Shops

[Erik_the_Blue]

This thread really isn't about NPCs, by the way, it's about shops.

Agreed. However, there seems to be a consensus here that shops shouldn't be self-serve; there needs to be a character operating the shop, be it a PC or NPC. If this is the case, then the shopkeeper character is a relevant part of the discussion, as well as what may or may not be done to that character by others. I realize that in my last post I argued against the secondary benefits (and costs) being a consideration when choosing an implementation to address a problem (when those secondary effects relate to a primary problem of their own), so this may sound hypocritical, but I'd also argue that it would be naive to be willfully ignorant of those secondary costs and benefits, regardless of whether or not they are better related to a different problem.

Lastly, Erik, I'm not sure why you are arguing against the idea. As you can see, a lot of players like and support the idea, and think it would add to the game. Would you stop playing, or consider it a game-ruining feature if this was implemented?

On the contrary, I recognize that player-to-player trade is an essential part of games like this, and support trying to ease the ability of players to engage in such behavior. What I am arguing about is not the idea, but the method in which the idea is implemented. Even then, I am not so opposed to the method suggested by the OP that I would immediately leave the game should it be implemented. I do believe that multiple methods should be considered when approaching any problem instead of merely accepting the first popular proposal to come along. This is even more true for this game as it is still in alpha: The problem is not so severe that it needs to be addressed immediately, and any solution is bound to have long lasting effects on the development of the game and its community. It is important to consider those effects so that the solution chosen is that which is most beneficial in the long run. The alternative is to chose an adequate solution to address the problem in the short term and later devise a superior solution to address the problem in the long term, only to find that switching from the adequate solution to the superior one is made difficult due to inertia, i.e. existing systems needing to be modified or replaced, players against changes in general, economic shocks due to the changes, etc.

To put it simply, I want to see shops implemented in-game in some form, but I don't want to see them implemented by some hasty bootstrap measure that potentially inhibits the growth and development of the game in some other way. I am not yet convinced that the method proposed by the OP introduces the least significant barriers to the game's future development while simultaneously providing the greatest potential for modification should a more permanent solution be devised.

[Jfloyd]

I think the best way to implement this is: (Loftar, I appologize)
Have a menu come up when you right click the Shop.
Have it show a list, or inventory of all the goods the shop has.
You then click on the item you want, and like the building menu, and request for goods is opened.
The item can't be taken until the right ammount of coins is put into that, and the Ok button is pressed. Then the person will recive the item, and the coins/bars will be put in a coffer. Whole chests could also be placed in there, or maybe a new item, which has been asked for, a crate. Shops could hold say 32 slots for items, and warehouses could hold 20 slots for crates. On roll over there should be a list of what each crate contains, and its price.

[Vanigo]

Or maybe purses could be implemented at the same time, and shops could just pull money directly from the purse?

[zdazzle]

I don't want to see NPC's period. As you go from a PLAYER-DRIVEN game to a NPC-DRIVEN game. Where YOU DON'T EVEN ASSOCIATE WITH OTHER PLAYERS, and YOUR NPCS DO ALL OF YOUR WORK. Hopefully You'll get this before the game becomes generic mmo #32 thanks to player stupidity and laziness.

There is a economy, and its doing just fine. Get over it. Nobody wants your shitty little farm produce items. So get mining.

If you want a coin based economy. Start getting people to endorse coins, people are reluctant right now. Stop asking for Jorb and Lothar to hold your hand. etc

Now that I see who the op is. You live in fucking bottleneck. People like Blaze and the laketown inhabitants trade all the time, And look at how well they are doing. They are rich, and powerful and can probobly roll you and your entire settlement fast.

MOST OF THE NORTH trades with each other. I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. WE don't talk about our trades we just move them.

Fuck. Why don't you work with what you have instead of begging for help. For dwarf fortress players you are pathetic.

I'm no economist, BUT its not that hard to start a coin economy. First off start mass producing coins. Second off start bulk trading and endorsing them with generous amounts of resources. Once everyone has stockpiles of coins and has good feelings about them, and theres lots of places that take them. BAM you have a coin based economy, Object value will find its own way. There will be many values for one object but they will slowly surround single numbers as people find a general value based on work for objects.

