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Upcoming Economic Balance Changes

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by DarkStarr, Sep 9, 2016.

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  1. Croniac

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    The wealthy are only so wealthy because they game the game... If other players could steal, or otherwise hurt those wealthy players, their money wouldn't be in coffers, it'd be in circulation. This is why consent PVP is a bad mechanic in a player economy.
     
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  2. Time Lord

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    SP Shard was also a player driven economy. The motive in writing a more compelling game, is ego. These guys have allot of game ego and if they don't produce something respectable, then Richard can't fly to the moon and visit his alien buddies and Starr & the gang don't get their retirement with an easy game to manage as a hobby.

    Speculation, sure it is, but I do know egos and egos like theirs don't enjoy playing second fiddle. I believe once the planets begin dancing, then the game will have it's unique pizzazz enough to retain that respect they need.

    I could be totally wrong, but speaking engagements dry up when old game producers can't pull some rabbits out of their... ya know :p
    I'm betting on egos ;)
    That I think is true...
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  3. Croniac

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    Which one was "SP" sorry, it's not lighting in my mind... I played on Sonoma as 'Croniac', my theif was 'Mary Ann', and I had a mage 'Rouriac' I was also a counselor on Baja (I don't remember my counselor name, probably Rouriac)... The lead counselor on Baja was kinda of a hot mess... She was openly hitting on the male counselors all the time and anyone who wasn't responsive, found a fast way to the door... It was the beginning of the end for the counselor program, and a shame, because I really enjoyed helping new players... But I didn't play along with her game and I was gone inside of a few months.

    I think Starr and Garriott's ego's are probably well satiated, or they'd be bigger devs today.. no, this is just about extra walkin' around money... If it was about ego, these guys have all the resume to be at any company they want to be at doing anything thing they want... But they aren't.
     
    Last edited: Sep 25, 2016
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  4. Elwyn

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    The main problem is that the gold supply is still so tight that most people don't have enough of it to pay a crafter enough for all the wasted materials that it takes to make a 1-in-20 item. This causes crafters to sell the resulting junk items cheaply in a quantity of supply much higher than the natural demand. When the average player with a reasonable amount of money sense can easily accumulate a hundred thousand gold a month, then people will start paying 10x or 20x gold for the perfect item, in accordance with its rarity.

    Not only do crafters have trouble selling their junk because too few people want that many mediocre items, but it also reduces the market for the really good stuff when people will pay rock-bottom prices for "good enough" junk instead of getting the perfect stuff.

    I think the base price for arrows is 1gp for 12, or 0.083gp each. That's very hard to compete with, and demand pricing doesn't make enough of a difference with the pre-release population level. I have been able to sell them for 0.1gp each in a town with no arrows NPC, but I do that mostly because I made a bunch of wooden boards by mistake when I needed wooden timbers.
     
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  5. Time Lord

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    ~Tales From Gaming History's First Player Based Economy~
    The following is a story from @TEK @TEK1 , of Ultima Online's "Siege Perilous Shard", where the were no places that were safe, except one player owned town known as Safe Haven, which took quite a bit of time to have ever become safe.

    This post is a bit of a background on myself and my motivation to advocate for PvP territories in SotA.

    I started playing UO the day it was released on the Sonoma server and saw the best and worst of PvP early on in those days. The Sonoma server was important for this thread as on that server was a player town called Oasis. I would go there an participate in Fight Nights, and the different activites they put on, which was entirely player driven. During these events, they had players who served as "Town Guards" and would work their best to thwart any PK attacks..which would happen often. Despite the constant threat, the events were always popular as you never know what would happen. I was even on the losing end of the Fight Night "Terror Bombing" which prompted a game change:
    • Explosion potions no longer set off other explosion potions. We regret that our earlier post seemed to indicate that the explosion potion was changed only at the request of the City of Oasis, without input from other player sources. Reports from the City of Oasis on Sonoma, which was suffering from terrorist bombs during their periodic Fight Nights, and subsequent support from other player commentary brought this issue to our attention. Please note that the explosion potions were never intended to be instant-kill tools. From now on, explosion potions will only detonate themselves.
    http://wiki.uosecondage.com/Ultima_Online:_The_Second_Age_Patch_Notes_for_10/01/1998

    Despite the bombing, I was inspired by the player driven good and evil, friend and foe, and political intrique in all of this. The players took an area out of the world, gave it a name and defended it as such.

