Improvement of the ingame economy

[trevdk]

I have a suggestion that I feel would improve the game experience in Ryzom. The problem is the economy – there is none. It would be very easy to say “fix it”, but more difficult to carry out. This suggestion is meant to be nothing more than pointers and ideas.

In order to get the economy infrastructure in shape, we need to look at how much impact the economy have today. The answer is very little. A well-developed economy would have huge impact on the rest of the gameplay and we would suddenly see a much wider variety of businesses on Atys. Now how do we do this? First we need to look at the market. We players can sell our items at the local vendors and then we forget about them. If the market got more advanced it would attract more attention; and by advanced I mean things that would enable players to adjust prices on their items on-the-fly, remotely see prices in other regions, being able to sell bulk loads of items, possible even see the price development over a given amount of time.

This kind of implementation would spawn an entirely new side of conflict in Ryzom; namely the non-lethal act of business warfare. Guilds fighting each other on the market with best/lowest prices or best quality items, would force the guilds to focus more on a specific side or branch (this would work better if crafting specs for item increased, e.g. more mats per item).

To top it off, the implementation of guild war would be the crowning of it all. If a guild could declare war on another guild, they could possible disrupt the other guilds income of mats etc. A guild war would mean no place would be safe on Atys, and the war would have a weekly costs of X amount of dappers (safe zones would however be needed inside cities of course).

Ideas and thoughts on the above are most welcome.

[cloudy97]

I kind of like that you need to travel to specific towns to see what the merchants have in stock. It makes the world bigger, more spatial, but I see the point about getting an overview.

The problem today is that the good and great gear never hit the vendors, maybe your idea would change that. Sounds a bit like EVE's "market window" without the travel time.

In addition to this idea, and to add to the Kami vs Karavan tension (and possible racial tension): put permanent merchants (like the hawkers) at tribe camps and have people sell items via that specific tribe. Fame would decide if you could buy from the merchant - or if you're killed-on-sight. (Neutrals would be the winners.)

[blaah]

Originally Posted by trevdk

A guild war would mean no place would be safe on Atys,...

outposts was meant to be like that, but just like it was with spires, devs chickened out.

[killgore]

Yay economic wars. Alan Greenspan would be the uber all guilds would have to get. Sorry but I don't see how unless your economy major this would make the game more exciting.Guilds on comms with their spreadsheets open determining that lowering their cost on Irin will make them the guild of all guilds.I'd would really like to see GF spend money on the story.-Kil

[g00st]

heh,

wasnt the greatest sifi du da in the planet created by a er tax embargo ;o)

good ideas

(watch some simpsons)

[gillest]

I see only two obstacles:

- low number of items available: even tho you can make different colors and plans, we are basically restricted to 3 types of armur (LA, MA, HA), 1 type of jewellery (jewels ) and some weapons...
Yes, the look change but for the same mats, the stats would be perfectly identical and the increasing number of high lvl crafter linked to the free for guild system does not make the demand very high..

- As mentioned above, you can rarely find good quality items in merchants (1 Sup 180 mace and q200 sword and axe in merchant in forest btw ).
Tho been able to see what is on sale in other lands would be great: the option somehow exist for what is on sale for yourself (as long as u still need to travel to buy it).

[flat75]

In my opinion guild war would be a really horrible idea, would entirely remove the quasi-concensual PvP situation.
Even now, Pvp has serious bugs, it would be a huge mistake to force people to pvp whether they want or not.

Your suggestions about economy does not touch the most important troubles of economy: as too much money going into player hands, and there is nothing significant to spend on. (commonly referred as money sink)

I agree with you - economy would be important, but right now, high level players can't spend they money.

I am sure there would be a lot of things they'd gladly pay for example: increased guildhouse storage (with yearly fee), better pack animals and mounts, pets, stuff to put into house, etc.

[arfindel]

I feel the need to repeat here a suggestion I placed in game about a year ago. The personla relation crafter customer would be a lot improved if together with the (now useless) message: you have sold a Kara Viva pants for whatever dappers, you would learn the place where you sold (vendor X from Thesos) and mainly the name of the customer.
A customer who buys from you can be encouraged, you can learn his interests (fashion or stats for example), thanked for his purchase, kindly asked what else he/she would need.

I love travelling to the spots where things are on sale. But in Ryzom only some two cities can be visited comfortably to do that. While the crafter could be encouraged to see his objects in different spots of Atys, the customer could be encouraged to visit Avendale, Avalae, Min Cho... for commerce reasons all civilisations could have a porto franco area where all religions and neutrals can access easily.

All these .. of course... while waiting for personalised shops, personalised vendors (who can be so much RPed - who would you hire to sell your goods?), real boutiques.

[gillest]

Originally Posted by arfindel

But in Ryzom only some two cities can be visited comfortably to do that. While the crafter could be encouraged to see his objects in different spots of Atys, the customer could be encouraged to visit Avendale, Avalae, Min Cho... for commerce reasons all civilisations could have a porto franco area where all religions and neutrals can access easily.

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes....

Porto franco

or open the TP's: keep them closed for faction in area lvl 200-250 but open them in area 50 (even if towns sell 200-250), they are still in areas 50....
I havent been in avendale to buy -sell anything (same for Zorai) for like a year now: that is just plain stupid nerfing imo ...

Or make all capitals Porto franco to lvl 250 :0

[trevdk]

So many things to reply on here

It is true that there are many high level players with loads of dappers. A money sink is needed indeed. One of the issues of implementing changes to the economy (as I suggested in my previous post), is that is can hard to implement in isolated pieces. A money sink could be to create a 'repair' facilty that could repair armor/weapons etc. The price would have to be high. Now a repair facility will only work if the item is worth repairing, and right now it is not. The material cost on item would have to be increased when crafting (this leads to a new issue of gaining XP, but i wont come into that right now). Imagine the cost to make a set of HA got tripled or more. Then suddenly it would be reasonable to repair it once broken, and the price on armour would go up on the market. As Faa said, then it would wonderfull if we could develop the markets in the smaller cities.

Regarding non-consentual PVP; Im still a big fan of it, and i still think that implementing the possibility for guild war, would have have a positive effect on the economy. As i posted previously, we would have the chance to disrupt the flow of mats and if we had enough dappers, we could hire merc to do war against an enemy guild for a certain amount of time.