Market Influence
Kinaed was talking about making a way for everyone to be able to change market prices, and asked for suggestions. One idea that I thought could work would be basically a stock market for influence over a commodity. For example, Iron. The administrators would release a set amount of shares with a set price, that you could purchase for IP or silver. They would also set the base price for Iron. Then everyone who owned shares could use them to inflate or deflate the price. The system would take the amount of shares voting up, subtract the number voting down, and modify the cost of the iron accordingly. The shares could also be sold on a free market, which would allow the price of influence to fluctuate. The cool thing about such a system is it rewards economic skills, and also gives people a place to sink their money. And of course we wanted to spice things up for nobles, and now we can.
While I like this concept in the abstract, I'm sorry to say I think this implementation may be problematic - and to fix the problems would require adding in a much bigger system underneath that would be a ton of coding time for little RP reward.
The problem with the system as described, IMO, is that there's no price fluctuation based on anything except votes. Why would people vote, ultimately? To raise it and then sell it - so everyone that owns it is going to vote up, etc.
To make a system of resource cost work, we need supply and demand - we need assets that create resources and a system that creates scarcity via natural disaster and/or people's activities. And that project is, quite frankly, a ton of work.
If we're going to go for this, I think this is definitely not the first step; an asset system is. And then, instead of shares, people trade in actual fundamental amounts of resources.
Let me babble a little...
We could allow people to purchase assets in a POLCA-like system where they set...
1) type of asset (business, land, etc);
2) the resource(s) that asset gives them;
3) any extra perks (weekly IP generation, flat silver income beyond the resource game) it gives them;
4) specific asset type factors.Asset type factors would include things like hidden (a secret business), offense/defense (for assets that allow one to attack other assets), etc.
These factors would spit out a total cost in silver to buy that asset and the PC could choose to make that transaction. Voila, now you have an asset. Income, between asset and other weekly pays on your pay list, could be used to determine your social status as gentry or freeman; enough income for X weeks running and you get promo'd, not enough for X weeks running and you lose it.
Any individual of any social class who has the money to can buy an asset, so this isn't only a noble or gentry game, though their added starter wealth will give them a leg up.
Anybody who wants to start play as a gentry probably ought to be required to have an asset that explains their status, though if they don't want to play the resource game, not all assets have to generate resources.
Resources can automatically be put on a global market where scarcity determines what you get for them. You can create scarcity by withdrawing your resources arbitrarily and stockpiling them for a brief period - alternatively, the game can create scarcity via random events that hurt production. Additionally, assets of specific types may come with commands that, for IP, allow you to do things like raid somebody else's asset - better hope you don't get caught, though.
Scarcity would not only determine a person's own income from their resources, but also the price of items made of the same material on the open market.
Now, for all that babbling...
I'm not sure this system is worth making, because it's a LOT of code and we have so much else to add.
The problem with the system as described, IMO, is that there's no price fluctuation based on anything except votes. Why would people vote, ultimately? To raise it and then sell it - so everyone that owns it is going to vote up, etc.
To make a system of resource cost work, we need supply and demand - we need assets that create resources and a system that creates scarcity via natural disaster and/or people's activities. And that project is, quite frankly, a ton of work.
If we're going to go for this, I think this is definitely not the first step; an asset system is. And then, instead of shares, people trade in actual fundamental amounts of resources.
Let me babble a little...
We could allow people to purchase assets in a POLCA-like system where they set...
1) type of asset (business, land, etc);
2) the resource(s) that asset gives them;
3) any extra perks (weekly IP generation, flat silver income beyond the resource game) it gives them;
4) specific asset type factors.Asset type factors would include things like hidden (a secret business), offense/defense (for assets that allow one to attack other assets), etc.
These factors would spit out a total cost in silver to buy that asset and the PC could choose to make that transaction. Voila, now you have an asset. Income, between asset and other weekly pays on your pay list, could be used to determine your social status as gentry or freeman; enough income for X weeks running and you get promo'd, not enough for X weeks running and you lose it.
Any individual of any social class who has the money to can buy an asset, so this isn't only a noble or gentry game, though their added starter wealth will give them a leg up.
Anybody who wants to start play as a gentry probably ought to be required to have an asset that explains their status, though if they don't want to play the resource game, not all assets have to generate resources.
Resources can automatically be put on a global market where scarcity determines what you get for them. You can create scarcity by withdrawing your resources arbitrarily and stockpiling them for a brief period - alternatively, the game can create scarcity via random events that hurt production. Additionally, assets of specific types may come with commands that, for IP, allow you to do things like raid somebody else's asset - better hope you don't get caught, though.
Scarcity would not only determine a person's own income from their resources, but also the price of items made of the same material on the open market.
Now, for all that babbling...
I'm not sure this system is worth making, because it's a LOT of code and we have so much else to add.
First of all this statement "The problem with the system as described, IMO, is that there's no price fluctuation based on anything except votes. Why would people vote, ultimately? To raise it and then sell it - so everyone that owns it is going to vote up, etc."
Should not be true. Reeves and knights want the price of metal low, as do blacksmiths. Candlers want the price of wax to be low, so they can make more money. Not everyone is selling the product, people will want to vote down prices as well.
The problem with the POLCA system is it is paying money for more money. Because as long as money can buy access to resource production, there will be no scarcity. If you start stockpiling, someone else will be smart enough to buy some iron and sell it. Another problem is this will lead to constant deflation. As long as money can be spent to buy resources, the price of resources will drop. Sure it is a more interesting way to gain money, but I don't think we need that. I think we need a way to turn money into power, and to a competitive power. This POLCA system could turn into that, but if you start putting in raids, a global market with options to stockpile or flood, and the other things you are proposing, I don't see how coding it would be easier than just a global market with a vote command. I can't speak to the coding costs, perhaps an Admin can. But I can say that the POLCA system might be another drain on Admin time, rather than a one time enterprise.
