid which I ended up using as bribes and paying off entities in game. I don't mean tiny bribes either, I'm talking like 60,000 bribes to templars. This character was a ranger with no like crafting skills. This was all made via foraging... FORAGING. It was also all made via NPCs.
All that money meant pretty much nothing. I just ICly assumed that any noble/gmh was technically more wealthy than me. Obviously I knew most sponsored roles were paupers compared to me but money is relatively worthless in Armageddon. The documents and manner in which the staff enforce the gap between commoner, GMH, and noble negates the value of coin. Those massive bribes and payoffs probably didn't improve my character's situation. People still probably wanted to kill him. People probably still didn't care if he died. The only thing that money did was make people hope I lived long enough to hand it to them and then tripped on my way out the door and broke my neck.
TLDR - Money is worthless because even if sponsored roles are poor compared to you. The NPCs and VNPCs behind them would gladly off you if you even remotely insult them. Because that's the kind of game Armageddon is. Only place money can buy you power is with PCs and even there it's limited.
I believe that if items broke down with greater frequency, if weapons snapped and broke apart (as bone and wood and obsidian rightfully should), if armor degraded quickly, and other items had a very obvious point of expiration, you'd increase the demand for items and also for spending. Playing a leader can be disappointing when you find out the minions you want to reward already have.. everything.
I played a soldier once who bought a super fancy sword from a Salarri merchant. Rode out onto the North Road and the sword immediately broke the instant I hit a gortok. First hit ever and it broke. Now it was probably an extremely random fluke, almost like winning the lottery, but it allowed for some fun RP with Salarr, demanding my money back (there was no code to leave me with a broken sword, but I RPed it as virtual and the PC merchant went along with it). If this were a more regular threat to swordsmen, hunters, etc., suddenly all your Richer than Noble characters are going to need to spend money often enough that 'obscene wealth' isn't that obscene anymore.
Plus it would help match the storyline of Zalanthas, which is items are significantly more faulty in a world without (much) metal.
Quote from: Jeshin OR on May 30, 2015, 02:04:46 AM
This character was a ranger with no like crafting skills. This was all made via foraging... FORAGING. It was also all made via NPCs.
You're the reason the markets have no coin for everyone else >:[
Quote from: Suhuy on May 30, 2015, 02:08:03 AM
I believe that if items broke down with greater frequency, if weapons snapped and broke apart (as bone and wood and obsidian rightfully should), if armor degraded quickly, and other items had a very obvious point of expiration, you'd increase the demand for items and also for spending. Playing a leader can be disappointing when you find out the minions you want to reward already have.. everything.
I played a soldier once who bought a super fancy sword from a Salarri merchant. Rode out onto the North Road and the sword immediately broke the instant I hit a gortok. First hit ever and it broke. Now it was probably an extremely random fluke, almost like winning the lottery, but it allowed for some fun RP with Salarr, demanding my money back (there was no code to leave me with a broken sword, but I RPed it as virtual and the PC merchant went along with it). If this were a more regular threat to swordsmen, hunters, etc., suddenly all your Richer than Noble characters are going to need to spend money often enough that 'obscene wealth' isn't that obscene anymore.
Plus it would help match the storyline of Zalanthas, which is items are significantly more faulty in a world without (much) metal.
This in of itself is the problem of the economy on a player level - supply and demand.
Since things last so long, there is a supply but no demand, people get something. I believe things should wear out quicker and require maitenence.
Arm's economy could do much better - and while I agree with other posters that Arm ISNT an economic simulator, Economy is also a vital part of society - it can effect every aspect of society in critical and impacting ways, and in that way I feel it could have a bit of a bigger part in armageddon - its mostly virtual and should stay that way, but I feel the merchant houses PCs and plots could effect that - demands for various things going up or down, say Salaar sends people up north to get lots ofwood to supply the market with wooden weapons or gear -- the price would eventually go down some due to supply being high and demand being less. This is just a rough and unlikely example - but its definetly something to think of.
That said, in my experience with RPs - doing such a thing requires a -lot-. .. lot lot of work to set up and keep track - its one thing to do this in a table top setting focused around a group of 6-8 PCs that change the world - way different for something the scale of armageddon. So thats why its probably not a thing - TOO much workload, I know this from experience. x.x;
There is this neat game called Nethack that some of you are probably familiar with. It is like Arm in the sense that, once you've "mastered" it, it's relatively easy (but it is insanely hard to master, especially without spoilers). Experienced Nethack players deal with this by imposing challenges on themselves called conducts (http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Conduct).
Quote from: MeTekillot on May 30, 2015, 12:02:30 AM
Weren't the noble families in the middle ages exorbitantly rich because they were land owning and tax collecting? I feel like a lot of the problems with the Armageddon economy are because it was established by a teenager who designed the MUD, and only minimally added to by a series of people, few if any of them with economics or historical degrees geared toward economics. I know that Armageddon's history is nothing like real world history, but it seems we draw from the real-world for inspiration so I think it bears looking at how economics worked and continue to work if we want to figure out how we can make Armageddon's economy somewhat realistic while still fun.
Not really, no.
Medieval nobility wasn't that rich in the material sense of jewels, gold, and so forth. Instead, their wealth came more from labour. Medieval taxes were usually not levied in money as they are today, but in actual agricultural produce. A castle to live in, weapons and armour, and a personal army don't cost money as much as they do labour, which was just about free for someone who could tax produce at their leisure. Merchanting and banking families in Medieval ages may have been richer, but they were also of far lower status, not to mention military power.
It's almost as if.. As if some societies don't operate on money being the main sign of power.
Woah, man.
Arm slightly differs in this in the sense of nobles not being fief holders, which means their wealth isn't concentrated in grain to dole out to retainers. Maybe some families own farming villages, and you could argue noble stipends have the same effect, but it is different nonetheless.
Quote from: Patuk on May 30, 2015, 05:20:44 AM
It's almost as if.. As if some societies don't operate on money being the main sign of power. Woah, man.
Nevertheless, this is irrelevant to what I was trying to say. There's no reason money couldn't be made more useful in the game, by providing things for common characters to aim for, aspire to, and eventually buy. This could be done without challenging the nobility. It could expand what common characters could achieve. It could provide a way to express a very common and powerful emotion, namely greed, in game. (If you believe this motive doesn't exist on Zalanthas, look at how characters are always trying to buy the best from Salarr and show it off). It could make common characters more responsive and motivated when presented with bribes, rewards and prizes.
Possible solutions to help the rich PC problem:
Make food cost a lot more. Then make it so people might have to go greb in a midden heap to find cockroaches to eat or something so they can survive. Make a merchant that sells piss to drink. Give them a reason to buy those cheaper rotting fruits.
Give even less sid for raw materials and basic crafting materials. But buy more of it. Why? Cause the merchants dont give a feck if its fair or reasonable and if you dont like it then feck off and starve.
Entry to the city costs sid or materials. You have to buy a pass to get back in. Cheaper if you buy before you leave then to buy on your way in. Dont have enough? Then you better greb enough shit to barter for it. And we arent paying you shit for it. We got enough useless fecks like you inside and we dont fecking care if you feed the scrabs. At least a scrab can feed someone.
House Nenyuk takes half when you deposit. Yup, half. Cause feck you. Carry your sid on you and some elf will come deposit your sid for you.
Make armor and weapons cheaper...or I should say make available cheaper armor and weapons and make the good stuff more expensive. The cheap affordable stuff is crap and breaks easily and doesnt do much in the way of killing power.
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
Make a couple of templar pcs that do nothing but tax people. Constantly. Dont have any sid? Fine. Give me your boots. That fancy cloak. That bottle of ale. Give it to me. Or die. Wouldnt bother that guy with nothing but trousers and whose starving, cause feck it, he will be dead soon.
EDIT: the middle-aged man is being halfway facetious.
One issue I see is that resources are abundant and there's not enough players to use the resources so most of them get sold to NPC merchants. This creates a lot of extra money that's not being spent. What could be done is to make some of the resources less accessible requiring more roleplay to obtain, but keep them obtainable. Also, create more things to spend that money on, both for struggling characters of low skill, for skilled underlings who have all the gear they need, and for leader PCs who want to progress their plots.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
Possible solutions to help the rich PC problem:
Make food cost a lot more. Then make it so people might have to go greb in a midden heap to find cockroaches to eat or something so they can survive. Make a merchant that sells piss to drink. Give them a reason to buy those cheaper rotting fruits.
Give even less sid for raw materials and basic crafting materials. But buy more of it. Why? Cause the merchants dont give a feck if its fair or reasonable and if you dont like it then feck off and starve.
Entry to the city costs sid or materials. You have to buy a pass to get back in. Cheaper if you buy before you leave then to buy on your way in. Dont have enough? Then you better greb enough shit to barter for it. And we arent paying you shit for it. We got enough useless fecks like you inside and we dont fecking care if you feed the scrabs. At least a scrab can feed someone.
House Nenyuk takes half when you deposit. Yup, half. Cause feck you. Carry your sid on you and some elf will come deposit your sid for you.
Make armor and weapons cheaper...or I should say make available cheaper armor and weapons and make the good stuff more expensive. The cheap affordable stuff is crap and breaks easily and doesnt do much in the way of killing power.
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
Make a couple of templar pcs that do nothing but tax people. Constantly. Dont have any sid? Fine. Give me your boots. That fancy cloak. That bottle of ale. Give it to me. Or die. Wouldnt bother that guy with nothing but trousers and whose starving, cause feck it, he will be dead soon.
Am I really the only one who thinks that the above sounds both ridiculous and awful as fuck?
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
loooooooooooool
Quote from: bardlyone on May 30, 2015, 01:18:44 PM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
Possible solutions to help the rich PC problem:
Make food cost a lot more. Then make it so people might have to go greb in a midden heap to find cockroaches to eat or something so they can survive. Make a merchant that sells piss to drink. Give them a reason to buy those cheaper rotting fruits.
Give even less sid for raw materials and basic crafting materials. But buy more of it. Why? Cause the merchants dont give a feck if its fair or reasonable and if you dont like it then feck off and starve.
Entry to the city costs sid or materials. You have to buy a pass to get back in. Cheaper if you buy before you leave then to buy on your way in. Dont have enough? Then you better greb enough shit to barter for it. And we arent paying you shit for it. We got enough useless fecks like you inside and we dont fecking care if you feed the scrabs. At least a scrab can feed someone.
House Nenyuk takes half when you deposit. Yup, half. Cause feck you. Carry your sid on you and some elf will come deposit your sid for you.
Make armor and weapons cheaper...or I should say make available cheaper armor and weapons and make the good stuff more expensive. The cheap affordable stuff is crap and breaks easily and doesnt do much in the way of killing power.
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
Make a couple of templar pcs that do nothing but tax people. Constantly. Dont have any sid? Fine. Give me your boots. That fancy cloak. That bottle of ale. Give it to me. Or die. Wouldnt bother that guy with nothing but trousers and whose starving, cause feck it, he will be dead soon.
Am I really the only one who thinks that the above sounds both ridiculous and awful as fuck?
Just because you see a single person expressing an idea on the GDB does not make it a majority opinion or trend.
Historically in threads like these, there's been a lot of objections to making the world harsher in ways that have an unbalanced effect on new players who haven't learned the game.
The game doesn't need to harder at the bottom. The problem is not the poorest PCs being too rich. Depending on race/class/starting location, there is already legitimate challenge to surviving on a fresh character, especially for inexperienced players.
The problem is the "middle class" of PCs who, having solved the problem of survival, are then able to accumulate endless stacks of cash. Solutions should be targeted at this middle class, not just blindly making everything more expensive and difficult. Giving them more expenses won't really deal with the problem, either. It doesn't really matter if Middle Class Ranger Amos is squeezed from making 1000 sid profit a month down to 500 or 250 or whatever, he's still going to eventually create an enormous, unrealistic pile of wealth by doing nothing more than surviving a long time and playing regularly.
This shouldn't happen, and I do feel if it were prevented, you'd fix a bunch of other problems. Primarily in regards to inflation (especially in PC-to-PC transactions), realistic roleplay regarding large sums of wealth, and Imm support for PCs who want to do interesting things with their money.
(Altering Nenyuk isn't necessary for such a fix to be made. It's just the most obvious way to do it.)
Quote from: Narf on May 30, 2015, 01:35:01 PM
Quote from: bardlyone on May 30, 2015, 01:18:44 PM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
Possible solutions to help the rich PC problem:
Make food cost a lot more. Then make it so people might have to go greb in a midden heap to find cockroaches to eat or something so they can survive. Make a merchant that sells piss to drink. Give them a reason to buy those cheaper rotting fruits.
Give even less sid for raw materials and basic crafting materials. But buy more of it. Why? Cause the merchants dont give a feck if its fair or reasonable and if you dont like it then feck off and starve.
Entry to the city costs sid or materials. You have to buy a pass to get back in. Cheaper if you buy before you leave then to buy on your way in. Dont have enough? Then you better greb enough shit to barter for it. And we arent paying you shit for it. We got enough useless fecks like you inside and we dont fecking care if you feed the scrabs. At least a scrab can feed someone.
House Nenyuk takes half when you deposit. Yup, half. Cause feck you. Carry your sid on you and some elf will come deposit your sid for you.
Make armor and weapons cheaper...or I should say make available cheaper armor and weapons and make the good stuff more expensive. The cheap affordable stuff is crap and breaks easily and doesnt do much in the way of killing power.
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
Make a couple of templar pcs that do nothing but tax people. Constantly. Dont have any sid? Fine. Give me your boots. That fancy cloak. That bottle of ale. Give it to me. Or die. Wouldnt bother that guy with nothing but trousers and whose starving, cause feck it, he will be dead soon.
Am I really the only one who thinks that the above sounds both ridiculous and awful as fuck?
Just because you see a single person expressing an idea on the GDB does not make it a majority opinion or trend.
Historically in threads like these, there's been a lot of objections to making the world harsher in ways that have an unbalanced effect on new players who haven't learned the game.
I edited the post. I apologize for not being clear. I was trying to be facetious and sarcastic but I guess it came off as I actually honestly meant all of it. I didn't. I was trying to point out the fact that you would have to go to some sort of extreme such as this in order to make the PC wealth disappear. Or maybe don't pick up every left over scrab bit you find laying, half buried in the sand and selling it.
I've had exactly one character who I felt was rich. And he really really wasn't that rich. He just was able to consistently keep getting funds to make it appear that way. Paycheck to paycheck as it were.
Cause you don't have to have all the best stuff. And the fact that there are people who think that is the only way to survive a long time, is well, it is a way to do it, just not my way. (anymore)
Wealthy PC's will always exist, because you can easily get wealth. Powerful PC's are different and completely divorced from their actual bank accounts.
Apologies for the way that came off. I was on my phone at work when I typed it and should have mentioned it was a joke. Every point I made would ruin the game for most of the playerbase, and basically make any new players quit in 2.3 minutes.
Quote from: Malken on May 30, 2015, 01:23:42 PM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
loooooooooooool
This is how it seems ATM.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 01:44:54 PM
Apologies for the way that came off. I was on my phone at work when I typed it and should have mentioned it was a joke. Every point I made would ruin the game for most of the playerbase, and basically make any new players quit in 2.3 minutes.
Ah, not at all. Sometimes I just mistake things when someone's being facetious. I know what you mean about having enough to make it more or less 'look' like you have a rich pc. Whenever I hear about anyone getting even a 5-digit nenyuk balance on a commoner pc, it is always somewhere between baffling and mildly upsetting when they're the same people advocating making things harder on everyone else. Most people DON'T do/have that, so it usually leaves me going ???
I used to save up like 10000+ easy on most of my PCs in the past, it was almost like an obsession of mine to have as much 'sids stashed up as I could. Over the years, I realized that I would just end up storing these PCs all the time, storing them with still like 10000 in the bank, so it was totally useless for me to keep amassing these fortunes, so I just quit doing that eventually. Now as long as I have the equipment (for the "look" of the PC) that I require to have fun and I have a little stashed away in case I lose my mount or something, I'm quite happy with that.
My foraging days are now mostly at the start of the character, just so I can be personally satisfied with the way he looks and so I don't come off as a n00b character off the boat (which I tend to hate), past that, I don't really need sids.
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 02:45:36 PM
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Just tossing this out there, most of the time I spend grinding sid, salting or whatever is due to the fact that I can't find anyone interested in doing otherwise.
I have had characters that I made literally just to interact with others on and not for their coded skills and have almost slapped people in the face with emotes and please interact with me type situations and they are just content to sit on their stool or walk right past.
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 02:45:36 PM
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Go back to your MUSH, nerd.
Just seems silly to me that people are complaining about their voluntary actions in the game. Even if you spend all of your time salting -- that doesn't mean you have to spend the money, save the money, or have it amount to anything. You could instead just blow it all on booze and spice, if you really wanted to.
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 03:04:03 PM
Just seems silly to me that people are complaining about their voluntary actions in the game. Even if you spend all of your time salting -- that doesn't mean you have to spend the money, save the money, or have it amount to anything. You could instead just blow it all on booze and spice, if you really wanted to.
I strongly suggest spice.
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 03:04:03 PM
Just seems silly to me that people are complaining about their voluntary actions in the game. Even if you spend all of your time salting -- that doesn't mean you have to spend the money, save the money, or have it amount to anything. You could instead just blow it all on booze and spice, if you really wanted to.
You put this better and more succinctly than I managed to, but this. This is EXACTLY how I feel. Instead of penalizing others with proposed changes, why don't you be the change with something that doesn't require staff help and just stop doing what you think is so awful and ruinous if you hate it so much. I don't get it either.
+1 what this guy said.
Yes, there is a problem with the overall economy in the game. There is an imbalance that makes it easy for certain types of players to get rich. In my opinion the imbalance is getting worse with certain new things IC. There have been other threads that have addressed this and made suggestions.
-GMH wages need to go up,
-Prices for things need to be adjusted,
-A tax on profits from items sold to any merchant. You might be able to make four small off that load of hides, but 25% is going to the Templarate.
-The flow of coin into the economy should be more carefully controlled.
-Also new options for spending.
There are already-lots- of opportunities for players to spend dosh. I think we could have even more (private homes that could be purchased or rented, hiring a private guard for your apartment, or having a class of apartments with better security, forms of entertainment). However they would require staff resources, and might not be a priority.
These might help somewhat, and improve things, but you are never going to fix the economy in the game. It is just one of those flaws that you just have to live with. It is still FUN!
I'd like to see coded, fade-to-black, type whorehouses. Like seriously. You pay sid to a whore, you go into a room, that is titles Fade To Black. After a time, half a Game Time Hour, you exit room with a special desc like:
the dirty, grungy mercenary wanders out of the back hallway, a smile on his face.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 03:32:02 PM
I'd like to see coded, fade-to-black, type whorehouses. Like seriously. You pay sid to a whore, you go into a room, that is titles Fade To Black. After a time, half a Game Time Hour, you exit room with a special desc like:
the dirty, grungy mercenary wanders out of the back hallway, a smile on his face.
Yeah, why don't places have brothels? Could even give employment to PC whores. That'd be interesting.
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 03:41:49 PM
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
You can give them the coins I reckon.
Quote from: Norcal on May 30, 2015, 03:43:37 PM
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 03:41:49 PM
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
You can give them the coins I reckon.
Virtual people?
Quote from: Alesan on May 30, 2015, 03:57:06 PM
Quote from: Norcal on May 30, 2015, 03:43:37 PM
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 03:41:49 PM
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
You can give them the coins I reckon.
Virtual people?
Maybe, buy the VNPC an actual gift/barter payment, and junk it as you hand it to them?
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 03:04:03 PM
Just seems silly to me that people are complaining about their voluntary actions in the game. Even if you spend all of your time salting -- that doesn't mean you have to spend the money, save the money, or have it amount to anything. You could instead just blow it all on booze and spice, if you really wanted to.
There's a couple areas in the game, where one might be able to make the case for the high karma required of the role bringing with it a couple 'nethack-esque conducts' to artificially limit themselves.
I do not think something so fundamental as the economy is one of those areas. Clearly, the game could use some design tweaking in that respect. Pretending otherwise and RPing around it might be a fine solution for some people, (and I'm sure plenty of us, including myself, have left thousands upon thousands of sids on the desert sands out of sheer apathy), but I think it harms RP.
Realistically, our characters would be clawing and scratching for every sid they could get. Better RP might be to roll with that, rather than take the Arm-hipster approach and scoff at having more than a large in our bank account.
