Lyeowar
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Posts posted by Lyeowar
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Trombone for me.
Selmer Stradivarius 42BO and a jazz bone from the 1890s.
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Ok then, fine, you all win, there is something wrong with the economy, now tell us all how you are going to fix it eh? its not exactly that simple of a thing to do.
Been there, done that, read my posts. Yeah, it's not a 100% fix, but it's a step in the right direction.
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Really, the topic says everything. PM me in forum or in game
Lyeowar
EDIT: Scratch the steel, just the Puma left.
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Sure, it isn't perfect. No-one is expecting perfection.
And this is an amazing game already.We're just suggesting an area for consideration for improvement by the devs. Some (myself included) have suggested a way to change the game so that it appeals to a more broad audience, or at least removes a rough spot for those people who enjoy producing mid- and high-end items.
It seems that there is a dichotomy in the players - some who think the economy needs work, others who don't. Surely there are other divisions too: some players probably think the graphics (randomly selected attribute) need work, others don't. If the devs don't want to scratch our particular itch, that's fine. But do you really want people to stop making suggestions? If you don't, sure, criticize our logic, suggest improvements to our recommended implementations, but please don't try to invalidate our suggestions just because they're not important to you personally. That's what I've seen in the past few posts.
Personally, I'll keep playing, regardless of what happens.
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I dont understand why people insist on picking NPC prices as their starting point.
Instead of worrying what the NPCs will pay, think about what it takes the player to make.
If you're referring to my post above, there are reasons to refer to NPC prices. Using your hemlock example: NPC buys hemlock at 0.5gc - that means that means that the price will never drop below 0.5gc, otherwise producers would just sell to the NPC; NPC sells hemlock at 5gc - that means the price will never rise above 5gc, otherwise consumers would just buy from the NPC. So, even if there are millions of units of hemlock on the market, the price can never drop to below 0.5gc. So, no matter how many people want to put poison on their blades, it will always cost them at least 0.5gc. This doesn't make sense, does it?
Instead of trying to base the economy on a semi-arbitrary price, base it on something real that doesn't change.
Time is a big factor, and only varies for the amount of effort put in, but it is experience that is the big equalizer. The amount of experience gained does not vary significantly from one player to the next and so should be the basis of your cost estimates.
So you're saying prices should never change, regardless of the amount available for sale, or the amount desired for purchase?
If, tomorrow, the resource prices were dropped to almost nil, (or even changed at all, as has happened in the past) your entire model would have to be refigured.
That's actually a little misleading. The model will stay the same, the values of the constants in the equations (and the resulting equilibrium values) change. This is of neither logically or computationally expensive.
With experience being the deciding factor in your model, you could very easily say that an item or process is worth X amount to you and that amount will hold true against any other item or process you do. It will also be very easy to transfer that value over to other players as they would have the same basic parameters to work with.
We already have such a communication medium: price. Your X above has "items/gc" as its units.
Then you will get loads of people crying because they are looking at the 5gc NPC price and thinking that supply and demand in an unlimited resource economy means things are broken.
Just because there's unlimited resources in the ground doesn't mean there's unlimited availability of those resources at any price. There's only unlimited availability at the price that the NPC sells at, and only unlimited demand at the price the NPC buys at. At any other price, the willingness of players to buy and sell limits the availability.
They are not. You are just using the wrong parameters to judge your case.
Try the experience based economic model and see where it takes you. I am sure you will still find some areas to fix, but at least the problems and fixes will be in tune with the true market forces in the game.
I'll definitely take a look at this point of view, because it's interesting academically. However, until I can directly trade XP to another player in exchange for goods, it's not useful to describe the current EL situation.
Maybe. Economics is pretty slippery even if you have done graduate courses and stuff.
Only the assumptions are slippery, not the models based on them. That holds whether it's economics at the high school or graduate level. And if I've missed stating any assumptions that could bring the logical flow of my arguments into question, please point it out. And for the record, I assume that there is scarcity at most prices, and that players always want more rather than less of a good.
Great discussion everybody!
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About "so": the possibility to sell ingredients for more than what you could get for the end product, does not imply that you can't make a profit.
Again we need to differentiate between accounting/business and economic profit. We all agree that if you value your time at 0 gc (fair assumption since this is a fun game), you can make a business profit. However, the problem is still economic profit. When you calculate this, you have to assign the cost of each input to be its opportunity cost. That is, the highest-valued alternate use for the good - in this case, usually market/NPC price. Using this calculation, as has been shown on before, we find that economic profit of most goods is negative.
In a free-market situation, economic profit for all goods should be zero. If it is positive, there's incentive for more producers to enter the market. If it is negative, there is incentive for producers to leave the market. Let us remember, however, that producers cannot really leave the market in our case, because otherwise we cannot play the game (or at least play it in a very different way).
So, we must ask ourselves, why is the economic profit negative for most products. I will assert again that it's because of the price-floors and price-ceilings imposed by having fixed-price NPCs, which limit the possible range of prices. Because of these limitations, we find that there is more incentive to produce raw or intermediate goods, rather than final goods. i.e. the alchemic, crafting, and manufacturing process is one that adds negative value to the goods, in most cases.
I believe that with the removal of the imposed price restrictions, we would find ourselves with a much more effective economy.