Should not be true. Reeves and knights want the price of metal low, as do blacksmiths. Candlers want the price of wax to be low, so they can make more money. Not everyone is selling the product, people will want to vote down prices as well.
The problem with the POLCA system is it is paying money for more money. Because as long as money can buy access to resource production, there will be no scarcity. If you start stockpiling, someone else will be smart enough to buy some iron and sell it. Another problem is this will lead to constant deflation. As long as money can be spent to buy resources, the price of resources will drop. Sure it is a more interesting way to gain money, but I don't think we need that. I think we need a way to turn money into power, and to a competitive power. This POLCA system could turn into that, but if you start putting in raids, a global market with options to stockpile or flood, and the other things you are proposing, I don't see how coding it would be easier than just a global market with a vote command. I can't speak to the coding costs, perhaps an Admin can. But I can say that the POLCA system might be another drain on Admin time, rather than a one time enterprise.
But there's just no dynamism in a system that only involves voting yes or no with no accounting for resource scarcity whatsoever - and resource scarcity should be driving prices. It's the demand without the supply, and I think it's just lacking the 'guts' of a real economy to succeed.
What the asset system does (in terms of paying money for more money) is involve a huge outlay of initial capital for a slow weekly gain. I don't think this is a problem; it's how business works IRL. You lay out the initial cost, you get the product, and you hope profit over time will pay back your expense.
We can easily create scarcity by 1) the cost of the assets being huge; 2) limits on asset ownership per person; 3) potential limits on the totla number of assets producing a specific resource; 4) natural price correction. That is, if wheat is suddenly worth a lot of money, a bunch of people may scramble to create wheat farms... and suddenly wheat is worth nothing. Woops! You acted in too short-term a way, and you took the hit for it.
I should clarify that I think this asset system will take tons more coding than your market, not less - but I think the market can't work without a resource system of this sort.
What the asset system does (in terms of paying money for more money) is involve a huge outlay of initial capital for a slow weekly gain. I don't think this is a problem; it's how business works IRL. You lay out the initial cost, you get the product, and you hope profit over time will pay back your expense.
We can easily create scarcity by 1) the cost of the assets being huge; 2) limits on asset ownership per person; 3) potential limits on the totla number of assets producing a specific resource; 4) natural price correction. That is, if wheat is suddenly worth a lot of money, a bunch of people may scramble to create wheat farms... and suddenly wheat is worth nothing. Woops! You acted in too short-term a way, and you took the hit for it.
I should clarify that I think this asset system will take tons more coding than your market, not less - but I think the market can't work without a resource system of this sort.
The first thing is dynamism, from what you said all your system is doing is automatically voting down, unless you want to vote up. The problem with this Asset system is twofold in my opinion. Your four conditions make it feasible economically, but there are two things I still don't like. Sure you could affect the market, but only if you closed NPC shops, since they provide an artificial source. Also, it requires very little economic skills, and it rewards those who sit by and collect money. That's fine if you want to tweak the income system. But if you want to make an economic system, it would be far more interesting if you stood to loose. Still you could solve these problems, I just didn't realize the admins were willing to put in so much work. The asset system with a global market could be expanded into a real economic system, but it would require a lot of fleshing out.
Scarcity as it affects supply/demand would be almost impossible to have be impactful to the average player beyond our shop_price * material mod that we've already added. It's just not thematic that most players personally purchase or use raw materials on a grand, outside of your own trade, scale. Even if some people did, we don't have enough people who would. By that, I'm not speaking about individual merchants, but more like "the iron ore from an entire duchy has ceased flowing" and the flow-on impacts. About 10% of the pbase would even notice, and the 90% who don't probably wouldn't care even if they did notice because their char concepts have nothing to do with iron prices. Those who did have that power or interest would literally be a handful of nobility who we don't have enough breadth to really cover all commodoties.
I really like the idea of a market buying and selling commodities to affect the in-game multiplier. I like the idea of some nobles being able to define a native production commodity, so having the ability to increase or decrease the price of a commodity by a certain factor, as well as market prices doing the same. I'd probably cap the price shift in either direction though. That said, I think that we'll have to gloss or overcome a few things to make it worthwhile and accessible to everyone.
A "voting" system isn't a bad system so long as there's reasons people would want it to be in either direction. Higher iron prices don't necessarily translate into an iron owner making a profit either. Economically speaking, it may mean they cannot sell their resource because others cannot afford it. Likewise, an investor purchasing when prices are high is likely to lose money than if they purchase when low and sell when high.
Anyway, I think a market has merit. I just have to ponder what it might look like in practice. Everyone who feeds ideas in here helps me frame something! :)
I really like the idea of a market buying and selling commodities to affect the in-game multiplier. I like the idea of some nobles being able to define a native production commodity, so having the ability to increase or decrease the price of a commodity by a certain factor, as well as market prices doing the same. I'd probably cap the price shift in either direction though. That said, I think that we'll have to gloss or overcome a few things to make it worthwhile and accessible to everyone.
A "voting" system isn't a bad system so long as there's reasons people would want it to be in either direction. Higher iron prices don't necessarily translate into an iron owner making a profit either. Economically speaking, it may mean they cannot sell their resource because others cannot afford it. Likewise, an investor purchasing when prices are high is likely to lose money than if they purchase when low and sell when high.
Anyway, I think a market has merit. I just have to ponder what it might look like in practice. Everyone who feeds ideas in here helps me frame something! :)
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