Kalach

Formal Request: To Ent , Roja, and the development and Mod Team. Could you please consider an ISP ban on this player?. I base my request on the above posts and this persons own admissions. He/She/It has no interest in this game...only in spoiling others pleasure, I am aware that there is no precedent for such a request.....but ask you to consider it anyway. I would say that others have received bans for less . I thank you for your consideration and also ask of my fellow players that if they agree to add their names to it. If just the threat of this stops such crap behavior..it will have been successful. Thank you . ps To the players who disagree pls feel free to add as well I hate to say it, because I dislike players of this nature, but.... #1, the rules are specific about what is a punishable offense. It would be incredibly unfair to punish someone for things that are not against those rules. #2, One of the main complaints I've heard is that is PK is boring. From what I've seen, it is boring because there is a terrible gridlock of allied and friendly grids, compared with relative strength. People like Tristran and guilds like LSC give people something to kill. Bottom line.

Searching through the forums, I've seen a few discussions over the past months about the economy and prices. I'm trying to understand what has prices set at where they currently are. Since we can harvest and make most things ourselves, the main drive for prices should be what players are willing to pay, and what NPCs are willing to pay. FEs for example can be sold to an NPC for 3GC each. Few people are going to sell FEs to a player for 2GC each, just because they are a player. HEs, though, are priced at 6-7GC each. Someone checked the Magic Store for me, and reports that the magic store will buy an HE for only 3GC. So that's not the driving force. Players have repeatedly stated that HE's seem expensive, so that doesn't seem to be what's driving either. Is it so much of a sellers market that the sellers can charge what they like? That seems odd, because people can learn to make HE's themselves, and many people are reporting thats what they do. So what is driving prices? Minerals and Ores seem overpriced to me, but perhaps they are NPC driven (Is Harvy a troublemaker?). Would the economy look different if we eliminated all NPCs? Or are we setting our prices ourselves, and then just complaining about them?

Read that, skimmed the thread linked from your "confessional". I want to try to sum up what I've learned from this thread, the ones that were posted. Again, my purpose is just to define exactly what is wrong. The fix is going to be long, at times painful, and complex. There are multiple things going wrong here, and fixing one is going to highlight another even more painfully. #1 Base level and even second level components are relatively solid in their prices. The base class of prices (harvestables) is always going to be somewhat arbitrary, and a well-reasoned set of prices exists. Second tier component prices seem largely based on what it takes to make them. #2 The main complaint is a lake of player interaction in the market. Because of this, using NPCs to bound the market by having them buy/sell at reasonable prices is suspect. If NPC's are bounding the market, then with the exception of transportation problems, there's little reason to sell to players. #3 There is atleast a history of mass-creation of manufacturable items. This causes a flood of cheap items in the markert, ending in devaluation of the item. #4 The history of mass-creation is now starting to generate a correction. Players are veering away from manufacturing to other avenues. "Manufacturing isn't profitable" is a regular statement. Experienced manufacturers no longer have a hill to climb (until the new items are released, soon) because they've (as Mr. Mind stated in one of his posts) "made it all." #5 There are many items labelled as useless. Since a player that is interested enough can have a human nexus of 5 simply starting off, lower levels of manufacturables don't as much demand. #6a Experience and GC gain are not balanced, across the board. Players have mentioned in fighting, they choose whether they make enough money to keep fighting, or whether they make enough experience. In order for players to make a significant gain in experience, they have to produce items in significant enough quantities that they sell for a disproportionate gain in GC. #6b The major functions of the economy are available for limited investment. Flowers, sulfur, silver and FE take *very* little investment in skill and time to produce. This means that a player that is simply dabbling in the area (mining,essence creation) has as likely a profitability as the the player that wants to specialize in the area. #6c Specialization is not rewarded highly enough to be encouraged. A player that wants to focus on mining, for instance, has little incentive to do so. Conversely, a player that wants to focus on fighting has little incentive to continue focus on fighting, rather than delving further into fighting. Correlates with 6a and 6b. #6d Path is not mapped out (maybe) for character growth. In my playing, there doesn't seem to be a solid plan for character growth that aligns profitability in both experience and GC in any skill area. If mining is your goal, for instance, does it follow that after you have mined X flowers you have the PP for your organic nexus, the money for mining books (which, despite the fact that they are in naralik are easy to get your hands on) and gloves. After mining Y sulfur, you have the necessary skill, PP, and money for iron, etc... I believe the same goes for essences and manufacturing. Well... I know, it was lengthy again, with a lot of information. Hopefully people will find it informative. I'm sure some people will question my conclusions. No problems, I'm sure I'm wrong here or there. I just beg you to be patient in showing me where I'm off track, so we can both learn, and eventually Ent can look at this, and perhaps have help in mapping out his economy changes to solve the problems.

