Why would anyone want an NPC Building in their POT?

Discussion in 'Player Owned Towns' started by Poor game design, Nov 20, 2014.

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  1. Drocis the Devious

    Drocis the Devious Avatar

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    I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the idea of having NPC buildings (with NPC vendors) in my Player Owned Town (POT).

    I can't think of a good reason to do this.

    Please, before you think about replying to me that there are plenty of "good reasons" to have NPC vendors that concern roleplaying and single player mode or whatever else you might be thinking, stop. Realize that although the roleplaying side of me cares about that as much as anyone, I don't care about it enough to take the negative effects associated with NPC Building Vendors. Please continue to read and I'll explain why...

    NPC Vendors (the ones controlled by Portalarium, i.e. the Thomas the Barkeep in FireLotus's Tavern) do nothing but suck the gold out of the game and away from you and your POT. Yes, the gold and items may end up in a monster hoard or in some NPC chest somewhere...but a significant fraction of that loot is just going to go *poof* out of your local economy.

    So by my calculations, the more NPC Vendors you have in your town, the more difficult it will be for your town to sustain itself economically. Therefore, I don't want any NPC Buildings in my player owned town.

    I think the logical solution would be to allow Player Owned Town owners the ability to charge NPC's a tax on doing business in their town. The tax would be a very small flat rate tax that would adjust per the amount of goods going out of the town (through these NPC's) on a monthly basis. But it would help cover the costs (which could be HUGE) of the economic value that is leaving the town never to recirculate into the local economy again.

    Your thoughts? (minus the "I love NPC's and I'll have them in my town no matter what the economic benefit")

    Edit: Because no one seems to read OP's anymore, I'm just going to respond 'walrus' to anyone that gives me a defense of NPC's on a non-economic level throughout the remainder of this thread.
     
  2. Spoon

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    Um, you are missing all the NPC functions not based on vendors or trading - some which is unavailable to players. Things like Banks, Trainers, etc.

    For your other points, I can't yet in the game really see NPC vendors as competition to player vendors, their pricing and wares will be different.

    When more of the economy comes online I might change opinion, but right now I can only think that they add service (and immersion) and will not be a detriment to local business.

    Then there is the ones that offer wares that might not be attractive for players from a price vs effort standpoint. Some of the lower tier foodstuff comes to mind.

    Also if you are looking at crafting, there is a potential business case to have a lower tier NPC vendor that sales resources you want to refine into higher tier items.

    etc

    too little info really to make any final decisions there.
     
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  3. Duke William of Serenite

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    If you choose to tax an NPC selling on your land, I do not see anything wrong with that. Its your land and he is selling goods for free and living tax free and hes not paying rent. The only vendors of interest I would like are the ones that sell goods needed for crafting like wax, coal, crafting tools etc.

    If we could have musical instruments played by a band which is a big dream of mines... We could get live people playing music in our taverns selling ale to customers wanting to watch the show. You pocket some coin selling beer and everyone is happy. I can only wish devs look at Enikos post on creating playable music in game.

    Sorry I went on a tangent Baron. Back to the vendors and while I agree with you on this idea, I think devs have a thing for gold sinks so it may not fly. I am not a fan of gold sinks because I am a big fan of player run economies. If they want gold sinks keep them out of our cities or let us manage them by adding taxes. Does something like this need to be in game before realease? I don't think this is of paramount importance but if it is not alot of coding involved and can take a few minutes why not. Or something like this can be handled in the creation of your town phase.
     
  4. Drocis the Devious

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    To your point, there's not very much information. I agree with that. But as it stands, I see very little benefit and a huge negative.

    That's another good point. I do think Banks are a must for any town because of the unique functionality. But trainers? How many times does a player have to go to the trainer that can teach them "Fire Arrow"? A max of 5 times? Can't I let some other town foot the cost of that guy for me?

    The Context of the OP focuses entirely on vendors though (i.e. Thomas the Barkeep).

