To follow up on this, and I feel there's a related issue with several other topics.
When you go into a shop and buy something, the asking price your given (what you're asked to pay) can be horrifically beyond the valued price (what you think it's worth).
You might go into a shop and be asked to pay 5 times what you'd expect, which can be ridiculous on some items.
i'm not sure what's causing it but I suggest there's some factor of your charisma and level involved.
Whilst I'm not complaining about the ability to make money, there are some issues that just seem odd.
I'd tie this in to another thread on the prices of "potions of life" which are already expensive and then get multiplied in terms of cost.
I'm not sure of the maths behind the asking price and the expected price, but I think there should be some kind of small percentile increase rather than such a ludicrous amount of extra charge played on top.
it's possible for a character to have a drastically reduced charisma (among other stats) and need to pay for a potion of life but have the prices of the potions far too high to be realistically achievable..
The Shop Prices are Too High
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Charisma plays a huge rule in the value you get/sell for items.
So if you have a really low charisma, you won't get much when you sell stuff, and you'll pay a lot when you buy it.
If your charisma is high, that difference is much lower.
Think of it from the shopkeeper standpoint: They buy tons of crap they will never sell, so they need to make a lot of money whenever they actually do sell something
IMO the real fix is for there to be more items in the shops worth buying (for players to spend money on). I'm not predicting a perfectly balanced economy (whenever something can get created out of thin air, that isn't going to happen), but having both buy and sell would be good.
So if you have a really low charisma, you won't get much when you sell stuff, and you'll pay a lot when you buy it.
If your charisma is high, that difference is much lower.
Think of it from the shopkeeper standpoint: They buy tons of crap they will never sell, so they need to make a lot of money whenever they actually do sell something
IMO the real fix is for there to be more items in the shops worth buying (for players to spend money on). I'm not predicting a perfectly balanced economy (whenever something can get created out of thin air, that isn't going to happen), but having both buy and sell would be good.
My problem is the amount of influence charisma has, if you end up with a 1 charisma you can end up paying 7 times as much.
Which is ridiculous when you consider how much items can be priced at and if you're buying an expensive item that's further compounded.
What's stranger is that as you level up and gain charisma (through potions, etc) it only becomes easier to buy things you could already afford more easily because its easier to earn cash.
I'm suggesting a sterner cap on how much the price deviates from the norm. A low one at that.
Which is ridiculous when you consider how much items can be priced at and if you're buying an expensive item that's further compounded.
What's stranger is that as you level up and gain charisma (through potions, etc) it only becomes easier to buy things you could already afford more easily because its easier to earn cash.
I'm suggesting a sterner cap on how much the price deviates from the norm. A low one at that.
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cavesomething
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The other alternative is that it might be more interesting for some players to have a very low charisma character in order to make the use of shops harder.
I think the way you will typically encounter this is due to stat drain on death, and it might be that it is worth thinking about how points are taken away.
At the moment, a decision is made for how many stat points you should lose, and then these are removed randomly. It follows that going from 10 points to 1 point is worse than going from 19 points to 10, so maybe it is worth considering rolling these in a different way.
You could say, for instance, that rather than having an equal chance for each stat, that the chance of depleting a stat is current_value/normal_value
So then (ignoring other stats for the sake of simplicity), if you have strength at 15 and the normal value is 20, then it is at 75% of its normal value, if char is at 2 and it's normal value is 10, then it is at 20% of it's normal value, so when you choose a stat to lose, there would be a 75/95 chance it would be strength.
Of course if your other stats are all heading towards 1 anyway, then it won't make much difference, but then you have bigger problems than the prices in shops.
I think the way you will typically encounter this is due to stat drain on death, and it might be that it is worth thinking about how points are taken away.
At the moment, a decision is made for how many stat points you should lose, and then these are removed randomly. It follows that going from 10 points to 1 point is worse than going from 19 points to 10, so maybe it is worth considering rolling these in a different way.
You could say, for instance, that rather than having an equal chance for each stat, that the chance of depleting a stat is current_value/normal_value
So then (ignoring other stats for the sake of simplicity), if you have strength at 15 and the normal value is 20, then it is at 75% of its normal value, if char is at 2 and it's normal value is 10, then it is at 20% of it's normal value, so when you choose a stat to lose, there would be a 75/95 chance it would be strength.
Of course if your other stats are all heading towards 1 anyway, then it won't make much difference, but then you have bigger problems than the prices in shops.
There can be many reasons why a characters charisma is low.
Some races (wraith I think) have a severe charisma penalty - no way to get around that.
But the other issue is that other than shop prices and a few non combat skills, charisma is not used for anything, so if you are making up a new character, charisma becomes the dump stat (I'd rather have the HP to survive than get best prices). So that may be another reason why charisma is low.
It certainly isn't hard to change the importance of charisma on shop prices - if it has no/very little purpose, then charisma really becomes a dump stat - it has no importance in the game.
Some races (wraith I think) have a severe charisma penalty - no way to get around that.
But the other issue is that other than shop prices and a few non combat skills, charisma is not used for anything, so if you are making up a new character, charisma becomes the dump stat (I'd rather have the HP to survive than get best prices). So that may be another reason why charisma is low.
It certainly isn't hard to change the importance of charisma on shop prices - if it has no/very little purpose, then charisma really becomes a dump stat - it has no importance in the game.
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cavesomething
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I may be able to make use of charisma reasonably effectively in conversations using the dialog system.
