IDEAS FOR RYZOM

Title says it all.

Currently, the NPCs giving missions act as a veritable bank, handing out money to whoever is ready to work for them, regardless of how actually useful is the work. Overseers would accept items 24/7 if crafters were to give them stuff, regardless of an actual supply/demand chain.

If the dapper is meant to be worthless in design, as a means to enable everyone's freedom (as I heard it explained at least once) - then feel free to ignore the topic. However, if the dapper is indeed meant to hold value (a scenario I definitely find more interesting), then a regular money sink must be introduced. Teleports and tools, while achieving this partially, might not be enough; they are indeed expensive for a beginner, but for any experienced crafter/digger they are cheap. One-time sinks (like apartments) are not enough either.

Keeping in mind that players aligning themselves to a nation get access to much better money rewards from New Horizons and a much higher amount of faction points, a counterbalance would be needed. Compulsory dapper payments each Jena Year would be interesting to see, and if the player defaults, a slow decay of their fame could follow, even down into a negative if needed. Implementation needs to take care of players going off for extended periods of time, of course ...

I'm still debating internally if owning property in a city (as a neutral) counts as a taxable thing, probably yes. Similarly, guilds owning guild halls (even if neutral). Not going to suggest amounts, they are for the dev team to set up according to their internal calculations regarding balancing. However, if possible, I would suggest adapting said taxes to the context; number of players living in that city, number of people doing overseer missions, etc. Living in a sparsely populated city should definitely get you lower taxes.

Suggestions / rebuttals welcome.

Mjollren --

Not picking on you personally, but you brought this up and it's a pet peeve of mine. The whole question of "trying to make the dapper worth something."

Suggestion to the devs and players: Please stop trying to create a monetary economy in a situation where there is an infinite supply of raw material.  The problem is not in the money supply. The problem is that for all intents and purposes the supply of *everything* is infinite. The sources of harvested material and of looted materials is inexhaustible.

In such a situation, the economy cannot be "monetary" unless artificial restrictions such as exhorbitantly priced tools, taxation, etc. are installed.  Such installations will always benefit the established player because he or she will be able to easily exploit the exceptions left in to allow new players to enter.

In my opinion there was nothing wrong with the economy prior to the merge, contrary to the statements by various people.  Dappers were meaningless, it's true, but there was a thriving barter and gift economy.  It is not necessary to have money to have an economy.

For real-world examples of gift and barter economies, see those of the Pacific Northwest tribes in North America. Or tribal economies in any other place where there were no rare raw materials that were used by the people there.

When everyone is rich, no one needs to be poor.

 -- Bittty.

Mats below choice are pretty much grind. Even choice, you can make some average items with them, but the real fun and interesting stats come from excellent and supremes. And while 6 crafters can all simultaneously do the same mission to get the same dappers, 6 diggers will "steal" mats from each other as they dig the same spot deposit with limited resources. However, you do have a point .. on a low enough population, even excellents are virtually endless.

I do maintain, however, that dappers must forcefully dissapear somehow, just like items forcefully dissapear eventually through usage and decay.

I am all for implementing things that align games more to reality, but you mentioned it in the above quote, there need to be safeguards for players that do not play 24/7.
Maybe a breakdown of hours played by week (month even) and deduction of dapper accordingly.

Yet, I may also raise caution to the thought behind it of chars having "lots of dapper". I do not fame for money, only when I get down to 200k (20x roots porting), and even that I find tedious.
Bear in mind most players get lots of money from the professions (600k per profession/day I was told), but this is heavily depended on the fame, whereas missions give less money and often need specialised skills (e.g. level 230 in HA or so).
Call me lazy, but the last thing I want is constantly farming for fame/professions next to me limited time for playing.

If you want to implement taxes, than you need to implement a skilled based fame independent income stream along side it, e.g. a kind of skill-profession guild (not like the player guild) that you can align with for one of your chosen skills, e.g. jewel craft. Then you will have a hidden daily task/mission of crafting lets say 6 jewels a day, and if you do you get a dapper bonus equalling the tax or just minimal above.

profession with 99 fame in a race gives 10k per item at 35 items per day (350k)

that's usually enough to get me by on tps and shopping but it still feels like a job to do that, and dapper missions, so i try not to do them =)

Razrah, you point out another problem with imposing dynamic dapper sinks. Easier to just not worry about it from a programming standpoint.

Mjollren -- there are already dapper sinks, some large some small. Teleport pacts and charging enchanted weapons are the latter. OP wars and Guldhalls are the former. The main thing I'm trying to say is: The dapper is inherently worthless in the face of an infinite supply of raw materials. The only kinds of materials that come close to balance with the (craft/use/wear out) cycle are supreme boss mats, OP mats, and NPC boss crystals and plans. ( I suspect a few specific exe mats from Nameds might come close, too, but am less certain.) Even there, the mats are created faster than they can be used once the initial pit of demand is filled.

As I said before, when everyone is rich, no one needs to be poor.

-- Bittty.

nod, my understanding is the biggest dapper drain is ops

make that more expensive if you want =)