    The purpose of NPC vendors in the economy is to act as gold sinks. The entire reason they exist in the game is so that they CAN compete with player vendors and keep inflation down, or supply up, or whatever is needed to "balance" the economy. So in my mind, I can't see a reason why you'd want a lot of those guys around.

    Here's an example:

    NPC Bob is a Weaponsmith. He makes weapons from refined goods. Any player that is also a weaponsmith will have to compete with NPC Bob. That's fine, the game shouldn't do anything outrageous to make the player weaponsmith have problems. I'm sure they'll get along just fine. But what happens when someone buys a refined item from NPC Bob? Where does that gold go? It doesn't go back into your town's economy like it does when you buy something from the player weaponsmith. You see, NPC Bob doesn't go down to the local player tavern and spend his money. NPC Bob doesn't buy is wife a nice dress. NPC Bob takes all that money and flushes it down the toilet (of the game) so that Portalarium can control inflation.

    That's what I'm getting at. Why would a POT owner want to install gold sinks into his town? It might help the overall game, but it's not going to help his town.
     
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  5. Satan Himself

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    For a big well-established POT, a trainer should be part of the one-stop shopping. Nice feature even if not strictly economical.
     
  6. Drocis the Devious

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    What if trainers are very specialized though? (as I think they might be)

    I believe the devs said that a trainer might only know Thrust Level 1. So you'd have to find another one that knew Thrust 2.

    I think this is great for the game, but not so great for player towns. I can see where you might want your town to have lots of great Forestry related skills. But are you going to have trainers for the whole Forestry skill tree? Probably not. So then the question becomes, does this make sense for your Hamlet of 20 residents? I don't think it does. Even if you have a Metropolis of 300 lots, it still may not make sense because the people there can only train once (or a few times if they're shuffling skills around) so it really seems more like a gold sink and less like a valuable attraction.
     
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  7. Satan Himself

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    True. I thought they said trainers would be able to teach entire trees but not every skill in every tree. That would be better. Separate trainers for each level of each skill would be really cumbersome and, IMO, pointless. Let a swordmaster teach all sword skills.
     
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  8. Drocis the Devious

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    You may be correct. I don't remember exactly what was said. I only remember that trainers would not teach all the levels and when I heard this conversation I left thinking that it would be very limited. I think the more limited the better. It forces players to travel, explore, and get out of their comfort zones more than other games.
     
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  9. Arradin

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    ...?

    Answer me once simple question: How do most people get thier money ingame at this time?

    After answering that question, you might want to re-think the claim that they are 'gold sink' .

    Ah, i don't want to sound like a total douche, so i´ll explain further:
    Vendors are the main income for players, becuase WE sell the goods we either craft or collect. So i think the fact is that they GIVE more money than they actally take.

    Also, we have trainers.

    So the question from me to you is:

    Why would you want to cripple your citizens by NOT having NPCs? :)
     
  10. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    We don't know what sorts of NPCs will be available but there could be a whole host of different types with different uses. Stablemasters for pets, healers and vets for resurrecting players and their pets, skill trainers, town heralds (that a town owner could program to say certain things), etc etc. Some NPCs and their associated buildings may also be more decorative than anything else - simply something to make the place feel more like an actual town rather than a collection of player lots.

    You seem to be overly focused on profit and accumulation of wealth in many of your posts and you seem to believe that if something doesn't turn a profit then no one will do it.
     
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  11. Drocis the Devious

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    I'm not talking about Player Controlled NPC Vendors. Of course I'd want those.

    I'm talking about the NPC Vendors that are not controlled by players. There's a big difference between the two. The NPC's controlled by Portalarium are not going to give players endless amounts of money for items that no one wants. That's how the devs are going to control inflation. So if you think you're going to be able to sell 400 of the same item to an NPC, you're wrong. They will give you next to nothing for that because it's worthless. If they do give you money for that it will be because the items have value and they can be resold to other players. But they're not going to give you a lot of money for that stuff so as to encourage you to find a PC to sell it to.

