Are there too many local economies and too little cross promotion?

There may be far too many local economies for the current population. We have per vendor, per town, per town cluster, per region, per world. It's a huge pain to do price comparisons much less find the vendors with what you are looking for.

I believe we need a way to rationalize all these tiny economies into larger regional economies.

One thought is this can be done with the existing public/private vendors if there was a bulletin board on all vendors of what the other regional vendors are carrying. Alternatively, the vendors could charge an additional fee for being listed regionally. Being listed is just that (item, price, location), no remote purchases.

Thoughts? I am sure that many of you have better ideas that also don't break the local economy model.

 

I hear you Tahru. I was telling myself hmm I'll go check out some towns and their vendors since I've mostly been staying in Wizards Rest with the ones we have and then since Owlshead is close by, I check out their vendors. What I found was 1) there is a huge time sink to visiting all towns in this game, you get loading screen after loading screen to do this. I would love to visit other people's towns and experience the creativity that they have accomplished, but the time sink is a killer. I would also love to see what is on other peoples vendors. The huge thing for me is that I can't get a picture of what has been accomplished by others. Sure we can make lists of who has what, but that doesn't talk me into going there necessarily. It's not the fix.

One of many complaints I'm hearing is that people place things on their vendor that don't sell, well why? because we don't know about them. We are stuck in this vortex of little divided worlds and it frustrates me. All the things we players come up with to be creative are never heard about. It is just us and our little world. That is so not fair to this game. Time after time we request things like NPC town Bulletin Boards that could connect the world to some degree.

I must have went to 10 towns last night and what I saw was things like no vendors and very little population or development in them. I was surprised. In Wizards Rest we are having a great time creating and developing fun. Is there no incentive for towns to create and be creative. What, Are we all in a vacuum? I still truly believe we have to connect the world. Let us know who's doing what, and who needs what, and who is wanted, and who is holding what event.

So here is the picture again I vote for knowing what is out there and not just in my own separated world. Walk up tot he bulletin board and hear the news and think, hmmm perhaps I'll take a trip over to so and so's town, he's having a sale. Or perhaps I will whisper so and so, he says he wants a black dyed bodice, gloves, and matching shoes ( I don't have it though, wishes for it though , but pretending I do have it, I can let him/her know we have one on one of our vendors in Wizards Rest. Anyway and I know this because I saw it on the news on the Bulletin Board.

 

oops decided to add this to a separate comment instead of an edit lol, and yes I do like the attempt by the team to encourage us to visit other towns by the town crier's giving 100 gold for clicking on them. This is a valiant attempt and I love it for the possibilities to go from town crier to town crier and gets some gold for those who don't want to fight and just craft, and yes it is a big time sink as well, but as is everything in a game

 

The biggest problem is definitely not knowing what is where and the impossibly long time it takes to search for the item you want. The other biggest problem is that there isn't much money to spread around for the cost of most equipment (too expensive for general population to be able to purchase). Both the issues are by design and I just don't understand the rationale behind it. One of the many problems of persistence prior to economy balance or planning. C'est la vie.

We've been asking for something like this for ages. Hopefully, they will eventually listen and put it in (or something similar).

 

Bulletin boards are the solution, but personally I think its important that the information on the board is based on player initiative -- players intentionally advertising -- and not an automated system.

They'd also serve a purpose beyond selling goods; they'll also have things like job requests, guild advertisements, event advertisements etc.

 

If nothing is done in game, then it will fall to player created websites to fill the gap. There is already one that I know of. The problem with player created content for this, is that the creators are not going to do anything to protect the local economies; hence they will ruin the game design to some extent, the external sites will fracture the population and perhaps most importantly they take our attention out of the game where it belongs.

 

How many items can be put on a single player owned vendor ?
(I know, a bit off subject - but I need to know so I can respond to the OP).

 

Roughly 200 I have been told. I can tell you it is not enough. I am stacking a lot more now because of it.

 

I like what UO is doing. Player Vendor Search while in a safe zone. Just search for what you want. When you find what you want and what price you want select it and Bam! a little map goes into your backpack. Whip open that map and it shows the location of where the NPC is with the item you were wishing to purchase.

 

Personally I'm hoping the house deco contest will help showcase some areas players are investing in so community hubs can start forming. I know I've been speeding up my stocking abilities and carpentry skills to be able to participate, so maybe others are too.

