Community Engagement in City States (Or Red Storm/Luirs)

[Pariah]

So I was thinking and figured I'd run it past the group and see what you lot think.

I tend to be a very on or off Armageddon player, meaning that when I play, boy o boy do I play, like a lot of time, lots of hours, lots of emotes, lots of activity, very little downtime while I'm logged in.

The challenges I see based on this type of play is that I find myself with lots of excess, whether that be coins or items gathered from one of my many hunters (pretty much all I ever play).  I used to do the shop route every time I'd end up with excess selling everything they would buy and amass massive fortunes, or be the salt baron and grow a multiple thousand of Sid worth of bank account or stack of Sid in my bag but never really had an outlet for it.

I now know that doing that is sorta shitty, as I'm taking away the small coins that others could make who play less than me, or focus on purely crafterish type characters so I don't run monopolies on all the shop keepers, I think I've maybe sold three times in the life of my current character.

So with that explained and my mindset, I started to wish and wonder there was an outlet for all the goods and gear in the game.  I try to normally find folks to deal with as it promotes RP (The whole reason for the game) but with the joy of Tuluk being back, and the effective splitting of the 20-30 folks between all the different areas, that sometimes can be difficult when you're based in one geographic region unless you become Amos the wandering merchant that packs his mount to back breaking with seven bags full of shit and travel the world.  Not really optimal in my opinion, plus it only takes one bad sandstorm or errant super critter to ruin your life.

I wish I could give the game credit, but I honestly don't remember which it was, but I remember playing a RPI game that actually would have mobs or npc who would take raw materials, and it would earn you influence/coins within the city, it actually kept track and those points and items translated into actual visible changes in the area.

Say that the folks didn't turn in any bone for a long time, you'd notice more soldiers/guards with obsidian weapons as there was a lack of bone.  Shops would start to dwindle to less bone stock and the prices would skyrocket for bone.  If the inverse was to happen, you'd see more soldiers/guards with bone gear, and the price of bones would bottom out due to supply and demand.

So, idea, what if there was someone similar to the Templar in the mining office, but for hides/shells/bones etc who collected goods brought in by various different folks.   And it affected the local economy in a visible way?

This would allow shortages that aren't staff created, this would allow folks an outlet for various shit that piles up in storerooms/apartments/warehouses.  I know that after a while on a hunter, the pure number of aggressive critters you run into, give you a few options.  Either flee from it, which isn't the best because it tires out your mount and why flee when you can just kill it.  You could kill it (Normal option) then you have to think do you just leave it there dead on the ground or take the proceeds?  I have sometimes been attacked by three scrabs, two pissed off chasten, and a raptor in one hunting trip and go, "What the fuck do I do with all this?"

I personally feel that's why there is still stuff in Salarr/Kadius/Kurac storerooms from when I played a house hunter ten years ago.

The way I envision it, it would allow those Templar characters who are in the city ministry to have some overview of who the folks are supplying various things, gain favor, lose favor, manipulate the market however they deem appropriate in their criminal/corrupted minds.

What we would probably need is some new locations, a removal of the "I have too many of those already" but not game breaking for the economy, maybe give out chits like the cleaner guy that turn into something useful?  Food/Water?

I totally realize this is 100% just spitballing, but I figure if I don't at least throw some ideas out there, nothing happens.  Ultimately I would love if more players made crafter folks who bought all my shit I collect, but realize that's probably not going to happen.

What you guys think?

[Alesan]

I would love to make more crafter characters but I cannot deal with the game of trial and error in figuring how to make anything but basic items. I don't like the same old routine of joining a merchant house as a crafter, being shown the workshop, and getting the "here you go, now you're on your own" treatment. I don't enjoy trying every single item with every other single item, most often with five different crafting ingredients because why not make the recipe as complicated as possible.
So I make yet another combat or wilderness related character with a little crafting on the side to give me things to do to.

To any merchant house leaders who actually give their crafters an engaging experience, kudos. I haven't had an experience like that since around 2015.

[Pariah]

I don't think that merchant house leaders have a recipe list or anything.

So they sorta gotta play by personal knowledge so I don't hold lack of recipe knowledge against them.

I do wish there was an analyst that told you what raw ingredients could be used for.

Like analyze piece.bone

Could be combined with blah and blah to make shiny.

[Brokkr]

Output list could be upwards of 400 items.

Just one of the problems with this simplistic of an approach.

[Pariah]

Output list could be upwards of 400 items.

Just one of the problems with this simplistic of an approach.

Maybe limit it to what your crafting skills allow, same as one item crafts with craft piece.bone?

Or add a trigger word like.

Analyze piece.bone jewelrymaking
You could use the same mechanic that spell help files use.

Help spell fireball
Checking to see if you have spell fireball (or whatever it says, I don't remember)

To only pull the output you could realistically accomplish?

But yeah, I'm sure this is super hard to fix or you guys would have already.