    Basically if you're a player that's buying and selling from NPC's controlled by Portalarium, then you're not finding the best price to sell at, or you're overpaying for an item. NPC's controlled by Port are gold sinks, that's literally how they were designed by the devs.
     
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  12. Drocis the Devious

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    {FYI: The tone of this reply is not intended to be hostile, just to the point.}

    If you read the OP I specifically said that I wasn't focused on the other aspects of NPC's outside of the economy because I knew people would say what you just said.

    Just because I make a lot of posts about the accumulation of wealth does not mean that's my primary playing style. I'm a big roleplayer, and I like PVP, but when I play a game I like for there to be logical reasons that the economy (as well as all aspects of the game) works the way that it does.

    Ashlynn, I don't really understand why you felt compelled to post what you did. I don't show up in Pax Lair conversations and ask why everyone is so focused on roleplaying do I? This is a conversation about game design, and specifically the way the economy of player towns works. I'm not comfortable roleplaying that it makes sense when it so clearly doesn't.

    If someone is going to roleplay a merchant or a town owner, they should have logical reasons to put NPC's into their town. If the NPC's act like gold sinks and take money out of their towns, that's bad for the town. And unless you're roleplaying a very poor (bad at their job) merchant or town owner, you wouldn't want that to happen. You wouldn't say "Yes please put a bunch of those gold sink people over here in my town!"
     
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  13. redfish

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    It would be nice to see player-made NPCs give out quests at some point, I don't know if that would mean town NPCs, or just hirelings or servants a player has attached to them. Of course, then some type of interesting quest creation system would need to be in... so there's that.
     
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  14. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    Well lets take Thomas the Barkeep. People might want to place barkeep NPCs in their town so that they have an actual barkeep around when they don't have a player to do it. Or just because they want one around. Perhaps a town owner might want a yam merchant in town because none of the players can be bothered to harvest and sell yams personally and would just like the convenience of one being around.

    Regarding this thread though you have done the same thing here you did in another thread. You have made a thread title with an overly broad statement or question and seem a bit perturbed when people respond to it. I don't know whether your thread title is supposed to be click bait or something but if it's not then you shouldn't really be surprised when people respond to the question posed in the title.
     
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  15. Drocis the Devious

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    http://gawker.com/npr-pulled-a-brilliant-april-fools-prank-on-people-who-1557745710
    Please read the OP and not just the title before you respond.
     
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  16. redfish

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    The barkeep could always be a servant or hireling belonging to a player rather than a "town NPC."

    The most interesting thing about some type of NPC barkeep in a player owned town though, is he could serve a lot of functions other than giving out ale. He could record player visits... so you can ask him "When was Drocis here last?" and he would respond "I saw him a couple of days ago." Or, "Who was here today?" and he would respond "Drocis came in earlier today with some young wench." He could also give rumors and gossip, which were passed to him by players. "Patrons here have told me there are nasty skeletons on North Valeway, but they have swords that make good prizes." And eventually that could expand to player-created quests.
     
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  17. Drocis the Devious

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    Player controlled NPC's that are not gold sinks could do the exact same thing. An NPC is an NPC...but when a player owns the NPC, the money goes to to player and not "the game". Which is what this thread is about.
     
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  18. Ashlynn [Pax]

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    Your posts would be easier to keep track of if you didn't keep editing them all the time.
     
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  19. redfish

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    Okay, well one purpose NPC gold sinks could serve is they could buy items and always have gold to pay you for them, unlike a player vendor who may or may not buy an item. I agree with you, though, that its a function better served through player vendors for all other reasons, and also if NPC vendors are there they should be taxable.
     
  20. Drocis the Devious

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    The OP was edited once, I added a single line to it that started with the word "Edit".
     
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