Traders and economy.

[Odynn 2,248]

2 hours ago, Trooper said:

They were broken before, they are broken now.

They were abused before and while it could have been easy to fix them as suggested in the OP they were nerfed into the ground to please the whining crowd. Same whining crowd that want them remove now when they already managed to kill them and can abuse the free coins drop.

 

 

2 hours ago, Trooper said:

Even Rolf knew they were badly broken, thats why the only traders on Xan are the starter towns.

 

No, Rolf didn't added traders on Xanadu because of the community, not because he thought they were broken. True he was not happy with how they work, but so was he about PvE (basicly the only way for him to deal with troubles in wurm was with a sword in hand) and deeds (which were supposed to have a community on them). So if we want to go with the original intent (not to mention that traders were given away with large deeds and PMKs - maybe to help with upkeep?!), do you want to go back on PvE / Deeds / Skill decay / Epic reset every few months?

 

And Xanadu is a poor example, knowing it was the Eldorado of traders farmers for a while. You just had to sit here, with alts next to each traders, wait for the message that indicated they got a cash refill and drain them. Peeps walked away with golds till that event message was removed and I wouldn't be surprised if xan traders have the best income of all servers.

 

Xanadu is also a mess, seeing that the economy was boosted with 10 golds and all the ongoing upkeeps for the whole coins drop, something that was not done on the older servers with the traders. So even on that point, Xan is a failed experiment, lack of traders on it helped in no ways when it comes to all the types of abuses, I'd like to see fixed.

 

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

The issue here is the amount of interaction required to generate the income, forage/botanise does seem to favour higher level players and I suspect this needs to be addressed in some way.   Having a trader dump up to 5 silver per month into someone's hands would mean that anyone playing over 12 months would be taking 60 silver out of the coffers, giving a net gain of 10 silver after 1 year.  After that one year, the gain becomes 60 silver a year, a pretty large amount.  That's a bit excessive, especially since they'd just be used to keep large one-man deeds going for longer.

 

 

[Odynn 2,248]

1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

Having a trader dump up to 5 silver per month into someone's hands would mean that anyone playing over 12 months would be taking 60 silver out of the coffers, giving a net gain of 10 silver after 1 year.

 

you missed the whole part where it's limited to the upkeep in the original post, i first suggested 80 to 150% of the upkeep, 80 to 120% would do fine as well and will be used in the following maths.

 

So lets make it easy to be understood by everyone.

you have a 1s deed upkeep, you can get back from 80c to 1s20c... not that exciting for a trader deed right?!

 

you have a 2s20 deed upkeep. You can get from 1s76 to 2s64.

 

*So far it's not making large incomes right, nowhere the 60s as you says...

 

you have a 8s deed upkeep. You can get from 6s40c to 9s60... except it's capped at 5s per traders. so you either have a maximum of 5s on your 8s deed upkeep (no gain at all here) OR buy a second trader with each being able to give you between 3s20 to 4s80

 

you have a 25s deed, you will have to buy 5 traders to get your complete upkeep reduction (but yes, in that case and if you are lucky to get all the money all the time, which is statistically impossible due to the amount of month and traders and overall randomness, you would make some money).

 

So no, with that system, it's nowhere giving the amount of money you can get from forage / botanize or others free coins system you can turbonerd and abuse.

 

And yes, the system is only valid in a long run, rewarding players who invest money and stick with the game, those who leave will have their deeds and traders disband if they do not take care of them. On the same note, it's not a system for old players / vets / whoever you hate with all your guts, it's a rework of a system to prevent abuse and benefits everyone in a way or another. Reducing the income of those traders deeds you all hate so much, helping the large / community oriented deeds with their upkeeps, freeing more coins for everyone from the king coffers.

[Hailene 362]

I'm still at a loss while a system where people have to go out and do stuff to earn money (you now, actually play the game to be rewarded) is somehow worse than subsidizing the upkeep of people with large deeds.

 

"But you see, the people with large deeds will have more money to put into the economy!"

 

And how is that different than the people who earn a couple of silvers here and there through foraging and killing mobs? What are they doing with their copper? Eating it?

