Suggestion to the Devs: missions, vendors, and quality gears/mats

[vinnyq]

This is tied to the thread about lack of good equipments on the market, but I don't want this to get buried in that thread, hence this one. But I think my suggestion will also help with a few other issues.

Here's some of the aggravation:

- players are not putting exc or sup mats on the markets, nor exc or sup equipments on the market.

- players are complaining that they can't really "affect" their world.

- Nevrax has wanted people to be making caravan trek from land to land (hence the mounts and mektoubs upgrade), but most just keep their animals in the stables.

- dappers are useless after a certain point

- missions are boring and useless

Here's the suggestion (partly stole from Basic's jesting and a few others )

* Let NPC Vendors put up QUALITY mats and equipments on the market, at a high price, with the following prerequesit:

* Players must complete delivery mission from x to y from outposts to city, or city to outposts, etc, the mission completed dictates what equipments and/or mats be available at the city.

* The amount of equipments/mats that will be available on the vendors depend on the amount of items delivered from the missions, so the bigger the delivery bulk, the more items will be available on the market. This will give players and incentive to lug their mektoubs around carrying as much stuff as possible.

* This will be a constant on-going world mechanic. Players can keep doing the delivery missions, and high-end items will be available on the market as missions are completed.

Conclusion:

If you guys do this (and the only thing that I see need to be added to the system is to allow vendors to sell those aweseome stuffs and the trigger check for mission completed vs items on vendors), this would solve a lot of problem.

1) give players a chance to affect their environment, at least in the market

2) give players incentive to do delivery missions and leading mektoubs all over the place

3) give more meanings to daps

4) allow high end quality gears and mats be on npc markets

5) give players who does not want to dig/craft a mean to get the stuff they need

So devs, please please read this (I know you do), and consider it. Thanks

[vinnyq]

Mmm, I just thought of the drawback. This might make diggers and crafters useless.

To avoid this, you can make the delivery missions available only if certain mats/equipments are turned in from players doing the Suppliers missions.

Now that I think about it, I see that Nevrax might already have a plan of doing so, hence the useless Suppliers NPCs missions right now. They just haven't fully implemented yet, and plan to do so in the future.

Let's hope this is the case?

eta:

Now that I think about it some more, it looks like it's just a more complicated round about way of putting cool stuff on the market. Diggers and crafters can just put high end mats/gears on the market and avoid all this.

Well, then just make it so that NPC Harvesters automatically provide mats to Suppliers (but not too as great in stats as those that players can digs or fighters can loot from boss mobs), and suppliers can provide good gears to be delivered to NPC vendors, but not as great as those that players can craft.

(I think I just talked myself into a circle, whoops)

[zumwalt]

A general concept to go with the flow of your thought.

Create NPC worker bee's, literally, have a blacksmith shop that actually smiths, a leather shop that does medium, and a cloth shop that creates light.

Think of it as more of a npc driven production system.

NPC harvestors have 1 packer they can keep with them at all times to fill and come back to town, local harvestor npcs do the main area around town or in the main zone area of the towns, they then supply the market with what they harvest every 3 days.

They are killable, targetable, and so are the packers, and will only respawn 1 time a week if killed by a player, 1 time every 2 days if killed by another npc.

Those suppliers supply the market with what ever they harvest at what ever quality.

Production, the 3 shops actually purchase the materials to produce the armor at the basic price, no upprice for them.

What they produce they sell at a markup price at say 250% of base value on market (just a guess, adjust as wanted or as supply / demand creates)

These goods will by nature be 70% basic mat created, 15% choice mat created, 10% excelent mat created, and 5% supereme mat created items.

This is where npc karavans come into play, for materials of excelent nature they need to have a small constant escort to the deeper wilder wilderness to get the materials.

For supreme, you get the drift.

But this means that the npc's need to be programmed for protection and for escort.

3 new npc types have to be created for production
Time tables for mat delivery have to be made.
pros / cons have to be weighed

And the npc production should only be able to make so much product based on limited space for storage

More like a game economy running itself.

Otherwise, you have to live with monopolies.

[dc77066]

A general concept to go with the flow of your thought.

Create NPC worker bee's, literally, have a blacksmith shop that actually smiths, a leather shop that does medium, and a cloth shop that creates light.
....
More like a game economy running itself.

Otherwise, you have to live with monopolies.

Finally something for all those idle NPC's to do!! Maybe the MOB/RAID engine could generate NPC's with random appearances, races and names and have them running around doing missions, hunting, grinding, PvP, roleplaying, events and guild-building! The engine would place these NPC's in the less populated regions to add some "life". OH! And you can talk to these NPC's through the chat system and open trade windows and get stuff from them!
And THEN the NPC's can start paying subscription fees! AND then they can take rudimentary jobs to support their gaming habits and single-handedly save Social Security and Medicare!!

But in the end, you know they'll just camp the good spots and PK anyone getting within 250m of their outposts!