Quote from: bardlyone on May 30, 2015, 01:18:44 PM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 12:33:22 PM
Possible solutions to help the rich PC problem:
Make food cost a lot more. Then make it so people might have to go greb in a midden heap to find cockroaches to eat or something so they can survive. Make a merchant that sells piss to drink. Give them a reason to buy those cheaper rotting fruits.
Give even less sid for raw materials and basic crafting materials. But buy more of it. Why? Cause the merchants dont give a feck if its fair or reasonable and if you dont like it then feck off and starve.
Entry to the city costs sid or materials. You have to buy a pass to get back in. Cheaper if you buy before you leave then to buy on your way in. Dont have enough? Then you better greb enough shit to barter for it. And we arent paying you shit for it. We got enough useless fecks like you inside and we dont fecking care if you feed the scrabs. At least a scrab can feed someone.
House Nenyuk takes half when you deposit. Yup, half. Cause feck you. Carry your sid on you and some elf will come deposit your sid for you.
Make armor and weapons cheaper...or I should say make available cheaper armor and weapons and make the good stuff more expensive. The cheap affordable stuff is crap and breaks easily and doesnt do much in the way of killing power.
If you are in a militia or clan or gmh, you get no funds. We supply you with basic gear and give you better as you are promoted, feed you, give you a place to sleep and you better be happy you arent eating cockroaches to survive. Maybe if we feel nice, we will buy you some ale. Maybe if we agree to bribe that templar, we will give you the funds to do so.
Make a couple of templar pcs that do nothing but tax people. Constantly. Dont have any sid? Fine. Give me your boots. That fancy cloak. That bottle of ale. Give it to me. Or die. Wouldnt bother that guy with nothing but trousers and whose starving, cause feck it, he will be dead soon.
Am I really the only one who thinks that the above sounds both ridiculous and awful as fuck?
Yeah, some of these are pretty riduclous.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 04:05:32 PM
Quote from: Alesan on May 30, 2015, 03:57:06 PM
Quote from: Norcal on May 30, 2015, 03:43:37 PM
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 03:41:49 PM
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
You can give them the coins I reckon.
Virtual people?
Maybe, buy the VNPC an actual gift/barter payment, and junk it as you hand it to them?
Yes, virtual people. It would be easier and make more sense to be able to just junk the coins. Since they would probably be more valuable to people watching your kids while you work or whatever.
I'm aware there are work arounds,but they're exactly that- work arounds. :-\
I wouldn't call it a problem, though as a somewhat experienced player, when I play a gatherer, hunter, etc. I try hard to spend the money in some realistic way. Bribe, probably is the best way of spending coins in realistic and fun way.
PS. Apart from wagons, which would be awesome in many ways; I always thought pleasure slaves, servant slaves, etc. would be nice addition. You know, non-combatant types of slaves.
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 06:01:08 PM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on May 30, 2015, 04:05:32 PM
Quote from: Alesan on May 30, 2015, 03:57:06 PM
Quote from: Norcal on May 30, 2015, 03:43:37 PM
Quote from: valeria on May 30, 2015, 03:41:49 PM
I wish we could junk coins to better reflect paying certain kinds of people for their 'services.' ... or can we? Is there some mechanic I don't know about?
You can give them the coins I reckon.
Virtual people?
Maybe, buy the VNPC an actual gift/barter payment, and junk it as you hand it to them?
Yes, virtual people. It would be easier and make more sense to be able to just junk the coins. Since they would probably be more valuable to people watching your kids while you work or whatever.
I'm aware there are work arounds,but they're exactly that- work arounds. :-\
Maybe a "donate" command that allows you to specify the amount of coins you want to "use up (junk)" and also a reason as to why you used it so that Staff can get a report if they so wish it?
donate 60 Weekly payday for the nanny
Donate is already an occupied syntax.
I don't know if coded objects etc are really a solution to increase the value of money.
I have played a wealthy PC. This PC had so much money that when new templars spawned in this PC would hand out tens of thousands of coins as 'hey, welcome, let's be friends' gifts. This PC would put in orders with GMHs to the equivalent of 'I have ten thousand coins to burn, so prepare me ten thousand coins worth of interesting things. Don't care what. Here's the money.' This PC broke the weight limit on their room because too many coins had been piled up.
But I always had things to buy. Every server reboot, I could go buy out that month's line of Kadian colors. Every new employee could get a full set of kryl armor. Every rival aide could be arbitrarily given a few thousand coins to maybe make them doubt their own master.
I didn't experience a problem with the value of money in regards to coded goods or in regards to the lower end of the social spectrum. I think the value of money falls off at HIGHER ends of the spectrum, because while that virtual blue robe would LOVE eighty thousand coins in exchange for X favor, that PC blue robe might be thinking, "What am I ever going to do with 80,000 coins?"
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 30, 2015, 08:25:30 PM
I don't know if coded objects etc are really a solution to increase the value of money.
I have played a wealthy PC. This PC had so much money that when new templars spawned in this PC would hand out tens of thousands of coins as 'hey, welcome, let's be friends' gifts. This PC would put in orders with GMHs to the equivalent of 'I have ten thousand coins to burn, so prepare me ten thousand coins worth of interesting things. Don't care what. Here's the money.' This PC broke the weight limit on their room because too many coins had been piled up.
But I always had things to buy. Every server reboot, I could go buy out that month's line of Kadian colors. Every new employee could get a full set of kryl armor. Every rival aide could be arbitrarily given a few thousand coins to maybe make them doubt their own master.
I didn't experience a problem with the value of money in regards to coded goods or in regards to the lower end of the social spectrum. I think the value of money falls off at HIGHER ends of the spectrum, because while that virtual blue robe would LOVE eighty thousand coins in exchange for X favor, that PC blue robe might be thinking, "What am I ever going to do with 80,000 coins?"
Let me guess. Red Storm tailor? ;)
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 02:45:36 PM
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Totally agree with this one. With over a hundred characters played, I've never amassed so much coin that it became a problem. 'Just don't do it' sounds simple, but true in this case I think.
Quote from: Miggy on May 30, 2015, 11:57:04 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 02:45:36 PM
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Totally agree with this one. With over a hundred characters played, I've never amassed so much coin that it became a problem. 'Just don't do it' sounds simple, but true in this case I think.
Generally the people complaining about a problem aren't the same people exploiting it.
This is a conversation that comes up at least once per year.
Once you're done playing Armageddon Dress-Up, coins are worthless. After that, it's all about influence and skills, so there's really a fairly narrow range where finagling with economics will have any appreciable effect. I'd say keep it easy to make coins just to keep the necessary grind minimal, because grinding is kinda lame.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on May 30, 2015, 11:59:20 PM
Quote from: Miggy on May 30, 2015, 11:57:04 PM
Quote from: Is Friday on May 30, 2015, 02:45:36 PM
You guys could just stop amassing cash and instead concentrate on interaction, solo RP, RP with other people, and generally playing your role via emotes -- rather than PvE.
Totally agree with this one. With over a hundred characters played, I've never amassed so much coin that it became a problem. 'Just don't do it' sounds simple, but true in this case I think.
Generally the people complaining about a problem aren't the same people exploiting it.
Right. And even if you are not one of the obsidian hoarders, they still affect the player economy (such as it is) in general, and thus affect everyone.
My solutions:
- Create a greater gap in price between low quality and high quality items. Don't change the base cost of survival in the game. Change the mid and upper levels. If a low quality knife is 50 coins, a mid quality knife is 500, a good quality knife is 1000, and a high quality knife is 5k, you don't create a hardship for the poor player; you create a hardship for the rich player. You also create more prestige for truly luxurious items.
- The same principles apply to other luxuries. A player should be able to get a place fairly easily for 200 a month, but it should only have one, dingy room. You should tack on 1000 a month for an additional room, or 500 for additional space in that single room, or 100 for one of those "a figure walks west below" windows.
- Various items not related to combat need to wear out. One thing they did recently was add 'uses' to many tools, and I think that was a splendid idea. Clothing should become worn by traveling in it, or stained more easily by filthy things such as walking down an alley, having food thrown at you, or spending time in dirty places. Degrees of clothing should be required instead of armor in various places, such as perhaps the Tea House. Create a demand for clothing, where a player is inconvenienced by not having it, or not having enough of it, or fancy enough of it. Don't make it necessary to survive, of course, but give it purpose in a relatable and real manner.
- Create coded advantages to eating good food. These should be slight, of course, but it provides a reason to buy a 250 coin plate of erdlu eggs in scrab sauce instead of a 5 coin scrab steak.
- Make sure travelers caught with spice don't die from NPC interactions in the south. I'm dead serious here, it's one of the real reasons I often avoid spice. I forget about the contents of my pockets too often, and I have no desire to bite the dust and rewrite a character for having a grain of four in my pack.
- Finally, since we're now past the whole 'new codebase, new game' thingie, let us create more freely, but charge us to do that and of course, ensure that it's not easy. If we wanna build walls and houses and outposts and wagons and whatnots, let us run with that. It allows us to spend extra money on things that make us smile both ICly and OOCly, and creates grand goals for us without really messing with the glass ceiling system. It also, most importantly, allows us to imprint the game with our characters, and leave history behind us.
By the way, I'm aware that we've begun to lean this way with the whole minor house system, and that is a splendid thing that I absolutely support. Keep keeping on.
I think all clothing should be armor (or at least armor-like) and wear out over time and activity with various states. A noble would never be seen in anything other than pristine or new silk but a common servant may prize a worn silk shirt. Just like armor repair there should be a clothing repair skill.
Quote from: Bushranger on June 01, 2015, 05:34:22 AM
I think all clothing should be armor (or at least armor-like) and wear out over time and activity with various states. A noble would never be seen in anything other than pristine or new silk but a common servant may prize a worn silk shirt. Just like armor repair there should be a clothing repair skill.
Tie it to exposure to sun, wind and sand. Make the rate at which something wears out variable depending on its material. I.e. silk weathers very quickly, sandcloth weathers very slowly, silt horror plate weathers basically not at all. Armor and clothes alike should wear out, so this would also make armor repair more of a necessary, regular thing.
Doesn't silk have a pretty high tensile strength relative to other fabrics?
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on June 01, 2015, 04:46:43 AM
My solutions:
- Create a greater gap in price between low quality and high quality items. Don't change the base cost of survival in the game. Change the mid and upper levels. If a low quality knife is 50 coins, a mid quality knife is 500, a good quality knife is 1000, and a high quality knife is 5k, you don't create a hardship for the poor player; you create a hardship for the rich player. You also create more prestige for truly luxurious items.
- The same principles apply to other luxuries. A player should be able to get a place fairly easily for 200 a month, but it should only have one, dingy room. You should tack on 1000 a month for an additional room, or 500 for additional space in that single room, or 100 for one of those "a figure walks west below" windows.
- Various items not related to combat need to wear out. One thing they did recently was add 'uses' to many tools, and I think that was a splendid idea. Clothing should become worn by traveling in it, or stained more easily by filthy things such as walking down an alley, having food thrown at you, or spending time in dirty places. Degrees of clothing should be required instead of armor in various places, such as perhaps the Tea House. Create a demand for clothing, where a player is inconvenienced by not having it, or not having enough of it, or fancy enough of it. Don't make it necessary to survive, of course, but give it purpose in a relatable and real manner.
- Create coded advantages to eating good food. These should be slight, of course, but it provides a reason to buy a 250 coin plate of erdlu eggs in scrab sauce instead of a 5 coin scrab steak.
- Make sure travelers caught with spice don't die from NPC interactions in the south. I'm dead serious here, it's one of the real reasons I often avoid spice. I forget about the contents of my pockets too often, and I have no desire to bite the dust and rewrite a character for having a grain of four in my pack.
- Finally, since we're now past the whole 'new codebase, new game' thingie, let us create more freely, but charge us to do that and of course, ensure that it's not easy. If we wanna build walls and houses and outposts and wagons and whatnots, let us run with that. It allows us to spend extra money on things that make us smile both ICly and OOCly, and creates grand goals for us without really messing with the glass ceiling system. It also, most importantly, allows us to imprint the game with our characters, and leave history behind us.
By the way, I'm aware that we've begun to lean this way with the whole minor house system, and that is a splendid thing that I absolutely support. Keep keeping on.
I like all of this, its a good start. I dont know if it would solve a lot in the long run. Probably would just change how long people greb salt until their character is how they think picture it should be.
I think you need the struggle to be real from the bottom tothe top. And since this is a game, there is needed, a lot of thought given to balance and playability, and simply sacrifices have to be made. Realism is always going to suffer for fun. Otherwise we would all be grebbing for cockroaches I feel.
I don't think there is an answer, that we as players, could see. Maybe staff could, but honestly, the best answer is just don't greb/tailor/hunt/craft etc until you are rich. Go interact instead.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on June 01, 2015, 09:37:38 AM
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on June 01, 2015, 04:46:43 AM
My solutions:
- Create a greater gap in price between low quality and high quality items. Don't change the base cost of survival in the game. Change the mid and upper levels. If a low quality knife is 50 coins, a mid quality knife is 500, a good quality knife is 1000, and a high quality knife is 5k, you don't create a hardship for the poor player; you create a hardship for the rich player. You also create more prestige for truly luxurious items.
- The same principles apply to other luxuries. A player should be able to get a place fairly easily for 200 a month, but it should only have one, dingy room. You should tack on 1000 a month for an additional room, or 500 for additional space in that single room, or 100 for one of those "a figure walks west below" windows.
- Various items not related to combat need to wear out. One thing they did recently was add 'uses' to many tools, and I think that was a splendid idea. Clothing should become worn by traveling in it, or stained more easily by filthy things such as walking down an alley, having food thrown at you, or spending time in dirty places. Degrees of clothing should be required instead of armor in various places, such as perhaps the Tea House. Create a demand for clothing, where a player is inconvenienced by not having it, or not having enough of it, or fancy enough of it. Don't make it necessary to survive, of course, but give it purpose in a relatable and real manner.
- Create coded advantages to eating good food. These should be slight, of course, but it provides a reason to buy a 250 coin plate of erdlu eggs in scrab sauce instead of a 5 coin scrab steak.
- Make sure travelers caught with spice don't die from NPC interactions in the south. I'm dead serious here, it's one of the real reasons I often avoid spice. I forget about the contents of my pockets too often, and I have no desire to bite the dust and rewrite a character for having a grain of four in my pack.
- Finally, since we're now past the whole 'new codebase, new game' thingie, let us create more freely, but charge us to do that and of course, ensure that it's not easy. If we wanna build walls and houses and outposts and wagons and whatnots, let us run with that. It allows us to spend extra money on things that make us smile both ICly and OOCly, and creates grand goals for us without really messing with the glass ceiling system. It also, most importantly, allows us to imprint the game with our characters, and leave history behind us.
By the way, I'm aware that we've begun to lean this way with the whole minor house system, and that is a splendid thing that I absolutely support. Keep keeping on.
I like all of this, its a good start. I dont know if it would solve a lot in the long run. Probably would just change how long people greb salt until their character is how they think picture it should be.
I think you need the struggle to be real from the bottom tothe top. And since this is a game, there is needed, a lot of thought given to balance and playability, and simply sacrifices have to be made. Realism is always going to suffer for fun. Otherwise we would all be grebbing for cockroaches I feel.
I don't think there is an answer, that we as players, could see. Maybe staff could, but honestly, the best answer is just don't greb/tailor/hunt/craft etc until you are rich. Go interact instead.
I like some of 7DV's ideas.
Why wouldn't this change things?
People that frequent the same places known to every player in the game end up dead a lot there, you guys keep talking about the salt grebbers... Stop being nice and start killing those people, problem solved.
The clothes thing, the community would do. I remember I used to start tossing out comments like: "Why are you wearing full armors at a bardic event?, "Oh I couldn't hear you through your face-mask in here with all this noise..." etc.
We -are- already the top percentage of armageddon inhabitants. I said this specifically in another thread where people were talking about 'prettiness' (No not guilt). Realism is pushed back a bit, because nobody wants to forage for cockroaches all day everyday. Few people constantly want to play a but ugly hooker taking it in every orifice to pay rent, ya know? Even just playing a militia recruit you are socially superior to like 97% of zalanthas.
Quote from: Aruven on June 01, 2015, 10:07:57 AM
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on June 01, 2015, 09:37:38 AM
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on June 01, 2015, 04:46:43 AM
My solutions:
- Create a greater gap in price between low quality and high quality items. Don't change the base cost of survival in the game. Change the mid and upper levels. If a low quality knife is 50 coins, a mid quality knife is 500, a good quality knife is 1000, and a high quality knife is 5k, you don't create a hardship for the poor player; you create a hardship for the rich player. You also create more prestige for truly luxurious items.
- The same principles apply to other luxuries. A player should be able to get a place fairly easily for 200 a month, but it should only have one, dingy room. You should tack on 1000 a month for an additional room, or 500 for additional space in that single room, or 100 for one of those "a figure walks west below" windows.
- Various items not related to combat need to wear out. One thing they did recently was add 'uses' to many tools, and I think that was a splendid idea. Clothing should become worn by traveling in it, or stained more easily by filthy things such as walking down an alley, having food thrown at you, or spending time in dirty places. Degrees of clothing should be required instead of armor in various places, such as perhaps the Tea House. Create a demand for clothing, where a player is inconvenienced by not having it, or not having enough of it, or fancy enough of it. Don't make it necessary to survive, of course, but give it purpose in a relatable and real manner.
- Create coded advantages to eating good food. These should be slight, of course, but it provides a reason to buy a 250 coin plate of erdlu eggs in scrab sauce instead of a 5 coin scrab steak.
- Make sure travelers caught with spice don't die from NPC interactions in the south. I'm dead serious here, it's one of the real reasons I often avoid spice. I forget about the contents of my pockets too often, and I have no desire to bite the dust and rewrite a character for having a grain of four in my pack.
- Finally, since we're now past the whole 'new codebase, new game' thingie, let us create more freely, but charge us to do that and of course, ensure that it's not easy. If we wanna build walls and houses and outposts and wagons and whatnots, let us run with that. It allows us to spend extra money on things that make us smile both ICly and OOCly, and creates grand goals for us without really messing with the glass ceiling system. It also, most importantly, allows us to imprint the game with our characters, and leave history behind us.
By the way, I'm aware that we've begun to lean this way with the whole minor house system, and that is a splendid thing that I absolutely support. Keep keeping on.
I like all of this, its a good start. I dont know if it would solve a lot in the long run. Probably would just change how long people greb salt until their character is how they think picture it should be.
I think you need the struggle to be real from the bottom tothe top. And since this is a game, there is needed, a lot of thought given to balance and playability, and simply sacrifices have to be made. Realism is always going to suffer for fun. Otherwise we would all be grebbing for cockroaches I feel.
I don't think there is an answer, that we as players, could see. Maybe staff could, but honestly, the best answer is just don't greb/tailor/hunt/craft etc until you are rich. Go interact instead.
I like some of 7DV's ideas.
Why wouldn't this change things?
People that frequent the same places known to every player in the game end up dead a lot there, you guys keep talking about the salt grebbers... Stop being nice and start killing those people, problem solved.
The clothes thing, the community would do. I remember I used to start tossing out comments like: "Why are you wearing full armors at a bardic event?, "Oh I couldn't hear you through your face-mask in here with all this noise..." etc.
We -are- already the top percentage of armageddon inhabitants. I said this specifically in another thread where people were talking about 'prettiness' (No not guilt). Realism is pushed back a bit, because nobody wants to forage for cockroaches all day everyday. Few people constantly want to play a but ugly hooker taking it in every orifice to pay rent, ya know? Even just playing a militia recruit you are socially superior to like 97% of zalanthas.
It won't change because people are either wearing the best armor they can to have a hope of surviving or they have decided at character concept timethat they are going to wear X.
That means they are still going to do whatever it takes to get there. If it takes more grebbing, slaughtering animals and crafting. It will happen.
Honestly, if people could start with stuff they like, and didn't feel they had to get out of newbie stuff immediately for OOC reasons. (Usually i hate being in newbie gear or if im not in newbie gear people might think im to tough to try to fight) Maybe people wouldnt work so hard at getting rich and instead get in that clan, start their new lesser merchant house...so on. (All merchant classes and dwarves with a money relevant focus not included)
If we are the top 3% of the world we should start that way. I don't agree that PC's are necessarily. (Kudos to every beggar pc ever)
I don't have a problem with someone slaughtering salt grebbing PCs. But if thats the case I would expect you to spend time solo RPing slaughtering some of the thousand other VNPC grebbers.
