Preserving Economic Viability of New Trade Skills

Mithridates

I can't see that happening, unfortunately. There will be a massive fluctuation of prices, and it will go down until everything is absolutely dirt cheap and it will stay there. It's essentially making player-owned shops for those that sell anything other than clothes or jewelry useless. 

@Skye the LACK of commodities, herbs, etc. may keep the prices high for a bit, but the fact that these comms and herbs are replenishable will make it so the prices will continue to fall and fall. It's essentially a huge bust. Flooding a market with supply while reducing demand will ruin it. And yes, the 'cartel' idea is great, but they need the ability to punish, IE putting a player's skill on 'probation' if they undercut, so that they can artificially inflate prices based on the gold in circulation. But I think I'm trying to apply real life economics into a text game, so I'm going to stop. 

Skye

Not entirely true. Not everyone is going to be able to afford those trade skills. A lot will, yes, but not all.

ETA: and it's been many many years since the implementation of Autoclass, herb prices seem to have regulated quite nicely imo. I expect the same to happen again. Like i said, the prices won't be the same as they used to be, but they'll eventually stabilize.

Tecton

If we were to just release the skills as they are now, that's quite likely. Good thing that's not going to happen 

Mithridates

WHAT A TWIST

Jules

Tecton said:

If we were to just release the skills as they are now, that's quite likely. Good thing that's not going to happen 

Thanks for your answers, Tecton.  And I hope I don't come off as wanting to quash any and all forms of "doing something nice" - but I want motivated sellers to have some hope of making a living so that when I go looking for whatever service, there's probably someone waiting to do my bidding (for a tidy fee, of course), rather than hoping someone is "being generous" at the moment.  Also, just wanted to make sure the quote above is referring to a likely bust as mentioned by Mithridates (if skills were released as is)?  I hate missing things.  

Trey

@Tecton, will classes that originally had the skill have any sort of advantage over classes that didn't? For my example, would knights be better at forging than, say, a sylvan?

Tecton

Trey said:

@Tecton, will classes that originally had the skill have any sort of advantage over classes that didn't? For my example, would knights be better at forging than, say, a sylvan?

None.

Tecton

Jules said:

Tecton said:

If we were to just release the skills as they are now, that's quite likely. Good thing that's not going to happen 

Thanks for your answers, Tecton.  And I hope I don't come off as wanting to quash any and all forms of "doing something nice" - but I want motivated sellers to have some hope of making a living so that when I go looking for whatever service, there's probably someone waiting to do my bidding (for a tidy fee, of course), rather than hoping someone is "being generous" at the moment.  Also, just wanted to make sure the quote above is referring to a likely bust as mentioned by Mithridates (if skills were released as is)?  I hate missing things.  

yes, that was in relation to Mithridates post.

Sena

Skye said:

Those recommended prices had been put there for a reason even if they were in dire need of reviewing. But like I said, it eventually self regulated even without a price list.

I would have loved the idea of some kind of cartel RP, fixing prices and what not, but it's so hard to enforce in the game.

It seemed to me that Oakstone minimums were ridiculously overpriced and largely ignored years before autoclass.

Jurixe

@Tecton, I noticed that you mentioned that crafting skills would have a limit and would receive some form of compensation. Even if you only have one crafting skill right now (say, Tailoring), would there be an option for us maybe to 'unlearn' the craft and receive credit towards another skill, something like quitting class and getting some number of lessons in return? Failing that, would we at least be able to 'drop' tradeskills and learn new ones if we wanted to?

Skye

They were, and horribly so! But they still served as some what of a benchmark for prices. They got revised again at one point, but the prices were still high enough that people would still discount their goods at least a little. but even back then they were still regulated to a certain extent. Since most forestals were largely gridlocked by the difficulty of gaining class, the prices, while not 100% Oakstone, were still fairly similar. With the exception of the handful of under the table 'dealers', nobody would have dared openly advertise prices far below Oakstone the way the selling price of herbs just completely dropped right after Autoclass came out.

ETA: The prices of certain herbs did also escalate tremendously after, like ginseng (since it was the first thing you could harvest, a key ingredient for Health refills and you know, curing important afflicts). And also bloodroot and moss (which had always been expensive to begin with), but a lot of those teething problems were quite quickly sorted out by Admin changing the way harvesting works. In the end, as I said, it's sorted itself out quite well despite my own initial misgivings at the actual time of implementation.

Mithridates

@Tecton let me run the Achaean economy. I'll do it good. 

Tecton

Mithridates said:

@Tecton let me run the Achaean economy. I'll do it good. 

Riiiiiiight

Tecton

Jurixe said:

@Tecton, I noticed that you mentioned that crafting skills would have a limit and would receive some form of compensation. Even if you only have one crafting skill right now (say, Tailoring), would there be an option for us maybe to 'unlearn' the craft and receive credit towards another skill, something like quitting class and getting some number of lessons in return? Failing that, would we at least be able to 'drop' tradeskills and learn new ones if we wanted to?

There will be the ability to drop a class skill and pick another, yes. Any specifics beyond that are not finalised, but I'd assume it would function similarly to how class skills work (although the % of return may be different.)

Xith

Tecton said:

To answer some of the other questions asked here:

• Yes, there will be a limit of how many trade/crafting skills each player will have access to.
• Yes, there will be some limitations, especially on things like concoctions and alchemy.
• Yes, there will be new trade skills to go along with the divorced ones (timeframe unknown).
• Yes, tradeskills that require design review will still require a license.
• Yes, tradeskills with a license will count towards the maximum.
• Yes, there will be some form of fair compensation for people who lose existing tradeskills in the changeover to the new system.

