Economy
From Neverend
A bulk economy, where items aren't always sold on an individual basis, but in cases of items or crates. Wholesalers and shippers would sell these items at low cost to retailers, who would mark them up enough to make money but low enough to increase demand. There would also be group demand from NPCs, such as ten longswords being needed for a group of ten NPC guards. Of course this makes individual items common and dirt cheap. In this case I don't know how enchanted, randomly enhanced, rare, or unique items would fit into the system.
How do players and NPCs earn a living?
-Cooking -Cleaning -Picking up trash -Patrolling -Guarding -Shipping items -Running a shop -Running a tavern -Running an inn -Reception desk -Organize items on display -Stripping/sex -Various chores -Being rewarded for fighting enemies or defending NPCs -Performing a task from a leader, merchant, guard, or other NPC
Resource gathering: Hunting, farming, mining, woodcutting Crafting: Butchering, cooking, blacksmith, carpentry, leatherworking Wholesaling: Taking crafted goods and selling them in bulk to shops, who mark them up individually. Retailers: Shopkeepers who sell individual items.
Positions that require trust or authority to work at:
Shipping: Players transport gathered, crafted, wholesale or retail goods across land and sea. Leadership: A mayor, prince, king, emperor, etc. Sets laws, sets people to enforce them. Authority: Police, guards, sentries, military. Uses a rank structure with new recruits at the lowest ranks. Bank and storage: Stores actual items and currency. Entrusted with safekeeping. Earns money from fees or interest. Sells stocks, bonds, credit, loans, and house/boat deeds.
Instead of an Auction House that lists everything as a sort of all convenient shopping list, a more literal auction house would work, like the one in FF6. The auctioneer presents an item brought out by demonstrators, and bids are made by players. If no bids are made or the reserve isn't met, the demonstrators take the item back.
Schedules could exist for different price ranges, different auction methods (hidden reserve with no price, dutch), and the auctioneer would look bored and ask people to sell items if no items were for sale.
Price ranges can include 1-100, 100-1000, 1000-20000, 20000-100000, 100000-500000, 500000-1000000, and rare/priceless. Items can be individual or in lots or groups of items, such as a bunch of craft items that are worth more as a large group.
Warehouses and banks are another thing. A rich person could have a building full of crates or chests for storage. Guilds could have storage buildings for member valuables and shared items. Cities and towns can have town storage for charity, organizations such as clerics or churches (like a grant), and storage for guards, mercenaries, and bandits.
If you wanted to work as a guard, you'd be provided with armor and a spear, but might have to pay a fee to use it, or do something to get it for free. If they don't have the equipment, then they could ask you to find your own or make your own, until they get some supply. Shops would have similar issues, as they would want some surplus inventory so they aren't sold out all the time.
Bandits can loot and hoard items, as well as scavenger and packrat monsters. Items left on the ground or taken from fallen players, or stolen form NPC thieves and bandits, could be brought back to storage containers at the NPC or monster camp. Thus when a player tries to raid the enemy camp, they naturally find items in chests and containers, as long as the enemy has been working hard.
When a player has enough resources, they can buy a small shop, complete with AI Controlled vendor. This shop will sell goods for the player even when the player is offline.
Staff will pay attention to what items are popular and what aren't, adjusting the prices regularly. this will make the shopping experience more organic like it is in real life.
I like being able to manufacture and sell stuff to make money - however, at least for me, the act of keeping up on inventory and running a shop is boring as hell.
Any suggestions that let a player make and sell stuff (taking advantage of their skills and ability) yet makes it simple to do so would be wonderful.
I want to be able to make and sell in order to profit from hard earned skills - but I want the game to be exciting. So maybe the idea of a few stores you can sell your wares to at wholesale and they sell to the general public is good.
However... I also like looking for a bargain. If there are only a couple stores selling stuff their really will be no option to find a good bargain. And perhaps it also makes it TOO easy to find what you want? If EVERYONE is selling their stuff to the same few stores - then they either have what you want or they don't. There's no opportunity to hunt something down before another player does.
Also - different areas should have different economies. I might spen more for a particular item in one district than another but I don't mind because I don't want to bother travelling elsewhere to buy it cheaper. And for those who have a limited budget they could look for those bargains.
Or maybe a combination of all the ideas that have been presented in this thread. Auction houses, and warehouse type stores and individual player stores for those who do want to run them. Lots of options.
Maybe UO style vendors wouldn't work so well. But actual stores would allow players to sell things in a building, helping the city grow and have an economy, without crowding everyone at the Auction House for instant WalMart selection and prices.
Shops can be run by individual owners, NPC owners, members of a guild or group, or rented for use for a certain period of time. The shops would sell whatever is listed for sale by the player, usually bought wholesale from others or crafted.
I like the idea of robbable shops, where items listed would physically be in storage chests, and rarer items would be in display cases or magical barriers. Guards and bodyguards would have to patrol the shop and watch out for thieves and bandits.
Otherwise, shops are simply a list of inventory that has nothing to do with whether the seller gets killed or not, like in EQ. I find this simple but more boring- does the shopkeeper swallow his entire inventory before he dies?
Outdoor areas could have caravan style tents that can be folded into an inventory item by the owner, carried and placed in an open area. Tents would help establish sellers rather than having someone aimlesly stand somewhere and shout across the area. It would also add personality.
By having to actually set up physical areas, it would prevent players from simply entering vendor mode and sitting around, and those who couldn't afford a shop would either join a guild to help them start one, or sell to the shop at wholesale prices.
Replying to ihavenolife's post about players being able to make and sell products even from a low level, a thought came into my mind. I've seen in other MMO's (WoW, The Larkinor Quest) where there are huge auctionhouses, where players can put up their products for a larger audience.