I understand what you are saying.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on June 01, 2015, 11:16:21 AM
I don't have a problem with someone slaughtering salt grebbing PCs. But if thats the case I would expect you to spend time solo RPing slaughtering some of the thousand other VNPC grebbers.
That's what my character does when I'm logged out of the game.
Shoka I would just say...
Have pity on people in good armors. This game isn't designed for you to win, and people with great stats and stuff do tend to want to protect their characters.
Don't worry, great armors don't stop fireballs.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on June 01, 2015, 11:16:21 AM
I don't have a problem with someone slaughtering salt grebbing PCs. But if thats the case I would expect you to spend time solo RPing slaughtering some of the thousand other VNPC grebbers.
by that token of logic, I expect you to solo rp getting raided by the thousand of other vnpc raiders.
PKing people and getting away with it is HARD, and nobody who has the skills to do it wants to waste all those days played on the 100 'sid a salt grebber might have on him.
Quote from: Aruven on June 05, 2015, 12:42:58 PM
Shoka I would just say...
Have pity on people in good armors. This game isn't designed for you to win, and people with great stats and stuff do tend to want to protect their characters.
Don't worry, great armors don't stop fireballs.
I really don't understand the 'game isn't designed for you to win.' Can't decide if you are saying 'you' as in everyone or 'you' as in specifically me.
I would just say, yeah. I know why they get them. That's not the problem. The problem people are complaining about is that people 'greb' to much and make themselves ridiculously wealthy. Supposedly.
My point is, the two main reasons people do something like this, is:
A: They don't like wearing any newbie clothes because they hate it.
B: The newbie clothing that you can get is crap and they want better.
C: some other less common reason
Solution for both OOC reasons:
Make the starting gear lists longer and more diverse. This will lesson the impact of OMG that girl is wearing newbie clothings!!!!!!!! And make those pieces of gear, not be completely crappy but what people basically strive to have when they first start their character.
People would do less of that perhaps. Dunno.
Well I'm not sure what can be done to fix things, but I know a while back I was perfectly capable of making 5K 'sids in a real life hour with a merchant not too long ago. The value of basic materials needs to go down, not to go into too much detail, but easily aquired materials crafted into easily made things gives you 250 coins per sale, and when there's 4 merchants in Allanak willing to buy said product... Yeah, too much money can be made with too little effort.
There are a handful of items from the newbie shops that are actually better than almost any counterparts you'd find in the game world.
Quote from: Shoka Windrunner on June 06, 2015, 06:14:53 PM
Quote from: Aruven on June 05, 2015, 12:42:58 PM
Shoka I would just say...
Have pity on people in good armors. This game isn't designed for you to win, and people with great stats and stuff do tend to want to protect their characters.
Don't worry, great armors don't stop fireballs.
I really don't understand the 'game isn't designed for you to win.' Can't decide if you are saying 'you' as in everyone or 'you' as in specifically me.
I would just say, yeah. I know why they get them. That's not the problem. The problem people are complaining about is that people 'greb' to much and make themselves ridiculously wealthy. Supposedly.
My point is, the two main reasons people do something like this, is:
A: They don't like wearing any newbie clothes because they hate it.
B: The newbie clothing that you can get is crap and they want better.
C: some other less common reason
Solution for both OOC reasons:
Make the starting gear lists longer and more diverse. This will lesson the impact of OMG that girl is wearing newbie clothings!!!!!!!! And make those pieces of gear, not be completely crappy but what people basically strive to have when they first start their character.
People would do less of that perhaps. Dunno.
I feel like staff recently made starting gear more diverse -- you just have to spend time in the starter shops refitting your character. But you can literally change out every piece of gear you start with, and some of the purchasable starter stuff is pretty decent to boot.
It might be an interesting experiment to give every new character access to a random, rare item from some curated database []. Just a little something extra to attach a story to.
Anyway -- I can see your point, Shoka, that there are discrepancies between how older characters and newer characters behave. But there are so many other dimensions to this phenomenon than just the newbie gear dilemma. A new character also has to build up his/her skills, and has to establish his/her clan membership, or reputation, and/or alliances.
I also think it's important to the economy of the game, such as it is, that at least some characters have to overcome some initial hardship.
[edits]
Quote from: Asmoth on May 29, 2015, 02:23:02 PMIf you salt daily while you practice your crafting skills, after about two days played you have 5 large in the bank.
1) How many in game hours are you salting for per in game day played?
2) How many in game hours are you crafting for per in game day played?
3) How are you getting the goods you're crafting with? Does it involve you going into a region with dangerous animals?
4) How are you obtaining food and water?
5) Do you have more than one set of clothes?
6) Do you have an apartment?
7) Do you have furniture that you've bought in your apartment?
8) Do you visit taverns? If so, how much are you spending on food and drinks on average per visit?
9) What do you do when there's a sandstorm and you're inside the city?
10) How much of your income comes from salting?
11) How much of your income comes from crafting?
12) What about your character concept gets them to be both a salter and a crafter?
I don't get the whole "It's too easy to amass so much wealth by doing <insert repetitive task here>! Why does the game let us get this much wealth!?" I've never played someone who wanted to spend hours every single day doing back breaking labour like salting or mining obsidian because they thought it was fun. They salt until to pay rent, get some ales at the Gaj, buy some food and get some water. They also bought extra sets of clothes, better armor, a mount to make things a bit safer. A tent to rest in once the sun reached midday. If they were doing really well would buy something a bit stronger than ale to drink and even eat out and not cook their own food!
I don't think anyone makes a character going "I'm so going to hit that forage command hard and I'm going to make thousands and then I'll put it in the bank and do nothing with it!" So here's a question: For those who've made wealthy characters, did you intend to make a wealthy character? Or were you expecting to make a poor character or an average character? For those who expected to make a wealthy character, what did you plan to do with that wealth and what stopped you?
I get it that someone might have expected to build a village in the middle of nowhere with their wealth and buy some carts and establish a trade route between the two locations and then found out staff were highly resistant/flat out killed that idea. We've all thought "wouldn't it be awesome if we..." and then for whatever reason found out we couldn't for reasons X, Y and Z. But what about your next wealthy character?
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:38:28 PMWhich means most common characters just won't care. Amos is in a clan, he has his gear from Salarr, he has his food and swill, why should he care if someone offers him 1000 'sid?
Don't people complain incessently about how poor their clanned character is and how they need their pay to be increased? Sounds like a perfect way to do that. Also what vices does Amos have and how much do they cost him? If he doesn't have any, why the heck not? Wouldn't it be more interesting if he was addicted to spice, sex with elves, gambling, alcohol or really rich food that he eats to excess? Does he not have parents whose apartment he needs to pay for? Does he not have any illegitimate children that he's desperately trying to find 'sid for?
It seems like a lot of people who suffer from the "I'm making too much 'sid" problem make perfect characters. They always make the best life choices. Their parents are either independently wealthy or dead, they have no children or partners to provide for, they never drink to excess and they always work diligently to make enough coin to be able to support their lifestyle and never try to live beyond their means. For such characters, wealth is irrelevant. But poor or rich, this is not how I see people act in the real world and it's not a character I'd certainly be interested in playing.
NOTE: I'm not saying people are playing incorrectly or aren't as good roleplayers as others. I'm just asking if people have considered making different choices for their characters. I ask this because the implicit underlying theme in this thread seems to be "it's not fun that I have all this wealth and nothing to do with it." If it's not fun, I suggest people either stop gaining the wealth or start finding new ways to spend it.
Here's some ways you can stop gaining wealth:
- For grebbers: Only work until you have enough to pay for your needs.
- For crafters: Employ players to forage for the goods you need to craft things into.
- For merchants: Employ others to make the goods for you that you're selling.
Here's some ways you can lose your wealth:
- Rent the best apartment that's available that you can find.
- Stock it with nice and comfortable furniture. Treat it as a status symbol and putting coin back into the economy.
- Go out of your way to buy from PCs. Haggle, but don't draw a line in the sand that you refuse to cross.
- Carry a few small in your pockets at all times.
- Pay upkeep costs for virtual NPC relatives in your life (you can get rid of coin by giving it to shopkeeper NPCs or haggling for a much greater price than a good is worth)
- Buy multiple sets of clothes (everyday clothing, nice clothes, work clothes)
- Buy nice drinks every time you go into a bar and eat out whenever you get hungry
- Pay people to get dirt on anyone and everyone
- Pay taxes
- Bribe the militia to regularly patrol you're apartment.
- Get an addiction or three.
Quote from: Eyeball on May 29, 2015, 02:43:25 PMThe nobility is supposed to be able to lord its luxuries over the commoners, but can't if the commoners can earn all the luxuries themselves.
The answer to that would be to have luxuries that are only available to the nobility
Are commoners allowed to wear silks? I've always seen templars hassle any commoner (often at the request of a noble) who dares deck themselves out in nothing but silks (house employees being the exception).
Quote from: HavokBlue on May 30, 2015, 12:45:13 AMThe city can afford to issue stipends because everything is being taxed. Water is being taxed.
The problem with this can also come from players who've accumulated knowledge over several characters. Those who know the ways in which to get cheap/free water and food are no longer being taxed 45 'sid every single day they leave the city. Those who know free/cheap food can be found are no longer paying upkeep costs for those things. Many do not bother with buying apartments as they wait for If you know enough about the game you can get your maintenance costs down very low. Those who have a high enough haggle skill and use it at every single opportunity (as is setting appropriate) can minimise their upkeep costs. Now that's not to say everyone who has knowledge of cheap essentials is taking advantage of that knowledge with every single character. But that can also help explain
Quote from: Malken on May 30, 2015, 06:53:59 PMMaybe a "donate" command that allows you to specify the amount of coins you want to "use up (junk)" and also a reason as to why you used it so that Staff can get a report if they so wish it?
donate 60 Weekly payday for the nanny
That would be awesome!
Also here's the thing with making large sums of money. The staff have successfully divorced the ability to gain large sums of coin from the ability to shape the world. If you want to create a Minor Merchant House, being able to earn 100,000 'sid a month is going to get you nowhere because people who are able to gain such large sums always rely on NPC sales. If you want there to be actual change in the world and to be part of that change, buy and sell from NPCs as a last resort and always go out of your way to buy from players. Without players doing that, there'll almost never be any new Minor Merchant Houses.
If you are earning 100,000 sid a month you should expect an email from staff asking you to detail the exploit you are using. ;)
There's something wrong with your mom's money in the game.
Quote from: Mordiggian on June 25, 2015, 06:49:59 AM
If you are earning 100,000 sid a month you should expect an email from staff asking you to detail the exploit you are using. ;)
I did this once, it wasn't fun (it was, however, justified ICly, he wanted to keep his significant other from hunting, but it turned out to be not about the coin, I still got account notes commenting on it, lol), so I stopped and found better goals and methods for my character that facilitated interaction. It wasn't an exploit, either.
Quote from: Mordiggian on June 25, 2015, 06:49:59 AM
If you are earning 100,000 sid a month you should expect an email from staff asking you to detail the exploit you are using. ;)
Sure, it's called ivory needles * 5 * 10 shops - any more questions boss? :P
Re John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
My unimportant commoner characters:
I try to bank at least 2000 sids. That's in case they get arrested, or become notable enough to gain an enemy that needs someone hired to whack. It's also in case whatever it is my character does for a living, is not doable for a period of time, and the rent has to get paid regardless.
I try to keep no less than 100 sids and no more than 500 sids on hand at all times.
Often I go over that 2000 sid bank, and in a couple of cases, getting to 5000, and even 10,000k, was an actual IC goal of a character. One of many goals, but still a goal. They each had different ideas of what it meant to be "rich" and being rich was a goal.
My important characters (clanned leaders, sponsored roles, special apps that had the means to amass ubersids, etc): generally worked toward maintaining 10,000 in the bank, usually kept between 400 and 800 sids on hand at any given moment.
Some things that would trip up those expectations/goals:
A grebber who gets stuck in continual sandstorms for multiple RL days and has to spend a lot of sids on wasted stable fees and water (since they don't know that there's a storm til they get there, and then they have to turn back).
Roleplay taking priority over utilizing coded skills - being in an "interesting" discussion/event in the city means my character won't be grebbing, and won't be chipping stone or laying silk out at a filthy bar or magicking items into magick items, or any other such thing. Sometimes I don't make use of "money-making skills" for RL days, and that means I have to use up some of the sids I have without earning replacement sids for awhile. See item #1 - having a bank of a couple thousand :)
Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say (or the other 3 are AFK and not even paying attention), I'll go to the moneymaking project, and make more money. This happens fairly often.
Renting an apartment that's loaded with sellable stuff that my PC doesn't have any personal use for. Instant riches, and my PC would have to be REALLY stupid to not take advantage of that. I do try and spread that kind of thing out - sell off a couple of rocks today, bring 2 of each rough sandcloth item tomorrow, sell off all the training weapons next week, find buyers for all the silk stuff two weeks later. The downside to that is that often, NPCs don't have the sids to pay out.
I really do prefer to sell to and buy from PCs but I have never met a PC who actually wanted to buy this stuff from another PC. In fact I've actually gone into shops wanting to buy an item - another PC would come in to sell the item - and that PC would just ignore me when I ask if I could buy it from them directly. It's like the selling, to them, is not part of roleplay, and they just want to do it and leave the shop so they can get to whatever else it is they're trying to do. LIke they expect selling stuff to be automated and are actually annoyed when someone wants to roleplay the experience.
I have actually tried to sell rubies and emeralds to a Kadian Merchant, or Agent (both, with different characters of mine) and was told they didn't need any. I would've sold them cheap, because the NPCs never can afford to pay out on them anyway so they were just sitting in a bag for RL months, usually. When PCs in leadership roles of merchant houses that make tons of money selling luxury items made out of these kinds of raw materials, say they don't need those raw materials, it really makes me wonder why I bother trying.
The problem in game is there isn't enough cool things one can spend money on. A wealthy Salt Barron should be able to get their own private island fortress in the silt sea with vivaduan slave girls/rukkians slave boys to serve their needs.
Oh. OH! OHHHHHHHHH! Vivaduan girls and rukkian boys do make sense. damn, that's hot
Quote from: Molten Heart on June 25, 2015, 10:33:46 AM
The problem in game is there isn't enough cool things one can spend money on. A wealthy Salt Barron should be able to get their own private island fortress in the silt sea with vivaduan slave girls/rukkians slave boys to serve their needs.
In contrast to my last post - and in response to this - I have had characters who wanted to spend LOTS of sids on things that are actually available in the game, but required a PC clan leader to provide it for them. And those PC clan leaders were rarely available, and usually forgot, and a full game-year later I had three times as much sids, and still didn't have the thing I wanted. And it wasn't a "special" item. Just a regular item that had to be loaded up on the clan NPC merchant (I know this, because I used to play a clan leader in that clan). Didn't matter which clan - Salarr, Kadius, and Kurac all gave me the same kind of treatment, with most of the characters I"ve had with tons of sids and eager to spend it on expensive stuff.
It's another reason why some PCs end up stupidly rich. They are saving up for just one fancy thing - that they know is "gettable" that the PC has promised will be available as soon as they come up with the sids. And then they put the order in - and the item never arrives. Meanwhile, they're still making coin, and it just keeps building up, and the things they WANT to spend it on, aren't showing up.
Anatomical based choice of gicker class for better slaves? Noted. If only everyone didn't find them positively disgusting for the most part.
wish up, request tool more stupid things with your coin.
Quote from: ABoredLion on June 25, 2015, 10:43:06 AM
Anatomical based choice of gicker class for better slaves? Noted. If only everyone didn't find them positively disgusting for the most part.
I added the gender difference using this song as a reference: http://www.armageddon.org/original/type/Songs/search/Ladies%20Love%20a%20Stone%20Mage
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 11:43:48 AM
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
Yeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting. I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.
You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either. I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.
Moderated a post. Note that saying someone's a troll is pretty much trolling. It takes two. Report a post if you think someone is trolling; otherwise, keep it to yourself and roll your eyes privately.
Quote from: Lizzie
Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say
It's odd how no one seems to make the connection between this and lack of motivations in the game (other than plotting your neighbor's doom). Throughout human history, greed has been an incredible motivating factor, but in-game, not so much.
Quote from: Nyr on June 25, 2015, 12:01:22 PM
Moderated a post. Note that saying someone's a troll is pretty much trolling. It takes two. Report a post if you think someone is trolling; otherwise, keep it to yourself and roll your eyes privately.
moderated another. ya'll need to read
Quote from: Synthesis on June 25, 2015, 11:51:29 AMYeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting. I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.
You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either. I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.
Sarcasm is a great tool at conveying information when used well. You've failed to actually convey any information. Are you saying that you want to create a character that can spend all day foraging (inevitably skill up) without actually successfully becoming rich? If so, you've got plenty of materials you could trade that won't make you rich (thanks to the 5 item limit). So maybe you want to create a characger that spends all day foraging salt (which negates the 5 item limit) and yet remain poor. That's fine. Here's the expenses you've got:
- Water - 45 'sid per trip
- Food - Varies
- Mount - 25 'sid
But let's assume you've gotten so good at foraging that this is no longer an issue. That's fine. You've still got expenses:
- Shitty apartment - 500 'sid per IG month
- Cheap Ale - 20-30 'sid per IG day
Then you've got days where sandstorms will stop you from going outside of the city. But depending on how often you play, that could simply be staving off the inevitable. So here's a question: Why not play poor rich? Throw your money around, buy ridiculously expensive bottles of alcohol and quickly find yourself short on coin. Buy spice and get caught doing it. Buy a deck of cards and gamble huge sums of money with all the other rich salters. Be lazy and don't go out every single day to forage.
And if, even after doing all that, you're still playing so frequently that you're still getting rich and you don't want to play a rich character, maybe pick a different material to forage? Because the people who have a few hours a week to devote to Arm aren't getting absurdly rich going into the Salt Flats. They're getting by. What they'd truly be struggling to do is get by on any other material because those are significantly more difficult to get by on. Consider playing a salter to be Armageddon on easy mode and instead play a different type of character that better fits what you want to play.
Of course, this is assuming you're complaining that you can't play a poor salter. You've failed to actually convey any real information in your post of sarcasm so this is all based on a hypothetical meaning I've attributed to your post.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 25, 2015, 12:04:28 PM
Quote from: Lizzie
Sometimes RP is non-existent - if I'm in a bar for 1/2 hour real time and there are 3 other people there and no one has anything to say
It's odd how no one seems to make the connection between this and lack of motivations in the game (other than plotting your neighbor's doom). Throughout human history, greed has been an incredible motivating factor, but in-game, not so much.
I think a while ago Patuk pointed out a historical fact that is pretty relevant here, namely, that wealth (and thus greed) has only until fairly recently been a matter that concerned coins and money. Of course, in fantasy worlds you have dragons sitting on massive piles of coins, but I'm inclined to think that most (healthy, thus no dwarves) people in Zalanthas would view wealth as more a matter of resources, social status, and political connections than the size of a bank account, and thus the greedy would pursue those, rather than coins.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 12:14:42 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 25, 2015, 11:51:29 AMYeah, you don't have to actually -kill- the things you're hunting. I've been sparring the same jozhal for 10 IC years.
You don't have to actually sell your loot as a merchant, either. I like to take a thief subguild so I can run around town and plant tanned hides and various bits of stoneware on people, just to see what their reaction is.
Sarcasm is a great tool at conveying information when used well. You've failed to actually convey any information. Are you saying that you want to create a character that can spend all day foraging (inevitably skill up) without actually successfully becoming rich? If so, you've got plenty of materials you could trade that won't make you rich (thanks to the 5 item limit). So maybe you want to create a characger that spends all day foraging salt (which negates the 5 item limit) and yet remain poor. That's fine. Here's the expenses you've got:
- Water - 45 'sid per trip
- Food - Varies
- Mount - 25 'sid
But let's assume you've gotten so good at foraging that this is no longer an issue. That's fine. You've still got expenses:
- Shitty apartment - 500 'sid per IG month
- Cheap Ale - 20-30 'sid per IG day
Then you've got days where sandstorms will stop you from going outside of the city. But depending on how often you play, that could simply be staving off the inevitable. So here's a question: Why not play poor rich? Throw your money around, buy ridiculously expensive bottles of alcohol and quickly find yourself short on coin. Buy spice and get caught doing it. Buy a deck of cards and gamble huge sums of money with all the other rich salters. Be lazy and don't go out every single day to forage.
