As Expected...

Checking the price of major consumables in Owl's Head today I found Curing Salt at 20 gold each and bundles of arrows for 12 gold. While you may think this a cute expression of supply and demand, this is a bad business move on the part of Portalarium. You are in fact penalizing your customers whose main time to play is on weekends. However, since I am not looking forward to an anymore crowded game, do carry on... I would be perfectly happy if this game never grew beyond Lord British's private little online club. You were not really planning on make any money off this game anyway, were you?

 

Are you talking about the NPC vendors in Owl's Head?

What's the price in Kingsport? Do you know? It's 30 seconds away from Owl's Head and I'm guessing that stuff is a lot cheaper there but I don't know. If not there, you can certainly find it in Central Brittany if you tack on 5 more seconds of travel time.

I have to do this for reagents because the one's in Owl's Head are 10 three times more expensive than what I can get them for in Kingsport.

 

Well Curing Salt in Northwood is 8gp as of right now, guess following the herd is not the best idea after all. People will travel for fair prices prime placement has always been about the number next to the item, I can't imagine what the price is in Britt right now!
Happy in my little town, fair prices all round including the player vendors - I always try and buy local myself.

 

These items are not sold in Kingsport... and when I find them for cheaper elsewhere I will not post it.

 

i respect your opinion and can see how this would effect people with little time in game, but i like this aspect of vendor pricing. does it need some tweaking? yes.

a simple solution is to leave owls head and hit up the surrounding towns find a cheaper supply and stock pile it. i am sure it will not be to long before there are player traders that actually travel from town to town actually selling these items below the current towns price which will be a fun thing to see imo

 

Players should be finding these other towns and bringing the cheaper goods to the Owl's Head public vendor. That's not happening?

Btw, I totally love the fact that Black Pearl costs 22 gold per in Owl's Head! I think it's really cool.

 

Lol I prefer 6gp, love the mechanic - now lets see who is good at business shall we.

Will put on my fine clothes, guess we will be having visitors this evening

 

Exactly. That's the attitude I wish everyone had, but I understand that's not really how MMO's have been designed over the years which is one of the reasons this economic system is so special to me.

My POT, Rats Nest is not going to have ANY NPC merchants. I mean, what's the point? Players can bring in goods and services from other NPC towns and stock their own vendors. There's no reason to create gold sinks in my own town! Some people think I'm crazy, but I really think they're crazy for having NPC's, I mean all that wealth just goes right out of your town and out of the game forever.

 

So I just checked and there's a player selling 100 Curing Salt for 1500 (or 15 per) that's 5 less per curing salt than the NPC vendor in Owl's Head right?

I think that's a very cool system my friend.

 

What is going happen when the game goes public? Every purchase in every instances affects the price. You and I know how and where to get better prices. However, you expect casual players to spend their limited playing time running from town to town shopping? If curing salt is 20 gold each in Owl's Head why is the crafting vendor not paying players 10 gold each for it? Besides, if every player resents every other player in the game for driving up prices what does that do for the sense of community? I do not believe there can be a workable player driven economy without a stable npc economy as a foundation.

 

I understand the reasoning behind this, but all you're doing is forcing additional 'downtime' particularly for people who need regs/arrows to actually fight anything, to wander about trying to find someplace that it isn't a ripoff.
At least arrows can be crafted. Reagents....besides the pittance of the odd forageable here and there, there's no other way to obtain them.
A full load of loot, sold to the blacksmith for me (I can carry about 300 pounds of crap before I can't move) gets me about 2000-2500. Restocking my reagents up to the point where they were before I left? About 2000 gold, if I buy it in our guild town. In Owl's Head it would have cost me 4500. Over twice what I normally make! And that's only if I'm grinding skeletons or humans who drop loot. If I'm fighting creatures, the skins don't sell for much of anything, and if I'm fighting spiders the venom sacks they drop sell for an impressive 1 gold each.

Honestly, I'd like to see actual, viable ways to acquire essential reagents and fuels. The agriculture as implemented currently is just another cash sink of buckets and seeds with the added enjoyment of delay. Other ways to obtain crafting fuels are nonexistent.

 

Because it's a player driven economy.

