The Arelithian Economy: You Can't Eat Gold

[Thake]

I don't know where you guys buy your stuff. Attunement Potions 7k?? I know at least 2 shops that sell them at 4.5k on a regular basis.

[The Man of the Moon]

I don't know where you guys buy your stuff. Attunement Potions 7k?? I know at least 2 shops that sell them at 4.5k on a regular basis.

For so long (since I came on Arelith almost a year ago) the prices had been between 7k and 10k.

Nice that someone makes efforts to lift back to decent prices those silly expensive potions. I will check to find those you located, but I believe as long as someone took over them asap they found them, the expensive prices will continue out there.

[Rattus_norvegicus99]

I played a merchant slave character for a year and I can tell you, the RP was very alive for Martin. In fact, he was so busy I rarely had time to 'adventure' - both in crafting and in gathering/supplying others with goods. And he paid out well for certain supplies.

That said, gold is easy to come by. *shrugs* Its always been hard for me to get players to gather coal and sand for me, but then there is a merchant in Wharftown now, Azradi, who has a blooming business and in fact, has good trade for coal and sand.

I think merchant RP takes time and devotion. Instant gratification types aren't going to make it long enough to see the fruit.

[The Rambling Midget]

Quesiton: Where does the Gold Come from?
Answer: Gold comes from, generaly speaking, the people who fight monsters. That's where the vast majority of it is generated. The only other places I can think of, wihch don't come back to monsters, are Gem Scales and Appraise Farming.
So if you cut the amount of gold generated by monsters, how are the crafters going to get gold themselves?

You're right. The gold comes from people who fight monsters. What you're missing is that gold is only a placeholder. A merchant is always going to need seed money to get started, but once things are moving, the adventurers are basically being paid with their own gold. And it doesn't just disappear, unless someone gives it to a NPC.

Merchant gives adventurer gold for raw materials. Merchant makes raw materials into goods. Adventurer gives gold plus a markup for labor to merchant, in exchange for goods. Once the cycle is complete, the adventurer has goods but has lost gold, and the merchant has turned an overall profit.

From that point, adventurers will continue to introduce found gold to the system, but at a slow enough rate that it behooves them to do work for wealthy characters in order to supplement their income.

You've also implied that crafters won't do any monster fighting themselves, but they will. It worries me that I have to continue reiterating this, but I am not suggesting that gold should be completely removed from drops. I am suggesting that it be reduced and partially replaced with commodities, so that players are encouraged to interact, in order to achieve wealth and power. That's the important part.

EDIT: One more thing I should add in behind that. A stable economy is one where the amount of gold coming in from NPC kills is roughly equivalent to the amount of gold going out through NPC merchants. (accounting for hoarders, of course) If too much is coming in from kills, there's no drive for merchants to use the player economy to achieve their goals. If too much is going out through NPC merchants, then gold becomes scarce, and people are afraid to lose what little they have. Both of these cases discourage broad interaction. Only a (more or less) balanced system will encourage it.

[Scurvy Cur]

A couple of quick points:

1) My observation has been that monster gold is just fine, at least up to level 15, possibly even 20. My characters for whom this is the primary source of income spend just about everything they earn buying supplies and better gear. Income only really starts to roll in at a rate far in excess of expenses in epic levels, and even then, mostly in a select few dungeons. I would trim epic gold income, but trim only.

2) Kregor is absolutely right when he points out that each craft has only a few things worth producing for sale (alchemy is the exception) and YMA is right that most crafts do not sell enough useful consumables. My tailor may sell a pair of fine elven boots and a fine will shirt to every dex character he interacts with, but my alchemist will sell them skleens, attunements, and gonne slugs in perpetuity. Dropping the artificial price inflation on skill items would be good here, as would adding useful consumables to the other crafts. I do not see neat RP descriptions as being a feasible answer, unless there is a mechanical reason to use an item.

3) There's an elephant in the room that's only being alluded to, or raised as only a minor concern, used to gather a few extra gold here and there: appraise farming. This is actually a far faster method of creating gold out of thin air than even the most dedicated epic farming. A quick and dirty test on a level 3 character fresh off of the boat. I stopped the experiment a couple of hours later, and he had all of the gold I could ever conceive of using on him without either buying a major guild house and changing the locks repeatedly, or making a start on 5% basining items. The appraise levels in question were thoroughly casual, and a level 10+ character could do better wth next to no effort. I also didn't bother looking for the maximum profit per inventory space item, so likely missed it on some optimization of income there. Moreover, permahaste and/or a macro designed to auto-buy kits would have saved me a little over half the time the run took, thus more than doubling my income rate.

