A bit of criticism - Part I?

And i have to disagree with you on disagreeing with recalls!.....Simply thinking about recalls you/i/all would automatically think they discourage exploration, why explore when you can just recall to a book mark right? However with a little thought and from my personal experience with it all it goes a little something like this.

This comes from a person who has never used a recall scroll and only once used a teleport scroll, and that was because someone was waiting on me, not for my benefit, so understand i am not teleporting over the map at present to save my aching legs/fingers.

Recall to runes made or given by a vendor would encourage the actual exploration in the first place imo, something we don't have at the moment, due to the hard work in finding a vendor and then remembering where on earth they were a month later. If i could mark a vendor or even be given a rune from a vendor to recall to, then for myself i would be much more encouraged to actually go out and find these vendors in the back end of nowhere in the first place.

If i wasn't advertising on my signature here, no one would ever find me, hidden away on a little PRT island with no road to and a big hill to cross. If someone does happen by chance to find me, buy something and then in a months time decide they want to check that out, they have to spend that time again getting to me, and finding me, to then find i haven't what they wanted. To much time, memory needed and chance of failure for them to just to go to a hub and get from there at inflated costs. And this is with me being quite easy to find where i am, what if these POT's/Towns fill up completely, how will anyone find/remember where anyone is after a duration of time. Ok we have Town criers, if they can remember the name of the person they bought off, not usually, they only kinda half remember it was in that town, a minute running down that road, and over some river or not...i get lost in any of the Brittany scenes and refuse to go there at all now, those players there thinking it a prime location as it a NPC town will only be getting much foot traffic if it by an entrance or in plain view i would imagine.

But if i could have an ability to remember/mark/recall to i would take that initial time in finding those players, that would be knowledge i have earned for myself, my own list of good vendors where i can get a BARGAIN. The hard work and exploration is still there in finding them but i am then rewarded time and again after by having the ability to locate and see what they have for sale quickly and efficiently.

I know on initial thinking recalls dampen exploration and make the world smaller, but i argue they don't, they encourage exploration and make the world much bigger and interesting for all.

 

And next you would find in every major town, one or three vendors selling books/runes to recall to every other town and vendor imaginable. Including runes to other shops that sell runes/books to everywhere under the sun. That is where it gets to discouraging exploration as people will simply buy pre-marked runes without having gone there first. Without limitations, this feature would be out of control in weeks and you'd never be able to bring it back under control. At least now we have a cool down timer so people wouldn't just teleport across the street like in UO.

 

Also just to mention who the hell knows what prices should be. The world is so separated. When we list something on our vendors trying to make a bit of profit from all the time, resources etc that it takes to make it and that is speculative at best. I don't really think we can control or should control that part of the game and how could we anyway? It would take massive amounts of effort imo to get everyone selling as they should. I don't feel that it has to be so micromanaged anyway. In playing archeage for example I went to buy something on their player market and I thought wow this is a great deal, but instead since the seed icon and actual item icon were similar I only paid a lot for a seed that a regular vendor would have had way cheaper. Also in UO you would get variety of prices as you traveled the world and you could mark your favorite spots in your wonderful runebook. Our resources are extremely costly. To make something is really expensive in time and resources atm. I don't see this changing, although I do have other ideas of fun verses time syncs for many of our actions in this game, but that is another story.

Hey recalling does not stop exploration. Truly if there is something to see a player will see it. Recalling is for special times like trying to get to your group or run home because RL is calling you. I love how recall is working in this game for the most part and I was a big supporter of us having rune books as well and marking your favorite places, but I think it is ok that we even got any recalling and binding to our houses at all. I will take my crumbs, well and a second bind spot as Budner says would be a great crumb too lol
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There is map time and there is recalling time imo.

 

What's the problem with just a poster board in each city with all the vendor's (in that scene) goods listed and updated on a regular schedule, maybe every 4 in game hours or something. Some kind of central trading list board, and once you find the item you're looking for at a price you're willing to pay, the board could compass you in the right direction to that vendor. In this way, you could feasibly keep regional economies intact while greatly enhancing the amount of trades in each scene. And certain cities could eventually be "known" for whatever kind of goods, etc. Forget teleporting around all over the worldmap, at least have a central way to not be forced to run from vendor to vendor blindly per city, not even knowing if they have stock of what they purport (in their title/name) to be selling/buying. To be clear, you would still have to actually run to each vendor you wanted to visit to complete your transaction, thus encouraging a city with folks moving about and exploring.