 

If you can afford X upkeep, then get a deed that has X upkeep. I am still not convinced that someone wants to have a deed with X+4s upkeep needs to have a system pay for the 4s for them.

[Fairyshine 3,183]

1 hour ago, Hailene said:

 

 

"But you see, the people with large deeds will have more money to put into the economy!"

 

And how is that different than the people who earn a couple of silvers here and there through foraging and killing mobs? What are they doing with their copper? Eating it?

 

 

 

You are confusing deed upkeep with Wurm economy.  People who forage silvers usually put this towards deed upkeep (not the economy) so in effect they are taking money from Code Club to give back to Code Club.  People who buy silvers from the shop gives money to Code Club then pays for deed upkeep to give the in game silvers back to Code Club as well.  The difference is usually if someone with a large deed buys silver, they spend it in game giving the silver to other players for rares and bulk stuff, services for priests, and so forth.  This in fact boosts the Wurm economy.  In my experience, people with so called large deeds won't stop buying money from the shop to spend on Wurm, it is just where and how they spend it, that will change.  If you buy a gold a month from the shop to spend on Wurm, your first priority is paying for your deeds.  Whatever is left, will go towards boosting the economy.  If nothing is left, stuff the economy.  If you get some of the money you spent in shop back via a trader, it will pay for some of your deed, giving you more money to boost the in game economy.

[Hailene 362]

14 minutes ago, Fairyshine said:

  If nothing is left, stuff the economy.  If you get some of the money you spent in shop back via a trader, it will pay for some of your deed, giving you more money to boost the in game economy.

 

Isn't that the exact same case for the person who is foraging, killing, and burying corpses? If they have to spend all their silver on upkeep that leaves them nothing to buy in the economy?

This has some serious negative affects. First it hinders their progress (if they choose to buy other tools) and also hurts the low-medium item market as the people buying 1g a month from other players (let's be realistic, someone buying 1g regularly isn't going to pay full price) aren't interested in 70QL tools.

 

So assuming that the money is going to be spent first on deed upkeep and then next on economy, and both the more established players with traders and the new players foraging for food have to pay deed upkeep...what are the advantages of giving established players the basically free silver?

[Gumbo 1,563]

Hi all,
Have been following this thread and see it has become active again. Thought I'd chime in with my opinion and tell my Trader story and how it has affected my game play. Sorry in advance for the length.

 

I can still remember buying my first Village deed (Xanadu).  I had to earn 1 gold to buy the Settlement form for it, and it came with a Trader form on top. I worked hard selling items for a year while living at Southport (and sneaking into their Trader hut to skim a few coppers off it, shhh don't tell them I did that), both on JKH and when Indy opened. Back then the Trader payouts were pretty good. With the advent of the new deed system, I resized my deed fairly large mostly based on how much the Trader was paying out. When Samling was shut down I started another deed by FM/The Howl. I dropped my second Trader and pretty much did the same thing as before, always careful to never over extend myself. After a while, I had a pretty good haul of silvers coming in. With this new found wealth, I thought it would be a good idea to start giving back to the game community here. I started to contribute time helping at Impalongs. Since I had those extra silvers, it got my creative juices flowing and that's when Deal or No Deal came about. I was giving away the banked silvers I earned, to random people. It felt great when new players won and gave them a start with some silvers or a drake set they could sell. After that I tried my hand with Fight Club, a deed that was funded by a Trader. It was a nice community event with an auction and I even got some Chaos Kingdoms to come by and use the event for recruitment. I donated some good stuff that auctioned way under cost even by todays prices, but it didn't matter. I was happy to have run the community event.

Hopefully you're beginning to see my point here. Having that bonus of Trader cash around not only helped pay for deeds, but it helped run community events. It's one thing to come to this game and craft your heart out 24 hrs a day. Sooner or later that gets tiring and folks leave. IMO, this game needs more and more player run community events. And my extra Trader money is what made it possible for me to contribute to this game, in that fashion.