Here's a list of interesting links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunity_cost
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_profit
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You will find that people who harvest and make their own items will be more then willing to sell a final product for 'cheaper' then it's cost if they do the work themselves and the intermediate items dont have a high demand. We even had a case of one person who considered anything they harvest or made for themselves 'free' unless they actualy had to spend gc.
Why did that make me think of myself?
(Dunno if you actually ment me or someone else. )But fine if you raise your items prices, I would be glad to raise monster-dropped books their prices.
If I sell a potion book, the book is worth less then the actual potion. Which is imo completely wrong.
The book to make something should be worth far more so it takes like at least 100 potions for you to get your book costs back.
The (economic) problem with considering anything you make yourself to be 'free' is that you don't consider the "full economic cost" of the product. While it's true that you can, indeed, make a business profit (where the explicit cost you spend in gc for your inputs is less than then gc you bring back in), you cannot (usually) make an economic profit (where you consider all costs, including the value of your time, the price you could make from selling the intermediate goods), etc. Both concepts of profit are valid, but we need to use the economic one in such discussions.
IMO, we cannot 'fix' the ingame economy by price-fixing (as the first post suggested), as there's incentive for another producer to sell for 1gc less and take the profit away from the fixers (see cartel theory for more info on this). Instead, we need to have NPCs with dynamic, market-driven prices. I believe the devs know how to do this from "Other-Life," though I could be wrong. In effect, the NPCs put price-floors and -ceilings on prices, when they trade with players. This, in turn, causes deadweight loss by driving the prices away from competitive market equilibrium. By removing these limitations, I think the market would make significant advances towards being perceived as 'fair'.
And yes, for any economists out there, I know I've simplified a lot. And for anyone who wonders "who does this guy think he is," I'm not an economist, but I've taken a half-dozen or so undergraduate economics courses, and one at the graduate level. And I'll also stand by what I'm saying by adding my name to the list of people with economic knowledge (who have posted in other threads) who are offering their help to the devs.
Lyeowar
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It matters when you have to carry the ingredients.
My indifference was simply to allow someone more experienced to define a good amount of resources for such a necessarily 'expert' item.
But to make lots of small pieces of cloth and stitch them together would be very artificial.
Why? That's how it's done in real life by artisans. Approximately.
Another is to require the use of static map objects as tools and facilities (which I believe is still a long term plan?). So you'd have to find a loom, fill it with thread, and use it to turn the thread into cloth.
A loom sounds like a great idea. However, it could be something you could buy, just as a tool. I, personally, have one that collapses into a very small space. Yeah, we're starting to lose some reality because it'd be a real pain to make anything in bulk on it, but it could work.
Still, to break the "Hunk-the-weaver" model, you'd have to have some way of putting thread into the loom (see "Interacting with the Map" for discussion of one approach).
Maybe 'Use With' would work if you could use multiple items at a time. However, given that changing use with would require way more effort than just adding the items discussed, I doubt that's the way to go. That, and it would change cooking meat (possibly for the better?).
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Hi! I did a couple quick searches for this topic, but didn't find it anywhere. If I can't read, then just lock and delete this topic.
Is there any good reason why we can't manufacture capes? I'm thinking take a whole boatload of thread (say 1000 or 10,000 or whatnont, the amount doesn't matter.) and mix it, based on crafting skill level. That makes you either a piece of cloth (if you wanted to have different types of manufacturable clothing) or a generic cape. Then, that cape can be imbued with a special ability by a high-end mage, much like modable swords.
Thoughts? I realize this could cause a loss of demand at the WSC cape seller (losing a money sink, increasing the money in the game, causing inflation, etc.) as well as devalue the capes from monster drops as well as some perks. However, the economy is hurting so bad, I don't think this would make a big difference.
Lyeowar
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Was sophi4 a new player?? maybe she just doesnt understand the rules quite yet... but still, warning taken. Also mind telling us wat u lost, if u just lost a few vegetables i dont think its worth putting on outlaws...
I want to say level 26 overall but she's not online so I can't check the players-online section. She took a little over 40 thread (only stuff of any value in the bag). Not like losing a full steel plate set or something like that, but still annoying and possibly a precursor of things to come.
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Hi,
I was working out of a bag at the DP vegetable garden when I hit a teleport nexus. s0phi4 walked onto my bag. I told her, in local, that the bag was mine. She then mis-typed the beam command, and then succesfully beamed off. When I got back to the bag, a large fraction of the (processed) contents was missing. I then asked her in PM to return the contents (stating what they were), to no answer. I followed up by asking her motivation for stealing my goods, again with no answer. She then signed out of the game.
I have a screenshot of the conversation if needed but was not fast enough to get a screenshot of s0phi4 on my bag.
Just a heads up.
Lyeowar
Food Preserving
in Suggestions - General, Misc.
Posted · Report reply
I didn't see anything about this previously in my searches - if it exists, lock and delete please
Ok. Hauling food sucks, because you can't store it. That makes some sense, because food goes bad (though raw meat doesn't?? oh well
) and it makes mixing a bit more challenging. But, why can't we preserve some food?
Say:
1 FE + 1 Fruit = Dried Fruit
1 FE + 1 Raw Meat = Smoked Meat
Both of these can be stored (in RL) for a long time. They could have either the same food benefit, or slightly less.
Thoughts?
Lyeowar