Fixing an economy

[rellis]

Use the filter, where u can select say diadems, Q200 - Q220. Then select choice to excellent. and put a maximum price range.

thats a pretty decent filter if u ask me


personally i think introducing grind mats up to Q200 or Q250(mebe not) will link up the two markets between dapper and grind mats. could have say 5000 mats to be bought a day for each mat. jus a quick suggestion. il post more as i think on this during my next lecture

[arfindel]

when i say vendors are at most basic i refer for example at the fact that a lot of crafters would like to sell - and they are actually selling - packs of their products.

When was the last time when somebody came to you to ask: could you please make me a pair of HQ q250 zorai boots? or can I please have an earring?

Crafters would love to make and present such packs, also presnet their ideas a little. Grind MA for melee, and pvp MA for ranged would look pretty difefrent. Small pvp HA would look different than plod grind HA etc.

Private crafter vendors would not have hundreds of stuff on them, but several packs of small dedicated series.

[johnne]

Use the filter, where u can select say diadems, Q200 - Q220. Then select choice to excellent. and put a maximum price range.

thats a pretty decent filter if u ask me


personally i think introducing grind mats up to Q200 or Q250(mebe not) will link up the two markets between dapper and grind mats. could have say 5000 mats to be bought a day for each mat. jus a quick suggestion. il post more as i think on this during my next lecture

No, the filter options are far too limited and that's still going to give you junk (if it returns anything at all). I can tell you right now that trying that in Natae on the server I play on you won't find much. If people could specify that they only want say... +focus jewels then THAT would be useful. And I very rarely buy off the vendor unless I know I can get a complete set. It's a simple mechanism but makes all the difference in the world.

How about more meaningful names to crafted items? You can have two items with identical names using identical racial plans, but they can have radically different stats. Jewels are notorious for this. There's all kinds of "Matis rings of durability" that I can make but I have no way of making something that would have a meaningful name like "ring of fire protection." Oh, the pre-craft makes me think I can do that but it lies! Which do you think will sell? Generic item X of durability or excellent high quality ring of lake resistance?

[mrshad]

There are two big problems with the economy:

The vendors don't get used for anything more than mat storage and item disposal.
Dappers are less valuable than they "should" be.

I am okay with those problems. I think that attempts to fix those issues (limiting dapper creation, or changing the vendor mechanics) will cause worse problems.

We have a player run economy that places a value on raw materials in exchange for crafted goods. Basically, (Time Spend Harvesting)=(Skill at Crafting). The crafter and the harvester are free to negotiate the details of the transaciton, and both parties come to an agreement they find mutually benificial. Many (perhaps most, certainly most crafters *I* deal with) will accept large sums of dapper in place of raw materials; but still, a mutually benificial arrangement is reached. This is the very heart of free trade.

Mucking around too much with what they players have made will probably have more bad results than good ones.

But, if GF has a plan they think will work, I am very interested in seeing it (preferably before it gets implemented).

[xfluffee]

You do realize there would be 1000s of the same item you would have to sort though to find anything good?

Implement better filters. For example, search for 2H swords that have a minimum speed, damage, vs parry, particular crafting plan, etc.

An advantage, it would reduce the traffic between client and server, since only the filter request would be sent and only valid matching items (up to a certain limit) would be returned, instead of returning as many things as it can, every time the merchant display window is opened.

[jamela]

when i say vendors are at most basic i refer for example at the fact that a lot of crafters would like to sell - and they are actually selling - packs of their products.

When was the last time when somebody came to you to ask: could you please make me a pair of HQ q250 zorai boots? or can I please have an earring?

Crafters would love to make and present such packs, also presnet their ideas a little. Grind MA for melee, and pvp MA for ranged would look pretty difefrent. Small pvp HA would look different than plod grind HA etc.

Private crafter vendors would not have hundreds of stuff on them, but several packs of small dedicated series.

Now that would be wonderful for armour and jewellery!
Why didn't I think of that?

[rellis]

(@johnne) Touche, u got me there, a search on the stats would be the optimal filter. i guess i was narrow minded in thinking what i sell on vendors. if its fyros jewellery u know its grindset with max hp,,, tryker -> max focus.

I still think introducing ability to purchase higher quality grind mats or to purchase cats would get rid of a lot of the excess dapper in the game.

