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Etherdrifter

Thoughts On The Wurm Economy

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5 minutes ago, Eltaran said:

Well, the linked merchants would certainly be a good idea if merchants could hold more than 50 units of BULK materials. That is a must in my opinion.

 

No doubt, the starter zones being market hubs administered by the game would be nice. 

My only issue was the regional resources. Though hoarding would not be as big of an issue on PvP because you can knock them off the mountain, but in PvE, they would be dug in like ticks.

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Since we're talking about trading and market places, I have a question for you all.  I've been thinking about the idea of a trading hub for a couple months now, and I'm interested to know a couple things if you all don't mind sharing your opinion.  Let me be clear that I'm not asking for any specific details on how any such hubs should or could work, as I've already been drawing this out for quite a while and have the details straight in my head, but I am asking for "yes" or "no" to two different questions.

 

  1. Would you be inclined to buy bulk goods from a trading hub if the system of such a hub was streamlined?  This would of require you to travel to pick up the goods yourself; however, the idea here is that the goods would be available 24/7 without need for contacting the seller.
  2. Would you be inclined to sell bulk goods to a trading hub if the system of such a hub was streamlined?  This would still require you to travel to drop off the goods, and the prices would be negotiated, so it wouldn't quite be as efficient as buying from the hub, but would still be faster than contracting a worker.

Let me know what you all think, so I can decide how to progress with my concepts. :)

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Only for any 'planned projects' or big enough purchases to warrant the time and effort to travel to such a hub. But most time, if I really wanted something in bulk, I'd still probably just ask in Trade chat rather than trekking all the way to a trade hub to see if it was even available, and to get an idea of price.

 

Going to a market hub is just so off-putting. Sure, for me it's only 10-15minutes to get to my nearest (providing there are no mobs on route) but then it's also getting back and checking the merchants... it ends up being most of a play-session and only something I'll bother to do if I am pretty certain I'll be able to get what I wanted in the first place.

 

Most of the things I 'want' or 'wish I had' are spur of the moment things... imping something but run out of good enough ore... but going to a market to get some means that the forge will go out, and the flow of whatever small task I was doing would end up completely broken. It's these 'small' and 'sudden' needs for things that makes me wish there was a simple and immediate way to see if the odd things here and there where available locally.

 

Say you're making something and realise you've run out of iron ribbons... do I really want to stop my furniture making to go and mine some iron, then fire up the forge to make a new ribbon.. if I could quickly and easily buy it from a local merchant, I would. Instead, that usually ends my current tasks and I go do something else instead. It's all these small needs that can potentially create a large marketplace for other mid-range players. I don't care what QL the iron ribbon is in this scenario.. I just hope someone has one. I also don't want to go to a market hub, or wait 45 minutes for a mail and pay over-the-top prices to cover a simple iron-ribbon, or door lock, or reasonable QL log, or nails, or a few pieces of leather...

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I think the only way to improve the sale of middle quality level items is to reduce the action timer so higher quality level items are not as needed for younger players who want quicker actions when skilling... I am a new player and my first thoughts were how can i get better equipment.. how can i beat this slow action timer, kind of  a lesson from Wurm Unlimited... I think if things were made speedier lesser quality skilling tools would suffice.. and of course keep skilling rates at the same lumbering pace... 

what do you guys think?? Kind of restructure the action timer on a curve...

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1 hour ago, Tinkerer said:

Only for any 'planned projects' or big enough purchases to warrant the time and effort to travel to such a hub. But most time, if I really wanted something in bulk, I'd still probably just ask in Trade chat rather than trekking all the way to a trade hub to see if it was even available, and to get an idea of price.

 

Going to a market hub is just so off-putting. Sure, for me it's only 10-15minutes to get to my nearest (providing there are no mobs on route) but then it's also getting back and checking the merchants... it ends up being most of a play-session and only something I'll bother to do if I am pretty certain I'll be able to get what I wanted in the first place.

 

Most of the things I 'want' or 'wish I had' are spur of the moment things... imping something but run out of good enough ore... but going to a market to get some means that the forge will go out, and the flow of whatever small task I was doing would end up completely broken. It's these 'small' and 'sudden' needs for things that makes me wish there was a simple and immediate way to see if the odd things here and there where available locally.

