Purchase silver, assets and trade skills

[Puciek]

I've read the ooc chat and couple things come up again so I figured that a topic for them is due, so I will kick it off with short commentary:

1. People can't afford to buy anything they want all the time, especially freemen.

GOOD! About the time that in this game, where the imbalance of power and wealth is supposed to play an important role, we suffer with our wallets. The never-ending stream of silver was silly, it made everyone master out combat as just matter of time and setting up triggers, no one used anything but plate armour/leather (unless for RP reasons) as they and horses were too cheap. And everyone eventually winded up living in a mansion, even if they had no explanation for how can they afford it (a phome with 6+ is very much a mansion, even if it's not called as such).

So now I see people picking up iron weapons, chainmail, living in modest homes and even filling up busy-work bounties to earn that extra silver which warms my heart deeply.

2. Leveling tradeksills is expensive as hell

Awesome! It used to be that you could've levelled most tradeskills from 1 to 74 and spend less than a gold total, and that was broken because, well, what sort of place does it leave for apprentice<->master rp? Heck, it doesn't even exist for the most part anymore, and not because we are short on players to do it but simply because everyone just grinds up with purchase silver. Now that it is gone, it forces people to go out and RP their way into the mastering of skills. For example, you can befriend a blacksmith to teach you, that's a thing. Or you can befriend someone who has iron/steel assets and can get hella cheap. Or you can threaten them into selling it cheap, works as well! Alternatively, you can do the old trope of rping your way into getting a sponsor, this also happens on the grid.

But the most important part of it is that now you don't master tradeskill in a week. If you want to start out as a master blacksmith, get that sorted out in chargen, not try to make it up in insanely fast time on the grid. Focus more on selling your goods and services to fund your trade, less on the actual grind to the top, you will do wonderfully.

3. Assets are massive investments and expensive!

Yes, they are, because they also bring pretty insane benefits, silver being the least of it. Again, if you want to play a wealthy character - sort it out in chargen, that is why there you can do it for XP. But if you are on the grid, you have to earn your way into riches, and this can either be by grinding your way there, or making some very savvy rp choices. I see assets as massive rp opportunity that many people just fail to embrace, but those who do, from what I've heard, they find the results amazing, for example, we can have actual trade deals now, not just RP them.

[chronodbu]

Puciek raises a good point about crafting that I for some reason haven't personally considered.

We're a bit too focused on the cost of training professions when part of mitigating that cost should come via trying to get some of the craft masters to teach master/apprentice style.

That's sort of the whole point of apprentices not having shops is learning from their masters.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

As I mentioned in my question — and, reading through it, I think most people echoed — the assets system has been an improvement over the old one which combined base income with purchase silver/wealth, but I don't think that it's anywhere close to perfect; many other people expressed frustrations over the limitations of the system.

The clear benefit of the current system is that silver has an increased 'value' to it. Nobody argued, that I saw, that this wasn't a good thing. Players shouldn't feel like they can always get what they want and having different tiers of weapons / clothing / horses / houses is a very good thing.

However, several people also expressed frustration that once on-grid, assets are only rewarding if you already have them. Improving or gaining assets is an incredibly daunting (and, I'd argue, borderline impossible) task if you don't have the XP to sink into them during chargen — "wealth" shouldn't be an archetype of character only available to long-time players. (And if you disagree I'd humbly submit Farra for consideration — I had RP'd extremely little on TL:I when I made her and had no meaningful XP saved up; this at a time when nobles made less than gentry by default and incurred a significant XP penalty upon creation). Being able to spend XP to justify wealth allowed me to play a character who I think has been a positive for the game. That said, I'm extremely happy to see purchase silver gone and purchase wealth limited; it did strike me as lame that people would randomly have huge deposits of silver they couldn't really justify.

I think there are clear avenues of improving both the way assets pay silver out and in how silver/future assets can be obtained on-grid. I'm still working through the ideas in my head and I'm trying to gain a bit more information on how assets currently work before I pose them, but I will caution against the very common human idea that "better than before" means "don't make it better still".

[Puciek]

I have to disagree with one your point - that getting assets on the grid is impossible. I know multiple freemen and gentry who got further assets, for silver, while on the grid - but that usually was a result of some long-running RP, rather than saving gold for it. There is still a lot of gold on the grid that can be picked and invested in assets, just have to figure out IC ways to tap into it. The master/apprentice relation in merchants is just one of the most obvious examples, be creative and figure it out!

And this old v new debate is, well, an old one. If you cannot afford to make a concept, make a different one. This was always the rule here, rather than "pretend to be rich and then fill up with purchase wealth". Same as playing a "seasoned battle experienced fighter" when your skills are barely at 36, that's just asking for trouble. If you don't have QP/EXP to make such character, adjust the concept to an aspiring fighter. It's there because otherwise everyone is rich/maxed at combat/app5, and as a result, all those things lose meaning. It is a balancing factor.

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

And this old v new debate is, well, an old one. If you cannot afford to make a concept, make a different one. This was always the rule here, rather than "pretend to be rich and then fill up with purchase wealth".