[isanda]

A lot of people would love to have boutiques where to offer their crafted items. More than a money sink this would make a time sink and a beautiful one. Collateral cities with some exceptions have no use at all and could be put to very good job by allowing people to create their (instanced) shops there. It would give life to those abandonned cities, would make commerce much livelier and could also create new lore secondary lines around the products crafted in some places. I bet we would all go to Natae for Sehraci's boutique and to Windermeer for Icenn's weapons etc.

It needs in a first step the ability to buy (or rent) a visitable shop (may be identical to any appartment, nobody will suffer) with 2-3 personal vendors and in a second phase of implementation the possibility to decorate that shop by dropping objects.

Reminds me of SWG, and reminds me of having to run around traveling to different worlds, and spending hours looking through shops filled with nothing, or only junk. You could spend hours looking for anything decent if you didn't know exactly where to go to for something. You might say well you need to put some effort in to find good things, but it became extremely tedious to shop in that game, far beyond any point of a fun challenge (I stopped playing it years ago, no idea if that got improved ).
I've definitely found the linking here much nicer than that.

Although one option that I suppose might work is having separate stores, but having a centralized searching option, separated by land maybe. Such as searching for HA quality 190-210 and getting a list like at merchants but with a store name/location, and maybe with stats still, though without would still show which places actually had HA, rather than running around HA stores that were empty (or close enough).

The ability to sell sets would be very nice though.

[mithur]

The personal traders look good, but is, as isanda says, a bad idea. You have to make easier and quicker the transactions, no more complex.

I think that the problem is the next: At high level the transactions are simple:

Crafted Items x Materials

What should be archieved is:

Crafted Items x dappers & dappers x Materials

If you want to put in the middle dappers, you have to make more attractive and easy the trade. Put more filters, maintain the link (I'd said, even, link all four continents, or, at least, put hawkers in each 250 city linked with the rest of all four continents; that will make you able to maintain the different price based on fame), allow sell sets, make a Traders channel, maybe automatic (*A q200 2H Sword has been put for sale at 45000 dappers) or manual (Hey, guys, I've put a damn good sword q200 wit good damage and 30 speed, only 45K daps), and give enough feedback about what market needs and what not (Some screen showing, by filters, i.e., how many 2H Swords are at sell that be there less of 4 days, grouped by q).

Then, I think, will exists two kinds of crafters: the old kind, crafting for fun, friends and alliance, who will still being things on demand and taking mats as prices, and a new kind of "professional" role of crafters who will try to learn what market demands and craft it. It's a kind of role who lacks in ryzom, and it could be very fun to play here.

[arfindel]

Reminds me of SWG, and reminds me of having to run around traveling to different worlds, and spending hours looking through shops filled with nothing, or only junk. You could spend hours looking for anything decent if you didn't know exactly where [my underline]to go to for something. [...]The ability to sell sets would be very nice though.

That's precisely what happens now in Ryzom, you can search vendors for horus if you don't know the exact name of the crafters and have also good personal relations with them.

The problem in SWG came from the huge areas covered with shops, out of which 1/4 were abandonned, 1/4 used as storage and 1/4 selling junk. But Ryzom has different data: we obviously don't have a huge population as SWG had, a master crafter, after months of working for it and with the perspective of endless receipes is less prone to leave the game, finally the rent for a shop can be high enough as to be afforded only at high levels of dig and craft.

As about travelling distant lands to get to certain boutiques, I find fun and nice and within the current lore. It's certainly better than having to nag the crafter when he's hunting, running with vorax in tail or rezing someone. The time between the order and the realisation of the objects is also eased, because the crafter can leave your order in his shop and you can go and pick it. Yes mistakes are possible to an extent, but they are very seldom. WHo picks an order made for someone else, gets banned from the shop and this may happen only once.

However boutiques won't usually sell unique, hard to get items, but good stats, normal done series for usual wear would be easy to find and prices will settle somewhere (atm the commerce goes from free stuff to uber expensive in an unclear manner). Could also be an incentive for fashion.

Vendors being set on dapper based commerce will strenghten the power of dapper. Crafters shops could also have vendors offering to buy at crafter set prices materials. Running to buy/sell your goods around the world, preferably through unused ghost cities, is a nice time we spend in game, while privately ordering gear is not impeached in any way, and can continue as before.