Mith and Irongron have the specific numbers, which I will not post here. It is, however, safe to say that we already have NPCs that dispense stupidly large quantities of gold (and that's bad), concentrate it in the hands of a few characters rather than spreading it out across the adventuring population (and that's also bad), and that no discussion of excess money supply can afford to treat this as a side issue, while focusing exclusively on the cash generated by farming Kohlingen.

[Yellena]

My main character isn't a combatant, even tought she likes adventuring. That said, she rarely see interesting items in shop.
Most of the crafted items aren't good for her either, as most are focused in combat status, have a modified base cost so we can't enchant further or just have redundant and useless (costly) enchantments.

I really feel there is a huge lack of variety in both craft and loot matrix. For characters like her, items with an interesting 1/day spell or ability would be way more interesting than a +6 sword. The downside of this is how UMD works. Every char can take 3 levels in a UMD class and use everything (that, in MY view, limitates things a lot). An alternative would be to somehow limit the numbers of "1/day utility items" a character can carry based on some factor.

I also feel the lack of need for RP/social investment skills. A lot of crafted stuff have them, but we have very low interaction with them and the NPC world, and from a self experience, they're not much taken into consideration in normal intaractions either. Some perks to skills like that (maybe tied to the respective focus feats) could open a lot more opportunities for non grinding characters. I wrote in old forums years ago a topic with suggestions on this.

Another thing I agree on is the HIGH prices of some shops. There is so much accumulated gold spreaded on servers that if you sell an item for an absurd price (that a new character will rarely have without help), someone will end up buying. A buff to coin acquisition to make all "professions" similar could be nice, but... gold wipe first? *evil laugh*



EDIT: had to stop the writting to prepare for work. Will continue on another post when back from work.

[Dalenger]

I think the issue with inflated prices is just that people have too much hoarded up.

Take prauun for example. He never did any serious trading, however on his quest to reaching epics I ran him quite a bit through the Deep Glen (before the nerf). In under half an hour, I could get 15k easy. He currently has little over 1mil, and while I do enjoy trading I have no huge reason to go around selling items at 400 gp a pop. So I inflate the price in order to make up for the lost time which could be better spent grinding some dungeon. (This is just an example, I don't actually do this.)

The only other places I've ever spent gold is on land bids (Which are RIDICULOUSLY expensive... the last one I participated in the winner bought the shipyard for like 14 mil), enchanting basin (rolling for that 5%), and housing (which in the end isn't THAT expensive).

I think reducing the amount of gold in the system would help a lot. Leave lowbie dungeons where they are (so they can still afford kits and the occasional enchantment), but drastically reduce the gold from mid and epic dungeons. Make kit drops much more common and gold drops less common.

[Cortex]

14 million for a ship wot

[grip]

14 million for a ship wot

[Dinosaur Space Program]

I don't know about drastically reduce epic drops. There are only a few true culprits of filthy high end gold drops in dungeons. We all know where they are because everyone farms Those dungeons. Even it out, I would say, but keep epic dungeons still a bit better on the gold than a midbie one. There has to be some scaling.

And honestly, knowing what I do about appraise farming, I would say cleric NPCs need to just not Buy Back things they sell. Problem solved. Can you still appraise farm? Probably, but the easy cookie cutter route that Prints money is now taken care out.

"You sneezed on this healing kit, I am not buying that!"

I guess given the assorted issues this thread has given up, my solutions would be simple and taking from a lot of suggestions people have put forth.

>Tweak dungeon drops at the epic level for reduced gold but still above midbie levels.
>Have certain monsters drop materials over gold, I miss the old raw gem drops that were worthwhile, maybe more base ingots, dusts, healing kits, potions. Be fun if wands were occasionally dropped for a random spell with random charges or scrolls from mage spawns.
>Take out buying back cleric supplies on Haulfest and Fhara (quickest fix) for spam appraise farming
>Lower the 'how much this item is worth' tag on things that aren't high end or only offer skills. I would totally buy skill buff tailoring goods if they were more enchantable. However, I have looked at this in the past, they really aren't remotely easy to enchant.

