Staters: Discussion

[Rooshi49]

So I think Staters are awesome and should warrant some love as an alternative currency to the game. From what I've seen in the Q/A forums there seems to be some people who would actually like to have a discussion over the worthiness of its existence.

And so here we are. I think Staters should have a lower conversion rate so they are used more often. While they may be obtained right next to a bank, I think they are worth using if you wish to make a transaction with a sketchy party and you're afraid that they might kill you.

I also think that placing gem balancing stands in places away from banks would help motivate people to use them. Or perhaps have some sort of consumable that transmutes gold into staters. What do you all think forum people? I open the floor to you.

[Mr_Rieper]

I'd like to see staters used more often as a currency between hostile groups.

For example, after battles, my chivalric character will offer ransoms for the dead or captured. It's more of a symbolic or ceremonious gesture than anything else, and it's a viable alternative to simply bashing the bodies of enemies. People just have to make an offering, and he would expect to have to make an offering in return for one of his.

Staters would be great here. Just carry them into the fight, use them as bargaining chips in place of gold. Even if its offering just one or two staters, they are easier to produce than gems and still hold a fair bit of value.

[magistrasa]

I am only interested in staters because I have never heard of them before and I think it's neat that there's some kinda secret currency conversion system.

Something that might make it even more weird and fun (but probably exhausting to code so I ain't expecting much) is for the exchange rate to somehow be based on the "value" of the settlement you're exchanging it at, or using staters to invest in settlements somehow. Fluctuating exchange rates resulting in losses or returns in investment, creating a stater-based exchange market. I guess I'm saying staters should be bitcoins?

I don't know how economics works so I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm sure you can tell.

[Dirac]

I just don't see the value added of installing some alternate form of currency unless there is something odd like a rash of trade ganking going on which is frankly against the rules anyway.

There are already many things that can be used as alternate forms of currency during RP such as gems, adamantine chunks, or elf heads.

Unless it is super easy I don't see the point in using our limited dev budget fiddling with something that is IMO a "nice to have".

[Rooshi49]

All that really needs to be done is to change the conversion rate from gold -> staters and from staters -> gold. As it is I think its around 12% to 20% to exchange between the two. . . which is ridiculous.

[Blood on my Lips]

I just don't see the value added of installing some alternate form of currency unless there is something odd like a rash of trade ganking going on which is frankly against the rules anyway.

It already exists. No one is asking for something new to be added. We would like to see the conversion rate improved.

[Ebonstar]

there is no exchange rate on stater to gold, its a one time thing

[The Rambling Midget]

there is no exchange rate on stater to gold, its a one time thing

Huh?

[Ebonstar]

All that really needs to be done is to change the conversion rate from gold -> staters and from staters -> gold. As it is I think its around 12% to 20% to exchange between the two. . . which is ridiculous.

when you put gold in the scale you pay the conversion rate

when you put staters into the scale you get face value no other charge

[Cerk Evermoore]

I think they are a really cool concept. Seems really cool for in game gambling too.

[Blood on my Lips]

I just put 500 gold into a gem scale. I received four staters worth 100 gold each. I got back 56 gold that it didn't convert. That's 444 gold to make four 100 gold staters.

Next, I put 111 gold into the scale and it didn't make a stater. 112 gold did not make a stater. 113 gold made one stater worth 100 gold and gave me 2 gold back.

[Rooshi49]

I just put 500 gold into a gem scale. I received four staters worth 100 gold each. I got back 56 gold that it didn't convert. That's 444 gold to make four 100 gold staters.

Next, I put 111 gold into the scale and it didn't make a stater. 112 gold did not make a stater. 113 gold made one stater worth 100 gold and gave me 2 gold back.

Yea it looks like about a 12% penalty from what I calculated. Which is insanely high. . . I'm not even sure why theres even a conversion penalty. It just heavily heavily heavily discourages using it as an alternative currency.

[Nitro]

I just put 500 gold into a gem scale. I received four staters worth 100 gold each. I got back 56 gold that it didn't convert. That's 444 gold to make four 100 gold staters.

Next, I put 111 gold into the scale and it didn't make a stater. 112 gold did not make a stater. 113 gold made one stater worth 100 gold and gave me 2 gold back.

Yea it looks like about a 12% penalty from what I calculated. Which is insanely high. . . I'm not even sure why theres even a conversion penalty. It just heavily heavily heavily discourages using it as an alternative currency.

Because if there isn't a conversion rate there wouldn't be any reason to use anything but staters since you can then never lose any gold on death when you can just convert the staters back into cash in the safety of a city.

