Economics!

[firespirit44 1323]

Just pointing it out there Brett:

Mining is actually a incredibly hard profession with a less than 50% diamond drop per ore. So mining 6 diamonds does not equivalent to 3, it may be just 1 as the percentages calculate based on each ore, and the chances do not stack.

The reason why diamonds have flooded the markets is because of glitches and diamond spawning. Hence the inflation of armour and swords in general.

[PajosFTW 18]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Taxes

Why I support this change:

I have seen that many people believe that taxation should be handled IC and performed manually. I am opposed to that belief, though I agree on the point that things can get more interesting when done IC. Unfortunately, it is just not practical. Have you ever been to a town with taxes? The manual taxation system they have almost always leaves the clutter of OOC note signs stuck on people's homes, tax collection chests, and forces nation officials to chase down people who may have left the server. And this is just property tax. Realistically, this is a server, and unlike real life, nation officials log off. How are they supposed to be able to loom over every person at all times, make sure each transaction is taxed? Everyone would simply evade taxes. And while tax evasion can be fun RP, when everyone is doing it, it just becomes a problem.

YES to plugin-enforced taxation.

[Jistuma 1996]

There are a few questions I have to ask before making my coments on the ideas:

1º - Will minas be physical, like the emeralds we have now?

2º - Will there be a shop plugin?

[Aerinyes 402]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Adding resource permits, Taxes (A certainty of life), Making weapons/armour and food degrade over time

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

Resource Permits:

This isn't a bad idea in theory. But that is a heck of alot of work to make happen. The better idea is to do it on a larger scale. Each major nation could have its own mine (that it pays for). And this mine would be on another world (A mineshaft teleports a worker there). There you can mine up to your hearts content until it is dry. Once that happens the nation has to purchase another.

This way a nation can hire workers to mine for them and handle the distribution. Its also easier in that you're only working with a handful of clients at a time (each nation). Using the different world means the map can simply be restored as needed. Landscarring and stripmining (Though I'd still discourage those things and make them RP) won't cause lag or issues on the live regular world.

Now for unaffiliated peeps, there could be a public mine that has limited resources (not much gold or diamonds, but some if they can find them). Players can obtain permits to enter this sort of mine which is regened periodically. Like nation mines its held off world so regening it doesn't cause corruption on the live world.

Taxes:

I think this should be handled by the individual nations. We currently tax by home that a person dwells in and it works pretty well so far. An automatic arbitrary tax seems artificial to me. I do not see why anyone who doesn't own a home in a popular area should be paying taxes. Tolls, home taxes, and quotas seem to work rather well.

Combined with my idea about mines above. Players would be paying in materials to get any sort of resources for themselves, set by the individual nations.

Degrading Items:

This I disagree with. While it makes sense for perishable foods to degrade. The effect it would have I don't think would be the desirable result. I think restoring hunger levels to normal would achieve the same result with the least amount of work for both the players and the coders.

This way food will be consumed at a faster rate then what they are being stored at.

As for weapons and armor and the like. I highly disagree with this. I'm going to use elves and dwarves as an example. Their craftsmanship is centered around their equipment lasting as long as they do. Which is 1000-2000 years. Armor and weapons degrading for them (in months, years, or even decades) without being used would make very little sense in RP.

And I disagree with having human made weapons degrade faster. They are in RP are going to use their weapons faster (due to ambition and adventure) before its even a factor.

Overall I think using time in RP should be done abstractedly. We have dates and years as a guideline but we shouldn't strictly adhere to it. For instance we don't sleep for months at a time. We don't go a year without eating. And we don't disappear for months/years at a time when OOCly we go on trips/vacations. Otherwise if you went afk for an hour, your character would have died of exhaustion and hunger. An extreme example, but you get the idea.

Comments:

I've handled the economy of Malinor and turned it into a meaningful and bustling thing. Where minas were useless in Oren (costing 400,000 to 750,000 for a small home). I was able to keep their worth in Normandor. You could purchase a home for 1000-5000 and well not everyone had the nicest homes until they worked for it.

Despite not having a mine, I was able to still hire on workers to obtain materials. That which we couldn't obtain ourselves (iron, gold, diamonds) I was able to trade and barter for with outsiders.

With that said, I know how the economy in LotC works and I know what drives it. If you ever wish to have further discussions I am open to. It would just have to be during the week (Monday-Friday, excluding Tuesday unless after 8pm est)

[Eldenrom Yerusk (cucmucy) 1]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Exclusive Resources

Why I love this change:

It adds a great deal of RP even within the smallest trades on this server. People can no longer go to any good sized town and receive every item they ever needed on this server. It also promotes the exploration of the new world, people now have a purpose for the exploration of the server. Colored leather armor would only be obtainable by going to a few closely related towns way up North, or something of the sorts.