Thing is, the people who have a huge hoard of gold? Already do. Unless they strip money out of that character Or roll it, that money is Staying. So we have to work around that while the rest of us get our little baby characters out of debt and Maybe pad our accounts a little.

I refuse to endorse methods that benefit those people who are hoarding vast amounts of wealth (as they aren't going to really see an issue with nerfs to things as they already Got everything and a pile of gold to roll in) and penalize the rest of us who make new characters. Some of the suggestions in this thread do that.

There are gold issues, but most of those gold issues are on epics who have been around for forever and taken advantage of the different systems that have come through. The other issues with gold are on the people who I watch print gold with a few trips back and forth with the boat system. And the last issue is on people who with a few others run lap epic dungeons that have disproportionate gold drops per spawn difficulty.

If anything needs to be nerfed, you're looking at it.

[Yma23]

14 million for a ship wot

That's amazing, considering the max limit on bank accounts is 10mil

[Marsi]

The economy needs to be made less safe. Make banks independent and introduce some sort of feature that makes hoarding great deposits of wealth risky. More temporary shops, fewer shop shops. Power to actual merchant characters, not the merchant players whose characters are mysteriously wealthy no matter their motivations. I like the idea of replacing monster gold with trade goods.

As for gold sinks, I'm unfamiliar with how the land brokerage works, but I can't help but have my excitement dulled the more I think about it. 14 million gold? It's not going to be factions battling for supremacy Crusader Kings style like I hoped, I fear it's going to be the playground of uber-rich nobodies #28 through #43.

[The Man of the Moon]

14 million for a ship wot

That's amazing, considering the max limit on bank accounts is 10mil

And two diferent players told me the cap was on 20 millions... I shall get above ten millions myself for pure scientist-research reasons

[The Rambling Midget]

Make banks independent and introduce some sort of feature that makes hoarding great deposits of wealth risky.

Hoarders gonna hoard. If gold starts vanishing for no reason, the hoarders will just switch to staters, gems, or high value materials.

[Morderon]

On Crafting:

Give everyone their 60 cp a day even at level 3. The how many ranks you can spend remains unchanged (So a level 3 will be able to spend 6 ranks among his tradeskills, but continue progress up to 60 times a day).

Reasoning for FL: The difficulty of making a good item is dependent on how high a rank you have in the skill and therefore how successful you are placing item properties on that item without destroying it in the process.

For the prime: Even if you do manage to get the high dc item started for you it's going to be slow going/inefficient to continue progress for it even with 60 crafting points. For low DC crafts,, if you can manage to gather all the materials required to spend all your CP more power to you.

----

The reason my toons often don't take jobs gathering supplies isn't because it doesn't pay well so much as by time my toon returns with the goods there's a good chance the purchaser won't be around.

Pretty much the reason why I don't often hire those to gather for me too. As I'd attempt not to get to deep into something and/or the one hired will end up logging (life happens).

So on that note:

For guildhalls (or very special quarters or whatever), this will require a public room however, instead of a shared chest. Or perhaps replace some shops, or add some shops, as the below:

I think adding it to all shops through the sign would make it common.

A system that restricts storage to (mostly) only material items. The storage can hold up to 3k (or something) of any combination of items. Not different items: 99 coal is 99 items in this case. Probably a text based interface.

The owner can set a buy price and a sell price; and use the faction system so members can get stuff for free, as well as a maximum unit for each item.

Probably doesn't help much the underlying problem. But helps merchants gain the required items. However, being able to store 99 coal in a single item in a chest is already a lot.

Edit: I think the above would be even more nice to have about if the system goes towards a more item-based economy (material items more common as loot).

[Cortex]

Make banks independent and introduce some sort of feature that makes hoarding great deposits of wealth risky.

Hoarders gonna hoard. If gold starts vanishing for no reason, the hoarders will just switch to staters, gems, or high value materials.

Those items have their own prices. Pickpocket risk for one, and staters are less valuable than gold.

[Dalenger]

Make banks independent and introduce some sort of feature that makes hoarding great deposits of wealth risky.

Hoarders gonna hoard. If gold starts vanishing for no reason, the hoarders will just switch to staters, gems, or high value materials.

