[rant]
Yes what we need is to make it look like the OC with hundreds of chests just lyign around... please please please NO NO NO.... loots not the issue, inflations not the issue. Its people who store gold, likes we all would. Im gonna get off my high horse after I say if you want something work harder for it, Yes its a rp server, but u dont need a WF scimitar if you are just gonna sit around RPing!

Leave it how it is nothing is broken

[/rant]

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The Peacock wrote:

[GreatPigeon] is better than me.

In my view, in order to correct the inflation and 'economy':

1. A forceful edit of the income, which is basically the lowering of the cap of merchant buy prices, and the editing of item values to be relatively equal. This means no getting 'screwed over' by a stack of 5 aid potions dropping, or a 4gp magic potion bottle.

We must forcefully set a flat price for drops based by item's bin. All items from one tier sell for identical average amounts. This allows for one to forcast the amount of monsters it takes to kill to level up, as well the wealth gained by doing so statistically. That info would then allow you to numerically adjust prices in stores accordingly, and predetermine the amount of wealth growth between tiers and set static numbers to deal with it.



I would suggest the following values for the drops and their appropriate tier merchant price cap to be most in line with current consumable prices and gear prices in the module from stores:

Tier 0 1,000-4,000 gp 1-5 clvl
Tier 1 4,000-8,000 gp 5-10 clvl
Tier 2 8000-12,000 gp 10-15 clvl
Tier 3 12,000-16,000 gp 15-20 clvl
Tier 4 16,000-20,000 gp. 20-30 clvl



2. Intermediate characters need something to spend money on, as do level 30's. There really is no decent comprehensive coverage of stores in the module for Tier 2 and 3 Bin items. Furthermore, a healthy economy has sinks to draw money out of it once people have 'bought' all of their tier 4 loot from stores. Doing something which enables character progression while funneling money out is preferred.


3. Devaluing the net value of hoarded items, freeing up that portion of the economy by spreading of the wealth of epic loot through dedicated work, guaranteeing reward for effort. I would suggest a system which enables it to be earned incrementally, and has no penalty for grouping. Ergo: Everyone that participates in the boss kill gets an equal share of something for credit. This can be accomplished with perks that one gets for turning in quests for the epic bosses Head/Fur/hide/Horn/Spleen to NPC's around the isle. It is a way to earn the right to buy with gold+boss drop something sought by level 30s.


Something along the lines of purchasing higher ranked mythals (Greater or Above), and higher level loot (4.5+). This would of course cost large amounts of coin to and require adventuring effort.

We could have specific 4.5+ item merchants, which require you to have special circumstances allowing for access to their goods, such as quests/favors/reputation earned like Forstakkr by turning in these pieces acquired from epic bosses. They could be: Master jeweler, Master tailor, Master Leather crafter, Master Armorer, Master weapon crafter, Master Enchanter. Allowing people to earn/build their weapons via effort, not dumb luck and trading.

As you earn favor with them, this either enables you to purchase better things from them, which then can be crafted into things that you would want. (Of increasing expensive values and requirements for each increase of quality of course.)

This also enables those willing to work for it to have a sense of working towards building a masterpiece; which is what epic loot should be. Right now it's just like hitting the lotto.

This is a carrot, people need to adventure more than they do now, and do so together. By that same token they need to have something to spend money on, but it also must make sense in character. This accomplishes all of these.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

Im in agreement with Dwagin -if- we do anything at all. Increase the number of mythals, decrease loot, and make it damn near impossible to get those
durn epic loots.

And whats wrong with so much gold? It only piles up on old characters, but eventually i say people should have to retire their character.. Therefore new ones are put in place, and they have to make money all over again.

Its the circle of life, (and money) its the way it should be.

P.S. Nobody even kinda liked my little pun back there? Awwwh....

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--MAINS--
Xanon .: Talonite!
Xiladei .: Amethyst Dragon Disciple.
Ryth .: Returning Elven Archer. Missing for some time.

@Dwagin.

That seems very boring. Except for the more adventuring part, I like that.

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To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!

Nobody is gonna retire their favorite character because someone else is to lazy to put the time in it that they did...

And epic loots are very tough to get, It costs a lot to boss hunt for me, and only 5pct change of a drop per boss, of which Ive far exceeded those odds.

