Arelith

Iam sure this has been probably discussed before, but...

Arelith has changed alot with how people earn their XP and gold in the past 10 years. Now Arelith has writs, updated Gift of Wealth, NPCs buy animal leather or pretty much anything players have to offer. Soloing dungeons, especially as spellcasters is now easier than ever before. 10 years ago, a basic healer kit that was crafted with "cooking" sold like hot cakes for 250g in the Merchant District of Cordor, when buying one from NPC merchant at the temple for 400-500g was way too expensive for pretty much everyone.

Iam not saying the economy in it's current state itself is bad, but I feel one thing should've changed along with gold earning... the pricing of quarters and shops.

I saw the The Spires Citadel-update and thought it was very exciting, only to get worried few moments later after thinking; "How long will it take until some inactive player with huge bank account will own it?"

The problem with shops, quarters and guildhouses especially outside settlements... They are way too cheap nowdays. Buying one can be expensive, but the monthly maintance costs pretty much nothing.

Quarters and shops are easy to manage in settlements by role-play. I see this alot. If there's a shop that's been empty for days or sells some illegal stuff like necromancy, it gets handled IG. If there's a empty shop or shop that people are not happy with in a somewhere like in Crow's Nest, Skal or Sencliff ... there's nothing they can do about it. In extreme cases it gets handled by DM.

Guildhouses I feel are the biggest problem, because it makes an entire guild inactive if it's owned by a inactive epic character with huge bank account. Sometimes it's impossible to know if the owner of the guildhouse is active because of time-zones and many other things.

A shop in Skal for example has monthly maintance cost of 25g... that's way too low even for level 3 character.

I know it's simple; "If you suspect it's owned by inactive player you should contact DM" etc. But I feel DMs are very busy with alot of things and there are lots of occupied shops and quarters in the server. I feel the higher cost of quarters and shops will force more activity from the owners and if they don't have time to pay the maintance cost to own a shop or quarter, it probably should be given to someone who can.

I like that quarters are cheap enough to be accessible by fairly new characters without a huge bank balance. Raising the cost/taxes on them would just make them inaccessible to any character that isn't already very wealthy. I think this would have the opposite effect that you desire, resulting in only very old established characters being able to own quarters, many of which are barely active. We already have a problem with factions buying up all the better properties and then just sitting on them for RL months at a time without doing anything with them. I can name several highly desired properties off the top of my head that are occupied by some faction of players that only log in once a week to refresh the quarter then log off. These players have millions of gold so raising their rent isn't going to do anything. It would force all the new players with smaller bank balances to give up their quarters though.

I will say that this is a matter that's high on my list of concerns.
I don't neccesarly think that raising the prices is neccesarly the right answer - as NPC Logger pointed out, but I have some ideas that I hope we'll be putting into action at some point. Not immedatly, but somewhere down the line.
In the mean time I must try and do a sweep for innactive player quarters, because I'll be honest - this irritates me too.

Hevihenkka wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:28 amGuildhouses I feel are the biggest problem, because it makes an entire guild inactive if it's owned by a inactive epic character with huge bank account. Sometimes it's impossible to know if the owner of the guildhouse is active because of time-zones and many other things.

I'm okay with quarters being cheap, especially when they're very small, but I feel that the rent ramp up for larger estates should be much steeper. The largest single person homes should require a reasonable active income to upkeep. They're status symbols, and should be held by those characters that are actually driving the economy. Guildhouses - meaning any quarter with more than one quarter inside - should require the resources of an entire faction to maintain, so that they have to make a serious decision about whether it's really worth having, and there should be severe penalties for long term unoccupied quarters within. Running a faction on the cheap is as simple as setting up a message board in a Cordor Commons room for pennies a month.

I want to see guildhouses flipping like failed restaurants. You're either serving what people want, or you wake up the next morning and realize you went $100K in debt overnight. On top of this, though, there should be some QoL incentives added to guildhouses, to warrant their prohibitive cost.

If you want to try and thiefproof your home it actually becomes very expensive to raise traps to maximum, especially on guildhouses. We're talking tens of thousands every in-game month. Most people don't do this though.

It's easy to say how easy it is to make money, but for every person I see who is filthy rich, I hear others who are perpetually broke. After all, if you don't have a shop, it's not like you can go and plunk things down to sell easily. If you know how to make money and put effort into making it, it's not too hard. But it requires going out of your way for a period of time to do it. On Garrett I was often funding people who didn't have much money.

I think that upkeep costs should drastically increase:

incentive for multiple characters to share a quarter
incentive to release quarter in time of inactivity
deterrent against quarterlogging


Ideally, I'd imagine that upkeep costs might gradually increase over time the longer a single character keeps the same IG property.
This wouldn't make things more difficult for new characters, but might prevent players from holding on to IG property for too long.

Additionally, I think that guild houses ought to have this increased upkeep further >>multiplied<< for every vacant quarter inside.
Factions are currently heavily incentivized to pursue the acquisition of property outside of their own guild house (if they own one) - honestly, I do not fault players for doing this, but I strongly believe that this incentive needs to be balanced out somehow.

