Make it so that whenever you throw a snowball, it has a random chance to hit who it is thrown at (modified perhaps by race and/or agility buffs/maluses). Also make it break whenever it is thrown. Make snowball fights a real thing.
Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
I don't know if this has been posted (and shot down) before, but:
___
Edit one command:
CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> : offer to buy x credits at a price of y. If there are current asks below y, the transaction is carried out. If there isn't, this sets aside (x*y) gold in escrow to purchase credits if someone is willing to sell at that price.
Create a few new commands:
CREDITS BUY NONE: cancel all outstanding offers to purchase credits
CREDITS DEMANDED: lists the highest ___ offers for credit purchase
CREDITS DEMANDED ALL: Lists all offers for credit purchase
___
To make it work, I think you might have to put a hard cap (10? 100?) on the number of credits you can offer to purchase at any time. This would also prevent people from using it as a bank.
Right now, we only see the asks, and not the bids. It makes it harder to get involved in the market, and causes the big swings in average prices that we see. If people need quick gold, they might feel that they have to sell at too low of prices. It also incentivizes people sitting around and checking credits for sale every 2 minutes, just to jump on the low priced credits when they go up.
That being said, I definitely would like a syntax like this. Also, using it as a bank has little to do with it, since you can't steal in Lusternia anyway, and you don't drop gold when you die, so there's no real conceivable way to lose your gold. Even offering only offers 1000 gold at a time, IIRC.
I don't know if this has been posted (and shot down) before, but:
___
Edit one command:
CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> : offer to buy x credits at a price of y. If there are current asks below y, the transaction is carried out. If there isn't, this sets aside (x*y) gold in escrow to purchase credits if someone is willing to sell at that price.
Create a few new commands:
CREDITS BUY NONE: cancel all outstanding offers to purchase credits
CREDITS DEMANDED: lists the highest ___ offers for credit purchase
CREDITS DEMANDED ALL: Lists all offers for credit purchase
___
To make it work, I think you might have to put a hard cap (10? 100?) on the number of credits you can offer to purchase at any time. This would also prevent people from using it as a bank.
Right now, we only see the asks, and not the bids. It makes it harder to get involved in the market, and causes the big swings in average prices that we see. If people need quick gold, they might feel that they have to sell at too low of prices. It also incentivizes people sitting around and checking credits for sale every 2 minutes, just to jump on the low priced credits when they go up.
Seems to me this would further push the cost of credits up. Unless I misunderstand you, you're suggesting that older players like myself can buy up credits even when off line? Or if not off line, when inatentive?
I don't think it would particularly affect the average price paid, but rather stabilize the prices, reducing variance and (I suspect) lower average prices paid by newbies.
I obviously don't have the data, but I suspect the market currently works in the following way: one can buy a bunch of credits at any time, paying approximately 40k. Occasionally, a number of credits (10-100) goes up at prices substantially below posted prices (20-35k, for instance). I'd bet that those credits primarily go to the rich old folks, who have the liquidity to drop on a big purchase, and then resell them at the standard price, while the younger, poorer players are stuck buying credits "here and there" at about 40k. If someone with the data told me that actually the lion's share of these cheap credits went to credit-poor players, then I'd take back my idea.
I'd imagine that if we set up the other side of the market, then we'd 1) get much more stable "average" prices, 2) rich players would end up paying more on average, while poor players would end up paying less, and 3) those selling credits could dispose of them quickly. We'd also have the extra efficiency gains of rarely if ever having to check CREDITS FOR SALE, because you just need to post the amount you are willing to pay.
So yes, older players can buy up credits when off line or inattentive. I simply think that it was already older players who are taking advantage of the system as is, and that this would actually even the playing field.
Trouble is, if Joe Newbie puts up a buy offer of (say) 3K per credit, and every speculator on the market puts their buy orders at 1k less than the current market "price", Joe Newbie is never going to see his credits, and the speculators are just going to get their batches of credits 10 at a time without needing to actually pay attention to CFS.
It would stabilise the market, conceivably, but only where it was when the new syntax was put in.
I don't think it would particularly affect the average price paid, but rather stabilize the prices, reducing variance and (I suspect) lower average prices paid by newbies.