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The Peacock wrote:

[GreatPigeon] is better than me.

Decreasing epic loot drops won't reduce the inflation.

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Darthion Illys

Join the Banites!

I must agree with the points made by Mago. There will be haves and havenots. Nothing you do, short of destroying what makes Amia fun, will prevent this so do not try.

On the other hand, the small number of excessively rich pc's, who bid up prices to the stratophere on every desirable epic item while only competing against other excessively rich pc's ~or~ who rather than even bid in gold immediately offer barter choices of 4-5 other epic items need something (anything!) to spend money on.

I really don't bother looking at auctions anymore, for any epic loot, because it's out of hand and I know that I'll easily be outbid. I'll be outbid even if I drain every gold in my coffers and the "rich" pc, who perhaps can't even equip or wield the item , offers a tiny fraction of their wealth. In this regard, having a "near epic" NPC merchant ala the Black Caravan is wholly useful as it shrinks the non-epic to epic gear gap.

This is a seriously difficult problem to grapple with and there are no easy answers that do not in themselves immediately bring to mind the "Law of Unintended Consequences". I do hope there is a reasonable solution but I stress that the equalization of wealth is not reasonable.

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Tark Hammerfeast - Immovable Object
True Greenspan - Bendir's Boy Wonder

That is .. not what I said at all. Its quite the converse of what I suggested for epic loot.

+5 bin loot should be equivalent rarity as it is now statistically, but something you can earn through effort, and in my opinion something useful to -you-. If you can hook a gold sink onto making ituseful to you, is better. 5% chance, or 1 in 20 attempts. I'm looking at 3,000,000 gp for an epic item. And 10-11 epic items per character, plus 20 boss runs per item. That is 200-220 boss runs mimum, and 30,000,000-33,000,000 minimum gp outlay in a much tighter economy, and with the 1 boss spawn per person per boss per reset, already in place.

And Mago's right, Epic loot drop rate has nothing to do with gold inflation in the current economy. That is why I said inflation and economy adjustments are needed. Because I do not want to bash people's fortunes for no reason.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

Not offering a comprehensive solution, but just commenting on loot drops, which after all are the major source of gold inflow.

Most loot is sold for cash. At low levels because you cant use it and at high levels because it's useless. Epic boss-runners do so hoping they'll hit that small percentage chance for special gear - huge gold hoards are a merely a side-effect of that gambling process.

Perhaps doing away with gold drops and just giving loot (at the usual percentage chances), combined with merchant spending caps, would encourage more barter and keep gold hoards down. The down side is that it's even harder to gain gold if you arent an adventurer - it would lead to favouring certain jobs or job combinations for their cash flow rather than their RP value.

I seem to recall proposing in one of the previous threads a standard income and a standard expense (tax), both of which would balance out to allow a certain income (related to level) in the absence of any other activity.

Of course, other optional gold sinks are necessary.

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~Sharess on AmiaWiki~
Priestess, politician, prostitute
"[They] were moving in on me like Sharessans on a new broad in the bath house" - Tracer Bolt
AmiaWiki mod (mostly inactive)

Yeah.. okay one i know thats not what you said dwagin.. ima remove myself from this thread


I agree with Dwagin though! *says as his body fades from this thread....*

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--MAINS--
Xanon .: Talonite!
Xiladei .: Amethyst Dragon Disciple.
Ryth .: Returning Elven Archer. Missing for some time.

no taxs of anykind, that will piss off everyone.

lowering the gold NPCs will buy for and/or the sell value of the higher items will lower the gold coming in but potions and stuff will remain the same cost lowering the profit of hunting to weed out gold for somepeople.

other people who still have large amounts of gold DMs could weed it out with what ever they think would make them want to give it up, relics with magical powers,funds for building a temple...ect

throwing in some random out of the blue way to remove gold now is for the OOC reason that some people dont want to hunt but want the benefits as if they had, DMs on the DC request forum have said you want a item on the epic loot table go get it in game and now after the people tryed a large number of times and may have gained nothing you want to try and remove what they gained for thier effort.

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================-<Cory ShadowFlame>-================
Risenlord-Shifter(OMG a Non-Dragon Shifter that can hold his own in PvE)

I like that idea

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

Me too....

