[CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[cflist at gmx.li]

Hi,

Mark Wedel <
     
     mwedel at sonic.net
     
     > wrote:
>
     
        But is weight of the money any real issue?  Would reduced weight (or
     
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        say yet
     
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      another higher denomination coinage) really help out this problem?  If
     
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      anything, I think it may be worse because large sums of money would be
     
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      that much easier to carry around.
     
     
No, I didn't propose this as part of the solution (except for some reasons
described below), but because I find it annoying to run around a dungeon,
get tons of money (especially silver), then have to run to a bank and very
soon have to run home again and drop the money there. Therefore I would
prefer to be able to simply throw my money to a bank (to be made available
in all towns) and don't have to care about it any more. I do not buy
significantly more or less because I can carry only a finite amount of
money (for all purposes I can carry enough money).

>
     
       > 2) Make apartments for rent and not for ownership. A player might
     
     >
     
       > have to pay
     
     >
     
       >  some amount of money every time he enters the game for them or
     
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       >  whatever.
     
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       > This might also make different apartment sizes an interesting aspect
     
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       > in the game.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
        This has to be carefully thought out.  The person who plays
     
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        infrequently
     
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      probably shouldn't be penalized for doing so.  So it would have to be
     
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      based somehow on time played.  I'm not sure how to reasonably do this -
     
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      it would really suck to get locked out of your apartment for lack of
     
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      payment when you have sufficient funds inside (or equipment you could
     
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      sell to raise sufficient funds).
     
     
I said the rent should have to be paid every time a player logs in,
thinking of people playing infrequently, so this player would have to pay
less, I agree with you that it should be possible to play only
infrequently. The payment of rents is something which would be solved best
by the bank idea, as it could just go automatically. I agree to you that
this should not lock out a player from his items within the apartment.
Maybe a player who loses his apartment just gets access to a single-square
room without a bed to reality into which all stuff is thrown. I think most
players would attempt to get their apartments back as soon as possible.

>
     
       > 3) One might put a level requirement to some artifacts, so that they
     
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       > can be sold in shops to higher level players. Nevertheless I am in
     
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       > doubt if this would be a good idea.
     
     <snip>
>
     
       > 4) Create stores which are only open after the achievement of some
     
     >
     
       > kind of quest. Examples of this are already out there like the black
     
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       > market in Pupland or the adventurous shop in Stoneville. One might
     
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       > for example consider
     
     >
     
       >  a store open only to princes of Scorn. This might be a way to avoid
     
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       >  3.
     
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     >
     
        Could do that.  AT one point in the past, stat potions could be found
     
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        in shops,
     
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      but that really resulted in people searching all the shops for the
     
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      potions they wanted.  I think one problem right now could be the
     
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      randomness - you may actually have money to spend on something (like say
     
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      a skill scroll or whatever else), but there are none around right now to
     
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      buy.  So what do you do?  Decide you'll wait for the shop to reset and
     
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      maybe buy it later.  So in some cases, spending money can be difficult.
     
     
Yes, at this point money loses its value.

>
     
        But the point my statement above is that if shops with really good
     
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        stuff are
     
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      available, that really good stuff should probably be static (eg, it
     
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      shouldn't be generating random artifacts that player can just check for
     
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      each time the shop resets).  But you still have the problem that
     
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      'special access dude' can buy the stuff for his friend that doesn't have
     
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      access.  There is no way to really prevent that.
     
     
You can orevent this by item_power, but nevertheless players willing to do
that do it now since it is the same as giving powerful artifacts from
quests to lower level heroes. So this should not prevent us from
introducing such stores.

>
     
       > 6) One great wish of mine: Princes of Scorn should be given the
     
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       > chance to buy
     
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       >  some really expensive castle, perhaps like the guildhouses, but for
     
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       >  single
     
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       > players, which are also extensible. Maybe in this way there could be
     
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       > achieved
     
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       >  some final thing a player can save his money for.
     
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        Reasonable to do.  Could add a 'park' to the towns for that matter,
     
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        and let
     
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      people pay different sums of money to get statues of themselves or
     
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      whatever else.
     
     
Yes, another good idea. 

>
     
       > just had another thought: I don't see a real reason, why a shop
     
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       > should buy the items I don't need, in my experience I cannot just go
     
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       > to a shop and sell them some stuff. We might think of introducing
     
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       > second hand stores, in which the sold items remain even after a
     
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       > server reset. Think of the store in Santo Dominion, but remove the
     
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       > "empty" switch (maybe remove items after some time like 10-20 server
     
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       > resets). When we have this we might introduce a better market system,
     
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       > so if there are already 20 Bonecrushers in the store a player just
     
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       > gets 100 plat or whatever, whereas items that are much sought for and
     
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       > remain in the store for only a short time might be
     
     <snip>
>
     
        Some tracking system (perhaps via plugin) could be done - just have a
     
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        database 
     
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      of what items have been sold, and what have been bought.  But I have a
     
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      feeling that in most cases, there would be very few items actually
     
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      bought from the secondhand store.
     
     
Of course real trade at a second hand store starts only when there is much
activity on a server so that there are many players putting different
stuff in there. Nevertheless there is the problem that indeed there is no
great variety in items that players find. Mostly you might find the 15-20
random artifacts in there plus some other stuff, that mostly everyone can
get anyways. We could think of these stores as some kind of trading
between players - or that would be what we wish to achieve. But you can
only get that if there are some powerful items that are very very rare.
You might take a look at the "yellow" items in Diablo 2. These are
powerful randomly enchanted items, more powerful sometimes than the well
known random artifacts. If one might introduce something like them there
might be achieved some real trade between players.

Regards,
  Christoph Bergemann

-- 
  "Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards,
    for they are subtle and quick to anger."