    Fast forward to the opening of the Siege Perilous shard. I was excited that it would be a return to the "classic" UO...the one which Oasis had inspired me. I decided I wanted to really be on the forefront of a new player town on Siege. So I convinced a friend of mine to join me decided that we would claim the npc building (not that you could actually "claim" anything) at the crossroads out of town as our own and defend it as such and eventually build our homes. My character was Shaar Barista and the name I gave the town was: Safe Haven

    When creating Safe Haven, I and we gave it a few Roleplay rules to make it interesting for us all. Sorta like a gritty Wild West bar, Safe Haven would be friendly to all players regardless of the flagging as a good guy or bad guy. A "red" character who was clearly a murderer was welcome just as much as a "blue" character who was "good". In Safe Haven, only your actions within town mattered to us. No fighting as allowed. If you started a fight and killed someone then you would be on the "Kill on Sight" list no matter who you were.

    With those roleplay rules in place, we took up shop at the crossroads and began telling all players who came by that this was Safe Haven and doing all we can to make them feel welcome. I posted on all the the UO forums at the time and began doing any kind of events we could dream up. For Siege Perilous, being that many players were banned from NPC towns, and could never participate in any events in those NPC towns...Safe Haven represented a place that they could.

    In a short time, we had several houses placed around "town" and got some notoriety. Some players came out and joined us as citizens and others as "town guards". We formed a town government with a Mayor and Sherriff. We recruited players interested in trade to place vendors in Safe Haven tower for free while we made sure they knew it was risk vs reward. There were plenty of enemies of Safe Haven who would attack us and of course we would defend ourselves the best we could.

    The defense we made for the town began to take notice from other players and guilds of the server. We engaged all that entered the town into these politics of defending the idea of SH. Eventually most major guilds on SP had pledge its support of Safe Haven. This didnt mean though that all was fine and peaceful. At one point, a major guild who you might of heard of...the Knights of Glory and Beer got themselves on the KOS list of Safe Haven for killing a "red" player in our town borders. Sure they made had killed a bad "PK", however they had broke the town laws. As so, whenever the KGB would enter town, we would either killl them or drive them off. We also engaged into the politics of that matter with KGB and its leaders. Eventually a cease-fire was declared and they were allowed into town again. This happened with all guilds of SP at one point or another.

    As time went on, we held town elections that involved the entire shard/server, held major events and gave out countless prizes. Got the attention of the Seers who provided storylines for the town against evil Lizards nearby. Safe Haven also started a guild called NEW which was a recuitment tool for Siege Perilous, so that new players who wanted to try the server could get off the ground by providing gear and safe passage. We got most all the major guilds of Siege to not attack members of NEW as long as they didnt "farm" certain locations or engage in pvp while in the guild. Imagine that, a PvP enable area that was more eventful than anywhere else in game and was managed by player justice.

    Why does all this matter though? This matters because it showed that you can Roleplay and give reason to PvP without out it being all negative. The excitement of living and playing in Safe Haven would not be possiblile without it being a "PvP enabled" area. At a glance, I was simply a bad "red" PK when I was really a color blind guardian who judged players on their actions in my town. I hope in some way that SotA can provide the ability to create such a thing again. I hope there is "Wild Lands" where a Safe Haven type town could exist again.