 

Now with Trader money scarce, I have none of that "splashing around money" anymore.  I'll likely start to drop unnecessary deeds. I'll forget about doing any community event type things (pretty much already have, all tho I do have some other ideas I believe are pretty good, but they cost silvers to run). I'll go back to sitting at my forge and craft away till I'm bored out of my skull, then walk away to go play some other game. What it all boiled down to for me, was having a nice income booster that opened the door for me to be more creative, and to pass that creativity along to everyone else. But now, I feel it's best to avoid the costs associated with any community enriching events. So often, I feel people leave this game simply because they get bored of building and crafting. The missing part to retention of players is giving them something different to do. I'm not talking about Staff run events here, tho they are helpful. I'm talking about players playing the game and bringing new things to it. Trader silvers gave me that opportunity.

 

[Hailene 362]

5 minutes ago, Gumbo said:

Now with Trader money scarce, I have none of that "splashing around money" anymore.  I'll likely start to drop unnecessary deeds. I'll forget about doing any community event type things (pretty much already have, all tho I do have some other ideas I believe are pretty good, but they cost silvers to run).

 

 

If the main pull of traders is to give money to splurge on community events, then it's not an effective way of distributing money.

 

What percentage of trader income went to community events? 5%? 2%? Less?

It'd make more sense for the GM to pay individuals directly to hold community events than to hope some small fraction of the money dribbles into community events.

[madnezz 555]

The only reason traders are not doing well is because there are less players in the game resulting in less deeds and templars.  This all goes away if the playerbase grows.  If you really want to do you part in keeping wurm alive, find new players to enjoy wurm.  

 

You don't need to waste dev time with fancy suggestions and pity parties for CCAB.  Word of mouth is always the best advertising and in the case of Wurm it's the only form of advertising at least as long as I've been playing.   Spend less time here day dreaming and arguing and more time inviting people to the game you enjoy playing.

Edited June 10, 2017 by madnezz

[Gumbo 1,563]

33 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

If the main pull of traders is to give money to splurge on community events, then it's not an effective way of distributing money.

 

What percentage of trader income went to community events? 5%? 2%? Less?

It'd make more sense for the GM to pay individuals directly to hold community events than to hope some small fraction of the money dribbles into community events.

 

"not an effective way of distributing money" -  Maybe not, but it is effective in building the community. That's something you can't put a price on, and something I'm willing to bet the deed on that the Staff here would like more of. It builds the game.

 

"what percentage went to my events"  -  Well during DoND, one season I gave away over 3 gold worth of silvers/drake set. I prolly ran two or three seasons that year as well as random games in GL. So in total about 6 gold. Trader payouts then were about 20s each I'm guessing/averaging. So if a Trader gave me 2.4 gold a year, that makes it somewhere around 250%?   I was a pretty active crafter back then, my earnings too went towards prize money, after my deeds were paid for. I never kept books, when the bank acct. was high enough, I started to run more games.

 

"GMs to pay individual"  -  This was something I was heavily against with DoND. I didn't want anyone telling me how I could run things. I never took any donations, despite folks offering drake sets as prizes. I wanted to avoid all things that may cause problems. Such as, I had two+ folks offer to donate a drake set for a prize. Lets say one drake set got won, who's set do I give to the winner? Who's set do I return to them cuz it wasn't won? How long should I hang on to it until it's won? So to avoid things like that, I banked the whole kit and kaboodle. If I screwed up in a game, it was all on me, no 'sponsor' to explain things to. I liked it that way and would only do it that way again.

 

Edited June 10, 2017 by Gumbo

[Hailene 362]

2 minutes ago, Gumbo said:

"what percentage went to my events"  -  Well during DoND, one season I gave away over 3 gold worth of silvers/drake set. I prolly ran two or three seasons that year as well as random games in GL. So in total about 6 gold. Trader payouts then were about 20s each I'm guessing/averaging. So if a Trader gave me 2.4 gold a year, that makes it somewhere around 250%?   I was a pretty active crafter back then, my earnings too went towards prize money, after my deeds were paid for. I never kept books, when the bank acct. was high enough, I started to run more games.

