So, I couldn't find where this has been discussed, if at all, so forgive me if its a repeat post.
Most MMORPGs give vendors the ability to purchase and sell an unlimited number of items in a single visit. To me, this is a huge immersion breaker. I really enjoyed the way Elder Scrolls: Skyrim did their vendors. The merchants had limited inventory for the day and only had so much gold to purchase your japtem with. This gold value obviously increased if you purchased something from them. Also, we could make it so vendors would really only buy specific materials (i.e. an herbalist would not buy your rusty flail you found on a large rat)
Pros:
Cons:
What other Pros and Cons can you guys think of?
To be fair i really like the Archeage System with the Trading Packs. When too many people bring the same sort of pack to the same merchant, they get less and less rewards for it. But these are actually special items, just crafted for trading and getting gold or item as reward. Im not sure if i really wanna see the elder scrolls vendor system in an mmo, at least not for every crappy item. Maybe for special crafting stuff. Cause tbh, i ended up using special merchant mods in Skyrim cause it was soo annoying that 90% of the vendors couldnt even handle the loot of a single tomb :D
But yeah, in some way i maybe would like to see a system like that for the harvester/crafter.
In my minds eye I see ....
1. Ensure 'coin' drops only comes from intelligent mobs, and in tiny amounts.
Where did that rat keep the 35 silver we found .... and who brought the rubber-gloves and hand-bleach!
2. All other drops should be 'skin', 'pelts', 'bone', 'feathers', 'scales', 'blood' etc
This would even include Raid mobs. They could provide 'generic' high end components/reagent (eg 'Dragon blood') and 'specific' (eg 'Tiamat's Gall stones') as well as a few items from a rare loot table.
3. NPC vendors have stricly limited cash reserves to buy with (with set replenish rates).
Smaller vendors (eg in villages) would have smaller cash replenishment rates. Larger merchants (eg in Cities) faster ones.
4. NPC vendors only buy based on their appraisal (won't pay for 'magic' unless they can tell it is)
The idea is for NPC merchants to have their won 'areas of expertise'. This would determine what kind of items they would be prepared to pay significant cash for. Other than this, they would only buy either good to be sold locally, or other goods at 'face value' (Eg they buy 'Steel Longsword +2' as if were merely 'Steel Longsword').
5. NPC will lower prices offered if players sell too many (supply vs demand)
Be nice if (local) merchants dropped their buy price if the (local) market is glutted:
"You want me to buy more bat wings??? I don't have any more storage! Even if I did, I wouldn't buy them
... for one, it will take me months to shift the ones I already have, for another they SMELL!
You have already ruined your country's economy, so don't you come ruin mine!"
6. NPC all have a pre-existing economic model/network (village -> town -> city)
Village merchants sell mundane 'wanted' stuff (removed from their inventory) to local villagers. Much of the rest is sold on to travelling merchants heading to larger towns and then on up the chain to city merchants ultimately. At each stage of the way, some of the 'odder' pieces will not be sold on (random chance, plus merchants lack of experience) thus ensuring that 'dumpster diving' can be done at any merchant ... though gear may get moved up the trader/merchant chain to another merchant.
I.e. - there are 2 ways cash is generated by players: Cash drops (coins) and Items sold to NPC vendors.
The first would need to be reduced drastically and mainly replaced with 'reagents' and crafting components.
The second would need to be severely limited. NPC Merchants cannot have an infinite supply of cash if you are to try to slow inflation significantly.
Would these stop inflation? Probably not - but the model could be made to slow it dramatically. This would keep people in a lower coin type, may even force bartering in some cases and would let crafters be the main link between people's loot and actual servces and cash.
NOTE: Quite a LOT of tuning would be needed to get it to work without crashing the economy!
Anyhow ... that's my 2 cp spent!
Evoras, wonders if he can get a rebate?
This topic got me thinking a bit more about basic currencies and the economy.
What if there was a finite amount of coinage at any given time. I have no ideas what these figures would look like but maybe 1,000,000 copper, 500,000 silver, 100,000 gold, 10,000 plat.
Then in 6 month intervals the banks in game create more coin. At this point you could go sell them stuff and change lower coins in for some larger denominations(limited per player).
