Flower/Economy Problem

[GarfieldClowntje]

I have seen A LOT of threads considering the Market/Economy in EL being destroyed since the easiest way of making money is harvesting/selling flowers.

 

Even for the top-players with higher EMU it is a very good way of making money.

 

I think I might have a solution for this problem (and yes I did multiple searches and found multiple threads, but none with the idea I am gonne post here)

 

 

 

First:

 

- Make it so that flower picking is illegal and you can get a time-penaltie when you are harvesting flowers. (5-10 minutes of non-harvesting flowers).

 

Second: (and this has been suggested before)

 

- Lower the buy-prices in flower-shops so people will easier buy flowers FROM the shops, instead of selling TO the shop (money-drain instead of money-overflow)

 

 

 

Think of it, why should you be able to go into somebodies yard, sit down, harvest flowers and go sell them. Who's flowers are they? If I get 3 time-penalties of 5-10 minutes within an hour, that would certainly p*** me off but if I really need those flowers to create stuff, I will try to buy it somewhere else. I would go either to other players, or I would go to the shop.

 

Create stuff with the flowers, as it is supposed to work and sell those product again for money (*which will gain less money if these products are sold to an NPC compared to the flower harving/selling as it is now, OR it is money from other players so no new money is brought into the market*)

 

 

 

Third:

 

- In addition to the above, there could be some LandLord-NPC per Map where you can BUY permission to harvest flowers anywhere on that map for a certain matter of time. Price for that permission can easily be adjusted so that harvest/selling flowers will gain minimum money in that time-period

 

 

((Fourth:

 

- Maybe use for Gods or Charm as well. Certain maps 'belong' to a god and if you serve that god, you will get less penalties. And/or if charm will gets implemented it can possibly be used in this as well. Higher Charm level being good results in less penalties.))

 

 

 

Is it good, or not ...

 

Reactions Pwease

[trollson]

Most of these suggestions have been made before, though maybe in the more general category of the effect infinite resources have on the economy. So this applies to all harvestables, not just flowers.

 

First Point: This reflects ownership of resources, and so the character's are effectively stealing (poaching, scrumping) them. I think the best place for this, as a 'weak' crime, is as a penalty to karma, to discourage excessive exploitation (I think I suggested that somewhere). Of course, it is then possible that the remoter resource sites are unowned; but are also in areas occupied by monsters.

 

Second Point: Lowering the price paid by the Flowershops would hurt newer characters, for whom selling flowers is their first meager source of income. Somehow you'd have to make selling flowers viable for starting characters, but not worthwhile for more developed ones.

 

Third Point: This is an extension of the first point; if the resources are owned, then yes, it should be possible to pay for a license to mine. This could be done on at the guild level, if they rent/buy a resource site in a "civilised" area.

 

Fourth Point: hmm, possibly a new suggestion Adjust harvest event rate and/or severity by your rank with the appropriate god(s)?

 

Another suggestion I have made (somewhere) is to limit the rate of exploitation of a "bunch" of resources: A bunch of resources has a maximum harvest rate, then this is shared between concurrent harvesters. So a bountiful deposit may have 10 points, so upto 10 characters can harvest at their full rate, but when more arrive, all see their rate decrease. Essentially there are only 10 harvest attempts per round available, which become spread between those present.

[Thordin]

First of all, did you think on newbie players? Flowers are one of the best thing to level up in the beginning, just to harvest them and to earn some money for the start, you did that certainly too when you started playing, didn't you?

 

Flowers are essential for making potions, so making harvesting illegal is not the best thing to do IMHO.

 

But I see your point, blue lupine bush in PL for instance

 

There were many suggestion on drastically lowering NPC buying prices at flower shops, the problem is following: either we keep it this way, so newbs will have some starting money income as well as starting experiences to level up or we tweak the prices, thus hardening the process of making money for the newbs.

 

I have some idea, feel free to work on it deeper:

Make NPC price dependant on harvest level, the higher harvest level you have, the more advanced you are, "so what the hell are you doing on the flowers?! go get harvest something advanced!", the less money you will receive from selling the flowers. This will keep low harvest level players on flowers to get money while high harvest level players will stick to titanium/silver/gems/whatever. And if you say something like: "but high level player can hire low level to sell the flowers for him!" Here is an answer: "it's cooperation, both will recieve some money and I see nothing wrong in enforcing players to cooperate."

Edited June 13, 2006 by ThordinElement

[Istiach]

Removing pl money tree would be easier sollution

[Cycloonx]

Removing pl money tree would be easier sollution

 

It started with removing votd lilacs and flowers at the graveyard ... taking away the new best bush will activate people to search a new bush, so that bush will again be removed and so on, so that isn't the solution

[NitageR]

PL lupines are x3 ? If yes make it x2 or x1 for example :]

Edited June 13, 2006 by NitageR

[Thordin]

You have to think how to solve it in general, tweaking one bush won't solve anything, it needs system change, just like I suggested, or if some of you have better idea, come forth with it...