 

I was addressing traders as a whole. So the percentage of money that went to events compared to the total amount given to all traders.

 

So you have to account for those zillion of 1s trader deeds we had back in the day.

 

5 minutes ago, Gumbo said:

"not an effective way of distributing money" -  Maybe not, but it is effective in building the community. That's something you can't put a price on, and something I'm willing to bet the deed on that the Staff here would like more of. It builds the game.

 

We could still have funding for community events. It's just that 100% (or at least as close to 100% as we can get) of the funds could be distributed properly (IE into the hands of community event holders and not to subsidize veteran players).

 

Community events are worthwhile. Giving someone 30% off their upkeep every month for basically no work is not.

 

4 minutes ago, Gumbo said:

"GMs to pay individual"  -  This was something I was heavily against with DoND. I didn't want anyone telling me how I could run things.

 

It could be a blank check of sorts. As long as the community event host isn't abusing it (like keeping half of the funds to himself or friends) then the show could go on.

 

I'd rather have the mods give a community event host 5g every few months than give out 200g in the same time period and hope 5g of it goes to community events.

[JakeRivers 2,921]

You want funding for a community event? Start a crowd funder, can't expect the game to pay for this.

[Gumbo 1,563]

5 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

I was addressing traders as a whole. So the percentage of money that went to events compared to the total amount given to all traders.

 

 

Yup, no problem. I really only wanted to give my story about how I used my Traders. I'm of the belief I used them for good things.. in their hay-day. There were others who definitely milked em dry. This area is for suggestions and ideas, and wanted to make sure the ideas I used my Traders for, was given.

 

[Fairyshine 3,183]

2 hours ago, Hailene said:

 ... as the people buying 1g a month from other players (let's be realistic, someone buying 1g regularly isn't going to pay full price) aren't interested in 70QL tools.

 

 

In fact, I know of quite a few people who regularly bought a large amount of silver from the shop ( and always from the shop), at what you call "full price".   If you asked them why they did it, they would answer that they enjoy the game so their support goes towards the game itself via the shop.  No, they are not interested in 70 ql tools.  Most high end players I know would rather give 70 ql tools away to others for free.  However, since the market tanked as there are not a lot of in game silvers to splash around, many people would now sell those 70 ql tools for the 20 copper they can get or imp to 90 for the 80 copper (instead of giving it away for free).  They would also be reluctant to pay a little more for bulk stuff and would rather see if they can get it cheaper or delivered for free, or make it themselves and not bother buying from others trying to sell bulk stuff.

 

One thing that is a common theme in this thread is that quite a few people who had/have traders, used the money to do community building events or maintain deeds for the benefit of the whole community.  It is not in dispute that this happened, it did.  It is also not in dispute that it is happening less or that non essential deeds are being dropped despite them being for community benefit, because they are.  

 

I don't think anyone has anything against foraging giving coin, the issue is with the fact it comes from the same money bucket as traders, and that deed upkeep which used to be supported with trader coin now no longer is supported, so the money has to come from somewhere else.  Selling tools or imps or mats to people who foraged the money is perhaps a way of getting the money back you used to get from the trader, but doing those things all day every day quickly feels like a job instead of a relaxing game.  

 

As always there are two sides to this coin (excuse the pun).  

[Finnn 3,321]

6 hours ago, Hailene said:

This has some serious negative affects. First it hinders their progress (if they choose to buy other tools) and also hurts the low-medium item market as the people buying 1g a month from other players (let's be realistic, someone buying 1g regularly isn't going to pay full price) aren't interested in 70QL tools.

Ql70 is 'noob gear' if it was anything more.. impalongs weren't going to give that for free in bulk.

QL70 is on the menu for a person in need of SEVERAL TOOLS/items/... and a budget of One or Two silvers to spend.

 

@Gumbono offense, but you said it yourself.. it was so good.. that you felt like sharing that wealth with others.

In a way that makes it really broken. If you are able to carefree make back what you have spent, even more... something's wrong.

Buying 1-2/+ traders shouldn't allow you to play for free w/o spending anything ever again.