Hope this helps!

So I currently have jewellery and tailoring. If the limit was 4 skills, and I decided I want 3 of the others but not jewellery, will I be able to drop jewellery in favor of other skills?

Tecton

Xith said:

Tecton said:

To answer some of the other questions asked here:

• Yes, there will be a limit of how many trade/crafting skills each player will have access to.
• Yes, there will be some limitations, especially on things like concoctions and alchemy.
• Yes, there will be new trade skills to go along with the divorced ones (timeframe unknown).
• Yes, tradeskills that require design review will still require a license.
• Yes, tradeskills with a license will count towards the maximum.
• Yes, there will be some form of fair compensation for people who lose existing tradeskills in the changeover to the new system.

Hope this helps!

So I currently have jewellery and tailoring. If the limit was 4 skills, and I decided I want 3 of the others but not jewellery, will I be able to drop jewellery in favor of other skills?

Yes

Jules

I'm a little leery of cartels (or crafters unions/guilds if you will), but they have played a key role in real life economic prosperity for good reason (and can also have big downsides when they become big/institutionalized themselves).  I figured they might come up if this discussion went anywhere at all, and they deserve to be on the table.  The next question is how do you avoid the pitfalls?  I didn't really experience Oakstone, but from what I've heard about it over the years, I appreciate what appears to have been one of its core goals - preserve a healthy market for its craftsmen through enforced pricing.  It's also not hard to see how this kind of organization can go from having the teeth it needs to serve the long term best interests of its members, to an iron-fisted organization wielding too much power (and probably fraught with favoritism to boot), and nothing else good from there.  

Mithridates

@Jules you can't, save for having them founded on Republican foundations (a body of law that can't be violated). The unfortunate part is, without a chain of supply they become completely nessecary. 

Jules

Ah, if I understand you, part of the answer could be craftsmen having to rely on one another in some way to provide their services (and goods)?  I like that. 

Xith

Mithridates said:

@ Jules you can't, save for having them founded on Republican foundations (a body of law that can't be violated). The unfortunate part is, without a chain of supply they become completely nessecary. 

Cooper

If you can't make a large profit from running a shop you are doing it wrong.

Xith

Wasn't so much that. If you value a shop around 12 million, and assume you can make 100k in actual profit per year (not including 7500 or so for taxes), it would take 120 game years to pay that off and be in the positive.

Cooper

You're forgetting the value of the shop in the equation.

Silas

Yeah, shop value is if anything increasing year on year. And 100k/year is really at the low end of the profits you can bring in from one (if you have the right skills).

Siduri

@Mithridates: 

Your comment about commodities is silly at best. 

Trust me when I say this: They may be "infinite" at the source, that is, there will never be a permanent shortage, the prices won't hit rock bottom due to it. 

Why? The denizen shops that sell them will -never- sell them below a certain floor price, and people who buy them from there will almost never sell them without keeping a little profit margin. That means, yes, the prices will stabilize, but they'll never be worthless. If you're thinking about Traders Satchels, well... the production level of these is really nothing to be afraid of, especially since it is randomized.

Jules

I view the players' time and motivation as the main "commodity".  I don't know that pricey comms would really help, here - and they might just be an annoyance.  They have to matter for the credit market though (as one of several gold sinks).  His suggestion about creating a supply chain is something I doubt anyone else in the game has thought of yet, and might just be incredibly helpful.  I can't just go be a "do gooder" myself for hours on end without some sort of input from another player or players.  What form that might take could vary a lot, and would probably require adjustments to get right, but I see a lot of value in the concept.  

Sena

Jules said:

His suggestion about creating a supply chain is something I doubt anyone else in the game has thought of yet

It's definitely come up in discussions before, and already exists in a very basic form, with gathering (collect raw materials, can't do anything with them) and cooking/inkmilling (require those raw materials). More interactions like that, especially if it's more limited so one person can't both gather and use the raw materials, would be nice. The commodity markets seem like a very effective gold sink though, while gathering doesn't remove gold, so a mix of both (especially in a single skill) would be best.

Jules

Oh I don't think commodity markets should go away, I was just leery of artificially jacking comm prices up (as mentioned they do have an artificial floor, which can be tinkered with if needed).  The limit on tradeskills that Tecton mentioned might help - and if you also couldn't have the "complimentary" tradeskills, might help more (or might be too much, and no one could find someone to finish/start their work, sort of like tends to happen with sailing crew now).  Gold sink is a somewhat separate, but important issue, especially for people who need to be able to purchase credits on market.  Anyway, my first instinct on the supply chain suggestion is that I'd sort of like something where you actually need a partner in the moment, especially for services.    

Trey

Xith said:

Wasn't so much that. If you value a shop around 12 million, and assume you can make 100k in actual profit per year (not including 7500 or so for taxes), it would take 120 game years to pay that off and be in the positive.

If 100k is the profit high you ever saw, no wonder you sold your shop. Raping the poor kid on the price was a separate matter. If the Maldaathi shop saw less than 250 plus in a given ten day period I was dissapointed. (I was rarely disappointed).

Xith

I don't know what you sell there but I'm talking about profit. As in "what you made" minus "what it cost you to make it". This particular shop I didn't actually do much with. Stocked Tarot and then stocked like 200 eye sigils and a few stasis bags. Then I got the offer and couldn't really pass it up.