 

@Krissa Lox that is a great grass roots approach. I put my cards in there as well and I don't really believe I am competitive. For me though, that is more about community spirit, but you may be onto something. We have a tendency to worry about things that work themselves out.

 

I'm definitely in it for the community building as well, being more excited for it serving as a convenient directory of interesting places more than the actual contest part.

 

Personally I enjoy saving up gp, and then spending hours venturing out to scout different locations to spend my gold.

 

Yes I do too as well. That was my plan last night in fact. I was just very surprised at the towns that had not much done to them, but I didn't check out too much because it was 2:00 a.m ish. In spite of this the bulletin board and work orders was an old idea that got pushed aside. Instead of making a bulletin board where you could post your requests for services etc, it just got thrown on the vendor instead. IMO that was the quickest and easiest way to do it for the moment. I am just hoping this was a temporary fix to giving us a aesthetic, fun, and more practical way to share the world between ourselves. Well of course just imo

edited

 

If the game is good then communities will form organically. If people read from what the kickstarter says however they will think its a single player game they can play online with their friends, much like the LAN in the past. Port should figure out which audience they are catering to IMO or they will lose both.

 

Great question. I have no intention of circumventing the game designer's objectives. So the proposal I put forward has many thresholds of which the designers would choose. I am sure all of us have different opinions when it comes down to it. I don't want to put myself in a position where I will be unhappy with the result, I just know that the way it is now seems insufficient.

But if I was to choose, I would open the doors completely because if I don't someone else will. But I would do it like this. I would charge a price for each level of advertising. In a town would cost much less than in a region which would cost MUCH less than in the world. The fees alone would prevent extreme undercutting and monopolies.

 

This is on purpose. If you have perfect information about the economy, then it is harder to make a profit because there is a race to the bottom. You can see this effect on the OH public vendor which is the largest market in the game. Raph Koster wrote about doing this (intentionally) with Star Wars Galaxies. The one thing that SWG had that we don't have here is mechanisms to advertise. That should change.

 

In the long run yes, but at the current time there is no perfect information about the economy because everyone is in greatly varying places in their development that the buying and selling points for goods are very diverse between individuals, so there's no current ceilings or floors to race to.

For example, when I was leveling mining in Owl's Nest, I'd sell ore at whatever price people were paying that day because then it was free money while I was leveling. Now that I've GMd all my mining skills, I don't sell in Owl's Head anymore because the yield of that particular zone doesn't pay me what time is worth to keep mining rather than leveling other skills. What ore I do get I now take home to put on my own vendor at my own price point rather than putting up on public vendors.

Now this price point at this time is not just dictated by my mining skills but also my combat skills. I'm not quite to the level of comfortably handling Etceter yet, so the value of my mining time remains based on what I can get from Owl's Nest. Once I cross that threshold, my price point will change as well depending on my results with Etceter. It may be more efficient and therefore more worth it to compete at public vendor prices, or it may push me to take up enchanting instead and not sell raw ore to the public at all. I'll just have to see what it looks like when I get there.

Most likely though, public vendor prices will be set by people who are leveling up or who are in ore-producing zones for reasons besides just the ore. Not because it's a race to the bottom, but because they're just getting more value out of being there besides gold so they don't need as much gold in return for it to be worth continuing. As people reach they're goals, they too will likely drop off the public vendors to set up private shops of their own, and then buyers will have more reasons to wander around looking for them because then there's a lot more stuff out in the world to make it worth spending time to go see instead of everyone having to cluster in one place to make a living.

I just happen to be on the earlier end of this evolution due to having more playtime than is likely average, but it will probably be an ongoing process for several months to a year. In the meantime, there probably won't be any true "fair market value" for most goods, but rather mutually beneficial exchanges based on individual needs and contributions. Which I personally prefer because it tends to reward cooperation more than competition which I think is good for the starting population.

Not to derail Tahru's thread, just stating my perspective that I think things are going OK, just maybe slower than hoped for.

 

great gold sink idea. this would be interesting and useful way to pull money from economy.

 

Like you I save up my GP until I really need something. But I don't have a lot of time to just wander the map to try and find what it is that I need. I look for the best price and may pass over a few vendor to try and find my price budget. The loading screens get old really fast and I lose interest in shopping all together. I wish there was a better way.