Request - Adjustment of leather dyes quantity per bottle

[Kent]

My request has to do with the high expense of many dyes, and the fact that when those quantities per bottle were first designed, much fewer pieces of leather were needed to make each leather good.

For example, back in the day, about eight pieces of leather were needed to craft a leather breastplate. Now 15 pieces of leather are required to go into the same product.

A bottle of dye can range up to 50 riln. Each bottle has only 5 applications of dye...ie, only 5 pieces of leather can be dyed with it. That wasn't too bad back when fewer pieces of leather were required.

My request is that it would be doubled to ten applications per bottle of dye, please.

[Rias]

Remember that the Northern Lost Lands is a wild, dangerous, and removed place (recall the Quarantine). I like to think that in the current situation, dyes are something of a luxury.

I wouldn't mind increasing the uses per bottle of dye, but I'll likely go over prices as well. Easily-attainable dyes may get cheaper. Harder-to-produce dyes will be more expensive (think purple, real-world historically).

Honestly, I want to, one of these days, go over th entire Lost Lands' economic situation and availability of goods, etc. Some places are far more luxurious than I think is believable, outside extremely expensive elite pricing.

[Kent]

Honestly, I want to, one of these days, go over th entire Lost Lands' economic situation and availability of goods, etc. .

I've been waiting over two years for the economics of CLOK to be put right. May well be the biggest source of game grief to me personally.

For example, a character crafts an above-average pouch from leather, and the resulting product sells for less than the raw skins that went into it. If I'm not mistaken, all leather goods of a type (eg all player backpacks) have the same price at the pawnshop, regardless of quality. There would have to be communistic legislation in place for this situation to happen.

Another example, a shovel costs much more than a sword. Huh?!

A pawnshop won't buy a player crafted flatbow at all, regardless of quality.

etc.


It seems to me the best tool to grapple this problem would be to prepare a spreadsheet with a price grid on it, showing all possible items and their price ranges throughout game world.

[Rias]

You really want that spreadsheet, don't you? I doubt it will ever happen, unfortunately. Stuff varies from place and situation, and is often reassessed and readjusted. Keeping a player-accessible spreadsheet of all that minutae would be one more thing we'd rather not have to constantly remember to maintain every time there's an adjustment.

[jilliana]

It seems to me the best tool to grapple this problem would be to prepare a spreadsheet with a price grid on it, showing all possible items and their price ranges throughout game world.

I feel that this method is not only putting mor work on the GM's but a little bit too OOC. We all eventually know where things can be bought cheaper and their materials. It also makes common sense after a bit of learning where things are worth more to sell compared to others.
Why not create your own spredsheets with all pertinent information you want on it and keep up withit? I know I have a place where I put all the information I need to remember, as do a few other players.

[Kent]

It seems to me the best tool to grapple this problem would be to prepare a spreadsheet with a price grid on it, showing all possible items and their price ranges throughout game world.

I feel that this method is not only putting mor work on the GM's but a little bit too OOC. We all eventually know where things can be bought cheaper and their materials. It also makes common sense after a bit of learning where things are worth more to sell compared to others.

I wasn't looking for info on where to buy the cheaper things. Just a range of acceptable prices. For example,

Blacksmith's hammer 300 min 500 max

This way if a player spots a blacksmith hammer outside that range he can bug it with confidence.

Is preparing this spreadsheet putting more work on the GMs...or a necessary evil? Let's rephrase the question to, what alternative methods can be done to accomplish the goal of fixing the economics?

[xavier]

alternatives could be getting rid of players that consistently and constantly complain about things that really and very seriously don't need any attention until more fundamental issues can get fixed.
For example, I'd really much rather have all the guild issues worked out, like tasks, guild point modifications, specializations if any, etc worked out before I concern myself with not being able to rack up hundreds of millions of riln for grinding

[Elystole]

Is preparing this spreadsheet putting more work on the GMs...or a necessary evil? Let's rephrase the question to, what alternative methods can be done to accomplish the goal of fixing the economics?

The economics on a game like this are never "fixed." We aren't dealing with a closed system of finite resources. What we have is a collection of generators and sinks. When I make 20,000 riln in a single day (Yes, I have done this. Repeatedly. No, it isn't hard, and it doesn't require a lot of skill.) that riln doesn't come out of the global CLOK riln supply; it is just generated. When I spend riln with an NPC, it does not rejoin some pool. They do not hold it to spend it later. It is simply deleted; it disappears in a sink.