I really enjoy there being one place in my life where my rent isn't constantly rising, though.

Baron Saturday wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 3:48 pm I really enjoy there being one place in my life where my rent isn't constantly rising, though.

It's, as I say all the time, video games. I think instanced housing and inactivity sweeps (caveat: some of us have lives and have to take a week or so away from the game for this or that, so some human empathy would be cool with these) would be good enough.

Isn't a bunch of new housing coming with Guldorand?

Its worth noting that 10 years ago gold drops on creatures were astronomically high, close to one thousand each on a beholder, for instance. There were few, if any gold sinks and the common complaint was that gold was worthless, add thus merchant roleplay pointless, because above a certain level everyone had, effectively, infinite gold.

Drowboy wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:00 pm It's, as I say all the time, video games. I think instanced housing and inactivity sweeps (caveat: some of us have lives and have to take a week or so away from the game for this or that, so some human empathy would be cool with these) would be good enough.

Isn't a bunch of new housing coming with Guldorand?

Instanced housing would be rad, if possible with server resources. Give Leomund's Tiny Hut to GSF or ESF Evocation.

I really want some sort of mechanic for multiple characters to actually share a quarter, like if you had a "share with" or "buy with" setting and for extra cost, you'd have five or so extra storage spaces. And with that, might require both people to refresh in order to keep that extra space

Especially for those who play crafters (I weep in carpentry) all of my district storage and personal storage is filled with herbs, materials, and wood, so even if I do want to play roommates, it sucks for the other person who might want to put down some stuff.

For shops, whatever you set the rent at (and they do need to be higher, they are the most in demand thing on the server), you could make it so the rent has to be paid for (or matched since that might be easier to code) by shop income.

If your shop isn't making money aka selling things you shouldn't get to keep it as its just a glorified vanity cabinet at that point.

Eira wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:18 pm I really want some sort of mechanic for multiple characters to actually share a quarter, like if you had a "share with" or "buy with" setting and for extra cost, you'd have five or so extra storage spaces. And with that, might require both people to refresh in order to keep that extra space

Especially for those who play crafters (I weep in carpentry) all of my district storage and personal storage is filled with herbs, materials, and wood, so even if I do want to play roommates, it sucks for the other person who might want to put down some stuff.

I’m of the opinion that storage should be mostly be decoupled from quarters. Instead everyone would have a semi-mobile storage fixture they can place down anywhere BUT can only pick up while it’s empty. This would alleviate pressure from people needing quarters for item storage, instead they’d offer security, privacy, and prestige. Some quarters, like the vaults could retain storage as they are useful for little else, and daring people might place their storage fixture somewhere out of the way on a short term basis. People would be able to more easily share a quarter with their PCs spouse or BFF or whatever, as they wouldn’t be incentivized to each have a house just so they can have two chests.

Cybren wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 7:56 pm

Eira wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 4:18 pm I really want some sort of mechanic for multiple characters to actually share a quarter, like if you had a "share with" or "buy with" setting and for extra cost, you'd have five or so extra storage spaces. And with that, might require both people to refresh in order to keep that extra space

Especially for those who play crafters (I weep in carpentry) all of my district storage and personal storage is filled with herbs, materials, and wood, so even if I do want to play roommates, it sucks for the other person who might want to put down some stuff.

I’m of the opinion that storage should be mostly be decoupled from quarters. Instead everyone would have a semi-mobile storage fixture they can place down anywhere BUT can only pick up while it’s empty. This would alleviate pressure from people needing quarters for item storage, instead they’d offer security, privacy, and prestige. Some quarters, like the vaults could retain storage as they are useful for little else, and daring people might place their storage fixture somewhere out of the way on a short term basis. People would be able to more easily share a quarter with their PCs spouse or BFF or whatever, as they wouldn’t be incentivized to each have a house just so they can have two chests.

Please can you make a suggestion out of this?
There may be a very good mechanical reason why it's a terrible idea and Cannot Be Done
But conceptually I really like it.

Done

Yeah, when people are selling shops/hours for 2.5-3 million gold, there is an issue. ICly, if I was in the government, I would charge them with tax fraud.

Xerah wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:24 pm Yeah, when people are selling shops/hours for 2.5-3 million gold, there is an issue. ICly, if I was in the government, I would charge them with tax fraud.

What about the ones exempt from settlement influence? Because those are the ones most often sold for such ridiculous sums.
Could it be that the OOC knowledge of eviction immunity represents some sort of rapid increase in value when compared to the settlement-bound counterparts?

-XXX- wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:02 pm

Xerah wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:24 pm Yeah, when people are selling shops/hours for 2.5-3 million gold, there is an issue. ICly, if I was in the government, I would charge them with tax fraud.

What about the ones exempt from settlement influence? Because those are the ones most often sold for such ridiculous sums.
Could it be that the OOC knowledge of eviction immunity represents some sort of rapid increase in value when compared to the settlement-bound counterparts?

This is meta-gaming in some cases. If the quarter is in the middle of literally no-where, in a remote cave for example, then sure, but people treat this as IC knowledge even in places such as the interior of the crow's nest or sibayad or soulhaven, etc. places in which, realistically, you can most certainly get evicted.