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Gianan Wing - Wandering Priest of Akadi
Rente Galenson - Halruaan Wizard

That suggestion would accomplish the capping but it seems very complicated and is biased towards those who know how the system works OOCly. The complexity does not feel 'nice' or 'streamlined', intuitive, nor does it emulate IC realism to my brain. Mayhaps I do not see it from the same angle, if you could expand on it better, there might be merits that haven't be communicated, or that I do not readily see.

This would lead to a system of greater gains for some than others. I'm not fond of that dynamic, it punishes new players that don't have the insider information on 'how the system works.'

This would make forecasting inflation data a rather complicated mathematical affair, where simpler is always preferred. We need set numbers to derive values from in order to more readily adjust income levels either higher or lower, if needed, or adjust item prices accordingly. We do not need something that would take a page long algorithm to properly accomplish that taking into account the possible combination of merchant sales.

I still believe that the value of items needs to be based by bin. This would let us apply simple numbers to the monies coming in and monies going out. We could use that to figure how much we have to tip someone's hand into spending to keep inflation in check.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

If anything, that's the most simple and best working solution suggested so far.

Don't really see how you can consider it complicated, nor biased towards those who know the module. Nor how it would lead to a system of greater gain for some than others (isn't that what we have atm, anyway?).

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Darthion Illys

Join the Banites!

*cough* couple points, no vaultwipe does not mean communist amia, it means resetting the gold values to 0 it 'resets' the 'capitalist' system. Still it stays a capitalist system, obviously if you farm a lot your getting more gold.

Reducing the amount of gold given by farming will slow down the inflation of funds, the amount of gold in income should be closer to matching the gold expenses.

Basic logic is if you make more than you spend you end up with extra cash, finding ways to make fixed costs will lower the amount of millions in the inflated economy.

Which is why ages ago I suggested several things, like houses or faction banks where they use player funds to upgrade their 'pad/house/lair/area'.
Perhaps add in some private boats for sale with little rooms underneath or up the costs of cart travel and mythaling, or perhaps raise the costs for potions and overall merchandise that is available for sale.

Bottom line it can be Anything that spends players money on things that they want or need.

Make the income match the expenses and we have a balanced economy, the problem is all those stored up millions that are not so valuable now but will be immensity valuable if drastic steps are taken to fix the economy. (IE it's not fair to the newbie who joins amia with 2k gold while there's epic lvl characters sitting on 20+ million.) 'that' is the reason for the vaultwipe suggestion. No it has nothing at all to do with communism.

We could try to grandfather it and slowly fix the economy...will it be fair to new people?...no, will it eventually work? ...maybe. ..in a year or two

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Night is just another day without light.

yes it might not be fair for the newer people but its not fair for the older people, would you whipe DCs and levels and items as well in the name of being fair?

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================-<Cory ShadowFlame>-================
Risenlord-Shifter(OMG a Non-Dragon Shifter that can hold his own in PvE)

I'd rather it take a year or two to fix than piss off so many of the older people enough to just leave.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

So far the best solution with the most, openly expressed "goodjob"s (about 3) and the least open opposition!

Good thinking belgianbonzai!

and this is actually lowby friendly too!

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Gianan Wing - Wandering Priest of Akadi
Rente Galenson - Halruaan Wizard

Wished gold inflated. because Keri would be the rich of rich, back when it was like "OMG You have one milliongold!?" she had 1.5 mil.. the druids and keri would be laughing.. so now mainly her riches are "rped" because she isn't the richest character on the server by a long shot now.

It depends on what you're looking at. The small picture, or the larger one.

It is 'less work' in initial set up than as I have suggested, yes.

But the mathematics required to figure a PC's general income, and tweak gold siphons to keep pace would be more difficult with their system instead of my own. Mine is very simple, designed to make it easier to adjust for inflation.

Solo: M = Monsters Per level to level B = Loot bin of M.
(0.05*M)*(B*4000) = GP/lvl.

Just add 0.01 per each additional party member, then divide the final amount by that same number of party members.

The alternate suggestion to mine would make it biased towards those who know the module, yes. They would know which merchants have which buy prices for which tier gear, and by that knowledge they would know which to sell to in order to maximize profit at any given point with a piece of gear, if they knew the base item price.