 

Doesn't have to be that way and not the way i envisaged it. Vendors could somehow be bookmarked by that person, an unteachable/unmarkable rune or whatever, only entitling that person to use. Maybe given away with a purchase, with at least a cost to make, maybe only useable within that region of the vendors location, there is lots of checks and balances that could be put in place but the bottom line would be that the world is more open and a reason to explore other towns.

 

I'm not advocating dictating final prices.. but the perceived value of currency can be influenced by establishing a low price and availability on basic goods as well as necessarily gold sinks. If I can get a reliable supply of garlic for 2g a pop off NPC vendors.. then no player is going to charge 500g for 10. or 5,000 for 100 etc.. Suddenly if I need some garlic and I'm broke.. I don't need to go out and grind for an hour.. the coin I make off 1 kill would be worth enough for buy 10-20 garlic.

See what I'm getting at here? Suddenly players selling garlic in bulk will be charging 100g for 100 garlic. And still making a profit as garlic seeds would be less.. water is free etc..

I'm not talking dictating to the player market.. I'm talking manipulating the perceived value of the currency.

 

I have to agree with Bowen (which is something because we butt heads on many issues). The single tier economy has problems. I also agree just dropping the amount of drop is not the answer. People felt cheated to get a 5gp drop from a hard fight (it would be like finding that one mandrake root in the bandit chest. Really! 1 $#@%^ mandrake? I don't even collect them after I kill the bandits.) However, I think many would be happier with a drop of 500 copper pieces. Even a standard 3 or 4 tier system with copper silver gold and COTOs would be a vast improvement.

As it stands, inflation is a foregone conclusion. However, if you try to correct this by reducing MoB drops to nothing, people will simply stop killing MoBs and then you'll have nothing but those who want to PvP or RP because seemingly every resource is guarded and if people don't want to kill for worthless drops, why harvest for worthless drops and certainly you won't fight AND harvest for what is still worthless. I, like Bowen, love the SotA concept, dev team and progress that has been made, but there is another game or two that might be in the market right now. (OK, actually there are thousands of games with more playtime to endgame generated each year than there are hours in the year, so competition for players (that's paying customers) is high.)

 

the problem is that mark/recall is really getting off the intended topic and I don't want to get too side tracked with it.

 

Well it is dictating a little bit and why should no player charge what they charge, because then we would have the perfect world which I don't think is the intention of this game for one thing. Yes true it would make it more comfy and cozy for some to have the knowledge that we can count on prices not being unreasonable and fluctuating from person to person, but then we wouldn't have to figure out things on our own or have to find ways to work around it. There should be a little bit of difficulty for us to try to work out challenges and an opportunity for the crooks to fool us, well and they may not even be crooks, they may think their prices are worth it because they offer you a drink when you get their establishment, or the setting they provide for your entertainment is killer when you get there, or they may just think that being in their presence is so worth a ton of money.

The economy focus on this game does not have to be so very perfect imo. We can balance it as best we can in the points that matter as you mention the perception of the value of currency, but it will not fix the rest of the stuff wrong with this game. I have played tons of games whose economy was just what it was in the end and still had a great time playing the game.

 

Not really.. Dictating would be saying 'PC vendors won't sell garlic for more than X' and by increasing the value of currency through an established world market (ie NPCs) and hopefully a multi-tier currency.. you're discouraging inflation. Inflation would only drive up the need to grind for wealth all the more.

The player market will simply adjust one way or the other. If you leave things as they are now.. the natural tendency of a single coin currency that is already priced high before commercial release is just going to be an every increasing spiral of inflation. Spurred on by ridiculous incentives like free gold from the Oracle to make it easier and easier for low income players to meet basic needs. The problem with upwards spirals is there's no ceiling to hit. Then thing you know people are buying horse poo for 1 million gold and players are trading sea shells. That's not the economy I want to see.

 

Well I don't see controlling it to the finest detail as fun. Now if you are talking about a game that has everything at eye level instead of us all being located in a ton of separated little world hexes then perhaps you could try to have some control, which we aren't, and that is if you wanted to have some control over it at all being the point. So are you asking for some tool tip saying 'hey you are charging too much for that item' or it saying something more fun like 'woah that is an impressive amount of money you are trying to charge for that item, and ask are you sure you want to charge that exorbitant price' and it just pops up. And if that were the case the game would actually have to be aware of the pricing structure and cost of items overall to hint at it, and this game as is, is just not smart enough to know that or much of anything we as players do imo, but I could be wrong in regards to economy. My opinion only is that I just tie the game intelligence in with details that tie it all together to make it more fun to play and these are sadly mising atm yes imo.

