I have always believed that the way UO was and is designed does not allow a truly stable economy. The main reason is most likely directly tied to magic. Magic (and the Public Moongate system) allows instantaneous (and usually free) travel to anywhere in the world, at any time, to anyone. In order to provide a stable economic model, travel would need to be limited somehow. This would allow you to tailor economic forces to the people, NPCs, natural resources, and monsters in a given area.
In other words, by limiting travel, you make it difficult for a hunter to store their goods, a miner to bank their ore, or a crafter to transport resources to their workshop. This allows you to provide a natural economic requirement around the places people go, and the things they do. In conjunction with this, if market forces were to be driven by activity in a particular region, it would encourage further economic investment in that region. This could be in the form of taxation - a less favorable option, but an interesting one - or by discounts and premiums on goods and services. Housing would naturally grow near resource-rich areas and centers of business, and players would not all insist on living in a "market town" like Luna.
Another important aspect of a "no-instant-travel" system would be the storage of items. Banks should not store items dropped in them from anywhere in the world, but only hold items given at that particular "branch". This is a system that is feasible, but would make little sense unless travel were limited. Services could arise that would provide limited transport of goods from one place to another.
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Having said all that, I realize this is not truly feasible for a UO-based shard.
I do want to comment on how "this" shard might improve the economy.
I like the idea of a Lottery. I think gambling, in general, is both entertaining, and a way for the rich to dispose of unwanted gold. It would have to be designed so that the "house wins", or it would defeat the purpose, and provide incentive for macro-gambling (*shudder*).
I also like the idea of allowing Player Vendors to set up "buy requests". This, along with the idea of an Auctioneer, could provide a degree of at least simulated stability to the economy, as it would encourage price stabilization. Look up the Runescape Grand Exchange if you want an example of a global economic model that is almost completely player-centered. There are flaws in the system, to be sure, but overall it has vastly improved the economy in that game from what it used to be.
Recycle bins can be customized to provide a portion of the raw materials of the item recycled. This would prevent players from automatically dumping all their useless finished goods on unsuspecting NPC vendors, since they would most likely prefer to get some materials to keep working on their craft.
I also very much like the idea of making it so players can add "buy requests". I was even looking at making it so players have access to a sort of [add command but obviously without the ability to add anything. Just the ability to see root names of items so they target the correct thing. The problem is badly named ones like Tangle1.
I believe salvage bags recycle some material no?
We do have a housing lottery for an Ilshenar house coming up at some point.
Interesting read, i enjoyed the video Richard Garriot did about the original plan of animal interaction and how players would work with the ecosystem, in the end human players were a plague that slaughtered everything and anything, rendering the original ecosystem defunct.
On the economy side we are somewhere between Zimbabwe and Venezuela for inflation
I like the idea of scrapping vendors and making it a player driven game, i do miss the old days of needing armor so you needed to visit the blacksmiths where a player would be crafting items.
The two biggest goldsinks (1 & 2) the game had are currently disabled, both had a huge economy behind them
1: Lower Reg Cost (well 100) - LRC killed off a massive portion of the economy for reg buyers/resellers, the volume of gold sunk into npc's has dropped drastically over the years, yes we could all recall around spending time getting regs @ 5gp each or through faction vendors but it was so much easier to buy from random joe or random janes vendor in large quantities.
Removal of the LRC system wouldn't be too horrific but would force players to play the game whilst managing resources, whilst generating a new income source for those who want to farm regs. It would also act as a large scale gold sink as well as bringing back more player interaction. as all players would need regs you could overnight establish a supply and demand chain.