And if, even after doing all that, you're still playing so frequently that you're still getting rich and you don't want to play a rich character, maybe pick a different material to forage? Because the people who have a few hours a week to devote to Arm aren't getting absurdly rich going into the Salt Flats. They're getting by. What they'd truly be struggling to do is get by on any other material because those are significantly more difficult to get by on. Consider playing a salter to be Armageddon on easy mode and instead play a different type of character that better fits what you want to play.
Of course, this is assuming you're complaining that you can't play a poor salter. You've failed to actually convey any real information in your post of sarcasm so this is all based on a hypothetical meaning I've attributed to your post.
You're taking it too seriously, man.
My point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.
There are plenty of things to blow your 'sid on, if you're getting too rich. If you grind your alcohol-tolerance skill, you can drop 200-300 'sid in the Gaj just to get a slight buzz! One time I left all my pockets open on purpose and went AFK, and my friendly local pickpockets relieved me of EVERY ITEM IN MY ENTIRE INVENTORY THAT COULD POSSIBLY BE STOLEN. I mean, we're talking like 2,000 'sid down the tubes, bam!
Quote from: Synthesis on June 25, 2015, 12:38:02 PMMy point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.
The only skill grind that has no opportunity to spend more than the minimum amount of 'Sid is the forage and tailor skill. Every other skill gives you ample opportunity to engage in other players to give that 'Sid to. Will there be PCs to get your supplies at first? No. But if you consistently reach out and prove yourself to be a long lasting character, the people you need will eventually exist. Many people who think they're playing a jeweler actually play a grebber/jeweler. If you're not playing a character that's totally self sufficient your ability to accidentally make large sums of 'Sid decreases significantly.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 01:11:18 PM
Quote from: Synthesis on June 25, 2015, 12:38:02 PMMy point is that you have to do a lot of repetitive tasks to skill up, and I would wager that the vast majority of excess 'sid is accumulated because people are doing "IC things" to skill up, and the 'sid generated is just sort of a happy by-product of the skill grind.
The only skill grind that has no opportunity to spend more than the minimum amount of 'Sid is the forage and tailor skill. Every other skill gives you ample opportunity to engage in other players to give that 'Sid to. Will there be PCs to get your supplies at first? No. But if you consistently reach out and prove yourself to be a long lasting character, the people you need will eventually exist. Many people who think they're playing a jeweler actually play a grebber/jeweler. If you're not playing a character that's totally self sufficient your ability to accidentally make large sums of 'Sid decreases significantly.
Every skill grind has the potential of making you lose more 'sid than you gain, if you do everything completely wrong and you have no idea what you're doing. (I.e. if you're a clueless noob.) Even sneak and hide technically are costing you 'sid every minute you're doing it, in terms of food and water status. I'm not sure what your point is, here. If you trade with players for your raw materials, usually you will make VASTLY MORE coins, especially once you branch (or if you start with) armorcrafting.
To reiterate: my point is that the vast majority of repetitive actions required to skill up (especially combat skills) will generate coins as a by-product (especially at the (advanced) level just prior to mastery or branching). People generate those coins because it looks bad to just junk the shit that you crafted, and it looks bad to just leave the animal carcass on the ground without skinning it. (Although, I totes feel ya people, with the scorpions--keep letting those little turds linger until reboot.)
I'm not sure what you think my opinion here is, but it's more along the lines of "meh, no big deal." I'm not offering a prescription or a solution...I'm just making an observation about the way things are.
Quote from: nauta on June 25, 2015, 12:19:44 PM
I think a while ago Patuk pointed out a historical fact that is pretty relevant here, namely, that wealth (and thus greed) has only until fairly recently been a matter that concerned coins and money.
Oh good grief. Do you honestly believe greed for gold and silver and coins made of such didn't exist until capitalism? Read about all the ancient traders, the Silk Road, and so forth. What do you think motivated them? Read about Rome and how money changed hands in their political system. The term "crass" comes from the legendary greedy, money-grubbing behavior of Crassus! Read about the long history of piracy. Read about Venice and the other trading republics. The most important act of greed in history was when Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, if you believe the Bible. It's ridiculous to assert lust for money is anything new. I didn't reply earlier because I didn't think people would actually believe him.
Quote
Of course, in fantasy worlds you have dragons sitting on massive piles of coins, but I'm inclined to think that most (healthy, thus no dwarves) people in Zalanthas would view wealth as more a matter of resources, social status, and political connections than the size of a bank account, and thus the greedy would pursue those, rather than coins.
What are coins, except a medium of exchange for these things? Money means you have resources. Money means you can buy social status. Money means political connections. Or at least it should if humans in-game resemble humans in real life.
I've had a reasonably wealthy character, but I never really felt comfortable with the level of wealth. At ~10-15k in the bank, an 800 coin per month rent can make you very nervous if you're only taking out and not putting in, which can easily happen if your PC has a lot of obligations and thus isn't spending time making coin. Rent, stable fees, and miscellaneous purchases can add up over time pretty quickly, and some of the higher end gear for sale by the GMH can take big chunks out of that easily.
On clothes, from a combatant POV:
Changing out of your armor is a pain in the ass.
If you're wearing heavy armor, good luck carrying the set with you while wearing regular clothes. You might need three to five bags to cram it all in there and since you're not wearing it on your back, suddenly said heavy armor is super encumbrance armor. Want to leave the armor at home? Hope you don't get called to do anything important for the 1.5 RL hours you have an IC off day, because then you'll have to spend 10 minutes running across town to your apartment to get your gear, never mind actually changing /into/ it. Do you use a clan locker? Good luck putting all your gear in your locker, man, because it's probably not gonna fit! (If it's heavy armor. Or giant armor. I have it on pretty good authority one set of regularly sized light armor fits fine. As long as there's nothing else in said locker. And the storeroom isn't crammed full of other stuff.)
Plus, the number of slots you end up covering with armor or uniform-related stuff really grows over time. REALLY grows over time. Head, face (sunslits/wrap), neck, chest, arms, hands, waist (quiver), belt, three weapons, about (most uniforms), legs, boots. Once my PC went an indeterminate amount of time without a breastplate because I'd accidentally removed/put it in a storage container and didn't notice because of the sheer amount of other stuff said PC was wearing. If I took my sunslits off, I was guaranteed to forget to put them back on when I needed them to be on.
My point is... I pretty much don't expect anyone who wears armor to ever not be wearing armor, because changing out of it is OOCly a pain in the ass. At least it is for me. I don't know how others feel about this. I suspect if I ever play a PC for which a fashion statement is a relevant thing, that this particular point will make me headdesk on a regular basis.
This doesn't preclude purchasing other clothes that will sit unused in storage. My PC had, in fact, purchased clothes that sat unused in storage. This PC just didn't buy many sets, because what was the point?
If you want to put more coin sinks in the game, they have to be minimally useful sinks. Clothes were just extra paperweights, or would be if commoner Zalanthans used paper.
/clothingrant
Synthesis your saying you will make more money if you buy raw goods rather than forage for them? Your going to need to explain that one because on it's face it seems nonsensical.
As for your observation that using skills generates wealth: no shit. This isn't discussing gaining wealth. This is discussing gaining ridiculous sums of wealth. Your average ranger or warrior isn't going to be able to achieve that through hunting thanks to the 5 item limit.P
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 07:42:45 PM
Synthesis your saying you will make more money if you buy raw goods rather than forage for them? Your going to need to explain that one because on it's face it seems nonsensical.
As for your observation that using skills generates wealth: no shit. This isn't discussing gaining wealth. This is discussing gaining ridiculous sums of wealth. Your average ranger or warrior isn't going to be able to achieve that through hunting thanks to the 5 item limit.P
Uh, the ability to generate mass quantities of coins goes something like merchant/armorcrafter, ranger/armorcrafter, ranger/master trader. You can make a metric fucking shit-ton of coins just doing rangery stuff. If you -haven't- been making a goddamn mountain of coins in the process of skilling up your rangers...either you aren't trying, you aren't curious at all, or you're just really, really bad at playing rangers. (Plus, rangers branch 4 crafting skills, without even having a subguild!)
And yes, if you pay 1 or 2 dudes to forage for you instead of doing it yourself, while you focus on crafting and selling the garbage they bring you, the profit potential escalates very, very quickly. Especially if they're good players who are just slumming it for fun.
Synthesis: killing things generates lots of wealth
John: really?
Synthesis: Combining combat classes with crafting classes generates lots of wealth.
John: Paying for raw materials will cost more then foraging them for yourself
Synthesis: no, it makes you more money.
John: How?
Synthesis: Well you can still make lots of 'Sid even if you pay for the raw goods.
I think I'm done here. This seems to be arguing for arguing's sake.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 07:56:19 PM
Synthesis: killing things generates lots of wealth
John: really?
Synthesis: Combining combat classes with crafting classes generates lots of wealth.
I think I'm done here. This seems to be arguing for arguing's sake.
I think you're just really bad at playing rangers, otherwise you wouldn't even be arguing with me about this. The 5-item sell limit is rarely an obstacle, when there are hundreds of valuable things you can go out and greb (and PC merchants in town will buy some things almost as fast as you can sell them), and there are places you can go that basically nobody else can get to, and you can get your own free food and water, and you can freely travel between cities basically whenever you want, because even in a PITCH DARK storm, you can still get there, if you have an excel map.
I mean, okay. I can ride to the north, spend maybe 3 hours hunting and grebbing, fill a bag full of shit, ride back down to 'nak and sell it for 1,200 'sid. Round trip six hours, maybe 2 RL days' worth, mostly travel time. If you're really good, you can tame a couple of mounts and jack that up to 2,200 'sid on a single trip. Total cost? A single 20 'sid stable fee. Who else can do that? 2,180 'sid in six hours? Maybe an extensively-branched merchant, with consistent access to supplies, but that's about it. The downside, of course, is that you run a MASSIVE RISK of losing your PC in the process.
Also, that's before you even get into selling stuff directly to PCs, mind you.
Travelling in pitch dark in total storm thanks to an excel map? Seems pretty two just.
Please point to the person complaining that taking 2 RL days to get their character to travel across the Known World, facing significant risk, is making too much 'Sid. If you can't you've gone on an off topic tangent and are not contributing to the discussion at hand.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 07:56:19 PM
Synthesis: killing things generates lots of wealth
John: really?
Synthesis: Combining combat classes with crafting classes generates lots of wealth.
John: Paying for raw materials will cost more then foraging them for yourself
Synthesis: no, it makes you more money.
John: How?
Synthesis: Well you can still make lots of 'Sid even if you pay for the raw goods.
I think I'm done here. This seems to be arguing for arguing's sake.
It's about time management. You make more coins by crafting and selling than you do by foraging. So you end up paying more for someone else to forage, but you make up for that by having more time to craft and barter and make connections for trade.
Not that complicated.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 25, 2015, 09:29:37 PMIt's about time management. You make more coins by crafting and selling than you do by foraging. So you end up paying more for someone else to forage, but you make up for that by having more time to craft and barter and make connections for trade.
Sure. There's a sweet spot where the amount of time played makes it optimal to use others to obtain raw goods as the amount of time expended finding people who are skilled enough to obtain the materials you need, who also have the ability and inclination to get those materials, whose playtimes overlap with your playtimes sufficiently to regularly give you those materials, and who are willing to do it for a low enough price to make the whole venture worth your while (as opposed to getting the resources yourself). But that requires a lot of elements to line up and maybe those elements do so regularly for on peak players. But I'm seeing a lot of people going out and foraging for the goods themselves.
But to make it relevant to the point I was making, for those complaining that their characters are getting too rich and yet are using players to obtain the raw resources they need to craft, are you selling to NPCs or PCs? If you're selling to NPCs, perhaps consider selling purely to PCs.
Can someone make "too much" coin by exclusively buying materials from PCs and exclusively selling goods to PCs? Sure. And if someone is then more power to them. They're creating fun for the players getting the goods and they're creating fun for the players obtaining the goods and fun for burglars and pick pockets who are probably stealing the goods. They're also hopefully creating enemies (other traders who are competing against them, any active merchant house merchants whose trade overlaps), they're paying taxes which allows templars to carry out their plots by securing the coin they need and they're probably gaining the interest of some nobles who want some of the coin they have as well. That hardly seems to be something to complain about and seems, to a degree, to be the whole point of the game.
But here's a question: Who here fits the above scenario and is still unhappy that their characters are too wealthy? I'll be surprised if anyone fits the bill.
My point that has either been ignored or missed is this: some people are creating characters who gain considerable wealth and are then unhappy about the amount of wealth that character is accumulating. Yet there are things they can do to decrease that wealth, and I suggested a few. I then opened myself up to have people with this complaint discuss how those suggestions were (in)appropriate or doing them would not work to then generate more ideas. Sarcastic responses not withstanding, I'm actually open to discussing this point with people who have this complaint.
Why only discuss those who have the complaint? Because you can create hypotheticals all day about how much wealth you can accumulate in certain conditions. However the number of players who actually play the game is finite and so the number of situations that actually occur are also finite. I don't care if theoretically doing a combination of X, Y and Z will cause enormous wealth if no-one ever actually does X, Y and Z. I also don't care if people do X, Y and Z and are happy with the results they get for doing X, Y and Z. Why don't I care if they're happy? Because they're having fun and enjoying the game. I leave concerns of game balance and realistic RP in the hands of staff and typically avoid threads that complain about "those people who are ruining my fun". This thread didn't seem to be a bitch and moan thread and the vast majority of posts seemed to be discussing a problem people are experiencing with their own characters.
I'm not complaining about my PCs being too wealthy.
I'm not complaining about -any- PCs being too wealthy.
I'm just trying to explain to you how it happens. My extreme example there...you basically have to -want- to become wealthy via that method, because it's a total pain in the ass to do it frequently. It is entirely possible (nowadays) to take an out-of-the-box ranger with zero crafting skills, never leave the Allanak surroundings, and make enough 'sid to dump 300 coins on useless bullshit (drinks, spice, giving coins to beggars, etc. etc.) every RL day, and still be left with so many coins that they start to become an encumbrance problem if you don't bank them--without even -really- trying to make coins. You'll just end up with a bag full of shit while training up skinning, archery, combat skills, foraging, etc., and if you aren't -terribly- unlucky, you'll be able to sell it all, eventually.
However, merchants (and subclass crafters, I suppose) can get very, very wealthy just by selling stuff generated by their unwanted successful crafting attempts. When you're trying to get from (advanced) to (master) to branch something new, if you don't take certain measures to increase your chances of failing, you can go on extensive (10+ items) success streaks before you finally fail, which leaves you with a pile of loot that you can either a) junk or b) sell to NPCs.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm not saying it's a good thing. It's just the way the game has always been, and all I'm doing is trying to explain it. So...don't get defensive about your point of view with me, because I'm not pushing any kind of pro- or con- agenda.
I guess the only "point of view" I have about the issue is that there has to be -some- leeway with regard to making coins, because if you put the clamps down on it so that even very experienced players like myself start feeling the pinch...then noobs and people who play infrequently and only during peak hours will probably find it extremely difficult to get by.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 26, 2015, 11:05:47 AMI'm just trying to explain to you how it happens.
Thanks. I'm aware there's plenty of ways for characters to make coin.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 26, 2015, 11:05:47 AMI guess the only "point of view" I have about the issue is that there has to be -some- leeway with regard to making coins, because if you put the clamps down on it so that even very experienced players like myself start feeling the pinch...then noobs and people who play infrequently and only during peak hours will probably find it extremely difficult to get by.
I'm still not seeing the relevance to the sarcastic post you made or the wild tangents you went off since then. But yes, I agree with you that clamping down on ways to make coins is bad because some people (with minimal playtimes) will need the easier methods that other people (with greater playtimes) can then abuse. I have never suggested nerfing the easy ways but instead recommend that those who don't enjoy making large sums change what their character does to either gain the money or to spend the money so they don't have as much coin.
Thanks for your contributions, John. I think you have some pretty good ideas regarding using that coin, and self-limiting yourself from making that coin in the context of the IC world.
I thought the dangerous side of the economy was supposed to be inordinately risky and make those who venture it much more money than subsistence jobs?
My only real complaint is the lack of subsistence jobs since Tuluk closed. Almost everyone is forced into the dangerous, wealth-creating jobs niche that is technically a minority of people within the Known. This is probably the one thing I would change; adding in a few automatically paid subsistence jobs that paid between ten and fifteen sids a day so that people could drink to stave off hunger. I don't think many people would be into it, though, we all love hunting and killing shit and exciting things too much.
EDIT: Mind you I didn't read this thread, so maybe that 'this is/is not a niche that must be fixed' was clarified at some point.
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 11:43:48 AM
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
The point is that it shouldn't be so easy to become rich in the brutal desert world of Zalanthas. Allanak doesn't seem like the kind of place where you should be able to easily build up a huge nest egg just by diligently working that 9-5 job. Whether or not my character chooses to do so has nothing to do with the fact that it shouldn't be possible. I, personally, also have zero control over other players, but their unrealistic wealth affects the game for everyone. Rather than expecting everyone to completely change their financial roleplay, a much more reasonable solution would be to alter the structure of the game's economic incentives and penalties.
Every time I read the title of this thread I just want to come post....
"I don't mind it at all. You can give yours to me!". :)
I heard somewhere that hunting was intended as a barely-scraping by job, but I couldn't give you proof.
http://www.armageddon.org/help/view/Hunter%20Roleplay
QuoteBeing a hunter is by definition not a lucrative occupation. If you are selling massive amounts of hides and becoming ludicrously wealthy than you are overdoing it. If you are struggling at some points but in general managing to get by, then you are truly enjoying the experience of playing a hunter in the harsh world that is Armageddon.
What about a vendor from a major clan that accepts hides/stingers/other hunted crap for a few sids per item?
That way, people who play a lot don't have to feel guilty about profiting off all those animals parts with other players, they have someone they can sell to easier who will give them less, but enough to get by on.
Something coded the way salt for House Jal is currently coded now--- with each kind of salt having a unique value and it being all added up by the sack. How hard would it be to make that a thing?
It doesn't really address the problem: it's not that it's wrong to sell hides and meats for high prices, it's wrong to sell a LOT of hides and meats for ANY price. The game doesn't model in animal population numbers and the impact of over-hunting on them. We're not going to run out of chalton hide even if we go out everyday and kill every single chalton on respawn. The help page's point is that it's the players' responsibility to keep their characters hunting at "realistic" levels.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 26, 2015, 05:58:41 PM
It doesn't really address the problem: it's not that it's wrong to sell hides and meats for high prices, it's wrong to sell a LOT of hides and meats for ANY price. The game doesn't model in animal population numbers and the impact of over-hunting on them. We're not going to run out of chalton hide even if we go out everyday and kill every single chalton on respawn. The help page's point is that it's the players' responsibility to keep their characters hunting at "realistic" levels.
But as has already been pointed out, you can make lots of 'sids just by going out and doing your thing 'realistically' every day. Kill a scrab, pluck 3 herbs, forage a bit of food, cook and process all the things you have and sell it all? There's 500 'sids for you. That's if everything is perfect though, of course, which isn't always so. If things are really perfect you can get 450 coins off of 1 plant, no hunting, foraging or skinning required.
At what point does it become unrealistic for your character to
not take advantage of this stuff? How many times do you have to force yourself to walk past easy money before your character would realize whats around you?
If staff want hunting to not be very profitable all they'd have to do is tweak some prices on a few things. Leaving it up to the players is woefully hopeful.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 26, 2015, 10:02:47 PM
If staff want hunting to not be very profitable all they'd have to do is tweak some prices on a few things. Leaving it up to the players is woefully hopeful.
There is an instinct to play the game as if it were a challenge that you can beat. It's unsurprising when you think about, because I think we're at risk of mistakenly breeding that attitude into new players if we're not careful. I.e., a newbie walks outside and starves, or some other easily avoidable, miserable failure of a death, and the expectation -- encouragement, even -- is for him to learn to master that challenge and move onto the next, and the next, until he's finally playing an interesting character with some biographical depth. Success!
But at some point he's crossed a threshold where he's not playing "realistically" anymore (for some definition of the term). He's making too many coins. He's not starving enough. He's using an unorthodox weapon, but actually it's one of the best in the game. His character is suspiciously knowledgeable about cures, artifact caches, drinking spots. He's un-pickpocketable.
