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Commodities Acquisition
With the advent of the new city improvement system, the reliance on commodities, and the stress on commodity village stores, has increased tenfold. Cities need these commodities, but they are also in competition with private individuals who purchase them for their own crafting purposes. However, certain commodity types are not produced in sufficient numbers to provide the needs that have arisen with the new system, and nothing so far has been done to correct this.
There are two problems stemming from this:
1) The current system relies on player courtesy, that is the willingness of purchasing players to leave a minimum of commodities in the store to prevent over-inflation. This player-courtesy system is, in essence, the same that surrounded harvesting years ago. Careless individuals would effectively drive the prices of certain herbs up by not caring about leftover quantities, and also diminished stock availability because said resources needed even more time to regrow. Commodity-wise, we are talking about the delay we must allow a commodity to grow back to sufficient numbers so its price starts going back down (equivalent to plant growth).
2) The current system is based on numbers that have nothing to do with today's reality. Cities alone need huge amounts of commodities. The 41 daily obsidian needed to maintain the Scimitar of Yen Sorte, or the 93 daily steel to maintain Targossas' Scimitar and three Barracks (many others are needed, but I'm pointing the most problematic) are also competing with forging and sigil production, and also with enchanting. There are days where I am, per example, unable to acquire more than 15 units of Obsidian for my city, because someone is keeping the village stocks close to 0 as a permanent situation.
As a side note, while Steel is perhaps one of the most represented commodity in stores, it is also the most demanded one because of the sheer amount of forgers around the world, and the quantities that are needed to meet the market's forging needs. In contrast, only two stores sell Obsidian. Steel's price is currently inflated to between 200 and 289% of its value, and sometimes Obsidian goes at around 467% of its base value in the only -two- village stores offering to sell it.
Here are some solutions, but feel free to discuss and offer more:
1) Increase the commodity store restock rate along with the inflation drop rate, this would probably diminish the possibilities of 'locking' the stores both quantities-wise and price-wise.
2) Increase the number of village stores offering the most problematic commodities. I am speaking here of Steel, Leather, Obsidian, mostly. Given the amount of stress the current stores endure, I think this would need to be coupled with another solution to really make it viable.
3) Increase the max reserves of commodity stores from 250 to, say, 500. This would allow those with big needs to more easily fill their rift and move on to other activities.
Comments
Obsidian is by far the most problematic I have noticed. The others are annoying but not quite as bad. Leather is mostly fine.
Let them run out. Let's see some resource wars.
I see that obsidian is actually tough to get, so it's now additionally sold in Zanzibaar.
Plenty of leather and steel though. Currently hundreds of either of them available at village comm shops.
At some point we're going to shift to much comm production being driven by players, at which point village comm shops will go away (or perhaps turn into low-priced buyers of comms, to put a floor on comm value).
Not sure if the Zanzibaar shop is a troll or not, since this would hardly make the investment/travel time/risk worthwile. Also, to note, Steel is commonly available, but at heavily inflated prices because people buy in batches of 250 without caring for the rest of the world.
If the player-based commodity generation is like extraction, woot, I'm excited. If it's like gathering from extra rare corpses ala buffallo horn and shark teeth, I think I'm just about ready to give up my Ministry and buy myself a space in some Zaphar retirement home.
EDIT: Can we access a witness-like command to know who bought how many of what when visiting a commodity store? With warrant to murder abusive merchants? PLEASE make it happen.
Wouldn't it make sense to put obsidian near a volcano, and not in an annoyingly distant location that is unlikely to have much effect on the problem?
I could see Zanzibaar buying obsidian, because it would be such an effort to get it there, but selling it makes no sense.
It's contraband obsidian being fenced by the Baarian smugglers.
I sense the need to dig, quick buy the artie shovels from the shop of wonders before they go away!
Well, as with most things economic, I'd rather try to solve the problem in baby steps. You could well be right that it ends up having no effect, but players sometimes surprise me with their industriousness. We'll see if this has any effect, though my secondary agenda is to add extra reasons to go to islands.
What about the whole "There is no room for another ship in that harbour" thing? Wouldn't that be a bigger issue for people whisking away to buy their obsidian via return over sailing there (and/or the boats not actually doing anything but sitting there for weeks)
Was having issues docking earlier at islands as a result of harbours being filled up, and just ended up being quick about using ropes if the island size permitted.
I still want to know why there is obsidian on Zanzibaar. Blujixapug's suggestion is awkward at best.
an easy solution is for your city to actually start buying it for a price that people are willing to pay... You will see peoe pull from their reserve and will allow new players another way to make a little money. Just an idea
Eat like a caveman, train like a beast. Champions are not born, they are made.
Will the changes to comms happen any time soon, @Sarapis?