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

White Beard

Change:

Giving Races their own exclusive resources

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

The only problem I see with this is that in time the items will no longer have the exclusivity that they use to. For example, as Jungle saplings where first introduced to this server I bought a few from a small elvish town, and after a couple of weeks I nearly had a whole stack. Hypothetically I could then sell a few of these saplings to towns all over Asulon, then over time from growing them, they would receive more saplings. They could then sell these to other towns, and everyone would watch as 1. the exclusivity of the item dropped and 2. the price of the item dropped, for it no longer holds any rarity on the server.

Now do not fear, for Cucmucy's Idea is here.

Change:

The implementation of plugins dealing with a persons race/subrace and/or Nationality on the server.

Reason behind the Change:

As stated above, the rate at which an exclusive item in such a popular server can degrade is quite high. The implementation of a plugin that reacts based upon that member's race or sub race. Meaning that if they are not High Elf, they can't make potions that are currently above level 75, or if they are not a Halfing, potatoes and carrots would disappear upon the harvest.This would obviously be a strenuous effort on Vaq's part, as far as coding goes, but it would supply LOTCer's with a great means of Roleplay with not only trade, but with the overall interaction between the beloved races on this server.

[Chaqery 427]

Well, as interesting as these all seem, I can't help but think that theoretical thinking has gotten the best of us here. So here's my criticism.

Name of the Person who Proposed the Changes: Whitebeard

Change: Removing mina drops from mods, Resource Permits, Taxes, Making Weapons/Armor and Food degrade over time, Adding different racial economies

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

Removing Mina Drops from Mobs: Like all of these suggestions, I appreciate the movement towards a bit more realism... but then I think about it and realize that the notion is baffling. What does this do for Knightly Orders, Frontier settlers, or anybody else that doesn't cling to the cities? It merely makes mobs annoying. If they don't drop money (Or anything worth selling/using), then all you do is discourage people from trying to push the boundaries of civilization, or start something on their own. I might be wrong, but I don't believe the GM team is trying to discourage people from doing things on their own. That's the whole point of a 300 slot RP server.

Additionally, this requires a massive shift towards a "merchant" class. Aside from the fact that in medieval society the merchant class was only beginning to blossom, you really must take into consideration that this would actually require a considerable amount of players to actually be merchants and traders. While I support this notion, I sincerely doubt the ability to have a successful, numerous, and competent merchant class. "Herp derp I'm a merchant" isn't going to work, and could server to severely damage the server. Alternatively, a sort of merchant application system would only limit the numbers of a crucial class.... and would cripple the server as well.

Resource Permits: While I think this is a pretty cool idea... it doesn't seem to me like this has been thought all the way through. I'll talk a little more about this on the taxes issue, but this requires a much higher understanding of economics than I've EVER seen present in anybody on the server. I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I'm honestly not sure half of the people with positions of IC power can even spell economics, let alone comprehend how it's all supposed to work.

Plus, it's a bit more personal that it would ever be in reality. Land would be owned by the nobility. They're not going to just... sell you a plot of it to mine. That's not how the feudal system works.

Similarly it's only going to promote hoarding instead of contribution to the economy. People will hoard all they gather in these little mines and cling to it so that it might give them an advantage over others.

Taxes

Great idea... but it's already mostly enforced. Any town or city leader, or Noble ruler worthy of their position is fairly keen on their tax income. The idea suggested here make absolutely no sense though. Not only does it remove the potential RP of making sure taxes are collected, it FORCES taxes upon players who ICly might attempt to avoid their taxes.

Aside from killing the RP that could spring from this, it also makes no sense for a few other things. If this is on all monetary transactions, does that include people using the in-game system to pass money off by hand or large amounts to a friend as a gift or other merit of good will? It's ridiculous to have 5% of the money you're giving to a friend ICly taken because of a silly game mechanic.

If the people in charge expect their tax revenue, then they'd better take the time to RP collecting them or hiring somebody to collect them. The use of a game mechanic would seemingly promote laziness... and lord knows that's already something we're going to have to deal with.

Making weapons/armour and food degrade over time.

I realize this would keep the jobs you entailed in work... but do we even really have any of these? That's great if we do, but you can't just implement a massive system change in the interest of a group of Rpers that either barely exists or you're merely hoping to exist.

Additionally, while the food degradation over time makes sense... as I saw stated several times on this thread before, food (and the food system at this point) is really nothing but annoying. It no longer heals you, still degrades rather quickly, and has the potential to kill you. It's a massive RP killer, and since there are no really benefits to it anymore, it's annoying. Making food degrade would only serve to further the issue that has become the food system.

