Shattered Kingdoms

To be honest, this particular year the problem in the United States seems to be a matter of convincing corporations to spend their money on hiring people again. They are all having record profits but are afraid to spend their hoard because they fear a double-dip recession. IMHO that's where government policy needs to be directed at encouraging for the time being.

Yes, money has been a hoard-able resource for some years now on SK. It's the kind of thing that most games would never dream of trying to do. Call me old school, but I happen to enjoy games that don't hand me everything on a silver platter and then call me a winner. I receive enjoyment through accomplishment and accomplishing anything worthwhile is difficult.

SK will still allow you to escape reality into a realm of combat and fantasy, but will not let you escape any of the problems that affect you financially.

Oh, hard work allows us to escape financial problems, it is a pretty clear-cut system. I just think it silly to, well, try to run World of Workcraft Text-Only Nothing-Permanent Edition.

As for economy, a recession is an excuse to do terrible things. Most price markups have very little to do with supply and demand, and many layoffs have little to do with financial exigency.



...Do you even have a character in this game, Dulrik?


Based on everything else, though, I can tell that coding SK must be a worthwhile experience for you.

There are people who run around with thirty heal vials in this game, despite the fact that the vials are very limited. Just kill them and take their heals.

Coin can only be "hoarded" so much, given that only 50 obsidian can go in any PC's bank account.

Is it annoying? Yes. Is it game-breaking? Hardly. This game suffers much more from people who play with their OOC buddies and treat SK like counter-strike by forming gank squads and failing to offer even the slightest player courtesy or RP at all when it comes to PvP.

And yes, before you point out that one of these problems is a code fix and one a "player attitude" fix, I'd much rather see other coding changes go into effect, such as either removing bounty NPCs or lowering their spawn rate, mostly because at this point so many spawn when outlaws are involved that city PvP is impossible without clearing the trib accounts.

OMG we get it you hate the freaking bounty NPCs...stop reminding us everytime there is something about a flipping code change.....Seriously...Make another post about the damn NPCs elsewhere instead of whining about how you can pvp because of the NPCs.....
and on a side note, I have no problems with bounty NPCs they are quite easy to kill, sure annoying but your killing people so people should defend your shenanigans.
in other words HTFU about bounty NPCs they ain't going no where

Yeeah.

The issue I have with the economy, and all other 'fixed amount' resources in this game, indirectly including bounty NPCs, is that the difficulty of one person's task can be affected by the malicious and unenjoyable actions of another without the victim even having an opportunity to resist or challenge the assault. C.f. Offline CRS, tribunal coffers, item hoarding, economic terrorism, custom-item-whoring, unmentionable milestones, and so forth. In other words, one person's "invested time" entitles her to a result that you are obligated to submit to, while at the same time so many time investments can be nullified.

Hoarding is an act of aggression that FPS games do not have. Hoarding compiled with the brokering of knowledge results in a cliqueish game where entry into the competitive gameplay is not worth the cost unless you join forces with someone already influencing or sufficiently versed in the system.

In other words, these "code fix" problems create the "player fix" problems, Edoras.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, while respecting Dulrik as much as I can, he demonstrates an inability to fully comprehend the nature of social influences and problems. I will hypothesize that this inability has less to do with his acumen and more to do with his lack of direct participation in the system he must adjust because he alone is it's steward.

This is one of those things that I'd love to be incorrect about, of course, and that very well could be the case.

I've been saying this for years.

The thing that, to me, breaks the economy code so completely is the lack of wholesale or bulk order adjustments.

In RL, a single buyer who is looking to stock or use a large number of a single item can usually get such items at extremely discounted prices. In SK, even if you buy 20,000 of the lowest quality vials from a single source the price will only ever go up per vial.

Most people in SK who purchase consumables like vials, arrows, etc, do so in large quantities. It's rare that you find the person who will buy just one or two vials. More often, when you're looking to stock yourself up with vials and such, you're buying 20, 30, even 50 vials at a time and as it stands now, all that does is make the pricing ridiculous for the next buyer.

My company buys huge amounts of product for distribution and because of the bulk buying power of the conglomerate my company is a part of, the price per unit is extremely low. If SK had some similar kind of system, it would make the economy coding function more smoothly, manageably, and realistically. It may also lead to amusing player interactions wherein people create buying blocs to keep costs per player lower. Maybe even an option for faction leaders to spend faction coffers on supplies that are able to be purchased by faction members would help.

Like a company store? Sort of.. only without credit?

Similar to that, yes. So there would be a shop-keeper in each faction's "HQ" (in quotes because tribs don't have an HQ per se) that would be flagged to sell only to faction members. Then, the faction leader could set the prices of the faction-purchased merchandise to either give at cost to members, or with a slight markup to generate coin for the faction coffers.

The ultimate idea being that faction members contribute to the faction coffers, and therefore are forming a kind of buying bloc directed by the faction leaders, pooling their resources to make bulk purchases at wholesale prices.

[ 6] A bag of dried berries and grains - a small food
Price: 5 gold, 3 silver.

lol

x.x

rolls of tongue is where it's at.