Something I saw made me sad

[Creme]

I was watching Market the other night, this was maybe a week ago, and it was in the latter part of the evening. A new player came into channel and linked a few T1 formulas/techs and listed them for sale. There were no takers.

About 20 minutes later, the same player linked 3 items of jewelry, all bronze, unteched, also for sale. Again, no takers. A few players offered suggestions to list those items on the connie in NT (which btw, is borderline broken because of being overlisted). I hope very very much that someone eventually purchased those pieces.

I thought about going later and buying them myself, but then didn't.

My reasoning:

If there's not a market for these low level unteched crafted items, then my purchasing these items might lead this player into thinking that there WAS indeed a market for such things, and then this player might go off, craft a bunch of them, and then get hit with connie listing fees and in 2 weeks, find them in his/her vault. Then he might get really discouraged and quit.

Then again, he might get discouraged and quit over not being able to make coin crafting.

To me, it seemed like a catch-22. Buy a few pieces up and give this new player a false sense of expectation, or don't buy and hope that he learns of other means of making coin off of crafting (or elsewhere).

What is there that we, as seasoned players can do, to try and stimulate the money earning capabilities of new players into the game?

Are there changes that Virtrium can implement, perhaps increasing pawn prices on T1/T2 items, but only if the players adventure/craft rating is low?

Even here, there would be potential for taking advantage, in that a player could craft a ton of materials and then hand them off to a low level alt and sell them...BUT, I'm thinking of not a HUGE increase in pawn price for this tier, but just maybe enough to make it worthwhile for a new player to be able to earn a decent amount off these items, perhaps 70% of a fair market price?

I don't know, I just know it made me feel a little sad, and disturbed to think that this new player (who was so very very polite btw), might quit out of not getting a sense of growth/achievement in crafting.

I haven't seen this player again, and honestly, I don't remember the player's name. I just remember how very nice he/she seemed and how sad that there was no market for his/her goods.

[Kumu Honua]

That's one of the major problems for Horizons.

Economy is non-existant. There is no churn of new players to feed, and no need for wealth after a easy to reach point.

As an alternative...you might want to direct him to dragons who might purchase his goods for hoard value. At least his wares might be felt as useful to him that way.

[Creme]

That's a great idea. It's been so long since dragons fed off mass quantities of crafted items that I'd forgotten all about it.

So, young biped crafter makes crafted items to sell to new dragons for hoard.

Something needs to feed income to new dragons then.

This is good though, because the more ideas that we can collect, maybe we can have a list of suggestions for bipeds/dragons to get off the ground, income-wise; perhaps a new user's guide to making money in Istaria.

[Digita]

Another thought would be to discount consigner fees for low levels (with some checks in place of course to prevent abuse of this by seasoned players).

[Kulamata]

Nicely raised point. When Vi works their way through the current list, it would be nice if they could find a good economist willing to consult for IBM's who could help construct a viable economy.

The only version of the economy that really worked was pre-merge after the adventurer poverty issue was corrected. A lot of tinkering since was ineffectual or harmful.

[Shian]

Well, to be perfectly honest, there really is no market. This game has very little economy, so coming into the game hoping to treat it as any other to make coin would just not be possible.

It has often puzzled me at how in such a game where all the mechanics are the same, the economy simply isn't there. Pointing this out to the player and telling them where coin comes from would probably have been best.

[Peaches]

Bottom line, is Horizons needs an influx of players. Without the game being on the market for players to buy, makes it even harder to get new players.

[Tryagain]

Bottom line, is Horizons needs an influx of players. Without the game being on the market for players to buy, makes it even harder to get new players.

umm publishers are in it to make $$$ no publisher will touch HZ because there is absolutely no possibility of any money to be made. I highly doubt Vitrium has the resources to publish a new copy of the game for distribution. In short there is no chance of there being new copies of HZ on the market ever again.

Instead they should stick to the download and free trial system. Advertise when the resources allow it. Its a slow road for HZ but I think HZ has enough support to hammer out the changes slowly over time.

