Agriculture's economic problems

They've said repeatedly they will never do any such thing (It's been suggested multiple times).

Now, can we move the discussion back to the original topic? Thanks!

 

So one thought would be to make a difference between maturity and full maturity. I.E. If you miss one water cycle and the plant reaches maturity, you can wait another cycle and have it gain at the constant unwatered growth rate until it reaches full maturity (Full maturity being max yield for that plant for that square based on optimum watering). Watering becomes a catalyst to reach full maturity faster similar to how green houses speed up the growth rate and by side effect the watering cycle. Thus Greenhouse unwatered may become the equivalent to non-greenhouse watered with the benefit that the greenhouse unwatered would not need the watering cost factored in.

 

I hadn't heard that, perhaps you could give me a reference in private, as to not muddy this topic... Thanks...

 

To me this post misses the point. It would be better if agriculture did not make money to the NPC. It would be better if there was enough demand from players for the end product. Unfortunately there isn't.

What has been named the deadly poison exploit, would not call that an exploit myself. Actually made demand for ggrown goods leading to players selling to players rather than the NPC. This is what you want in a player economy.

It would be better if there was a way to "vendor" grown goods or better yet the products crafted from grown goods that gave a non net gold reward (or minor gold Vs player time invested) thus making player demand. With player demand there is not reason for there to be a profit to the NPC. Which is actually exactly what that "exploit" did. Making the potions was a net gold lose if everything was bought from the vendor. But a break even at 3g for nightshade making an infinite demand at that price. So it was actually the farmers making the gold not the potion producers, they just got XP, for a not insignificant time investment. It's just the potion producers that used the gold faucet so it looks like they made loads of gold, they didn't, they had already given that gold to a farmer.

More things like the demand loop in this "exploit" is what is desirable in player economy. Not profit to the vendor. However without player demand we have fall back on selling to the NPC that just causes inflation, as it is a gold faucet.


Regards
Spung

 

Yes, the deadly poison was actually an example of how things 'should' work -

Farmer grows something, and it isn't worth much until an additional processing step occurs, that processing step had an experience benefit, so players would work together to grow, process, and sell nightshade for a tiny fraction of the amount of profit you could make fighting in the same time period.

Almost all of this profit went to the farmer, depending on the arrangement/pricing. But there was a demand for the nightshade due to its use in gaining experience. Thus, players would buy it even at a nil profit position for themselves, to make XP. To me, this should have been the standard that agriculture aspired to - encouraging player cooperation and demand instead of just being a 'grow it, vendor dump it, repeat' exercise. Even then, agriculture needs significant real estate investment, likely tax payments, extreme time management (or you make a loss), and has significant artificial delays built in (grow times) which effectively limit it.

Even optimising, managing a planting estate of 2500 slots (this is 5 villages dedicated, and 1 partial) , spending about 4 hours cumulative plant/water/harvest time over the cycle, (not counting runaround, seed purchasing, etc.) every 3 days I make approximately the same amount of money that I can fighting in two hours.

I get less producer XP than I'd get for 30 mins in the mines for the entire effort. It all goes straight to the vendor and doesn't influence the player economy in any meaningful way, other than being a gold faucet. But in terms of gold that enters the game for time spent, its significantly less of an impact than just killing bandits and selling their crap. Its also contingent on property ownership and the ability to adhere to a watering schedule.

I have never understood why "fighting" must be the only faucet and all other activities must be sinks or, at best, considerably less lucrative. This is nonsensical, if anything I'd expect the reverse.

As Spungwa has said, Agriculture should supply a player need, not just be a vendor dump. But the only reason a player would have to buy it would be if they could "do something with it" that gives a benefit, either XP, or additional profit for additional time spent, or -something else-. As was the case with deadly poison, the profit vs. player time spent was miniscule compared to other activities.

I know one of the main considerations with "non-combat" activities being lucrative is "because people bot." So lets ban the botters, please, instead of just nerfing everything to pointlessness.

 

Maybe player grown crops could be more potent(or better in some capacity) than those bought on an NPC vendor. Give folks a better reason to buy player grown crops.

