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How I learned to stop worrying and write a lot of words about Trade and commodities
Selthis
Member Posts: 526 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is probably going to be long so I apologize in advance. Thanks to the folks who read over it and offered their ideas/input.
I'm going to assume a few things in this discussion of trade.
The commodity situation in Imperian is desperately out of whack. Most cities have huge stockpiles of most of the commodities (except for those depleted in the Horde invasion event). In fact, most cities have so many they have had to take steps to impair the output of the townes or cut out caravans altogether in order to prevent serious damage to the gold stock of the city.
Issue 1: Need for commodities
Only a small number of commodities have non-negligible use:
Food for guards
Iron for cannonballs and various engineering stuff
Wood for bolts
Rope for nets
Stone for treb ammo
Silver/gold for hazewards and some alchemy
Diamond for mending
Sinn, Isan, Cuhpfehr for smithing
When it comes down to it, there just isn’t that huge a need for commodities. Crafting eats up some commodities but most crafted items last a pretty absurdly long time, especially with the plethora of ways to extend decay times (repairing in the craft skill, I believe there is a shard power that works similarly).
A similar issue exists with smithing and its related commodities. While there is the occasional person who outlays a bunch of commodities to smith up a superb weapon or armor, for the most part there is very little need for smithing more than once every 4-6 months, unless you are a class that uses a weapon for bashing. Weapon/armor damage was in a way to combat that, but even with the damage it takes a fair amount of time for a weapon to be unusable and beyond the point of repair.
The simple fact is there is not enough drain on the commodity system for the money it eats up in refining cost. The cities have to struggle to find a market for the commodities they just spent a lot of money refining.
Issue 2: The cost to convert Materials to commodities
Based upon the announce posts above, refining should have seen a change to costs. Despite the changes to gold drops, refinery costs have not seen a change.
This issue ties back into the issue of not enough uses for commodities. There is the fairly large initial cost involved in this setup to even get the commodities. All so they can be used, except they aren’t used that much at all due to issues mentioned previously. I feel like the answer isn’t more arbitrary commodity sinks, but instead lies in lowering either the cost to produce commodities and raising the churn on the crafting system at the same time. Equalizing out the input and output of commodities in a manner that doesn’t punish the people who want to do crafting with exorbitant prices but also doesn’t punish the cities who don’t want to take a loss on material conversion/commodity sales.
Issue 3: Commodity spread
We have several crafting specific commodities that are generated infrequently but over time have still built up. It crowds the comm shop and to the best of my knowledge they rarely sell. In particular: Platinum, Emerald, and Ruby. Rather than have a huge list of possible commodities, why not make broad categories. Rather than specific precious stones (except for diamond, because we still need it for diamond dust), why not just use gemstones? Rather than specific precious metals (Platinum, Gold, Silver) we instead have a precious metals commodity.
This could be managed on the crafting side via the crafting guidelines that are going to be implemented. You would just present a priority system of cost which increases the amount of the Gemstones/Precious metals needed for that particular thing. For example, the value of the Precious metal is rated as follows: Silver>Gold>Plat. Someone wants a simple silver ring: 2 precious metals. Another person wants a blinged out platinum and gold monstrosity, a total of 7 precious metals plus whatever the bling fee is that crafting approvers/head decide on (I am not totally clear on how approvals work).
This would mean that it would eliminate some of our commodity choices, but I think it might streamline some of the crafting as well. The system is already used since we only have one type of lumber and one type of stone for example.
Issue 4: Time Sink
I write this as a person who has the 100k lots achievement: Running caravans is more of a chore than an adventure. There is very little interaction with the game while my script walks the cavern from the city to the towne, I fill it up at the towne and then map the path back to the city and walk back. The most I get is generally if there are some bandits and if that is the case I just slam my attack macro until they are dead and then start moving again.
The idea behind the caravan system is sound in that it gets people out and working to get materials for conversion into commodities. And I really like that it requires an element of danger to get commodities. I’m not sure how to make it livelier, for lack of a better term. Some of the ideas mentioned below cover aspects of it though.