The seller would need to return to the auctionhouse to collect his money, but it provides players a good way of selling products if they can't afford their own shop. In many MMO's (RYL included) players tend to simply set up their own shop instantly and free. This resulted in endless lag, and a shop selling the exact same thing only centimeters away from each other.
Letting players do this would be a bad idea. I like the concept of it. If it was only a few players in each town doing it, each far away from the other two, it would be great. But, that obviously wouild not be the case.
So this auctionhouse will provide the buyer with everything possible to be sold, and the towns will be MUCH less crowded and claustrophobic.
What about the ability to craft items that could have ill effects on a player? A very powerful sword but everytime you use it you lose some strength or lifeforce or lose the ability to get hard for a certain period of time?
A ring of strength that makes you ugly?
Maybe you know what the ill effects are and don't mind because you need the weapon... or maybe you need a certain level of intelligence to recognize the item for what it is... so if you're not smart enough you might buy a very powerful sword but not know that if you use it, it will drain your life away...
Crafting should have a low level of entry for cheap and disposable goods. More complex items would require more skill in one or more crafts, though a low level crafter could attempt to do them with a very low chance of success.
Crafted goods should exist for the entire range of the game. Low skill crafts provide newbies with plenty of equipment, while high skill items may require rare and exotic components. High skill crafters can also produce low skill items in greater quantity.
Variability is another factor. There may be plus and minus attributes, bonus effects and detrimental effects, element effects, special effect, charges, etc. FF7's materia or Diablo II's jewel system is a basic example. Crafted items could have a name attribute and a date attribute that could be activated in an item by certain items or skills, giving a signature or stamp for when and who made it.
Durability allows items to last for a certain number of hits. Swords may become more dull and armor may be more prone to breaking. Consumables such as food, drinks, and medicine would have quantity instead of durability, acting as a fraction such as 43/89. The maximum capacity would be greater for larger items, or items that have many small uses such as a jar of honey.
The community aspect of crafting allows players to craft for a city or town, which provides to other players. A crafter could give items to a city armoury or weapons hold, a guard barracks, a craft guild, a vendor's guild, or other organizations who would sell or donate those items to other players, or use them for their own jobs (cooks require ingredients, soldiers require weapons, clerics require healing components, mages require magic components, etc). These resources can be for a specific group, for members within a town, or for the town in general. Players help stimulate the town economy by selling wholesale to the town, while players and NPCs sell retail. A more socialist city would demand crafting to support the town with minimal wages or no wages to crafters.
Survivability is the aspect of a player being able to make things in the wilderness and survive on his own. This includes skinning an animal, cooking it, making a simple animal skin cloak, etc. Primitive towns may rely on the lowest levels of crafting to make bone weapons, totems, talismans, altars, spears, cudgels, clubs, fur clothing, necklaces, and other items.
If a player lacks the appropriate tools for low levels, he may be able to craft with his bare hands. If he wants to skin a rabbit but has no knife, he can do it with his bare hands, with a greater time to perform the action and higher chance of damaging the material. He can also dig in farm soil without a shovel.
Stone and bone tools are found or made from bare hands, such as breaking off a bone leg from an animal or using a rock. The leg is now a bone tool that can be used to crudely cut wood, farm, etc. It is also a weapon.
Better tools include wood, such as spears and mallets. Wood and stone allows for crude axes and picks, which are used to find metal. Metal is used to make wood and metal tools. Some tools can be enchanted for greater efficiency.
In this way, a group of people can develop a working society out of nothing, though it will take a while.
There are instances when weapons that have negative effects in addition to the positive do exist. There are also times when a weapon requires itself to drain certain life or blood from the wielder in order to have it's tremendous ability..
A weapon that simply has that design just because it was designed that way has never sat well with me. There will be weapons, however, that will be cursed by deities AFTER they were created.
there will be other weapons that are designed to drain things that the intended wielder should have in abundance (life stealing weapons for deities.. blood stealing weapons for powerful vampires.. holy energy stealing weapons or sexual energy stealing weapons for Deimos for example..)
the magical equivalent of a battery operated weapon..
these will be few and far between however.. many enchanted weapons may function in this way,. they may have spells and powers.. but where does their power source come from? the player of course..
even those weapons usually only draw from the player when they cannot do so from victims..
generally these weapons only draw when their powers are utilized
Sliding currency
Value is equal to a percentage of the next highest and lowest currency, like EQ. 1 platinum = 10 gold = 100 silver = 1000 copper, etc.
There are six levels of currency. Each level is a static value: 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10,000, and 100,000. Each level has a random name chosen for what it is. Say 1 Yklesha = 10 Vrsha = 100 Zsha.
When more currency is introduced in the world, value decreases, so that 1 Yklesha is now 1/10 of its original value. When any currency becomes devalued past level six (100,000 of one coin used to be equal to 1), it is now obsolete and no longer used. New currency is then introduced in the first slot, such as 1 Glrka being the new highest currency. This continues forever as new currency replaces old currency, and old currency is worthless.
This doesn't handle deflation well, as it would have to keep track of the last obsolete currency, but wouldn't be able to remove the new level 1 currency. You would have multiple level 1 currencies, which could increase or decrease in value regardless of the scale.
Now if money from other civilizations had their own currencies, there would be exchange rates between different civilizations. If every civilization had a six level currency scale, then equivelants could be determined without having 100,000 coins in a poor country = 1 coin in another country.
Basically, the scale tries to eliminate excess money in the millions or billions as inflation occurs. When money is devalued past a certain point, it must either be melted into raw material, traded for a higher level and rounded up or down, or thrown away.