 

Just remove anything that can be made by players from vendors. Then demand sets the price and if prices get out of hand or inflation increases just stick them back on a vendor at a suitable price for a short period.

 

@Elrond made a great point about agriculture being a factor in land value. Most players will want property to set up a house, sure... but to get players to want multiple properties, agriculture needs to be profitable and/or useful! Multiple properties means more $$ for the game and makes the world look more populated.

Therefore, Agriculture needs to be profitable and desirable in general. I believe all grown crops should at least yield a small profit if sold back to an NPC. Lot space can be costly to begin with and "farming" doesn't really give much producer XP to be worth the time/effort if you can't make at least a small gold profit on anything you plant.

Yes, the ideal goal would be to make sure all (or most) crops are a useful commodity so that players want to grow their own or buy from other players instead of NPC dumping. But, markets fluctuate, supply/demand swings, and a dedicated farmer should have an option to sell their crops instantly to an NPC to make gold if they need it and can't wait for the items to sell to other players. Without this option, a farmer has the risk of investing in a crop that may not sell right away (or at all if competitors undercut you).

The key is to make the NPC profit enough to be a viable option, but making the value of the goods to other players higher than what the NPC buys it at. It's not an easy task, that's for sure. But that should be the goal they strive for.

In order to make crops worth more to players, there has to be a demand for all or most items we grow. That means improving food buffs on things that need grown goods. It means changing dye recipes to require combinations of roses and/or other grown crops (as we were previously told was in the plans) instead of tree barks. It means adding recipes to make desirable things from crops that we can grow but have no use other than decoration (corn, coconuts - mostly useless).

I have hopes they will improve things at some point. @Chris is usually pretty good at improving market values on things... as long as there isn't a potential for exploiting and flooding the economy with gold. I don't think a few gold profit per planting is unreasonable though and certainly shouldn't flood the market.

Oh, and eventually we might get animal husbandry options to go along with growing crops that might help boost Agriculture and make land more valuable. We could raise animals for wools, leathers, meats, furs, eggs, milk, maybe some byproducts that will be used for fishing bait and lures, etc. There are a lot of possibilities to hope for!

 

IKR?

I can't keep wood or timber stocked for more than a couple days in my vendors. Goes very fast. Would be nice to be able to plant trees. I'd love to harvest that every so often. I'd start using more of my deeds with the expanded need

 

Lol well that is a nice wish list for 10 even but since we are a sandbox we could wish for much more too but 10 would be helpful.

 

Vendors are generally not the problem here, since the rate at which they *sell* the items to other players is high enough that it allows farmers to negotiate a good rate with other players (For most of the items, anyhow). The problem is that vendors pay a farmer too little if they can't find a player to buy the goods, as it most often results in a loss (and many times, a significant loss).

 

I agree with you, it was really an example of how things should work. However @Chris has made it very clear that Port wants to tightly control any ways in which gold can enter the system and keep that extremely limited (I.e., outside of cotton essentially restricted to fighting). So we're essentially stuck in a command economy in many ways. I.e., the game is deliberately designed so that the majority of things you can do as a player will be a money loser.

 

Of course they are the problem if you want a player run economy.

1) none of the crafting skills sell to a vendor at a profit
2) if there's not a player market for what you grow, why grow it.
3) if a crop isn't used in a recipie the Devs should make one or remove crop from game.
4) if no NPC vendors you get to set a price you need
5) profit from npc vendors would be another gold creator.

 

You are taking what I said out of context.

What you said was:

I was very clear that there was no issue with the fact that vendors also *sell* the same materials to other players, because the price they charge players is exorbitant compared to what a player can farm it and then sell it for at a good profit. For example, vendors charge 4g per nightshade to players, while a farmer can sell it for much less than that and make a nice profit. I've already stated several times that the rate vendors pay to farmers is ridiculously low. That was a main theme of my original post.

 

It is ridiculously low for every player produced item, I'm not sure what makes agriculture any different.
The difference in prices between player produce and NPC produce prices is not enough to make me go look for player vendors and I'm far from rich.
So how do you justify farmers making an in-game profit through NPC vendors as opposed to other crafts and how do you square that circle with the ambitions of a player economy.

