Trasak said:Enitzu said:Buying space in a bank, sure I'm good with that. Even renting it for a time period for a low cost, fine. But unlimited space based on cash available, no thanks. The thing with this is that space forces you to make choices. Do you keep those outdated lowbie boots cuz of the sentiment behind them or do you sell them to create more space for storage. It also falls into server issues when you have 5k+ people all with 1k storage spots. That's increasing the amount of data accessed by the server by alot.
You could set the rent prices as exponential growth the more space you rent and you need to pay the month upfront. That way you could still store a lot for a short amount of time but if you leave it in there too long it will really drain your resources and eventually all the items will go up for auction.
I'm not really good with this. You should never lose items that you have stored in the bank. All you really need to do is this:
If you still have items in a vault when your lease runs out, your bank account is put on hold. No deposits/withdraws except for the purposes of cleaning out your expired vaults. Once you've cleared the expired vaults or purchased another year, you're free to go about business as normal.
Bank vaults would be shared account-wide, but regionally distinct (as VR has discussed)
This has been a really awesome discussion so far :) I've purposely been only watching, and not responding because I really wanted to see how you all felt about the idea objectively.
I just wanted to explain some of my thought process now that the thread has been going on for a couple of days.
1) The main reason I went with the idea of paying a fee for each item was (as some have pointed out) the money sink angle. The idea that everyone has to pay at least a little bit. But I think there's a lot of room to vary that (first X slots free, scaling cost based on how many slots you have, etc) and still keep the spirit of what it's trying to accomplish.
2) The reason that I chose to allow people to withdraw (but not deposit) if they weren't able to pay their upkeep was to cover the scenario where a player bit off more than they could chew, so to speak. I feel like people would legitimately make that mistake, and I didn't want to penalize them too harshly for it.
3) I purposely chose to say that maximum storage would be "unlimited", based on how much the customer was willing to pay. The reason I put that in quotes is that obviously there will be some sort of technical limitation. But what influenced me to say "unlimited" is the fact that one of the biggest reason people create alts that they don't actually play is to get around limitations on item storage. Philosophically, I'd rather allow players to store as much as the game can handle on a single character, and make that a money sink, than just have people using extra character slots to get around the limitation for free.
Anyway that's just some of my original reasoning. I don't want to influence anyone's ideas but I figured it would help some of you if you understood what was going through my head when I wrote this up originally :)
I like it a lot. There's no reason at all that banking should be free - it's not like those 'vendors' get anything out of the deal.
It's the same as sales taxes on an auction house.
Good idea.
EDIT: Changed my mind somewhat below hehe. Whilst I think it would be appropriate for something like auctions, I'm not sure it would be good in banking.
I mentioned at some time on some random post that i wanted banks to act more like real banks. You want to transfer funds from one bank to another? Wire transfer fee. You want to store items in a bank? Pay for a vault/box to deposit items. Money deposited in a bank gains daily compound interest. Maybe your class guild leader pays for the first month at the bank for item deposits? It would be a way to promote joining your class guild. And why does class guild not have more benefits or "dues" to stay in the class guild? We can still have a functioning player economy and have an NPC economy where to join on a class quest or do certain things ingame you need to pay your dues.
Nephele said:Hey all,
So somehow, the thread about money sinks and the thread about managing alts merged in my head and sparked a crazy idea. I wanted to share this idea with everyone and see what you all think. I admit it's pretty radical in some ways and I can't think of another game that has done this that I've seen. But I also can't really think of a downside to doing it. Maybe you can.
Here's the idea:
- In order to utilize the bank you must "purchase" item capacity. The base rate for item capacity is something small like 5 cp/item. So spend 50 cp, get 10 capacity. Spend 20 silver, get 400 capacity. That sort of thing.
- Each "item" you put in the bank takes up one unit of capacity. Items in containers such as bags still count, so a 10-slot bag full of stuff takes up 11 capacity. Stacks take up only 1 capacity though, so those 150 arrows only count as 1 unit of capacity.
- There would be shared bank slots that work the same way but are purchased at a slightly higher cost, maybe 8cp/item or something.