2: Insurance - insurance was probably the worst at killing off the economy, it was a gold sink but its nowhere near the gold sink of replacing your regs and items that pre insurance had. It also created a knock on effect that crafters were only needed for the initial crafting an item and maybe a future upgrade but they no longer pumped out the suits of the past. I remember I could farm leather and make mage suits and put bag son regs on a vendor and need to stock it daily. my purchase of regs from vendors or leather from players (or farming leather myself) allowed a sub supply/demand to fulfill the supply demand further up the chain. The missing gold sink chain of the resource gatherer to crafter to player is gone and that needs to be returned to help both playerbase and economy, im not suggesting removal of insurance as if that was done we might as well just go Fel ruleset. but a compromise would be something in between.
Revamp of the way it works could create a new economy, for instance make it so all armor and items are damaged by say 5% on death, so you now require to use a repair deed, bringing back the need for crafters, they can manually repair for 100% chance or via repair deed with same system that repair deed fails so you need another to try again. Change the recipe for repair deeds to cost more ingots or other resource so that they in turn need to have orders of resources fulfilled to craft the deeds that all the playerbase will require.
3: Hoarding - CUB was introduced a long time ago to help the hoarders problem, this game attracts collectors, it always has done. not many games allow you to display your shit as well as this, maybe Star Wars Galaxies did it better but alas I diverge. Adding more and more items to the appraisal system with higher reward points would help people hoard less and get something back.
A solution to this system would be an item exchanger, it exists already with tokuna artifacts (minor to major), what if we could exchange say 5 doom artifacts plus gold for the doom artifact you actually want, this has been introduced with power scrolls already. The gold sink is generated and the items are removed from the game, but a new supply/demand chain is generated. Eventually you could have every item awarded a score, and exchanging of any item builds up points to get what you actually need, CUB is great but many new items are no longer needed by players, volume 1 masteries for example and stacking up in my house from all the champs, the scrolls I can keep and combine.
As a short term measure, until the shard is more and more populated, its growing and that's great, increase the rate of all drops of anything, having a drop rate based around a large playerbase means some people will never see an item as its a tiny few who get items, then reduce the rate of drops as the population grows. This will enable those on the shard to create the player driven economy in prep for the future playerbase, i.e the current "range" of dungeon points before an artifact drops, reduce this by 50% so more items are added to the economy to be sold among players. We have issues just now that there is demand for items but no players farming for items - the halo from doom is the perfect example, many players want it, no ones running doom with a low pop server, myself and mag ran it lots but only got a handful of good arties, the rest are junk(no one wants them) in comparison to the new magic artifact system, but they aren't worth CUB'ing for something else, maybe the above solution to the hoarding would address this.
Last wee pointer would be reducing the bod timer to get even more players into it to help boost the economy with more powders and runics, creating more buy/sell opportunites.
Finally remove the AFK check completely for all gathering professions and any penalties for afk gathering, yes it will open the door to100% afk gathering but does it really matter? having players getting mats to then craft stuff to boost the economy is more important that miner joe gathered ingots whilst watching a movie not looking at his screen. But hold your gasp of horror for a second, if we remove the ability to sell those mats directly to NPCs or items produced from those mats, so now the only options are sell to player to craft items or craft items and sell items to player. This in turn with the insurance update could work hand in hand. Make gathering mats more dangerous, UOF spawns random creatures whilst mining to make it harder on the afk'r but also puts in nice rewards in those mobs to give even more reason to go back to basics and be a gatherer.
The game currently is about farming to get the high level items but we have lost the roots of player interaction and the supply demand chains of the past, they could be reintroduced without it becoming a "custom" server but a more balanced economy OSI clone : )
Hope that helps and thanks for reading, i spent a lot of time planning servers in the past and how to address this issue that always arises, once a population gets big enough it does balance out if the gold sinks are suitable for that population. casinos are great as well, UOF has a casino system for poker that allows you to be against other players but all wins the banker aka goldsink takes a cut.
#addacasinoplease
We will look at ways to expand CuB.
That being said I am HIGHLY considering the removal of the CAPTCHA system. The problem is people do not realize how many other systems those resources play into these days. Crafting, CuB, Community Collections, Trade orders, Donating to towns for town fame / money for the town. If we remove CAPTCHA we would also look at these systems and see how best to mitigate the cheating THAT WILL HAPPEN. When it was removed the amount of resources grew exponentially.