[Cybernet21]

He's not asking for no conversion rate,he's asking for a lower one.

[Cerk Evermoore]

Staters are the crypto-currency of the future. Invest in Staters now.

[Rooshi49]

I just put 500 gold into a gem scale. I received four staters worth 100 gold each. I got back 56 gold that it didn't convert. That's 444 gold to make four 100 gold staters.

Next, I put 111 gold into the scale and it didn't make a stater. 112 gold did not make a stater. 113 gold made one stater worth 100 gold and gave me 2 gold back.

Yea it looks like about a 12% penalty from what I calculated. Which is insanely high. . . I'm not even sure why theres even a conversion penalty. It just heavily heavily heavily discourages using it as an alternative currency.

Because if there isn't a conversion rate there wouldn't be any reason to use anything but staters since you can then never lose any gold on death when you can just convert the staters back into cash in the safety of a city.

Well for one, they stack up to only a certain point. Right now that point is 100 staters. Thats only 10,000 gold.
Secondly, they can be pickpocketed. Which is awesome! It would give pickpockets a very high value target.
Thirdly, even if staters had no conversion rate, I don't see everyone using nothing but staters. And even if that DID happen, I'd definately start making pickpocket characters. I'm pretty sure others would too, to the point where I think the pros and cons of using staters would balance out.

[Nitro]

Staters are low value as far as pickpocket targets go. A single adamantine ingot, a ruby, 4 diamonds, two attunement potions. All of these are more valuable than your stack of 100 staters. There's a whole host of 1x1 and 1x2 items that are far more valuable than a full stack of staters on their own or as a stack.

[Rooshi49]

Another thing I would like to see is to increase the stack size of Staters to something like 1000 if possible.

[Rooshi49]

I'm just going to try and start find interesting ways of using staters so they can gain some attention to their existence.

[The Rambling Midget]

I could see it being used as a kind of black market currency that allows you to buy specialty items through dialogs at the cost of staters, with merchants showing up in shady places as random but common encounters.

Forces you to keep some on hand, because you never know if your guy is going to be at the place, or whether he'll be there when you get back from the nearest gem scale.

[Rooshi49]

That would be rather cool, and would fit into Irongron's project of creating more random encounters.

[Durvayas]

I'm in favor of the conversion rate being changed from 12% to 10% to make the conversion at a glance easier.

If I throw sets of 1000gp into the scales, its easier to know I'm getting 900gp's worth of staters if the rate is 10%.
At 12% the amount I get is 880gp's worth, which as you scale up, is a bit more awkward to keep track of than simple multiples of 9.

Visual examples of the scaling rates:

at 10%

1000-> 900
2000->1800
3000->2700
4000->3400

At 12%

1000->880
2000->1760
3000->2640
4000->3520

[Rooshi49]

Mithreas confirmed its actually around 9.5-10%

[DM Symphony]

I just don't see the value added of installing some alternate form of currency unless there is something odd like a rash of trade ganking going on which is frankly against the rules anyway.

There are already many things that can be used as alternate forms of currency during RP such as gems, adamantine chunks, or elf heads.

Unless it is super easy I don't see the point in using our limited dev budget fiddling with something that is IMO a "nice to have".

There is a marked difference between a barter system and an alternative currency system.

Also, not to speak for the team, but tweaks and such for an existing system such as this are usually 1-3 minute efforts to find the relevant code, edit, save, and upload. Conversely, dev time on "is this fair, will they like it? Maybe these numbers are too high, let me ask some players" can end up stretching out a feature's "budget" to several hours, depending.

Another thing I would like to see is to increase the stack size of Staters to something like 1000 if possible.

Stacking rules are enforced per item category, not item. Arelith did not go to each of the popular stacked items and pick numbers for each of them, they are each bundled together in different categories of "miscellaneous: thin" and "miscellaneous: small" and "arrow" etc.

In this case, Staters use the gem base, so you are suggesting that Arelith changing gem stacking from 10 to 100 was not enough.

There is some sense to this, I suppose, currently the highest stacking inventory object is the "gold piece" inventory item, which stacks to 50,000. This is also the engine limit, and some of you may have had to deal with stacks of 50,000 gold before. Despite the stater being a "form" of currency, though, gold is quite a bit different as it obviously does not take up inventory room on characters.

This is because when gold is picked up by a character, it is essentially destroyed, and their "current gold amount" on their character is changed to reflect the extra gold. The data is stored on the character like Current Hitpoints or Strength. In this way, character inventories are never inconvenienced by high gold counts. What a difference that would make if they were.

