Wealth Revamp

[Dice]

I have a thought on wealth and influence that might be a little bit controversial, but I want to throw it out there.

Maybe there really doesn't need to be any sort of 'wealthy' flag at all. When you think about things influence can purchase, most of them seem to be things that you could realistically buy with money.

So why not a two-tiered system? You can buy the things influence allows either with silver or with influence. Wealth wouldn't count into influence in that model.

This:
1) Provides a new money sink for the economy
2) Realistically models how wealth actually works - you may be a nobody socially but if you're rich, you can still get things done
3) Also models a sort of 'dual path' for gentry vs nobility - power through money vs power through social status

I haven't fully fleshed this thought out, but what do people think of the gist of it?

[Kinaed]

I'm agreeing with the gist of Dice's post.

I've been thinking that we should allow players to purchase 'assets' with silver in-game or background 'purchase advantages' in chargen that would make them what we call 'wealthy'.

The assets themselves would provide a modicum of income.
At certain thresholds, they would provide influence points to spend.

Nothing more, nothing less. Thoughts?

[Geras]

Seems reasonable to me. Though I'd just say that I hope the influence point bonus isn't too too large.

[Kinaed]

Why not? And large in comparison to what?

[Geras]

Well, I would think influence points derived from support should be the dominant factor, no? It is after all the support (or support-influence) system that's being implement here. I think it makes sense "fun"-wise, as support is derived through RP rather than XP.

I think in general too btw that care needs to be taken to not make the influence benefits too powerful. We have to be mindful that mages herectics and thieves are all over-represented compared to what's realistic, and we can't have things getting skewed too much because of it.

[RabbleRouser]

Uhm.. I'd like to chime in with another issue I have with this whole new concept...

From everything I've heard the whole support system is going weigh too heavily on the while influence thing and that it is completely reasonable for someone with enough wealth or status to be able to have a decent chunk of influence with no actual support and hope that influence will not be as dependent on having support as I keep getting the feeling is intended with the new ideas.. No one should be forced to garner PC support to be a player in the system.

Just my two cents on this one, and I'll outright admit that i have not been following the whole support stuff too in depth, because what little bit I have read about support building influence and influence buying perks keeps sounding more artificial than the XP way of buying a lot of the stuff now and seems to cut NPC or vNPC support, of even having the right 'family' completely out of the picture.

[Geras]

Hmm, that's a good point.

[Kinaed]

I'd like to note that support is just one of the five or six things that I have listed to give influence. :) The calculation doesn't make it the most or even best route to get influence, but it's there. I agree that support should not be required to play the game, though I don't have an issue with building it in as desirable or beneficial, and maybe largely so. As it is, however, my first cut that went to the staff to discuss really didn't seem to overstate support... I think.

At the very least, we're aware of the issue.

[Jei]

Didn't read the entirety of this post so if the following is screwed up because of my negligence, then disregard.

Isn't 'wealthy' just the ability to purchase silver at a lower cost? And isn't purchasing wealthy an xp expenditure? And then purchasing silver at this lower cost also an xp expenditure?

If so, why are you adding further restrictions than what is already in place by having XP be the 'currency' for buying wealth? I'd rather say there should be no 'minimum' as the amount in the bank account, IMO, reflects 'liquid' wealth, rather than 'invested' wealth.

So someone may be 'wealthy' but have a lot of investments and their finances are below this minimum, I don't think that means they should lose the wealthy advantage that they spent experience on just because they dip below that is very 1) fair, 2)good for you guys' other goal of having people spend more and horde less. So I'd like an option added to this poll of 'no minimum', though it's a bit late. Oh well =/

EDIT: Please just disregard this entire post, I was unaware that the old system of how purchasing wealth worked was done away with quite a long time ago. =/ So... yeah. I have no real opinion about this.

[Kinaed]

Yeah, we're not going that way.

We'll probably abolish the wealthy flag alltogether and just do a calculation on assets to determine overall influence.