I think I'd be in favor of this. It'd add real value to gems (other than just shiny yet-to-be essences), if hoarders do do what you say TRM. Truth be told, I doubt anyone would be able to convert 500,000 gp into gems overnight.
Giving each settlement a bank might not be that bad of an idea, that way people are more passionate about their settlements. If a settlement goes bankrupt, everyone who put money into that settlement's bank losses like 25% of their bank. It'd add some real flavor, and would represent the economic impact of having a bankrupt government.

*mutters something about western debt*

[Maragaram]

Enchantment

We can forget about at least 2 of the other 3, enchanted gear is the way almost everyone goes. A couple of stat bonuses, plus one from a list of thing suitable to an individual PC (spell slots, skill bonus, resistances etc). It is enchantment, and pretty much only enchantment, that makes crafted items less interesting. If one wishes to invigorate the excellent crafting system, one must almost certain reduce the generic but superior items created via enchantment.

There a couple of ways this could be achieved, my top 3 to consider would be...

3. - Reduce the Enchantment Menu (Getting it rid of skill bonuses for instance, would suddenly a make a huge amount of the crafted recipes extremely interesting)

2. - Make all enchantments at the basin temporary (costing a lot less, with failure only resulting a loss of coin and not the destruction of the item)

1. Make more enchantments possible, but also make ANY enchantment only possible on already magical items. This one would be my favorite, as with some adjustments to the success ratio it would be a total boon for both enchantments and crafters, with each system massively encouraging the other. Enchanters would be inundated with interesting requests, while crafters would be constantly able to find a market for almost all of their wares.

The number 1 idea actually sounds pretty good to me. Alternatively, or possibly in addition to that, what if enchanting items was only possible for enchanters? By which I mean, characters with Spell Focus: Enchantment. After all, creating other magical items either requires crafting points or gold AND XP AND a feat (Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, Craft Wand). Why should making a magical sword or bracers be any different? Either you put in the crafting points and the resources, or you need the right "training" (feat) in order to sacrifice some money and a bit of your essence.

Currently, Enchantment Basins are only a step up from being magic item vending machines. You put money and an item in, and you get a better magic item out. It's like buying a soda. The machine sometimes even gets stuck and eats your money with nothing given out (enchanting fail, whoops). Plus, they're all over, and anyone can use them... and there's no RP benefit to it for most characters, only a mechanical benefit. It really doesn't make sense. I'd prefer to see Enchanters (and thus magic-using characters in general) receive an extra voluntary boon if it means not having magic vending machines everywhere. At least then you'll need to interact with another character on some level to get a magic item, rather than just throwing gold in a fixture.

[Mr_Rieper]

Make banks independent and introduce some sort of feature that makes hoarding great deposits of wealth risky.

Hoarders gonna hoard. If gold starts vanishing for no reason, the hoarders will just switch to staters, gems, or high value materials.

Gems and other valuable commodities can be stolen, which (besides the low value) is probably why nobody is hoarding them at the moment. Though, to add onto Marsi's point...

Have the banks tax the transactions of the especially wealthy. Putting money into the account can be done safely, but if your balance is above a certain amount, attempting to withdraw or transfer funds will incur an extra fee. There are different thresholds of course, to prevent people from keeping just below the taxable amount. The more you have, the more you spend.

Better yet, introduce a named NPC that is the "head" of the bank network on Arelith. The DMs can control this character and interact with the playerbase, as well as attend settlement meetings. Then, make the different "thresholds" dynamic. That is, the exact values for what is taxable changes every few months. Sometimes the thresholds are higher, and the wealthy characters can breathe a little easier, and sometimes it's lower and they'll have to invest their money to avoid additional taxes. This'll hopefully cause the hoarding characters to have to put in a bit more effort to keep their massive fortunes, as well as put the gold back into circulation.

For those worried about losing their hard earned cash while inactive or offline, only withdrawals, transferrals or any form of movement in bank accounts would trigger it. So it's technically possible to avoid it altogether by never touching your bank account.

The IC justification for this is that the money of the wealthy people that is kept in the bank is an asset for the bank itself. Naturally, they would want to discourage the amounts from fluctuating too much, especially if it is a very large amount. The NPC could be used to interact and provide loans for both players and settlements, as well as give some warning of impending changes on bank taxes. Not to mention it would make interacting with the bank a lot more immersive.