I obviously don't have the data, but I suspect the market currently works in the following way: one can buy a bunch of credits at any time, paying approximately 40k. Occasionally, a number of credits (10-100) goes up at prices substantially below posted prices (20-35k, for instance). I'd bet that those credits primarily go to the rich old folks, who have the liquidity to drop on a big purchase, and then resell them at the standard price, while the younger, poorer players are stuck buying credits "here and there" at about 40k. If someone with the data told me that actually the lion's share of these cheap credits went to credit-poor players, then I'd take back my idea.
I'd imagine that if we set up the other side of the market, then we'd 1) get much more stable "average" prices, 2) rich players would end up paying more on average, while poor players would end up paying less, and 3) those selling credits could dispose of them quickly. We'd also have the extra efficiency gains of rarely if ever having to check CREDITS FOR SALE, because you just need to post the amount you are willing to pay.
So yes, older players can buy up credits when off line or inattentive. I simply think that it was already older players who are taking advantage of the system as is, and that this would actually even the playing field.
There doesn't seem to be as much price variation as your post suggests. Perhaps, you were exaggerating for emphasis?
The market being somewhat unstable has some risk involved in speculation. If it was stable and could be automated then I think that would open up some abuse. For instance, if credits were stable at 40k each, why not have a buy in for 39k? That's 10k profit for doing nothing.
While many people seem convinced the problem with the credit market is gold, I'm not convinced. Long before maps the prices were still in their 30's. Seems more like the problem with the credit market is lack of credits. Lusternia has engaged in marginalizing credit purchases by implementing alternative curacies (dingbats, goop, crystals, coal, candy, curios, presents, et al.). Binding credits didn't help either.
One only has to look at their org logs to see how rarely someone buys credits or how few have elite memberships.
There doesn't seem to be as much price variation as your post suggests. Perhaps, you were exaggerating for emphasis?
Maybe my perceptions are colored by my biases, but I don't think it's uncommon to see the "average sale price" drop 5-7 thousand, and then slowly creep back up to where it was before. I don't know the formula used for the average sale price, but I suspect it's something along the lines of "average price paid for the past 200 credits" or perhaps it has a time weighting factor. In any case, this suggests to me that the market is characterized by big purchases at low prices (must be lower than 33 or 34k, probably even lower than that, depending on the average price formula) and small purchases at the higher price of ~40k. Because I doubt newbies have the cash on hand to buy up a large number of credits, even at a somewhat discounted price, I take this as evidence that the rich players are the ones buying low, and the poor players are buying high.
The market being somewhat unstable has some risk involved in speculation. If it was stable and could be automated then I think that would open up some abuse. For instance, if credits were stable at 40k each, why not have a buy in for 39k? That's 10k profit for doing nothing.
I actually think think that introducing overall stability is what will create the risk in speculation - there's no risk in buying at 30k, since you know that you could resell at 5k profit per within an hour, and 8 or 9k profit per in a few days. Stabilizing the market will mean that speculative profit will be based completely on longer term trends, which are harder to predict.
While many people seem convinced the problem with the credit market is gold, I'm not convinced. Long before maps the prices were still in their 30's. Seems more like the problem with the credit market is lack of credits. Lusternia has engaged in marginalizing credit purchases by implementing alternative curacies (dingbats, goop, crystals, coal, candy, curios, presents, et al.). Binding credits didn't help either.
One only has to look at their org logs to see how rarely someone buys credits or how few have elite memberships.
The issue with credit prices is not, and has never been, gold. Sarapis went into some detail about a thing called "mudlfation," apparently coined in the 90s when MUDs were at their peak, but basically it explains a few things regarding MUD economics and how the inflation is not really tied to gold but rather the longevity of the game. He also stated there is no known solution to it.
The issue with credit prices is not, and has never been, gold. Sarapis went into some detail about a thing called "mudlfation," apparently coined in the 90s when MUDs were at their peak, but basically it explains a few things regarding MUD economics and how the inflation is not really tied to gold but rather the longevity of the game. He also stated there is no known solution to it.
Solution: Everyone agrees to let Kethuru win next Ascension. World resets, economy is fixed for another few years.