내가 제일 잘 나가!!!111!!1
May I ask why the current city improvement system was put into place so soon if the sister project on which is it dependant is not coming anytime soon?
We have no recourses against the abuses of the current system, no way of putting a stop to bad behaviours (we can't hire over this, or even claim cause), and some of us have a hard time getting anything at all (without paying three to four times the normal value of the item) to provide our cities. Things are getting so out of hand that I am seriously thinking about quitting because of the stress this brings, and I don't think it's a good idea to have a City position that burns out player after player.
Because there's far too many comms in the world, and we're trying to bleed the supply out some. They were also almost all selling at their minimum allowed prices previously, which was quite broken. Now supply and demand are coming into better equilibrium.
I'm not quite sure what you mean about things getting out of hand though. The only comm that was regularly running low was obsidian, and even then, there's over 190,000 obsidian in the game right now, between cities and active players. 228,000+ steel.
If your city can't afford 3 barracks and a Scimitar of Yen-Sorte, don't have all of them!
You could also look at offering people or other cities something for the comms you need. There's certainly plenty of them out there.
Mhhmhh, tried that and was robbed blind by someone I considered a friend. I'm not trying this anytime soon.
Also, it is important to note that Targossas is a young city, and that we were trying very hard to build our reserves when that change hit us. And we could afford these improvements with the gold of our coffers. The difference between now and then is that not only do we need to spend (roughly) as much gold, but we also have the added stress of dealing with supplies that are repeatedly bought out by people who are OCD on forging teh bast rapiar evar.
As for buying from other players, maybe what we need is a TRADE command to trade X <blah> for Y <widgets> anyway, such that whoever hands over the gold or stuff first isn't risking being ripped off.
Please! That's already a step in the right direction.
That's probably not necessary. That's already considered a scam and is a shrubable offense, last I checked.
As for things like steel, right now supply is less of (though still) a problem than pricing. When you folks made that change to city improvements, it buckled the economy for those comms and prices tend to range from at minimum -double- what they've normally been and up. I've seen some city comms shops charging 350 per because they're afraid of not hoarding enough to maintain their improvements. It wasn't necessarily a bad shift from the 'pure gold' maintenance of those, but it would definitely have been better to drop that change along with this commodity production skill we've been told about.
I was hoping to see comms bled out of the system, but that's not really happening. At best, the total available supply of comms in-game is remaining constant, though that's better than before when it was nothing but growth in all comms all the time.
Also, keeping stuff mentioned in Skype, might help this situation! There is an OOC/IC barrier for a reason. Maybe someone won't get robbed blind if they followed this anyways.
@Kyttin : As far as I know, what was mentionned in Skype did not bleed into the game much further than the trade, which's IC means had been agreed on OOCly (the amounts, trade medium, etc.) ALSO, said person was, OOCly and ICly, up until now, a person I had cared a lot for, and I believed that this was mutual. 'Keeping stuff mentioned in Skype' is not going to repair broken trust and the feeling of betrayal that accompanies such a thing.
EDIT: As far as I know, I could very well agree on Skype to pay 100 credits for a rapier. If said salesman does not deliver the rapier, and I have the logs to prove that the deal was made, and that only one end of it was fulfilled, it remains a scam.
There is an OOC/IC barrier, but friendship sometimes crosses it. It just goes to show that even if you think you're friends with someone in Achaea, you should always take the extra measure to back up a trade with an IC interaction, ie. Hey, will you give me X for Y (wait for them to agree before you do anything). The awesome TRADE idea that Sarapis is proposal is an amazing idea that would make that extra step second nature IC.
P.s. I'm sorry that whaever happened, happened to you @Siduri.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
Friendship does not cross Targossian/Mhaldorian barrier. That's just stupid RP.
As for this, I'm sorry Siduri, and I'm pretty sure the Divine may agree, I won't say they will..but if you Agree on Skype to pay 100 credits, and you being a Targossian, send the 100 credits to a Mhaldorian.... It's not IC. No matter what, because you didn't speak about it on Achaea. You have to speak about it on Achaea to make it IC.
@Kyttin : Given the amount of detail you know, there is no doubt you know the person we are talking about. As for inter-enemy RP being stupid, said person and I have had a very healthy relationship while in enemy cities prior to her joining Targossas. Why couldn't I assume that this partnership would continue beyond? I mean, it's pretty much Siduri's shtick to be allowed leeway when interacting with enemies.
Probably true. But you have to wonder who would do this, knowing that the rest of the Achaean community would pretty much consider the person who did this to be the lowest of the low and, in all likelihood, ostracize them socially -- both IC and OOCly.
Album of Bluef during her time in Achaea
I have no idea about anything else, nor do I want to have it, but this is a pretty ignorant comment.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.