Sorry, "I,Robot" flashback.

[marct]

It sure would be cool to see those NPC harvestors actually digging. In fact, I would like to see the "God mode" turned off for the roaming NPC's. The tribes should function the same as the war camp did during the Kitin invasion a few months ago.

A bunch of these ideas are posted elsewhere as well. Nevrax, please search the forums about this stuff, there were a lot of good ideas.

http://ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11066

I believe there were a few others also. I think there are even some other economy notes, I will try to dig them up. The NPC's should really have a little more management of the economy setting a Maximum price for items that is reasonable, etc.

[glipe]

I don't want to see merchants selling Excellent or Supreme Mats. I want them to stay tough to get, maybe make them even tougher! These are the most rare materials in all of Atys! What makes you think they should be available to anyone with dapper? They are things to be quested for by heroes killing huge monsters! Or dug up by only the most experienced harvesters in areas filled with danger! And other, similar activities that would make me put exclaimation makrs at the end of my sentences!

Sure, it'd be nice to see Supreme items that could be quested for without having to kill or dig ("Go to the Kami graveyard on top of the forbidden cliffs at midnight on the third day of Autumn and there you will be directed to the ghost of a great warrior, who may gift you with an object of great power as a reward!") but as things are you have to do these things to get these mats. Yes, some people are frustrated that ex and supr mats aren't available to buy but you don't see antiques for sale in newsagents!

So while I agree that it would be nice to have different types of missions available to gain quality items or materials, I feel that having them available as NPC items from the merchants will take the shine off otherwise desirable merchandise. The economy hasn't yet stabilised. I think that once a larger amount of players begin to reach the better sources, materials will begin to trickle into the merchants at their own rate.

[morgan73]

I think that once a larger amount of players begin to reach the better sources, materials will begin to trickle into the merchants at their own rate.

LOL! I'm sorry, but that really did shock me to the point of absolute entertainment.

You see, the problem with even more players, is those mats will *still* only spit out 140 or so Excellent mats, and 70 Supreme mats, and then it's dead untill there's a server reset. So all more players getting to those spots will do, is make more upset players who have realized that he who gets there first and camps the longest wins. Every time.

Land specific excellent mats (non-pr) is a little easier, but not by much, but supreme? Forget it, you won't find anything diggable topside, unless you figure out a way to craft with mission mats.

[glipe]

LOL! I'm sorry, but that really did shock me to the point of absolute entertainment.

You see, the problem with even more players, is those mats will *still* only spit out 140 or so Excellent mats, and 70 Supreme mats, and then it's dead untill there's a server reset. So all more players getting to those spots will do, is make more upset players who have realized that he who gets there first and camps the longest wins. Every time.

Land specific excellent mats (non-pr) is a little easier, but not by much, but supreme? Forget it, you won't find anything diggable topside, unless you figure out a way to craft with mission mats.

I agree with the camping situation. That will be annoying. That's why I think they should be put in dangerous spots, like most are at the moment. Many large groups are going to be at the right level soon to take out the nasties standing on many of the best spots. You can't camp a spot where monsters come for a quick pint and a chip buttie. And depleting them doesn't get rid of them until there is a server reset! You come back to a source that was depleted 5 mins before and it'll have mats at it. Unless this is different for Supreme sources but my magic 8-ball sources say no.

Also, if people want to try to camp PR sources, the devs have set up a nifty little scheme called PvP to deal with that. Kill the bugger, with a team if necessary. By the time he's gathered together a team to come back and kick your butt, you'll have the mats and be long gone. After all, if they're that precious they're worth fighting for, right?

This may promote guards for harvesters but I'm all for that. Now, I don't run the kind of character that would do that sort of thing. Dispicable in his eyes. But who can say what competition for sources will bring out in diggers if all the rants on this board are anything to go by?

And I also agree about the mission mats situation but I think there should be a way to exclude them from your prospect anyway. I've put in a suggestion about that very issue.

[morgan73]

And depleting them doesn't get rid of them until there is a server reset! You come back to a source that was depleted 5 mins before and it'll have mats at it. Unless this is different for Supreme sources but my magic 8-ball sources say no.

This isn't depletion, this is "There used to be matierals here, but the source has been used up for a while". Far, far different thing, ask any PR digger.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, or you missed it elsewhere, this doesn't apply to just the PvP sections of the roots, those available #'s of mats is the same in every PR section. Only the strip of Lands of Umbra and the Nexus is open PvP (and therefore the potential to fight over said spots - bleh).

So in all those other sections where excellent and supreme are reliably found, with kitin patrols in place of PvP, you're still limited to the same number before it's just as dead for just as long, but the tradeoff is 4x's as much danger, and absolutely no option to fight over those just as limited sources.

If there was a trade-off that truely reflected the differences between the two "options" people had, I doubt there'd be much to complain about with it. I know I wouldn't.