    What is great about this story about Safe Haven, is that despite it being created in 1999, and years since i've even played UO....the area that I personally named Safe Haven is still regarded as so and even the NEW guild is still around. The ability to lay a mark in a MMO like that is truly awesome and sorta gives you immortality. Will SotA allow us to be immortalized as well?
    =====================================================================================

    As for the @Time Lord (myself) I gained much of my UO fame (if you could call it that, because I was only famed to those that were famed) from playing the character know as "Hamlet" when Siege Perilous Shard first opened. There I hooked up with one of the greatest solo players of Ultima Online, there known as "Thunderlips" who had placed the first house on that shard which bares a special identifier outside the south entrance of Moonglow, "first house of the shard". It was from this small house I then built around Thunderlips the most powerful Order Guild (which was the first guild of any kind there on SP). That guild was known as "The Fellowship" (TFS) which became the dominating PvP force of that shard within it's first year of operation. This was no easy task, as just soon after by a matter of days, houses began springing up all over the shard and this solo player Thunderlips had barely beaten the many Chaos Guilds that wanted to rule that "PK&PvP Only" shard.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    ~The Special Economy of Siege Perilous Shard~
    ~The First in Gaming History, Player Driven Economy~


    SP Shard's economy was one where NPC's sold little for extremely high prices for very cheaply made equipment which had a extremely limited set amount that the NPCs could sell. A common cheap axe that other shards sold for 80 gp, was costing as much as 800-1000 gp from the NPC vendors and again of very cheap durability, basic of the lowest power and each NPC vendor may only have 6 to sell to anyone. Once those 6 were gone, that NPC vendor would sell no more for a full real world 24 hour day. Even regs and even food were the same, extremely expensive and in extremely limited NPC vendor quantity. Most of us used maces because they caused so much more damage to other player's equipment, that some PK would see a mace and run as fast as they could away.

    :rolleyes: Yet in this player driven economic environment became The Fellowship's true source, of true power. Thunderlips only asked me to keep the guild's members away from him because he was a soloist in his game play and only came out to lead us into the thickest direct attacks, "indeed true sieges" to exhaust our enemies limited supplies. When we began, we were out numbered because SP shard had attracted the most, the finest PK and Chaos guilds of all of Ultima Online because of the nature of the shard where murder was said to be most easy, "with no city guards on the shard at all".

    ~The Fellowship's Economic Charge of SP~
    Starting from being out numbered I quickly called all my crafting friends and RP friends to join me there. Th'Dirty Old Man and the temptress Roxan (actually a 70+ year old wonderful lady who could woo the pants off of any young man) and a few others came. I called up all my foreign friends who spoke little English yet knew me from my having been one of Ultima Online's first "Troubadours" who created the first player made UO backed quest makers. I had created quests in many languages and thus I had prior connections with Russian, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Mexican and others players I had no idea what they were. I called them all and invited them to create a chr there. Many did and at first said their chr there would never be their main, as they all had prior obligations to guilds of other common shards. So I began with 12 in all and a few others that were already in The Fellowship Guild. I then used those friends to make it feel inviting to other crafting players to join an "Order Guild" which would surely be under attack from all sides becoming the focus of all PK and Chaos to attempt to extinguish. I went to work recruiting others playing SP who had found out the hard way that every single crafting player would be PK'ed whenever they would be out gathering crafting supplies. I also recruited every fighter I could, who then quickly learned that in a player driven economy, those that work together survive, have the best equipment and thus had the greatest power. Within the first 3 months we had been out numbered, yet in the next 3 months we out numbered any Chaos guild and in 2 months after that we out numbered all the Chaos guild combined. All the while this was happening, we had been constantly raiding, constantly hunting down PK, locating Chaos guild's headquarters and attacking without ever running out of player numbers to do so... all because we had created the finest supply lines all protected by the guild. Yet even when we saw miners out mining that were not our own, we would then call up 3 miners to the scene and quickly drain that area's wealth in nodes, "which replenished more slowly on SP shard, than any other shard". This enabled a few larger shipment of supplies to come in to us at greatly reduced prices from other "non-order guilds", who only sought for us to allow their crafting miners and gatherers to freely be in any area we saw them in, without calling our own gatherers to compete with them. This allowed The Fellowship to then concentrate our efforts into stomping every Chaos guild down to their shorts "literally", because again, ever supply on SP shard was player made, or was purchased at great cost when they were even available on any NPC vendor.