That hasn't taken into account the difficulty in balancing an appraise system with this alternate suggestion could end up being.

When one begins to factor in Appraise either raising sell caps or sell percentage amount, it begins to cause murky things in the sell prices, and who to sell what to, which takes a significant amount of math to determine for each item. You in theory, could just toss out the appraise selling bonus but considering the point investment I have on my merchant I'd be not happy with that suggestion.

One needs to be able to extrapolate the system into some form of usable data to base further adjustments to the economy on. My solution for this ends up being quite simple to do and plan (ahead) for, even adding appraise bonuses into the mix.

Truth be told it would be simpler were each merchant to have a fairly similar(read identical) purchase% and leave it at that for data purposes. I personally believe the only modifier for selling things that a player should receive a bonus for is the appraise skill.

Secret merchants should have items you want to buy, not be a purpose to sell for mass profits to for the informed over the ill-informed.


To your final point Mago:

As for the current system of 'greater gain' for some than other gold wise? No. Everyone has the same chance to make gold in the current economy as anyone else with gear that exists readily useable by anyone in the module. Now, some builds might be more consumable heavy than others and pay a higher cost to adventure, and that cuts into their profits, but that is not the fault of an economy but a class/PvM balance issue.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

Okay quite why this topic has dragged on for four pages, I have no clue.

Dwagin put it best when saying that the wealth of the horrifically wealthy does not come from selling to merchants but rather to other players. Now obviously at some point along the line loot was traded to a merchant by a player to afford to buy something pricy from another player, however once the GP starts changing hands from player to player there is very little you can do in script to regulate that.

Without regulation, inflation will continue until players cannot gain any more gold because if they did it would cause integer overflow.

Regulation essentially means that the most-demanded items would have a ceiling price and anyone caught transacting those items for more than that price would be fined double the difference. Thus you limit the rate at which wealth can be gained simply by selling off loot to players. Players would still be able to go and find new loot to sell off and get wealthy by selling quantity, rather than selling the few items they have for exorbitant sums of gold. In other words, they would have to satisfy demand instead of sitting on a limited supply.

I'm not saying this would be popular, but there's not going to be any point in creating other kinds of GP sinks unless there's nothing else you can use that GP for. At present, you can most certainly use your GP to out-bid someone, so why use it for anything else?

I always wonder why the general populations of Amia don't exploit these amazingly rich PCs. "Oh look, Captain Moneybags is docking, time to tell him about the new tax on being rich, hahaha". Then the Customs man or Gatekeeper takes 100 000 or 200 000 or whatever away from El Richo.

"That's not fair, I worked for this!" I hear some people say. Too frigging bad, so did the poor Yuan-ti you murdered to get it. We want a real, persistent RP world then I think we should acknowledge the costs of being rich.

Your a rich cleric not giving this money to appease your god; spell failure all of a sudden. You're a mage not buying the best components (from the component box or whatever); spell failure. You're the fighter not spending a mass of money on equipment maintenance; AC reduction or Knockdown as you trip on a lose strap. The Sneak not buying the best shoes; Hide fail all of a sudden.

Spending cash on RP and character maintenance doesn't have to be mandatory but it can be done with relative ease. This can also use the job system. In quite an interesting manner too; how many druid herbalists are going to sell components to mages they suspect of necromancy?

Also, citizenry taxes. If you're not a citizen of a city it costs money to enter. If you are a citizen, you pay tax. This doesn't have to me a requirement but it can be fun. Who wants to be a tax collector?

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Jess Incognito:- Ah, but the phoenix may fly only when its feathers are grown...

Olaf Grudgebringer: Stroppy Cleric or Morradin

Krunk (Underdark): Stay back! He's a bit mad.

the_incognitos@live.com

I asked for voluntary donation bins where they keep track of donations a while ago, and nothing came of it.



Hang on, why can a poor mage produce the same effect with the same materials at less chance of failure?

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

Eeesh, Amia: A Persistent Accountancy and Housekeeping Simulator....thanks, but no thanks.