As to this new fella yeah that always kind of made me feel bad. I however made the mistake of buying those items at that time. They did get fed to my dragon though.... I doubt HZ will have a market again anytime soon. If vitrium can reach their 10K subscriber goal perhaps then yes. But thats a double edged sword of player retention as well.

[gopher65]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: either institute permanent item decay (baaaad idea. It is truely unfun to have a suit of armour that you've spent *months* working on just go poof.) or, as a better alternative, make several new classes of craftable consumables that are *actually desired* by players. The new confectioner stuff is a good first step (but limited step) in this direction. But things like craftable single or limited use scrolls (like spells, but consumable like trinkets) that take rarish resources, and other such things (banners, with craftable fuel for them) are the only solution to this problem.

Sure you can say "it will all go away if we have enough player churn". But realistically this is not freaking WoW! HZ will never ever ever ever ever create enough churn to make the economy work. Consumables are the only answer for a low population game like this because they scale beautifully if properly balanced.

[pevil2000]

the trouble with this game economy-wise is:

1. lack of new players that can't make everything themselves, therefore needing to buy the stuff

2. people are too nice! We give away everything pretty much on here, and I'm not complaining coz I love the community and community spirit, but for those trying to earn coin for lair/plot/repairs/whatever pretty much just have to go out and kill for it

3. equipment isn't as important as something like WoW. Ok, I'm only lvl 72, not 'end-game' yet. And it is more important for a dragon at 100 than for a multiclassed biped (in the sense of I imagine that once you get heavily multiclassed, you would still survive better naked than a T5 teched 100 rating biped). But at the end of the day you can easily cope without the techs, be it crafting or adventuring, unlike WoW where at end game if you're all in whites, you're pretty much doomed. (obviously stuff like class/monster/player skill comes in here as well)

4. as said by gopher, not enough is consumable. I hate durability on items in games, but at least if it has the chance to break for good, it keeps the economy from stagnating.

Without changing the above, which tbh I don't want to be changed, the only way to reliably allow moneymaking is to remove the PB lowering their prices after x amount of y is sold to them. Tell people to make gems etc, they can only farm so many before they have to log out, or get bored. Either that, or encourage them to take up building classes and help out on plots/lairs for coin.

[Antonath]

Perhaps they need to reimplement / reactivate the old Imperial Task Master system.

Basically, have an NPC that gives a quest to craft 10 or 20 or even more items for the Empire's armouries - weapons, armour, scales, maybe even spells. When handed in, the player gets some XP and coin reward. Rewards should drop off at higher tiers, but still be available.

The old system was limited to "hand in a bundle of metal bars" or "hand in a bundle of logs" and the like, but it shouldn't take much work to implement "hand in a bundle of swords" - assuming the old system is still in place, just switched off.

That would solve the problem of new players getting coin, as well as getting them a boost to crafting xp when they really need it. Unfortunately, it does nothing about getting cash away from higher-level players.

Maybe we need server-wide construction events where the Empire does the building, but the public pays for it

Antonath

[Shian]

Heh. Pevil you are right about the community spirit. Anything I have needed or wanted has been given to me. Anything I have been able to give out in kind, I have given. Such is the nature of Istaria. An odd one, but the 'pay it forward' deal seems to work very nicely here.

I made coin- enough for a lair as a young dragon by pawining off a few lodestones and watching the market channel for payable lairwork and making a healthy list of places I could work. Although this certainly did not stop a few other dragons who I obviously did not know try to give me free coin.

I like Antonath's idea though.

[Vermithraxx]

Old thread about the economy from a while back:

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ad.php?t=16785

Final consensus breaks down to it being too big of a project to implement, and was never really properly established (ever) in this game.

[Steelclaw]

WTB $EEKOMG <T1 resource, processed>, paying $WTFTHATSIT each! PST!

Yes, T1 resources sell, but only as long as you don't get greedy and charge too much.

[Royal]

Solution is:
Make every item player-bound on equip.

