Your View: Crafting And The Economy

[Phelrin 60]

I do think there should be a restriction of some sort, simlilar to the previous skill system. However, I think it should be set that you get all your points to begin with, and then any changes can be changed normally. The arguement against this is that your character has to learn those skill, but for many of us on the server, we have learn them both once through RP, and through the various skill systems multiple times

[Ned Lud 1260]

Restrict crafting in a very liberal way that allows players to choose/toggle what they can and cannot craft, per item. Not sure if this is doable. Otherwise just let it be a free-for-all and trust the judgment of players. Players should decide what their character is capable of, not code.

If we must restrict crafting, create NPC merchants, scattered throughout the realm that deal in every item in circulation, at a higher price. This way players can purchase the items they need at any time, rather than waiting hours for their Legendary Blacksmith to get home from school. An increased merchant price will still encourage player-to-player trade.

Consider having rare item crafts be unlockable through quests and criteria, available to everyone and once again, trusting player's judgment.

Allow player-managed auto-shops, but restrict them to certain themes, to be determined by nation/city/town leaders and loosely overseen by staff for abuse. Hunting Outpost, Butcher Shop, Farmer's Market, etc.

Physical money sucks. Over-complicated and glitchy. Let's return to text-logged currency. Simple. If players want to deal in gold nuggets, they can deal in gold nuggets.

[Dry Crackers 268]

A good idea would be to make it so that you have say, three or so skills. You're good at the first one, mediocre at the second one, and really not that great at the last one. If you level one skill, then the levels on the others go down by a tick or two, depending on how similar the skills are (Axefighting and Woodchopping, for instance.) So you could be a really good swordsman, say, but you would be a terrible miner. Or you can be an OK swordsman and an OK miner. However, if the skills are similar (axefighting and woodchopping are a good example) then you would have a not-as-big debuff.

Get the idea?

This idea would have to be used in combination with a developed money plugin and a shop plugin due to how it restricts the Common Man and makes him rely on other, slightly different Common Men.

EDIT: Oh, one other thing. The people who say they should leave crafting to the discretion of the player, it won't work. I take advantage of the absence of a skills system all the time, and I'm sure all but the most upstanding of roleplayers do to.

[ULTRA LORD 25]

No. Because things happen, aka minas get lost, players die (naturally and unnaturally), items disappear, server errors cause mina loss/item loss. There is too much variation for this to work. Keep it aegis-style and FUN, not restricting us to boredom. not trying to sound hostile

[Stag 3234]

Leaving it free is handy for accounts that have multiple characters.

[The Cleaning Crew 571]

Leave it free. Sure, stimulating the economy sounds good when you're reading it on the forums, but in game it would just be inconvenient.

Maybe we can have a system where only blacksmiths can make items of iron level and above. That would stimulate the economy and not leave poor players without even a stone weapon to fend off the hordes of zombies that always seem to be around when you're at your most vulnerable. But this leaves the other professions without any real benefit.

For instance, making it so that lumberjacks are the only ones who can chop trees? Not a good idea. Anyone can chop trees. That same basic statement goes for pretty much every other profession. Perhaps the success rate could differ, but that's still not as vital as what the blacksmith profession would offer. The reason I took such a long break from the server is that at one point when Vaq was still in charge, I couldn't even make wood into planks without being a lumberjack. It was ridiculous.

[bov61 32]

I don't think everything should be restricted. I think it should go back to the way it was back when Vaq was coder.

For example: Wooden swords can be crafted by everyone, Iron and above can only be crafted by a Blacksmith. Something like that.

As for the economy, I personally think it should be text based, I don't like the idea of having physical money. It could be text, and could still be stored in chests/double chests. I'm sure that wouldn't be hard to code.

[ShadowNinji 34]

I for one would like to achieve a true Economy and I think with slight restrictions, this will defiantly help.

[StaticFromage. 6]

I enjoy skill plugins because they help weed out Mary Sues... however making to much restrictions will just cause another grinding fest. So I agree with most people that have commented so far, make the simple items craftable by everyone, and less simple items craftable by their proffesion.

[tomahawk90 5]

Beware, wall of text

I think many of us are missing out on solutions as we are looking in one direction, instead of first establishing the problem and assessing other solutions too. In other words, we are looking at this from an angle to close to the problem, so I think its time to take a step back and see if we can take a different approach. Sorry if I sound like I want to teach, its just that this is part of my education so Im quite set in the approach I take towards "problems". One first has to pinpoint exactly what the problem is, before looking at solutions. Additional positive is that if anyone disagrees with what I am stating, they can clearly state what part they disagree with and it can simply be altered, and because the whole thing is a linear process in which one follows from the before stated, this will quickly result in a better solution.