The issue with credit prices is not, and has never been, gold. Sarapis went into some detail about a thing called "mudlfation," apparently coined in the 90s when MUDs were at their peak, but basically it explains a few things regarding MUD economics and how the inflation is not really tied to gold but rather the longevity of the game. He also stated there is no known solution to it.
Solution: Everyone agrees to let Kethuru win next Ascension. World resets, economy is fixed for another few years.
Thanks for figuring out our plan this year, @Phoebus. Economy is fixed, we will destroy half the game world. Everybody wins!
The issue with credit prices is not, and has never been, gold. Sarapis went into some detail about a thing called "mudlfation," apparently coined in the 90s when MUDs were at their peak, but basically it explains a few things regarding MUD economics and how the inflation is not really tied to gold but rather the longevity of the game. He also stated there is no known solution to it.
Solution: Everyone agrees to let Kethuru win next Ascension. World resets, economy is fixed for another few years.
Thanks for figuring out our plan this year, @Phoebus. Economy is fixed, we will destroy half the game world. Everybody wins!
I really like @Mrak 's idea of adding in buy-side mechanics to the credit market. I think it will add a lot of interesting speculation to the credit market, which will be very entertaining to see played out. As well, I agree that it might lower the price of credits (though I don't think by very much). We see it time-and-again as new promotions come out: the price of credits falls as more people buy them with RL currency, and slowly go back up further along in the month. Having a mechanic in place to allow consumers the option of placing Calls might bring down the price further, as it'll give sellers the option of selling at prices better for them.
Also, if you want to bring down the price of credits, then it's up to the Admins to remove overall gold from the game. A good way of doing so, for example, is to decrease Reliable Gold drops while increasing Unreliable Gold drops. Here's what I mean by that:
Think about Maps. For a while, they reliably provided users with a consistent, substantial revenue stream at consistent intervals. This revenue stream was only available to that user, and couldn't be sabotaged by others. Contrast that against, say, the Grey Moors. Killing and turning in the corpses of Krokani and Aslaran also provides a fairly decent revenue stream, but you're never guaranteed access to those places as others may have gotten there first. If the Admins provided more sources of the latter example, while decreasing the amount of (or reward from) the first example, gold will overall be harder to attain, thus inflating its value and deflating the prices of everything else.
Another thing what would have to be done is providing worthwhile sources for removing existing gold. I personally like the idea of gold auctions, where folks can bid on things such as Curios or whatever. A worthwhile discussion could be had about such worthy gold-sinks.
Obviously, I'm just speculating here, but I've thought a lot about this particular issue quite a bit since returning to the game.
Whether a credit is 1000 gold or 100,000 gold, that gold is a representation of time spent earning. Yes, credits are much more expensive now than the past, but the average income of players is higher as well. That equivalence between time and spending power balances out, except for newbies and weaker characters. But, players should be rewarded for character advancement, or increasing their knowledge of the game and this often equates to a greater ability to earn coin.
More important is control of the net gold in the system, which the game lacks in sufficient measure. Most games that properly address this issue have resource removal that increases as characters get more powerful. Lusternia has the opposite. As characters get more powerful, their gold costs decrease while their gold income increases.
I tend to agree strongly with the need for gold sources to be fixed and contested, so the net total gold coming in is controlled. But I think that's a far smaller concern than the relative difference between gold coming into the economy versus gold exiting the economy. The game needs gold sinks, and by that I mean things like mandatory repairs to maintain the full potency of equipment (such repairs costing gold coins in one way or another that leave the system). Manses and ships should have modest gold coin costs to maintain, or else insert drawbacks here. I wouldn't ever want to see this kind of setup resulting in item destruction (for anything of significance, like weapons/armor/manses), but I suspect we're far too late into the game to introduce mechanics like that.
For example, once every year your armors lose 1-2% of their defense until repaired, down to half. Repairs cost gold in some way which have to leave the system. Ah, but did you get artifacted armor? Now your gold costs are three times as much, but only dwindle to 75%. Got a fully trained mammoth? Stable fees are going to be much higher, but it's even higher for people with beastmaster collars on their beasts. Custom beasts get crazy in stable costs the higher they go in credit value. They'll never die for not having stable fees paid, but they'll dwindle down to 1/4 of their balance speed if not adequately maintained.