If you insert spellcomponents for anything but 3-4 gamewinning spells (timestop / igms maybe 1 or 2 more) you should install weapon and armor wearing down as well. (my opinion)

@Dwagin, the system I proposed was just an easy method for what Magoo and Iron were talking about. But as you asked a bit deeper explanation (and sorry for the big blocks of text) :

For IC realism:
the first group would be like the merchants dumb little helpers while he's off on whatever business:
"here Bob, I'll trust in you... just give a price you think is fair and for which you think you can sell it again with profit... but never more then 2000GP .oO(don't want to get broke on this idiot getting tricked by these pesky adventurers into thinking their wooden stick is actually an enchanted mage relic from far far and away)"

bartenders also go here:
"i know adventurer stuff sells for good money, but i am unfamiliar with all of it, so I have it checked later by my lore-monkey-wife and for now I just spend 3000GP maximum on an item, for that price I can use it as decoration in the tavern... now,... get a drink or get out"

So, first group is people with little knowledge about what they buy, unable to lore items maybe even. They just know that in general they can sell this or that item for this or that price, and they offer something similar. They dont have an economics degree, but they do know to limit themselves in order to save their hide/business.

the second group are standerd merchants, their cap is due to an empty purse (its even possible to do this actually, but that would make "rush the merchant after reset" a new sport, and a regular cap seems more pleasant for everybody if you think about that)
Fact that they keep buying for the same cap after they just told you they had no more money and you agreed on the sell can be two-fold: 1) they lied... sucks to be you 2) an NPC just bought something from them for that money they offer you now

the 3rd group are the greedy type. They have vast amounts of money and they pay bad so they can sell with insane profit margins, but if that is all you got then that's all you got.


OOC'ly: its exactly same as we have now and current game mechanics can be used, only the merchant settings have to be altered and not every single item or lootbin (as opposed to when you want all items in a lootgroup in same price range)

Calculation method can be easy by the way:
1) set ranges for top prices for the shop in question: 3500GP, 20000, 60000GP (for example)
2) set caps: 2500 (hard cap), 10000(hard cap), 20000 (soft cap, not mechanically enforced)
3) scale %'s so these prices group around the caps: 70%, 50%, 35%

Numbers here are just pulled out of my ass, but you get the point.
Stuff sold around 4000GP is good on both 1 and 2 shop, the gap between the last 2 shops is perhaps a bit big but you can expand this system to whatever amount of shops you want anyway.

Appraise is a 30% max cap so you just include 10 or 15% appraise in the calculation %'s to take care of that.... No appraise people pay even more, appraise people pay slightly less. And you can still make the appraise check very hard to beat so only appraise focussed ones can start to breach the caps. Or you use appraise in the conversation leading up to the shop.

Basically people will have to discover which price range they best sell to which merchant... but.. a little exploring is fun anyway (why else play on a server with more then 20 areas) + you can always find out IC (or OOC,... its not like every character ever just went to Bendir to sell to the bartender "just to see if he might give you a good price" )

second OOC bonus: as you go higher in lootbins, the NPC price you get goes worse so it possibly will give more player interaction.

At the moment you just sell everything half decent to an NPC for a OK cash, and people just pass the sold items and buy them from NPC's.
If your sell/buy price is 60-80% different, you'll have more chance of selling to a PC. Take an item that sells from shop at 50k but you can only get 15k for it... should be easier to find someone paying 30-35k for it (both make 15-20k profit) then at the moment where shop pays 40k and you have to find someone who wants to pay ~45k to make 5k profit.

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Click here for the navis & lukavi portraitpacks preview & download.

I can't believe I'm saying this... but I'm with Ruce on this one.



Regards,

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"Come under the flag of truce, and brook no treason... for mineself is Death, and care not whom knows mine touch."
- Frey Asaid'De Majere

Oh come on! Frey could finally be a taxman!

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I keels u with my axe!

"Do ye know where the Holy-Flamin' Frost-brand Gronk-slayin' Vorpal Hammer o' woundin' an' returnin' an' Shootin'-Lightnin'-out-yer-bum is?"

Something I thought might work for funnelling gold out of the system, would be to remove all epic loot drops, and replace them with epic loot "blueprints".

Add a few Master Craftsmen around the Isle, and have them charge exorbitant sums of gold, as well as require certain job-system components, to create whatever masterpiece of craftsmanship that you have the blueprint for.

