by tyrtix » Thu Jul 20, 2017 6:18 am
Having a decent grasp on some of the other games like hafen, i can say that there are few differences in them that makes markets work sometimes better, sometimes worse than the ones we have here.
I won't stand with the basic idea here because of one thing: this game is really "all made by players", and i like very much this concept.
Wurm Online have something like the OP said: starter spawner "towns" are all player-made, but they contain two traders that have store items that can be bought directly with the ingame currency. In my experience, up now, it does not work very well: players generally ignore the sold items with a very few exceptions, given by items that are both very expensive and useful for players that can/want to buy them and are very, very useful in the game, sometimes are uniques that may give a real hedge to players, but will cost a LOT of money. Wurm btw have a great difference with Haven: the world servers are static, they NEVER get resets, so ppl buying that kind of items feels safe that they will use them as long as they still want to play. Salem too have such items, and ppl will actually fight for them and sell them back, creating sorts of black markets, wich is, in long terms, not so good for the server economy.
Another thing is the safety: most of the mechanics in the game really makes players so paranoid that in fact one of the abused additions in unofficial clients are...hearth teleports when you see another player. Maybe implementing some kind of "guard" npc's inside kingdoms or villages, even by a building and upkeep requests (maybe in food?) that will patrol a small area may help A LOT the markets. Simply make them work if the shield is up, and no pvp damage will be done.
In the end, the "market" in the game and trading.
I already spoke some time ago (maybe few months, even years) about that. Simply put: any market with NO, or little consumable item is doomed to fail in that.
I think the devs made a good spot on when they added new stats and skills, so to differentiate what the players could really do... except that the game makes everyone bots easily all the alts and all the skills they want, making even better to do that than having a single toon be very good at making few things: nothing beats having two or three toons that all can study and raise different sets of skills.
Wurm incentivate alt creations, Salem a lot less (thou still do that, but ends up in making ppl do very specialized toons, and very few of them). Wurm devs/gm's are very active at tracking down botters, and ALL of them gets banned by the game in what seems likely a day or two of botting activity. Salem instead disincentivate the alt making by requiring a LOT of curio items to raise an alt, in fact, often is so many of them, that you want to use the rare ones ONLY on your main, very different than haven, for example).
Basically, IF a player have a ton of things to do with less skill needed, it will specialize his toon to do few things, but better and to get high-end items. Food now is in good shape, and there is room even for more specializations about food in Haven, and maybe by having some more different kinds of food in some specific fields will make it even better.
Curio system actually works, but imho barely: either is "put everything in the study thing" and let him do the magic, or for the most advanced players, sort the curios for lp/hour gain...then put them in the study desk and do the magic.
I know, that's not the place but here's an idea that just escaped the black hole i have inside my skull about curio: make inherent bonuses about them.
You study a curio related/built with a certain skill? When you finish it, you have a bonus point pool that you may use to raise that skill: a cone cow for example will still give, for example, 50 lp at 10ql, and 10 lp that can be used to raise survival skill, and only that one.
Also, you can set the curios to give bonus lp if the studied ones comes from a specific set, like while you study all toys curios, they give a bit more lp (not sure is doable btw...)
Some tools may get damage while used, thus lowering their ql, symbel items may wear down even a bit more at high ql (and get rid of the spell please) and should have more variety and maybe even be able to increase the table food slots. Making them a little less ql based and a little more variability based could be interesting: make a larger area for symbel in the table, make the items gives less bonus per se, this will give the effect of needing more various items for getting same bonus.