I've also seen a few quarters owned by people of the same faction whose sole purpose was to act as an extra storage chest (to the point there was quarter actually named XXXX Storage House). I don't really think that is in the spirit of the server.

AstralUniverse wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:16 pm

-XXX- wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:02 pm

Xerah wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:24 pm Yeah, when people are selling shops/hours for 2.5-3 million gold, there is an issue. ICly, if I was in the government, I would charge them with tax fraud.

What about the ones exempt from settlement influence? Because those are the ones most often sold for such ridiculous sums.
Could it be that the OOC knowledge of eviction immunity represents some sort of rapid increase in value when compared to the settlement-bound counterparts?

This is meta-gaming in some cases. If the quarter is in the middle of literally no-where, in a remote cave for example, then sure, but people treat this as IC knowledge even in places such as the interior of the crow's nest or sibayad or soulhaven, etc. places in which, realistically, you can most certainly get evicted.

I wasn't justifying it. I was pointing at an issue.
Yes, we could point at players treating these types of IG property differently, but honestly why?
Having two grades of quarters/shops differentiated solely by inevictability is IMHO a design flaw first and foremost.
I'd suggest that this might fall more into the "don't hate the player, hate the game" category as the issue stems from server design and can be easily remedied by server design.

I disagree (that it shouldn't be the player's fault for doing this) for the same reason I don't like holding on to a faction or settlement for too long. Sure, I could, but moving on promotes new characters and people into doing something interesting/new.

For sure, there have been discussions on this about limits but nothing set in stone nor is it trivial to set up in a way that makes it also fair and reasonable.

-XXX- wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:55 pm

AstralUniverse wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:16 pm

-XXX- wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:02 pm

What about the ones exempt from settlement influence? Because those are the ones most often sold for such ridiculous sums.
Could it be that the OOC knowledge of eviction immunity represents some sort of rapid increase in value when compared to the settlement-bound counterparts?

This is meta-gaming in some cases. If the quarter is in the middle of literally no-where, in a remote cave for example, then sure, but people treat this as IC knowledge even in places such as the interior of the crow's nest or sibayad or soulhaven, etc. places in which, realistically, you can most certainly get evicted.

I wasn't justifying it. I was pointing at an issue.
Yes, we could point at players treating these types of IG property differently, but honestly why?
Having two grades of quarters/shops differentiated solely by inevictability is IMHO a design flaw first and foremost.
I'd suggest that this might fall more into the "don't hate the player, hate the game" category as the issue stems from server design and can be easily remedied by server design.

No, I really think asking for 500k gold for a quarter because it's a cave is questionable RP. Sure, we can say that the problem does emerge from the fact there are two grades of property, but it doesnt make it any less meta-gamey because in the end, it's a cave, or a miniature room in an inn and the fact it is worth that much to the player is not IC. Again, I think it less so a problem when it's a remote cave, and that it's more immersion breaking when it's in a populated area (in which, ICly, your character can very much get evicted) that is simply not a mechanical settlement.

I've always pushed that the server should have it's fair amount of quarters in neutral areas. For that reason I'm really glad Sibiyad, the Tower and Shadow Wharftown exist.

The issue of the disparity there isn't really something easily fixable, though I will say that we are keeping our eye on those who 'auction' Quarters. (The short of it? Don't hold a quarter simply to sell.)

The only way to get rid of this 'two type' system is to make it just 'one type'

That means either a) - All quarters are owned by settlments - which means that players are very much forced to abide by the rules of said settlments. And whilst no settlment is 'designed' to be good or evil, on the surface tends to lean very much in the 'good' direction. There's already a bit of a divide there, I don't want to enforce it.

Or b) that no one can evict from quarters. And whilst that may sound fun, it leans to the fact that McNasty can walk through cordor into thei rmanor saying 'Yeah uh, just gonna go torture a few women to death and summon a Baalor to eat their coprses. Fun sunday afternoon! Hope the horrifid screaming doesn't bother you!' And there is nothing that any sort of authority can do about it and that, in an area they controle, and can be really frustrating.

I suppose there's 'C' where it's all put in the hands of Dms but... frankly? No. Just... no.

So having the mix of quarters is a good idea in my opinion. Though yes, we do need to ensure people actually are rping around their quarters.

Wrips wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2020 9:17 pm I've also seen a few quarters owned by people of the same faction whose sole purpose was to act as an extra storage chest (to the point there was quarter actually named XXXX Storage House). I don't really think that is in the spirit of the server.

This is just a symptom of the lack of guild houses.


As for shops, we could cut the capacity in half and double the number of them. That way twice as many people could have shops, seems way more fair.

Building on that, you could designate your "shop allowance" to go to your faction instead of having your own shop, which increases the capacity of the faction shop by 10. This would organically cause shops in popular areas to be larger size and encourage people to work together on them, increasing quality.

Same thing with quarters. Use your quarter "slot" for your account to add +10 to the storage capacity of the chest in a shared/faction base.

Out of curiosity are storage limits still a memory or performance issue in 2020 or are the limits in place to discourage hoarding?