The GMs' task in a system like this is balancing generators (mobs, boxes, markets, pawnshops, etc.) vs sinks (repairs, houses, shops, NPC merchants, permits, etc.). That's what Rias is referring to when he says that "Stuff varies from place and situation, and is often reassessed and readjusted." You aren't ever going to get a nice, stable system of prices that never change because PCs keep finding ways to game the system and make the generators run amok. Nevermind that no real, healthy economy has prices that stable. If the GMs didn't adjust prices and come up with interesting ways for us to lose our riln (like festivals and auctions), we'd have hyperinflation. And that's bad.

For example, I'd really much rather have all the guild issues worked out, like tasks, guild point modifications, specializations if any, etc worked out before I concern myself with not being able to rack up hundreds of millions of riln for grinding

The death system is still due for an overhaul. So is mining. I belong to a guild with no tasks or unique abilities (but a whole lot of style). Firearms are due for some tweaking. There's been talking about updating the justice system. And didn't Jirato recently post something about 2500 bug reports? None of this is to say that GMs should be working on one thing or another: We only have four GMs (and a handful of builders), and I've learned that it's better that people work on things as they're interested in them. Otherwise GMing becomes too much like work and people start burning out.

What I am saying is that just because one thing isn't being worked on doesn't mean that nothing is being done, and that in the grand scheme of things the cost of dye or the weight of pelts is minor. Leatherworking works. It isn't perfect (and Rias has already said that the GMs aren't happy with it so we don't need to convince them of this), but it works: We can make things with it and those things have a purpose. That's good enough.

[xavier]

I know from experience having been a GM on another mud that manpower is limited and that more than a single thing is worked on at a time. The point I was trying to make was more adequately phrased by the way you said things. I'd just much rather see fundamental issues fixed than minor things.

Like I'd really hate to have a guild ability that didn't work because of some superbug that was number 2237 on the to do list because someone wanted, let's say, lead taken out of the available metals because it doesn't have any uses.

This is just a hypothetical example, I've never personally experienced this on Clok.

[Elystole]

I know from experience having been a GM on another mud that manpower is limited and that more than a single thing is worked on at a time. The point I was trying to make was more adequately phrased by the way you said things. I'd just much rather see fundamental issues fixed than minor things.

I wasn't disagreeing with you. Just elaborating in case some people still didn't get it. Sorry that wasn't clear.

[Kent]

The economics on a game like this are never "fixed." We aren't dealing with a closed system of finite resources. What we have is a collection of generators and sinks. When I make 20,000 riln in a single day (Yes, I have done this. Repeatedly. No, it isn't hard, and it doesn't require a lot of skill.) that riln doesn't come out of the global CLOK riln supply; it is just generated. When I spend riln with an NPC, it does not rejoin some pool. They do not hold it to spend it later. It is simply deleted; it disappears in a sink.

Whoa...whoa! I was never asking for anything that complex. I was asking for some basic, common-sense pricing to take place.

Common-sense things like an exquisite quality pair of gloves is going to buy and sell for more at the pawnshop than an average-quality pair, which in turn is going to buy and sell for more than a crude pair, instead of all three priced the same.

For a crafted item to not sell for less than it's raw materials are worth sans labour...for example, two pieces of leather are needed to go into a leather flask, said leather will sell at the market for about 15 riln a piece...and the finished product with skilled labour currently sells for (much) less than 30 riln.

For a bloodglass greatsword looted from a mob to buy and sell for at least 5 times what a steel greatsword will buy and sell for, all other things being equal. Not a flat rate of 25/75 riln for each. 25/75 should be the starting price for a copper shortsword and prices go up from there depending on metal and size of weapon, as they do in non-pawn-shops.

(It seems jewellry has varying prices depending on metal and quality already, if we could bring this in for other items.)

For pawnshops to cease from buying holey socks, tattered pants, and other ruined and unsaleable items; and to instead begin buying crafted flatbows (of at least average quality, perhaps), furniture and chests built through carpentry, and other crafted items from players which they are currently 'not interested in' when you try to sell them.

For a copper shovel in a shop to not be priced at 4 times or more than the price of a steel rapier or a steel mattock. Who would buy a copper shovel for 500 when you can travel a bit and buy a steel mattock for 150?

Also for very tough and leader-type mobs to have riln on them not in the 62 riln range but more like 450 riln. They are that successful, and yet broke?


These sorts of pricing changes was what I was asking for...not a vastly complex economic network.