Anyone can sell ql20 bucket for 5silver on a trader.. and next time to use just a different items.. to not drop the buying rates.. and keep switching..

 

6 hours ago, Gumbo said:

"not an effective way of distributing money" -  Maybe not, but it is effective in building the community. That's something you can't put a price on, and something I'm willing to bet the deed on that the Staff here would like more of. It builds the game.

You didn't make friends, you had followers.. who came for the loot

Allow teleportation from deed to deed every 30min or so/for free~/.. and you'll have people helping each other more often and play together.. 

As it is right now, you have to travel for x minutes to your friend, do something for y minutes.. and travel back home.. for the same x time...

Sure it's fun helping somebody/working/etc.. but you've lost an hour or more to just get a few minutes of player interaction, and penalized with more traveling time..

[Alkhadias 548]

On 10.06.2017 at 0:23 PM, Finnn said:

Allow teleportation from deed to deed every 30min or so/for free~/.. and you'll have people helping each other more often and play together.. 

As it is right now, you have to travel for x minutes to your friend, do something for y minutes.. and travel back home.. for the same x time...

Sure it's fun helping somebody/working/etc.. but you've lost an hour or more to just get a few minutes of player interaction, and penalized with more traveling time..

Yes, even better. Let's make "only deeds" server, where you have a deed and 50x50 square of terrain to hunt something and teleport where you can swap from one deed to another, because walking from deed to deed takes too long... and piss off all highway builders who put lots of time and efforts to make your traveling nicer. Or even better, allow to teleport, give everyone 99QL items, and make all players equal by increasing skill gain to allow everyone to get 90 skills loty easier. And you know what? People will still complain. That's not the Wurm's way. 

[Odynn 2,248]

Well, one thing here is sure, we have the two sides of the coins, haters of the system no matter what, no matter what changes are being done... or how nerfed they are and people who used them for good. At a time where a lots of thread are being made about the economy, wurm being too expensive for what it is, the lack of community spirit and people leaving the game, traders remains one of the cogs in that complex mechanism.

 

Yes trader give free money for little work, but when they were not abused, see the benefits of them. How many newbie friendly deeds have been paid and powered by them. How many people had the time to help others because they didn't had to work their assess off to pay for the upkeep. (See @Wurmholementoring suggestion). The amount of events held and financed by them ( @Gumbotestimony is a great one for that, his DoND are a good memory for many and something the new players will never ever meet again). How many community projects have been funded and still paid with them.

 

Traders are a tool, just like many others, to improve the life of everyone including the average player. You cannot blame the tool for the abuses of a few, you can put regulations to limit the abuses and this is the goal of this thread. Why remove something that can be powerful for the game and available to all with the proper tweaks.

 

When you hate traders and their owners, ask yourself if you did as much as them, all of them, not just the traders farmers/drainers, when it comes to the betterment of the game and community spirit improval. Ask yourself if the traders that give you 2/3s per month in perfect conditions are worse than the 3s per day botanizing/foraging free coins drop. Ask yourself why you want to see one removed while keeping the later in game when the harvested products sell already for a lot. You cannot have two differents opinions of the same end result.

 

The holier than thou attitude is not helping as well, long term players and those who invest into the game are already doing their share in supporting CCAB funding, the buy more silvers, you don't have to own that big ass deed or whatever reasonings are bad, reflecting poorly on you and the community as a whole. Why someone who pay a lot into the game shouldn't get a fair share of what s/he is paying, while someone who doesn't get the benefits of what the first paid (@Darmalussuggestion is an improvement to the current situation).

 

And you can blame me all you want for being a dreamer that spend time writing his ideas and thoughts on a forum, I see Wurm slowly going down, the community ready to rip each others throat and yes, i missed the good ol' days. Wurm model is more and more oriented toward the wealthy, shunning people who are not able to play with their wallets won't get you more players. When people accuse me of being an elitist old player, they don't know me nor the values i stand for.

 

Hate away, issues at hand will remain till something is done.

