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AndreC

So How 'Bout that 'Conomy

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

I think this is my new favorite post :)

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

I think the largest problems in Wurm's economy are a serious lack of liquidity and excessively high search and transaction costs. Don't get me wrong, it's fairly realistic for the time period in which Wurm is set. However I think we can all agree that we don't want a basic iron age economy. Restrictions on mailing have a pretty huge impact on economic activity, because it can require an hour or far more in most cases to complete a transaction on foot, horse, or boat, which is often more time than it takes to create the item being sold in the first place. This leads to excessively high prices and less people engaging in trade in the first place.

In addition, Wurm would benefit from an ingame server- or cluster-wide ingame interface of offers and bids for items, raw materials, and labor. I know we have the forum for this, but I think having this information accessible ingame would make a huge difference in terms of the convenience and reduced search costs, i.e. comparing different prices and selecting the best deal. Right now we have to spend a significant amount of time searching for the best offers, then spend another significant amount of time traveling to go pick it up. These two factors are an unecessarily high portion of the total cost of purchasing something.

I suggest linking total volume of a mailbox to the quality and type of mailbox it is, and providing very high volume mailboxes on all starter deeds. I think the max volume should allow sending a decent amount of raw materials at a fairly low cost. Most importantly, the cost of mailing something should be figured as a percentage of the total value of the items being sent, say 5% or 10%. In addition, I think a listing of want-to-buy and want-to-sell contracts should be accessible from all tokens, merchants, and traders.

My 2 iron

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This kind of idea based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how to maintain such a project is very common.  I've even seen it from people who worked in the software industry and really should have known better.

Actually, I believe you're wrong. A well managed code base could be easily split into two different versions. Of course, maintaining the other version would mean hiring someone to help with that version. And this is long overdue. I'm sick and tired of knee-jerk nerfs to Freedom because Wild/Epic something yadda yadda yadda.

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How to fix the economy?

- Visible armor

- Player Customization

- Multistorey buildings

right?

YES!

This + a better combat system (and a bit more usable loot).

I really think we need more involved combat to attract more players as well, ok the above stated improvements are great and will attract more players for sure, but those who like adventuring or PvP(shudder) will not be very attracted to these things unless there is a more interactive combat system and more rewards for killing mobs.

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This kind of idea based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how to maintain such a project is very common.  I've even seen it from people who worked in the software industry and really should have known better.

Actually, I believe you're wrong. A well managed code base could be easily split into two different versions. Of course, maintaining the other version would mean hiring someone to help with that version. And this is long overdue. I'm sick and tired of knee-jerk nerfs to Freedom because Wild/Epic something yadda yadda yadda.

True, but he is also correct in that you don't need to completely fork the code.  That really would make it more difficult, and even very good teams often end up with headaches at best.

Many things could be easily accounted for by adding a new spell effect.  For example, I just responded to a post about combat nerfs for tamed pets.  Instead of nerfing everything, a spell effect could have been added to tamed animals on Epic that weakens them in combat with other players (ie: attacking or being attacked by a player object or a guard/templar).

Depending on how effects are written and referenced internally, it's even possible no other code changes are necessary.  An object should know how effects affect it.  So when the code internally asks the pet croc object for its effective combat rating, for example, it would respond with the actual value modified by the effect.  Then your combat code doesn't need to care about what effects exist that modify each object's combat rating.  It also makes balancing easier at the same time, as well as making it braindead easy to document.

Doing this kind of thing is even easier than hacking special cases throughout your code.

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Hi,

I don't see how you could possibly claim "dwindling numbers" when the graph clearly state that the player count has increased and stayed steady ever since Freedom opened to prems.

Server space has been tripled (guesstimated) or quadrupled since (Deliverance, Exodus and the whole Epic cluster). Do we have 3 times (guesstimated) or 4 times the paying customers, still, really?

No? Then we have lost players. Server space costs money. Server space requires a certain density of inhabitants. Else it's only eating money.

Do we have the by far more paying Wurmians paying for the by far higher server costs?