If there was no vendor trash loot in the game and everything could be used for crafting many more transactions would take place player to player. Including more trading of this for that without even using coin.
The ability to just poof coins into existance every time you kill something or vendor something seems bad to me.
Great stuff in this thread already, can't wait to see more ideas...
Kiz~
I just don't see the point. I see a lot of solutions being presented for a problem that doesn't really exist.
Anyone want to help me out here? It seems like inflation is the biggest premise, and we've had like 3 threads about inflation this week. No one thus far has managed to explain why inflation is inherently bad.
Liav said:I just don't see the point. I see a lot of solutions being presented for a problem that doesn't really exist.
Anyone want to help me out here? It seems like inflation is the biggest premise, and we've had like 3 threads about inflation this week. No one thus far has managed to explain why inflation is inherently bad.
Feels bad to spend $1000.00 on a loaf of bread...
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:Feels bad to spend $1000.00 on a loaf of bread...
Not really. It only sucks because our concept of the dollar carries more worth than that. Remove the $ and it becomes pretty ambiguous.
Unless you move away from a currency based system of commerce, you're going to have this problem.
An average American, say, 50 years ago would feel the same about current prices. Wages and various other factors are a little too political or abstract for this particular conversation, but the point is that once you start getting blue diamonds that sell for ~150p with maxed Charisma, suddenly you aren't as revolted at the concept of spending a few plat on something.
Inflation will occur within 30 seconds of the servers going live, that's just the nature of money.
To the extent this proposal means that I can't buy things from a merchant if another player has already shopped there that day (or even that hour) I don't like it at all.
To the extent the proposal means I have to go from merchant to merchant to merchant to try and sell the crap I got on an adventuring run, and if other players have recently done the same no one has money to buy from me, I like it even less.
I've seen this system work well in a single player game but in a MMO I think it would work ...less well.
Archeage trade pack running was super fun. But it failed in so many ways. One person could make as many packs as they wanted, and keep turning in - all while tanking the prices for others. Multiboxing was HUGE in that game too. So you didn't just see families of people running these and splitting the money, which is what my family did. You saw ONE SINGLE PERSON running these trade runs with 8 different characters with farm freighters and they would turn in or sit on so many packs. They didn't care to tank it a little bit. Because their farming was easy. They had 8 characters to farm to use their labor and such. Labor was kind of a cool concept in the game, until it became a pay to win part of the game.
When the game first came out, you had limited labor. They added labor to cash shop and boom. People had max crafting for a lot of different things if they spent enough money. Game added 2 new servers that started over, and the same thing happened. Within 2 months, people had a few different crafting professions as max level. That shouldn't even happen to be honest. While I enjoyed the trade packs a lot, their system that allowed it to be ruined by other players and bots is what killed the game, essentially.
It's hard to tell what's going to work and what's not going to work in a game we haven't played yet. It's a great discussion though.. I've seen some ideas that I like and some I question a bit. Anything that FORCES players to constantly pay attention and try to be on early every day, is what will kill the game. Maybe not in 6 months, but shortly after. Anyone whos new and can't sell off to make money because all the higher levels are going to lowbie zones to sell off because the main cities have been completely demolished by the rest of the population; well... they won't get to sell anything what so ever. No way to make money to buy gear, pay for repairs, buy potions for their next adventure. Plus, when you're forced to attempt to log in early or online everyday just for a chance to sell off junk and make some money, no one's going to like that for very long.
I hated WoW for this. I felt forced to log on every single day to keep up with the rest of everyone else because your daily quests in these zones not only gave you materials and items you might have needed to get into harder dungeons, but it was also needed for your weapon too. And the reward you got after completing all your dailies every day was almost essential to move forward in the game. Our casuals are not going to want to log in every single day. Nor feel like they have to. Neither will some of our dedicated players. I get very dedicated to games, but the moment I feel I HAVE to log in or my stuff gets wasted, I no longer feel the need to bother logging in the game ever again. Archeage was the same way with its labor system. It would give you labor when you were offline, but it was hit a max and eventually you were actually wasting labor by not logging in every day and using it to level up your professions.
