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One thought I had regarding aethertrading and the need for new characters to be able to get goop (gnome weapons for instance are pretty much essential). Rather than trying to find a way to fit in goop generations, maybe all existing ASHOP goop costs could be converted to credits and leave goops as a skin transformation only mechanic. Or even just axe goop entirely and use credits for skin transformations.

If you're going to remove aethertrade, I propose that the NPC that you'll be introducing be the next goop trader.

Every day, they will ask for a certain item(s) from a particular trade and once you fulfil that order, they give you goop as a reward. Then allow players to decide, regardless of what trade skill they have, to choose what to do with the goop, do they purchase scarves, candies, or artifacts.

For example, today NPC asks that he needs a chair (should be public design, not made by private cartels) to fulfil an order for their clients. Everyone can now look for artisans and the artisans themselves can work on the items, there's your engagement. The goop reward will be lower, perhaps half of what a unique tailoring item would give so that it won't be flooded.

Next day, NPC ask for a set of swords of this design so forgers have a chance to work and earn, then so on and so forth.

This way, this can probably solve player engagement, the feeling of the importance of that trade, and some sort of sink on commodities.

What do you guys think?

Edited for corrections.

Sulwh said:

Orael said:

I'm going to refer you to the overview post that explains why we're doing this.

Basically, the idea here is you're building proficiency to prevent grinding as much so you can sell things cheaper and more efficiently.

So the overarching vision is to:

• Have players grind to build proficiency that will reduce grinding in the long term. And then since proficiency will drop every year, players will have to continue to grind in order to grind less.
• Players will have to specialize in a game that does not have the population to support specialization.
• Instead of allowing all trades to aethertrade, no aethertrading will be allowed by any trades so aethergoop will essentially become a premium only currency.
• Remove all mechanical incentive for players to trans a trade skill, so that only players who are interested in the creative aspects of the game will fully trans trade skills, further increasing scarcity.

Did I miss anything?

1) They'll have to perform the trade once a year or something to maintain proficiency - and that's only to encourage buying from active players vs dormant players (primarily in shops). Proficiency at the moment wouldn't be that much of a grind
2) Players will not have to specialize but they'll be encouraged to specialize. We're addressing issues such as not being able to find traders with various things.
3) somewhat, you still have wondercorn and can buy it in game still. Aethertrading wasn't the only way to get goop.
4) Yeah, we're removing the benefit to have people choose the trade they want to do rather than the trade they need for the benefit. We wanted to remove any potential bias to let players do what they want freely. 

I think this proposal emphasises the wrong problems with the economy. Currently, it's possible for established players to outcompete new people in all trades, but that's not really because of skillflexing. Skillflexing just makes it easier for an individual to outcompete in all trades, but it doesn't matter to that newbie if it's one person outcompeting them in everything or if it's ten people each outcompeting them in a separate one of their possible choices.

The big problem is that artifacts (and curios) provide drastic benefits that massively warp the profit ratios of certain skills.

The only part of the proposal that addresses this is the vague statement that "The overall goal with proficiency levels is that a trader at 100% proficiency and zero artifacts will be more efficient/effective than a player at 0% proficiency and all the artifacts.". But again that doesn't matter if there's going to be someone at 100% proficiency with all the artifacts producing puritydust at less than a quarter of the cost. You're never going to sell any dust.

Individuals possessing multiple trade skills is a smaller problem than artifacts.

If you do address the artifact disparity, I can understand the idea behind stopping individuals from stocking their shops with every trade at full efficiency. It feels like an awkwardly artificial limitation to force shopkeepers to not just fully stock their own shop but it's understandable. But I don't think it needs to be a dramatic difference. Even a 10% difference in price is enough to make people pick the cheaper shop, or have shopkeepers seek out someone with proficiency to stock their shop, while allowing cartel-owners to sell unique designs from multiple trades without being completely priced out.

Aeldra said:

Hm. My main gripe with this is, how village revolts generally are very lopsided to begin with. There's often been a lopsides in villages to a large degree and to who had enough people to claim the majority of them. I understand that the goal of agriculture and prospecting is to make it so you no longer have to rely onto villages as much, but removing the commodity rewards from commodity quests will also now remove the chance for someone from an somewhat opposing org to run the commodity quest if they urgently need anything for their trades.

