Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

Charraj wrote:Also, I think I like Karond's idea of NPC merchants selling epic items. When I first saw his merchant in the Palace District, I thought it was too much. But then I realized it lets everyone have access to epic items, not just the old players. It really is fairer, IMO.

Vendors with epic items will help with the fairness part, since every player will have the same easy way to acquire them. It will also help with many other current problems ( suspicions, event hoarding, concerns of favoritism, jealous etc )

However, as far as economy is concerned, epic vendors wont have much effect. Once a player has bought the items from the vendors, then gold will - again - worth nothing. It will just be a longer time to get to that point. I think gold sinks will help a bit with that matter. I cant remember which players has made the suggestion in the past, but gold sinks such us creating guilds wards and maintaining them, costs to player actions such as camping in an area in order to take part in a war etc, will give some value to gold.

Ideally I think both epic shops and gold sinks should be implemented at the same time. The first to provide some fairness to acquiring epic items, the second to give some value to gold in the long run.

Whatever happens, I don't think a working economy will be 100% possible, because of the nature of online games.

People could donate more to Temples as a form of 'gold sink'...

Nomster wrote:People could donate more to Temples as a form of 'gold sink'...

The theater should be charging the tickets for the performances

OMG I LOVE THIS! hehehe

Still mulling over materiel spell components as a viable gold sink.

Storm Munin wrote:Still mulling over materiel spell components as a viable gold sink.

That requires additional calculations per action that I don't think we want to burden the server with given how much combat is happening. If as an item the server would need to search through the inventory running comparisons for each item along the way, then separating the item before proceeding. If a player has an inventory of 80 items of non spell components, then joined to the inventory is 15 types of spell components of varying quantity, it turns into a mess.

Assuming 20 pseudo casters players with an average of 37 items during a DM event, the script is sequentially sorting through the itemlist running comparisons with a high range of 740 comparisons made per action if everyone was queuing up.

If as a variable on an item, the item would need to be searched through the inventory each time, followed by the name of the variable, followed by the increment / decrement set. The latter being faster but both mechanisms are slow.

NWServer handles only one processed action at a time, globally.

Alternatively it might be alright if we were running the process on an i7-4790K but I don't think that's what the system is built on.

Just spit balling here. What if it cost money to maintain your mule? Like you could make a character for the sole purpose of handling your finances. The character would then talk to an npc in the nexus to be flagged as a bank for some period of time. While flagged as a bank they have access to any major city as a spawn point but cannot leave the protection of the city. Could even be special bank building that's scripted to return characters flagged as a bank back to the nexus of they try to leave.

In this bank area have several chests that can be locked and renamed for a cost and short period of time by tool like the dmfi ring. You can put stuff in this chest and access it again within 24 hours on another character. Make this cost money as a representation of storing one's physical wealth. Add a cost explained as a cut going to the temple of waukeen or something and you have a reasonable gold sink per transaction to allow to maintain an inventory across characters.

Not a perfect idea but it does tie a few of the themes together.

More merchants (including several epic item merchants) and additional gold sinks should be implemented. As I said earlier, the fact the server allows individuals to operate in this manner and in some cases even encourages it, speaks to how broken the economy is.

And as someone else has already stated it discourages new players. Anyone who joins the server learns pretty quickly that the system is slated against them and may lead to them leaving the server because they see how much investment is required to make up the difference.

I am of the opinion that gold should be drained out of the economy naturally. Simply put, large scale player initiatives should have a cost proportional to the value of the server economy. DM rulings suggest that they follow DnD rules regarding the cost of powerful spells, items and so on. I think this should be broken on a case by case basis. As an example, I've seen costs of between 5000 and 50000gp extended for large player driven events.

Knock this on the head and do away with the idea of "gold" having any real value in this world. A pint at the local pub costs something like 3-5gp, or higher. Make these player initiatives cost MONEY. Take for example Reine's training camp. Reine lives in poverty but at present is funding an entire training camp for around 45,000gp. Karond has what, 40 million? He could pay for the training and outfitting of an entire army. This is quite silly. I would extend player initiatives in that sense. These gold sinks need to be more prevalent and of far more size.