 

Say you're making something and realise you've run out of iron ribbons... do I really want to stop my furniture making to go and mine some iron, then fire up the forge to make a new ribbon.. if I could quickly and easily buy it from a local merchant, I would. Instead, that usually ends my current tasks and I go do something else instead. It's all these small needs that can potentially create a large marketplace for other mid-range players. I don't care what QL the iron ribbon is in this scenario.. I just hope someone has one. I also don't want to go to a market hub, or wait 45 minutes for a mail and pay over-the-top prices to cover a simple iron-ribbon, or door lock, or reasonable QL log, or nails, or a few pieces of leather...

So, just for the sake of discussion, lets say I was to put out several merchants throughout a server and stock them with odd and end components to sell to people such as yourself who want to quickly buy what they need and get back to crafting.  How would you feel about such a campaign?

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Another thought after i plowed through the bickering  is how about more random element to resource gathering so say a level 10 miner gets 1 good ore out of every 10 mines and the rest being random amounts in between and say a level 50 miner gets 5 out of 10 being great mines which can be sold.. its like doing sprouts even a low level character could sell sprouts if he so chooses to do so to make some mid to low level skill money at the market.. this way long term players still have their benefit but the the little man get to sell one or two out of his ten mines for a little money and the higher skilled players gets to sell all his stuff..just a thought..then being a low level charcter could generate some money which he could spend on ever better tools..  there has to be a tool progression instyead of everyone wanting a 99ql tool to make actions faster... there would be a progression form low level to higher level.. i have had thoughts of leaving wurm as of late, and am not sure why, i hope i gfigure out why though....

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2 hours ago, Slickshot said:

So, just for the sake of discussion, lets say I was to put out several merchants throughout a server and stock them with odd and end components to sell to people such as yourself who want to quickly buy what they need and get back to crafting.  How would you feel about such a campaign?

 

Not really unless those said merchants are viewable and accessible from my deed. I'm not going to waste half an hour wandering around to find the right one. Whatever it was that I wanted the item for, the flow has been broken. I've moved on to something else and got sidetracked on another project until I create or gather the resource myself at a later time.

 

Put it another way.. say I've just finished a new building, but forgot I'd run out of door locks. If one is available to me without having to waste more than a couple of minutes.. I'll buy it. I won't go to trade chat, I won't hang around on local chat hoping a neighbour comes online, I won't pay postage, I wont look on the forums. I could go mine, light a forge wait for the ore to smelt and bash one out myself in about 5 minutes. But.. most likely I'll just leave it as is. Move onto another task. Make a note to myself to make a door lock next time I go to do some smithing. Multiply this up for every odd job that ends up a piece or two short... multiply up by other players who experience the same thing.. they are all missed trades for the low-mid skilled playerbase.

 

Say I was adding some marble slabs for my flooring, but I had a run of bad RNG luck and now don't have enough shards for the last slab... there are 1001 odd scenarios where you just come up short in your current tasks.

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34 minutes ago, Tinkerer said:

 

Not really unless those said merchants are viewable and accessible from my deed. I'm not going to waste half an hour wandering around to find the right one. Whatever it was that I wanted the item for, the flow has been broken. I've moved on to something else and got sidetracked on another project until I create or gather the resource myself at a later time.

 

Put it another way.. say I've just finished a new building, but forgot I'd run out of door locks. If one is available to me without having to waste more than a couple of minutes.. I'll buy it. I won't go to trade chat, I won't hang around on local chat hoping a neighbour comes online, I won't pay postage, I wont look on the forums. I could go mine, light a forge wait for the ore to smelt and bash one out myself in about 5 minutes. But.. most likely I'll just leave it as is. Move onto another task. Make a note to myself to make a door lock next time I go to do some smithing. Multiply this up for every odd job that ends up a piece or two short... multiply up by other players who experience the same thing.. they are all missed trades for the low-mid skilled playerbase.

 

Say I was adding some marble slabs for my flooring, but I had a run of bad RNG luck and now don't have enough shards for the last slab... there are 1001 odd scenarios where you just come up short in your current tasks.

I feel sorry to say that I see no way then to remedy this need of yours without the game being altered in a severe manner, which is a lot to ask for minute quality of life changes.  Anyhow, that's just my perspective.

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You miss my point. I'm not saying I want a change to increase my QoL. I'm just giving an example of one area that non-elite crafters are missing out on trade opportunities. These are all odd things I, and probably many others, would buy *if* these things were readily available fairly locally. Hence my suggestion of locally linked merchants. Yes, it is a code change to the functionality of merchants, but one that would quite dramatically boost the marketplace within wurm.

 

They would also function the same in a market hub for higher quality gear too. You and 10 others have quality merchants in a hub, any player can just go to any one of them and, because they are all within a local range of each other, can see everything by just visiting one merchant. No more wasting time going up to each individual one to open it's inventory...