In my opinion, this can be counterbalanced by having some means and methods of gaining commodities instead outside of villages. The Tolborolla questline to gain silk spinnerets can just allow you to rift those spinnerets if you like (which might have the interesting application of allowing you to circumvent part of the grinding process of that quest if you can just store silk for later or bring it from a village instead). Could generate meat, milk, and eggs in the Gourmet Alley (Is that what we're calling it these days instead? Wherever the place with Crumkane's realm entrance is). Getting gold and commodities at the same time in villages has always been a bit lopsided while also only being particularly profitable for people who are largely self-sufficient and able to make full use of each commodity they produce as well as gold.

Then the only reason to turn in at villages would be to help fill the controlling org's holdings. This would also add a more competitive aspect to things, since players in orgs without villages would still have incentives to do commodity quests - it would just be for themselves rather than rolling into their trade ministry.

Sorry more thoughts. I never change class and have no interest in doing so. Depending how this proficiency/costing plays out, this proposed change would make obsolete: My tam, my third trade, allllll the lessons from 6 other trades (i have 8) and all the trade artifacts that go with them. Add in the trade curios that boost production...this feels like a really big swipe at anyone who actually was already engaging in the market system. A lot of people who have multiple trades don't do it for mechanics and likely don't even bother in having multiple slots open for them, but those like me who had them to be self-sufficient or just indecisive in what craft they feel like engaging in at the time, now have to choose favourites.

Every other part of this proposal feels pretty good to me at a glance (except maybe removing gold drops entirely) but this not only stings personally but I feel like it will have the desired result. How many shopkeepers do we have out there, that are like me and have multiple trades they use to stock those shops? If we are nerfed, are there really that many other people out there willing to stock a shop with their wares? It's hard to find some trades already, like tinkering. Are there really that many tinkers who would willingly stay at that trade to stock a shop? Over other more creative crafts? I know currently I flex it to access the enchants people need. But if they're going to be available in NPC shops anyway, why bother having it? I suspect current shopkeepers who like to flex trades will be hit, and everyone else who never cared anyway will continue not caring because they can just buy what they need from Trader Bob.

What is the incentive for non-creative trades? People wanting unique things will be able to access them in those player-run shops - awesome, but why have alchemy, or herbs? I know a lot of my shop-keeping gold comes not from anything creative but from people who can't find avaricehorn or regulators. Obviously it's hard to know without knowing what the NPC shops sell for but if they're not -significantly- higher there's still no way to make a profit, with now scarcity items always being available.

I'm a bit upset but I hope I'm still making sense. This feels like a backward solution and a big nerf to my enjoyment of shopkeeping. I tend to stock things to fill a need. 99% of my designs are public or in the city cartels - which would be readily available also. So even the trades that are creative likely wouldn't generate income for me unless i start filling my private cartels, which generally are designs only for myself or family, private for that very reason. Please rethink the trade limit/proficiency aspect. Cut the huge lesson costs to make them accessible, strip out the buffs, leave them as fun perks to have if you enjoy making things without having to grind to be -good- at something you transcended already.

i thought the idea was to allow people to engage as much or as little with the system as they wanted. The trade change cuts me to the cooore. I really enjoyed stocking my shops with a range of necessities that I could make myself. As someone who never changes class, my tam is now completely useless to me as skillflexing trades to do my own work is now going to be a punishment. Are trades also going to be untied from high/low magic? I assume so. As someone who really enjoys the creative aspect of trades, being forced to choose which I want to keep (or be penalised each time for switching) this is very frustrating to me. I'm not sure how making it a grind/must do to stay skilled is the tack anyone really wanted. And of course, if I wanted to be able to take up the new skills of sourcing comms to provide for my crafts, presumably that would also limit my creative outlets.
 
I'm glad I hadn't yet bought the artifact to give me a fourth trade as planned. I think removing the inherent buffs/bonuses is a great idea, I can even get behind removing aethertraders, but I think those were enough without also taking away the trades from people like myself who like to dabble in all the things, stock their shops sometimes, and design things they can also craft without hunting people down.

The shop changes are great! No more needing to find a person for one charge of a certain enchantment or for tattoos or what have you. Love it. Empower shop keepers! Please don't with the otherhand knock them back with this nerf. I have every trade currently that I can take and the thought of picking up the others is very exciting...except, again, being forced to choose (or suffer everything taking longer/costing more.) That's really unfun. I don't spend hours on hours on my trade, just here and there I like to dabble in different things when stock is low, but in many different trades. 

Pleeeeease. Please please. Reconsider this. 

Also - i suggest remove brewmeistery entirely and split it between cooking and alchemy as appropriate, it seems silly to remove those things from chefs and have a skillset that literally can only make a handful of things. Especially given it will no longer be class-tied and buffs removed.

And another thought - will teaceremony be added anywhere like the wondercorn? Some of us still made use of them situationally.