[Infamous]

*sigh* do we need another thing to lower players money?

first votd bush then gc from drops gets higher now you want em to make ppl unable to pick flowers?

IMO it's just fine now...

[GarfieldClowntje]

Most of these suggestions have been made before, though maybe in the more general category of the effect infinite resources have on the economy. So this applies to all harvestables, not just flowers.

 

First Point: This reflects ownership of resources, and so the character's are effectively stealing (poaching, scrumping) them. I think the best place for this, as a 'weak' crime, is as a penalty to karma, to discourage excessive exploitation (I think I suggested that somewhere). Of course, it is then possible that the remoter resource sites are unowned; but are also in areas occupied by monsters.

 

Second Point: Lowering the price paid by the Flowershops would hurt newer characters, for whom selling flowers is their first meager source of income. Somehow you'd have to make selling flowers viable for starting characters, but not worthwhile for more developed ones.

 

Third Point: This is an extension of the first point; if the resources are owned, then yes, it should be possible to pay for a license to mine. This could be done on at the guild level, if they rent/buy a resource site in a "civilised" area.

 

Fourth Point: hmm, possibly a new suggestion Adjust harvest event rate and/or severity by your rank with the appropriate god(s)?

 

Another suggestion I have made (somewhere) is to limit the rate of exploitation of a "bunch" of resources: A bunch of resources has a maximum harvest rate, then this is shared between concurrent harvesters. So a bountiful deposit may have 10 points, so upto 10 characters can harvest at their full rate, but when more arrive, all see their rate decrease. Essentially there are only 10 harvest attempts per round available, which become spread between those present.

 

Well, you could give lower chars some kind of 'licence' of 'free harvest' or smaller penalties. 5 minutes penalty for up to lvl 20 harvesting and 10 minutes penalty for above (maybe even 15 minutes for above level 50 harvesting?)

 

First of all, did you think on newbie players? Flowers are one of the best thing to level up in the beginning, just to harvest them and to earn some money for the start, you did that certainly too when you started playing, didn't you?

 

Sure thing! I did that as a newbie, but problem here ... I STILL do at regularly which is wrong imho (and in most of your opinions as well, which is a wide-spread philosophy on forums)

 

 

Flowers are essential for making potions, so making harvesting illegal is not the best thing to do IMHO.

 

But I see your point, blue lupine bush in PL for instance

 

There were many suggestion on drastically lowering NPC buying prices at flower shops, the problem is following: either we keep it this way, so newbs will have some starting money income as well as starting experiences to level up or we tweak the prices, thus hardening the process of making money for the newbs.

 

I never suggested to lower the SELL prices only the BUY from shops prices. Buying from shops should be possible, but isnt atm since they have way to high prices to BUY flowers.

 

AND: harvesting flowers is ALLWAYS possible at first ... untill you get caught, that is my idea. And even than it wont be permanent, but time-based penalty. So you can harvest again after said 5-10 minutes

 

If you have the bad luck to hit such a penalty 3 times in a row when you want to start harvesting ... well, that s*cks, but life does at times

 

PL lupines are x3 ? If yes make it x2 or x1 for example :]

 

This made me remember a suggestion I have had a LONG LONG time ago, but never suggested in here

 

Lets Call it Fifth suggestion:

Turn back all the x2 and x3 bushes and put them on 'normal' x1 speed

And let some bushes be 'upgradable' by using water- and earth essences on that bush

So you can turn a x1 bush into a x2 (or even x3) bush for a limited period of time, say 30 seconds, when upgraded with the essences.

Idea?

Edited June 13, 2006 by GarfieldClowntje

[Guest stalag]

i shup ut

 

I just leave one observation: why so many people wanna reduce even more the cash flow of people if at least 90% of players have less then 20k in storage....

Edited June 13, 2006 by stalag

[GarfieldClowntje]

@ Stalag:

 

this suggestion ISNT meant to remove the money-making for newbies, excuses if it seems like that

 

BUT there is a larger problem with the economy that harvesting flowers is best way to make money, from begin to end!

 

So I want to try to fix it, and thus I suggested something to reduce the amount of flowers being able to be harvested, so there is less cash coming ingame.

 

Do you still want to keep harvesting flowers all day long to make money when you are playing EL for over 6 months?

 

Offcourse there are lots of other things to do, but since this is best way of making money people stick to it

 

And it should be newbie way of making money, not high player way of making money

[Sistema]

Let's remember to make constructive criticism.

 

And the old VOTD Lillac bush was overkill imho....

 

The game is suppose to be challenging. That's what makes it fun ;-)

 

 

- Sistema.