Now... Hold on a sec.. I thought this server was a realUO clone? UO is what it is, because those mistakes were made.. who is to say if those mistakes weren't made, that the game would still be as successful. I love UO for what it is.. EVEN THE DIRT CHEAP RESOURCES.. even with all the mistakes made... WIth that said, IMO.. The biggest mistake UO made.. was Age of Shadows.. PvP was much more interesting, when all you had was exceptionally crafted armor and weapons.. easy to replace.. easy to get back into the fight..
IMO, leave it as it is..
Also, wanted to chime in on Goobers discord post, he said:
xG00BERx-Today at 2:19 AM
I’ll post my thoughts sometime hopefully tomorrow, I lvoe the idea of removing NPC things like leather and what not completely as t would allow players to have to sell more. I think In short tho as well be careful not to make it so difficult that I’m too focused on making my own cloth to make bandaids that I never actually get to go fight anything.. resource gathering and what not is great and I think Leathers and ingots etc should all be only purchasable from players to create a market but once again i feel if you make it so god awful it might be awesome and well visioned in your head but not attractive enough to a new player to stick around. If I had to log on a server and spent the first few hours just trying to harvest shit so I could fight I would lose my mind, because I’m not much of a crafter.. Idk just don’t force people into roles they might not want to be in, O’Malley in my eyes is a crafter and he will continue to be a wealthy fucker because he enjoys it and grinds it, I would much rather pay 500k for some shit instead of have to farm it myself.. not sure if it makes sense just a half cocked answer looking for some small feedback before I write some big shit tomorrow
"I think In short tho as well be careful not to make it so difficult that I’m too focused on making my own cloth to make bandaids that I never actually get to go fight anything.. "
That right there.. have to keep this in mind, you also have to keep in mind, by tweaking the economy, you are no longer realUO clone.. players will login and not be able to buy a bolt of cloth to make band-aids.. and be like "Eff this" and leave.. maybe not all.. but enough to hinder positive growth.
I think you should just leave it the way it is.. or revert to Pre-AOS
Maybe in the end we will just have to change our marketing. I do not want to also have my hands tied by poorly implemented mechanics. In the articles posted the staff realized right away their mistakes. The biggest reasons they could not fix them is the fact that they answered to EA already. By removing peerless timers, tweaking player vendors, ect, we have set the precedent that we can tweak things. If it is for the better I am down to experiment.
Well, economically speaking, less government is better. Supply follows demand. Players create demand. As soon as an omnipotent force decides to impose restrictions it is effectively engaging in social engineering, which isn't what uo (a sandbox) is about. Ok I'm done.
Having said that, I think, that players want to experience more of the sandbox. Unfortunately, an OSI clone is engineered for 1000+ players which keeps a lot of content, and items, out of reach from everyone except those who can dedicate a massive amount of time. In short - increase the drop rates of peerless/doom arties. Increase cost of insurance to offset this. I think this would open things up for people. I can't see myself spending an hour or so on shadowguard only to have a .01% chance to find anything. Same goes for any abyss champs/peerless, or a host of other content. I'll do it once, cross it off my list, and go back to things with more attainable rewards (champ spawns, ML dungeons) in hope to trade them to someone who will grind those places out. However, I don't think anyone here wants to do that, so the content will not be seen.
I am still worried about increasing the drop rates of the higher end items. I believe it will be possible to create some what of a "middle" tier that players can work towards item wise. We have already started it with removing peerless key timers. The intent was also to allow Joe Snuffy a chance to go out there and farm some keys, which he can resell for profit. The problem is most players do not know of these edits. A better way to get them out there, other than patch logs, will be needed.
Before thinking the solution, i want to know what is the problem now.
