Recipies need to have an adjustment made bfore this goes "Live" . . .

yeah but when I screamed that it was true! (sorta)

 

Sadly (for me) @Chris recently said he pretty much likes where the economy is right now which tells me that pretty much everything I'd like to see in the economy just isn't going to happen.. (with the possible exception of multi-tier currency at some point).

I would've taken a VERY different approach to the economy.. albeit a more expensive one.. Multi-tier currency would be a given. I would NOT use crafting fuels as a mandatory gold sink. I don't care for that at all. All fuels would be harvestable. I would limit how much money NPC merchants had to buy goods from an individual player so that they aren't major gold faucets whose only limit is how much loot you have to sell them.. I would increase output of refining skills by quite a bit and probably tweak drops.

There would still be plenty of nobs and levers to tweak the economy with. But increasing refined resources would bring prices down.. and I see no reason to care how much material someone has sitting in their chest in a back room somewhere. by all means let someone flood the market and bring prices down.. loot and NPC merchants control the influx of gold..

Goods being sold on player merchants could be sold off to the 'world' at an average market price if they don't sell after so many weeks. It then enters the loot tables to be found as loot or sold from an NPC.. or potentially recycled in the market as resources.

NPCs would sell small quantities of all basic resources and refined resources for a good profit.

Two major issues I have with NPC merchants.. unlimited gold.. unlimited product. They should have a lot sure.. but it should be finite.

Merchant prices would auto-balance vs player vendors.. example: Merchant has 1,000 coal total to sell per hour at 10g each. Player vendor in same town has sold batches of 2,000 coal for 14,000g (7 gold each). Merchant lowers prices to 8 gold each.. The reverse would also be true.. if player sells successfully for a higher amount the NPC would raise rates because they think they can get away with it).

Anyway.. just a few thoughts. Not what everyone else would like I'm sure but that's the sort of route I would've taken. Prices would be lower, currency would be worth more. Too much gold input.. can either reduce drops, gold available on merchants or change merchant prices. Too little gold input? Do the opposite. Always plenty of ways to control things.

But this thousands of gold per hour farming business.. just not to my liking personally.

 

Yeah, why does that corner npc need my 10,000 explosive potions? And at 20 per vial? Npc buying anything and always having the gp is silly. And always in full stock too. Think of the trade opportunities if a town is run out of coal by the local smelter! Bring it in from another region and... Oh wait, regional economy was dead on arrival due to whiners wanting teleports. Alas.

 

You want new players crafting rock maple and grey pine on day one or two ? They have all basic recipes need it to start them on the path to crafting available on NPC vendors. Later on after a month or two , theyll be able to spend 7.5k gold or more for a recipe.

On a side note ... im trying for a month now to craft some rock maple but i find it very difficult to farm/buy the resin...so aquiring the materials can be more problematic then aquiring the recipe.

Here we can agree... but i think we have different views on what that entails.

 

na do not want that but if I go out like you and I do, one should not have to Work that hard to find / earn these recipes?

Say I go to the Maple Sugar Forest and find the Sap Queen and do her quest I can learn how to combine the resin with the wood to make them Rock hard.

There are so many better ways to have gone about this than restrict it so that only the power gamer are the ones reaping the rewards.

End state would be the Ingenuitive, insightful, and rewarding crafting experience that is supposed to be a part of the game.

EVEN MORE something a Crafter can do other then being forced to be a monster adventurer first.

Also again Making a bow stave is making a bow stave - -turning maple into Rock Maple is another thing, but if you have Maple, Rock Maple, Grey Pine, whatever wood prepared, one should be able to turn it into a Bow Stave without the redundant special wood recipes.

So many things not well rounded and racing to "Release"

 

The decision to make loot more exciting - loot bundles - forced recipies in the loot direction.

Okay, loot can have -special- recipies, that's fine.
(Sometimes I am asking the question, why a skeleton mage or other creatures carry recipies? After reading/learning them, why carrying the scrolls? That's another story ...)

But for what reason do we have crafting masters in each town, if they can't tell us basic - and of course specializing - crafting abilities?
Wouldn't it be more interesting, a master crafter would give us the ability to craft an item, after we learned the recipe AND made (for example) 10 of them?
We could also receive Crafting XP for this

May be more recipes should be connected to our skill lvl (like it is for some of them) to give a meaning to our abilities and the difficulty to craft items?
I assume, to craft with iron or copper ore is less difficulty as to craft meteoric iron or constantan ore.

Finding/Bying/Learning special recipes at special locations is a great idea anyway. This was explained in Releases before, so special regions should have special (cloth/armor/weapon) - and also recipes of stuff from those regions.
If I want to make clothes and armors of Norgad style, well, I should travel there and learn from a master crafter.
If I prefer to craft Katanas, I should travel to the Perennieal Coast and learn how to do this from a master blacksmith in this region ...