[GarfieldClowntje]

I myself have <20k in storage, so I am cutting my own fingers as well

 

It isnt that I suggest this after 4 weeks encampement at the Portland Bush and 300k+ gc stored

 

It is a suggestion to try to improve an allready great game

[vytukas]

IMHO EL is already suffering from severe deflation, prices are dropping significantly (for example, EFE price dropped from 4.5k to 2k), and you want to make it even worse? I think we need more cash ingame to get decent prices back

[carone]

I agree that you can make way too much money with some flowers/bushes per hour, but getting rid of that alone is only going to make things worst.

What's necessary at the same time is create additional possibilities of making money, and all with about the same income/hour. The problem is that they're not the same so naturally people will do what's most efficient.

So what's really required, imo, is for NPC's to buy most/all things you can produce at a price that's slightly higher than the ingredients sell for(with adjusted NPC prices for all the ingredients, they're screwed up at the moment) so everyone can make money at the same rate with whatever he likes doing. This is far from easy to do but worth trying to achieve, imo. =)

 

There still isn't enough money in the game. The increase of money from monsters is a start but I don't think it's enough.

People are constantly broke and if possible make the things they need themselves, that's obviously not too great for the market.

It's been discussed so many times I don't even know why I bother posting, but I guess if we stop talking about it people will start to think everything is just fine.

[Thordin]

It needs to be done very gently, otherwise, it will overshoot and there will be too much money and very big inflation. Slow, gently and well-thought steps are required, tested and if proven beneficial to the game, then finally implemented.

 

I agree on that issue that there is almost nothing bad with money bushes, but in issue, that you cannot earn more money by harvesting more advanced ores such as titanium or diamonds, which is very wrong IMHO. Let the flowers for the newbs (or PP greedy fighters ) and encourage advanced miners to harvest advanced ores/gems/whatever.

 

The issue of selling everything makeable to NPC has been mentioned many times, it's not that easy as it seems, it must be balanced and very careful, otherwise it will cripple economy even more. In addition I disagree about NPC buying prices higher than prices of ingredients to NPC, players should be main buyers and not NPC, you can play single-player RPG then and chat over ICQ/MSN/whatever... . Interaction among players is essential and must be maintained.

 

And to be honest, I tried to make couple of Kgcs from money bush and I experienced that it is incredibly BORING and I get almost no XP/hour! So here is a choice of having either gold coins or experience gain. And guess what is more fun?

 

EDIT: typos

Edited June 17, 2006 by ThordinElement

[carone]

The issue of selling everything makeable to NPC has been mentioned many times, it's not that easy as it seems, it must be balanced and very careful, otherwise it will cripple economy even more. In addition I disagree about NPC buying prices higher than prices of ingredients to NPC, players should be main buyers and not NPC, you can play single-player RPG then and chat over ICQ/MSN/whatever... . Interaction among players is essential and must be maintained.

 

I have to disagree about it crippling the economy. What it would achieve is make people produce all kinds of different things instead of those few that are the most efficient right now.

Example: Leather helmets and leather pants. They are being mass produced for XP and then sold to Trik. But that doesn't mean that nobody sells them in the market, just not in the quantities they're being produced in.

The same would happen to any other item if it were as efficient to produce as those two. People would produce more of them and yes, sell more to the NPC, but there will always be a market for them to other players because if there is demand from players, and the NPC selling prices are high enough, players will buy them from other players instead of from the NPC.

So how does that ruin the economy? The only thing it does is give the manufacturers more variety, a thing which many skills lack right now. There are so few items you can efficiently make XP with in any profession.

 

And again, and you said it too, this is very hard to do, but it would make the game so much nicer.

[GarfieldClowntje]

I admit I left some weak points on purpose so that discussion can flow forth

 

LOL

 

 

But I just now realized that we are getting really far from flower topic now...

 

No Problemo!

I brought the flowers up for possible money/market improvement

 

This is still about market, right?

 

 

 

Some points I agree with:

* Leave the flowers to the new players for the moeny

* Let there be a far more variety to gain money on different ways

* Be carefull in doing that, a few months ago (maybe a year) the books prices went up BIG time, because there was just WAY to much money ingame and there were needs for money drains.

 

So new suggestion from me based on your posts:

* Let there be some kind of time/EXP/money-gain relation

- Flowers easiest, but takes most time and gives least EXP compared to the money you gain

- Creation of small and/or easy to produce items: normal time and low EXP but a bit more money gained in that time-period

- And the more advanced items you produce, the time it takes plus the EXP gained and the money gained will all increase all the way towards the top-items

 

 

 

With "The time it takes" I mean: gathering all the ingredients yourself, mixing all the pre-items and end products yourself and dragging all those items to the required NPC for you money. All that time included can mean that there is only a slight increase in money per hour compared to bushes

With the benefit that you gain EXP too!