UO is like real life, the more work you put into, the more "rich" you are, more things you have. The only thing i really dont like is the unlimited housing, because if the servers reach certain number of players this will become a bubble. The rest is fine for me.
I played/helped a lot of small servers, and a problem on everyone was the lack of artifacts and itens that players need to work hard to get, not because no one did, but there is no market for it.
Like 1 get a 120 magery PS, sell it for 2kk, but i dont have anything to buy with 2kk, so i dont even try to sell the PS on the first place.
Like i said, i want to know the problem before thinking on changes.
So the biggest reason for unlimited housing, and also the change of how the "Vet reward" Shard Loyalty System works is that even if I set a limit, per account, people WILL use VPNs to bypass account creating limits. They do this to own more houses anyways. Houses also do decay here. If we run into a problem where there is no housing or an abundance of dead housing we will 100% look at this issue at that time. However those Luna houses would still be taken, by the same people, one way or another.
One.. put a vote stone up were you took out the luck stone that gives, 4 or 5
souvenirs each time you vote.. >with a warning to actualy vote or be taken downif votes dont seem right
" my math is right that be a 1 year reward of a ethy horse or keep saveing for a 2 year reward of a_ and that help with broke people ...Two ..maby some type gold ehchange thingy at bank for
souvenirs .. people can put a amount . they want to buy with the amount of gold.. and the people that work all the time can come to the machine to buy gold.. wile the people that cant afford them can sell gold for sovs .no need to beg n a chat or forms any more .. be right there at the bank..the machine like atm kinda thingy....three idk yet but ill think of a three lol.. ""any way this will help out on balanceing the game and people will never know who is poor and who isnt less making fun of others that cant afford
souvenirs and those that just rather exchange them for gold... eather way the server will get payed by people wanting to buy gold or people buying souvenirs for other reasons..... ps yes i read the post. but these are new ideas... i see pople on chat trying to buy all the time or sell these so would help the game as a whole..
I actually will be removing all vote stones and this is why. This is a comment on a REDDIT post Vorspire started against another UO shard. Basically that other shard owns all the vote sites anyways. here is the quote and link:
"I always knew the vote sites were bullshit but even i didn't know he actually owned that many (or all of them?).
A TIP: A good thing for all upcoming servers to know is to NOT FORWARD YOUR PLAYERS to vote sites.
We at UOForever have never done it(at first we took some flack for that decision) why we refused to do so and why you should also refuse is because: In no world should you work hard to get people to your server and site, just to forward them to everyone else's server/site who are all advertised on this huge list, when the fact is the server list on that vote site doesn't promote getting new players or traffic in return for you.."
FULL DISCUSSION
HERE
I am considering adding an NPC merchant that sells Sovereigns but at a higher exchange than a player. Right now the played around with number is 15,000gp per Sovereign.
SO TO RECAP
The proposed new economy plan is:
1. Remove the CAPTCHA.
2. Come down hard on those who break the rules. If found AFK gathering we will simply jail the character and delete the entire resource container(s) in the house(s) they are traveling too regardless of what else is in it. The rules are the rules. It does not matter if you donate / don't donate, been here for a day, or been here since day one. That being said my time to police is limited but hopefully we get some Counselors to help police at some point.
3. Reevaluate and possibly remove some resources from various systems. (CuB, Community Collections, Town Loyalty)
- This is just a discussion. Each system will be looked at for potential exploitability if resources flood the market. Resources are not just tied to crafting these days.
4. Remove NPCs from BUYING resources and most items from players.
5. Allow NPCs to SELL various ingots, woods, and leathers, but at a much higher rate than a player would sell them for.
6. Create an NPC that sells Sovereigns at a rate of 1 Sovereign for every 15,000gp.
Again this is all still a discussion and NONE of these changes have gone into affect or have even been looked at coding wise. I understand the delicate steps that must be taken. Also thanks very much to those that have taken time to comment. I have read them all and they have given my some insight.
