Seaport

[Dondy]

I would like to see a seaport with a merchant area, where luxury goods not produceable by players can be obtained. I am thinking about things like cinnamon and silk, and opium, and jade, and sable, and ambergris, and quinona. At random intervals a new but unpredictable supply of these luxury goods would arrive at the seaport for purchase and would only be available by purchase while stocks lasted.

It could be sort of set up like the Inn at Brodgar, although perhaps your merchant could be a bit more developed than the tavern wench...

[Raephire]

I think we want to avoid NPC as much as possible - town merchants and city guards are a little different. But these things are not too important. It would be better to create an ocean, and separate continents, each continent having particular resources that others do not, as well as ocean. But don't expect these things too soon, I fear Loftars fingers may fall off.

[sami1337]

I like the idea of having an npc shop around, because i've seen how they can control a player market.
In wurm online most items gave some coins if sold. they were given a value based on skill and time spent.
For a newby this meant you could earn a little pocket money with dedicated work.

But it will not happen. devs won't set a value for stuff.

[Dondy]

Oh, the seaport is just to start with. Eventually the dev's might want to gift us with a far off island where we can actually find the special seashore tiles to produce shellfish and ambergris, and the jungle tiles to produce cinnamon and quinona and jaguars, and the mullberry trees to start the silkworm crafting, and tundra tiles where the sable spawn... But to start with as teasers put them in the seaport.

[Raephire]

Amber Gris is whale vomit, It floats to the surface of the ocean. And just think ladies, you use that shit on your bodies all the time.. MMmm, whale vomit and animal piss, all for beauty

[niltrias]

I like the seaport idea, not as a permanant feature, but just as a way to trickle in new features for testing before the full infrastructure can be implemented. Kind of like how grapes where added directly by the admins; instead of that, just make them available for trade at the seaport.

[Hamel]

I've found a major flaw with this suggestion! We have no sea!

[loftar]

By itself, I, too, am not opposed to the "seaport idea" for the purpose of trickling in new features, but the problem with it is what the "trading" should constitute. NPCs, by their very nature, cannot trade, as they have no values -- in effect, it would become trading with us, the developers; but seeing how we are not afflicted by scarcity, we cannot, by definition, trade. The only thing we could do is to try and set an arbitrary "penalty" for the procurement of new items (did someone mention planned economies?). And I don't like the idea of that, even as a temporary feature; it will just lead to odd situations and weird systems being built around them ("malinvestments", to speak in the terms of the Austrian economists; not to speak of the, in all likelyhood, resulting economic bubbles as a consequence of our tweaking and changing the system).

The only new items with which we have some kind of bootstrapping problem are natural resources anyway (since virtually anything else in the game is player-makable), so I think we'll just spread a few of them around seeing how they are, indeed, natural resources.

In itself, though, I like the seaport idea in that it would be possible to get various "colonial goods", which would be very suitable and fitting. :) If some system of actual trade could be set up, I would consider the idea.

[loftar]

I've found a major flaw with this suggestion! We have no sea! :P

It is likely that a sea will come with the next map reset, though.

[Hamel]

I've found a major flaw with this suggestion! We have no sea!

It is likely that a sea will come with the next map reset, though.

Awh, here I was hoping that the next map reset would have different continents with unique resources, so that a NPC sea port would be obsolete.