I've just always found it odd that it's the way it is, because the whole feel for me of Armageddon is to learn from the experience in the game, per character.  But crafting almost REQUIRES out of character knowledge for some things.  Plus some skills are more or less useless without other crafts and other abilities.  Take for example spear making.

For instance I played for years before someone finally told me that out of the thousands of scrabs I've skinned there is a cooking item with random bits that you never would try to put together yourself.

It just isn't realistic to expect a crafter to sit there and do, craft piece.bone thing1, craft piece.bone thing2, craft piece.bone thing3 to infinity.  Then add the fact you have whatever combination that five items in the system could spawn, I would hazard that's thousands of combos.

One way I think to possibly make it more palatable too would be to work how to craft things in with the VIEW command.

Say I view #10:

This is a shiny rock thing.
Your knowledge in shiny rock things let you know this could be made with piece.bone and shiny.rock.thing.

That way it would make looking at items in shops more educational and it's IC to get the knowledge, not just hoping that some old player will tell you how to do X and Y.

[mansa]

As far as I understand the original post,

Problem: 
There's a lot of resources the player has collected that they cannot "sell to NPCs". 

Solution:
1) Have some sort of roleplaying storyline where there's a lack of resources in an area, and players can get rid of all their extra resources that they've gathered by trading it to NPCs that will accept a larger amount of those resources.

2) We already have NPCs that can accept a lot of "trade", be that with tokens, trinkets, chits,
AND
We already have NPCs that will accept unlimited of a specific item type, be that wooden logs, glass, cotton, and obsidian chunks.

3) We can introduce some sort of "Reputation" / "Favour" metric for the players who bring in a lot of the rotating resource lacking NPC Seller.



Do I have the original idea right?

[Pariah]

As far as I understand the original post,

Problem: 
There's a lot of resources the player has collected that they cannot "sell to NPCs". 

Solution:
1) Have some sort of roleplaying storyline where there's a lack of resources in an area, and players can get rid of all their extra resources that they've gathered by trading it to NPCs that will accept a larger amount of those resources.

2) We already have NPCs that can accept a lot of "trade", be that with tokens, trinkets, chits,
AND
We already have NPCs that will accept unlimited of a specific item type, be that wooden logs, glass, cotton, and obsidian chunks.

3) We can introduce some sort of "Reputation" / "Favour" metric for the players who bring in a lot of the rotating resource lacking NPC Seller.



Do I have the original idea right?

Sorta yeah.

I of course always want to deal with players over selling to brainless npcs, but there just isn't always a player to deal with.  Which is what causes huge stockpiles of stuff in rooms/warehouses/storerooms.

So the option is either don't collect said junk, leave it in the sands to sink into the sands, or come up with a more inventive way, that's what I'm putting forward and yes I think if done right it could really enhance the world.

[creeper386]

I think some of this is kind of handled with the, start your own merchant house path and such. Or maybe with the new shops in Tuluk. To get more player to player trading without having stuff online.


I'd like to see more of this sort of stuff though, perhaps on a smaller scale, but I think some of it could be handled IC already. I'd love to see say, the Arm put out requests for shell and leather because they just lost a bunch of gear with dead soldiers in the north. Or Merchant houses buying resources, even if it just goes into a virtual barrel and gets removed.

Or special apping a Ministry Templar that has city improvement projects. I'll need like three aides to cover playtime.

[Pariah]

I think some of this is kind of handled with the, start your own merchant house path and such. Or maybe with the new shops in Tuluk. To get more player to player trading without having stuff online.

That's awesome too, my only negative I would put forward is the grind for coins to get the bribe/cost/lease money for the warehouse tends to make the gameplay less fun in my opinion.

So say I start trading company x.

If I'm reading the help file correct I have to pay 3k just to get started.

Then another 1-2k a year in bribes.  To simply have a larger room to store all the stuff that people aren't buying already.

So I have to grind coin making methods like salting, mining over and over to simply have a place to put stuff that people aren't buying now.

Course the upside of this is that I can then advertise officially that I need a crafter for x y and z.  But again that's just having faith that anyone wants to play one of those that isn't tied to the free food, free water, unstealable gmhs.

I think to successfully run one of those would be hard in the current climate.

I do think that having player shops like Tuluk all over the world would be great, but I also believe that's what they are doing in Tuluk now is sorta a beta test on them.  So who knows it might roll out soon in allanak and beyond.

[Patuk]

A lot of recipe woes, I think, could be solved just by making items you VIEW in stores automatically analyzed.

[creeper386]

I agree Pariah, that it looks like a huge grind and I get why it is, but also don't like it either, because sometimes to make that grind right now you are put right back in the position you are trying to avoid by not just selling all the #$$%^@ (*&^)_+ (edited to not give away info) to merchants so no one else can.


This is right up there with me thinking there is lots of virtual presence of things like wagons and carts and such things with no PC presence of these things due to huge barriers of entry.