Conclusion
Ideally, in the end we’d see some pretty sweeping changes to trade and commodity generation and use. The overall goal would be to make the system slightly more interesting and slightly more interactive without being a massive time sink or gold pit. I feel like decay rates and smithing/crafting are the main bone of contention to this in addition to refinery costs. This is partially being hit by the Tradeskill rework, but a well thought out plan that involved a larger overall change in trade would be very welcome to shake up the system.
General ideas
City related ideas
Outlandish ideas that will probably never see fruition
I'm going to assume a few things in this discussion of trade.
- Refining costs are meant to be a gold sink, but have not been adjusted since the gold changes.
- Decay times have not been significantly altered for most crafted goods, except for a slight increase in decay times from researching efficiency in the shard trees. . Crafting changes will address this somewhat with the 25% reduction in decay times but that may not be far reaching enough.
- City expansions and now sect temple expansions (gh expansions too maybe?) were meant to be more frequent and thus eat up more commodities.
- We have a lot of commodities that are very infrequently used outside very niche cases.
The commodity situation in Imperian is desperately out of whack. Most cities have huge stockpiles of most of the commodities (except for those depleted in the Horde invasion event). In fact, most cities have so many they have had to take steps to impair the output of the townes or cut out caravans altogether in order to prevent serious damage to the gold stock of the city.
Issue 1: Need for commodities
Only a small number of commodities have non-negligible use:
Food for guards
Iron for cannonballs and various engineering stuff
Wood for bolts
Rope for nets
Stone for treb ammo
Silver/gold for hazewards and some alchemy
Diamond for mending
Sinn, Isan, Cuhpfehr for smithing
When it comes down to it, there just isn’t that huge a need for commodities. Crafting eats up some commodities but most crafted items last a pretty absurdly long time, especially with the plethora of ways to extend decay times (repairing in the craft skill, I believe there is a shard power that works similarly).
A similar issue exists with smithing and its related commodities. While there is the occasional person who outlays a bunch of commodities to smith up a superb weapon or armor, for the most part there is very little need for smithing more than once every 4-6 months, unless you are a class that uses a weapon for bashing. Weapon/armor damage was in a way to combat that, but even with the damage it takes a fair amount of time for a weapon to be unusable and beyond the point of repair.
The simple fact is there is not enough drain on the commodity system for the money it eats up in refining cost. The cities have to struggle to find a market for the commodities they just spent a lot of money refining.
Issue 2: The cost to convert Materials to commodities
- Announce 1317 on 8/19/2009 Garryn introduces gold for refining of materials.
- Announce 1779 on 4/29/2011 Garryn introduces workers, assigns guards a food comm upkeep cost.
- Announce 1789 on 6/9/2011 Garryn speeds up refining and guard maintenance now prioritizes most stockpiled food commodity.
- Announce 2055 on 5/30/2012 Garryn changes bashing gold drop formula and says some costs may be adjusted but that specifics had yet to be determined.
Based upon the announce posts above, refining should have seen a change to costs. Despite the changes to gold drops, refinery costs have not seen a change.
This issue ties back into the issue of not enough uses for commodities. There is the fairly large initial cost involved in this setup to even get the commodities. All so they can be used, except they aren’t used that much at all due to issues mentioned previously. I feel like the answer isn’t more arbitrary commodity sinks, but instead lies in lowering either the cost to produce commodities and raising the churn on the crafting system at the same time. Equalizing out the input and output of commodities in a manner that doesn’t punish the people who want to do crafting with exorbitant prices but also doesn’t punish the cities who don’t want to take a loss on material conversion/commodity sales.
Issue 3: Commodity spread
We have several crafting specific commodities that are generated infrequently but over time have still built up. It crowds the comm shop and to the best of my knowledge they rarely sell. In particular: Platinum, Emerald, and Ruby. Rather than have a huge list of possible commodities, why not make broad categories. Rather than specific precious stones (except for diamond, because we still need it for diamond dust), why not just use gemstones? Rather than specific precious metals (Platinum, Gold, Silver) we instead have a precious metals commodity.
