Shattered Kingdoms

Dear Dulrik,
I appreciate all the effort that you have put into this game over the years. I understand that it is sometimes a thankless task. I know you want your game to be as good as it can be, and I understand that this is why you introduced the economy code. You thought it would improve the game. Unfortunately, your change had the opposite effect.

As you are no doubt aware, real life economies are incredibly complex systems. For this reason, it is extremely difficult to model them in a game world. There are simply too many elements that need to be accounted for. The economy code, in its current form, fails in spectacular fashion to mimic a real economy. Here is a short list of some of the elements of a real economy that the SK economy lacks:
1) When one shop fails to attract customers, it does not go out of business.
2) When one shop provides a certain item, and then decides to charge ten times the original price of that item, no other shop opens up to take away the first shop's business.
3) When businesses do a good job of attracting customers, they fail to expand.

These, along with other factors, make it so the SK economy in its current form does not even resemble a real world economy. The way things used to be were, in fact, more realistic, because things that should be affordable were affordable.


This lack of realism would be acceptable, if the change somehow improved the players' experience. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Requirements for PK have not changed, but the cost of vials has skyrotted, meaning that players are forced to spend many hours of their life farming coin. This is not fun. It really isn't. I didn't like the economy change when it was introduced, but I didn't complain because I wanted to give it a chance. Well, it's had its chance, and the pbase is not happy with it.

Perhaps you think that since the economy code introduces a layer of complexity to the game, it is a good thing. I urge you to examine this line of reasoning, and consider the possibility that an aspect of the game can be complex and detrimental.

In summary, the economy code makes the SK world less realistic, and also has an immense and negative impact on player enjoyment of your game. Please reconsider its existence. I have made this into a thread with a poll (instead of a PM) in order to back up my claim that the pbase wants this to change.

Thank you for your time,
Baldric


.........

If anyone disagrees with my assessment of the economy code, I would encourage them to include their reasoning in this thread. On the off-chance that I have failed to appreciate some aspect of this code, I would prefer to be made aware of that failing rather than to continue living in my ignorance.

In the end, I like the concepts of the economy code, but not the extent to which it alters in-game happenings.

In particular, I think that an items' base price should cap at 1.5 times as much its original base price, and that no economy should be affected so drastically that the prices within its cities are pushed beyond 1.5 times their original price, or that the coin dropped from its NPCs is dropped below half their original amount.

It seems that this is currently not the case. Vials in particular, especially detection vials and brewed vials, cost a crapton, and buying anything in a city that has its prices raised due to... whatever causes prices to raise, is extremely painful. I'm also not a fan of the fact that low-level players are very heavily impacted when the NPCs they are training drop a very small amount of coin, and in addition all the armor they want to buy has been inflated in cost on top of that.

I do like, all-around, the concept of how selling an item repeatedly devalues that item. It makes earning coin by selling equipment a more engaging effort than just selling troll leather repeatedly. I just wish it wasn't so necessary to do it -all- the time.

After getting used to the economy code, I'm not that adversely affected by it anymore. However, I think that its effects are a little too far-reaching, in that the economy code can really skew a newbies' perspective of the game for the worse, without the newbie either being able to do anything about it, or even know that its happening.

I agree baldy. I think I brought this up a few times also but Dulrik is pretty set on this system.

I would add that the people who are hurt most by it are warriors because a) they are heavily reliant on vials to be pk-worthy and b) it is much harder for them to farm coin than most caster classes. Add to that the fact that the warrior is usually the first one to die in any encounter and voila! Screwed-soup.

The cold reality is that the efforts put into the economy system likely won't be rolled back. How, then, could they be fixed?

If markups could be individualized on a player basis instead of a game-wide basis, that might help.

If "vendor trash" was paid for from a source that did not affect prices of items sold nearby, that might help.

If players could sell items in a more persistent "auction house" type environment allowing for player-created items like scrolls, potions, skins, and herbs to be sold asynchronously allowing for more inter-character trade, that might help.

If items could be gotten rid of in a way other than selling for coins that allowed benefits to a character, that might help. There are many potential options there, including 'donating' an item to the host economy in return for a 'discount' towards items within that economy while, at the same time, the economy strengthened.

If banks charged 'finance fees' that slowly bled stagnant accounts in order to restock the economy, that might help, but it also might tick people off.

If items that 'fade out' of a vendor's inventory are liquidated and added to the economy if they already aren't, "undoing" the impact that selling them caused to the prices, since they're really being removed from the economy. Right now I suspect there's basically a "currency leak" in the current approach where vendors try to raise prices on items to get back money they paid for items that technically no longer even exist... yet get sold again because they respawn on their sources.

Right now I think the economy is a Catch-22. The idea itself isn't bad, but I don't think these new additions have been made in a way to replicate a complete economic cycle.

I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but brewing has an awesome success rate now. I am at 95% or better. So those expensive vials are generally not wasted.

Tribunals have the ability to drive the price of shop items down. Specifically, the leaders.

Beyond sales tax?

I believe so.

I have heard that the ways of doing that are extremely inefficient, and even after putting a huge amount of effort into them, at least sometimes don't yield noticeable results.

a.) shup Trag.
2.) I agree with the first three posters, obviously generating my immense popular voting scheme to make this economic CRISIS change!