Five Ideas to Fix The Ingame Economy

[Gwain]

Ideas and commentaries based on observations. These are taken from a General discussion topic. They do not take into account that economies recover slowly over time.

First Idea:
Value-based mercantile identification of poorly crafted goods
The problem lies in what is being sold. Rubbish like rusted plate mail for example, it sells for far too much. Its worthless, no one that has it will use it, and those who would use it could not afford it. Yet when you go into a city like Waterdeep, which is a central market hub, you have shoppes that pay top coin for what is basically useless items like crude and rusted armour and weapons. What should happen is that the shop keepers should recognize through the descriptors and quality that what they are about to purchase is worthless and in turn halve the price or not accept it at all. Do this in popular markets and decrease it in places far away from established cities to keep up the demand to travel. Now the only problem is that young adventurers lose out on making coin in sales, well to compensate they could sell the accumulated items abandoned by seasoned adventurers as not worth selling, or trade on a character to character basis.

Second Idea:
Inter city trade zones
Divide trade zones within a city or area into several sectors with random economies that reset at random times depending on events or quests done in the borders. This would dissuade twinkers that rush and disable an economy completely after a copyover or reset by selling items immediately. In essence, they would not know exactly when an economy will be ready and may only be able to sell off a small portion of their junk.

Third Idea:
Player incorporated management
Allow for the expansion of trades to refurbish or improve on poor quality goods by characters in order to create a demand for them to be repurchased. As I said above, no one that could afford it, would purchase a rusty suit of platemail, but they will sell it right away and blow the economy to smithereens. This might allow them to sell almost any armour, crude leather, fur or rusty as refurbished and allow them to turn a profit, while enticing customers to purchase from mobile merchants, refreshing the economy with the current code in place.

Fourth Idea:
Limitation on repetitive sale
First off, raise the economic level significantly, but then attach a log to players selling more than one of the same item if value exceeds five platinum. If a player sells a certain amount, make the merchant refuse to purchase any more of the item in question until the money is made back. This allows for other items of a varying value to be placed in shops and dispersed far more widely than they currently are. Players will be motivated to buy in order to sell and depending on the nature of the purchases will make more coin in the long run and more than likely manage their items and divide their loot with more efficiency.

Fifth Idea
Realistic economic profiles
The banks take a cut of our character's coin every time we deposit. Why not make investment opportunities possible? Take the money in the bank and put it to work in a stock or trading market without it ever leaving the account, by allowing players to earn interest. This would allow the current economy system to remain, but players with money in the bank could invest it in different accounts and trusts (stocks, even) While players who don't use banks could rely on the current economy (loot = coin) to get their money.

A bit about how I do things
During the month-long uptime we experience last month I made major purchases on one of my characters in the highest economic zone, this more than likely restored the economy twice (I cannot confirm such, but it would make sense) In that time random rubbish including crude weapons and armour went on sale and did not leave the store inventory. Some nice things went on sale as well, which resulted in my own purchases. Just after the reset, the economy of the area was completely wiped out. This was thanks to \ the sale of a dozen rubbish items (I won't go into ic detail about where and what, but it was obviously these items that wiped out an entire area economy) This wiped out the economy for the entire area. It will more than likely be this way until an event as a result of a quest or several player purchases balances it out (which may take a bit of time)

What I've drawn from experiences is this:
-No matter how high an economy is, if there is an limit, someone will fill it and crash the economy
-Expensive rubbish though nice to have to sell, is not worth anything in resale so it will sit like stone until a reset.
-Though its easy enough to call it a faceless crime, we are all guilty of it. We have all made the quick sale and bottomed out an economy in the game. Therefore instead of pointing fingers, the answer is that we need to make the ability to do so difficult or impossible, and do it in a way that does not allow for more sale (bigger economies equals larger selling sprees)

[Leveran]

Ideas and commentaries based on observations. These are taken from a General discussion topic. They do not take into account that economies recover slowly over time.

First Idea:
Value-based mercantile identification of poorly crafted goods
The problem lies in what is being sold. Rubbish like rusted plate mail for example, it sells for far too much. Its worthless, no one that has it will use it, and those who would use it could not afford it. Yet when you go into a city like Waterdeep, which is a central market hub, you have shoppes that pay top coin for what is basically useless items like crude and rusted armour and weapons. What should happen is that the shop keepers should recognize through the descriptors and quality that what they are about to purchase is worthless and in turn halve the price or not accept it at all.

Actually, what would need to happen is have the value (which is set on all items) be lowered. Quite simple really.

[Alaudrien]

Hmm I agree with that there. Some goods that are really nice sell for crud while crud sells for top coin which is pretty odd. I know if they had something like -junk collectors- somewhere that will pay decent but not the uber amounts of coin they do now for the old cruddy armor. While some of the nice top shelf stuff you sell it barely goes for a gold or a few coppers at times. Hmm maybe even a sorta recycling place you turn in goods and such that are useless and depending on what it is they get -melted- down or broken a part. If you sell a wooden item it might give some coin and the wood is broken apart and sold as kindling and same with metal if it's made of steel or what not it becomes a steel ingot of low quality that could be turned into arrowheads or something

[Saranya]

As referred to in this thread maybe we first need a better agreement on what the problem really is?

