COTHonomics.

[Krent]

- Wipe current money As Reigen pointed out, this would be unfair to the people who currently use the IC money system. However, if we were to make a viable economy, this would be a necessary first step. As of right now, there's far too much inflationary spending within the server. People throw around gold like it was silver. I argue that it's necessary to wipe the current money in order to get an economy rolling. It'd serve in the greater interest of the IC currency, making it worth something. Though, of course, this wouldn't be without controversy; all the more reason why we'd need to plan exactly what we're doing with much consideration before we do it. If we do it.

- reset money quest
- set quest reward to 1g or less - I like this. Five gold seemed "too high" of a number before. With everyone starting with one gold, people would rely on using silver and copper for their base transactions.

- possibly audit ease of working up skills
- somehow interweave tradeskills and IC currency - This would work assuming we go the route of "use existing tradeskills as a means of production". While it'd be the most convenient (as the resources and skills are already set up in the game mechanics), we'd have to expand upon them...a lot. Rigley pointed it out. Since players mostly place value in random White and Gray items, we'd have to put in a lot of extra gear. Hundreds of additions, possibly thousands.

Could we do that? If so, it'd be a hell of a neat concept. But then, we'd have to consider resource distribution in the world. It always kinda irked me how the rarer metals, such as mithril, thorium, fel-iron and the like, were pretty common as the player progressed. Meanwhile, stuff like iron and copper became rare. Almost non-existent. Always made the "precious" metals feel...not precious.


- possibly make raid gear inaccessible and allow craftsmen to make raid level gear - Raid gear is more OOC than anything. People do use it to raid, but the act of raiding is something that only occurs recreationally. It serves no purpose in the actual RP realm, so its not really an 'issue' in the realm of COTH.

- possibly limit characters back to 2 professions (possibly even 1) - While I think it'd be more interesting to have everyone only being skilled in one profession, the truth is that'd only lead to people creating more alts. So, two seems to be like a 'magic number'. I like it.

[Harmonic]

I think that all sounds fair. The OOC money thing is something that needs to be taken away though, part of the problem is that people -have- amassed a fortune, because till we started to discuss it there has been -nothing- to spend it on. At all.

[Reigen]

This also brings the issue that not every character has the same amount of money. One of the reasons I avoided IC currency at first is...well...no one can tell me how much currency my character has. They don't know and only I really know. [I keep track of it using GHI coins I made.] If you're going to wipe what everyone has earned [which I'm still very against] there should at least be an application system on how much your character should have as well as providing examples on what the character has done to earn that amount. I only started to use IC currency because I felt I built up an appropriate amount compared to what the character had ICly earned.

Granted, an application system would be rather messy. We also have no set worth in IC value. To some, a horse is worth 10g and to others it's worth maybe three or four. We would need hard-set values in order to make an economy work. All we have are personal guesstiments.

[I am remembering these are only ideas, just putting my thoughts in!]

[Rigley]

I honestly am against the idea of individually dolling out cash to characters. Because...

Well, in my experience everyone tends to want 'a bit above average'. And if everyone is a notch above average, then where does the baseline set? There has to be at least a bit of a standard to -start- at, otherwise you have people who wish to begin with an inordinate amount of cash, and the inflation thing becomes an issue once more.

And either way, everyone can't be special. The GM team would pull their hair out trying to figure out if X character merits Y gold, an issue we had when we first tried to put in the cash system and we got flooded with tickets of exceptions to the standard amount.

[Brutalskars]

Blood money - You buy things with people. Characters are now a currency. Yes.

But seriously - I like .addrpitem for the ability to freely make gear. But I also remember back with other low levels with silver token days; we actually went out of our way to make sets - we traded and sold goods. Auction house was actually used. But when you got approved it didnt matter as much until you wanted a new set. Oh wait! Grind gold buy tokens! Get new set!

Systems have their ups and downs all over the spectrum. I will try to think of something - but I am a bit busy lately.

[Aphetoros]

Not going to read every post, but as for custom items we could always use GHI?

edit: unrelated

[Vrahn]

I dunno I'm just going to reiterate that putting a lot of time and effort into attempting to create an in-game economy may not be the best thing to put those resources and brainpower towards. Rensin's post about working your IC job to pay your IC rent for your IC house to your IC bankers is something I really hope gets the message home, merchant RP should be undertaken because it's an interesting character and I really do think if you make a proper merchant you can run around and do merchant RP without even needing to do any real transaction at all. I mean really would you want to RP every real life step of your craftsman making his sword, or your farmer keeping his field? I'm not so sure that's quite the best idea, and if we don't do something to that degree then it sort of begs the question what is the economy exactly? This sort of feels like its' building a whole system just to force RP interactions that I feel have potential to really become extremely meta-IC (Meaning essentially OOC RP) as opposed to a truly interesting RP situations.

Anyway as Krent said, to make the economy we do need to have a demand that people are OOCly willing to put their OOC time towards or else it's all superficial and highly unstable.

[Harmonic]

I think for the economy to work, too, it'd have to be more metaphorical than physical. I have a deed on Rensin, but the location isn't necessary. I can make armor, and clothes, and sell them, but I really don't need the IC money to bolster that. The same goes for working.

To me, it's implied that Rensin puts in a day's work at the bar. All the nameless NPC's and regulars supply him with the money that keeps the business afloat, otherwise, realistically, I couldn't keep up with having to physically be present and work on making the money for it. It probably sounds lazy or whatever, but realistically I don't have much time to put myself out there in game to keep something running that's always to me been an idea rather than some physical necessity.

I have mixed feelings. I think trying to make an economy is GOOD, but does it need to be a physically working one, that creates the need for supply and demand, or do we want something that's stated, and alluded to? If we -truly- want to have a physically working market, we can't have any exceptions. People need to be involved, and we have to work at it. That's what Krent is trying to show us... and give us a solution to.

It's a great idea. I personally couldn't do it, unless it was less on the physical and more on the implied side.