We need gold to exit the system, and we need it to exit faster for those able to earn it faster (in general).
edit: There should be a clear line between fixed gold sinks vs use-based gold sinks. For example, we might make equipment require repairs at a rate commensurate with use, whereas we might make manse maintenance a fixed value (some formula based on manse size, artis, et cetera) every year.
The issue with credit prices is not, and has never been, gold. Sarapis went into some detail about a thing called "mudlfation," apparently coined in the 90s when MUDs were at their peak, but basically it explains a few things regarding MUD economics and how the inflation is not really tied to gold but rather the longevity of the game. He also stated there is no known solution to it.
Solution: Everyone agrees to let Kethuru win next Ascension. World resets, economy is fixed for another few years.
Thanks for figuring out our plan this year, @Phoebus. Economy is fixed, we will destroy half the game world. Everybody wins!
Kill all manse comm generators, make villages require gold to produce commodities or power with the amount scaling with gold provided, regret time spent on that because commodity consumption is so low anyways.
I don't know how exciting a game about paying bills is going to be.
Ultimately, players do not want to log in to a game job that requires excessive maintenance. Paying a mortgage isn't fun IRL, much less as a game. Gold sinks, which are the most frequently offered solution, are very short term solutions because, unlike in real economies, players can create income out of nothing. Players are literally capable of manufacturing money out of nothing, and gold sinks are only a temporary drain until we generate more.
The only realistic lever they have that won't piss off large swathes of the playerbase is to decrease the amount of gold each mob drops. Which resolves nothing other than making the gold mountain numerically smaller. It does nothing regarding the time vs investment aspect of credit purchases.
The average income of the upper tier of players is higher, at any rate.
Frankly, the best way to sink gold out of the game would be to bolster the power of guards and make them have a consistent gold (and commodity) cost. Encourage orgs to incur gold costs and to look to their players to soak that gold. It would take a long time to work through some of the massive stockpiles, but in the end it could help pick up some of the slack. That way, the gold cost would ultimately be directed towards those characters with the most voluminous savings while not affecting players with low gold amounts at all - all without introducing must have gold items that further increase the power (and richness) of the rich.
Orgs remain the only way worth mentioning of removing gold from circulation - not that circulation is really the issue, rather it's the utter lack of circulation required.
It also does nothing regarding the non-mob sources of gold, such as curios, maps, and gnome trading. I'm not sure how much gold is generated by mobs vs non-mob methods though, so I'm not sure what the impact of each is. Nor does it address the Ayisdrae and Xenthoses of the game, who're already sitting on more gold than every player below level 80 combined (I'm not trying to vilify them, just point out that any re-balancing of the game's gold economy would need to address cases like theirs, where someone has enough gold to safely ignore any change to the inflow of currency for a considerable length of time.).
The issue overall is that on the whole, the entire game has enough of a stockpile of... everything to ignore changes short of deleting stockpiles for.. a long time. Serenwilde could last for RL years without a single new commodity, gold coin, or mote of power. You can't really drop most of those stockpiles, but you can try to encourage the stockpiles to become concentrated and removed from general use (in org coffers, for instance). There are also the most incentives for orgs to drop giant piles of gold (10mil a go) for things like expansions.
Case in point, the average credit price just dropped from 38k to 28k, literally seconds after someone mentioned credits for sale on market. I really doubt that a newbie picked them all up.
I didn't mean to re-open the gold drops vs. everything else vs. sinks argument, I apologize for that (and I don't pretend to have the solution).
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SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
Would it be possible to browse cartels the way we can browse by trade?
Ie, ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS LYRE shows only the lyre designs available to the artisan.
Could we do CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS or CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS LYRE to focus our searches to particular cartels? Some of them have a lot of designs!
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
Can we have a SHOO command that gets player loyals to go away if unattended? So we don't necessarily have to beat all the kittens and puppies, and can reliably clear out cluttery hunting bonds from dormant players. Please?
Also, a Tully's broom that resets to an appropriate room in the org, that can be taken out of its holder by org leaders/council and only used/held inside prime org territory?
Would it be possible to browse cartels the way we can browse by trade?
Ie, ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS LYRE shows only the lyre designs available to the artisan.
Could we do CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS or CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS LYRE to focus our searches to particular cartels? Some of them have a lot of designs!