[Tpikol 1,057]

absurd to see people treating this is if it was all blind speculation,we know the effect that reducing the payouts of traders had,because it happened,and we lived trough it. and for anyone who didnt live trought it,it was horrible,it crippled the ingame economy and sense of comunity and they way it was handled was terrible which gave the people abusing the system huge payouts(like the xanadu fiasco) and only screwed over the people that used the traders as intended.

[JakeRivers 2,921]

So because you don't like the small trader deeds and are jealous that someone may be benefiting from a feature in the game you want it changed?

 

 

[Odynn 2,248]

8 minutes ago, JakeRivers said:

So because you don't like the small trader deeds and are jealous that someone may be benefiting from a feature in the game you want it changed?

 

You, sir, don't know me... nor the amount of deeds with or without traders I have and the insight on the system I have... so you may want to read the above posts.

 

I'm not jealous of small traders deeds nor their owners, everyone who hate them are and want them gone from the game... including you from what your posts tend to say.

 

Jealous people who wanted free coins without investing in traders got them nerfed into the ground and when some like me ask for some love and a proper rebalance we are called jealous, the irony, sir, is strong with you.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

@OdynnI was speaking PER YEAR, not per month.  Per month you're at 5 silver per month; for little to no effort at all (it takes a LOT of high-level forage/botanising to get even 1 silver, let alone 5).  You're also hitting the forage/botanise pool pretty hard there unless you create a separate pair of pools.

 

The trouble is I do sympathise with you, at 50 silver you should expect some return on investment greater than easy access to the (VERY LIMITED) selection of cash shop items.

 

But I also think that such a return on investment should not encourage "trader farms" from cropping up and it shouldn't shaft others who forage/botanise for some extra copper/silver.

 

Your suggestion doesn't quite manage this, however, the issue you raise is a valid one.

[GoldFever 299]

Traders are a smoke screen for the real issue in my view--deed costs.

 

There is so much empty land right now everywhere that who cares if someone wants a huge deed for just a few silver a month (or even free).  Use a mechanism that you reset your deed life by actually logging deed citizens in or something like that.  Since it seems that deed costs fund the "free money pool" so that one can have traders to offset deed costs, just get rid of the high deed costs and be done with it. 

 

 

[Tpikol 1,057]

On 31/3/2017 at 6:58 PM, Etherdrifter said:

Sorry but this is a -1 from me as it stands.

 

Traders simply gave more experienced players more money to spend.  We're not short on rich older players, what we're short of is newer players with disposable income.

 

Buff traders sure, but make it based on how much people use them.  If you buy a cash shop item from a trader, the trader owner gets a percentage.  Nice and easy.

reading this and the rest of your messages it seems like you are no clue how traders work now or how they ever worked. this has always been the case the trader gets a percentage.

 

On 1/4/2017 at 5:34 AM, Brash_Endeavors said:

I think the reason most of us who oppose this suggestion, do so primarily because we suspect it leads us slowly back to the old system again that we finally escaped from.

and just look at the great results that "escaping" that old system has produced.in the so called "old system" the game was thriving,and now its pretty much dead. good to see you are glad it worked out that way.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

3 minutes ago, Tpikol said:

reading this and the rest of your messages it seems like you are no clue how traders work now or how they ever worked. this has always been the case the trader gets a percentage.

 

Percentage of all trades DONE AT THAT TRADER?  I thought they just used to get a percentage of the pool?

[Tpikol 1,057]

4 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

Percentage of all trades DONE AT THAT TRADER?  I thought they just used to get a percentage of the pool?

the first anyone used to learn when buying a trader writ is that you dont actually spend 50s,because the trader inventory gets 12 or so back that you can then just take back so you never paid 50s in the first place. this is directly received that that trader when you buy something the same with how merchant writs really only cost 8s because you always get 2 back.

 

also you dont seem to understand that when oddyn was talking about traders getting 5/7s in Deli he meant in the best of the times for traders,years ago,not nowdays.thats why your calculations dont make sense. right now im gone from wurm,but last time i had a trader i made a lot more just by random coins i got from killing mobs,than "milking" the trader.