Doesnt want to see NPC because griefing would be too hard for him then, we wouldnt want that would we? And I think NPC's are needed, how else are we supposed to protect our town for griefers/ thiefs. Perhaps with a high enough skill level people could sneak past guards and not be seen, etc. But I doubt any one cares what YOU think.

[provo]

I like the idea, and is essential for building a working economy. I would have sold meat for bread any day back when i was a hunter. The only issue is that i would not want it to be infinitely secure from theft but that another issue.

the main issue is the player stupidity on this issue. Ie the NO NPC camp. Everyone likes this game because its player run. But.

The only reason we want a NPC vender it to provide a tool to allow trades when players are offline. Cause we all live in the real world.

We could do it with magical chests but that would be stupid. So we have given the magic chest a body and cloths so it doesn’t seem as automatic. And provides a rational as too how this trade works. For those who oppose NPC would you consider magical chests too allow trade to occur when players are offline?

More generally JTG you are not a economist. . .

1. No trade.
Their may be an economy but there is not trade. As you said no one wants his “shitty farm produce” because everyone produces their own items.

But because everyone produces their own items, there is no trade. Because there is no trade every one produces their own items. And so on. I don’t have time and too angery after reading this thread to explain why this game isn’t reproducing real world economies right now.... but i will.


2. Chash economy

a. he production of a cash trade system is not so easy. Once you mass produce coins, they have flooded the market. And become worthless. And will continue to be as players produce their own coins. Since there is no regulatory authority of any kind.

b. Then you want us to start trading? For what? Everyone makes their own items in this game...... Trade for the shit load of coins i already have and are worthless to me?

c. Endorse the coins? I assume you mean back the currency them like countries back them with gold reserves. So we going to have a massive stockpile of tanning tubs? Or steel? Given the player theft. Maybe we need a NPC army base like the U.S. treasury has defending its own gold reserves.

d. Other then the above suggestion you claim that people can just will a currency economy into existence.

Additionally player enjoy this game because the dev’s utilise player imput. We are not whining about problems wanting help, we are suggesting improvements for the game.

Who gives a fuck who has played the game longer? Ideas should all be up for debate.

But shops build by players and a designed to allow offline trade. Some NPC interface makes the shop sensible and better then a magical chest. I however like the crime elements of the game, and think some sort of crime potential in a shop would be good.

[JTG]

As long as there is a extremely high crime potential. The only way I'd accept the shop idea is if it is very easy to rob shops. That way you don't have people using them as storage, and they have to at least watch it a bit. Personally you could always make a shop facility ingame right now.

You always have the apples for oranges forum. List off tons of prices you offer for buying and selling. Theres also the ability to make a RoB trading post. Make a centralized commodity ordering area. Make lots of parchment and allow people to put down their offers and selling and buying prices, along with advertisements. You can also peddle goods here, and it won't be boring if theres someone there to talk to.

Theres plenty of room for making shops ingame. You all haven't even explored ideas used successfully today for ingame usage, like Bazaars and such. Not to mention one next to the RoB will imprint the idea into newbies. Afterall this is a alpha and the more people supporting a idea gains it strength over the longterm.

[Vanigo]

c. Endorse the coins? I assume you mean back the currency them like countries back them with gold reserves. So we going to have a massive stockpile of tanning tubs? Or steel? Given the player theft. Maybe we need a NPC army base like the U.S. treasury has defending its own gold reserves.

Actually, since coins can be melted back into bars, they don't need to be backed by any outside agency. It's the upside of using valuable metals as currency.

[provo]

c. Endorse the coins? I assume you mean back the currency them like countries back them with gold reserves. So we going to have a massive stockpile of tanning tubs? Or steel? Given the player theft. Maybe we need a NPC army base like the U.S. treasury has defending its own gold reserves.

Actually, since coins can be melted back into bars, they don't need to be backed by any outside agency. It's the upside of using valuable metals as currency.

thanks for pointing that out.... I don't actually think that this currency needs to be "endorsed" or "Backed" i was pointing out what was a pretty poor suggestion at making a currency based trading system

utilising a rare metal is the obvious bace of coins.... but this game hasn't got a barter economy yet. Everyone is living in a subsistance economy (and may trade some items). so the issue of currency is abit too early.