[Sigi]

I think there is a (perhaps small) market for T1 and T2 atuff but it has to be reasonably priced so you can buy it at low level / not much coin. I'm not in the habit of asking for things so I either have to buy or have to make it myself. I noticed a difference in the stocking of consigners between Unity and Chaos. At Unity the connie at Kion was mostly used and there was a rather good (in my opinion) selection of things for reaonable prices. You could buy your cargo disk or "second hand" armor etc., spread out over all tiers. At NT there was a nice selection of cheap T1 basics.
At Chaos there is a huge amount of T1 stuff, sometimes very overpriced and T2 things like a simple socketed weapon, a slate cargodisk of any sort are very hard to find. Perhaps I'm the only one or one of the few who would like to be able to buy those things at a connie, but if not there is a market there.

[gopher65]

WTB $EEKOMG <T1 resource, processed>, paying $WTFTHATSIT each! PST!

Yes, T1 resources sell, but only as long as you don't get greedy and charge too much.

Yeah, when I play (rare as it is these days) I am always looking for tier 1 resources. Most people don't want to make them because they no longer get XP for them. But if you see a new player, tell them to just make bricks or bars and dump them on a consigner. This is a good way to make significant amounts of money. I dumped .... oh... probably 10 gold into tier 1 resources (did most of the tier II and III myself) for my plot, and that was largely just walls and trees. Some of that was done by experienced players looking for a little silver, but a good portion of it was done by new players.

At 1 to 2 silver *per unit applied* for tier 1 stuff, that adds up quickly. A few hundred silver is a great deal of money when you are under level 40.

Also, there weren't always people looking to build. So I often checked the main consigners for Sandstone Bricks so that I didn't have to mine them myself. The larger the stack the better, but I bought a few stacks of 15 Bricks if I happened to see them. So tell new players to dump resources on the consigners. I know I'm not the only one who buys them, and for a hefty price too. I'd suggest a price of 16 copper per brick (someone else check that out, I might have made a mistake. Maybe it is 160 per brick?).

[Pharcellus]

HZ doesn't need a "professional economist" to fix its economy. Most of the things you can do to "fix it" most anyone can figure out.

Game economies are rather simple things, making them complex just turns people off. We don't need "stock markets" or "currency exchanges" or anything like that. We simply need to come up with a system that has simple, but effective pressures on both supply and demand to cause it to function. The top candidates are:

1. Item/Equipment Decay - an idea loved by some, hated by many. There are many ways of doing it, and I know one way which would probably work well with Horizons as it is, but there are several which could be used if the crafting system were changed a bit.

2. Regular, repeating money sinks
a. the teleportal system is one way, but there are far too many "free" ports in the system, which basically allows the sink to be avoided, for the most part. Fix that and make all ports cost appropriate to their destinations and those traveling.
b. Property taxes on plot owners is another good one. Pay your tax, or your land gets reclaimed. Solves two issues at once. The more and better structures on a plot, the larger the plot, and the better the location, the higher the tax. Gives people a reason to choose smaller plots and lesser-tier structures.
c. Consigner fees are a small sink on sellers, but not really enough to notice. I don't think there is a need to change the way it works, as it makes it unrealistically unfeasible to use otherwise.
d. Machine use fees - going kinda hand-in-hand with item decay, using machines degrades them. Imperial machines are managed by the empire, have usage costs on them per item made, and are automatically maintained at top efficiency. Player plot machines would have to be player-maintained, and players could also set costs on their use. Efficiency would go down until it went to a certain point in the negatives in terms of bonus, whereupon it would cease to function until "maintained".
e. Trainer/training fees - many other games charge coin to advance your skills once you reach another level via going to a trainer. HZ can take advantage of this concept as a money sink as well.
f. Resource field usage fees - yes, you would have to have a permit to harvest Imperial resource fields, which would be limited in time, and cost money to obtain. Enforcement would take the form of getting "0s" from any resource nodes in a field that you didn't purchase a permit for.