I honestly think inflation won't be too big of an issue. As long as they make the game as hard as they said they want it to, it shouldn't be easy to farm a ton of mobs and make money. Especially once you get higher level and you farm lower level mobs to sell stuff... That would instantly kill any NPC's with limited coins. It could possibly help inflat the market, but at the same time... Lowbie zones shouldn't be dropping a crap ton of good stuff anyways. No lowbie should have 1 plat sitting in their inventory unless it was given to them by someone who's been playing the game for a little bit. One other thing to be concerned about is lowbie dungeon drops from higher level people. I think after you reach a certain level, you shouldn't be able to farm those lowbie zones. If you're 11+ levels above the content you're farming, you receive no drops. That would prevent higher levels from farming out areas that the lowbies need to gear up and progress and make money.
Sorry for this HUGE POST. I'm sure VR has already thought a lot about this but are still fleshing out the details. I just wanted to put my 2c in for the people who posted their ideas.
Inflation is a reality no matter where you go. Let me say at the start I have always played MMOs from their beginnings or earlier, I have never played an MMO from its launch for more than 3 years and several for quite shorter periods of time but in my play I have never seen a case where my toon was overly affected by inflation... yes at times I would question the odd thing but it never runed my game play to a large degree.
Maybe, in the past, I just havent involved myself in the larger economy of the server as most of the guilds I have been in have worried about themselves and taken care of themselves and its individuals needs for the most part... and I have never been much into crafting... I have always been a forager, miner or whatever and my stuff always went to the guild for our own prurposes but again... its just not something I have experienced to a large degree or payed attention to for that matter.
In any case.. Im hoping that with all the things VR is implimenting and with the maturity of the community these extremes I hear and read about will be limited but... as with anything... these types of world issues will evolve organically through its community and even the most well intended actions by the devs may well be circumvented by individuals with that intent. Im sure VR will do its best... the rest is up to us.
Hyperium said: Many players don't have time to be online 24hrs a day to meet a vendor limiting suppy system.
This is a good point and one people need to remember when they start coming up with ideas that have some time-limit or refresh on them. When it comes to vendors buying items, let them buy everything. But they buy low and sell high. Selling items to vendor which should have knowledge about such items could get you better pricing selling but not by much. So selling that fine steel sword you looted off a goblin could get a higher price from a Blacksmith merchant than, say, a Food merchant.
The other half of this which is just as important is to let NPCs resell everything sold to them, but at much higher prices. Just as selling to an item-aligned NPC could net you a better buy price they could also offer you a better sell price. The spread between buy and sell price is smaller.
Lastly, and this is critical, NPCs must take into account supply and demand. If you sell a vendor 1 of something, you get X price. As you keep selling them more and more, the price they pay must decrease and decrease rapidly. Eventually it will be the player who will decide to stop selling to a particular vendor not the vendor deciding to stop buying.
Basing buy/sell prices on supply and demand is fundamental economics. Don't limit the vendor inventory but give the merchants some economics lessons.
Ok so first, no one is trying to stop inflation, it is innevitable with fiat currencies. Also, backed-currency would never work in a world with a wildly fluctuating population. The goal of this article is to find ways to limit the astronomical rate of inflation that tends to hit games within a couple years as well as make the acquisition of currency more stable across the levels. If i'm level 50 I should not be able to walk out for 10 minutes and make as much money as it took you the first 10 levels (a couple weeks?) to acquire.
Secondly, I am not sure where I went wrong that people would assume you have to wake up in the morning to get a chance to buy/sell items. I stated that the market would referesh every game day, which I assumed to be about 1.5 hours real-time. So, the only thing you would have to notice is that.. hey its been dark for a bit, I should get back to town if I want first hit on the markets.
Lastly, I understand the hesitation with limited NPC cash, but no one said it had to be a miniscule amount like Skyrim was (obviously was only meant for a single player world). Furthermore, if I sell 12 bat wings to the merchant, he just lost 72cp. If I buy 5 flasks of water off him, he just made 80cp. So, it is entirely possible for their currency to increase even before the start of a new GAME day just by people purchasing goods from them.
I really liked the idea of item-aligned vendors as was mentioned by Evolas and a few others. This would give an inherent merchant class opportunity for all. They could dig through merchants looking for off-aligned items that they may be able to get a better price for at the properly aligned merchant. Would be interesting also for merchants selling non-aligned items to not have a clue if they are enchanted or what-not so you could gamble in a since and possibly find a diamond in the rough so-to-speak.
