Player owned town portals

So let's say you are a merchant. You have been lot at Owls's head, Braemer, but not much at Holtrot.
Your merchant fame at Owl's head is at 800, Braemar 1000, Holtrot 100.
At Owl's head, new game-level information #12 was issued. Braemar is currently at #10, Holtrot is at #7.

When the merchant arrives at Owl's head and spends some time in the taverns, merchant's information level is raised to #12.
At Braemar, since merchant has high fame point of 1000, the news will be immediately accepted, raising Braemar's information to #12, however since the merchant has low fame at Holtrot, Holtrot's information level may only become 8.1 by the merchant's visit.
At some point in the game, major game-changing event happen, and all towns that have information level less than #11 may be penalized, and difficulty of travel may change around Holtrot.

Having merchant's per-settlement fame affect in game politics, merchant needs to keep both of their local and long-distance towns up to date (you can have one merchant specialized in long distance communication, and then have their local partners re-distribute information in nearby settlements) to stay profitable. Since such change is difficult to detect by automated systems, we can have realistic change of events that throws off external sites while still staying consistent.


Let's say you are a guild leader who control large section of the map. You need production of certain NPC-obtainable material ramped up at the front lines. You will have to:

1. Issue a decree that will change production patterns at your Guild Headquarters.
2. Find a merchant that has high fame at front lines, and ask him to take the news there.

This will not be easy unless the merchant has spent considerable amount of time earning fame at the front lines in advance, and when this happens, the merchant will be rewarded for his contribution.

If we make NPC information a commodity, merchants will be able to change the world they reside in.

 

I like your posts and they are in pretty good depth. Not to be dismissive but I think you should start a new thread on this topic because it is pretty involved, and although it does affect the player town portals a bit, It should have its own discussion.

 

thats actually insanely insightful, but probably too detailed. but, i think almost regardless, there will be a drive to external websites for information since really, it's just how more or less we've always power-gamed. so even if there was an attempt to debug or thwart automated efforts, it would be rather instant on trying to find a way around it (sotaloot.com) or plenty of other means, that will end up being developed.

really liked your post though, and the system you described while not "implemented" sounds interesting in just conception. glad you're here, stick around.

 

Hmmmmm....

For me a trade route is when two towns are connected together via the exchange of goods in such a way that people in either town can benefit. There is nothing in that definition that says anything about time or distance, nor of pain suffered in the name of "immersion". I think what I offer is a pragmatic definition of a trade route. I offer this in defense of Caliya's questions, which seemed fair, but I make no statement about her other posts on this forum so don't take this as a blanket approval of all her posts.

Portals, lunar rifts, or any kind of quick travel, should be implemented with some caution. I'd like to see a balance of convenience and not making the game faceroll easy. I don't want to discourage casual gamers because some community members believe that we must suffer an arduous journey of pain in order to make any amount of gold. We want to encourage casual gamers by offering them rich gameplay without necessarily pandering to the ultra-convenience of some modern MMOs. I'd like to see shipping and I'd like that to be inter-regional (perhaps there will need to be some moderation in how it is implemented).

On the profitability of trades within regional economies: No, the most profitable trade should not be intra-region but inter-region. The greater the effort required to make the trade (recall only painful arduous journeys are meaningful from an immersion PoV) then such trades should be of greater value. A trade being the movement of goods from one location to another (of any distance) in exchange for another set of goods or money. Even if there is frequent fast travel and a global economy this would still be true. I add the caveat that effort obviously doesn't equate to value, but is only a factor. The logic I use here is to point out that more effort should corroborate with trades of a higher value.

Given that there will be barriers to movement and a lack of a singular global pricing system then we have a notion of regional economies. The introduction of some fast travel will not break this. On the other hand, the introduction of singular global pricing would eradicate regional economies by definition. If there were very few barriers to movement and fast travel was the norm then we'd see the prices tend towards singular global pricing. I'm not advocating global pricing but rather I'd like some balance of regional economies and convenient travel.

I would also like to bring sotawiki into this discussion, while it doesn't have prices at the moment, it is an exogenous source of information and one which is incredibly useful. It won't be blocked nor forbidden because that would be highly damaging to the game and the community.

 

It really hinges on just how limited fast travel will be. If people retain the ability to zone home then portals would have no impact at all. But due to the size of the map and the plans to double that size with each release and the future addition of roaming monsters, travel distance and time is substantial factor when pricing goods gathered from far off regions. I am not sure there will be global pricing because of this, but who knows until we actually get a look at episode one.

 

I think we broadly agree. I don't think we will see global pricing, at least not at the player vendor level. Admittedly it doesn't need to be singular pricing in the most precise meaning of the word but rather the spread of prices is narrow and that players feel like the economy is global (granted some will complain that if you don't travel for X hours from town to town then the economy must be global).

If there was a tendency to global pricing then I would bet that the devs will make changes to the game in order to preserve the idea of regional economies (a hunch). Perhaps come Ep2, and later, they will relax the definition of regional to become "per island": i.e. Novia is (almost) a single economy with roughly singular pricing. To achieve the latter would require easy movement across Novia though (come Ep2). Currently, I'm not expecting this as an outcome either though.