3. Changing the formula/tech sales over to coin instead of "lore tokens" and "Imperial Bounty Markers". My preference would be to completely change the form/tech system over to a quested knowledge system, but that's well out of scope for HZ at this point. However, there's really little point in the lore token/IBM system. We have a plethora of separate currencies with little reason to have them. Coin is good enough.

4. Vault usage fees - part of a suggestion to revamp vault storage. Basically, make vault storage unlimited, but using stacks/space above a certain "free" number costs during the attempt to put materials in. However, once the fee is paid, the extra space lasts for some limited time, like a week or a month. In an effort to curb abuse, the cost could also rise exponentially.

Of course, all this leads naturally into revamping money sources as well as creating new and adjusting old sinks. The income and outflow of money through the system can readily be modeled and adjusted as necessary to make coin have value again. Some ideas for that include:

1. Fix mob coin drops - monsters who shouldn't be carrying coin pretty much don't right now; a notable exception is gruoks. Only humanoid monsters should be carrying coin. Undead is a maybe; my first impulse is to say "no", but it is feasible to make undead act on the vice of greed, even though it is otherwise pointless for them to do so. Instead of coin, mobs should drop trophies (most do, but some drop rates are out of whack), components, resources, or other valuables which can be sold to other players, or to the empire via pawn brokers or imperial quartermasters.

2. Re-do Imperial Quartermasters - rename the tech-vendors as "Imperial Loremasters", and create a new set of NPCs in every town who give out "Craft xxx <items>" quests. We used to have those in the past; the ones who gave out Imperial Resource Parcel forms and quests. However, they could also ask for specific kinds of items in exchange for coin. It shouldn't be as good a price as what players are expected to pay for the same items, keeping the value of selling to other players higher.

3. Imperial Construction projects - all "community projects", the Empire should pay out coin for each construction unit applied, just like player construction projects. That should be very easy to do, since the system is already in-place; just would require the devs to put in the coin amounts, which I would recommend doing programmatically, rather than tasking some intern to do such a tedious and error-prone job.

4. More bounties - trophy hunters fill this niche pretty good, but there could also be imperial bounty masters who give out new and/or different bounty tasks all the time, just to get people to go explore the world, or fight a new WA invasion. Just one more way to generate coin.

Naturally, a lot of these suggestions are distasteful to the vast majority of HZ players, mainly because we've "had it free or cheap" for so long, we feel like we are entitled to it staying that way. However, what makes economies work are cost pressures on many basic necessities, specifically because time and resources aren't free, and things don't last forever in perfect condition. The need for consumption is at the heart of what drives any economy, and that principle has to be integrated well into any virtual economy for it to be viable.

Now, some will say "we don't need to model real life; we come here to get AWAY from that". While that is true if we get obsessed with making the system overly complex, cumbersome, and tedious, the game HAS to have elements of RL systems to even be playable to begin with. IE, it already, at a minimum, mimics RL in many very key ways. If it didn't, it wouldn't be much of a game, let alone a RPG. The trick is finding the right balance of things which stimulate the economy without becoming too much of a burden on the average player to make it "not fun".

[Pharcellus]

Oh, another point that was brought up:

Hand-me-downs - armor should be customized per character (attuned-on-equip). Weapons and other equipment can optionally be customized per character (maybe through the use of customization kits, or just add a special 0-slot tech making them attune-on-equip). Customized weapons can do a bit more damage, or have their level/skill requirements lowered.

Guild Wars does this automatically when armor is crafted. It is customized to the character and cannot be traded or worn by anyone else. Weapons are not customized, as they can be found as loot (wearable armor is never found as loot), but you can go to a weapon crafter NPC and have your weapons customized. Doing so costs a very small amount of coin, gives the weapon a 20% damage bonus, and makes the weapon untradeable/unuseable by anyone else permanently.

[Vaz]

Why is a "functional" economy necessary? Why must the primary cause of all negative behaviour in the world, greed, be stimulated?