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Comments
It's not cool. Not cool at all.
Oakstone (Achaean Duiran, sort of) used to ban mass salve, and set prices for herbs/elixirs/salves. Forest enemy people that broke the rules.
Sentinels/Druids, pre-Duiran, tried to do something similar here. My char, Irru, almost got outguilded (without class) standing for free trade, and would have if Arafel hadn't agreed with me.
The syssin used to ban certain venoms (including one of the vlock ones) and set prices for stuff.
Cool? Not really.
Been there, done that. It's stupid, it's only fun for the people making lots of gold or benefiting in some other way (like being the only class that can vlock, or being able to yank/grab anyone into traps because mass salve barely existed outside of the guild. The odd rogue would get a few vials into the wild, sure.
I wonder how that would pan out in current days. Poor @Calipso? Lol?
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
I think there is also an issue with market research, though. I mean, I make an effort to keep each of the shops I look after stocked with different things, and I make sure there's at least one type of thing someone would definitely need to buy (field gear, food, enchantments, curatives) as opposed to things that people would just like to buy (jewelry, drinks, Yet Another Ballgown). There's shops though that have had the same wares quietly for what seems like an eternity, or have barely anything on the shelves, and I'd really like to see their numbers on their sales. I think I'm going off on a tangent.
The problem with the underground this and mafia cartel that is, I would bet good money that a lot of the people with shops are the kind of people who just want to bumble along quietly and do their crafting. Which means that the instant some kind of interesting thing like that was enacted, at least one person would feel they were being harrassed for enjoying their game in their own way, and I think that's not a place we want to go.
That being said, I am not saying that there needs to be a mafia cartel of "Set your prices this way." merely saying that that is how prices work when it comes to undercutting to the point of it being -BELOW- what you spent to make. I'm obviously not going to sell an elegant vial of rain (Zsadist™) for 40 gold, if someone is selling a wooden vial in the shape of a dragon (Zsadist™) for 25 gold in one of their 2 or 3 shops. Of course, they could do the same in a single shop, but you have more flexibility of prices with multiple shops.
I do try to keep some variety in my shops personally, and for the most part, beyond curatives, I try to avoid stocking the same things in multiple shops in the same cities. That said, I don't feel that imposing limits on variety within a specific shop is the way to go. As long as I have at least a substantial percentage of the base stockroom space stocked, and I'm paying my taxes, I don't think it's unreasonable to leave me to my own devices therein.
My rage, is the unrelated surge of idiocy and borderline ooc nonsense that appears to have risen in Aetolia of late.
ETA: And-or the BLATANT ooc nonsense. Come at me bro? Really? Eesh.
- Its primary function is stocking goods for the syssin at a really good price, profit is a secondary consideration.
- Anything stocked that we have to purchase commodities for -is- stocked at a profit, albeit a small one.
- Anything stocked that's donated is sold at a close, but lower rate than the competition. See above.
Shops are not required to be run at any particular market rate, they are not required to operate at a profit, nor is there a rule about not undercutting (which actually Moirean's shop was pretty much doing to everyone else until the Syssin shop undercut her in some areas). The syssin shop -is- operating at a profit, incidentally. Nearly everything in it is donated. I am doing most of the donating. A lot of people run shops for RP reasons, if I were to purchase a shop for my private use, for example, I'd be thinking of it as an investment that would allow me to have a place to stock my own designs. It would be RP, not profit, that I'd be investing in.
There are many, many easier/faster/less tedious ways to make money in Aetolia.
Edit - My rage is that people still argue shops shop be a limited thing, despite all the ranting here. The limited shop creates solid economy argument is clearly nonsense. So can we just bypass that and open up more shops already, to allow an expansion of custom crafted goods and make it not be a crazy challenging process to acquire one. The last shop in Spines went for crazy amounts of money.
Also rage that my desire to play has dramatically waned again. That I've had to deal enough backbiting (not directed at me), drama, nonsense, and childish behavior that it's -hard- for me to want to RP with people, because I just don't wanna get drug into any nonsense. I feel like I should be screening people OOC before I interact with them. I play other text games. This is not an issue there. People act like adults. Why can't IRE players act like adults? Blech.
I don't feel like it is absurdly restrictive, the way we did it. If you're going to occupy limited real estate within the City, you should be at the very least providing for the city and giving people a reason to -come- to the city, to generate revenue, RP, interaction, attention, what have you.
Isn't that a really fine line? How many shops would be empty under too strict of provisions? I'm not saying you guys didn't do it right as it sounds like from your post you have but how did you define those lines?
Just curiosity really, I can't understand how a game where you have unlimited means of gold not to mention legacy gold, and where one can factor in that you can purchase creds with IRL currency and then sell them for gold... how is that even possible to regulate? I'm also not an economics nerd or anything so, that might be part of this curiosity and my excuse for any potentially dumb questions/observations.
It was a process of discussion about what was reasonable to maintain/acquire through tradeskills and those shopkeepers who by chance do not trade, and what seemed a reasonable entry level of variety to keep city shops from going stagnant and help reinforce the city's authority to yoink things if they go neglected outside of technical tax paying.
Still. I think shops are perfectly fine as is.
ETA: That is to say, their numbers, and general variety across the board.
They're not without flaws, but I don't think those, which are the two biggest gripes raised by this thread, are actually problems.
Message #17059 Sent By: Oleis Received On: 1/03/2014/17:24
"If it makes you feel better, just checking your artifact list threatens to crash my mudlet."
That said, personally, I think the biggest problem shops face is that there's not anywhere near enough room in them, even with a level 3 artifact. >.>
And yeah, I don't even bother looking at an entire wares list. I usually know what I'm looking for when I go into a shop and will just use the directory to find it.
Tbh, if being over the limit didn't stop some things from showing up on the directory, I wouldn't care, since doing 'wares pants' will show all pants regardless of if the shop is over limit, unless you have so many pairs of -pants- that -that's- over the limit.
I do agree that there's been a really annoying trend over the past few years of undercutting that has led us to this spot where stuff sells for basically 1g each. The recent concoctions change has only made that a LOT worse. I can harvest 12,500 herbs a single day. That's just way too many. I don't really have much hope for fixing the market (especially for things that have free costs - the baseline price for those is what people value their time at, as time is the prime cost there). There's always going to be someone who's willing to undercut super low for a short term gain, even if it means less money in the long run because it drives the average value down.
I still think it's silly to price stuff below the cost to make it. I'm trying to remember what game it was that had this, but I remember there being a minimum vale for selling things in a game I played, ie you couldn't price stuff below the vendor/crafting costs. I always thought that was an interesting way to help guide players away from messing up baseline prices for everyone.