Unlike other games where the economy is just background noise, we're trying to make a functional economy where the players are the STARS of the show. The NPC's are only there to do two things. 1. Act as a gold sink. Every time you buy something from an NPC you're throwing your wealth out the window! This helps keep inflation down. The NPC is not going to give you 10 gold for curing salt because the developers WANT you to buy from other players. 2. To help control runaway inflation by the players once you learn to buy from them. If an NPC is selling curing salt cheaper than the players, you can bet you'll be buying from them. This makes it very hard to sell for more than what the NPC's will sell it for. So some silly players might try to sell for more than 20 gold right now, but only the suckers are going to pay that. Most people will "figure it out" and they'll only buy for a lower rate than the NPC is selling for.

For example, right now all these players are trying to sell corpse wax for 20 gold each on the Owl's Head public vendor. These people either don't understand the economy or they don't care and they're just trying to get someone to buy it by mistake. Regardless, I bought 1000 corpse wax from someone selling at 4 gold per corpse wax a few days ago. Why? Because it was less than the NPC's ever sell it for! So it's a great deal!

I can't tell you that joe average player will understand this or enjoy this. I can only tell you that when you're dealing with an economy this sophisticated, the best players will "get it" and profit from it. But just like our real life economy that doesn't mean that joe average player will get the shaft in day to day dealings. Joe average player's money is good the world round. So there will be good deals for him too, if he's willing to pay attention and buy low.

 

You'll find a player vendor that you "trust" not to gouge the prices. You'll go there and he or she will treat you well. They'll make their money, but they won't do it on the backs of their customers.

Right now I'm buying a ton of one item from the same guy. I have been for weeks off the public vendors, and no matter how many of these items I buy he never raises the price. Why? Because he understands that the moment he does, that gives any competition the ability to steal away his best customer. He's making his money and then some, and I'm getting a good price for this work.

You guys should relax but pay attention, this is going to be awesome.

 

Someone needs to do the following :

1. Find a nearby POT with the appropriate vendor placed next to the entrance
2. Buy up all the fuels at the regular prices
3. Set up a vendor in Owl's Head
4. Sell the fuels at an increased price which is still below the NPC price
5. Advertise the heck of their scheme

Bingo, instant profit.

 

It's only been a few days since persistence, lets not panic this soon.

 

Yep. I'm surprised we're not seeing more of that already.

I know I'm counting on that to happen in Rats Nest. I hope there are several operations like that importing basic goods into my town. It depends on how many people end up living there of course, but I'm going to have 524 available lots so it could be BIG MONEY for someone.

 

Aye, I sell my goods really cheaply, but don't advertise nor sell it anywhere but my own secluded little shop in the middle of nowhere's-ville.

So I expect someone will eventually come up with the bright idea of simply buying my entire stock, increasing the price, and reselling it in some other town... Perhaps they will even start value-adding, by adding another layer of enchantment, or whatever.

Of course, then I'll just increase my price slightly to offset for demand, and simply make more inventory.

Everyone wins.

 

I like how the economy is setup in Shroud of the Avatar... it's different... if I want something similar to other MMORPGs then would it be much better to just play those instead?

 

I'm sure some of those as old as me remember doing this in UO. I'd go to Minoc or Vesper and buy all the regs at low price, then resell to the vendor in Britain at a profit. As I sold items the NPC price would come down until someone bulk purchased from them again driving it back up, so I could do the same again.

 

Yes this is a huge issue right now that makes No sense, as far as game play other then to once again penalize the players. what the point?

Sorry some of this is very wrong,
lets start with this one,

The Developers have made it so you have to buy it from NPC, this is 99.9% the only way to get them, (.1%, the few places to harvest them, getting 1 from loot, Growing some specific in a garden).
So I completely disagree with you saying we have to buy them from other players, that's the last thing we need to do, or should do. thers way to many vendors out there that will have them for the regular price (which is way high to start with).

Now in order for a economy to actually function it has to be Fair, allowing the selling prices to go up as players buy items, but not allowing the buying prices to also increase is completely a one sided story, completely unfair, and not adding to the game economy or enjoyment of playing. So YES the NPC should be paying 10 gold for curing salt if he is selling it for 20g each. and after he buys so much of it, the price should start to go down, this would be a sophisticated economy, not the joke it is now, if you think different, well I'm sorry,

This is not even a option, who in there right mind is going to pay the extra gold to buy black perl off the public vendor for even 10 gold fully knowing I can just buy it for 8 gold off a NPC vendor in another town?
I mean if you are saying you will, ill stock it right up!
But your not going to, your simply going to buy it cheaper some were else.

What is sad, is it just a huge inconvenience for us to now have to go and look for vendors that have items at a fair market value, adds to a bigger time sink to crafting, as if players don't got enough BS to deal with, because of a completely faulty crafting system over all, that is in need of serious tweaks.