The only real issue I see with the every 1.5 hours and such is with zones. People are going to be stuck in a specific zone doing quests or exploring and group content. If they come back and want to sell off but they are a half hour too late and are full of items in their inventory, your suggestion is to travel to another city just to sell off? It's hard to find a really perfect system. Especially since many games are actually very different and focus on a different group of people.
I guess it wouldn't be too bad if it's every 1.5 hours. But I still think it would be rather annoying and inconvenient for those who couldn't make it in time to sell off :\
If you were going to use a limited NPC Cash system, I'd prefer to see the Project Gorgon system where the NPC currency is limited by each player, instead of having a serverwide money pool. You would still curb inflation a bit, but it wouldn't contain most of the cons that would come with a serverwide system.
As Liav pointed out, this all seems like a "fix" for a non-problem. At best all it will do is stop everyone who doesn't spend 20 hours a day in game waiting for a merchant to suddenly regain coin to buy their stuff. People who log in slight off peak hours will get shafted because half the game world will be tapped out.
This again is one of those game systems that, though isn't very realistic, is just needed for the game to work. Trying to compare a system within a single player game to an MMO is apples to oranges. You'd ether completely screw over half the server, or the cash pool per merchant would be so big that it'd make no difference in the long run.
It all just seems pointless.
I don't have a problem with vendors only buying item types that they generally work with/sell. Just throw in a pawn type vendor that will buy anything at a much lower price for people who don't want to track down specific vendors for better prices. This just seems normal to me with or without any kind of inflation problem.
Yea, I kinda like Nolry's idea. I don't know how Pantheon intends to work once we get in game, though. There are some games that constantly drop coins from mobs, but not enough to farm for crafted gear in any amount of time. And there are mobs that drop grey item pieces. Stuff you can sell to vendors for cash. The only issue with that is it takes up inventory space. But it's not an unplayable game because of that. Hopefully alpha comes along soon and we can come back to this post and possibly give more ideas. :)
I think there are some cool ideas in here, but at the risk of agreeing with Liav, I'm not sure what problem this solves other than "it's not realistic that all merchants buy unlimted amounts of everything". I don't like the idea of having to micromanage when I sell goods depending on what game time of day it is. I do agree that rats shouldn't drop rapiers, and that armorsmith merchants shouldn't buy rat whiskers. /shrug
Krixus said:I think there are some cool ideas in here, but at the risk of agreeing with Liav, I'm not sure what problem this solves other than "it's not realistic that all merchants buy unlimted amounts of everything". I don't like the idea of having to micromanage when I sell goods depending on what game time of day it is. I do agree that rats shouldn't drop rapiers, and that armorsmith merchants shouldn't buy rat whiskers. /shrug
Risky indeed. /wink
I agree with Liav here.
Not to mention how incredibly screwed you'd be trying to do a vendor run while in a dungeon group. The nearest vendors would always be out of money for you or giving you next to nothing. I really don't think this is going to be the problem everyone is assuming and if it does pop up it will take years, which is plenty of time for VR to monitor it and work on slowly curbing it. There are always ways to get creative to suck the money out of players here and there, be it for events or otherwise. Maybe Thronefast wants to raise money to build a new ward in the city requiring players on the server to collectively contribute 1,000,000 plat before it unlocks, and a dungeon with it.
I agree that you are not going to stop inflation. You may slow it, but it is inevitable. But I have always liked a merchant system, as proposed above somewhere, where a blacksmith will pay more for a weapon or armor peice than he would for a loaf of bread, and vice versa for the baker.
Fulton said:I agree that you are not going to stop inflation. You may slow it, but it is inevitable. But I have always liked a merchant system, as proposed above somewhere, where a blacksmith will pay more for a weapon or armor peice than he would for a loaf of bread, and vice versa for the baker.
But that only makes sense as far as materials go. A baker doesn't want someones bread, they want to sell their own fresh bread. A blacksmith most likely doesn't want a forged weapon in good condition any more than any other merchant as he is just going to sell it, why break it down and put work and effort into reforging something that can already sell itself?