The transportation cost/simplicity of harvesting of flowers drives their cost pretty darn close to 0. There's always a good place to harvest flowers, taking up 1 EMU, being close to storage, etc... You couldn't build a model directly off of EMU, but it seems that the price is driven by complexity to harvest. For ore, transportation greatly exceeds other concerns, so it largely drives the equation. I've played the game enough for this to make sense to me.

Not a pro, here, but this is pinned at the top of the forum! Problems with Norton Internet Security

NP... It's going to be really funny, when he posts and tells me I was totally wrong, though.

Corrected (assuming no fails of course) EDIT: forgot FPs Hrmm... I've never seen anyone sell silver for less than 2! EDIT: Wait... You're writing in quantities, mostly, aren't you?

I knew someone was going to be evil enought to make me have to adjust the percs. ;-D Hah! I won't! I won't I say!

Iron ore is an exception to this. The ore in Nordcarn is very close to storage and the ore itself isn't all that useful. Even if people want to make iron/steel bars it makes a lot more sense to take coal and FEs to the iron ore: if you buy iron ore at 4gc one bar would cost you ~45gc while the market price is closer to 30gc. Okay... So maybe it could be made more generic: The bounding is less based off of harvesting time, more based off of ease to transport to where it can be utilized. (EMUs being a starting point, but not the only contributing factor.) HE's you said were close to right on. [Although your formula doesn't work at *my* failure rate ] Assuming that the first tier items are then based off of this vague "transportation cost", do second tier items more or less meet the cost of the components? FE Sulfur: 2 Flowers: 1 Total: 3 LE Sulfur: 2 Flowers: 2 (2 sunflowers, right?) Total: 4 /trinity PC Life Essence (I think it's 5 which is close)

That's important information. Do people use this as a general rule of thumb to bound prices? At the least, something costs 1GC per EMU? Don't misunderstand. I don't expect anyone to give anything away. I firmly believe that people should be compensated for their time. I'm just trying to understand why we value our time at the rates at which we value it. I'm definitely not ready to suggest any changes. It actually makes more sense as EMU bounded. After all, harvesting silver takes more time then harvesting sulfur, yet both are generally 2GC. But, both take two EMU.

I think that accurately represents the situation in the game, but oversimplifies the situation in RL. In RL the calculations are heavily based upon costs and profit margins. Steel sells for $3 because on a per Steel basis they are paying $1 in taxes, $1 in labor, and $.50 in equipment upkeep. That gives them a $.50 profit afer costs. In RL there are always costs that largely drive prices, and profit is a small margin. In EL the cost for harvesting is time and equipment loss. Equipment loss is so rare that it calculates out at less then 100th of a GC in my experience. This means that time is the only factor for EL as you stated above. But here's the set of propositions that don't all make sense together to me: The economy is stagnant (insufficient buying and selling) The prices are ruled by supply and demand The prices are sufficiently low where people will buy [this is really a correlation of prices ruled by S&D]. If the prices were sufficiently low, there would be buying all over the place. There are two things I can think of that could be contributing to problem. [Part of what I'm trying to understand in this thread. Every other thread was about solutions. I want to try to very clearly define the problem, first.] #1 The most reused items (Health Essenses, Sulfur, Flowers, Fire Essenses, Silver) are some of the easiest to make/harvest. This means that any buyer has an option of just doing things himself. #2 Items are available in sufficient quantity in a sporadic fashion. There are times when noone is selling FE on the market. There are times when there are tons of people selling FE. Same goes for other items. This would have the effect of potentially magnifying problem #1 (people can't get what they want to buy, so they make it themselves) while increasing demand (people are happy to jump on things, once they need them, because they're actually available.) All of these things except the bounding should be driving prices down. HEs and other items are not currently subject to the bounding, because they have not reached the boundary. HEs are an item with known demand. (Reference my other thread, Cost/Benefit of fighting.) Most cited reason for not purchasing items is not that they are free through a cooperative market, but that they items are too expensive, and so self-sufficiency is necessary. I don't think that summary, or the majority of the discussion of the recent threads, explains the trends in the basic items such as essences and harvestables. Why is there little market for minerals and ore? Because the cost is so expensive (2 GC for sulfur?) that the profit for an FE (At the bounded minimum of 3GC) is significantly reduced in game terms. So most people spend the time rather than the money.