From another point of view: not all crafters would use meteoric iron or constantan or white iron ... why shouldn't they have specialized on less materials?
May be sometimes there is just ONE in a region who can tell me to do THIS special kind of weapon/armor or how to make/use THESE special materials?
May be we have THE Master Crafter specialized on iron stuff in one town and the other Master Crafter prefering copper in another?
And just a few specialized to meteoric or -to take the example from above- rock maple items? And these Crafters could sell/learn us the recipes therefor?

Well, sometimes, like for magic elemental skills, they could ask to do a favor, bevor telling them to us
It's interesting to find sometimes a recipe in loot, but I prefered to explore the lands and to receive recipes from Crafters.
Buying is easy, but shouldn't be the only possible way to receive them, especially special recipes ...

The amount of recipes and to learn about where to find the needed materials is still a challenge for every new player!
Endless running around and hoping for a loot drop seems not the best way to make players happy who really want to be a Crafter.
Just my thoughts about this

 

Regional is (was) an great concept but before they even remotely consider Turing this on the need to have the core of crafting fleshed out.

They have tons of input and concerns. Sorry but "release" is not solid without it.

I still thnk it was a cop out when they just scrapped alloy types and used the resources in combination with other what was it tin, tungsten, nickle, and (brain Fart) which could have given so many more alloys but :-(

 

I agree with multi tier currency, that would make 10,000 gold actually worth something, and really deviate from the UO economic model...

I fail to understand "Why?", everyone is so concerned about "release", its not as if the Devs are planning to "stop" development, their not even close to stopping, I don't understand why some players are panicking...

The regional economy can't be based on pricing alone, fuels need to "sell out" and be out of stock until the next shipment arrives... The caravans should traverse the roads(new encounters), and the passes, they should be attacked by the enemy(PvP), and protected by the players(Heros), so that the shipments can reach their destinations... Can you imagine coming across a caravan that has a dead crew, and finding the invoice as to its destination, then climbing aboard, to deliver it safely for a reward... What a quest that would be, Aya... You could be a "scallywag" or a "Hero", your choice to lose karma or gain it... Loot the "Goods" or "deliver" it, for the good of the region... These caravans should be parked for awhile outside of an Iron, Copper, Silver or Gold mine with players and NPCs mining inside to fill the wagon outside (Players would sell their ore to the drivers, and be off limits to PvP or not), players could either attack the Crew (driver and guards) or help to defend the crew (PvP)...

I think the Crafting system and the recipe loot drops are fine the way they are. no need to change a thing at this point... Release or no... I'm having "Fun" and I don't care if anyone else "isn't having fun", your loss...

 

I believe they are concerned about first impressions on new players. A large influx of players is better than not.

I recall once upon a time having a discussion about caravans much in the way you described. T'would indeed be a fine thing and would do well as a PvP scenario if done properly.

 

To add to what @Bowen Bloodgood said which I think would have been fantastic.

I love deep crafting systems in theory. Having to make other things in order to make the ultimate goal item. The problem is that without limitations and actually having to choose a trade path, we have everyone being everything which really kills the demand and market in crafted goods. What should have happened is that people who wanted to get into crafting should have had to choose a trade with their characters. You want to be a fletcher? Awesome, you take the path of learning how to make bows which could include the skills of forestry to start, eventually learning milling and once you were proficient in that, taking on the trade of fletcher and building bows and of course, you could make it more specific than that; this is just an example.

This would help to curb an overabundance of items and even out the market because people would pick one path rather than all paths and in many cases, would choose based on the demand of the economy at the time. It would also mean that we'd see a lot of players using resource gathering and eventually refining as a means of making money at the start because there would be a huge demand for resources from people skilling the next step in the profession. Eventually they should have had players have to choose a certain special area of the trade which sets them apart from other people who become masters of the trade so that everyone is making different items that have high demand.

As it stands, crafting is all over the place with no limits and while XP pools have been a decent idea for adventuring skills, I am finding them infuriating for crafting. Every time I turn around, I have to go back out and grind resources when my gathering abilities are already where I want them to be. Now I'd just like the ability to buy resources from other players and skill off that but the XP pool prevents me from being able to do that and unless I constantly go out with a large group of people to skin things (and I originally wanted to be a pure crafter for the most part), I can't gain enough XP to keep up with skilling my trades.