Not 100% sure this is what you're looking for, but you should be able to do ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS CARTEL GWORKS APPEARANCE LYRE to narrow the results down. From HELP DESIGN SEARCH.
Would it be possible to browse cartels the way we can browse by trade?
Ie, ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS LYRE shows only the lyre designs available to the artisan.
Could we do CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS or CARTEL GWORKS CATALOGUE INSTRUMENTS LYRE to focus our searches to particular cartels? Some of them have a lot of designs!
Not 100% sure this is what you're looking for, but you should be able to do ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS CARTEL GWORKS APPEARANCE LYRE to narrow the results down. From HELP DESIGN SEARCH.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
You two don't seem to ever talk ingame. Maybe someone -does- need to earn Sylandra and steal her away.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
Comments
To make it work, I think you might have to put a hard cap (10? 100?) on the number of credits you can offer to purchase at any time. This would also prevent people from using it as a bank.
That being said, I definitely would like a syntax like this. Also, using it as a bank has little to do with it, since you can't steal in Lusternia anyway, and you don't drop gold when you die, so there's no real conceivable way to lose your gold. Even offering only offers 1000 gold at a time, IIRC.
Also, if you want to bring down the price of credits, then it's up to the Admins to remove overall gold from the game. A good way of doing so, for example, is to decrease Reliable Gold drops while increasing Unreliable Gold drops. Here's what I mean by that:
Think about Maps. For a while, they reliably provided users with a consistent, substantial revenue stream at consistent intervals. This revenue stream was only available to that user, and couldn't be sabotaged by others. Contrast that against, say, the Grey Moors. Killing and turning in the corpses of Krokani and Aslaran also provides a fairly decent revenue stream, but you're never guaranteed access to those places as others may have gotten there first. If the Admins provided more sources of the latter example, while decreasing the amount of (or reward from) the first example, gold will overall be harder to attain, thus inflating its value and deflating the prices of everything else.
Another thing what would have to be done is providing worthwhile sources for removing existing gold. I personally like the idea of gold auctions, where folks can bid on things such as Curios or whatever. A worthwhile discussion could be had about such worthy gold-sinks.
Obviously, I'm just speculating here, but I've thought a lot about this particular issue quite a bit since returning to the game.
More important is control of the net gold in the system, which the game lacks in sufficient measure. Most games that properly address this issue have resource removal that increases as characters get more powerful. Lusternia has the opposite. As characters get more powerful, their gold costs decrease while their gold income increases.
I tend to agree strongly with the need for gold sources to be fixed and contested, so the net total gold coming in is controlled. But I think that's a far smaller concern than the relative difference between gold coming into the economy versus gold exiting the economy. The game needs gold sinks, and by that I mean things like mandatory repairs to maintain the full potency of equipment (such repairs costing gold coins in one way or another that leave the system). Manses and ships should have modest gold coin costs to maintain, or else insert drawbacks here. I wouldn't ever want to see this kind of setup resulting in item destruction (for anything of significance, like weapons/armor/manses), but I suspect we're far too late into the game to introduce mechanics like that.
For example, once every year your armors lose 1-2% of their defense until repaired, down to half. Repairs cost gold in some way which have to leave the system. Ah, but did you get artifacted armor? Now your gold costs are three times as much, but only dwindle to 75%. Got a fully trained mammoth? Stable fees are going to be much higher, but it's even higher for people with beastmaster collars on their beasts. Custom beasts get crazy in stable costs the higher they go in credit value. They'll never die for not having stable fees paid, but they'll dwindle down to 1/4 of their balance speed if not adequately maintained.
We need gold to exit the system, and we need it to exit faster for those able to earn it faster (in general).
edit: There should be a clear line between fixed gold sinks vs use-based gold sinks. For example, we might make equipment require repairs at a rate commensurate with use, whereas we might make manse maintenance a fixed value (some formula based on manse size, artis, et cetera) every year.
Also, a Tully's broom that resets to an appropriate room in the org, that can be taken out of its holder by org leaders/council and only used/held inside prime org territory?
Not 100% sure this is what you're looking for, but you should be able to do ARTISAN INSTRUMENTS CARTEL GWORKS APPEARANCE LYRE to narrow the results down. From HELP DESIGN SEARCH.
Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."