- Every 30 RL days, you have to "re-buy" your item capacity. If you don't do this, you can still withdraw items that are within the bank, but you cannot deposit items.
- If you wish, you can store money in the bank (also useful for other reasons), and then configure your bank to auto-renew your item capacity each month using stored funds. As long as there's enough coin available, it will auto-renew.
- Maximum item capacity in the bank is effectively unlimited (or, with a super-high limit based on database restrictions). Go nuts, purchase 1000 capacity if you want to. If you've got the cash to cover it month to month, more power to you.
I think this idea would accomplish a couple of things. First, it would act as a scaling money sink for the game economy. You pay for what you use. So you as a player can determine how much you're willing to pay for and adjust that amount over time. But the money leaves the game economy. It would also cut down on people using alts to get around storage limitations on bank, without really penalizing people who want to run multiple characters and/or trade items between them for whatever purpose.
Anyway, that's the crazy idea. Curious to hear what people think about it.
I love the idea and I hope that's more or less what they'll go for. I also hope that we will have either customizable tabs or specific tabs for different things like crafting materials, consumables, equipment, quest items/keys, etc. along with search option. I think that devs should take into account the facture and size of items when thinking about stacks - orc teeths or herbs wont take as much space as bear furs.
I accept there is need for money sinks and banking isn't a bad place for that, but I think this system would punish certain playstyles and people and favour others.
I'm a bit of a hoarder, so I would probably regularly find myself paying for lots of storage that isn't 'active' and if I run out of money I can't store any more items even if I go through the pain of freeing up space (because even if I want to swap in 1 new item I will have to pay the upkeep on 100).
It totally favours those that like to play TradeQuest and have high turnover on a smaller variety of items. And of course those who play GoldQuest and prioritise loot/treasure/etc and not exploring/socialising/etc.
In games that had upkeep cost on player housing I just didn't take part because I knew I wouldn't use it to an extent or frequency that made it worthwhile.
It was annoying enough to feel pushed out of player housing - to apply that to something as fundamental as banking would be nasty.
As always, interesting ideas, Neph! Not for me, this time.
P.S. To be honest I find the concept of 'upkeep' in a fantasy game pretty mundane and depressing in most regards. Things like item damage and wear. Rent. Etc. Things wearing out and bills are something I play games to get away from ;^)
I have just one question, why do you want real life things in a video game? I have read through all of the post here thus far and why on earth anyone would want to imitate real life in a video game is beyond me. People play games to get away from such mundane and silly things. To imply on making the bake just like a real bank outside is just tedious and, in all honesty, rather stupid. Games are meant to be fun, they are meant to be an escape from the world around a person. To play a game that is as tedious and depressing as real life makes no sense at all to me.
That being said, I understand the angle of havin git be used as a money sink and I have to agree with the person that said the thing about WoW, (I'm so sorry I don't remember who it was, I will edit it in later) you start out with a set amount of bank slots, and in turn you can purchase bag slots to expand your bank, with each bag slot being more than the last. If you really needed more bank space and you already have all of the bag slots with the lagest bags possible, then you could have the option where you pay for extra bank slots for a small fee, or even more bag slots for a larger fee. If the bank slots aren't doing it for you and the bag slots just aren't holding what you need, then you can also have the option to buy a storage chest. Having to pay rent or an upkeep on this is just not something that should be done. You wan tto encourage peopel to put money int a money sink, but you want ot chase them away by charging them for every tiny thing they do with it...You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar in this case.
As for localized banking, that is just not great, at all. If I'm somewhere in the mountains, I don't want to have to go all the way to the oasis in the other side of the map, just because I need to get my feather out to make arrows. That would be like flying from the US to Germany just because your forgot your toothbrush. I understand that there needs to be some money sinks, and that there needs to be a means to be able to help with inflation, but having a digitalized bank in a game act like an actual bank you would find in a plaza outside is just plain and utter craziness.
EDIT: Porygon was the person that made the comment about the WoW system.
OCastitatisLilium said:I have just one question, why do you want real life things in a video game? I have read through all of the post here thus far and why on earth anyone would want to imitate real life in a video game is beyond me. People play games to get away from such mundane and silly things. To imply on making the bake just like a real bank outside is just tedious and, in all honesty, rather stupid. Games are meant to be fun, they are meant to be an escape from the world around a person. To play a game that is as tedious and depressing as real life makes no sense at all to me.