Granted, the question would arise as to why each blueprint can only be used once. I don't have an answer to that other than that perhaps it would be one of those things we'd just have to accept, in order to eat up some of the gold trading hands.

It'd work well for trading still, because the person with the blueprint to sell, would still get their millions in gold from whatever player bought it from them, but then the person buying it would need to spend however much more to actually craft the thing (assuming that the blueprint owner hadn't already crafted it prior to selling it - but works equally well even if they do), perhaps plus the cost of acquiring the necessary crafting components, which should help make the job system become a real part of the economy of the server.

I personally see no true downside to something like this. It wouldn't create "tiers" like many other suggestions would. But it WOULD drain large amounts of gold out of the system on a semi-regular basis, for things people need and want, without putting unnecessary strain on anyone.

Alternatively: the drops could be "damaged" versions of the actual epic loot, requiring "repair" to make them become the actual epic drop in question, rather than blueprints. I just like the idea of blueprints more, because it drags the job system into play, which should only be a good thing.

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Role with the Punches...
Elan: A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!

Well then it's not fair either way, because true the time and effort spent on the current characters should also count for 'something'. So how do we justify either of them, vaultwipe or drastic eco changes...

Just has to be done slowly, best way is to find new ways of using gold, as stated earlier.

...and no I'm not gona support the actual communistic gold suggestions, I agree with Mago on that point.

I do like the idea on tracking gold values to try and see the income vs spending ammounts...if it can be done pratically.

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Night is just another day without light.

To me, these blueprints sound a bit too far removed from the standard fantasy cliché of slaying the dragon and looting the horde. It just seems, I dunno, too odd to me. A chance to get damaged epic loot sounds better, but if you're paying a PC to repair them then the gold doesn't leave the economy.

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To err is human; to forgive divine, but VENGEANCE IS MINE!

I believe the idea is to get NPCs to repair them.

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2009's Second Most Overall Contributing Player

يمكنني استخدام مترجم جوجل

Not sure it needs to be "damaged".

It could be that you loot off the boss a fine longsword, so fine in fact, or made of such wondrous material, that it has the "potential" to be crafted to a weapon of epic proportion if the correct enchantments are placed upon it by a master craftsman. Ordinary longswords, even heavily enchanted and magical ones simply do not have the "potential" to become weapons of epic proportion due to some minor flaws, imperfect balance, or less finely refined materials. The longsword with "potential", while not yet enchanted, possesses the necessary traits to serve as a vessel for such wondrous enchantments.


The master craftsman, who is far and away more knowledgeable and skilled than any other is the NPC. These could be the job system trainers or some other hidden master. He charges alot of money to turn the "potential" into the "epic". The prices charged vary with the desirability of the item. A surestrike light hammer might cost less to enchant than a wonderforged greatsword or Ioun stone.

I dunno, just thoughts.

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Tark Hammerfeast - Immovable Object
True Greenspan - Bendir's Boy Wonder

Appraise cap is 20% at the moment for max bonus.

And this still leaves player merchants with basically one alternative, keeping a giant ledger of the price of every item in the module, and knowing what that value of each is.

We can not appraise an item like NPC merchants can. Closest to that is a tool that you get as a member of the ATCF, but that only works on items you already possess.

So shy of having the toolset open 24x7 and crafting and adding the price for each item there is no realistic way to translate IC appraise skill to profits shy of having a XML file open for 'fodder' items. If the loot was useful, it'd likely cause more bartering / trading than straight up tossing it to NPC vendors as fodder, because that is what it is, and no PC merchants will buy it to resell to other players, because it won't sell, and we won't buy it if we can't resell it to a merchant for profit ourselves.





Well, that is what all systems are, are they not? Simulation or mathematical equations to balance within the acceptable variables? Be it gold per monster uptake, xp per level per monster uptake and effort versus reward, and time vs xp gained per monster, or the probability of epic loot.

Whats it matter to Joe average player other than needing to make ends meet on his PC as he adventures to cover costs. Its up to the staff to make sure that can happen in game but is balanced, because if costs are easily met there is no actual -cost- to them because you always have cash on hand.

Without actually knowing what the combat ability of an average adventurer of any specific level it is impossible to properly balance Difficulty to it. Consumeable use, proper Challenge ratings. Income functions in this same manner, if we do not know the average ability of a player we cannot determine proper costs for equipment, and a ballpark figure for gold sinks to keep inflation in check.

ultimately to get a handle on mathematical problem, one must resort to maths to rectify it.