And somewhere along the way (and it's probably not too far in -- a few months of playing) he's inherited this lofty new responsibility of placing limitations on himself, where before the game did it for him. He has to fabricate new things to lose coins to. He has to hunt less, even if that's one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game to him. Etc.
That's a long-winded way of saying I agree with RGS. It might be worth investigating simple ways of having the game be more challenging to players who want to volunteer for it.
Even something as simple as logging on and seeing Monopolyesque taxations on your character, like: "Thief! Thief! Half the coins on your person have gone missing." Or similar arbitrary taxations by the bank on your account. Or randomized instances of highway robbery by your landlord, who's going to be charging you double for your next month's rent. Or weapons that break, cures that expire, etc. And your "reward" for taking on these challenges might just be an asterisk next to that character on your list of dead characters, but I think that would be enough.
[edit: as I reread the above I realize I harp on this a lot, and it might come across like I'm demanding staff to do my ideas. I'm not :) Armageddon is the Best Game and I honestly appreciate every second of every minute staff put into our shared hobby]
Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 26, 2015, 05:04:10 PM
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 11:43:48 AM
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
The point is that it shouldn't be so easy to become rich in the brutal desert world of Zalanthas. Allanak doesn't seem like the kind of place where you should be able to easily build up a huge nest egg just by diligently working that 9-5 job. Whether or not my character chooses to do so has nothing to do with the fact that it shouldn't be possible. I, personally, also have zero control over other players, but their unrealistic wealth affects the game for everyone. Rather than expecting everyone to completely change their financial roleplay, a much more reasonable solution would be to alter the structure of the game's economic incentives and penalties.
Someone who plays a few hours every day will be able to get filthy rich while someone who plays a few hours every week will struggle to get by when doing the exact same activity. If you balance around the hardcore gamer you screw over the casual player.
Quote from: John on June 26, 2015, 11:59:30 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 26, 2015, 05:04:10 PM
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 11:43:48 AM
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
The point is that it shouldn't be so easy to become rich in the brutal desert world of Zalanthas. Allanak doesn't seem like the kind of place where you should be able to easily build up a huge nest egg just by diligently working that 9-5 job. Whether or not my character chooses to do so has nothing to do with the fact that it shouldn't be possible. I, personally, also have zero control over other players, but their unrealistic wealth affects the game for everyone. Rather than expecting everyone to completely change their financial roleplay, a much more reasonable solution would be to alter the structure of the game's economic incentives and penalties.
Someone who plays a few hours every day will be able to get filthy rich while someone who plays a few hours every week will struggle to get by when doing the exact same activity. If you balance around the hardcore gamer you screw over the casual player.
...the casual gamer already gets screwed as is, unless you go full monty and make money unusable for anything beyond food and water.
Quote from: Armaddict on June 27, 2015, 12:27:02 AM...the casual gamer already gets screwed as is, unless you go full monty and make money unusable for anything beyond food and water.
So let's make it worse?
Quote from: John on June 27, 2015, 01:49:35 AM
Quote from: Armaddict on June 27, 2015, 12:27:02 AM...the casual gamer already gets screwed as is, unless you go full monty and make money unusable for anything beyond food and water.
So let's make it worse?
Unfortunately, Armageddon has never been a game for "casual gamers". If you only have a few hours a week to dedicate to Armageddon, no matter what the system is like, you're going to end up screwed in many ways. Skill-wise, money-wise, plot-wise, etc.. There's really not much you can do "for the casual gamers" without making it worse for the rest of the players (as in, if you insert yet another way for casual players to make money, it'll just be totally abused by the rest of the playerbase).
Removing the limit on x5 items? Not gonna work.. If you put it to x10, the same players who are making a fortune right now will make even more so.
You think that when the salt guy tells you that they have enough salt for the day it screws the people that play Armageddon 10 hours a day? Not really, they have enough bags of salt to just come back the next day while the casual gamer is still screwed, but the economy is still messed up so it's either we leave it totally screwed up like it is now or we take measures to correct it in some ways knowing that some players will suffer for it.
Quote from: John on June 26, 2015, 11:59:30 PM
Quote from: hyzhenhok on June 26, 2015, 05:04:10 PM
Quote from: John on June 25, 2015, 11:43:48 AM
Quote from: Lizzie on June 25, 2015, 10:31:36 AMRe John's general question as I interpret it: "What are the financial goals/expectations for your character and why?"
It's pretty much "If you aren't happy with your character being rich, what are the financial goals/expectations for your rich character and why?" The undertone seems to be people don't want rich characters and yet keep doing behaviour that gets their characters rich.
The point is that it shouldn't be so easy to become rich in the brutal desert world of Zalanthas. Allanak doesn't seem like the kind of place where you should be able to easily build up a huge nest egg just by diligently working that 9-5 job. Whether or not my character chooses to do so has nothing to do with the fact that it shouldn't be possible. I, personally, also have zero control over other players, but their unrealistic wealth affects the game for everyone. Rather than expecting everyone to completely change their financial roleplay, a much more reasonable solution would be to alter the structure of the game's economic incentives and penalties.
Someone who plays a few hours every day will be able to get filthy rich while someone who plays a few hours every week will struggle to get by when doing the exact same activity. If you balance around the hardcore gamer you screw over the casual player.
Not at all, because your primary needs tick down in proportion with how long you're logged in.
And many of the suggestions in this thread have discussed adjustments that would primarily effect Arms' "middle class", comfortable PCs without necessarily hurting newer or lower play time PCs. It's not impossible to design a system where creating and saving wealth becomes more and more difficult on an exponential scale based on how wealthy that PC already is.
The best way to handle large sums of money without hurting casual players is taxation. Another option is to give templars the ability to audit bank accounts. I remember once a templar had a PC of mine at the bank and he asked her to give him her entire balance. Of course, I didn't -- I did give him about five small, which was maybe a third of what I had, but he had no coded way of knowing how much was left. What if I had 5 large? In that case, 5 small is a pittance. He would never have been able to know though.
I think they should. I think one possible restriction is to force the player to be in the bank with the auditor, but this should be one way to control wealth.
That scene plays out strangely in my head. If a templar asks a commoner, in front of a Nenyuki clerk, to give them her entire balance - why would the clerk knowingly deceive the templar and withdraw only a third of the commoner's money? Especially if the commoner said something like, "Give me 500 coins," instead of "Give me my entire balance."
Codedly, the templar has no way to know, of course...so it's just another code limitation of playing in a text based universe. But if that scene had been in a movie it would have looked weird.
Nenyuki probably has a family and a name. using that poor sod to deceive le templar? way to put Bill on the spot
Quote from: LauraMars on June 28, 2015, 02:44:17 PM
That scene plays out strangely in my head. If a templar asks a commoner, in front of a Nenyuki clerk, to give them her entire balance - why would the clerk knowingly deceive the templar and withdraw only a third of the commoner's money? Especially if the commoner said something like, "Give me 500 coins," instead of "Give me my entire balance."
Codedly, the templar has no way to know, of course...so it's just another code limitation of playing in a text based universe. But if that scene had been in a movie it would have looked weird.
This was several years ago and I forget exactly how it was worded but "give me your entire balance" wasn't said. it was more like an open ended question of "how much are you worth to nenyuk?" my PC gave a number that was lower than the total balance then went to the teller and withdrew that plus some.change to make it look like she drained the account. itwas a survival move. the same templar also took her mount ticket and all of her pocket change. my PC ended up with just enough coin to buy a mount later and ride out of the city.
I would like to see cash dumps for cosmetic things. 30,000 coins for a small piece of metal jewelry, 20,000 coins for a ratlon, that kind of thing.
Or maybe set large financial goals for building projects. During my tenure in Kurac there was an extremely large fundraising goal set to achieve Kurac's return to Allanak, and this was a good funnel for all that excess cash.
unintentional post
I'm not big on the idea of giving PC Templars the ability to audit / withdraw from Kurac willy-nilly, especially without the PC present. If you had saved up 10k sid for the sole purpose of hiring Scary McDuderstein to assassinate a Noble, and then after the deal was struck you went to your bank account and found your balance at 8k, unbeknownst to you... And actually, in that circumstance, you might have gotten off lucky. Giving PCs the right to generate any revenue they want for their own personal desires, while simultaneously enforcing their opinion of what is realistic for other PCs to have... It's a recipe for frustration and disaster.
I wouldn't mind seeing some of the other implementations that have been discussed of taxation via Nenyuk accounts though.
I do like the idea of auto-taxation at the bank. Utilizing Nenyuk would be a sensible way for the templarate to tax the commoners (who are largely unaudited, untracked, and unaccounted for). For that matter, why is Nenyuk not charging you on the money they keep safe for you? Out of the goodness of their hearts? This could even be a sliding tax scale, based on the total value of your account balance after the deposit is made. 5% if balance <= 1,000. 10% from 1k - 5k, 15% 5k-10k, 25% > 10k. Something like that.
Alternately, Nenyuk could do what old banks historically did and issue you account notes for your deposits. Each time you make a deposit, they hand you a ticket for the amount. (Or make certain amounts, such as 100, 500, etc - like bills). If you lose that ticket (or have it confiscated), you lose your money. This would be almost too harsh, as pickpockets, raiders, and assassins could wipe out 100% of your wealth (if you didn't work for a House that had safe storage for these tickets.)
Quote from: Erythil on June 28, 2015, 06:09:01 PM
I would like to see cash dumps for cosmetic things. 30,000 coins for a small piece of metal jewelry, 20,000 coins for a ratlon, that kind of thing.
Or maybe set large financial goals for building projects. During my tenure in Kurac there was an extremely large fundraising goal set to achieve Kurac's return to Allanak, and this was a good funnel for all that excess cash.
But Kadius shouldn't necessarily sell their best stuff to Joe Blow. Makes things awwards when lord and lady fancy pants go shopping
I'd be OK with making banks harder to use if either Zalanthas invented paper money or coins were simply made less heavy.
If anything they should be made more heavy. (For realism, not playability.) If the system were as simple as 1 coin = 1 coin, then 500 obsidian coins would probably weigh at least 100 lbs. But since we're stupid, unlettered commoners I can't imagine there being a coin with a 100 chiseled onto the back of it either.
For that matter, why obsidian? Are there slaves somewhere painstakingly chiseling dragons onto the back of every coin? How many coins could one slave make in a day - two? Would they not use something simpler, like ceramics? Something you could actually create a mint for?
The banking system in Armageddon is very much in a lot of ways an OOC construct all together. It exists primarily for ease of playability and the convenience of the players, if not the characters.
Before we start looking at things like currencies and realism surrounding currencies, we have to look at how that currency is even handled as a whole.
What good is looking at what the money is made out of, if the very system that governs that money for the most part isn't realistic at all?
Quote from: Barzalene on June 29, 2015, 10:39:30 AM
Quote from: Erythil on June 28, 2015, 06:09:01 PM
I would like to see cash dumps for cosmetic things. 30,000 coins for a small piece of metal jewelry, 20,000 coins for a ratlon, that kind of thing.
Or maybe set large financial goals for building projects. During my tenure in Kurac there was an extremely large fundraising goal set to achieve Kurac's return to Allanak, and this was a good funnel for all that excess cash.
But Kadius shouldn't necessarily sell their best stuff to Joe Blow. Makes things awwards when lord and lady fancy pants go shopping
At present, not even nobles can buy these kinds of things, when lore-wise they ought to be available to some extent, or else Borsail never would have restored its stocks of silver rings after their property got scuttled.
Quote from: Erythil on June 29, 2015, 12:57:20 PM
At present, not even nobles can buy these kinds of things, when lore-wise they ought to be available to some extent, or else Borsail never would have restored its stocks of silver rings after their property got scuttled.
Nearly all noble PCs are pretty much nobodies in the grand scheme of things. If the player of a noble PC wants to be able to buy (or receive) super-duper-extra-special things, then s/he needs to be getting noticed by The Powers That Be. Mere coin won't buy metal or other mega-bling.
As commented elsewhere in the thread, just because you have money doesn't mean you're somebody. That's not how the economic and sociopolitical system of Armageddon works.
If nobles are nobodies, and indies are nobodies, and GMH agents and such are also (presumably, 'cause they're common-blood vending machine) nobodies, do we even have somebodies?
Talia: Though it's true coin alone does not power and influence get, do you (and staff at large I guess) agree that there should be methods by which or accepted approaches for those with ACTUAL power and influence to drain coin and other wealth from commoners with coinpiles but low influence and standing?
Note: Fines are limited. A commoner has to avoid committing an offense to avoid fines, and most all of our players learn these from earlier characters. Do you think we need more than fines, do you encourage players to pursue auto-taxation, and do you think any of the ideas about banking etc have merit here?
badskeelz below: see my note about fines' limitation secondary to metaknowledge.
Quote from: Harmless on June 29, 2015, 01:28:41 PM
Talia: Though it's true coin alone does not power and influence get, do you (and staff at large I guess) agree that there should be methods by which or accepted approaches for those with ACTUAL power and influence to drain coin and other wealth from commoners with coinpiles but low influence and standing?
Crimcode immunity and the kill/order command can do wonders.
Quote from: Harmless on June 29, 2015, 01:28:41 PM
Talia: Though it's true coin alone does not power and influence get, do you (and staff at large I guess) agree that there should be methods by which or accepted approaches for those with ACTUAL power and influence to drain coin and other wealth from commoners with coinpiles but low influence and standing?
Players of PCs who would be in a position to go to Nenyuk and ask, "Yo, how much does Amos have in his bank account?" can do that and have done that.
Other methods probably exist. Players of PCs who are in these sorts of positions can work directly with clan staff if they want to. That being said, in my experience and observation, most of the time players do not want to create this kind of conflict, and would prefer staff (the V/NPC world) do it for them. To which I say...ehh. I'm happy to help you create conflict but I'm not interested in being the sole source of it.
Quote from: IAmJacksOpinion on June 29, 2015, 10:53:22 AM
If anything they should be made more heavy. (For realism, not playability.) If the system were as simple as 1 coin = 1 coin, then 500 obsidian coins would probably weigh at least 100 lbs. But since we're stupid, unlettered commoners I can't imagine there being a coin with a 100 chiseled onto the back of it either.
For that matter, why obsidian? Are there slaves somewhere painstakingly chiseling dragons onto the back of every coin? How many coins could one slave make in a day - two? Would they not use something simpler, like ceramics? Something you could actually create a mint for?
I've assumed that there is actually an obsidian mint somewhere that stamps the coin images into near-molten coin-shaped shards.
Anyway, I did the math a bit on this. Let's assume that an Allanaki coin is roughly the same diameter as a quarter, but twice as thick. A quarter weighs 5.67 grams. 1000 quarters is 5.67 kilograms, or 12.5 lbs. Quarters these days are nickel-plated copper with a composite density of roughly 8.9 kg/m^3. Obsidian/glass has a density 2.4-2.6 kg/m^3, so roughly 1/3rd that of nickel/copper. With our assumption that obsidian coins are twice as thick as quarters, that means obsidian coins weigh 2/3rds as much.
So 1000 'sid is 3.78 kg, or 8.33 lbs.
I suppose that means that the weight of coins in-game is actually not too far off from reality, and I see now why my spindly aide had so much trouble hauling 10,000 'sid to the bank. :D
Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 29, 2015, 01:27:43 PM
If nobles are nobodies, and indies are nobodies, and GMH agents and such are also (presumably, 'cause they're common-blood vending machine) nobodies, do we even have somebodies?
some·bod·y
pronoun1. a person of importance or authority.
synonyms: vNPC, NPC
Quote from: Harmless on June 29, 2015, 01:28:41 PM
Talia: Though it's true coin alone does not power and influence get, do you (and staff at large I guess) agree that there should be methods by which or accepted approaches for those with ACTUAL power and influence to drain coin and other wealth from commoners with coinpiles but low influence and standing?
Note: Fines are limited. A commoner has to avoid committing an offense to avoid fines, and most all of our players learn these from earlier characters. Do you think we need more than fines, do you encourage players to pursue auto-taxation, and do you think any of the ideas about banking etc have merit here?
badskeelz below: see my note about fines' limitation secondary to metaknowledge.
Believe me, this already exists. Go get a ton of coin, and make it clear you have it... You'll meet them real quick, and it won't matter if you've broken any laws or not.
Quote from: Patuk on May 29, 2015, 02:38:14 PM
I'd just like to chime in that in large part, this kind of thing is working as intended.
Zalanthas is not America. Money is not power, power is not money. Zalanthas is more akin to medieval lands, or ancient ones. Seeing money as the primary sign of wealth is more of a modern notion.
Disagree with you on several points, although I thank you for taking the time to share your opinion.
I think the original poster may have gotten it somewhat off as well. I'm not sure if he is new or not, but if it is it might possibly explain how he has gotten the impression that he has.
I could spend 20,000 pretty easily in this game. Like in less than a game week. If the right people are online, I could spend it in a game day. I'll speculate that I could spend 40,000 without too much trouble.
I'm not really clear on how he got the idea that money isn't useful in the game? Has he met people who are turning down money? In that case maybe he is simply not offering enough money.
One problem I think he may be running into, is with the clan kids. There is certainly a certain type of gamer here, who cares only for climbing the clan ladder or whatever and these guys are never really that worried about money. To some extent, that's realistic. You wouldn't worry about getting compensated work if you already had a difficult military job, one which paid all of your bills? You have enough work, you have enough money.
The people who run these clans are the medieval equivalent of trust-fund kids - they probably don't care much about money either. Even certain areas of the game don't use money much, operating more on kind of a barter economy.
I would suppose he's just asking in the wrong places. Two characters ago, my character didn't give a damn about money. He only needed enough loot to stay drunk. My last character, would have ridden across the known world and taken out a noble for less than a large, he was completely desperate.
I don't think the suggestions that people have to make cooler ways to spend money are at all bad. It certainly couldn't hurt.
Quote from: ibusoe on June 30, 2015, 03:28:36 AM
I could spend 20,000 pretty easily in this game. Like in less than a game week. If the right people are online, I could spend it in a game day. I'll speculate that I could spend 40,000 without too much trouble.
::) If anything, my opinion comes from being a very long term player, not from being new.
Yeah, you sure can. You can blow it all, on spice, booze, whores. You can just toss it onto the street.
I even said that right in the original post. But not on anything lasting. Once you're tired of playing a booze hound or spice head, 20,000 coins is of little value to a commoner; there's nothing to spend it on.
I don't understand the resistance to the idea of being able to do other things with the money. Buy hovels or homes, hire a couple of crappy NPC guards for a crappy workshop, a wobbly cart to haul goods in, a pile of bricks and beams to build something with, commission a large piece of art or sundial or whatever, the limit is the imagination. Don't you want your character to be able to have material goals beyond just buying Salarr's best sword? Don't you want your character to be able to have greed for money as a valid motivation instead of a futile accumulation?
Money will only buy you the loyalty and/or service of those people dependably who would have followed you for free anyways.
Your money might even buy you the favor or loyalty and services of someone who doesn't like you for a while, right up until you try and buy them to be on your side against someone they DO like and respect more than you personally.
Money is power to an extent.
The real power? Being the type of person people will respect and follow and won't betray for any amount of money.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 30, 2015, 11:37:51 AM
Buy hovels or homes, hire a couple of crappy NPC guards for a crappy workshop, a wobbly cart to haul goods in, a pile of bricks and beams to build something with, commission a large piece of art or sundial or whatever
Workshop - This is possible, see player clan progression documentation.
NPC guards - Also possible with player clan progression.
Commissioning art - Possible through the mastercrafting process and and/your PC's connection with some kind of artist who can do that.
Buying or building structures - Not possible right now. I don't know if it will ever be possible but I do understand the desire for it. In part this is a code issue but in part it is that the documented social structure of places like Allanak just doesn't really allow for it. Though you could say that this is possible as part of player clan progression (eventually you can work up to an estate).
Wagons and carts - Not possible right now because we don't have the code for it. Still on my list to do someday when we can get the code for it.
None of these things are easy to do, and they don't require simply throwing money around to get them done. But they wouldn't be valuable or interesting if they only required money or were easy.
Quote from: Talia on June 30, 2015, 12:11:06 PM
Wagons and carts - Not possible right now because we don't have the code for it. Still on my list to do someday when we can get the code for it.
You realize that if you ever did get the wagon/cart code working, you would be heralded as an Armageddon hero for ages to come?
Just sayin'
Quote from: Narf on June 30, 2015, 12:33:26 PM
Quote from: Talia on June 30, 2015, 12:11:06 PM
Wagons and carts - Not possible right now because we don't have the code for it. Still on my list to do someday when we can get the code for it.
