[CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[Todd Mitchell]

***TAXES***
>
     
      I really like the idea of a tax or rent. Might work if it scales above
     
     >
     
      linear for higher level players.
     
     >
     
     
     
As suggested it really is no problem for higher levels to get cash so these
changes
would tend to penalize the poor more than the rich (sounds familiar).
Perhaps a class tax would be more appropriate than a land tax.  A rate
determined by class by level payable to your class guild every game year (or
game year played? - monthly?).  This would be replaced by tithes for clerics
and paladins - but it amounts to the same thing.  Maybe you couldn't level
up if your account wasn't paid.  Also instead of buying guild halls outright
maybe they should have an overhead so that the membership would have to
collect enough to pay it (I can imagine an obscene
sum.) This would encourage membership drives to share out the costs.
I like the buy a castle idea as well, but can imagine what these would do to
the landscape.  Buy a castle, pay the land taxes and maintenance fees as
well.

***GAMBLING***
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     The house may take a cut, but if two players are playing, it just shuffles
     
     the
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     money between them - doesn't really take it out the game (so the new player
     
     is
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     now just richer and still doesn't have anything to do with it)
     
     
It wouldn't solve the problem you are right, but it would give people
something else to do with money besides buy stuff.  Save up for that big
ante game.
It is just gloss really, but it would be fun.
Gambling house maps would be fairly simple and would operate more on a cash
removal
basis (house averages 75% take) but between player gambling would be a new
social dynamic - and possibly illegal if there are guards around.

***Food and Skill costs***
>>
     
      Things should cost more in general.  Food should cost more, skills should
     
     >>
     
      cost more and some skills like magic should cost way way more (like 10000
     
     >>
     
      diamonds or something).
     
     
 >But its difficult - you don't want to starve the low level characters
because
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     they can't afford the food.
     
     
Ya some things are already expensive for low levels.  I wouldn't want to see
the price of life potions go up for the lower levels.  People can always eat
orc chops (or corpses- ewwwh) and find booze.  It takes more time to hunt up
food, but this actually mimics reality somewhat.  Of course when the server
is busy
the poor would suffer.  You can always have some cheap bulky food available
for sale as well, but it is portable food value that should be more
expensive.  This wouldn't really do much about high level money glut
however- it is
small potatoes (hehe) and would probably just be part of a general price
adjusting.

>
     
     The skill scrolls are relatively cheap.  Perhaps if they were very
     
     expensive,
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     people would really consider the race/class they choose even more.  As it
     
     is
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     now, you sort of know that by level 15 (probably even earlier), you can
     
     pick up
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     all the skills you want, so what you chose when you created the character
     
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     doesn't mean too much.
     
     
I really think that it would do a lot of good to the game to make it much
harder to add major skills and it would force more considered decision on
race/class choice and different styles of play.

***Adjusted treasure lists***
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      When I think about it, it's probably better to make treasure chambers in
     
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      the dungeons than to have the monsters drop the wealth. Limit the
     
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      monster drops to weapons and armour. I can't really picture a dragon
     
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      carrying lots of gems while fighting you.
     
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     I like this idea a lot, It would be easier to manage amount of cash on a per
map basis this way.  It would also be easier to adjust maps, and encourage
mapmakers to make more use of tricky things in maps (keys, traps, hidden
doors).  This would be pretty easy to do since it would just involve editing
the treasure lists (although not easy to balance and having drastic effects
on players.)  The experience from killing monsters is a pretty good reward
in most cases, and some creatures could still carry around some cash
(especially lower level creatures).  It would become a hunting criteria
(hmm, trolls carry cash...)
Doing this would really cut out a lot of money from the realm however and
prices might have to be adjusted somewhat (also some maps adjusted to add in
some treasure).  This would also relax the problem (but not remove it) of
monster generators, making them less useful as cash generators, while not
having problems with running out of creatures between resets.
You certainly don't want to get rid of those rare random valuable items, but
they should be rare.

Since almost everything is a salable item, people could still make money the
hard way (selling bodyparts for bounty and cashing in those +1 daggers and
other bits of crockery) When I was making the pelts for wolves and bears, I
was dreaming about some sort of furtrade/commodity market based on distance
from resources and non-purchasable items (have to look at those scripts
Joris mentioned...)

-tm