 

Which was neither suggested nor implied. The only 'control' I'm suggesting would come from NPCs establishing a lower price in the world/NPC market. No hard coded limits on player vendor prices should be needed.

 

Lol you think I'm a crazy woman probably, sorry. I am on my own vendetta to getting something accomplished overall in this game atm. My own agenda. Ok in what you said in a simplified way and to the point this I understand. . It has nothing to do with the crooks and errr I mean creative characters ability to try to rule the world

 

Can I ask that if you're going to post a multi-part post on constructive criticism, and part 1 is about the economy, just make a post with a subject line with something like "The Economy".

Part 2 can be about whatever part 2 is about, and so on.

It's very vague to have a post entitled "a bit of criticism" in a feedback forum. (Almost) every post in the feedback forum is a bit of criticism.

 

I was really expecting to get a lot more in when I ran out of time and was rushed to put in a title. Didn't know if it were be a multi-parter or not when I started.

 

Grinding for gold? Grinding for crafting is a much bigger issue. By the time I gather enough raw materials I have the gold I need.

 

Not everyone is a crafter.. separate issue.

 

Money in the game is relative. To some people a small amount of gold is a lot...and handles their needs. To others, they need much much more.

In fact...money in game doesn't correlate to money in real life....you don't need it to survive. What it represents in game is time. You can go out and do certain activites...or you can use money to pay for them. If it is faster to get the money, then you will go that route. If it is slower, then you will do the activity instead.

It has been remarked that 1600 gp is too much for a meal...but what is a gp? It was invented that 1gp is 1 dollar. But really, it could be 1 cent. Would 1600 cents be too much for a meal? Perhaps 1gp is one ounce of gold, which is 1000 dollars an ounce...that would make the meal 1.6M dollars. In other words, you cant 'invent' a real world price on a gold piece.

1600 gp's however represents a time increment. Which is different depending on who you are talking to. For me, that is about 20 minutes of game time. So that meal costs me 20 minutes of time.
For somebody lower level...1600 gp might take 3 days. With the oracle's help. And so that meal is very very expensive

Here is another example.....I can easily mine silver...the elementals are not a problem. But the activity of mining is boring and takes time. I don't farm weapons for gold like most people, but instead have other sources of income that is more fun to do. So I will buy silver when I feel the cost is cheap compared to that activity....

My armour/weapons though I will always make myself...it doesn't matter if it takes time....the activity is enjoyable, much more then it would be to make the money to get someone else to do it.

As well you can never balance an economy in a game where higher level people can make more gold then lower level people...if you price things for the lower levels, the higher levels can snatch them up cheap. If you price it for the higer levels, then the lower guys wont be able to buy them. The wealth acceleration kills the market.

 

I travelled a lot through many PoTs and I often find goods I am looking for for acceptable prices. Even the many many too long loading screens prevent me from visiting more PoTs but this may be fixed with performance polish....
But I agreee with Bowen: the currency is in a bad state and economy seems broken. A suitable way to fix the currency problem might be splitting gold in smaller peaces. So 1 gp = 100 silver = 100 copper = 100 tin. Mob drops for adventurer levels 1 -10 could be a single reagent and a few say 20 tin. Scale that with adventurer level, so adv.-level 80-90 receive drops like 5 silver, a reagent and rarely a weapon with magical benefits which can be sold or used by players. IF sold to npc, only specific vendors should buy specific items and furthermore only a few of them until they are running out of cash (for that player). We should not be able to sell a fishmonger 50 long bows and large battleaxes like we can do atm and gain 5000gp+ cash per hour.
If people qq about high taxes of their large properties I don't feel commiserative because owning a lot is a self decision by knowing the taxes AND owning should be very rare and not easy to access after playing short time. I myself don't own a lot yet (playing since R11 and now regularly since final wipe) and I still feel, the time is not yet ripe for owning property.
If currency would be split up to smaller coins it would be easy to offer reagents and crafting goods for less.
--My 5 cents

 

The problem is purely one of perception, and has nothing to do with inflation. Change the word "gold" to "copper" and the problem is solved. Later they can add silver and gold coins.