Best Of

Orael said:

Just to hopefully clear the air here - part of the reason for this thread is we can determine what the players in general want, so we can aim our goals appropriately.

There has been a lot of requests here to make things more active/engaging but then on the flip side, people want to have the option to not engage in the economy at all (mostly by having non-decay, self-sufficiency etc).  Those seem pretty polar opposite goals. 

Here are a few more questions that could use some answers in general. 

1) Is the economy actually a problem for everyone or just a certain subset of players (like newbies etc)?
2) Should trading and economy be pushed as a viable gameplay route (ie, Merchant players that can make money as their IC identity and role)
    - Is this currently an option?
3) Is there a route to allows players to both engage or not-engage as they see fit (ie Opt-in?).
   - Is this a worthwhile path?
4) Would a better option just be just to nuke the economy and not even worry about it and only fix the commodity issues and call it a day?
    - This option would be along the lines of just making basic supplies available in a shop. People can choose to have shops, but they'll have to understand that literally nobody has to or will engage with them outside others that choose to. The only worry about a glut of things would be to preserve db space rather than any economical issues?

Ianir said:

Parhelion said:

Shango said:

Used to have manse generators, and in the name of scarcity to...SOMEHOW...fix the economy, that was removed. 

I can almost promise you that this happened because Someone was afraid comm generators were costing them irl money.

Normally I have no desire to respond to claims like this because there's no benefit in it on our side, however this is outlandish and well-documented enough already that I have absolutely no issues doing so.

It happened because they got out of control and stockpiles of 10-200k of a single comm were becoming common, to the point where scarcity became non-existent in an economy that, while barely functioning as it is, relies on scarcity of commodities to exist. Money was not a concern, the game's health was.

Look, I know you're obviously going to have more knowledge of how this went down than I will, and I'm sure you're right, where I'm just cynical.

There have just been so many cases years ago where something with an impact on the economy was either severely underestimated or severely overestimated, and I can fully see a specific someone wanting to do away with the mines because they felt that it reduced the chances of someone buying credits in order to buy commodities. I'm not trying to badmouth said person.

I personally feel like the aforementioned 10-200k stock of a comm isn't as detrimental to the economy as your post might suggest, nor do I feel that our economy should or does rely on the scarcity of comms. I am not an economist, and someone with more experience can probably correct me with the greatest of ease, but in an economy where money simply falls out of corpses or sits around on the ground in piles waiting to be handed out to adventurers, any scarcity in the system that is artificially injected into said system is done so for a specific purpose.

We already have decay, we have systems in place that require you to keep fed, or pay comms/gold/credits to increase your chances of success at a task. Artificially making comms more scarce to "keep the economy going" or to keep them from being cheap only serves one real purpose: requiring people to spend irl money or grind on end to keep themselves going.

Again, this post is simply an uninformed opinion. As someone who delights in shop keeping, I don't do these things to make a profit; usually, I am trying to fill a niche or provide a service that others currently aren't. I don't plot out how much to sell things for, because prices shift constantly. I shouldn't have to struggle to find comms for a reasonable price because the economy of imaginary commodities relies on the scarcity of said imaginary items to keep their cost high.

Might be best to split the difference. Let active generators do the heavy lifting, but have mines available that you shove gold (or food. Please make cooks relevant) into to get some additional comms out.