- Some people enjoy life for the most what it is and want to escape only certain aspects of it, that stresses them out.
- Some people want realism in parts of the game which offers activities they rarely (or at all) have opportunity to expirience IRL, but whould love to learn about the process or some fact about it - like what are correct steps of crafting a sword or what is a proper method, correct nomenclature and items used while treating fractures. Personally I love learning new stuff when I play!
- Some people are extremally shy/with social fobia that want to expirince "real stuff" while not putting themselves "out there".
- Some people find specific parts of live to actually make sense! (I know crazy thought xD)
I'm sure there are more reasons, but this ones just came to my mind immidietely.
Hegenox said:- Some people enjoy life for the most what it is and want to escape only certain aspects of it, that stresses them out.
- Some people want realism in parts of the game which offers activities they rarely (or at all) have opportunity to expirience IRL, but whould love to learn about the process or some fact about it - like what are correct steps of crafting a sword or what is a proper method, correct nomenclature and items used while treating fractures. Personally I love learning new stuff when I play!
- Some people are extremally shy/with social fobia that want to expirince "real stuff" while not putting themselves "out there".
- Some people find specific parts of live to actually make sense! (I know crazy thought xD)
I'm sure there are more reasons, but this ones just came to my mind immidietely.
I get that people escape certain parts of life, that fine, but I find a few flaws with your reasoning here. One of them being the social thing. If you have a social phobia and/or are a shy person, then why are you going to play a game that encourages or possibly will even force people to socialize and interact with people to get anywhere? You say that they don't want to put themselves "out there" and this is true, but then they would be doing that exact thing while playing this game if it is encouraging or forcing socialization. I know people that have such social phobias and they completely avoid games like EQ and Wow just because of how social they are (with WoW being way more solo-able and lacking social requirements than EQ). Let's go a bit farther in on this, what about people with mechanical phobias, people that just can't handle too many monetary equations and things of that nature?
I'm all for learning things as I do other things as well, in fact I did a lot of that growing up; though I didn't do it through games, I did it through books. If I saw something in a game that I wanted to look more into, I went to my local library, or even to my own bookshelf, to see what I had on the subject to learn from. I didn't need a game to teach me, but the game did lead me to wanting to know more. I know that blacksmithing a sword take A LOT of work and time, from having the raw materials right down to the final product and even with that, I don't want to sit there and watch the whole process with each thing I make. it's the same with leatherworking as well. if I want to learn about it, then it's probably better to do it form a book or watch a video instead of sitting in game and watching it happen.
On to the realistic thing, if we were to do everything realistically from taking raw materials to turning them into something usable, we would be all sitting there for literal months to have it happen. Leather isn't just handed to you ready to go, and in some games, they tell you, you have to turn the hide into leather. If we were to do this as realistically and in the real world...well it's not pretty or nice smelling, and it takes forever. it could take months and someone would have to go around and collect urine from the populace, because we are dealing with a medieval fantasy style game so that's how it woudl go for this era, but that's a whole different story. The point is, to apply real world processes to a video game just makes it tedious when the vast majority use games to escape the real world.
As for things making sense, I get it, and yes, the bank thing does make sense in the real world, but why apply it to a not real world. I know what Brad said, that he wants Terminius and Pantheon to be more than just a game, but he wanted it to be a living and breathing world, but I doubt that even he would want to do real life banking things in a virtual bank in a game. Again, I understand having things make sense, but it's a video game, the world is fantasy; it already doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to, it supposed to be a fantasy world that people can escape to and just have fun for a bit, not deal with real world stuff in there as well.
OCastitatisLilium said:I get that people escape certain parts of life, that fine, but I find a few flaws with your reasoning here. One of them being the social thing. If you have a social phobia and/or are a shy person, then why are you going to play a game that encourages or possibly will even force people to socialize and interact with people to get anywhere? You say that they don't want to put themselves "out there" and this is true, but then they would be doing that exact thing while playing this game if it is encouraging or forcing socialization. I know people that have such social phobias and they completely avoid games like EQ and Wow just because of how social they are (with WoW being way more solo-able and lacking social requirements than EQ). Let's go a bit farther in on this, what about people with mechanical phobias, people that just can't handle too many monetary equations and things of that nature?