You always have the apples for oranges forum. List off tons of prices you offer for buying and selling. Theres also the ability to make a RoB trading post. Make a centralized commodity ordering area. Make lots of parchment and allow people to put down their offers and selling and buying prices, along with advertisements. You can also peddle goods here, and it won't be boring if theres someone there to talk to.

Theres plenty of room for making shops ingame. You all haven't even explored ideas used successfully today for ingame usage, like Bazaars and such. Not to mention one next to the RoB will imprint the idea into newbies. Afterall this is a alpha and the more people supporting a idea gains it strength over the longterm.

the point of the shop is too stream line the proccess, and make in game barter a simple proccess.

As long as there is a extremely high crime potential. The only way I'd accept the shop idea is if it is very easy to rob shops. That way you don't have people using them as storage, and they have to at least watch it a bit. Personally you could always make a shop facility ingame right now.

If the trade system does not have high secuirty then player will not utilize it. secuirty in economic life is needed for player to take on the economic activity. Maybe a permenate stone shop will have high secuity and a little road side stall has little security....

[Erik_the_Blue]

A couple points I feel I should reiterate:

I had intended for my modification of the OP's suggestion to provide a middle ground between the "NPC" and "no NPC" arguments, wherein the PC effectively becomes the NPC discussed whenever the player is logged off (provided certain conditions are met, but those are details of the implementation, not the general method). While I am opposed to NPCs, I also realize that they are essential for roles that the players cannot be expected to fill, such as those that require a 24-hour presence in the game world. Because of this, I would prefer NPCs that are minimally sufficient for filling their given role, but NPCs that are more sufficient (up to a point) are better than no NPCs at all.

While I am not completely against the OP's suggestion, I am concerned about the requirement that these shopkeeper NPCs should cost coins as it potentially creates a circular problem: In order to open a shop, one requires coins; in order to acquire coins, one requires a shop (or the ability to produce coins, or the ability to steal coins, or successfully engage in trade with another online player). The obvious way around this would be to allow shops to buy goods (effectively selling coins), but it would be imperative that this feature is activated at the same time as, or prior to, the activation of the selling feature. Otherwise, shops become limited to those who do not require trade to obtain coins.

Actually, since coins can be melted back into bars, they don't need to be backed by any outside agency. It's the upside of using valuable metals as currency.

Speaking from the historical real world perspective, the average person did not have the ability to determine the weight and metal content of any coin. For example, you may have a "gold coin", but when you go to have that coin melted down, whether or not that coin weights, say, 4.2g or 4.3g, or consists of 97% or 98% gold, will affect the value of the end product. Furthermore, after melting several coins so that you now have a small ingot of "mostly gold", who are you going to trade it with? The average person will still have no means of verifying the value of the ingot, so you'll either have to dupe someone into accepting your stated value of the ingot, severely undervalue the ingot, trade the ingot for more coins, or bring in a third-party (for a fee) that can verify the value of the ingot.

The point is bars of precious metals (and unmarked coins) have uncertain values due to the lack of standardization. This makes the backing of coins by outside agencies all the more important, since people who trust the agency and believe the risk of receiving a counterfeit to be very small will accept the stated value of a stamped coin. Furthermore, the value of a coin is generally not going to match the value of the metals in the coin as currency and commodity markets move independently of each other, so coins can be more valuable than the sum of their parts.

Of course, none of this applies in-game since we can't affect the weight or composition of coins or pass them off as being of a metal different from what they actually are, so everyone has the ability to instantaneously verify the metal value of a coin with 100% precision. In effect, we have a world currency with absolutely no chance of counterfeits being in circulation, something which has yet to be achieved in the real world. It may be worthwhile to change the game's coin system at some point, but such is the matter of another discussion.

[Hamel]

You always have the apples for oranges forum. List off tons of prices you offer for buying and selling. Theres also the ability to make a RoB trading post. Make a centralized commodity ordering area. Make lots of parchment and allow people to put down their offers and selling and buying prices, along with advertisements. You can also peddle goods here, and it won't be boring if theres someone there to talk to.

Yes, you could. But, you would have to organize dates for when both transactors would be online at the same time. Which is a big, unnecessary hassle.

Theres plenty of room for making shops ingame. You all haven't even explored ideas used successfully today for ingame usage, like Bazaars and such.

How would you do that? Leave a chest outside your claim with all of the goods and a parchment stating "Please leave payment."?