Training a hundred men? 450k. Minimum. I should have to raise serious finance to do what I'm doing. Yes, I am a player with a poverty ruling who wants the game to be harder. Sue me

A functioning crafting system would help, but gold sinks in and of themselves which are fundamentally DM lead should be something useful. The limiting factor on a lot of player initiatives should be the gold cost. Why is this good RP? Well, it forces players to deal with more powerful organisations than themselves. Organisations that may or may not be moral.

That is the lightest adjustment I could find to produce a gold sink that doesn't involve changes to muling or a full scale economic collapse (my favoured RP option). I am of the opinion that anything which destabilises a comfortable status quo is a good thing for roleplay.

I think the purpose of a gold sink should be to offer wealthy players something fun to spend their gold on.

Simply trying to drain gold from the economy for the sake of making everybody poor, or requiring gold for every little thing (imagine having to pay for appearance changes -- we used to have to back in beta!) doesn't really make gold more desirable. It just makes the game more of a grind.

I have no issue with nice items being up for sale, though. All shop ideas should go through the QC Team for review. But if anyone wanted to make a shopkeeper NPC, it's possible they could be included after review.

As an upfront warning, QC may remove items or alter them if it's felt they are unbalancing.

I've also seen other fun ideas over the years, like pets and other neat content for sale that doesn't necessarily serve a mechanical purpose. (Player placeable props, for example, as one that did go in).

For my part, I've never seen gold as useless. I've never had a filthy rich PC of course, but part of the reason for that is that gold has always been a really useful RP tool for me. Some of the non-item-based uses for gold include:

- Hiring other PCs to get them engaged in your player plots (a great way to help new players and new characters get started and to get them involved in your RP right away),
- Building guild halls,
- Influencing politics and economics through DM events and interaction (donations during the plague, the rebuilding of Gullykin and Beregost, etc., but could also be smaller scale, like bribing an official),
- Gifting to other PCs to buy their loyalty to your cause as a patron or protector, to manipulate them, or bribe them,
- Using it to set up and host player events, and offering it as a prize for player contests and competitions,
- And so much more!

All of those things scale to the wealth of the character.

Someone with 10k gold can do all of those things and have an impact in an event/plot, Karond can spend his 40 mil on those same things and his impact won't be that much bigger. Actually, I'm quite certain that if Karond tried to spend 40mil in an event, overpaying stuff to ridiculous proportions, any sane DM would ask him to stop as he's ruining immersion and the setting.

Everyone should have access to buy all items found in the loot table. DM items should be the same items, but with RP worth, meaning that its specialness comes from what it may represent in-character as well has have abilities only usable with DM allowance and supervision. Take fx. Endbringer, Eliphas's fearsome bane blade. Only mechanically special about it was that it was adamantine and had some extra minor stuff on it. But from a role playing point of view, its cut was fatal and near-incurable. It could hide its own alignment and change appearance. And most importantly, it was a symbol of Bane's power and anyone wielding it without losing their minds, where considered blessed by the Lord of Strife.

This is what DM items should be in my opinion.

mrm3ntalist wrote:Whatever happens, I don't think a working economy will be 100% possible, because of the nature of online games.

EVE Market Guide
EVE Items of Trade
EVE Lessons learned of a budding trader

Aspect of Sorrow wrote:

mrm3ntalist wrote:Whatever happens, I don't think a working economy will be 100% possible, because of the nature of online games.

EVE Market Guide
EVE Items of Trade
EVE Lessons learned of a budding trader

What i mean is that especially in this game, some players can play 1hour per day, others 6. Those that play the longest hours, will get the more benefits from the game.

mrm3ntalist wrote:What i mean is that especially in this game, some players can play 1hour per day, others 6. Those that play the longest hours, will get the more benefits from the game.

What are your thoughts on some elements, crafting for example, being moved from instantaneous actions to being set to a future time depending on skill?