    ~The End~
    The Fellowship had ruled, in a literal sense, Ultima Online's Siege Perilous Shard for it's first, little over 1+1/2 years, when Thunderlips decided to sell his account. This was no surprise to me, because he had confided in me that he was going to do that from the very start. I had kept that secret from all others, knowing what would be needed to be done before that ending. So, 2 months prior, I began negotiating with the 5 largest Chaos guilds for them to form an alliance which could stand against us. This was very difficult to do and I suffered a 1000 deaths just to get to secretly speak with them all, because I was not their favorite person by that time, because it was well known who was in charge while Thunderlips was always gone doing his solo thing enriching himself :D The Fellowship had grown to more than 160 members by that time, could call up 25+ at any time to stomp anything and anyone into the ground. There were many times when I would walk up unexpectedly to Brit or Moonglow's bank, while 50+ players all shouted together in a never ending stream of text, "Hail My Good Brother Hamlet" :confused: OMG the lag from that!

    The Chaos guilds were organized, I secreted 3 large shipments of supplies to them from The Fellowship's reserve supplies and the sage was set for The Fellowship's inevitable demise. For the next 2 months there was a war of epic proportions, some battles of as many as 9 computer screens deep of players all killing each other. It was counted in one battle as many as 300+ players happily bashing each other's heads in. No one had ever seen such battles before in Ultima Online. After, yes, but before, no.

    As our supplies became depleted and with Thunderlips time secreting away shortly at hand, what was once 160+ members had dwindled to 60+. On my final day, I stood at Moonglow's bank with my bank box only full of bandages, wearing nothing but a mace, a hat I took off a dead Chaos corps and a set of steel plate pants :confused: Thunderlips gave me The Fellowship's guild stone and sold his account (so he could get back to college). 1 week passed after I informed all the members of Thunderlips being gone forever and that I had been instructed to secret the stone away to an unknown location. Another week passed by, we were down to maybe 12 members and I gave the stone to a 13 year old member from Belgium who had fought so well and had served his Brothers and Sisters whenever they had called. I did not tell anyone else, the 13 year old had no house of his own and left it's fate to the wind. I deleted my character Hamlet and set off with a small band to invade Japan's Wakoku shard.

    A player based economic history, from the last epic history The Fellowship had made possible for everyone. Fore, without The Fellowship, there would have been far less "Safe haven player towns", because the shard would have been over run with PK had we not been there and done what we did, in the way that we did it. This is not the history of one man, this is a history of many players, all coming together for a greater good fun time for all.

    Player based economies are the best economies, because it's gaming without a net (not you @Net , an actual net ;))...err...umm... you know what I mean :p
    This has been the history of, Siege Perilous Shard's, The Fellowship (TFS) (Order Guild) of Ultima Online.

    I hope you enjoyed that true history's reading. Our current Fellowship Project is far different, yet is in the same spirit of bringing good people together for fun.
    But what's it's not ever going to become is ever a large guild, because large guilds just wear me out o_O...
    :cool:~Nystal TimeLord~:p
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2016
  6. Elwyn

    Elwyn Avatar

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    Not sure that he needed a full history, but not all of us are former UO players, so even if we've heard of Seige Perilous, we're not used to referring to it as SP. A link would have been more than sufficient.
     