I could suggest using higher value staters (1,000 gold value each, instead of 100), to cater to what I feel is an inflated gold market in Arelith, but doing so would preclude taking opportunities to put staters as loot and treasure on pirate creatures and the like, as I had done in FL to both cut-down on the "+1 item loot and sell economy", and artificially augment the already generated gold supply on fallen foe.

Be careful how far you discuss this system, though, at a certain point, if it is an attractive system, you must ask yourself things like "If not dropping on death is agreeably better according to the majority, do we want to make Staters better, or, do we not like Arelith's death system of dropping gold?"

[Rooshi49]

Another thing I would like to see is to increase the stack size of Staters to something like 1000 if possible.

Stacking rules are enforced per item category, not item. Arelith did not go to each of the popular stacked items and pick numbers for each of them, they are each bundled together in different categories of "miscellaneous: thin" and "miscellaneous: small" and "arrow" etc.

In this case, Staters use the gem base, so you are suggesting that Arelith changing gem stacking from 10 to 100 was not enough.

There is some sense to this, I suppose, currently the highest stacking inventory object is the "gold piece" inventory item, which stacks to 50,000. This is also the engine limit, and some of you may have had to deal with stacks of 50,000 gold before. Despite the stater being a "form" of currency, though, gold is quite a bit different as it obviously does not take up inventory room on characters.

This is because when gold is picked up by a character, it is essentially destroyed, and their "current gold amount" on their character is changed to reflect the extra gold. The data is stored on the character like Current Hitpoints or Strength. In this way, character inventories are never inconvenienced by high gold counts. What a difference that would make if they were.

I could suggest using higher value staters (1,000 gold value each, instead of 100), to cater to what I feel is an inflated gold market in Arelith, but doing so would preclude taking opportunities to put staters as loot and treasure on pirate creatures and the like, as I had done in FL to both cut-down on the "+1 item loot and sell economy", and artificially augment the already generated gold supply on fallen foe.

Be careful how far you discuss this system, though, at a certain point, if it is an attractive system, you must ask yourself things like "If not dropping on death is agreeably better according to the majority, do we want to make Staters better, or, do we not like Arelith's death system of dropping gold?"

Thank you for the masterful and insightful response to what I think is an under acknowledged part of the server.

In this case, Staters use the gem base, so you are suggesting that Arelith changing gem stacking from 10 to 100 was not enough.

Interesting point. I'm not necessarily implying that all gems needed to have its stack size increased, but I don't really see the harm in doing so. I think if it lets staters have an increased stack size, then its an potentially good idea.

I could suggest using higher value staters (1,000 gold value each, instead of 100), to cater to what I feel is an inflated gold market in Arelith, but doing so would preclude taking opportunities to put staters as loot and treasure on pirate creatures and the like, as I had done in FL to both cut-down on the "+1 item loot and sell economy", and artificially augment the already generated gold supply on fallen foe.

THIS is my favorite idea, though the only downside I can see to doing this is that there would be less . . . for precision in how much gold you could give out with staters. But thats okay! I honestly think that staters would be a good currency for very large transactions if the conversion rate is lowered considerably.

Now as for the part about putting it into the loot matrix, I think that would definately be neat. As it stands most money in the game is artificially created through gold dropped on monster death and chests, selling random items (like +1 item loot), Jewelry boxes, and scroll cases. While yes, I agree that putting staters into the loot matrix would inflate the gold economy considerably, there are things that can be done in order to offset that. The primary thing is gold sinks. The most prominent method of stabilizing rampant gold inflation in most MMORPGS is to tie the in-game currency to real life currencies, which kinda emulates the gold standard idea.

However . . . thats just not a good idea on something like Arelith, nor do I see it being able to done well. The second most prevalent idea for a gold sink that I've seen is purchasable consumables and services from the NPCs of the server. But ideas for a gold sink can be made a completely separate post entirely. I think it would be a good idea to discuss.

Be careful how far you discuss this system, though, at a certain point, if it is an attractive system, you must ask yourself things like "If not dropping on death is agreeably better according to the majority, do we want to make Staters better, or, do we not like Arelith's death system of dropping gold?"

Well I think that (as I've previously mentioned) that there are pros and cons of carrying staters on you. For one, if they were worth say 1000 gold each and could stack to 1000, then thats 1 million gold per stack! If people started carrying around staters then that could potentially be a great way for pickpockets to make money. The more pickpockets then the less people would be carrying around staters in their pockets. The more people would be using old fashion gold. There could be other things done in the future to potentially make a more fulfilling alternative currency system. But as it stands right now I'm still feeling out how "I" can be making the best use of them.