(Apologies if there are any mistakes or if my ideas weren't clear. Typed this on my phone.)

[DestroyerOTN]

Enchantment

We can forget about at least 2 of the other 3, enchanted gear is the way almost everyone goes. A couple of stat bonuses, plus one from a list of thing suitable to an individual PC (spell slots, skill bonus, resistances etc). It is enchantment, and pretty much only enchantment, that makes crafted items less interesting. If one wishes to invigorate the excellent crafting system, one must almost certain reduce the generic but superior items created via enchantment.

There a couple of ways this could be achieved, my top 3 to consider would be...

3. - Reduce the Enchantment Menu (Getting it rid of skill bonuses for instance, would suddenly a make a huge amount of the crafted recipes extremely interesting)

2. - Make all enchantments at the basin temporary (costing a lot less, with failure only resulting a loss of coin and not the destruction of the item)

1. Make more enchantments possible, but also make ANY enchantment only possible on already magical items. This one would be my favorite, as with some adjustments to the success ratio it would be a total boon for both enchantments and crafters, with each system massively encouraging the other. Enchanters would be inundated with interesting requests, while crafters would be constantly able to find a market for almost all of their wares.

To be blunt,

1. Assessment: Would work ONLY if the adjustment was A LOT. Given the standard for gear, you -COULD- get crafters cranking stuff; but then you'd need to consider that there are presently approximately a hand's worth of craft matrix items that are actually capable of being more than a 5%.

We're talking items equitable by a level 15 being an 80% chance of success kinda increase of ratio too. Any less and the self respecting enchanter will just say no.

2. This would just make basins unused. Temp boons don't stack here, especially not with existing permas; so the entire prospect would mean that you are either altering that standard, or making the entire process better accomplished by a scroll of "Aura of Vitality", and a mage with maximize spell and a lot of time and nerve.

This also means that Druids, Clerics, and Weaponmasters (all the classes that didn't need to) can max their relevant stats a lot easier than anyone else. No comment.

3. To be blunt, and there's no other way to reply; no.

There's really nothing in the skill bonus list on the crafting gear that anyone wanted to BEGIN WITH. That's the problem (alongside that they aren't basin able), less that the bonuses themselves are "bad" subjectively.

They're bad because +3 to animal empathy and concentration is worthless.

[Twily]

I think the issue with inflated prices is just that people have too much hoarded up.

I'm sure this plays a factor. I've had tons of lower level characters now, so I slowly over time learned some very efficient ways to go about progressing a character from level 3 to 10ish. When I first started playing here, Money was a HUGE issue... Because I bought things I could use. Now I only buy the more efficient things and as a result I don't spend much money(because I buy a total of roughly 10-20 piece of gear from 3 to 10). I often end up with 50k in the bank and over roughly 100k in enchanted gear by level 10.

Hoarding money is actually insanely efficient. You can buy the best gear for your level, right when you hit that level, and can optimize the order you buy the things to make it so the same piece of gear is simply improved as you continue to level, instead of being replaced. It's all just a playstyle. I got bored of hoarding, so now I spend all my money twinking my character every single level. Look out merchants, Someone here has a hole in their pocket

[Syrima]

Getting rid of the extremely rich is simple.

[Thake]

Money should attract random mugging. The more money you have, the more loonies you attract that want to murder you and take your money

[Sazu]

If you want to give crafted items more worth, make basin enchanted items unrepairable(like artifacts). Then it's getting the crafted permanent item vs paying to have someone enchant items repeatedly.

Also allow more flexibility in what stats to put on crafted items when crafting. perhaps make it a blank slate you can add a specific amount of stat boosts to when improving the item.

Then you'd see ALOT more crafting in action.


Edited: On top of the fact that enchanting allows customized stat boosts permanently, it's as easy as waltzing up to the nearest enchanting basin. Crafting takes time. Therefore crafting items should definitely create better items... and it doesn't. I think the improve item option in crafting should allow you to make the items you traversed the realm to get materials for... better, than items you merely walk up to a basin to enchant. The enchantment basin item qualities/crafted item qualities seems backwards.

[Erin Greene]

They are never going to do these sort of things to the enchantment basins, because the server already has a relatively cruddy magic items selection to begin with.

Removing the Basin would effectively make having gear appropriate for your level impossible for 99% of characters.