I'm all for learning things as I do other things as well, in fact I did a lot of that growing up; though I didn't do it through games, I did it through books. If I saw something in a game that I wanted to look more into, I went to my local library, or even to my own bookshelf, to see what I had on the subject to learn from. I didn't need a game to teach me, but the game did lead me to wanting to know more. I know that blacksmithing a sword take A LOT of work and time, from having the raw materials right down to the final product and even with that, I don't want to sit there and watch the whole process with each thing I make. it's the same with leatherworking as well. if I want to learn about it, then it's probably better to do it form a book or watch a video instead of sitting in game and watching it happen.
On to the realistic thing, if we were to do everything realistically from taking raw materials to turning them into something usable, we would be all sitting there for literal months to have it happen. Leather isn't just handed to you ready to go, and in some games, they tell you, you have to turn the hide into leather. If we were to do this as realistically and in the real world...well it's not pretty or nice smelling, and it takes forever. it could take months and someone would have to go around and collect urine from the populace, because we are dealing with a medieval fantasy style game so that's how it woudl go for this era, but that's a whole different story. The point is, to apply real world processes to a video game just makes it tedious when the vast majority use games to escape the real world.
As for things making sense, I get it, and yes, the bank thing does make sense in the real world, but why apply it to a not real world. I know what Brad said, that he wants Terminius and Pantheon to be more than just a game, but he wanted it to be a living and breathing world, but I doubt that even he would want to do real life banking things in a virtual bank in a game. Again, I understand having things make sense, but it's a video game, the world is fantasy; it already doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to, it supposed to be a fantasy world that people can escape to and just have fun for a bit, not deal with real world stuff in there as well.
The fact that they have social phobia, doesn't mean they have to shut themselves up completely and stay in their rooms all the time. They may want to challange themselves and become better every day, but actually meeting someone face to face from the start would be too much of a shock, but having the game that expects them to socialize more, but in the environment which they have some control of (they do not show their faces, they can only listen and follow commands until they feel more confident and then start to speak more and more). I know quite a few of people that from hikikomori personality changed into quite average human beings - becouse of games.
As for people that "can't handle too many monetary equations" that's almost me - I mean my math skills are average, but I just suck at and don't enjoy trading - but I don't mind asking for help members of my guild to do trading for me for a cut.
The examples I gave were JUST examples and I don't expect (or want to) to sit through entire process of forging a sword each time I craft - though I certainly wouldn't mind having to do it like a (not so)mini-game whenever we advance in crafting rank. I also spend quite a lot of time researching topics that interests me the most after a play session, but it'd be certainly nice to be able to learn something from game itself rather than reading (or skiping through) some generic (and often incorrect) text that would be usually in standard game. But the biggest advantage over just reading about some things in the books/internet is repetitivity (repetitio est mater studiorum) - familiarizing onself with the nomenclature and actually remembering this stuff rather than just understanding the process but then forgetting about most of it.
I get that - but during my life I've learned that BALANCE is the key to everything (mainly happiness) - having a game purely realistic wouldn't be fun long term, but so would be having a game detached from reality.
People are different and we all are attracted to different things (and that is a beauty of life while being it's curse at the same time). The game being in fantasy setting doesn't automatically mean that all rules doesn't/shouldn't apply and we have to go for extreme. As I said real world is a beautiful place that only needs a bit of "colouring" to be perfect. I'm quite sure that I'm not the only one with that mindset ;-)
Nephele said:Here's the idea:
- In order to utilize the bank you must "purchase" item capacity. The base rate for item capacity is something small like 5 cp/item. So spend 50 cp, get 10 capacity. Spend 20 silver, get 400 capacity. That sort of thing.
- Every 30 RL days, you have to "re-buy" your item capacity. If you don't do this, you can still withdraw items that are within the bank, but you cannot deposit items.
