A Coin Conundrum: Gentry Versus Freemen

[Temi]

Gentry are the only class who is expected to remain wealthy, whether that be enough to tread water, or enough to buy out the ocean, as long as they have enough to continue funding their lifestyle, and appear as "Gentry". If their entire world revolves around maintaining their wealth to maintain their lifestyle, is it really that unreasonable to claim a gentry is defined by their wealth, when it is the foundation to their class? I suppose using the example of a foundation, one could argue that a house, or any building, is not defined by the foundation but by the shape or "appearance" of the building

I think that's a pretty great description, actually.

Agree. Adding on, yes, wealth is the foundation of the gentry class definition, but money is not enough to make a gentryman. The house cannot stand without its foundation, and that defines its shape and possibilities, but without the extra stuff, like rooms, it ain't a house.

[Rabek]

Voxumo: No, a Freeman cannot make an in two hours what a gentry does in OOC month. Whoever said as much was grossly exaggerating. Gentry income appears in their accounts at no penalty. Freeman jobs-wise, on a character with 85 con and around 400 MV, you could potentially work at a Freeman labor job for about 20 minutes without having to stop and invest in food to refuel. You earn 1 silver per 10 MV used, as the cost of food is 1 silver per 10 MV regained. If you spend time hunting (investment in combat skills), butchering (investment in husbandry skill), and cooking (investment in cooking skill) your own food, you can exceed breaking even. And good on you at that point; you worked your butt off and poured XP in. Otherwise, you're paying for food to continue. If buying food from NPC shops, you can break even. If buying food from PC shops, you'll end up with some surplus coin.

If the cost of food is the primary factor that you've balanced these jobs around, I feel I should bring to attention that there are numerous freely accessible fountain objects in the game, at least one of which is roughly three rooms away from the work site. These can restore your MV nearly instantly for free. I've had to familiarize myself with a wide variety of them all over the grid because freemen are so dang poor.

I remember reading an OOC chat log about the desire to remove 'purchase silver' once Assets come in. I'm not sure the details of this, and I'm not sure if it'll be implemented. However, while I like jobs as a way for freemen to train the early levels of some extremely expensive crafts, I feel that adding these jobs is a net negative for the game if purchase silver is going to be removed.

The reason is simple: we'd be trading a method of earning silver that requires roleplay (to get the rpxp necessary for silver/wealth) for one that requires none and has no costs other than moving a few rooms and drinking from a fountain.

That's not to say I don't appreciate the work that's gone into them. I just feel like, particularly with the possible changes coming in the near future, they shift the game/rp balance on TI towards more 'game' and less 'rp.' The balance being where it's currently at is why I keep coming back to TI, regardless of all the other problems I have with the game.

[Starstarfish]

I'm personally not sure that drinking from fountains should restore MV like that, that cuts out a lot of interaction with PCs and from the PC economy if people never need to eat. You can't really just drink water and live.

Also, if Assets don't require RPXP for gaining their automated incomes we already sort of have that curiosity of the relationship between mechanics/"gaming" and the storytelling/RP aspect.

Also, maybe update the helpfile for jobs to indicate folks should use think during the process to represent RP during use, which would make this no different than any other solo crafting RP, really. Maybe people as crafting in general has no indicated requirement to really RP. Especially with something like Gardening, without a system like this to gain any early pool, you are left at the mercy of timing that the other active Gardeners in game haven't already harvested everything in public or even clan areas. Same thing with Husbandry.

I agree the jobs might need tweaks, but I don't personally see it meaning there's less RP happening, but at present there's a real factor where RP alone doesn't allow people to actually do work related to their skill if no one is interested in buying it. Which, for a crafting character part of the satisfaction sometimes is actually doing work not just saying it was all virtually done.

[Rabek]

I'm personally not sure that drinking from fountains should restore MV like that, that cuts out a lot of interaction with PCs and from the PC economy if people never need to eat. You can't really just drink water and live.

Also, if Assets don't require RPXP for gaining their automated incomes we already sort of have that curiosity of the relationship between mechanics/"gaming" and the storytelling/RP aspect.

