Purchase silver, assets and trade skills

[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.

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.

Help me connect some dots here then.

1. Either those are all one-offs that are being shelved, which is pretty much like it always was and we don't really have a shelving problem - just a problem with not enough tailors to meet all the demand for clothing (likely fair as we only have few active ones and pretty hefty pbase).
2. Or those are not one-offs, and matter of shelving is just a question of mass producing + backroom management (in which case yay, we have people willing to wear what other people will wear, lower value of silver at work)

In either case, I do not see the problem with the existing system, or how assets caused the empty shelves.

[Starstarfish]

In either case, I do not see the problem with the existing system, or how assets caused the empty shelves.

Over the past year I've tried various Merchant concepts and different ideas - in the end, the conclusion was the same. Only be a Merchant if you want to craft what sells. Which is of all of the thought-out crafts and professions available is consistently a very short recommended list - essentially things that are "vital." This cuts off a huge list of potentially interesting concepts from the game - things that help flesh out the RP landscape because they are not "vital."

There's also the fact that if people don't want to wait for a PC anyone can with retool make anything regardless if they have the actual coded skill for that object or not. If you want to help out PC crafters, I'd argue the ability to retool should be related to coded skill somehow. The alternative or another idea is that assets for certain types of jobs/shops that do not get the PC pull they should need to be adjusted to represent vNPC sales. Or let lower-level Merchants take roster jobs while they work up to Journeyman to run their own shop. So that can serve as a basic income source and source of interaction with others to drive some PC sales.

Further, some folks seem to be saving on-grid money for things by doing things like ... virtually RPing items or food (or just spam drinking from fountains) or putting descriptions of perfume or cosmetics into their descriptions rather than buying them on-grid from others. So all of the "less money is good for RP" thing I'm not sure is exactly working out as intended or desired.

It may be more or less noticeable depending on what line of work people are looking to be in.

[Rabek]

If you have the ability to make a thing, it costs 1 silver to retool. If not, it costs the full price all over again.

I've submitted a policy note to staff before regarding putting cosmetics/perfume/etc in one's description without actually buying the object; it's against policy to do so. Report it if you see it.

RPing props you don't own is bad form and shouldn't be done, but I'm not sure whether it's against policy or not. If you don't have the code item, I will personally RP that you don't have it whatever you pose. It's cheating, in my opinion.

Anyway, I play like an hour a week (if that) so I can't really comment on the economy balance, but the first two points seemed to need clarification.

[Starstarfish]

If you have the ability to make a thing, it costs 1 silver to retool. If not, it costs the full price all over again.

My understanding here was if you made the object yourself - as items flag who crafted them. Not if simply in general you just know the craft in question. That might be me just misunderstanding though.

[Puciek]

it's 1s for the item creator (so you can do fixes and adjustments after finalizing) and price based on item value for everyone else, no matter what guild to prevent re-use of items.

[Rabek]

That's a relatively recent change, then. I don't know when that went in.

[Temi]

So, I tested to verify and clear the confusion up!

If you make it, you can retool it for 1 silver.

If you could have made it, but didn't, you can retool it for about 50% of its total cost.

If you aren't able to make it, you pay full cost again.

[Kinaed]

A few notes on policy stuff I caught while catching up on the forums...

1. Can you RP being wealthy or skilled if your character is not?

As per TI help files, "Your character sheet is you and the truth of your character". If a player RPs being a sword master when their stats don't back it up, either they're lying ICly or they're breaking the rules and should be reported to staff.

2. Is the use of props a character doesn't have against policy?

It depends. Also as per our help files, if a prop provides an in-game advantage over another player, it must exist - ie, if you RP cutting a piece of paper with scissors and don't have scissors, it's fine unless the scissors becomes a point of contention, such as PC A trying to pkill PC B with said pair of scissors. Money and social leverage is a matter of advantage in-game, so we do expect people to actually buy tea when sipping tea at the tea house. Also, by TI policy definition, props are non-functional items. Therefore, if an item has a code affect or function (lights, for example), they are NOT props, and the character is required to actually have that object if referencing it.

[Geras]

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.

I don't know if this is still true but a major downside to training by doing used to be your customers were getting screwed with the quality of your goods. Basically your skill played a much bigger role in the quality of the sword you forge (or whatever) than the quality of the material. So that's kind of a problem for any trade where the stats matter (leather, wood and blacksmithing spring to mind)

[Puciek]

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.

I don't know if this is still true but a major downside to training by doing used to be your customers were getting screwed with the quality of your goods. Basically your skill played a much bigger role in the quality of the sword you forge (or whatever) than the quality of the material. So that's kind of a problem for any trade where the stats matter (leather, wood and blacksmithing spring to mind)

It still does for weapon damage, but that is also why your apprentice grade weapons should be sold a lot cheaper than wicked ones, and now we have the economy where that's actually doable as silver matters. Before assets, the sub-par weapons were used as training one, a stepping stone between using wooden and proper ones.