All of these things are free market prices we set the prices if ppl want to buy them at our price that is wonderful. If they dont sell we lower the price. You know basic supply and demand. That was my thought. It just seemed ridiculous. Particularly when I was called stupid for trying to buy things at a quarter of the price, when I thought the price was more reasonable. Supply and demand calls for fluctuating prices and negotiation. These are two things I don't see. You say, if they don't sell, we lower the price. To me it seems like prices are fixed. It kind of reminds me of "gas" prices. There's no monopoly, but a consensus of sellers.... But then again, maybe there's a real outside force. If it *is* supply and demand, then if we want to "fix" the economy, we can easily do so ourselves by changing the prices we ask for things, and bringing them in to line. If summoners think LE's are too expensive, then don't buy them, ever.

And in every conversation I've seen (I've skimmed through them) the conversation has centered around large ticket items, rather than the most basic components. Why is sulfur 2gc? Why is fur 1gc? Why is meat 5 gc? You can't adjust formuals to these things. None of the suggested changes to formulas are going to make a hill of beans as long as players are artificially charging meaningless prices because that's what they charge. These discussions seem to just assume that things are certain values.

Not sure who I would ask who could give an anwer. #jc 4? Not a good place for this type of discussion, in my experience.

Probably. I'm trying to learn and understand things, though, and this is the best way I know to gether other peoples experience.

My thought is that fighter types may tend to be more forum-goers. Or the poll maybe 100% Accurate. ;-D The adjusted Percentages with Allrounders, Magic Users, and Vanyels included are: Fighter: 40.8% Summoner: 8.6% Potioner: 6.4% Alchemist (Essenses): 6.4% Alchemist (Bars): 4.3% Harvester (Flowers): 1.0% Harvester (Ores, Minerals, Crystals): 4.3% Manufacturer (Weapons): 4.3% Manufacturer (Armor): 6.4% Crafter: 7.5% Allrounder: 7.5% Vanyel: 1.0% Mage: 1.0%

DarkDante agreed to act as a broker For a specified price DarkDante made a deal and sold the goods. 'Nuff said. Just an FYI

What is the purpose of your guild? Make the requirement fit the purpose!

One of the most difficult things in any RPG game is providing players with a way to put their own unique spin on a fighter. What are the ways in which you have been able to make your character unique from the other PK characters out there? What are the ways that you wish you could make your character more unique? Do you see different skills sets running around in KF, or is there a generic mold that the skills fall into?

I'm still trying to get my mind wrapped around the workings of the EL economy. Up until now, I've been thinking about costs and how the supplier affects the economy. Now, I'm trying looking at things from the opposite direction: consumption. The ultimate consumers are the fighter-types. PK'ers, Summoners, and people who want to spend most of their time whacking critters. I don't want to make this a questionaire, but here are some idea generators: What items do you regularly have to buy to keep your fighting habit going? Do you find that you spend a lot of time performing activities other than fighting in order to buy supplies? Do you have regular suppliers you can go to? Do you make what you need yourself? Do you buy from NPC's more than from players? Are you able to sell or utilize the booty from your kills? I'm hoping from responses from people of all skill levels in all places in the game. Some idiot (me) posted this in the wrong forum, not paying attention to where he was it. I would be grateful if a passing mod could move this to general chat.

This is a great breakdown. Thanks for putting this together. Edit: Removed wasteful quote of previous post.

I usually try to watch the drama from afar, but this is kind of silly. Whether I am a bagjumper or not (I'll let you decide) does not change whether you are a bagjumper or not. I am free to publicly state that you are one, as well, and it still remains true. Watch this: CoKPhaY is an EL Player. See, I am an EL Player and I stated you are an EL Player, and it all worked out. Same goes for bagjumper.

What is wrong with people having long,short, or other conversations at storage?

Noted. What can I say, I am incapable of making a post that a large number of people see, without some kind of stupid mistake in it.

Ah! Thanks. These are actually tangential to the main reason I put the post, but they are very important ideas to have overall. Another one to add is a healer, which a very, very few people play.