 

The (in effect) interfacing with merchants is quite a tedious aspect of wurm and certainly one that certainly puts me off any in-game trading unless I am absolutely desperate to get hold of something.

Edited by Tinkerer
spelling corrections hehe

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1 hour ago, Tinkerer said:

You miss my point. I'm not saying I want a change to increase my QoL. I'm just giving an example of one area that non-elite crafters are missing out on trade opportunities. These are all odd things I, and probably many others, would buy *if* these things were readily available fairly locally. Hence my suggestion of locally linked merchants. Yes, it is a code change to the functionality of merchants, but one that would quite dramatically boost the marketplace within wurm.

 

They would also function the same in a market hub for higher quality gear too. You and 10 others have quality merchants in a hub, any player can just go to any one of them and, because they are all within a local range of each other, can see everything by just visiting one merchant. No more wasting time going up to each individual one to open it's inventory...

 

The (in effect) interfacing with merchants is quite a tedious aspect of wurm and certainly one that certainly puts me off any in-game trading unless I am absolutely desperate to get hold of something.

While I can't speak to the proposed effectiveness of "linked-merchants," I can say that nothing is ever quite as easy as it seems.  Sure the idea sounds nice, but the implementation would probably be largely frustrating.  I'm not saying that you're thinking it'll be a super smooth walk in the park, but I have seen many suggestions over the years and one thing that seems consistent:  most people seem to believe that their ideas are so easy that it would be instantaneously patched into the game and hugely popular.  It just isn't so.  Anyhow, keep brainstorming.  Maybe something good can come of it all.

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This seems to be an overall pattern:

 

"It could be difficult. Let's give up and leave things as they are until we can come up with something useless that is easy to implement".

 

The problem is that phlegmatism just won't help at all :P

 

Matter of fact is that the current options for trade and commerce are clumsy and (excuse the french) half-arsed. Using a forum or chat and sifting through a dozen of NPC lists with no way to compare offers can't seriously be what people envisage.

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Oh, of this, I am well aware. I have been designing and developing software for the last 20-30 years. Very little ever goes as smoothly as planned.

 

Which is partly why this idea actually is quite elegant. Very little needs to change. UI remains the same, interaction remains the same. Primary changes are just too add a linked list to each merchant object (pointing to the other merchants within radius) and so long as each item involved in a trade can be referenced back to the actual merchant for payment and inventory updating, there is no huge difference.

 

There would also need to be an event driven function to update the linked list of local merchants whenever the merchant was removed or placed. (Finding local merchants would not need to be calculated every time you open the merchant trade window)

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can anyone in WU make a auction house <like in ever quest or wow> ? so maybe it can be transferred to WO ? anything to help people sell items ?

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The problem with the economy seems to be the same one I see in almost every MMO. The overabundance of high skill or high level accounts is the problem. (Jack-of-all-trades issues aside.) Typically this means some kind of mudflation, taking different forms dependent on different factors.

 

But it boils down to something simple: You can reduce hte power of the highest skill/level players or you can increase the power of the low skill/level players.

 

The trouble is people who invest a lot of time in the game are unwilling to lose anything. So the typical result is making low skill/level players more powerful by speeding up skill gain or removing past obstacles, thus countering the overabundance of high skill/level players. While this might make high skill/level players feel somewhat dissatisfied because their past accomplishments are diminished, this is somehow more acceptable to them, especially if content is actively added and keeping them occupied.

 

Ultimately mudlfation kills all MMO's unless htey receive major (expensive) funding. Mudflation can be done good or bad, but since it gets harder and harder to keep old games healthy, companies inevitably turn to making new games instead. Maybe it has somethign to do with complexity theory. Or bloat. Complexity theory might play a role because mudflation is like a band-aid. It's added on top of a design. Unless everything is fitted perfectly, it'll degrade. As more and more things are added, it tends to bloat. Quality falls. it gets increasingly expensive.

 

EDIT: I will add my character has maybe 1 or 2 skils over 50 and maybe a couple dozen over 20. He's never bought anything through trades. He's never done a trade b4. I've done everything myself, although I've joined a few deeds and/or villages now and then. I think to some extent the game does have a jack-of-all-trades problem, but I think that's a side effect of players preferring to solo almost universally in MMO's. Wurm's economic problem is more complicated than that, since there're so many high skill/level players. It probably doesn't help though, since interdependence necessarily contributes to trade and interrelations.

Edited by Lightonfoot

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