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  7. Time Lord

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    Well, "I am the link" ;) and a few more like me...
    History and Wiki's are written by people who were either there, or they need a Wiki... either way it's the same wall of script :D and you can't know it's effects or it's advantages without having had experienced it. Much like the Vietnam war or any other history, some would write what they heard tell of those places in history, while others are who they found out such knowledge from "who are still alive today". Just like that Texas Capital building there in Austin, you may not find it written in any history books, but I'll bet I was the last of two Texas State House of Representative employees to have ever smoked a duby on it's dome while the maintenance guys were trying to fix it's dome roof's access ladder :p

    But then again, "you might call it a fatty or a blunt now" o_O...
    [​IMG]
    If anyone has never been in a player driven economy, these guys have too :D
    Actual History's recollections are strange that way o_O...
    ~Time Lord~;)
     
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  8. Net

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    I am the actual Net:D Anyway, such a long post, I was wondering why you mentioned me...
     
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  9. Time Lord

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    :p"No one ever expects the Net!":D
    [​IMG]
    ~TL~:D
     
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  10. Tibs

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    If I may I'll try to keep to the player-driven economy topic. Expressions of your dissatisfaction seem to me out-of-scope.
    I argue that NPC vendors enhance viability for a 'player-driven economy'. Removing NPC vendors, and incidentally removing a minor money sink, also removes a player option. It restricts player choice. It places the players into a situation where there are fewer alternatives. Your vision describes an economic environment where archers who want to use a bow in the game will have no choice except to either craft their own arrows, or purchase from crafters.

    The problem I foresee is that there will be nothing to stop those crafters from collusion, directly or indirectly (by comparative pricing) to keep profits as high as possible. Why I think that is a problem I will try to describe below. The only instrument to keep prices down in a corporate-oriented environment is competition for market share, and without NPC vending that instrument will still tend to the high side because of player desire for profit.

    I don't think it will be good for the game to alter the playing field such that only conglomerates and corporations, formal or informal, can enjoy success. I didn't intend to kickstart Eve Online in Novia.

    Collusion to maximize marketing profits leads to a reduction in market liquidity. Money would again accumulate and gel in the accounts of the corporate few, and individual players would be, again, largely excluded from the dynamic economy in recurring poverty. Income inequality is economically unhealthy, and a symptom of sociopolitical problems. The body politic is stressed, the flow of currency is sluggish and economic arteries are congested. Heart attack grows immanent.

    Leaving the NPC vendors in place provides the archer an alternative source for ammunition. While I support the commendable principle that player-crafted goods should in some way be better than generic goods offered by NPC vendors, I do not think that that superiority should be guaranteed. Exceptionality should be exceptional. I do not support removing player options in favor of complete deregulation of the economy because, generally, players are only human. Human beings, players individual or corporate, will usually not work for the good of the game, but only for their perception of whatever they imagine is good for themselves, often only near term.

    I hold, as desirable, reasonable market regulation for the good of the game, and encourage the retention and creation of alternative options for players. Curiously (because we cannot both have and not have NPC vendors), in the following paragraph you seem to concede my point.
    It appears you wish to both have and not have NPC vendors offering cheap generic products.
    I must disagree. I would argue that exceptional products should only be player craftable, but I further think that 'normal' crafted output should be common and unexceptional, that exceptionality should become more frequent with increased skill, and less common in earlier and lesser levels of skill.
    I don't think it is too hard to code, but rework is expensive. If, as you assure us, you are a programmer then you know that going back to introduce new arrays and variables into living, released code can be perilous and inefficient.

    Back on topic, if your objection really is to protest that NPC vendors reduce the efficacy of a 'player-driven economy', I would underscore that removing NPC vendors, and incidentally removing a minor money sink, also removes a player option. It restricts player options. It places the players into a situation where there is no alternative to purchasing from player crafters. Your vision, as I think I understand it, describes an economic environment where archers who want to use a bow in the game will have no choice except to craft their own arrows or purchase from other crafters. There will be nothing to stop those other crafters from colluding, and much to encourage their organizing corporate entities, directly or indirectly by comparative pricing, to keep arrow prices and profits as high as possible. The only apparent instrument to keep prices down would be a consequent competition for marketshare, and that instrument will still tend to the high side because of player/corporate desire for profit.