 

I'm not justifying anything about other professions. This thread is about agriculture. If you want to start a new and different thread on other problems with the economy, please do so.

 

I'm not asking you to justify other professions I'm asking you to justify why agriculture should be unique in making a profit through npc vendors and at the same time helping the player econony.

My suggestion to remove those items that you can grow from vendors helps the problems you have without growing gold in the economy.

Your suggestion allows you to grow what you want regardless of demand to always make money with no justification.

 

This is because most people don't need that much stuff from agriculture. Mages will need a handful of reagents, but unless you're using heavy 2x usage artifacts and constantly casting high burn rate spells, you usually don't need to buy a lot. In those quantities, you're absolutely right in that there's little point hunting for 20 minutes for a vendor selling nightshade for 3 each, when the npc sells it for 4 each and you only need 100 or so. That, and you can only grow 3 of them, and garlic is awful, profit wise.

Enchanting consumes a fair amount of mandrake, but I'd be hard pressed to burn through more than a couple thousand in a heavy crafting session.

And we can't lower the yield, because doing so would make growing it even WORSE than the npc prices!

The problem is there is nothing to DO with all the stuff you grow. Everything you could do with grown crops to either make xp, or craft something out of them to sell for more, has been nerfed. If I grow 20,000 mandrake root, that satisfies my 'use in combat' for months - and I can do that in a day or two. And my farming operation is pretty moderate, 'cause I find it tedious and boring. So best practice becomes 'grow stuff, sell to vendor'. Its a pretty sad system in that regard.

Take cotton as an example. NPC pays 4 each. You cannot craft anything, anything at all, out of cotton, and get a better return - everything is loss making due to the price of wax. If players had a way to produce wax for half cost, it would STILL be loss making, across the board. This is by design. They do not want non-combat anything to make any sort of profit. Look at the animal headdresses that have been nerfed FOUR times since persistence until now they're barely a break even exercise even though they DO require a combat-dropped component!

100% of the recipes in the game are either completely uneconomical to make, or require player demand, which is near nonexistent on most things. The demographics of our community suggest that a lot more people like crafting than there is need for crafted goods. A few select things have demand, a handful of consumables, or one-off deco sales, but the demand even for the consumables is minimal.

We don't need cash sinks, we need resource sinks - re evaluate 95% of the cooking recipes that nobody makes/eats and make them worthwhile, for a start.
Since crafters get almost all of the gold sinks in the game, consider removing the combat-requirement for absolutely anything lucrative - most of us would be happy to just break even on fuel instead of having to finance it by fighting more trivial crap.

Honestly, I'd much prefer if the emphasis were on non combat "industry" (agriculture, harvesting, crafting) for gold generation rather than the nonsensical infinite-money-npc-buys-infinite-junk-weaponry system we currently have, but it would be a pretty significant overhaul. I'd be happy if non-combat activities even generated a miniscule profit - a completely inefficient use of the player's time, but at least not be loss making. I've never understood the philosophy against this, and the only good reason I've heard is "because botters." If that's the heaviest argument against making non-combat activities a viable part of the game instead of a tacked on, pointless oversight, then I would suggest dev time be prioritised toward bot detection and elimination in the first instance.

 

I never said agriculture should be unique. I never said anything about other professions at all in my original post. That's because this post is specifically about agriculture and how it works in the SOTA economy. Again, if you want to talk about other professions and how they interact with vendors and other portions of the economy, then please go and start a new thread on that subject and stop hijacking this one.

It would certainly force all players to buy from farmers. I'm not sure that's necessarily a good idea. The fact that vendors have a value at which they sell the items means that farmers cannot outright gouge other players. I.e., it sets a reasonable ceiling that farmers can't go above.

Farming is a considerable time and gold investment. I think it is perfectly sane and reasonable to expect that the game provides a method for which to profit from that time. It certainly provides that capability to people who go off XPing and killing stuff for gold. Why should it matter that I choose to spend my time in a different way to generate gold? As others have stated, farming is generally quite inefficient for gold making compared to adventuring.

 

Really Cloth Armor is no good??

S