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I know it doesn't help this time, but its the best advice I can give. Sorry.
Let each organization, should it choose, opt to purchase and stand as proprietor for -ONE- shop, and add a position as Quartermaster in the organization to handle it. Then put a restrictions on players to own -ONE- shop each, without being able to let others handle their affairs should they go inactive.
Date: 4/22/2015 at 16:46
From: Razmael, the Synthesist
To : Everyone
Subj: Player activity changes
Hey folks,
In the effort of putting more of the game in control of the players who are truly active and
actually playing, I'm introducing a couple of changes.
a) I've shifted all election vote weights down by 1 point. This now means that people with < 5 hours
of average play time over a five week period will now have an effective vote weight of 0 and will be
unable to vote.
b) Shop taxes can now only be paid by the person who actually owns the shop.
No doubt these will be some controversial changes, but I believe it's in our interests to not have
people who are not actively playing monopolizing aspects of the game.
Penned by my hand on the 25th of Ios, in the year 447 MA.
Shop taxes already can only be paid by the owner of the shop. However, it doesn't address the person who logs in pays taxes and goes back to being inactive.
There's also a shop that has sat closed since Esterport opened, because the player no longer plays, that hasn't been put up for auction yet.
Most cities already have a policy of one personal shop per person. Except Esterport and maybe the refugee camp. I don't really go there so, can't be sure about that one. But people do generally have multiple shops, just in different cities. Not sure we need to limit a person to a single personal shop in the entire game though.
That said, even with the gold nerfs, plenty of things either cost MORE gold or the same. Amulets still cost 15k gold, comms have been increased in price (iirc, I might be wrong, but I don't really watch them because I'm not a crafter), credit prices have gone up by 2k (~6k per average) since the gold changes, and overall all ease of gold has dropped away from hunting to questing instead (while quests still take anywhere from 1-2 hours to repop their quest)... but people don't want to quest because it takes more time/patience than pressing X til xorani is dead.
There's nothing we can really do to change any of this until the amount of gold in the game starts dropping. So, until then, sit tight and relax... or go out and do some questing/hunting/etc to gain some gold.
For example: Waterwalking enchantment requires 1 elemental ice, 2 gold and 1 silver.
If you purchase this from the cheapest village commodity shop, available to everyone, it will cost 333+(171x2)+83=758 gold to make one.
Still, I see people selling them for 300, taking a loss with each sale. Yes, some commodities are cheaper to get from your city, but the difference is not huge. I know I wouldn't be able to sell it for less than 700 as a Spirean if I want to make a profit. It's a bit frustrating and I can only hope that those other people will either run out of commodities or change their price policies so my own prices seem a bit more reasonable.
Another reason why I believe things are so cheaply priced is because of how inflated the market is with them. I can go into any city and see 8 shops selling enchantments, 20 shops selling curatives, and almost EVERY shop selling some sort of frilly/lace/combat shirt/pants/clothes combination. It all goes back to Supply/Demand 101. Unless there becomes a point where people ARENT selling the same things as everyone else, I do not think pricing will ever change.
Tack that onto the fact that there is literally 0 worthwhile things to spend gold on, there's no reason to SELL credits on market for gold. Which is also why credit prices are still so high even after gold nerfs.
Re: Gold and goldsinks. My shops are now my only real source of income, because I've always disliked bashing, and I dislike questing even more, if that's possible. I play this game primarily for RP, I don't have the time or patience to deal with quests or bashing for gold, especially when the only thing there is that I need to spend it on is comms and I can't even do that because the commodity market is fucked.
I think the game should be playable on all levels without excessive grinding. You can't combat in some classes because of the wood shortage. You can't craft if you have woodcraft for the same reason, or in furniture because of the asinine shift to the furniture trade. Soon you won't be able to combat at all for the lack of vials if you don't have artifact versions because the stockpiles those of us who craft and sell these things have is going to run out. Cloth is short, too, so that's tailoring and bandages. If this is not addressed, we will get to the point where the only thing we can do is sit around and RP, with no clothes, no furniture, no props, no shops and rather limited fun.
Aet is supposed to be pay for perks, not 'pay to be able to do anything basic at all' unless that model changed somewhere and no one told us. Because right now, to make a successful newbie, you either have to buy credits with real money and sell them for gold, or bash/quest for a couple reallife days just to acquire basic curatives, and another couple days for a semi-decent* outfit. *Here defined as 'acceptable to most orgs'. That used to be accomplishable in a couple hours without outside assistance.
In general, I think the gold drops were reduced too far. I think the ways to get gold are now too limited. Not very many people -like- to quest. There are plenty who do, but they always did, and there are many who prefer other methods. I think removing/severely limiting those other methods was a mistake.
We do need goldsinks, but screwing the comm market wasn't the way to obtain one. I'm sitting on millions of gold across 21 characters, with only a couple of them having little-to-no gold, those being much less played than the others. I used to buy chests every time I had the gold for it. The prizebags aren't worth it considering the increased likelihood I'll get shit I don't want or need and the very low chance I'll get something that I actually want. I'll buy credits on occasion, if they're low enough, but they usually aren't. We need something we can buy that's worth the gold spent so we have stuff to spend it on. Not necessarily talking a chest equiv that fixes the problems Raz had with the other one, though that'd work, but we need -something- to spend our gold on.