Also, maybe update the helpfile for jobs to indicate folks should use think during the process to represent RP during use, which would make this no different than any other solo crafting RP, really. Maybe people as crafting in general has no indicated requirement to really RP. Especially with something like Gardening, without a system like this to gain any early pool, you are left at the mercy of timing that the other active Gardeners in game haven't already harvested everything in public or even clan areas. Same thing with Husbandry.

I agree the jobs might need tweaks, but I don't personally see it meaning there's less RP happening, but at present there's a real factor where RP alone doesn't allow people to actually do work related to their skill if no one is interested in buying it. Which, for a crafting character part of the satisfaction sometimes is actually doing work not just saying it was all virtually done.

People never need to eat as-is. Sleep. Coamjar. Magic. Even just never spending MV (not that difficult for certain concepts). It's a good thing. Some other RP MUDs spam you with 'you are hungry' every tick to and have starvation code. I've always found that distracting from RP rather than benefiting it, and it's something I like about TI that food and drink are encouraged with a carrot rather than a stick. The benefit to food is that it restores MV faster and you can take it more of it with you easier than liquids. It's a convenient luxury in that regard. Most food-related sales are going to be for RP purposes; restaurants and catering. And that's fine. My last cook made nearly 100 gold off two catering gigs. I don't think cooks are at risk for lost RP and funding. More importantly, Freemen can't really afford to be constantly buying food to regain MV. Not if they ever want more than the free phome room. Not if they ever want to buy anything at all from crafters. Even making their own, crafting food takes enough MV compared to what it provides that it never really feels worth the effort to track down the many, many ingredients and process them. Nerfing fountains isn't really the solution, I don't think. It creates as many or more problems than it fixes.

Assets, to my understanding, are merely making the automated income you get now have a more concrete reason behind it. It's not something you can just grind out silver endlessly from.

Making money with crafting does require roleplay. You have to roleplay with your customers. Not necessarily the case with shops, but my understanding is that most player shops don't sell much, especially when compared to commissions. Most successful player shops I've seen have had a player regularly roleplaying around it, like the Three Cups, back when it was the popular tavern instead of the Queen's.

Making money with Purchase Silver/Wealth also requires roleplay, just indirectly.

I'm never going to advocate or even support a move to require solo RP. It's always struck me as masturbatory, and I'll never participate in it.

As for gardening, the job just lets you make compost. Compost can be crafted with foraged ingredients, which are free. Probably half the grid or more lets you forage for the ingredients, so timing isn't really an issue. The gardening job is probably the least important, from a skill improvement standpoint. Something like forging, which has expensive ingredients, would be a better argument in my mind.

[Delphine]

I'm just going to weigh in with my two cents (and hope that I'm coherent as I have only had a little bit of my usual caffeine drip so far today) but, for me, it just comes down to appearances and how you carry your gentry character through your RP. I understand that having that actual coded wealth helps support said appearances by letting your character dress according to their station, etc., but beyond that... who's to say that just because Gentryman A has 10k silver in his bank account right at this moment while Freeman B has 20k silver in his bank account that the freeman is wealthier? That freeman doesn't have the (assumed as of right now) assets that the gentryman has nor the (assumed) family holdings nor the social standing, etc.

I was actually having an OOC conversation with another player probably last week and we were joking about IC wealth and such and we both agreed that, no matter what, our characters will always be two of the wealthiest people in the room at any given time. Because no one knows what's going on in your bank account besides you and so long as you appear to be wealthy, what does it matter, as it's all about appearances? Right? Right.

In short, my point is that I feel like the RP surrounding being gentry is more important than actual coded wealth and that there are plenty of ways to explain away why a member of the gentry might not have as much money in the bank right-at-this-moment as they probably should. "I have more funds in xyz bank," "I have portable wealth that I'm carrying on my person. Look at all my shinies!", "My family owns this estate over here along with a summer property over here," etc. etc. etc.

[Andruid]

I like the labor jobs. I think the cons are fairly well-balanced by the pros. They lose their novelty and usefulness for skill-building pretty quickly, as they should. They're themely, interactive, and show examples of quality writing that could be emulated. I'm hoping they'll help retain new players who happen to log in during bad times for RP, by providing them interesting things to do and explore while they wait. Especially now that gentry have some options, too.