That, what? That's entirely untrue. Not only is it not a "rule" — who says you can't pretend to be rich even now? — it wasn't supported by code as you could purchase silver and wealth once you were in-game and had RP'd enough to create further funds. Again, like I said, you can believe that limiting wealth to experienced players only is fun, but it's well, not. Fun for the experienced players, sure! But not fun for most others.

I know multiple freemen and gentry who got further assets, for silver, while on the grid - but that usually was a result of some long-running RP, rather than saving gold for it.

So, yes, the point being that saving up for assets is an option that makes sense only in theory, not in practicality.

[Puciek]

And this old v new debate is, well, an old one. If you cannot afford to make a concept, make a different one. This was always the rule here, rather than "pretend to be rich and then fill up with purchase wealth".

That, what? That's entirely untrue. Not only is it not a "rule" — who says you can't pretend to be rich even now? — it wasn't supported by code as you could purchase silver and wealth once you were in-game and had RP'd enough to create further funds. Again, like I said, you can believe that limiting wealth to experienced players only is fun, but it's well, not. Fun for the experienced players, sure! But not fun for most others.

Nonsensene. The measure of wealth is relative, if everyone is rich - no one is rich, which is exactly what we had before and why no one ever bought anything but top tier weapons/ armours/horses. And that sucked. There are many more avenues of rp to explore than "rich and wealthy", and slowly people are realizing that which is great to see.

And yes, you can ICLY pretend to be wealthy while being ICLY poor, but many people started character who wear dead broke, and then with purchase silver got wealthy with no backing to it. Was way too common of a pattern. Now if you will start dead broke, with a just t1 asset to your name, you will have to earn more - if that is what you want.

(Portion reported by a user and removed by Staff for being uncivil)

[Starstarfish]

Nonsensene. The measure of wealth is relative, if everyone is rich - no one is rich, which is exactly what we had before and why no one ever bought anything but top tier weapons/ armours/horses. And that sucked.

There used to be people in 20 room houses and others in 1 room hovels, people with silks and people with rags. So this idea that when purchase wealth/silver was a thing -everyone- was rich is not true. Having never bought weapons/armor or a horse this idea that everyone was rich and only spent money on these things is also a bit false I tend to spend my money on other things.

However, when people have less money they just tend to buy less things that are "fluff" - they'll just drink from fountains for MV rather than buy food from PC cooks, they' won't buy as many new clothes. Armor and weapons aren't the thing that suffers when people have less coin, it's jewelry, furniture, food, clothes all of the things that exist purely as RP props that are not "vital."

[The_Last_Good_Dragon]

However, when people have less money they just tend to buy less things that are "fluff" - they'll just drink from fountains for MV rather than buy food from PC cooks, they' won't buy as many new clothes. Armor and weapons aren't the thing that suffers when people have less coin, it's jewelry, furniture, food, clothes all of the things that exist purely as RP props that are not "vital."

Yes, this is one of the main things I've seen with the economy since I've returned. When I left, there were several flourishing tailor shops stocked with an assortment of outfits; now, the only shops that seem to be "doing well" (ie, are consistently stocked) are the ones that provide clear coded benefits. While it might be "thematic" for it to take a couple of OOC months for a gentry to afford a new outfit from a PC (nice gentry-level clothing tends to cost around 800 silver for an outfit, from what I've seen) it's just not fun for either the merchant or the buyer for demand to be so constricted by a lack of silver. In that sense, RP is gouged and weakened.

And again, I feel like I need to reiterate that I don't think the answer is simply "give eveyone more money" or "bring back purchase silver and purchase wealth". There ARE creative, RP-focused solutions that can be put into play that allow a more rewarding sense of character growth and progression beyond "lol u poor better suck up to a rich PC" which, again, is the only realistic fashion to gaining assets outside of char-gen, outside of being a merchant in one of the per-mentioned utility, always-needed trades. I haven't presented any of the two broad suggestions bonking around in my mind because I haven't really gauged all of the aspects of it cause, well, IRL, but I hope to have a write-up of some suggestions that should hopefully keep the on-grid "value" and "difficulty" of silver the same while encouraging more role-play around assets and other avenues of acquiring silver.

[Puciek]

There are no clothes in stock mostly because almost everyone wants them custom made. Trying to sell cheap armour/clothes to combat this doesn't seem to work just yet. Same with armour really, very few people buy the stock items, even if they are a lot cheaper. If someone stocks a store with those clothes it's for display purposes more than anything else, and afaik all the tailors/ armourers in the game have very long order queues already.

[chronodbu]

There are no clothes in stock mostly because almost everyone wants them custom made. Trying to sell cheap armour/clothes to combat this doesn't seem to work just yet. Same with armour really, very few people buy the stock items, even if they are a lot cheaper. If someone stocks a store with those clothes it's for display purposes more than anything else, and afaik all the tailors/ armourers in the game have very long order queues already.

That's simply not true. I know for a fact one of our tailors stuff in her shop sells out fairly regularly just when she keeps her store stocked without custom orders, though custom orders do regularly come in.

You just have to make the stuff appetizing to look at and put some effort into the strings.