You realize that if you ever did get the wagon/cart code working, you would be heralded as an Armageddon hero for ages to come?
Just sayin'
Knowing Armageddon code, it'll probably be saddled with some ludicrous downside/failure, so that you need pilot at (master) just to push your vegetable cart down the road. Also, the cart will cost 10,000 'sid, aggro creatures will attack and destroy it, and if you fail a pilot check, the cart will be crim-flagged and NPC soldiers will attempt to pilot it to jail, but will end up just randomly joyriding your cart around the Bazaar due to the constant random pilot failures (unless they fail the "enter cart" subdue check, in which case they'll just cut it to splinters, and then any NPCs in the room will start collecting your goods from the street).
That reminds me of when a Chalton destroyed my tent and attacked me. Still mad.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 30, 2015, 12:45:35 PM
That reminds me of when a Chalton destroyed my tent and attacked me. Still mad.
I was once attacked by a scrab while having an intimate moment in a tent. It's when I learned that armor didn't really matter at least on that PC.
Quote from: Synthesis on June 30, 2015, 12:42:36 PM
Knowing Armageddon code
::)
Carts and small wagons are planned to be basically skimmers that can go on land.
Quote from: Narf on June 30, 2015, 12:33:26 PM
You realize that if you ever did get the wagon/cart code working, you would be heralded as an Armageddon hero for ages to come?
Sure, but that's not why I've wanted to get it in game. It would be fun and neat and the players would enjoy it. Rathustra and I did a ton of work on it in 2010, then I couldn't get anywhere with the code, and then all of our work got eaten in the wiki crash. So I need to re-document everything he and I built (we had built a lot; we had all of wagon-building figured out), and there needs to be code to support it. So it's not top of my list right now, but it's still a plan for someday.
So please no one be holding your breath over it. But be hopeful for someday.
I didn't read the whole thing.
Indies should never have mo money than GMHs or Noble Houses. They just shouldn't. One problem I see is the whole having to ask for permission from the House to use House funds for shit or get corrected. Noble PCs should start with a NICE nest egg and there should be a huge amount in the House bank account, not for whimsy but for shit that matters. Let the stupid nobles who waste the money suffer ic consequences. Same thing with gmh employees, they're not all merchants, they don't all want to sell or craft but they should all still be able to bribe extravagantly.
It sucks being a newble and having to say "goddamn I can't afford that!". Should be able to afford to do anything in game. Money shouldn't be an issue for the 'supposedly' wealthy.
Yay wagons!
Quote from: ShaLeah on June 30, 2015, 12:57:31 PM
One problem I see is the whole having to ask for permission from the House to use House funds for shit or get corrected. Noble PCs should start with a NICE nest egg and there should be a huge amount in the House bank account, not for whimsy but for shit that matters. Let the stupid nobles who waste the money suffer ic consequences. ... It sucks being a newble and having to say "goddamn I can't afford that!". Should be able to afford to do anything in game. Money shouldn't be an issue for the 'supposedly' wealthy.
Compared to how things were when I used to play nobles, noobles now get an insane fuckton of money through their stipends, depending on which house they are from. I'd say that based on house rank it goes from "totally insane fuckton" down to "I might have to budget a little bit." But all of them have plenty of personal cash to spend on silks, decorative weapons, spice, booze, bribes, and favors. Nobles
are rich, though some are richer than others.
If the player of a noble wants to spend money on something that could benefit the house, they can ask about that. We are not tight-fisted with this but there does need to be a rationale. It is not unusual for tens of thousands of coins to be flying around the game after the house grants use of coin to a noble PC. Stuff we've approved large expenditures for in the past year are things like parties, festivals, arena events, political bribes, etc. All that needs to happen for this is for the player of the noble to make a request and to give a good reason that makes sense to the house. And it's even more likely to be granted if the money will be used to drive plots or activities for other players in game.
Quote from: Talia on June 30, 2015, 12:48:09 PM
So please no one be holding your breath over it.
You can't tell me what to do! I want it now!
(http://cdn2.mommyish.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/shutterstock_7631989.jpg)
Think of how many problems would be solved if Nenyuk only gave bank accounts to certain clans, and only people above a certain rank could withdraw from it.
Quote from: Taijan on June 30, 2015, 02:07:33 PM
Think of how many problems would be solved if Nenyuk only gave bank accounts to certain clans, and only people above a certain rank could withdraw from it.
I could get behind this.
Quote from: Taijan on June 30, 2015, 02:07:33 PM
Think of how many problems would be solved if Nenyuk only gave bank accounts to certain clans, and only people above a certain rank could withdraw from it.
Well...we can already do this with the "banker" role. If you're not banker or leader for the clan, you can't withdraw from the clan bank account.
Or maybe there's something I'm not understanding here.
Quote from: Eyeball on June 30, 2015, 11:37:51 AM
If anything, my opinion comes from being a very long term player, not from being new.
Sorry. I seem to have committed any number of gaffes in my post. Hopefully you didn't have the impression that I didn't like your idea. Actually, I think most of the posters here do like your idea, but they're attempts to be helpful are backfiring, as did mine. I certainly understand what it feels like to post a reasonable idea on the board, something innocuous like "Hey wouldn't it be cool if the hawks that you sometimes find in the wilderness were able to produce a cool screech or a room echo?" and like three people insist that your idea would never work, five people insist that it would break the game balance and pretty much everyone else insists that you're attempting to re-crucify Jesus. Hah. Yeah, it seems like in most cases there are simple code limitations that are preventing your ideas from going in, but as far as I can tell most of the other people like them.
Quote from: Talia on June 30, 2015, 02:12:24 PM
Quote from: Taijan on June 30, 2015, 02:07:33 PM
Think of how many problems would be solved if Nenyuk only gave bank accounts to certain clans, and only people above a certain rank could withdraw from it.
Well...we can already do this with the "banker" role. If you're not banker or leader for the clan, you can't withdraw from the clan bank account.
Or maybe there's something I'm not understanding here.
He means if independent Joes could not use Nenyuk's fullproof and completely safe in every capacity services all together.
He wants people who would otherwise be able to amass huge fortunes with no ability to actually guard it, sans Nenyuk, to have to either develop ways to guard it, or lose it (most likely through player on player conflict).
Unless I'm also not understanding.
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 02:25:51 PM
Quote from: Talia on June 30, 2015, 02:12:24 PM
Quote from: Taijan on June 30, 2015, 02:07:33 PM
Think of how many problems would be solved if Nenyuk only gave bank accounts to certain clans, and only people above a certain rank could withdraw from it.
Well...we can already do this with the "banker" role. If you're not banker or leader for the clan, you can't withdraw from the clan bank account.
Or maybe there's something I'm not understanding here.
He means if independent Joes could not use Nenyuk's fullproof and completely safe in every capacity services all together.
He wants people who would otherwise be able to amass huge fortunes with no ability to actually guard it, sans Nenyuk, to have to either develop ways to guard it, or lose it (most likely through player on player conflict).
Unless I'm also not understanding.
Nope, Desertman's got it down perfect.
So... the idea is to use the actual weight of money as a factor limiting its accumulation? Or is this simply to be realistic?
If the latter, then I'm OK with banks not having accounts for Amos Everyman but only if we implement parchment/leather/large-denomination money.
It'd be easy enough to do. Banknote increments of 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000. Add NPC shopkeepers to Nenyuk locations that sell and buy these items for the same price, no haggle. Voila, paper money. PCs can exchange at will. If it's deemed necessary, other NPC shopkeepers could get a ">make change" script of some sort later on.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 02:39:58 PM
So... the idea is to use the actual weight of money as a factor limiting its accumulation? Or is this simply to be realistic?
If the latter, then I'm OK with banks not having accounts for Amos Everyman but only if we implement parchment/leather/large-denomination money.
It'd be easy enough to do. Banknote increments of 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000. Add NPC shopkeepers to Nenyuk locations that sell and buy these items for the same price, no haggle. Voila, paper money. PCs can exchange at will. If it's deemed necessary, other NPC shopkeepers could get a ">make change" script of some sort later on.
Or, or, and stay with me here.....what if you got...."
a Nenyuk-stamped leather ticket", for all of your deposits that you made instead of us trying to figure out why Nenyuk recognizes and remembers every single commoner in the world on sight and knows all of their account history details just by a clerk looking at them?
Weight isn't the limiting factor, because that's kind of silly.
The limiting factor should be, "Am I strong enough to protect this fortune?", and "What IC measures am I taking to ensure my fortune is safe?". (hiring guards, paying off thugs, paying to have thugs killed, paying for higher-end places to keep your money secure, paying for political protections etc...etc...and just plain old killing people when they come to try and rob you because they know you are rich as crap and they have a chance of getting that fortune.)
Right now, you just put it in Nenyuk and it goes off into magical lala land, completely safe in pretty much every capacity beyond extortion, which is fine, but it could be so much more.
I would however prefer to see merchant House employees and noble House employees get to keep their ultra-safe bank accounts as a perk of being part of those organizations. Krath knows they need some more. (No sarcasm. They really need more perks to make those jobs more desirable.)
Meh. It makes a lot more sense to simply have generic banknotes that mean "THIS NOTE IS WORTH 500 COINS" rather than specific ones that means "LOOK UP TRANSACTION #9872491".
Banknotes can be safely stacked in inventory and traded between PCs. With tickets, you worry that differently-valued transaction tickets got mixed up or lied about.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:12:49 PM
Meh. It makes a lot more sense to simply have generic banknotes that mean "THIS NOTE IS WORTH 500 COINS" rather than specific ones that means "LOOK UP TRANSACTION #9872491".
Banknotes can be safely stacked in inventory and traded between PCs. With tickets, you worry that differently-valued transaction tickets got mixed up or lied about.
I like this a lot better than our current system. *shrug* Would take it in a heartbeat.
The tickets would represent coins that you could go get out of Nenyuk...most people would still trade in coins, not tickets. But, if someone actually tricked you/fooled into trading on the word that their "Ticket was good, I swear."...more power to them.
first they'll make us give up the obsidian standard, then they'll try to take our weapons away! then they'll make elf/human marriage legal!
Just kidding. I'm not wholly convinced on the thematic appropriateness of paper money, but do think getting more money out of banks and flowing around the PC population (Whether through trade or theft) is a good thing.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 30, 2015, 03:15:54 PM
first they'll make us give up the obsidian standard, then they'll try to take our weapons away! then they'll make elf/human marriage legal!
Just kidding. I'm not wholly convinced on the thematic appropriateness of paper money, but do think getting more money out of banks and flowing around the PC population (Whether through trade or theft) is a good thing.
I don't care for paper money. I like the idea of obsidian coins. Leather tickets that let you access those coins seem like the way to go and seem much more in line with the game world in my opinion.
As for the "multiple tickets and I don't know how much each are for" problem goes...you could always just consolidate your wealth under a single ticket, but that comes with its own risks obviously.
Tickets to access coins aren't all that different from paper currency, really. Used to be a $100 bill meant you could go into a bank and exchange it for $100 worth of gold coins. Your tickets aren't much different, except the value would change based on each ticket. Which, as Moe said, would be an administrative challenge for Nenyuk (though God knows how they manage now).
I like awkward obsidian coins as a currency, and I like the idea of Nenyuk being more exclusive. Being rich should be a challenge if you're not part of an organization that can help provide security. People with a lot of money will either need to A) acquire means of protecting it or B) spend it on material possessions or friends. Both help generate interaction between players.
Don't think of fortunes as something to be amassed. Getting rich isn't the goal of your character: surviving is. Money is something to be spent to help keep your character alive. A character with good income who saves little, because they're buying protection, is a lot better off in the long-run than a character with good income who's hoarded everything they've made and have bought zero protection.
Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 30, 2015, 03:27:07 PM
Tickets to access coins aren't all that different from paper currency, really. Used to be a $100 bill meant you could go into a bank and exchange it for $100 worth of gold coins. Your tickets aren't much different, except the value would change based on each ticket. Which, as Moe said, would be an administrative challenge for Nenyuk (though God knows how they manage now).
I like awkward obsidian coins as a currency, and I like the idea of Nenyuk being more exclusive. Being rich should be a challenge if you're not part of an organization that can help provide security. People with a lot of money will either need to A) acquire means of protecting it or B) spend it on material possessions or friends. Both help generate interaction between players.
Don't think of fortunes as something to be amassed. Getting rich isn't the goal of your character: surviving is. Money is something to be spent to help keep your character alive. A character with good income who saves little, because they're buying protection, is a lot better off in the long-run than a character with good income who's hoarded everything they've made and have bought zero protection.
A Nenyuki banker takes your coins, scrawls something on a Nenyuk-stamped leather ticket, and hands it to you.You can assume whatever was scrawled on the ticket denotes how much it is for, for when you bring it back to Nenyuk to access your funds. Super easy fix.
The tickets aren't a construct for trade. The tickets are a construct to break down the disconnect between amassing huge fortunes, and defending huge fortunes. They make those fortunes attainable by those who would harm you to attain them.
Banknotes accomplish the same thing, though.
>put ticket pouch
>put pouch belt
>close belt
>close cloak
Fortune defended against almost all but straight-up mugging and murder.
If you really want to make amassing, defending and attacking fortunes a part of the game world, I'd work on getting the fortunes out of Nenyuk as much as possible.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:37:11 PM
Banknotes accomplish the same thing, though.
Can you take the banknotes to Nenyuk and exchange them for obsidian coins?
Quote from: BadSkeelz on June 30, 2015, 03:38:41 PM
>put ticket pouch
>put pouch belt
>close belt
>close cloak
Fortune defended against almost all but straight-up mugging and murder.
If you really want to make amassing, defending and attacking fortunes a part of the game world, I'd work on getting the fortunes out of Nenyuk as much as possible.
I'm fine with it being straight up having to carry your coins around too. I was just trying to avoid the OOC annoyance of weight issues limiting for your fortune instead of having to defend your fortune limiting it. It seems like more of an OOC annoyance to deal with coin weight than anything and doesn't, in my opinion, add a great deal to the game.
A ticket makes you defend your fortune just as much as you would have to if it were coins, the only difference is after they loot you, they have to walk to the bank. *shrug*
Quote from: nauta on June 30, 2015, 12:47:22 PM
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on June 30, 2015, 12:45:35 PM
That reminds me of when a Chalton destroyed my tent and attacked me. Still mad.
I was once attacked by a scrab while having an intimate moment in a tent. It's when I learned that armor didn't really matter at least on that PC.
:D
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 03:41:28 PM
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:37:11 PM
Banknotes accomplish the same thing, though.
Can you take the banknotes to Nenyuk and exchange them for obsidian coins?
That is part of the idea, yes.
Pretty sure all this "screwing over the amassing of wealth" would just be one more way veteran players would have a leg up over new players and result in more loss of new players out of a sense of futility. At least with the bank as it is they can feel like they've done something when they see their first 1,000 sid in the bank.
Throwing in my two cents that I favor the proposition someone mentioned earlier of having more ludicrously overpriced luxury items like metal rings which will effectively take money out of the game. Even if you try to resell said item to a merchant that merchant will likely only be able to pay for a very small fraction of it's value, just like resold luxury goods in real life, and will essentially be a form of conspicuous consumption for the ultra rich who don't need to be sitting on piles of obsidian like Tolkien dragons anyway. Also prevents fortunes from unrealistically going *poof* when a wealthy PC who had all their money in the bank dies.
Long story short I am with the camp that wants to keep the banking system as is. This notion of a ticket system doesn't really solve the core problem and it isn't accessible to certain characters who wouldn't cut deals like that with the banks. Luxury items are open to all sorts of character concepts and achieves BadSkeelz's notion of "If you really want to make amassing, defending and attacking fortunes a part of the game world, I'd work on getting the fortunes out of Nenyuk as much as possible."
(On a phone, sorry for the hastily constructed argument)
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:44:43 PM
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 03:41:28 PM
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:37:11 PM
Banknotes accomplish the same thing, though.
Can you take the banknotes to Nenyuk and exchange them for obsidian coins?
That is part of the idea, yes.
So the only difference is really the description of the ticket item we are using.....
I suppose they can give it whatever sdesc they want. *shrug* Doesn't bother me any.
Quote from: whitt on June 30, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
Pretty sure all this "screwing over the amassing of wealth" would just be one more way veteran players would have a leg up over new players and result in more loss of new players out of a sense of futility. At least with the bank as it is they can feel like they've done something when they see their first 1,000 sid in the bank.
In my experience it's usually veteran players that finally give up due to a feeling of futility.
If this newbie is able to get so much wealth it fits somewhere other than in their backpack...they really aren't much of a typical newb.
Quote from: whitt on June 30, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
Pretty sure all this "screwing over the amassing of wealth" would just be one more way veteran players would have a leg up over new players and result in more loss of new players out of a sense of futility. At least with the bank as it is they can feel like they've done something when they see their first 1,000 sid in the bank.
Except part of the difficulty transitioning players to Armageddon is to get them NOT to fixate on numerical progress.
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 03:47:20 PM
So the only difference is really the description of the ticket item we are using.....
I suppose they can give it whatever sdesc they want. *shrug* Doesn't bother me any.
No, for a ticket you have no idea what it's worth by looking at it. For a banknote, the value of it is obvious from its appearance.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:50:00 PM
Quote from: whitt on June 30, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
Pretty sure all this "screwing over the amassing of wealth" would just be one more way veteran players would have a leg up over new players and result in more loss of new players out of a sense of futility. At least with the bank as it is they can feel like they've done something when they see their first 1,000 sid in the bank.
Except part of the difficulty transitioning players to Armageddon is to get them NOT to fixate on numerical progress.
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 03:47:20 PM
So the only difference is really the description of the ticket item we are using.....
I suppose they can give it whatever sdesc they want. *shrug* Doesn't bother me any.
No, for a ticket you have no idea what it's worth by looking at it. For a banknote, the value of it is obvious from its appearance.
A Nenyuk-stamped leather ticket.
Look Ticket
This ticket is made of leather. It has been stamped with the sigil of House Nenyuk. It is commonly used to claim coin deposits at their banks within the cities and outposts of Zalanthas.
A large black coin has been inked on it.
Following that thought:
A half a large black coin has been inked on it.
A small black coin has been inked on it.
A half a small black coin has been inked on it.
It would even give some IC "lore" in regards to people calling it a large and a small.
But really, I would just keep a few tickets in different containers on my body and remember what each was for. Why? Because that's easy and I don't see a problem. I personally would always know how much money was on my tickets and don't see an issue.
In the end, it is a matter of flavor for me. I really hate the idea of paper money in Zalanthas. I really like the idea of leather tickets that do the same thing as your paper money, because it seems to follow the theme. In the end, I don't really care enough to make a stink about what sdesc they give the ticket/banknote items, so long as the general idea gets in.
...
Paper is the part you're objecting to? I did include leather as an option in my post about the idea.
Also I'd definitely want the denomination to be somehow indicated by the sdesc/keywords.
"Small" and "large" already have lore/reason why people use those terms, but certainly those terms could be adopted for banknotes.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 04:02:28 PM
...
Paper is the part you're objecting to? I did include leather as an option in my post about the idea.
Also I'd definitely want the denomination to be somehow indicated by the sdesc/keywords.
"Small" and "large" already have lore/reason why people use those terms, but certainly those terms could be adopted for banknotes.
I'm with you.
Quote from: Desertman on June 30, 2015, 03:48:46 PM
In my experience it's usually veteran players that finally give up due to a feeling of futility.
We don't have an exit interview process but I'm willing to wager that we lose far more new players, between learning curve and no sense of advancement then we do verteran players.
Quote from: Marauder Moe on June 30, 2015, 03:50:00 PM
Except part of the difficulty transitioning players to Armageddon is to get them NOT to fixate on numerical progress.
Different strokes, different folks, but "the size of my wallet" remains a pretty standard measure of progress. Also one of the few that is actually tangible. If this were not the case, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
In a game where folks would rather have their chest of precious gems stolen then their favorite Kadian skirt, I hardly think amassing coin is a problem.
Making the economy more complicated isn't going to solve the larger problems of supply, demand, pricing and vendor availability/capacity. Carts and horses and all that.
For those advocating bank notes, consider this: with everyone carrying notes of deposit around, money will accumulate even more than it does now, because it's not leaving the game (confiscated by Nenyuk) when someone dies.
QuoteWe don't have an exit interview process but I'm willing to wager that we lose far more new players, between learning curve and no sense of advancement then we do verteran players.