Instead of looking at crafting and the economy seperatly, one could look at the overlying problem. Ultimately, this lead me to think that the best solution would be to limit what players can craft through code, and limit what can be gathered through creating diversity in the world. This is how I got there, conclusion is at the bottom if you want to skip:

On crafting:

The problem:

Players will craft/gather anything they need or can use without regard of the boundaries of their character.

Why is this a problem:

In an ideal LotC, everyone accepted would play for the RP, unfortunately, there are at least a few who are playing "to win". These are the players who will ignore the boundaries of their character and craft/gather anything they can use to advance, and as soon as one player is doing it, the system/economy is ruined as others will either have to accept this player's monopoly or will have to break the boundaries of their own character too.

Possible solutions:

1. limit what a character can craft and gather

2. make sure all players stick to the boundaries of their character without limiting the boundaries through fi code

What does that mean?

1a: limiting a character by a professions system, in which the chosen profession grants abilities others do not have while unabling the character to craft/gather items that are not inside this profession.

1b: limiting a character by limiting the amount of resources available around and making sure the character cannot travel to other locations but can still trade with other locations

1c: same as 1a, but not unabling a character to gather/craft items outside of his profession, but instead making sure all gathering and crafting is a very slow process

1d: ?

2a: clarify to players that if they are playing "to win", they should not be on a rp server, enough so that all players will stop gathering/crafting outside of their characters limits

2b: banning players who go outside of their characters boundaries

2c:?

Considerable?:

1a: Yes. The drawbacks of the system should however be overcome, fi those items and resources a player cannot gather him/herself should not be to hard to obtain.

1b: Obviously not, as this takes away any interaction between different locations, destroying rp.

1c: yes. All the crafting and gathering outside of one's profession should be very time-consuming though to make sure that players will only do these things when they see no other option, and not to sell them in bulk.

2a: not really. This has been tried through a detailed application being needed to get in, and warning players time and again. Some will always try to be "the best".

2b: not really. For one, it is probably near impossible to monitor, and a characters boundaries arent established just like that, so a player may always bring valid arguments to the table.

Solutions I have seen in this thread:

- Give everyone the ability to use the basic tools

This would not solve the problem, as characters would still be able to gather and craft almost everything, if not everything. There is a huge difference in how different tools are regarded. This is because the difference between a wooden pickaxe and a diamond pickaxe is much more significant then the diffence between the other tools of different qualities. This because one can actually gather better stuff with a better pickaxe (and way faster too, as the better ores are hidden behind walls of stone which break faster with a better pick). It does not matter with what quality of a tool one prepares the ground to sow seeds or cuts down a tree, the result will be the same but just a fraction slower. For this reason, simply stating everyone should have access to the basic tools would mean everyone has equal changes of obtaining all resources except some ores, except for miners as they would have access to all including ores.

- Lowering droprates

This too would not solve the problem, for it would still allow everyone to gather and craft everything. Apart from that, consider what people do if they need a stack of a resource they have a low drop-rate for. Unless these resources are easily obtainable and cheap, they will just gather more of it to cover the lower droprate instead. Fi, a low drop-rate on wood would not mean characters would go looking for someone with a high droprate with the possibility of spending hours upon hours to do so (especially those in a difficult time-zone), they would just cut down a whole forest to get their stack of wood. This seemingly good alternative means the problem is just shoved towards the problem of land-scarring, and as seen in the polls, almost no-one wants to return to the old system of everything being regioned.

On economy:

The problem:

Players and therefor nations can easily gather anything they need anywhere they want

Why is this a problem:

As all resources can easily be obtained anywhere in the world, this effectively renders all land and all resources to be of equal economic value to everyone in the world. This means there is no need for trading and therefor an economy, and it also means that there is no need to fight over particular parts of land in economic terms (land may still vary in value in strategic terms, such as a mountain that may be easier to defend, and in terms of size, which comes into play when a nation does not have enough space anymore to house all its inhabitants and the resources/money needed to sustain that population).

Possible solutions:

1: limit what resources are available to certain parts of the world

2: limit what players can gather in certain parts of the world

3: limit what characters can gather based on a feature which many players share such as race, and enforce that races can only live in certain parts of the world

4: ?

What does that mean?

1: Disable some resources from occuring in certain areas, or disable their renewability. Fi, grown crops yield only 50% chance of a seed, or sapplings will never grow into trees. I do have ideas;

2: Cutting a tree is possible in one part of the world, and not in another part of the world.

3: Self-explanatory, it means that races will never settle together fi.

Considerable?