[Starstarfish]

It seems that these are being edited, possibly given feedback from here - any insight on what's the current thoughts on how these are being changed?

[Rhothrian]

To be a wealthy freeman I think you will now need to have an actual craft trade, be good at it and hustle. Even then it will probably take quite a while to amass the type of wealth that people were getting from purchase silver, for all social classes. When you see a character with nice things and property created after this system you know they have been here a while to earn it. Taking longer to earn material goods also extends playability and provides goals that are no longer as easy to achieve.

I had my doubts about the removal of this feature as it rewarded the player from engaging with others and put plenty of money into the economy for all sorts of purchases regardless of your social class. Unfortunately, the side effect was that silver was too easily amassed by everyone, to include freeman who may not have even had or needed an actual on-grid trade to get it. The change to assets and removal of purchase silver seemed like punishing the player for legally using the rpxp for coin, but it was catering to a trend that broke theme by providing massive amounts of-off grid resources. However, I can also understand why some were upset and felt they were being cheated out of their efforts.

Will these changes create a trend with new characters/players creating gentry for access to greater wealth? Possibly, but people have different motivating factors for what they do and some roles/concepts in the game seem better served by freemen. Time will tell, especially when the, “old money” from the purchase silver days has dried up.

I'm really liking the asset system now that I've created one, understand how they work and how the city metrics system is now important to everyone that owns assets, not just guild leaders and nobles. The payout from your asset will fluctuate depending on the city metric that it is attached to, prompting people to learn about and vote on metrics. This will most definitely get a handle on runaway silver earned from straight rpxp purchase. However, it may have been better if they attempted to sell it more and create a positive spin.

Now items will be harder to get, silver slower to earn and business will somewhat slow regarding volume sales for the merchants, especially when the old money is gone from older players. Jobs will have greater importance. People will pay closer attention to city metrics, voting and doing all the things needed to affect them such as plots and utilizing the rumor system. More plots will be created to fuel city metric movement, and so on. In short it will prompt people to become more involved and informed about systems that they may not have paid much attention to before.

A far as wealth defining the gentry class: The mere fact that a commoner can be worth as much or more than a noble, to include education, lifestyle and influence is why they hold themselves to higher standards and want to generally marry their own kind. It’s also reason for some nobles to resent them just as theme suggests. This doesn't have to be a scenario defined by, "The asset capped gentry will be worth more than the asset capped noble."

[Starstarfish]

Now items will be harder to get, silver slower to earn and business will somewhat slow regarding volume sales for the merchants, especially when the old money is gone from older players.

This is one of my concerns. It can be hard to be motivated to play a Merchant type who doesn't really earn any money and/or feel involved in things. Especially if you are one of those player types who simply enjoys making things for the joy of making them, that will be a bit harder if you don't have the money to buy supplies to make stuff, etc.

I think at one point there was a discussion of assets could give supplies of some kind rather than money, that might be a keen idea going forward - Guilded folks being able to get an asset that represents getting supplies.

[Puciek]

Now items will be harder to get, silver slower to earn and business will somewhat slow regarding volume sales for the merchants, especially when the old money is gone from older players.

This is one of my concerns. It can be hard to be motivated to play a Merchant type who doesn't really earn any money and/or feel involved in things. Especially if you are one of those player types who simply enjoys making things for the joy of making them, that will be a bit harder if you don't have the money to buy supplies to make stuff, etc.

I think at one point there was a discussion of assets could give supplies of some kind rather than money, that might be a keen idea going forward - Guilded folks being able to get an asset that represents getting supplies.

I would say that the need for merchants will now grow, not diminish.

First you can no longer start with a complete array of trade skills, which will cut down on the characters who started in, bought raw supplies, and kitted themselves with iron/leather gear right away at under NPC shop prices.

Second, the silver is now in a limit, so the savings that can come from player merchants vs. npcs will be even more important, opting to seek out merchants rather than going to nearby NPC store.

But this, of course, will require for merchants to go out and seek the trades, not just post an announcement and wait for the mail. I think that hawking wares and street selling are seriously underrepresented.