This could be managed on the crafting side via the crafting guidelines that are going to be implemented. You would just present a priority system of cost which increases the amount of the Gemstones/Precious metals needed for that particular thing. For example, the value of the Precious metal is rated as follows: Silver>Gold>Plat. Someone wants a simple silver ring: 2 precious metals. Another person wants a blinged out platinum and gold monstrosity, a total of 7 precious metals plus whatever the bling fee is that crafting approvers/head decide on (I am not totally clear on how approvals work).
This would mean that it would eliminate some of our commodity choices, but I think it might streamline some of the crafting as well. The system is already used since we only have one type of lumber and one type of stone for example.
Issue 4: Time Sink
I write this as a person who has the 100k lots achievement: Running caravans is more of a chore than an adventure. There is very little interaction with the game while my script walks the cavern from the city to the towne, I fill it up at the towne and then map the path back to the city and walk back. The most I get is generally if there are some bandits and if that is the case I just slam my attack macro until they are dead and then start moving again.
The idea behind the caravan system is sound in that it gets people out and working to get materials for conversion into commodities. And I really like that it requires an element of danger to get commodities. I’m not sure how to make it livelier, for lack of a better term. Some of the ideas mentioned below cover aspects of it though.
Conclusion
Ideally, in the end we’d see some pretty sweeping changes to trade and commodity generation and use. The overall goal would be to make the system slightly more interesting and slightly more interactive without being a massive time sink or gold pit. I feel like decay rates and smithing/crafting are the main bone of contention to this in addition to refinery costs. This is partially being hit by the Tradeskill rework, but a well thought out plan that involved a larger overall change in trade would be very welcome to shake up the system.
General ideas
- Scale refinery costs back in a similar percentage that gold drops were.
- Lower decay times across the board for all crafting and smithed items by 25% (I believe the crafting change will go live once the crafting changes go in).
- Change the amount of commodities required to repair an item from a craftskill. Currently it is broken into two amounts, with engineering tools has x commodities required, and without engineering tools has roughly 2x commodities required to repair. I would suggest doubling both those numbers to ensure a choice in how badly you want to keep an item around forever.
- Change repair in smithing to take some commodities each time it’s used. The more you repair it, the more commodities it takes to get it back to usable condition.
- Consolidate niche commodities like expensive gems and metals into more general commodity groups (precious metals and gemstones) and assign that commodity increasing costs in patterns depending on how much it uses.
- More quests that need commodities (like the quest in Northern Breach for the orc invasion) to complete.
City related ideas
- City built (using commodities to lower stock of current commodities + gold) buildings that reduce refine cost for specific materials.
- A system that allows you to adjust refine rates per commodity. Each city starts out with a certain number of refinery points. Each commodity is assigned a certain level of rarity. The rate at which any given commodity is refined (its chance to be refined from a single raw material) would be a function of its rarity and the refinement points assigned to it. Through assigning points you can improve the ability to refine rarer commodities more frequently. The greater the rarity, the higher the point cost to improve the refine rate. Only commodities with at least one point assigned would be produced, allowing you to sacrifice the production of common commodities to slightly improve the production of rare ones. There should be a cap on the max you can raise the refine rate based upon the assigned rarity. Maybe make refinery points purchasable with shards or through shard research?
- An NPC who is hirable who increases speed/reduces cost of refining at the cost of a constant stream of commodities per month.
Outlandish ideas that will probably never see fruition
- Some sort of City announce board that will occasionally spawn random deliver quests quests like “Annona needs leather to repair all their leather pants. Deliver it to Annonadude and the city will be appreciative.” Then basically the person buys some leather and delivers it to Annonadude, gets some quest xp and maybe slightly buffs material production in the towne for a time. Think of something akin to the old package delivery quests but city/towne focused.
- As above but expand this to include certain NPCs or villages, maybe when they reach certain milestones the village “improves” via slightly fancier room descriptions or more goods for sale or a few quests added.
- Totally redo the trade system so that the townes automatically provide commodities to the city at a certain rate. But through player action/quests that rate could increase or decrease. I’m not even sure how make this work. Most of it would just be simple kill dynamic quests like ‘Man, these bandits have been terrorizing Annona for like 5 minutes and it is making us afraid to go to work, kill them and we’d be super happy.” Stuff like that. It would let towne fear sort of be more of a factor as well, and encourage some conflict over townes.