1 yes. This is how the real world works and it would affect roleplay in such a way that many resources will have different values to players in different places creating an economy, and that there will be flows of resources going to and from different areas, meaning trade, and it would encourage roleplay alongside roads, including brigandry. This would also work lovely together with the fact that player-owned shops will return in 3.0, actually making it way more interesting as a nation to allow foreigners to set up shop in your nation, or else employ people to travel to other nations to buy items to sell for a better price at home in their shop.

2. not really. It does not make much sense that one can craft something in one area, and suddenly looses the ability to do so in another area as if the brain is rewrired everytime one leaves an area.

3. not really. Limiting what a character can and cannot do based on common features such as race is quite realistic. However players may not like restrictions on what they can and cannot do, fi a dwarven farmer or lumberjack being impossible. Enforcing these groups to live together is also not what players would like, taking away to much of the free elements of the game and this not being realistic either, and taking away a lot of roleplay regarding social cohesion and racism.

Conclusion

In my opinion, the best solution would be to seriously limit what players can do. I hated that system as many others do, but it's really the only way to enforce people to roleplay a certain profession instead of being indiana jones who is capable of anything. And as far as I know, the reason of this hatred towards the old system of firm restrictions was not that players wanted their character to be able to do everything, it was that it meant some resources became extremely difficult to gather, leading to frustration and loss of interest (I am assuming this, correct me if Im wrong). What I am trying to say is that I think its not the restrictions that were the problem, but rather the fact that everything grinded to a halt.

I have seen suggestions such as NPC merchants around the land selling items at a higher price, so items will always be available. I liked that idea very much, as this would solve the biggest problem people have with the high amount of restrictions (I think). This would also take some minas out of the economy, decreasing the rate of inflation.

Also, as it is decided that not all the land will be regioned, everyone will at least be able to gather some supplies, especially around the monks sanctuary or whatever else will be in its place. Making your first bucks should be a little less hard now, even with high restrictions on your character.

In the end, one has to weigh the freedom of players against the playability and fun of the whole community.

Players do not like to be restricted, but if this is allowed, no economy will exist. Ultimately, I came to this conlusion:

Any player should be able to gather any resource and craft any item if willing to learn. The professions system was good and the maximum amount of points that could be spend on professions made sure that no-one would be good at everything, but there was still room for characters who were medicore at everything. This is both realistic and it does not take away from the freedom of the player, while still allowing those who choose gathering of resources or crafting of items as a job to excel at it over others such as fighters. Crafting should be incorporated into this skill system, so that points can be spend on crafting skills instead of on resource gathering. This way, players who choose a profession such as baker become possible. Now this is impossible, because everyone who has wheat can bake a bread. Anyone can excel at anything, but not everything basically.

This would already be a boost to economy, as different players choose different fields to excel at and they will have an incentive to trade. To further increase trade, not every corner of the world should allow every form of resource to be gathered. It would be quite ridiculous to limit crafting to locations, as this is usually only limited by the skill of the one crafting, but it would make perfect sense that every location on the earth supplies different things and more importantly lacks certain resources. This would mean that fi grain does not grow nearly as fast in the mountains as it would in flat grassy fields, if it doesn't not grow at all.

It makes perfect sense without limiting anyone drastically. An example to finish of: Dwarves. Dwarves are known to love digging for ores. This is why they live in the mountains. Right now, this is all lore-based, as dwarves could just as well go live in the middle of a forest and dig down and have a better chance at finding valuable ore. Applying the suggestions I make would not deter from roleplay, they would strengthen roleplay and lore, justifying things instead of questioning things

`thats hours of thought and 1 1/2 hours of writing :)'

[Uboob ~Taron Geminine~ 14]

I enjoyed how crafting worked back when Vaq was coder, for the most part. But I do think adding a profession system may help the economy of the server.

[Mankaar 166]

I would say that we should restrict crafting.. Not on wood and stone things but any higher should be hard to craft, It promotes rp.. you have to get out there and actually bother to talk to others. Improving rp immensely!

[Navin_ 99]

I would like it if it was like the Aegis skills system, not the late Asulon skill system.

[blindmind 350]

RP seems to have returned to where it was in Aegis, and everyone seems a good deal happier without so much restriction. The strangely overwhelming emphasis on economy drew way too much attention to very small and uninteresting details. Its more what you do with a hammer and less about where you bought it.

[Maxwell 1]

I think we should have classes that make you learn a certain group of skills much easier to learn and make skills from other classes harder to learn. And have higher level caps in your class skills and lower ones in the other class skills. Skills should only effect equipment iron and above ect, so people aren't too restricted on what they can do. Everyone can make simple tools mine some things farm/cook some food, ect. When you choose your class you can't change it (like your race). This would make people stick to what their character would really be able to do, and emphasise having a specific job and making you stick to it.