On the subject of armor though, I find that for most people it degrades fairly quickly already. That keeps all the blacksmiths I know very active. A degradation over time system is pretty ridiculous for it. Armor and weapons only degrade on their own if you don't take good care of them, and I know that I at least RP cleaning my blade and oiling my armor on the occasion. If the system isn't broke, don't fix it. Nothing needs done here, honestly.

Adding in different racial currencies

Honestly this concept really intrigues me... but then I get bogged down into how it would actually work. Trying to... essentially force a realistic economic system on a playerbase that doesn't necessarily grasp all that encompasses (especially when trying it on Minecraft) is already a task I'm not sure is needed. Adding in more than one kind of currency to further complicate things seems frivolous and unnecessary. Trying to implement a somewhat functioning system of the items proposed here is already going to be very difficult when dealing with people that don't understand. Requiring them to have a functioning knowledge of exhange rates and managing the collection of multiple currencies is just undue stress and complication for the sake of sounding facy.

On a closing note, I really do think these ideas are interesting and entertaining (And I love the exclusive resources idea!). With that said, I don't feel it's being approached in the most thorough or efficient way, and there are several places that don't make sense. It's not worth putting the playability of the server at risk because we'd like to play with a real economy. There is a considerable amount of younger players on the server, and even some of the older that I am sincerely concerned with being able to manage and promote this complex of an economic system.

[domainoft 191]

Also there were several months of time that the wilderness was open down to bedrock...It was abused to no end and has destroyed our economy ever since. I'm a firm believer that open wilderness has crippled RP and trade in 2.0 and should be reconsidered in 3.0 I can't say this lightly either as I have spent most of my time in both Aegis and Asulon in the wilds, we need a new system for it though. A harsher, and more protected system.

[Kanrath 190]

b]Name of the Person who Proposed the Change: Whitebeard

Change:Removal of minas drops from mobs

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

The truth is there are very few folks out there who rely just on hunting or want to, and as someone with 3 occupations I'm telling you trying to simply remove minas on a biased opinion that people do just mob hunting and nothing else will only hurt this server. The truth is the only reason we have seen mob hunting become a good chunk of the economy is because it's currently the only constant way to keep an economy active and growing. It would be a lot easier to fix the economy on this server by simply bringing nations closer together and removing the problem of the lone towns/cities eating up our server population. Once this is done and the economy becomes more active instead of the stagnant mess it is now you will find people holding occupations that enhance the nation they live in instead of being forced to hunt the creatures to get any kind of income.

((And seriously, the snarky comments at the bottom of each does not help to a healthy discussion))

[Kanrath 190]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change: Whitebeard

Change:Resource Permits

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

While I see some point to this, the general idea is weak at best. The major issue will always come down to the wilderness because you cannot control it by requiring permits, it will never make any rp sense. Iron ore exposed within caves does not need a permit to be mined, it's there in a cave, trees grow on the surface and don't require that much effort to cut down. Now, for actual mining within nations and the huge regioned area that nations make up permits would only make sense, but most nations would not be willing to let players dig around int heir land because 1: It leaves work for the nation to do once it is mined out and 2: If regenerated it could cause problems. And regioning the entire world would just be silly on so many levels

As is now, no one can mine deep enough to get access to diamonds or a good source of gold without needing a region, which of course only nations or VIPs have so the flow of these resources is quite limited, our major issue as others have pointed out was the fact during the first few months diamonds and gold were both injected into the economy through illegitimate methods and though some was removed chunks were still left in the hands of players. As for iron it's always going to be around in quantity because the demand for it is lacking compared to diamonds.

[Agith 224]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

WhiteBeard

Change: Food Degradation

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

Now, the idea seems somewhat sound...Though I think execution would be very hard to get right. Perhaps if it is possible to make food degrade, we could make it possible to use sugar ( This would be representative of salt) To slow the degradation and increase lifetime by 1 week? Food is one of those mechanisms in game that is hard to make rare in minecraft...We saw why at the start. I've literally died in the middle of roleplay because I got pulled off to the side for said roleplay when I was going to the store to buy more! So perhaps there should be means to slow degradation... ( And if possible, make it so that you can't store anything BUT the meats within a chest... So that you can't put in a set of armor with your food. I did this for roleplay purposes as well. ) OR if the prior option of in the presence of salt doesn't work, perhaps cooked food lasts slightly longer than raw food. THis promotes people to go to a chef and get said food cooked up right away.

[DMichaelBarrett 0]

Name of person who proposed the change: Whitebeard.

Change: Racial Currency.