While I really do like the idea of bank space actually having a continued use cost, I would modify this a bit by saying that the bank at your racial home city would have a much lower cost and offer expanded services while subsequent bank spaces at other racial cities would be more expensive for fewer services.
You could easily bring faction into this whereby the lower your faction standing with that race the higher cost and fewer services you get for your money. You can expand the banking system out into the wilds where some fortified encampment has a strongbox or other 'bank' type storage where the costs are very high but given the convenience you might want to pay for short term storage there.
People Start poor, as much as I hate to say this, when you're a newbie Bank space/inventory management has to hurt- because this makes the satisfaction of tailored weight reduction bags or droped LORE No trade weight reduction bags more satisfying to obtain- the "one less thing" phenomenon of relief.
This means I like these ideas. I like faction banking, too and higher fees with faction banking.
I think you shoud start with maybe 2 bank slots and have to pay for more. putting in a container to expand your slots would also cost a little. this would put a significant maintenence burden on the newbie provided it scaled with levels maybe?
Who remembers the goblin bankers in the bottom of runneyeye? scowling, ready to attack, but a nice suprise for the heavily laden. As a twist I would say ONLY Hostile NPC banks- like in runneyeye- would be universal and they would be FEW or one, maybe 2, a nice easter egg.
Local banks do not limit travel, rather, they make you aware of what you need for the area. Besides this lines up with the rare items going for more in far away palces and the whole "silk road" idea. For you, sir, can bring freathers to this place and sell them to a merchant and make a ton of gold, and then go back and get more, or you can keep them and adventure.
I think money should have weight, and I think money should also be smeltable by smiths of a certain skill level into ores as this will also help be a money sink of sorts. It may be too complicated but from a smelting perspecting I would like to see the coins smelted to be changed once deposited and withdrawn, for instance, copper coins deposited in thronefast, then withdrawn and smelted will produce X ingots of copper and y ingot of tin or other base metal, because thats how they coin them in thronefast. Never a one to one but thats the price you pay for the convenience of getting brass or tin, rather than smelting it yourself from ores.
@NepheleI
have not had the time to consider this for long so I might be missing a consequence that would change my mind but for now I like the concept. I agree also that losing items if not paid go’s too far as tempting as it might be.
Vandraad said:Nephele said:Here's the idea:
- In order to utilize the bank you must "purchase" item capacity. The base rate for item capacity is something small like 5 cp/item. So spend 50 cp, get 10 capacity. Spend 20 silver, get 400 capacity. That sort of thing.
- Every 30 RL days, you have to "re-buy" your item capacity. If you don't do this, you can still withdraw items that are within the bank, but you cannot deposit items.
While I really do like the idea of bank space actually having a continued use cost, I would modify this a bit by saying that the bank at your racial home city would have a much lower cost and offer expanded services while subsequent bank spaces at other racial cities would be more expensive for fewer services.
You could easily bring faction into this whereby the lower your faction standing with that race the higher cost and fewer services you get for your money. You can expand the banking system out into the wilds where some fortified encampment has a strongbox or other 'bank' type storage where the costs are very high but given the convenience you might want to pay for short term storage there.
I'm sorta against the principle of 'rent' for stuff like this, but I have to say, your idea of faction/location based fees is good, if it were to be a thing. It would at least be a more immersive feature you could mitigate rather than simply feel like a blanket banking punishment.
I just want to point out to everyone that this thread was started a year and a half ago. I was a little surprised to see it come back :) It is interesting to see how some of our viewpoints have evolved in that time.
Personally, I still think I like the concept of item storage as an ongoing money sink for players. I think that it can be set up in a way where people can maintain a reasonable amount of storage space without the prices being punitive. To me, I would rather know that I can keep expanding my bank if I need to (even if it costs) than that I'll eventually have to set up a mule to hold excess things. This is just my opinion, but it's based on not just what's best for me personally, but also what I feel is best for the game and the game economy as a whole.
It's interesting Neph. I've always liked the idea of having to pay a monthly banking fee (that can fluctuate) to the city guards for access to their city's bank (protected storage). Hehe I'm not saying this will be in Terminus, but for fun I've always liked the idea in some form.