Its a master smith. He charges bank because he can and it costs gobs of coin for his work because he's -always- got orders from adventurers.

He don't need no stinking blueprints. But he does need expensive tools and materials to get it back in working order, that are consumed in the process, because he buys 200,000 gold sharpening stones, because those are crafted from the pelvic bones of storm giants.

And lets not get into the whole 're-enchanting the potential' of the blade expenses, god, that wizard that crafts those things is crazy eccentric. Just why do I need a Tannar'ri spleen and Snow beast testicles anyway for my Elemental damage enchant?, and 500,000 gold for ground ...demilich skulls, diamond dust, dragon scales to make it not lose its edge!? Baator blood, bloody crazy mages!

But I do like the idea of paying to 'repair/bring up to snuff' for epic loot, and tailoring the enchants via lots of money. By that same vein it could just be a big lump of uber rare magic metal that needs forging. Makes even more sense if he has to forge it into something to charge huge amounts.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.

Blueprints fail in setting the static cost for "crafting" an epic item, since the epic item market is PC driven and completely dynamic due to demand and availability.

If the economy deflates slightly, the price on epic items drop. If a certain epic item peeks in availability, the price of the epic item drops.

If it then costs 200k to craft a Sure Strike club, and the market value of the club itself is 75k, then no one will bother to craft it, since no one will bother to buy it.

Basically making it more worthwhile to trash the loot.

Epic loot is already enough of a gamble, where you might find something worth 100k or something worth 15 million. No need to expand those differences.


Oh... and...



No, everyone doesn't have the same chance of making gold in Amia's current system. Nor will anyone ever have, with any system, unless you implement a huge communist-package into the module.

Basically, new players don't have the same knowledge as old players of where to hunt, where to sell their loot, where to buy their loot, where to hunt for gold, where to hunt for xp, where to hunt for bosses, how to hunt for bosses, what builds to have for PvM, what builds to have for boss hunting, what builds to have for merchandising.

Having prior knowledge of the module will always give an advantage. No economical system can change that, and even if it could, it would be the most shitty economical system I can think of.

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Darthion Illys

Join the Banites!

You're confusing having the chance at making gold and having the knowledge/skill/care to take advantage of that chance. These are different things and should not be confused.

Some people will not settle for 5% difference in sell prices. Some could not care less, it is 'trivial' to them.

Some people will go out of their way for saving 5% on buying something. Some people will pay more to save time/convenience.

Some people invest in appraise gear early in their character's lives, others never do.

The -chance- is there, waiting to be taken advantage of, all things being equal. The capability exists.

I'm fairly sure even a fresh player guy off the boat that asked where a good place to get rid of his treasure IC in Cordor, he'd find the response of visiting Ha'mar.

Or if he was looking for a specific piece of arms and armor, he could also ask IC, or make an IC post on the forums and he would likely find someone willing to fill the need of information or the actual item itself.

The very precept behind it is, with the same investment all are capable of garnering the same gold, there is nothing screwing over someone in the system as far as income goes currently.

Wether they have to lay out more than other classes after getting the same income or not? This is a matter of module's class/PVM balance and that is a topic for another discussion.

Truth be told, you can do a quick mathematical calculation of prices that NPCs buy and sell things for by comparing a cheap commodity to what they pay you for it at capped appraise, as long as you know the 'base' price of an item, for any merchant.

I actually do this with a single Flame weapon scroll or a +1 Heal kit.

A friend recently started playing on the server for the first time, and figured this out on their own. They got appraise gear on their own, persuade gear on their own, all by the time they were level 10, and were shuttling off to Ha'mar at every chance, because they asked, for just that, a good place to sell.

Sure, they don't have the full gamut of gear like say, Xyrkha has for pinning that 20% bonus or guaranteed persuade numbers for talking to him, but they did that with out me saying a word to them about it, to them. IC or OOC.

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Dwagin [Duh-wa-GIN] N. - 1a. Small and cute thingum, particularly fond of four legged scaled creatures of the metalic and chromatic varieties.

-Extraordinarily ordinary in the mostest of ways.