Concerns or ideas about the change proposed:

If racial currencies were implemented it could provide some stability to the economy if the Minas are kept and used as an universal currency for trade between nations. If travelers wanted to go to other nations to trade there could be an exchange from racial currency to Minas and vice versa based on the strength of the nations own currency. If the racial currency s strong then the traveler would get more Minas for less of their own currency e.g. 10 (racial currency)= 20 Minas. If the racial currency is weak than they will get less Minas for that racial currency e.g. 10 (racial currency) = 5 Minas. If this idea was accepted and implemented into the economy it should make the overall server economy stable if not improve it and will give the Monarchs the opportunity to control their own economy.

[Gobb'Mar 67]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

Many people

Change:

Allowing mobs to still drop Minas

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

I'm sorry, but that is so silly. There should be NO professions that allow you to make Minas from thin air. Every other profession makes Minas by selling their wares. Monster hunters should not be exempt from this.

I don't see how people think it's a bad idea for mobs not to drop Minas. Monster hunters will still play a big role in 3.0. Alchemists will need to buy blaze powder from them. Famers should buy bones/bone meal from them. In the same way that alchemists will need to buy redstone from miners, and Cooks will have to buy crops from farmers. This is the makings of a true, interesting economy.

~

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Racial Currencies

My concerns or ideas about the Change:

Em... I don't mean to be pointlessly critical... but I just don't see the point? All it will do is add unnecessary hassle of turning racial currencies in to other racial currencies. You'll still have the same amount of money at the end of the day. Although this is coming from someone who doesn't know why we don't have a universal currency so I apologise for my noobiness.

[Whitebeard 126]

Once again, if anyone would like to discuss their ideas or their concerns in person, just hop on teamspeak and poke me.

[Ned Lud 1260]

Name of the Person who Proposed the Change: Whitebeard

Change: Adding in different racial currencies

Why I love this change: With the upcoming Minecraft update, the heads and skulls of various mobs and possibly players will be available as decorative items. The War Nation has always been communal and there are many orcs, myself included, who hold little value in the minas. What we do like are severed heads, piled high. If minas drops are removed from mobs, a notion which I support, bounty hunters of all races will be at a disadvantage compared to other tradesmen, as standard mob drops yield little reward. Heads are a renewable resource, so why not give hunters a gruesome currency that is widely respected in orcish lands? The only truly dignified currency that we might honor? If you want our things, you kill a man, take his head and place it at our feet and then we'll talk. We could demand severed heads as the new tribute or as a form of identification for those traveling through our territory. Is this a disastrous mercantile endeavor? Yes. Would it be fun to do? Extremely.

I hereby renounce the minas. Emeralds are for an old woman's jewelry.

[no longer active 734]

Name of the person who proposed the change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Removing emerald drops from mobs.

My concerns or ideas about the change:

In my opinion you shouldn't force people to do things by removing the benefits. Earning money by mobs is and can be a form of RP. Role playing doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be done with other people, just that you are role playing. While we all agree it should be done with other people, don't take out the few people who actually try to RP in fights with mobs. They may emote so if someone passes by they can start RP but if they have no reason to fight the mobs they won't. I know I have gone out with friends and went mob hunting. We RPed the entire time and it was something new yet we didn't get rich. I only have around 25K and that is mostly from my bandit acts. Please, don't take fun out of the game. I didn't come here to only RP. If I have fun killing mobs for their paltry loot I see no reason why you should take that away. After all, who would buy rotten flesh?!

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name of the person who proposed the change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Automated taxes

My concerns or ideas about the change:

They change above was in your own words "to increase the RP". Yet in this change you are replacing potential RP by a plugin. I want kingdoms to be responsible for their own taxes and not have it all come to them magically.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name of the person who proposed the change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Making weapons, armor, and food degrade over time.

My concerns or ideas about the change:

The problem with this is that it will actually make less RP for smiths and cooks. Right now you go to a cook and make a bulk order as it will be cheaper and you will have it for a while. As of this change though people will make very small orders, not pay as much for each order, and not travel as much knowing they have a limited amount and want to safeguard it all. For armor it makes no sense. In all fantasy worlds there is rust, I agree with that. However, what would rust them? You assume a warrior who has many weapons knows how to cover them in wax and a smith knows how to present them well. Already smiths don't make full durability weapons, dont take it down more. This is another change that I feel just makes the game harder and require more time to play. Some people just want to get on for an hour max and have some fun, not worry about their food supplies.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name of the person who proposed the change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Adding racial currencies

My concerns or ideas about the change:

I feel this is a good idea but there should be a place in the middle of the map where you can exchange the currencies at a rate set by the leader of each race. For orcs, if they used heads, this wouldn't apply.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Name of the person who proposed the change:

Whitebeard

Change:

Adding exclusive resources to nations.

Why I love this change:

I love this one! It will add so much more RP to nation diplomacy! Nations could have trade stations that could be taken by bandits, they could have fights over a resources mines! The possibilities are endless!