The Great NPC Merchant Debate

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sorgin Txakal, Mar 11, 2021.

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  1. Duke Gréagóir

    Duke Gréagóir Legend of the Hearth

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    What the hell do you mean. Pineapple ham pizza is AWESOME!! :D
     
  2. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    No, it's not.
     
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  3. FBohler

    FBohler Avatar

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    A large pineapple pizza please. Hold the pineapple.
     
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  4. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    Problem with that, is that the more seasoned a player is, the less time and materials they have to spend doing X for the same results.

    Time becomes a non-factor because the only way lower level players can compete in the market is by eating their time and considering the xp they get from the process the payment for time spent.

    The good news is that eventually most high level players get too rich/lazy to spend time on anything that doesn't generate maximum gold/xp per hour and then start outsourcing instead of e.g. growing their own crops.
     
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  5. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    Pineapple, Bacon, Ham, and Jalapeño on Pizza is amazing.
     
  6. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Lol, this reminded me of that old Polly-O string cheese commercial:

     
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  7. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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    Fixed that for ya! ;)
     
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  8. Barugon

    Barugon Avatar

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    Everything you listed, except pineapple, is awesome.
     
    Last edited: Mar 31, 2021
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  9. necronut

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    Completely agree!
     
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  10. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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  11. Gia2

    Gia2 Avatar

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    Amen
     
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  12. Elwyn

    Elwyn Avatar

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    Sure, if you swap the pineapple for sausage.
     
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  13. Cordelayne

    Cordelayne Bug Hunter

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  14. SmokerKGB

    SmokerKGB Avatar

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    You guys are nut's: Double Ham, Double Pineapple... Mmmm, Good...
     
  15. Coswald_Dirthmire

    Coswald_Dirthmire Bug Hunter

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    This shows one of the problems in using public leaderboards to get information. I turned on reporting to public stats nearly a week ago, and I use several thousand a day just casting spells. In less than a week I'm the top nightshade consumer over the last 30 days. My suspicion has long been that many of the largest consumers are not reporting to public stats as many high level loot farmers like to obfuscate their routines.

    But take that number, 90k over the last 30 days (with my consumption it will be closer to 150k in a few weeks), and consider I also have the equivalent of about 6,000 1.0x grow rate farming spaces (in reality it's many more, mostly at a 0.1x grow rate), which is sufficient capacity to grow about 2.88 million nightshade per 30 day period. Enough to supply everyone reporting to public stats 20 to 30 times over.

    There are larger farmers than me in game, much more prolific farmers. With the value that goods can be sold to NPCs dropping (tea went from 3gp to 1gp, pumpkins from 4gp to 1gp, etc) they won't be able to grow "cash crops" that sell straight to the NPC vendors, so the only way to make a return on their significant investments (large farming operations can take many months or more than a year to see a profit) would theoretically be selling to players.

    But with multiple farmers out there each being able to supply the entire server with an abundance of any of the most used regs there's no way for player demand to meet the supply once those farmers no longer have their cash crops. Cotton is the last true cash crop, it is a pain to grow (it's collision and size makes it difficult to align the cursor, and see where to place it), but gives the best gold yield. Once that falls the current best return is to grow mandrake or nightshade and sell it directly to an NPC vendor.

    The NPC will only give you 1gp each vs. 1.2gp-1.5gp or so if you sell to a player, but even with many major farmers committed to cash crops or pumpkins the mandrake I list at 1.2gp still sometimes sits on my vendor for weeks, even if advertised in trade chat. When yield on mandrake/garlic/nightshade was doubled the prices folks sold for dropped to half, and if all the cash-crop land of novia were converted to regs, supply would far more than double.

    Some of these farmers (myself included) are primarily interested in the XP agriculture gives, which means that they are willing to keep growing even if it means selling crops at cost, or a slight loss. If we're unable to sell crops to NPC vendors at all that would put mandrake/nightshade at 0.625gp each, and garlic at 0.75gp.

    With the assets of farming already being a writeoff for these players there's no real way for new players to get involved in agriculture at all. Certainly not with a view to selling regs, and even growing for the convenience of personal use would mean spending more on the seeds and water (let alone the planting beds, land, dungeons, etc) than one would spend simply buying the regs.

    The above makes some assumptions, and I hope that I've not described the road agriculture will go down, but I wanted to voice my perspective and concerns. As with anything we'll know better when we have more information from the devs, and when we've seen what has actually come to pass.
     
  16. Sorgin Txakal

    Sorgin Txakal Avatar

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    Estroma brought up a good point in Discord. Since reagents are going away from NPC merchants, can arrows dissappear from them too so arrow crafting can be useful in the economy?
     
  17. Anpu

    Anpu Avatar

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    Arrows probably could be removed, but later. Since the game is basically Archer of the Avatar, that might be a problem..... ;)
     
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  18. Coswald_Dirthmire

    Coswald_Dirthmire Bug Hunter

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    It might not be the best time to further poke archers, but the recipe or ammo scavenging would need a big change or archer builds would cost more to run for a lot of folks than they earn.

    That's also a much bigger new player issue than hard to find regs, since the starter arrow pile gets depleted fairly quickly.
     
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  19. Burzmali

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    Well, once Chris finds a way to prevent "Cover" and "Not getting hit" from being the best armors in the game, maybe play will diversify some.
     
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  20. FBohler

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    These changes will probably hurt more newcomers than anyone else.
     
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