I do not see PCs floating in gold in this game. Aside from a few older hero-types, most PC's struggle just to keep their armor repaired and obtain necessary components. Potions and other luxuries? Forget it! And sadly, classes with the highest expenses have the toughest time making money. Kudos to the imms for the increases in economies and drop in home prices which have alleviated the pressure a bit!

Yes, it's annoying to have an economy occasionally lock up, but destroying the "loot market" would just make it harder for players to pay their bills and thereby encourage more twinking. You think rusted armour should be harder to sell, but what else are most players going to be able to get? And dare I mention that before our throw-away society, early crafters would buy almost anything in any condition. (It's amazing what people can salvage if they try.)

FWIW, I do like the idea of investment income. Those percentages we pay can't all go to hiring vault guards!

[Alaudrien]

maybe fk's ecenomy is magically connected to the current Real life one 0.o oh god save us! nah I agree with you Sara

[Gwain]

The investment idea is separate from the others, which are more aggressive in nature. Instead of smashing down people that farm certain areas for loot and then sell as soon as possible, it allows players an alternate scenario where they make money from wise investments and their bank capitol. This lets the other group of players wreck and wreck the regular economy with loot, while giving players an alternate means to get their coin to work for them.

Sadly, the idea was far down on my list:

Fifth Idea
Realistic economic profiles
The banks take a cut of our character's coin every time we deposit. Why not make investment opportunities possible? Take the money in the bank and put it to work in a stock or trading market without it ever leaving the account, by allowing players to earn interest. This would allow the current economy system to remain, but players with money in the bank could invest it in different accounts and trusts (stocks, even) While players who don't use banks could rely on the current economy (loot = coin) to get their money.

It works like this: (I'm not really a numbers person, nor a banker so I might be off)
I deposit one thousand platinum coins in the bank, the cut taken by the banker is one hundred platinum, so that leaves me with roughly 900 platinum coins. But, factor in a set interest of 3.25% for three ingame years (a year is roughtly an rl month) and you will end up earning 87.75 platinum in three years (three rl months) which is a relatively low interest rate.

We could adjust interest rates for individual players by allowing them to open an account based on the amount they are depositing. Maybe even set up a spending and savings accounts depending on their preference.

A savings account will hold a certain amount of coin and gain interest after an initial amount is subtracted (the banker's take) As long as the optimum amount specified by the account is kept in, the interest will grow over time. If money is taken out, the deposited coin will shrink or stop earning interest. A spending account would earn little interest, but allow a player to keep as little or as much coin as they wanted in it without any restrictions/regulations.

Factor this further into bonds and stocks (seriously)
A player could work through merchant organizations to deposit coin in a merchant bank or trust and tie it to stocks that can either be player driven (Going up and down depending on what's being brought in to town or taken out through the current merchant system) or driven by randomly coded occurrences. Step even further and you have places like temples and publicly traded companies and/or guilds/organizations with stakes and stocks. This coin of course would be tied to a stock/bond and could only be redeemed with the buying or selling of said stocks. A risky venture with varying buyouts and bankruptcies, definitely not for the short term player.

This idea is relative, making your money work for you in order to free you from economic problems, its advanced but I'd be willing to work on it, at least work on the descriptors and theory. It sounds a lot better than just raising the economy a bit more and seeing if that works.

[Alaudrien]

You know the investments would be pretty interesting..would be interesting to see int and luck play into it as well <.< sometimes we make badinvestments -nods-

[Elke]

Instead of smashing down people that farm certain areas for loot and then sell as soon as possible, it allows players an alternate scenario where they make money from wise investments and their bank capitol. This lets the other group of players wreck and wreck the regular economy with loot, while giving players an alternate means to get their coin to work for them.

It sounds good, but I can see a potential problem here. What's to stop someone wrecking and wrecking the regular economy with loot and -then- investing?

I'm also going to moot the other suggestion I put forwards with regards to this earlier. Perhaps it might be possible to take out loans to buy specific objects or items? I'm going to put forward the idea that if there's an investors bank there might also be some NPC you could sign a contract with. You could then hand over that contract in lieu of payment for a large purchase but you would have money coming out regularly from your bank account and get arrested and thrown into prison and the item taken away if you defaulted on payments.

Or, something like that? Maybe you could only have it if you were a citizen or had some other approval?

[Yevel]

I like this idea Elke, nice one. It would give something for gossip about too, Adventurer thrown in prison due to default on their payment. How embarrasing for some of the good faiths.

[Kirkus]

I like the idea of investing, except that it seems out of context. At least in the form of going to the bank and buy stocks and bonds. It seems to me that the businesses of investing would be more face to face. Investors would actually give the coin to the shop-owner or a guild right? I very easily could be wrong. It just seems to me that handling investments at the bank would be too modern a concept. Plus just to expand on the idea.... the City of Splendors book gives a list of like 40 or 50 guilds. I am sure we could, with a minimal amount of work, create some quests to simulate, stimulate and down right create business.

[Gwain]

My scenarios are more to give very detailed examples of what could be done. I'm a layman when it comes to stocks and finances. I'm not really critical of who or what organization manages them. The banks just came to mind because I had already been discussion bank interests and savings.