- Add hunger back into the game post 80, and make Cooking be able to produce two types of food. Simple foods that simply satisfy hunger and complex foods that offer short term buffs (that don’t stack with artifacts) in addition to satisfying hunger more effectively. Band of Fasting would actually be relevant now.
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Comments
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
If steel is produced at 200 gold per commodity, and then suddenly becomes producable at 100 gold per commodity, the 'value' of all steel immediately moves from 200 gold to 100 gold.
We're talking about instant creation, not July delivery. Thinking otherwise is the sunk cost fallacy.
EDIT: Of course, the odds of all the cities deciding to do this simultaneously is pretty slim.
EDIT2: And, of course, it is intended as a part of a larger set of changes. Taking it in a vacuum is silly.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
The risk you run being detailed is losing your audience to bluhbluhbluhbluh or incessant bickering about "that's not what I see."
Any changes are going to have to be closely monitored by players and administrators alike, sort of like a real economy.
But really, it needs looked at.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Duplicate is the wildcard, because it changes the entire dynamic. When it comes to commodity production, you ideally want your costs to be as consistant as possible. You don't want too much variability, because you don't want the 'when' part of the question to matter very much.
Duplicate is untied from production, because it only takes time and a little bashing to produce commodities out of thin air. This means that no matter what your production cost is for commodities, duplicate can potentially sell for cheaper. So you don't need to make production cheaper to compete with duplicate, you need to burn duplicate to the ground.
Yeah. Refining rates are fine, the just set the price of the resulting commodities. If we're not competing with anyone but other cities all using the same structure, there's nothing wrong with production rates.
Lowering comm costs causes more headaches than it fixes, there are better ways to get people to buy commodities.
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
"On the battlefield I am a god. I love war. The steel, the smell, the corpses. I wish there were more. On the first day I drove the Northmen back alone at the ford. Alone! On the second I carried the bridge! Me! Yesterday I climbed the Heroes! I love war! I… I wish it wasn’t over."
Just saying, now continue on with your economics discussion.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Or at least can you let us know if any changes to the trade system is on the radar?
EDIT: Ok, the formatting died a messy death. Give me a minute.
EDIT2: Ok, still a mess, but it's what you'll get since I'm too lazy to make a clean table
EDIT3: I lied, cleaner table
Commodity | Cost
--------------------
Cloth | 100
Coal | 100
Cuhpfehr | 100
Dairy | 100
Diamond Dust | 100
Fruit | 100
ginger | 100
glass | 100
Gold | 100
Grain | 100
Hyssop | 100
Iron | 100
Isan | 100
Juniper | 100
Kelp | 100
Leather | 100
Linseed | 100
Maidenhair | 100
Mandrake | 100
Meat | 100
Myrrh | 100
Nightshade | 100
Obsidian | 100
Orphine | 100
Pear | 100
Primrose | 100
Quince | 100
Rahnse | 100
Rope | 100
Silver | 100
Sinn | 100
Steel | 100
Toadstool | 100
Vegetable | 100
Violet | 100
Wormwood | 100
Galingale | 200
Stehl | 200
Wood | 200
Ice | 300
Platinum | 300
Stone | 300
Bonecommodity | 500
Orichalcum | 500
Veritum | 500
Emerald | 1000
Gemstone | 1000
Ruby | 1000
Sapphire | 1000
Can't be Duped
Alcohol
Bone dust
Bone ingot
corojo
Diamond
Fenugreek
hornpiece
Ink (any color)
Paper
Saltpetre
Shards
shot
Sidewinder Skins
Spirits (libations)
Sugar
Venom sacs
weed
Worts (all three)
Yeast
Blueberry
Dandelion
Endive
Laurel
Lovage
Olive
Feather
Blackpowder
Charcoal
Pellet
Shrimp Bait
Sulphur
Grub Bait
Crystehl
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created
Couldn't when I initially tested, might have been added. Or I broke something.
ETA: still bitter Ori and Veri could be, but not boneingot.
the claims are stated - it's the world I've created