Shattered Kingdoms

Unless the price can be more regularly controlled to reasonable levels, you can add 2000 arrow/bolt shops and the price will still be horrendous. I don't know about anyone else, when I buy arrows for a char it is usually at least 50 ~ 100 arrows. For you need that much since arrows get lost so easily.

Some of these changes seem frustrating at the moment, but I am hoping (REALLY HOPING) that they are just a prelude to implementations of trade skills and things like that. That will actually make money more worthwhile and give us the ability to spend it as well as earn it.

With these skills players could create all the commodities that we are paying insane amounts of money for. It would be rather interesting if players could somehow give their merchandise to shops on a commission. For instance, a scout creates a buttload of arrows and gives 100 of them to a shop and sets the price for them to be... 1 silver per arrow. He can check in whenever he wants and ask for his earnings, but the shop takes a... certain percentage in fees or whatever.

That way the money we the players posses would be in circulation.

Unfortunately, as it is now, players don't have a great deal of items they can create and therefor sell.

Oh, I also wouldn't mind an increase to the amount of money players can keep in the bank, though it's not that important.

Yes, increasing the number of shops wont stop the price from going up, but when you notice one shop has a high price, it would be easier to find an option. Not that the other option would be any cheaper, but if people have to buy arrows, the more shops available, the more that increase could be distributed more equally between them. The price will also decrease quicker for the same reason.

I think Snuffles' idea is the best one; allow players to sell their crafted items to stores (arrows and bolts, at least) at a price they set. But if that's not a practical solution, I will make a comment about the pricing of various "basic" items.

In the real world, when an item is overpriced (as arrows are), competitors arise to undercut the prices. Arrows are fairly easily made and can nearly be mass produced, even within the world of SK. Foodstuffs are similar. Certain items which are in wide demand and which are easily produced will NEVER go above a certain price, unless you assume worldwide inflation (something we're experiencing now in SK) and devaluing of the currency.

I think that some items, which are mostly bought in bulk, should be price-controlled, to account for the assumed fact that if, for instance, one meal costs 3 gp while the actual worth of that meal is 10 sp, someone in town is going to start producing and selling that meal for 1 gp and stealing away all the first shop's business.

Exempting some "bulk" items from the pricing structure would serve the same purpose, and prevent situations where one not-very-impressive meal, or one arrow, costs the same as, say, three pieces of beginning armour.

Makes sense?

This is very sound theory. As much as I'd suggest you not hold your breath for it to be actually implemented, I'd also suggest that it's possible that it was already considered, but that the economy system is being altered in a piece-meal fashion.

That's a ridiculous fashion to alter a system as complex as an economy, but it's possibly what's happening.

I agree that there are many solutions. I like having some kind of tradeskills as mentioned above. I agree that various kinds and types of things should be altered in their base cost in the object statistics, so that they reflect closer to the actual value in the game. I also believe that this will take a while to ultimately achieve as the best values are decided. Currently there is a wide range in cost on items that varies based on a few variables. Ideally the cost would be a much narrower range which relies on a greater number of the object variables to determine its ultimate cost.

(speaking as a mortal in this post)

Right now price fluctuation is per vnum, right? If there is one "iron arrow" (vnum 5000) and in another city "iron arrow" (vnum 6000), perhaps one way to reduce the wild fluctations is to link some of these items together so they share their status and even out a bit.

Isn't that kind of "coperation of suppliers to collectively trade" a standard component of commodity trading theory?

The problem isn't that some arrows are more expensive than others. The problem is that all arrows are mega expensive because they're in "high demand."

Okay. No idea what changes Achernar made, but if anything, I'm getting even less now than I was a couple weeks ago. This system is really effing annoying. It takes 30+ minutes to make an obsidian and a half.

Zmud Timer: 33:46

You're definitely doing something wrong. The new system is fantastic, but it requires a bit of creativity. I also spent some money buying a pet and a weapon, so you can add about five platinum to that.