I'd be willing to counter-wager that few of those leaving would say it was because of the game's economy or how coin was made or stored. They might say 'It was hard to make money', but that is not the topic of discussion, because that is about newbie jobs, not about how money is accumulated in the game. The 'this makes things hard for newbies' argument is frankly rather lost on me. We aren't advertised as newbie friendly, and being newbie friendly in ways such as this is, frankly, counterproductive. We can have a friendly, supportive, and helpful community without making the game easy. I don't think anyone came here to play this game for a social atmosphere, they came because it was described as a harsh, unfriendly pure-roleplay experience.
Edit: Apparently we -are- advertised as newbie friendly. Whose terrible idea was that? Hostile world, perma-death, promotion of cutthroat attitude and betrayal and capitalization on other's mistakes...newbie friendly? Whuuuut?
Why not just...minimum deposits/withdrawals with a light tax on deposits, if we're talking about making banking less viable?
Newbie-friendly community, newbie-unfriendly game environment.
Quote from: awkward on June 30, 2015, 03:46:21 PM
Throwing in my two cents that I favor the proposition someone mentioned earlier of having more ludicrously overpriced luxury items like metal rings which will effectively take money out of the game. Even if you try to resell said item to a merchant that merchant will likely only be able to pay for a very small fraction of it's value, just like resold luxury goods in real life, and will essentially be a form of conspicuous consumption for the ultra rich who don't need to be sitting on piles of obsidian like Tolkien dragons anyway. Also prevents fortunes from unrealistically going *poof* when a wealthy PC who had all their money in the bank dies.
I disagree with this. Only because I think that things like this should be a perk of being a noble or GHM ranking person.
There should be things that wealth alone cannot buy. Like metal. And bathtubs.
Maybe extend that to those who get to the point of having a real clan thing happening, new empires. You know.
While this has nothing to do with the actual topic, I always wished money was represented as gems. Gems have had value throughout history. Tiny gems, about the size of the head of a pin. There's no counterfeiting because nobody makes them. They are literally money if you dig them outta the ground.
Of course, conversely, you make finding gems much, much harder, so that when you see it used on some object in game, that's expensive shit. Gems big enough to actually use, nice shit.
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on July 01, 2015, 01:05:00 AM
While this has nothing to do with the actual topic, I always wished money was represented as gems. Gems have had value throughout history. Tiny gems, about the size of the head of a pin. There's no counterfeiting because nobody makes them. They are literally money if you dig them outta the ground.
Of course, conversely, you make finding gems much, much harder, so that when you see it used on some object in game, that's expensive shit. Gems big enough to actually use, nice shit.
Interestingly enough, IRL, gems were the favored form of portable wealth among long-distance merchants, for whom even a bag of gold coins would be too heavy.
>craft diamond
You could make that into about 2500 worth of monetary markers.
>look gems
This handful of tiny gems is an eclectic mix of plain, unworked
gems, each roughly the size of a couple of fleas. There are bits of
ruby, diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. Used as markers in exchanges
world-wide, they are too small to be used in any serious jewelry,
or as any sort of real adornment. It is known that emeralds stand for
one unit of worth, sapphires ten units, rubies fifty, and diamonds one
hundred.
Aren't our gems just chips of obsidian glass?
Food spices were also extremely valuable, because they were so rare and exotic. I'm sure their light weight didn't hurt either.
That tears it. I'm going to master-haggle diamonds all day every day for a RL year, until I have a pouch of diamonds worth twenty large. Then, I'll offer it to someone as a bribe, and they will laugh at me because "who gives a shit about diamonds come back when you find rubies"
How about public projects as a money soak? For example, allow Nenyuk to accept donations to a particular account for rebuilding the rock-lined road west of Allanak.
Sure. But I'd rather PCs did such a thing. Templars could create such projects, as well as Highborn and GMH family members.
Quote from: Eyeball on July 01, 2015, 05:44:05 PM
How about public projects as a money soak? For example, allow Nenyuk to accept donations to a particular account for rebuilding the rock-lined road west of Allanak.
Having been a Tor Noble trying to build roads between the farming villages, I can tell you that unless new staff are much more willing than old staff...I was told it was completely not okay to try and do such things.
Which led to in game writing about stagnation and the need for expansion. I would be -all for- this. Perhaps now that we have builders, it would be more acceptable?
People are pretty good about keeping soldiers watered out of their own pockets in taverns.
Phew, the economy sure is getting beat up a lot. Poor little fella. I'd like to devote a little time to sticking up for it, because I think it does some things very well.
For starters, it really drives home the point that Zalanthas doesn't run on a market economy, rendering supply and demand moot. Nearly all of the wealth is held by a very small minority - namely nobles and templars. GMHs rose to prominence by catering to their whims, and thus were granted a piece of the pie. At the top of everything are Those Two Guys that hang out in towers and pyramids while they run the Known World. Just reading available documentation about Tektolnes, it can be inferred that he's a bit of a jerk and isn't really in touch with the common people.
Eyeball started off by saying that there isn't much that 'sid could be used for by the common people, and I think that's spot on. Rather than seeing it as a problem, I think it demonstrates the system perfectly.
Some posts have linked money with wealth, while others have pointed out that the two don't always go hand in hand - and that's spot on. What is wealth in Zalanthas? I would say land, property, titles, slaves, guards... basically all of the things that the common character can't buy readily. That, I say, is intentional. The people who hold this definition of wealth don't want to give it up for anything, least of all some blunted and round chips of obsidian with a guy's face on it.
Going back to the "Tek's a dick" point, how awesome is that for a show of power? Guy picks a common material, sticks his face on it, and says it has value. And the whole of society goes along with it. It could even all be a joke to those in power.
"Look at all those poor dumb commoners trading bits of rock for the fruits of their labor!"
It's not a good economic system by any means, and it's hardly sustainable. Things rarely get done because they will cost actual wealth, and the people with it typically don't want to do anything to risk losing what they have or enabling the have-nots to get something of their own.
Making things worse is the fact that there is precious little actual value in the Known. The world was devastated in the past to a degree that it can't easily recover from, and the existence of things like sorcerers are making it worse every day, little by little. Outside the centers of civilization, there aren't enough resources out there to sustain growing populations, and much of the land is too drained to allow for agriculture and too fragile to make building anything upon it stable enough to last.
While I agree with all your points, Taijan, I'm concerned that crafting a setting where all PCs (even noble and templarate ones) are essentially powerless doomed nobodies leads to a really boring game.
^ Or at least, depressing and frustrating. I get that you (collective you) need to find a compromise between "it's hard to update the world and make it react to powerful PCs" and "stick with the lowest common denominator so nobody's important!" But the latter makes the game feel less like a collaborative story between players and staff, and more like shouting in a vacuum.
Plus, a game is supposed to be fun to play, not a soul-sucking exercise in masochism. So, that's why I'm glad to see the (limited) ability to create minor merchant houses, though I really think that needs to be expanded to tribes (in and out of the city, human and elvish), as well as organizations outside of Allanak (Red Storm, Morin's).
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 02:12:01 PM
Guy picks a common material, sticks his face on it, and says it has value. And the whole of society goes along with it. It could even all be a joke to those in power.
"Look at all those poor dumb commoners trading bits of rock for the fruits of their labor!"
It's not a good economic system by any means, and it's hardly sustainable. Things rarely get done because they will cost actual wealth, and the people with it typically don't want to do anything to risk losing what they have or enabling the have-nots to get something of their own.
Let's assume for a moment that we agree with this, that money is ultimately a joke that Tek's playing on the world. Cool. That's fine. But the game's player base is 99% played by the "fooled" people, not the people in power. To have a "fools" economy that doesn't operate on supply and demand, suggests that these people don't function like rational beings. That a person would pay huge sums of coin, for an item that's common, plentiful, and fairly useless to day to day life makes no sense (plenty of items are like this). And of course the reverse is true, some items are worth diddly, when they're insanely rare and valuable to the "fools".
I think no matter how you slice it, a few things could use tweaking, but I can completely understand if this is a project that never happens...because its big, complicated, and perhaps in the end wouldn't have enough bang for it's effort-buck.
Could Tek please fix the chalton/ivory hair needle economics?
Quote from: wizturbo on July 02, 2015, 03:04:50 PM
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 02:12:01 PM
Guy picks a common material, sticks his face on it, and says it has value. And the whole of society goes along with it. It could even all be a joke to those in power.
"Look at all those poor dumb commoners trading bits of rock for the fruits of their labor!"
It's not a good economic system by any means, and it's hardly sustainable. Things rarely get done because they will cost actual wealth, and the people with it typically don't want to do anything to risk losing what they have or enabling the have-nots to get something of their own.
Let's assume for a moment that we agree with this, that money is ultimately a joke that Tek's playing on the world. Cool. That's fine. But the game's player base is 99% played by the "fooled" people, not the people in power. To have a "fools" economy that doesn't operate on supply and demand, suggests that these people don't function like rational beings.
Hey, well said, Turbo.
Since when have people behaved like rational beings? ;)
I just want to reiterate that this is just my opinion on money, and not an official stance of staff. That being said, I didn't think it was THAT depressing, seeing how commonly I've seen the belief that money is worthless played out by tribals. And I don't think that the people in power really think all that differently.
I did leave two big things out of wealth: goods and services, which the people in power are some of the biggest consumers of. These are the things that really make the world go round, and are one of the biggest things that commoners are able to provide - after all, that's how the Great Merchant Houses were able to get power, and how other merchant houses are able to rise up. Groups like the Byn as well. They provide services to commoners, sure, but above all they cater to the needs of the powerful.
So, money's not enough to get things done (in my opinion). Proving a need or creating a want in the people who have power - that's the way to get stuff done, and well within the possibilities that players can pursue.
I wanted to use this picture before but just couldn't think of how to work it in:
(http://ct.fra.bz/ol/fz/sw/i58/2/1/24/frabz-ive-paid-you-a-small-fortune-and-this-gives-you-power-over-me-d3d3db.jpg)
I'm totally 100% behind the notion that money alone won't get you power. That's true in real life, that's true even moreso in Zalanthas.
Violence > Politics > Money
Sorcerer-Kings have violence in spades. And that's why they rule the world. Nobles have political power...i.e. the supreme violent powers like them, and don't seem to want to take away their toys. In fact, the Sorcerer-Kings give these families wealth in the form of their House stipends, but the coin they receive is nothing compared to the privileged status from this relationship. Great Merchant Houses also have some political mojo.
Commoners, they don't have much in the way of violence or political power on a macro level, but they do have some money. Getting the systems in place to make that feel realistic seems worth it to me. For instance if the combat systems were broken, and without any modifiers for strength, daggers did ten times the amount of damage as a greatsword it would affect the belivability and immersion of the world. When you see a commoner whose filthy rich (in comparison to other commoners) from doing low risk, easy to do activities that require no special resources, whereas those doing high risk, difficult activities are dirt poor, it has the same effect as that dagger vs. greatsword comparison. The same is true when some items are priced like greatswords, but are chipped daggers, or vice versa.
With that said, I don't think a major overhaul is necessarily worth the time. Some well thought out, but relatively small adjustments could go a long way and making things a bit more immersive and realistic. I think the majority of the player base agrees on this too, as economy was ranked #1 on that poll that went up not long ago.
The value of obsidian coins are at least partly anchored by the fact they can be exchanged at a given rate for water in the temple. Each coin is backed by a certain amount of water in a desert-dry world.
Unlike our paper fiat currencies in the real world, which are backed by nothing at all. And yet people still go nuts trying to accumulate them, without ever necessarily dreaming of "buying a senator" too.
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 02:12:01 PM
Eyeball started off by saying that there isn't much that 'sid could be used for by the common people, and I think that's spot on. Rather than seeing it as a problem, I think it demonstrates the system perfectly.
I don't. I see no reason why a commoner, who has the coins, should not be able to pay a carpenter to build a cart or pay a couple of crappy mercenaries a crappy wage to watch over a crappy workshop. I see no reason why this would not be possible in a functioning economy with a medium of exchange. It's purely an OOC limit.
Even if people start claiming such things are prevented by the templars and the political climate in Allanak, it should still be possible in Red Storm, Cenyr and even Luir's outpost.
Carts = something Talia addressed earlier in this thread, the limiting factor being coding issues and having earlier work lost, but something that can hopefully be worked on again in the future.
Workshops and mercenaries = covered rather nicely by player created clans being a possibility now.
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 05:56:04 PM
Carts = something Talia addressed earlier in this thread, the limiting factor being coding issues and having earlier work lost, but something that can hopefully be worked on again in the future.
Workshops and mercenaries = covered rather nicely by player created clans being a possibility now.
Carts are just an example, Taijan. Dingy little private workshops aren't available in the same way crappy private hovels aren't available; the closest thing is setting up a minor merchant house after RL years of effort by several people. But the point is these things are are all just examples anyhow. Here are some more: bathtubs or even small bathhouses, NPC slaves that have little combat ability but follow the owner's orders (e.g. to serve a meal to guests), ability to purchase access to fortified way points out in the desert, palanquins and rickshaws, privileged commoners' boxes in the Arena (buy a token and sit apart from the riff-raff and 'rinthers for the rest of your life), player-owned brothels, betting on large-scale stadium events (e.g. races), etc. The limit on giving commoners outlet for their coins is the imagination.
Quote from: Eyeball on July 02, 2015, 06:27:31 PM
Carts are just an example, Taijan. Dingy little private workshops aren't available in the same way crappy private hovels aren't available; the closest thing is setting up a minor merchant house after RL years of effort by several people. But the point is these things are are all just examples anyhow. Here are some more: bathtubs or even small bathhouses, NPC slaves that have little combat ability but follow the owner's orders (e.g. to serve a meal to guests), ability to purchase access to fortified way points out in the desert, palanquins and rickshaws, privileged commoners' boxes in the Arena (buy a token and sit apart from the riff-raff and 'rinthers for the rest of your life), player-owned brothels, betting on large-scale stadium events (e.g. races), etc. The limit on giving commoners outlet for their coins is the imagination.
So your argument is that these things are too difficult to achieve, rather than that they can't be achieved? You seem to be really stuck on the idea that things are not possible.
Dingy private workshops - Renting a warehouse in Allanak takes like an IC year of effort. Not really that big of a deal. Quite a few players have managed to achieve this, thus far.
Small bathhouse - See player clan progression if you want to run a bathhouse. You don't have to go farther than warehouse/merchant status if you don't want to - again, takes some IC years of effort, but it's not that big of a deal. Players are doing it. Arguably, this is not very Zalanthan and you won't really have a customer base, but you can try if you want.
NPC slaves - Available to those whom it makes sense to have purchase them, e.g. merchant family, templars, nobles.
Fortified way points in the desert - I don't really understand what you mean, but I'll grant you, this is not something that is currently possible (whatever it is).
Palanquins and rickshaws - There is a PC in game right now who possesses something like this, achieved via IC means.
Commoner's box in Arena - Kind of a neat idea. I'd have to look at code for doing this, I think there's something applicable. Not top of my priority list right now, though.
Player-owned brothel - see player-clan progression.
Betting on Arena events - players could organize this already. Doesn't require staff.
Warning - while you were typing a new reply has been posted. You may wish to review your post.
Quote from: Eyeball on July 02, 2015, 06:27:31 PM
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 05:56:04 PM
Carts = something Talia addressed earlier in this thread, the limiting factor being coding issues and having earlier work lost, but something that can hopefully be worked on again in the future.
Workshops and mercenaries = covered rather nicely by player created clans being a possibility now.
Carts are just an example, Taijan. Dingy little private workshops aren't available in the same way crappy private hovels aren't available; the closest thing is setting up a minor merchant house after RL years of effort by several people. But the point is these things are are all just examples anyhow. Here are some more: bathtubs or even small bathhouses, NPC slaves that have little combat ability but follow the owner's orders (e.g. to serve a meal to guests), ability to purchase access to fortified way points out in the desert, palanquins and rickshaws, privileged commoners' boxes in the Arena (buy a token and sit apart from the riff-raff and 'rinthers for the rest of your life), player-owned brothels, betting on large-scale stadium events (e.g. races), etc. The limit on giving commoners outlet for their coins is the imagination.
What is your solution though? Automating all that stuff through code or specific policies would be a super hard and take up tons of staff time and likely see very little use by the players. And the current process of asking staff for assistance for specific things seems to be fairly adequate in addressing those sorts of requests.
I also don't think those sort of requests would be something the majority of characters can realistically accomplish. Nor do I think the majority of players are willing to put in the work it would require to get those things. Those that are? They can stir up a dialog with staff and try to get things done right now without any changes.
Quote from: Taijan on July 02, 2015, 04:26:46 PM
(http://ct.fra.bz/ol/fz/sw/i58/2/1/24/frabz-ive-paid-you-a-small-fortune-and-this-gives-you-power-over-me-d3d3db.jpg)
My favorite scene in all of Batman...ever....
Quote from: Talia on July 02, 2015, 06:59:26 PM
You seem to be really stuck on the idea that things are not possible.
Ok, for sake of argument, say they are. It's still only through staff involvement and so it takes some time. So it can't serve as a practical soak of coins the way things automated within the game can.
Quote from: RogueGunSlinger
What is your solution though? Automating all that stuff through code or specific policies would be a super hard and take up tons of staff time
I hope this means we can at least agree that it's an OOC limitation now.
Also, I was hoping that the addition of the builders would alleviate this particular concern.
What more can I say without being unintentionally insulting? I guess coming from a strong programming background and having worked extensively with LPMuds in the past, which frankly were more complex than DikuMUDs, I don't see such features as being very challenging. But I can understand the need to limit access to the code base and that not everyone is a coder. ???
I'd love more coders/builders and whatnot to make the process smoother, you should apply!
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on July 02, 2015, 07:33:00 PM
I'd love more coders/builders and whatnot to make the process smoother, you should apply!
I applied to be a Builder and was turned down. :D
Hah. Welp. Balls in your court, staff.
Well, most of what Eyeball listed is doable in game with a bit of effort from players and imagination to fill in a gap or two.
Quote from: Talia on July 02, 2015, 06:59:26 PM
Dingy private workshops - Renting a warehouse in Allanak takes like an IC year of effort. Not really that big of a deal. Quite a few players have managed to achieve this, thus far.
Might be worth revisiting the number of warehouses available for rent with Tuluk's closure.
Quote from: Eyeball on July 02, 2015, 07:28:54 PM
Also, I was hoping that the addition of the builders would alleviate this particular concern.
Quote from: RogueGunslinger on July 02, 2015, 07:33:00 PM
I'd love more coders/builders and whatnot to make the process smoother, you should apply!
Builders don't code. Builders build. We have three of them and they are all working on stuff, while also doing things like having lives and continuing to play the game. They've done quite a bit of stuff between them, but they weren't ever supposed to be the answer to "more stuff you can do with your coins that is automated."
Players seem to have odd ideas about what the Builders do, or can do, or should do. In a nutshell, they work hand-in-hand with staff to build things (rooms, areas, NPCs, objects) to support projects that staff is working on. Thus far, Builders have worked on things like:
-- Extended scars and disfigurements for PCs
-- Updated tastes and scents for foods
-- NPCs for the GMHs to largely replace the item order process
-- Clay pits for Allanak
-- And a couple of other projects that they are currently working on
There's nothing in Eyeball's list of suggestions that can be fixed by just throwing Builders at it. There's very little there that needs fixing, since it is nearly all do-able with current processes. Yes, it is true that there is a lot that could be imagined for the game that if you want to do it you will need to handle it yourself without automation (such as Arena betting), or involve staff in (for creating a business with a warehouse). I don't know what to say about this other than that it's unrealistic to think that Armageddon will ever be a game that is fully automated for every single thing a player can imagine doing. Nor do I think I would even want it to be--e.g., coin-operated politics, put your obsidian in, a Senate vote drops out of the machine??
Quote from: wizturbo on July 02, 2015, 07:50:41 PM
Might be worth revisiting the number of warehouses available for rent with Tuluk's closure.
We are keeping an eye on this and have had some discussion about it.
Quote from: Talia on July 02, 2015, 08:10:46 PM
There's nothing in Eyeball's list of suggestions that can be fixed by just throwing Builders at it.
I never claimed it could, but they could at least offload some of the work, since it would also involve creating rooms and NPCs.
Quote from: Talia
There's very little there that needs fixing, since it is nearly all do-able with current processes.
Let's take betting on races as an example. Could something be set up by players alone? The answer is "sort of", and the problem is people take "sort of" and treat it like "yes".