It wouldn't be hard to write a pre-test "convince"
you could then have something like:
Where the "50" is the difficulty of convincing the speaker, and the quest set up looks something like:
The only difficulty with that is figuring out what the difficulty number should mean, and how they should be calculated, clearly it ought to be a role against oratory and charisma, which rewards oratory exp on success, but there needs to be an algorithm to do this, and it's not clear where the balance should be between the skill and the charisma stat.
Long-term it'd be nice to have factions who can have a sense of reputation or favour, which could be gained or lost through various actions, and which would alter the starting point for the roll. (playing a lythander-worshiping elf and convincing a fellow elf after having completed some 'hug a tree' quest should be easy, it should be much harder to do so while playing a dwarf with a history of deforestation who is carrying wooden weapons around).
It wouldn't be hard to write a pre-test "convince"
you could then have something like:
Code: Select all
{
"match" : ["help"],
"pre" : [["convince", "50"], ["quest", "foobar", "=10"]],
"post" : [["quest", "foobar","30"], ["giveitem", "mcguffin"]],
"msg" : ["Of course I'll help you; here, take this mcguffin"],
}, {
"match" : ["help"],
"pre" : [["quest", "foobar", "=10"]],
"post" : [["quest", "foobar","20"]],
"msg" : ["nope, you're on your own."]
},
Code: Select all
quest foobar
title foobar
description
baz
end_description
restart 0
step 10
description
I have to bar the baz, maybe qux can help
end_description
end_step
step 20
description
I asked qux to help me, but he refused, guess I'm on my own
end_description
end_step
step 30
description
I asked qux to help me, he gave me a mcguffin to help me on my way
end_description
end_step
etc
Long-term it'd be nice to have factions who can have a sense of reputation or favour, which could be gained or lost through various actions, and which would alter the starting point for the roll. (playing a lythander-worshiping elf and convincing a fellow elf after having completed some 'hug a tree' quest should be easy, it should be much harder to do so while playing a dwarf with a history of deforestation who is carrying wooden weapons around).
Note that using rolls to determine success is problematic if the character can retry on failure.
If we use a 1-20 roll, and the chance of success is skill level + charisma modifier, the roll can become a dominant factor.
For some things, like combat, attack rolls are OK because of the time it takes to do it (not hitting very often could mean you will get killed before defeating the monster).
But for things like chat, no real time issue, so if I can keep chatting until I get a good roll, not much harm there. So it almost needs to be something like skill level + cha modifier - it either works or doesn't.
If we use a 1-20 roll, and the chance of success is skill level + charisma modifier, the roll can become a dominant factor.
For some things, like combat, attack rolls are OK because of the time it takes to do it (not hitting very often could mean you will get killed before defeating the monster).
But for things like chat, no real time issue, so if I can keep chatting until I get a good roll, not much harm there. So it almost needs to be something like skill level + cha modifier - it either works or doesn't.
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Panthera Leo
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I think perhaps, if you want a "working" economy the best solution is to just keep it as simple as you can. The more 'roleplaying' elements included the more things there are to go wrong.
(Honestly though I think it's just dumb luck if a MMO's economy works. There are too many people blind by greed that will find a flaw and exploit it gleefully ignoring the damage they do as long as if feeds their greed. Along with fear and pride, their a very successful disease...)
If you want the shops to work I suggest something geometric and inanely simple. Something that will multiply or diminish as needed and that is self correcting. Perhaps a 'clearing house' in each town that will purchase items from it's associated shops based on a ratio of items it should have vs. what it wants. Shops can adjust their prices based on this clearing houses inventory and, when it 'wants' something bad enough it will scrap the excess to fill in the gap.
If, for example, the shop wants 1/5th of it's total value in arms, but only 1/50th of it's value in arms, it could destroy as much of it's inventory it needs to balance out creating enough random arms to make arms 1/5th it's total value. To solve the problem of having too much to spend and not enough to spend it on at higher levels, you could take it a step further and demand that 1/10th of it's inventory be worth at 'x', 1/100th be worth 'y', 1/1000th be worth 'z', and so on.
In this way, the more there is of something , it's supply, the demand for it is less because this "clearing house" has more of it and globally drops it's value. Like wise, the less there is of something, it's demand, the more this "clearing house" globally increases it's value. More over, if this demand goes on too long it will auto-balancing the supply and demand by destroying the over-supply to fill the demand.
(Honestly though I think it's just dumb luck if a MMO's economy works. There are too many people blind by greed that will find a flaw and exploit it gleefully ignoring the damage they do as long as if feeds their greed. Along with fear and pride, their a very successful disease...)
If you want the shops to work I suggest something geometric and inanely simple. Something that will multiply or diminish as needed and that is self correcting. Perhaps a 'clearing house' in each town that will purchase items from it's associated shops based on a ratio of items it should have vs. what it wants. Shops can adjust their prices based on this clearing houses inventory and, when it 'wants' something bad enough it will scrap the excess to fill in the gap.
If, for example, the shop wants 1/5th of it's total value in arms, but only 1/50th of it's value in arms, it could destroy as much of it's inventory it needs to balance out creating enough random arms to make arms 1/5th it's total value. To solve the problem of having too much to spend and not enough to spend it on at higher levels, you could take it a step further and demand that 1/10th of it's inventory be worth at 'x', 1/100th be worth 'y', 1/1000th be worth 'z', and so on.
In this way, the more there is of something , it's supply, the demand for it is less because this "clearing house" has more of it and globally drops it's value. Like wise, the less there is of something, it's demand, the more this "clearing house" globally increases it's value. More over, if this demand goes on too long it will auto-balancing the supply and demand by destroying the over-supply to fill the demand.