    In a game, 'player-driven' doesn't equate to 'remove game rules'. To be a game an environment requires rules, simply because fairness is what distinguishes games from reality. Regulation (rules) is a requirement of a game. Nor does 'player-driven' mean 'player-organization driven'. Corporations and consortiums should not be leveraged into the 'more-equal' players in the game. The game design must have sinks and faucets built into it to keep the game fair for every player. Leave Eve Online in Eve Online.

    Leaving the NPC vendors in place provides the archer an alternative source for ammunition. While I support the commendable principle that player-crafted goods should in some way be superior to generic goods offered by NPC vendors, I do not think that superiority should be guaranteed but exceptional, and I do not support removing player options in favor of complete deregulation of the economy. Players, even those informally incorporated, are only human, and will commonly not work for the good of the game, but instead only for their perception of what they imagine is good for themselves.

    Reasonable regulation of markets, and keeping alternative choices for players are in the best interest of the game.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2016
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  11. Croniac

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    @Tibs , I can't give an exhaustive response right now, as I'm on mobile.. But I did want to touch on a couple misconceptions in your post..

    1) Perilous new arrays and code: Not at all. Adding new types of items is entirely database, and doesn't need to involve code at all. You can be sure that every little item does not need to be added to code. It is almost certainly nothing more than an entry in a DB which contains all the attributes required for the existing code to know what to do with it.

    2) Your Eve Online remarks are a little cherry-picked. I didn't say make this game like Eve Online. I said Eve Online is a good example of how a player driven economy should work. The ability of alliances in Eve to control the manufacture of products and exploit the prices has to do with the scarcity of key ingredients. IF a particular mineral only exists in very few systems, then an alliance need only take control and hold those systems and they can instantly monopolize the products that require those minerals, and that is exactly what goes on in that economy. The vast majority o the minerals in Eve are quite easy to get and any player can make a solid living, I sure did, and I was never in one of those monster alliances with unlimited manpower and resources.

    In SotA, that type of collusion can't really happen because the resources are in the wild. Everyone can manufacture, so there really is a hard limit on what someone can charge. If some large group wants to try to sell arrows for 10gp each, and I drop my arrows at 1gp each in my player vendor right across the street, guess where the business is going to go.. To me.

    The prices will fluxuate naturally and find balance. Players inability to have sovereign control of resources automatically prevents the type of exploitation you're trying to claim would happen.
     
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  12. Time Lord

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    ~Arrows, Regs and Other Consumable Crafting Materials~
    What was done on Siege Perilous was to keep NPC selling process extremely high when compared to what could be player made. Yet having the NPC limited to what number they could sell meant that there was just enough arrows for an archer to safely be able to fletch themselves some. the way I'm seeing SOTA heading with it's multi-skilled no class structure, is that players are expected to be able to create everything themselves. The current economy NPC model keeps players in the field finding bugs and testing what needs to be tested. Once that testing is dome, I expect the NPC vendors to sell much the same way as the early Siege Perilous model, because that's what this same Portalarium team did before when they were given leeway by the company to create a much more difficult Shard, od game within the game of UO in order to satisfy the top end UO player's demands for tougher gaming.... or in the player's words, the way it use to be, yet headed in a different direction from what all other UO shards became.
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  13. Croniac

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    I should add, that the scarcity of some minerals in Eve is deliberate, as scarcity breeds war. And the devs of that game want combat and competition.
     
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  14. Croniac

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    @Time Lord thanks for that history on SP.. I had forgotten about that shard, and all the weird ways things went after the Trammel/Felucca split. The game was so much more compelling before that day.

    I was in "Crusaders of Sosaria (CRS)" on Sonoma, we had a town up in the north... About mid way between Yew and Vesper, north of that road, not terribly far from Oasis. The leader was PonyBoy. We were pretty active in the politics of the shard. But I don't have the vivid chronological memories you have of SP. I blame beer.
     