[Thordin]

Not bad...

 

I think I'm starting to miss few NPCs to sell higher items to. If this would be possible, there wouldn't be so many stuffed storage. I do NOT say, to sell it to NPC for profit, but at least get rid of items for some amount of money, so you can keep training your skills on better items and you won't completely broke yourself.

E.g.: steel chainmail armors

if there was NPC who could buy those (let's say for 300gc, but still), it would be way to empty storages of overproducement of items, keeping market fresh (there won't be so many items nobody wants, demand for these items may raise a bit, which would result in price raising). Sell favourite items to players and unwanted items to NPC for some loss (you can't earn money from it efficiently, but you don't have to be broken completely, because you receive at least SOME money for your effort). This would also set some bottom prices.

[Zelse]

I have an idea!

 

It's an idea thats used in many of the strategy games that i've played but made to fit into EL.

 

Why not give each harvestable resource a set amount of the items it produces?

For example: The blue lupine bush in portland (its a BL right?) has a total of 500,000 flowers on it.

Players will be able to harvest that particular bush/mine until the total amount of items that the

bush/mine produces reaches 0. When it reaches 0 the bush/mine will not allow anymore of the

items it produces to be obtain through harvesting. That resource will become 'replenished' at the

start of a new EL day. Now I know that there is no 'death' or 'loss' in EL because Mortos isnt in the

EL underworld anymore and that players have to walk out and animals/monsters have to spawn back

so why cant the resources we harvest? For roleplaying purposes we can just say that: the flowers are

re-growing their way from the earth (and for minerals/ores) the rocks are shifting their way back into

their natural surroundings.

 

Although you can say "well the flower/mineral/ore isnt going back where it

came from because it was sold to the NPC and/or was used to make my *produced item*"

Well guess what: we kill the creatures of EL constantly for their meat drops and such yet they still

come back fatter or richer than ever lol.

 

Having a numbered amount of resources avaliable to harvest could well... im no economist or mathmatician

since im still in high school but I think it could steadily lower the amount of money we make in EL by

selling raw materials.

 

Just a thought

 

BTW this could affect special days too

 

Special Day: Rations Day - Someone forgot to restock the natural resources (all harvestable items will not be replenished today)

Roleplaying: Mother Nature is taking a vacation and took most resources with her.

 

Special Day: Miracle Growth Day - Today all natural resources are coming back from the underworld at an alarming rate (Just like the old days with boundless resources)

Roleplaying: Mother Natures wisdom is as boundless as the sea! Take what you can while shes not looking!!!

[Ghengas]

pl money tree and similiar locations are a source for money in EL and if you ask me they should stay that way...people that harvest them do it because A) like me, they focus on stats like fighting which isnt perticularly profitable or B.) they are saving up for something nice.

 

if players didnt have a way to make money then noone would be able to afford the things that need to sell....

 

ex:

(with money tree) george makes a serp, henry wants the serp, henry picks flowers, goerge sells henry the serp, goerge uses the money to make more serps, henry uses his serp to kill people..both are happy.

 

(NO money tree): goerge makes a serp, henry wants the serp, henry has 42gc, goerge has to keep the serp....henry cant get the serp so he goes pking with no serp and dies, now henry is unhappy , goerge figures he has the serp so he might as well use it but since he is a manuer his a/d sucks () and he gets killed, now hes unhappy also.

[Thordin]

There is nothing bad with the flower bush actally. The problem is, that the flowers are fastest way, but reducing this won't help. We need to compensate resources ABOVE the flowers, not restrict the flowers (poor plants ).

[Mireille]

I have seen A LOT of threads considering the Market/Economy in EL being destroyed since the easiest way of making money is harvesting/selling flowers.

 

 

Have you ever tried making money from flowers? I mean significant money, like a few thousands gold coins, to finance your craft/manu/whatever expenditure? Well, I have. It's boring, tedious and repetitive and I don't think I'll even do it again.

Flowers don't spoil the economy. The problem is that someone "up there" thinks that he or she knows how economy works and that what we are dealing with is a deflation. Well, no, it's inflation what we have, however, we "fight" it with anti-deflatory measures. In other words, the current policy is quenching fire with oil. If this approach continues, markets will contiue to deteriorate and no half-measures like those you proposed will help.

Edited June 23, 2006 by Mireille

[Thordin]

Actually my friend harvested BL in PL and he earned enough for CoL in two days...

But as I said many times before, flowers are not the problem, but the ration of time/XP/money for ores is unbalanced IMHO.

[Mireille]

Actually my friend harvested BL in PL and he earned enough for CoL in two days...

 

Mindless walking to and fro a flower bush is not my idea of entertainment.