 

Caravans were something I was super excited about. I wanted to be able to sell large quantities of items to guilds and have to hire player mercenaries to make sure we delivered them without being attacked by others and the load stolen. It was a really big missed opportunity to involve PVP into a mechanic that would have been a lot of fun. For those who didn't like the idea of PVP but needed to move large loads somewhere for someone, it would have been a good way to establish another player run trade in game of making broker/transporting companies by people who do so the player would have never had to have a hand in any unwanted PVP, just have to rely on the skills of the players moving the goods. If the company didn't make it, their reputation with players in game would diminish and they wouldn't get jobs... just like life.

 

Therefor it would be great to have an own material knowledge skill to specialize on materials and learn how to handle/craft them. After that it would only need to learn how to make a bow, a sword, a chair, whatever

We could prefer making a special material by our own or decide to buy it...

 

@Weins201

I will keep this short since it is usually deleted.

But my old suggestion from when they implemented the recipe drops thingie which would mitigate the issues you outline in the op:

Have almost ALL the loot drop recipes on "black market" NPCs, BUT for really really high gold prices. Like 5-25k gold high.


What this does is three things:
1
create availability as a luxury feeling, which is a gold sink for the very rich.
If you can't find it? Sure now you have the option to pay through the nose to get it.

2
Set a price ceiling on the loot recipes. This so that cartels etc can't as easily corner a market to price hike it.

3
Create an in game lore reason for the recipe spread. In that the current trade guilds (just like in earth history) restricts the trades of skills etc. This then makes recipes a kind of hard currency which is traded/looted. Plus that they can still be got from the "black market" which then creates a lore for why they exist. Like the guy in Kingsport etc.

(4)
Side effect
Keep some as loot only making those really exclusive. Instead of now when everything is semi rare but nothing is exclusive.

 

I think ultimately the real culprit behind this is the lack of a world market to keep the "player economy" in check. People should craft because they enjoy crafting, but what we have now is that prices are so high that the newer player sees it's easier to craft than to pay the high prices. I'm certainly not going to pay 100k for a suit of armor when I can make a full set of epic exceptional in less time than it takes for me to earn 50k. If I build it myself start to finish I not only expend less effort but I keep my money.

If ore were sold from the world market (NPCs) at a reasonable price a couple things would happen. 1: players would have to price competitively with NPCs (but have the advantage of selling in bulk sums).. 2: only people who actually enjoy mining who mine because your average player would actually be able to afford to buy the ore without tons of gold farming.

Law of least effort. People are going to chose whatever feels like the least amount of effort them to reach their goal. Earn the gold to pay player's high prices.. or learn to craft and do it yourself. If prices were affordable, no one would feel pushed into self sufficiency.

If the rule was.. everyone does everything just because they can, everyone would all have the same builds, but skill building is a lot of work. So people only build what they really want or feel they need. I don't think crafting is really any different.

If all we did was build in limits than a lot of people would simply do what I do and use multiple characters to bypass those limits. (Though my reasons for multiple characters is RP driven), we'd be back to UO-like crafting mules and then we'd have the same issue. Prices need to come down to something people feel they can afford.

 

For clarification, tho you need an advanced recipie to craft the string and bow stave, you so not need an advanced recipie to craft a bow from advanced components.

There arent many, but there are a few vendors out there that sell advanced components for often half or less than half of the cost of the recipie. I dont think this has caught on widely tho due to the ammount of people who have hunted down everything to make what they need themselves.

But as somone who isnt a fan of hunting for recipies and grining alot of producer skills, i have a vendor i go to to buy advanced sword components when i wanna build swords

And just for the sake or referring to realism, if you know how to work iron but never worked copper, you will break your tools trying to work copper. I know that sifferent wood has differences in the material that make them different to work with too, so its not far fetched to have a different method for turning 2 different materials into the same thing

 

Perhaps it could be changed, so teleporting would only work until a given weight (body+Armor+Weapon) So Teleporting all stuff to every location wouldn't work any longer

 

If only players could sell intermediate components instead of each crafter having to make everything themselves... >_>

Also, I'm amused that for some reason, the binding recipes were the only ones I decided to learn before they took them away from the Owl's Head vendor.

Someone gets it. Now we just need for player vendors able to sell partial stacks, so we don't have to choke our vendor inventory with ten instances and quantities of the same item, and then we can focus on a bigger variety instead.

When there are 100 times more players trying to craft, there will also be 100 times more players finding recipes. (More or less.) So the end result should scale to much like it is now. Those recipes are finally starting to reach the point where people aren't willing to pay as much for most of them, though they're still nowhere near as dead as the obsidian and potion recipes have become.

 

I think it's optimistic to think new players will stay long enough to have exactly this problem.

 

and this is what I am trying to fix, TY

 

YES, but 500 gold each. It wasn't like everyone was able to just buy every recipe. It was expensive. People spend hundreds of thousands of gold buying recipes.