My two sovereigns, anyhow.
Pay for perks/pay is a little different than, 'I want to basically do nothing but write emotes and make gold from it.'
I can see where you're coming from, but at the end of the day you're going to have to be willing to do -some- of those things that players have available to them to make gold. Bash. Quest. Involve yourself so much in politics or city work that you get paid for it. Something. Not haven rp.
The gold is out there. And just like in rl, you gotta go get it.
That being said, in the spirit of fairness, since there ISN'T really an economy, I'm not exactly hurting on supplies. Just grumpy I have to do extra work to supply equipment to people when there's really nothing in it for me other than the thought that if everyone quits forging, the game's going to die.
The first part was responding to the people saying shops aren't profitable, and also not available enough. Was just saying they can be profitable and offering a fix to the availability. I spend my effort for gold in the aforementioned shops and that works for me. But it's not an avenue that everyone can take, or even that just anyone that wants to can take, which is why I offered an easy solution to the problem. One that also makes the company money, at that.
I'm not asking to get gold off of exclusively RPing, I'm saying that I shouldn't have to spend ridiculous amounts of time doing other things to acquire the basic stuff needed for RP. Or bashing or combat, for that matter.
The rest, tl;dr: If you don't have a shop, gold is too hard to get and we have extremely limited options by which to do so. Even if you have a shop, unless you've stockpiled comms. And yes, we need more goldsinks.
1) There is a ylem bonus that you can get 30k gold from every 12 days (1 season IG) IF you have 750k gold in the bank. 750k gold is NOT hard to get. What's hard is leaving it in there to accrue said gold.
2) Ylem mines. You get 1000 gold every time you do it. It takes all of 5 minutes to do it. That's 30k in a month. And would LITERALLY take 5 minutes... if not quicker depending on the quest you get. Its not hard... a level 1 newb can do it.
In any given month, you can easily make 90k (60k of it, you didn't have to do ANYTHING other than be active). Not only that, but this 90k is gained so easily that you don't have to stop ANY rp/emote throwing to do it.
Rashar hit the nail on the head with his post. There is gold to be made out there, just be active. You don't make money sitting on your ass in bed, in your house, watching The Bachelor. You have to have a job to make money. This is no different.
I've got nothing to say on the comm market since I buy artifact everything (I have no idea how the comm availability even work)... except for bandages. However, @Toz is also right. If people stop forging (right now there are only 4 forgers in the game: Urial, Toz, Solaria, and Rasani), the game will die because weapon classes (Sentinel, Teradrim, Praenomen, Templar, Carnifex, Syssin) will no longer be able to be played. This needs to be addressed*.
*Note: If I didn't have to give up Reanimation, I'd have forging as well and be a forger too, but that's a separate issue altogether.
HOWEVER, there is an issue with goldsinks. Cryptics were nice but the ability to turn gold directly into credits was a huge issue, but the prizebags are absolutely garbage. (See my post or others on an adjustable fix here)
In any case, that's my spiel.
Yeah. Comms market= BROKEN AS HELL.
As a person who is now outside of a city, I find it almost impossible to find ANYTHING as far as wood or steel goes. Either more villages stocking both plz, more villages with commshops that can sell both, or maybe influx this material in a way that isn't immediately... I dunno.. hoardable? I am not targetting anyone in particular because I dunno who does it, but I feel like hoarding is the only real way to make sure anyone has any comms, because if you're not sitting on top of a commshop 24/7 until you fill your cache, you're not going to get any amount of comms to keep you going, for any price that'd be viable as far as marketing goes.
Tl;Dr: Please PLEASE fix the commodity scarcity, I feel like leather is the only comm not frantically scarce as heck -_-"
But really, my statement on the gold thing is more that it shouldn't be as hard/time-consuming as it is to get basic stuff without the assistance of others. More in the way of other people than myself--I'm lazy, I just liquidate credits. But I know people who have tried to play, who quit playing because it takes too long to start anything, even something as simple as a basic outfit and a basic standard set of bashing cures as far as gold goes.
Eta: There are limited forgers, I agree with that bit, and ideally we need more of them 'cause not having them is problematic, as stated. Though I forge, too, I don't really focus on stats at all, I stock the first round of whatever I get when I forge which makes most of it less useful for combat unless I get lucky.
Edit: all I really want is to not have to scrounge for comma when I need one. No matter the cost.
Village A is a neutral village known for its abundance of wood. During the last war or something Enorian signed a trade agreement with the village through some mechanical means of alignment or something. Who knows. Bloodloch can no longer buy wood from their shop. BUT there's 2 options available for Bloodloch. They can raid the village and kill the lumberjacks/workers and steal x amount of comms, or they could do a daily quest of some sort to sabotage the comm supply and make off with some wood.
Similarly, Enorian could defend the workers during a raid. If successful they get a bonus to wood supply from that village. Or they could do daily quests or something to help increase wood supply.
Or something. Idk, that may not be super clear but I'm on my phone and typing is hard. Gives interaction to the comm market beyond camping shops and has avenues for pkers and non pkers to help. Win win for everyone.