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  15. Tibs

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    Understood
    I apologize: I'm more familiar with an earlier age, when a DB was essentially an array, the contents of which were called by variables in the code. I'm afraid I'm a dinosaur, rumored to be extinct.
    Certes. Eve Online expressed as Novia is a fear of mine, something I would avoid. I do not want the 'game' of this game to be the exclusive realm of player corporations. I recognize strengths in corporatism, but I contend there are faults to corporatism as well.

    Individualism should be celebrated, and I'd rather there were significant potential for cooperative play. Competition has come to have a disproportionate, even irrational (out-of-ratio) influence in RL A game should be playable by regular people. I urge that provision should be retained for independent players operating in cooperation, unrestricted by corporate boundary or membership or indoctrinated, uncaring mindset.

    I've met too many egoistic wanna-be 'leaders', and wish that my invested enjoyment in this game will not become dependent on some self-anointed alpha male and his sychophants.

    Playing a fun, open-sandbox multiplayer game with people who might be friends sounds wonderful. The prospect of some fascistic corporate-domination arena for the power-mad, not so much.
     
  16. Croniac

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    Spot on!

    Thats a big part of why I ended up leaving Eve. I ran a small corporation there for many years, did a lot of manufacturing, and a fair bit of excursions in PVP.. That eventually led me down to 'nullsec' with a midsized alliance... A move that was a lot of fun, for a short time, but then suddenly became a second job that didn't pay.

    I don't want my game to be a job. And I don't want to be kicked around by a 14 year old warlord. But, I do want a challenge, and I do want a risk/reward game. I want to be able to succeed via numerous possible paths.

    Right now, as the original post by Starr discussed, crafting doesn't matter, and that needs fixing. And I still don't think handing out free money is the solution.

    And the game really does need a 'risk' which it currently doesn't have. I can die, and die, and die, and die and it simply doesn't matter. Doesn't hurt me in any way. That is silly. I could play solitare and feel just as threatened.
     
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  17. Tibs

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    The accumulation of wealth should tend to promote risk aversion.

    Perhaps it would encourage the wealthy to hire mercenaries/bodyguards if a percentage of gold held on a corpse above an acceptably high threshold will become lootable in PvP or evaporate in PvE?

    Might entail coding for escrow and contractual obligation.
     
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  18. Croniac

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    Now you're on the track. In UO, everything dropped. In Eve, everything drops (or is destroyed). Those are very harsh realities that change how you play. And a lot of players don't want that much risk.

    But yes, a loss of some sort is needed to add tension. You can't do it as 'gold above x' because people will just not carry more than x. SO, 20% of gold on hand is lost, or dropped, and perhaps an item. You died of your injury, so it seems reasonable that you might loose that nice chest plate.

    So, you don't lose everything, but it should be enough to hurt a little, so you have a reason to play smart. And has the secondary benefit of causing you to need to buy things more often, helping the crafters.
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2016
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  19. Time Lord

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    One economy stimulus package will hopefully be NPC cabalist raids when the planets start dancing in the sky doing their special effects thing.
    I remember PonyBoy... or I think I remember the name. I made it a habit to always find out through stratics or ground investigations all the leaders on shards to see what they all were doing or not doing. I was just always on the look out for political cracks in the guilds or political set up to see if there was some sort of event that could be pulled off. So, I'm not exactly sure where I heard the name, but I do know I heard or ran into it somewhere :D
    Indeed! More Beer and more UO were a top priority in my life back then :p
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  20. Croniac

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    @Time Lord a lot of our guys spent time in Oasis, and over the course of time some of them set up houses there. 'Realtor' had a tower down there, I think Mojo had a house there too later on, but I don't recall which characters he was using there. Realtor was a GM tamer, and usually had dragons in his tower, you'd probably remember him.
     
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