I still don't know. But I doubt it. You might see it different, I'm curious to read your view. Thx anyway, your view is very welcome.

I have to chime in on this point and give a reality check as someone who has been a project manager for some very large projects:  Going to separate code between the two types of server would exponentially increase the workload for the developers and exponentially increase the number of bugs.

I'm in the business, too. And there are ways to fork the code, its not something unusual. As long as you have written nice, carefully crafted code, organized in different layers, no problem.

In the real world you'll very often have to reuse your code for another customer. "Code sets", carefully crafted, are the way to go. This way you only have to revise a more or less small part of the code, to make it working in a quite different environment. Writing code that allows this is the actual art.

In case of Wurm you'd have all the basic code in a common "code set". You might use different variables for PvP and PvP. But you might also have some code routines made specifically for PvP that would override the default code. Or special PvE code. This is no rocket science. Doing such is daily routine for me.

You'd have kind of a pack of "shared code" that isn't touched by the different environments/ customers, maybe you just override its routines. And you'd have some "custom code" tailored to the special needs. No rocket science. Easily to do. It's done by developers out there, day in, day out.

I don't see a real problem here. It's not unusual at all, any dev worth its salt is accustomed to it.

Have a good time!

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Hi,

I don't see how you could possibly claim "dwindling numbers" when the graph clearly state that the player count has increased and stayed steady ever since Freedom opened to prems.

Server space has been tripled (guesstimated) or quadrupled since (Deliverance, Exodus and the whole Epic cluster). Do we have 3 times (guesstimated) or 4 times the paying customers, still, really?

No? Then we have lost players. Server space costs money. Server space requires a certain density of inhabitants. Else it's only eating money.

Do we have the by far more paying Wurmians paying for the by far higher server costs?

Well, I can tell you one thing; The server space/player capacity was increased because the increased player counts made it absolutely necessary. Just within a few months after Freedom opened to non-prems Independence it capped out at 400-500 players during peak hours, which is the most a single server can handle without slowing to a crawl. Exodus and Deliverance getting added was a direct consequence of the success of opening up Freedom to non-prems, and the player count has kept climbing. OneTooFree/Code Club's financial reports (which I've been examining) displayed a great growth in 2010/07-2011/06, coinciding with the year Freedom was opened. There is really no support for suggesting there hasn't been a net gain, all things considered.

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It is us that should be changed by the market, not the other way around.  If prices are too low for sellers liking, that is the market telling them wurmians don't really need anymore of that product and that there efforts would be more appreciative in the making of a different product.

I'm with Hank on this, all the way.  We don't have a stock index, telling us to spin on a dime.  So some malinvestment and delay in changing our behaviors leads to the market cycle.  Thus this current pain.  It's natural, and it's a sign of a healthy market.

We're in a bear market for goods and (I believe) the beginning of a bull market in real estate.  Didn't I read that a village sold for 3G on the dev blog yesterday?  So much good land on Indy was abandoned after Epic, Deli and Exo came online last year, and it's ripe for the taking now.  Good mines, good farmland, great locations everywhere.  Waiting to be developed now and sold later.

Because the bull market WILL return.

Population growth will come.  I am supremely confident that the changes to graphics, characters, animations, multistory buildings, clothing, armor, and so on, as well as CCAB's recent hiring of a full time PR rep will lead to more subscriptions.  If we treat new players as guests instead of invaders, that'll help too.

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This leads to excessively high prices and less people engaging in trade in the first place.

But not less commerce.  It leads people to try to create their own local production economies instead of the model that's so common IRL today where ALL of the stuff is made in one part of world, and shipped to another part and nobody has any idea how things are made.  So, people are spending, overall, less energy/time moving things around, and proportionately more energy/time improving their own local productive capacity.

Wurm has a thriving, active and healthy cottage industry.  Partially because of how taxing transportation can be.

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The Wurm economy will never prosper as long as the selling of old accounts is not frowned upon. This will just mean that more and more people will reach higher skills and there never will be any "retirement" like in real life, so prices will continue to drop.

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