Yes, there could be some player set up races. The problems with such races is that (1) there wouldn't be a truly random element, they'd be a function of who could type most quickly, and (2) it would die as soon as the player running it dies.
Now compare that to templar-triggered arena events where people could bet favorite lizards or erdlus with team colors (or House colors, even), or whatever, with a NPC bookie. Random, codedly-handled outcome? Check. Dies as soon as a templar dies? No. Potential Noble House interest in their own teams? Check. (Maybe they could maintain a stable of animals, adding to it through capture, with each animal having its own characteristics in a race. But that's getting ahead of things).
The same thing applies to other items on the list, and again, they are just examples. I can supply more examples if you want. Picking apart individual examples doesn't accomplish much. Claiming that I'm demanding all of them, which I'm not, only muddies the issue.
QuoteQuote from: Talia
There's very little there that needs fixing, since it is nearly all do-able with current processes.
Let's take betting on races as an example. Could something be set up by players alone? The answer is "sort of", and the problem is people take "sort of" and treat it like "yes".
Yes, there could be some player set up races. The problems with such races is that (1) there wouldn't be a truly random element, they'd be a function of who could type most quickly, and (2) it would die as soon as the player running it dies.
Now compare that to templar-triggered arena events where people could bet favorite lizards or erdlus with team colors (or House colors, even), or whatever, with a NPC bookie. Random, codedly-handled outcome? Check. Dies as soon as a templar dies? No. Potential Noble House interest in their own teams? Check.
The same thing applies to other items on the list, and again, they are just examples. I can supply more examples if you want. Picking apart individual examples doesn't accomplish much.
There is already scripting for gambling in the game and it really adds all of nothing. You tend to have an NPC gambler who gets used and abused in the early hours of the morning by a single PC, if that. No one ever RPs with the NPC gamblers. No one ever RPs with other PCs around them. They're boring and pointless in an RP based mud.
Wizturbo is saying what I feel a lot more eloquently and less... bluntly, I guess? :)
I also agree that a little careful tweaking and attention to merchants (more hide buyers, item sell/buy price adjustments, vnpc sale adjustments, etc) could go a long way.
The difference is that it would be a public event, with political connections to the Noble Houses, not one PC gambling in a tent in an obscure location.
Alright, you've all succeeded in wearing me out. It sounds to me like most of you are pretty happy with the way things are. I'll leave it at that. It's too bad because there's so much potential here.
My problem with automation is that the second you automate something, people's imaginations decrease and they tend to stop caring. Take the strip tease in the old Sanctuary, for instance. And compare it to a player-run strip-tease event. I never saw anyone watch the automated strip tease.
Automated events are nice in theory, but they quickly lose their charm for me (and seemingly other people).
Quote from: valeria on July 02, 2015, 08:53:38 PM
My problem with automation is that the second you automate something, people's imaginations decrease and they tend to stop caring. Take the strip tease in the old Sanctuary, for instance. And compare it to a player-run strip-tease event. I never saw anyone watch the automated strip tease.
Automated events are nice in theory, but they quickly lose their charm for me (and seemingly other people).
:c RIP Tuluk.
But yeah, that's my view in a nutshell. You can already do everything you want in game with just a little effort.
That is incorrect.
Well, perhaps everything YOU want.
Quote from: MeTekillot on July 02, 2015, 09:04:47 PM
That is incorrect.
Well, perhaps everything YOU want.
Ding ding ding! We all want different things, and I feel, if you are upfront with the staff and set reasonable goals, you can get things done.
You will not have a "warehouse built custom" for you, however, you may be able to eventually "rent" one that is available eventually, with
enough financial and political backing. When was the last time you just dropped off 5k to your local Templar and said have a nice day.
Everything in this game takes time, the moment things start getting done quicker, people will expect it to be done even faster! I like all the
implementations the last five years have had. (Except the poop code.) I know I don't have fond relations with the staff, I try to push the
limits with everything I do. (And I know it irritates them, but like any entrepreneur, you try to get the most bang for your buck.) But I do
communicate with them about what I want and eventually, we agree to disagree and find a median.
Now that I'm done advocating for the poor economy and some other matters seem to have tapered off for the time being, I'm curious about wizturbo and Delirium's mention of merchanty-type issues and greatsword/dagger prices. Some aspects of that might have some overlap with a couple of things I've been working on already. Care to elaborate?
I for one have noticed that some items that should be expensive are cheap, and things that should be cheap are perhaps too valuable. Some money making schemes should be low yield but certainly produce results, while others that should be better fall apart too often.
Or to look in another direction, I think it could be beneficial to have a wider gap in costs between things a noble could readily afford and things made just for commoners in mind. Particularly enterprising commoners COULD buy them, but it would take effort and might attract some negative attention.
I for one, wouldn't allow commoners to touch Silk. Let Kadius be the sole proprietor of that market. I am sure there are several other things I think the commoner shouldn't have access to either but I'll think about it and see what I can come up with.
I personally find the whole "commoners shouldn't wear silk" concept to be a really superfluous taboo.
Zalanthan nobility are clearly superior in every way, shape and form to commoners. Purely by their blood/breeding/family name. 99.9% of commoners knowingly agree with this on a very deep level, due to innumerable years of social conditioning.
Nobles are not noble because of the fabric they wear. They are noble by virtue of existing. If a highborn is genuinely offended by a commoner wearing silk, what that says to me is they are insecure of their own social standing. Yet commoners can eat all sorts of fancy food or wear jewelry and that doesn't seem to matter as much.
I think it was a thing brought about by gloves being so fashionable and then the guys hesitating to bow to you that the silk taboo came along.
Quote from: Tetra on July 02, 2015, 11:50:27 PM
I personally find the whole "commoners shouldn't wear silk" concept to be a really superfluous taboo.
Zalanthan nobility are clearly superior in every way, shape and form to commoners. Purely by their blood/breeding/family name. 99.9% of commoners knowingly agree with this on a very deep level, due to innumerable years of social conditioning.
Nobles are not noble because of the fabric they wear. They are noble by virtue of existing. If a highborn is genuinely offended by a commoner wearing silk, what that says to me is they are insecure of their own social standing. Yet commoners can eat all sorts of fancy food or wear jewelry and that doesn't seem to matter as much.
I would be completely fine with it, if we didn't FLOOD THE MARKET WITH NICE SILK THINGS.
Nice armor is different. There's the same 'tiers' of value, but the top tier isn't just -chock full- of items. Clothing is. Anyone wanting to wear normal clothes and have any sort of individuality without crossing the silk barrier is literally on a treasure hunt across the whole of Zalanthas.
Quote from: Tetra on July 02, 2015, 11:50:27 PM
I personally find the whole "commoners shouldn't wear silk" concept to be a really superfluous taboo.
Zalanthan nobility are clearly superior in every way, shape and form to commoners. Purely by their blood/breeding/family name. 99.9% of commoners knowingly agree with this on a very deep level, due to innumerable years of social conditioning.
Nobles are not noble because of the fabric they wear. They are noble by virtue of existing. If a highborn is genuinely offended by a commoner wearing silk, what that says to me is they are insecure of their own social standing. Yet commoners can eat all sorts of fancy food or wear jewelry and that doesn't seem to matter as much.
Yeah, I agree with this. Silk and metal are both things that they that extremely affluent commoners should not only buy, they should wear. People forget that this is a slave-owning, mount-owning society. Not all commoners are created equal.
What percentage of commoners are completely destitute? I feel that even 98% would be too high, but even if it were 98%, the remaining 2% would still equal a lot of commoners.
Metal and silk? These are things that a retired mercenary (read: privateer) should probably own, even if in small amounts, even if only for special occasions. A pair of silk gloves would be an excellent thing for a (well to do) commoner to own to show that he weren't a total peon. The VIPs in this game *should* be a little impressed (or at least wary) of a commoner who is dressing up a bit, especially one who still remembers to bow and scrape at the proper moments.
Atrium graduates? Commoners. Bards? Commoners. Christopher Columbus and Joan d'Arc and Oliver Cromwell were all commoners living in Feudal societies. They didn't start out with much in life. D'Arc was illiterate.
All three became more wealthy *and* powerful than the nobility that they operated along-side with.
I think that what some of the people who disagree with me don't get, is that there is at least one very important thing that money can't buy you in game: a cool last name (e.g. Kadius, Oash, etc.)
You know what should maybe be restricted? Things that are actually important, and neither metal or silk are really that important. Magic items are important. Books are important. Magic components are important. These are the things that commoners shouldn't have.
I think fashion culture in Zalanthas would be more realistic and interesting if that rule was bent more; seeing commoners try to imitate noble styles more exactly, and having the leeway to actually do so. We all know nobles set the trends, and commoners mimic them. Nobles stop wearing gloves to show off their signet rings. Then what happens? All of a sudden, gloves are out of style and those jozhal mitts are no longer the 'it thing'.
A far more elegant solution than badgering a harlot for wearing some fancy shoes.
Quote from: Armaddict on July 03, 2015, 12:03:27 AM
I would be completely fine with it, if we didn't FLOOD THE MARKET WITH NICE SILK THINGS.
Nice armor is different. There's the same 'tiers' of value, but the top tier isn't just -chock full- of items. Clothing is. Anyone wanting to wear normal clothes and have any sort of individuality without crossing the silk barrier is literally on a treasure hunt across the whole of Zalanthas.
It's true that if commoners had a cultural pass on wearing silk, they would likely wear it more often.
But the same logic can be said for nobles only wearing it; there are innumerable silk designs in game, and only so many nobles playing at any given time. That is to say, countless silk items are going unworn in the game world. So why continue generating more? It seems almost nonsensical from a design perspective to have hundreds of silk items and only 2% of the playerbase able to wear them openly.
Allanak's culture is not Tuluk's culture. It's not going to become Tuluk's culture. Restricting what people get to wear or own is not a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law
Please don't take these ideas and start trying to push them in game.
In a metal-poor world, metal is absolutely important. In fact, if I were to really guess, I'd say that it's more important than gems could ever be. In our own world, currency is supposedly backed by gold, a metal which isn't even rare. No, commoners should not wear or bear metal. Ever. Legally.
As for silk, I think that ranking Commoners in Important Places/Houses/Service will see a little leeway on getting a boot to the head from the Highborn. But Bynner #4587? No.
Quote from: Talia on July 03, 2015, 12:30:48 AM
Allanak's culture is not Tuluk's culture. It's not going to become Tuluk's culture. Restricting what people get to wear or own is not a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law
Please don't take these ideas and start trying to push them in game.
Not even if I special apped a family/tribe of Tuluki refugees that grew to such a point that it sanctioned templar support for its usefulness, thus shifting the underlying status quo of silk-wearing and earning a protected status within the city(I'm insane enough, you know I'll do it).
jkjkjk.
(There is another MUD I have played that uses Sumptuary laws, even going so far as to legalize wearing of certain colours and garment styles.)
Quote from: Talia on July 03, 2015, 12:30:48 AM
Allanak's culture is not Tuluk's culture. It's not going to become Tuluk's culture. Restricting what people get to wear or own is not a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumptuary_law
Please don't take these ideas and start trying to push them in game.
I think you misunderstood. I spoke of variety. Of style. Of ability to wear non-silk and actually have something remotely interesting. It's not impossible, but it's certainly very difficult. My gripe was that there's this huge host of items that are not allowed to be worn by most, and a seemingly much smaller database of non-armor clothing (i.e. for style) for the common folk.
Plz find me a grey non-silk non-leather clothing set that is not generic base-level crafted. I been looking for awhile.
Ah, I understand. And, I agree. Commoners would emulate Highborn style, but in lesser fabrics. This is a non-served niche that really should be the norm.
Quote from: Armaddict on July 03, 2015, 01:31:56 AM
I think you misunderstood. I spoke of variety. Of style. Of ability to wear non-silk and actually have something remotely interesting. It's not impossible, but it's certainly very difficult. My gripe was that there's this huge host of items that are not allowed to be worn by most, and a seemingly much smaller database of non-armor clothing (i.e. for style) for the common folk.
Plz find me a grey non-silk non-leather clothing set that is not generic base-level crafted. I been looking for awhile.
I wasn't directly responding to you, but to Tetra, really. I agree with you that there is not enough "fancy and/or interesting but still not silk" stuff for commoners to wear. Partly this is a legacy of about 11 billion silk things having been created for nobles by staff in years of yore; plus the current mastercrafting process which usually results in players making silk stuff instead of non-silk stuff. I'd love to see mastercrafts which are non-silk, and I have myself in the past at times built culture-specific, cool things for commoners which weren't silk. (E.g. the cotton kalasiris that you can get in the starter area for Allanak, or the painted cotton sarongs in the starter area for Tuluk.)
So yeah I agree with you that there is not enough interesting clothing that is not silk. That is not a project that I personally am going to take on at this point, however. Maybe I will consider it for the future.
Personally, I think people should be able to wear whatever they can afford. Perhaps at best, as in Ancient Rome, certain colors would be restricted (such as the color purple, which required an extremely expensive dye).
As it happens, silk clothing is way too plentiful and cheap to justify being noble only. I don't know how the silkweavers or merchants can even afford to stay in business. I've seen silk dresses and blouses cost less than a scrab shell codpiece.
Perhaps silk needs to be changed to like, give +20 stamina or whatever, and made 5x more expensive. Or whatever. The current system seems irrational.
Uh. Silk actually costs quite a bit, if the item material is silk. Sometimes the item's material isn't silk, but the description is. Those are probably what you're talking about. NPCs base prices on the material used in the item's material value.
Uh, I think.
Quote from: Clearsighted on July 03, 2015, 02:41:22 AM
Personally, I think people should be able to wear whatever they can afford. Perhaps at best, as in Ancient Rome, certain colors would be restricted (such as the color purple, which required an extremely expensive dye).
As it happens, silk clothing is way too plentiful and cheap to justify being noble only. I don't know how the silkweavers or merchants can even afford to stay in business. I've seen silk dresses and blouses cost less than a scrab shell codpiece.
Perhaps silk needs to be changed to like, give +20 stamina or whatever, and made 5x more expensive. Or whatever. The current system seems irrational.
Another thing is, silk is actually extremely shitty to wear in hot weather. I wore a lot of rawsilk when I was travelling in India, and its not as breathable as linen or cotton fibres..Hardly practical, but then again we are talking about nobles.
Edit: I guess it depends on the weave and cut, disregard.
I hate that apartments come with built in beds ect..I would much rather buy my furniture and have more options at the shop for it.
That and Houses can we please have houses? Like every other semi decent mud I have tried has housing. I am just very discouraged when it comes to that part of the game.
Food in Nak I think is so stupidly expensive no one ever buys it. I would spend a shit ton more trying foods and buying from grocers shops just to try things if the price was so freaking ridiculous. piece of meat that wont fill you up? 200 ..price of your rent for a month 450 :-\
Quote from: Bast on July 03, 2015, 02:56:25 AM
I hate that apartments come with built in beds ect..I would much rather buy my furniture and have more options at the shop for it.
Yeh.
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on July 03, 2015, 02:59:52 AM
Quote from: Bast on July 03, 2015, 02:56:25 AM
I hate that apartments come with built in beds ect..I would much rather buy my furniture and have more options at the shop for it.
Yeh.
Noteworthy, so far as the 'giving more ways to spend money'.
Quote from: The7DeadlyVenomz on July 03, 2015, 02:46:07 AM
Uh. Silk actually costs quite a bit, if the item material is silk. Sometimes the item's material isn't silk, but the description is. Those are probably what you're talking about. NPCs base prices on the material used in the item's material value.
Uh, I think.
From what I've seen, the vast majority of silk clothing is no more expensive than the armor/gear a Byn Trooper might wear.
Some of it is a bit more expensive than others. Other stuff seems very cheap.
But even a full, body length, flowing white hooded silk robe is only about two large. It's purchasable from some random, dirty peasant walking around hocking wares in the bazaar.
To put 'two large' in perspective, at the new clay mining pit, a shishkabob of scrab meat costs 60 coins. Hell, a raptor meat steaks costs something like 150 sids. So a flowing, hooded robe of pristine white silk is roughly of equal value to around twenty steaks (being generous here).
I've seen plenty of other silk items that went from 2-5 small. They're sold at the Kadius shop all the time. The average is comfortably less than a large. Hell, Salarr sells studded leather pants that cost more than most silk pants.
If silk is priced at a level where a reasonably successful Byn Trooper can afford it (if they had any desire to purchase it), then clearly, it's far too commonly available to make any sense whatsoever restricting to a tiny caste of nobility, who would not be able to buy enough of it, by themselves, to sustain the silk-weaving economy.
It all just ties into
Clearsighted's Theory of Good Solutions to Game Design Problems:
Problem: Too many commoners are wearing silk.
Bad Solution: Arbitrarily restrict the wearing of silk to noble PCs. Change nothing else.
Good Solution: Make silk more expensive, and if need be, give noble PCs more sids with which to spend on luxury items. This should mean that only truly wealthy commoners are able to afford the luxury of silk. If every dirty whore, aide whore, gicker whore or indy hunter whore in the city is still prancing around in silks, then consider tweaking the economy. There might be an extremely easy method that people are using to amass huge mountains of sids that could be adjusted (such as ivory hair needles).
Oh, and if commoners still have too much sids, consider giving them more sinks for it, like making spice more interesting, or removing free food from the GMHs. Consider giving clans food vendors instead, where they sell food to clan members at reduced costs. Maybe only nobles to get to keep free food.
If you increase the amount that silk is sold for, will that also increase the amount silk is bought for, thus introducing more coin into the economy? If the answer is no thrn increasing the cost is a good solution. If the answer is yes then it is a bad solution. It depends on the code and what granularity it has.
The whole silk taboo thing came from PCs AFAIK. There was a rash of silk wearing PC commoners who were getting bowed to. The PC nobles got upset so the PC Templars started doing something about it. It has since become an ingrained part of the PC culture and staff have extended that to the NPC populace. Which is what people ask of staff. So to say it was handed down by staff is (historically) inaccurate.
Isn't who "can" and "cannot" wear silk a discussion for another thread, perhaps?
Quote from: Tetra on July 02, 2015, 11:50:27 PM
I personally find the whole "commoners shouldn't wear silk" concept to be a really superfluous taboo.
Zalanthan nobility are clearly superior in every way, shape and form to commoners. Purely by their blood/breeding/family name. 99.9% of commoners knowingly agree with this on a very deep level, due to innumerable years of social conditioning.
Nobles are not noble because of the fabric they wear. They are noble by virtue of existing. If a highborn is genuinely offended by a commoner wearing silk, what that says to me is they are insecure of their own social standing. Yet commoners can eat all sorts of fancy food or wear jewelry and that doesn't seem to matter as much.
The thing is, they don't want to show up in the same dress as you.
Quote from: Bast on July 03, 2015, 02:56:25 AM
Food in Nak I think is so stupidly expensive no one ever buys it. I would spend a shit ton more trying foods and buying from grocers shops just to try things if the price was so freaking ridiculous. piece of meat that wont fill you up? 200 ..price of your rent for a month 450 :-\
Yeah. Food could be a bit cheaper. With more low end foods that are filling. For special things, yes, 200 is a great place to start. For some meat? No.
Anyway, I made a silk thread here. (http://gdb.armageddon.org/index.php/topic,49659.0.html)
Quote from: Armaddict on July 03, 2015, 12:03:27 AM
Quote from: Tetra on July 02, 2015, 11:50:27 PM
I personally find the whole "commoners shouldn't wear silk" concept to be a really superfluous taboo.
Zalanthan nobility are clearly superior in every way, shape and form to commoners. Purely by their blood/breeding/family name. 99.9% of commoners knowingly agree with this on a very deep level, due to innumerable years of social conditioning.
Nobles are not noble because of the fabric they wear. They are noble by virtue of existing. If a highborn is genuinely offended by a commoner wearing silk, what that says to me is they are insecure of their own social standing. Yet commoners can eat all sorts of fancy food or wear jewelry and that doesn't seem to matter as much.
I would be completely fine with it, if we didn't FLOOD THE MARKET WITH NICE SILK THINGS.
Nice armor is different. There's the same 'tiers' of value, but the top tier isn't just -chock full- of items. Clothing is. Anyone wanting to wear normal clothes and have any sort of individuality without crossing the silk barrier is literally on a treasure hunt across the whole of Zalanthas.
There were some pretty neat bits of clothing in whatever that area was called in Tuluk, where the poor live. I'd love to see more commoner's clothing.