See below for my notes on fixing the economy. Most of the coinage bits are already coded and is being finetuned, all the proposed craft changes havent been implemented yet. Don't go beserk just yet, i'm inviting you guys to rationally discuss these changes.
I wont be dunking them in tomorrow.
---- REVISION 2
Fixing the broken Economy:
A MUD is based mainly on a functioning economy. DL's economy, isn't. People are either very rich or very poor. Prices are erratic, making money a hard thing to spend. A huge hoard of objects and gold is kept inside the player economy, and never spent. Mining hasn't helped. (sorry!
)
Goals:
- Draining gold from the economy, by balancing prices and implementing new things to buy.
- Draining objects out of the economy, without forcing players to loose their favorite objects due to deathtraps, corpse loss or item damage.
- Allowing people to keep their wealth. (no people suddenly becoming 'poor' because of this patch).
- Introduce coins of value.
- Adjust object prices.
- Balance Crafting fairly for crafters.
Items split into types:
Abundant: Pops all the time, easy obtainable, low value
Common: Pops less, but is still encountered a lot. mediocre value
Rare: Pops rarely, high value.
Extremely Rare: Pops very rarely, very valuable
Artifact: Possibly only one of each in existance, extremely valuable.
New coinage:
1 white shard = 100 emeralite coins
1 emeralite coin = 100 adamantium coins
1 adamantium coin = 100 platinum coins
1 platinum coin = 100 gold coins
1 gold coin = 100 silver coins
1 silver coin = 100 copper coins
1 copper coin = 10 copper bits
Note: Resources are not equal to coins, there is no relation between ingot price and coin value
See below for a description:
'obtainable by' describes who will be able to obtain this coinage with considerable effort. So for example, level 30 players will generally be able to collect several gold coins with considerable effort.
'abundant item price' describes at which level abundant items will start to cost the coinage type.
'buys' gives an idea what the coinage is worth.
Copper Bits:
obtainable by: Beggars
abundant item price for: lvl 1+ items
Buys:
- 5 bits - a ripped shirt
- 5 bits - components for 1+ complexity spell prism.
- 5 bits - learn a level 1 skill.
Commonly dropped by:
- Level 1+ mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 1
- Sacrificing copper+ priced items
Rarely dropped by:
Copper Coins:
obtainable by: Lower-class commoners, lvl 1+ players
abundant item price for: lvl 2+ items
Buys:
- 10 copper - a common cloth shirt
- 1 copper - Stable level 1+ pet
- 1 copper - place item in shop identify price (merchant pact)
- 5 copper - components for 5+ complexity spell prism.
- 10 copper - components for 10+ complexity spell prism.
- 1 copper - Learn a level 5+ skill
- 10 copper - Learn a level 10+ skill
Commonly dropped by:
- Level 5+ mobs
- Level 1+ boss mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 5-7
- Sacrificing silver+ priced items
Rarely dropped by:
- Level 1+ mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 1-4
Silver Coins:
obtainable by: Middle-class commoners, lvl 10/15+ players
abundant item price for: lvl 10/15+ items
Buys:
- 5 silver - a slightly magical cloth shirt
- 1 silver - Stable level 25+ pet
- 1 silver - Set structure friend
- 5 silver - claim one mining patch
- 1 silver - components for 15+ complexity spell prism.
- 25 silver - components for 20+ complexity spell prism.
- 50 silver - components for 25+ complexity spell prism.
- 1 silver - Learn a level 15+ skill
- 25 silver - Learn a level 20+ skill
- 50 silver - Learn a level 25+ skill
Commonly dropped by:
- Level 25+ mobs
- Level 10+ boss mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 8
- Sacrificing gold+ priced items
Rarely dropped by:
- Level 10+ mobs
- Level 5+ boss mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 5-7
Gold Coins:
obtainable by: Upper-class commoners, lvl 25/30+ players
abundant item price for: lvl 25/30+ items
Buys:
- good quality items, A magical embroidered silk shirt
- 1 gold - Add family member
- 1 gold - Stable level 50+ pet
- 1 gold - Set structure owner or guild-friend
- 1 gold - components for 30+ complexity spell prism.
- 50 gold - components for 40+ complexity spell prism.
- 1 gold - Learn a level 30+ skill
- 25 gold - Learn a level 35+ skill
- 50 gold - Learn a level 40+ skill
- 75 gold - Learn a level 45+ skill
Commonly dropped by:
- Level 50+ boss mobs
Rarely dropped by:
- Level 50+ mobs
- Level 25+ boss mobs
- Mining treasure chest: Underground depth 8
Platinum Coins:
obtainable by: Lords, lvl 50+/epic players
abundant item price for: lvl 50+/epic items
Buys:
- high quality items, A highly magical embroidered silk shirt
- 1 Platinum - A family name (after completing quest)
- 10 Platinum - A shop
- 1 Platinum - Engrave one item
- 5 Platinum - Increase structure size by 1.
- 1 Platinum - Learn a level 50+ skill
- 20 Platinum - Player Cottage (Max 2 rooms)
- 45 Platinum - Player Residence (Max 5 rooms)
- 90 Platinum - Player Mansion (Max 10 rooms)
Commonly dropped by:
- nothing!
Rarely dropped by:
- Level 50+ boss mobs
Adamantium Coins:
obtainable by: Kings, Guildmasters, persistant epic players
Buys:
- 10 Adamantium - A guild
- 40 Adamantium - Player Castle (Max 20 rooms)
Commonly dropped by:
- nothing!
Rarely dropped by:
- nothing!
Emeralite Coins:
obtainable by: Large countries, insanely persistant epic players
Buys:
- 1 Emeralite - Player Citadel (Max 40 rooms)
Commonly dropped by:
- nothing!
Rarely dropped by:
- nothing!
White Shard:
obtainable by: Deities, RL lacking epic players
Buys: Practically anything.
Commonly dropped by:
- nothing!
Rarely dropped by:
- nothing!
Specials:
- Treasure map chests: Drop coins equal to an equal level Boss mob.
- Monster pop-chests: Drops 4 times the normal amount of coins for that monster.
- Quest reward: Rewards 4 times the normal amount of coins for an equal level monster.
- Repairing: Repairing a fully damaged item costs 1/10th of the full item value, but never more than 1 gold.
Item classes:
- Abundant: normal price (see below)
- Common: price * 10 (1 Platinum->10 Platinum)
- Rare: one coin type higher (1 Platinum->1 Adamantium)
- Extremely Rare: two coin types higher (1 Platinum->1 Emeralite)
- Artifact: three coin types higher (1 Platinum->1 White Shard)
Old gold conversion:
No decision yet, but we are going to use the richest players as a base. Players are considered to have a small fortune above 1 million and have a big fortune above 10+ million.
1 Emeralite is comparable to a big fortune, 1 Adamantium to a small fortune.
10.000.000 = 1 Emeralite
1.000.000 = 1 Adamantium
100.000 = 1 Platinum
10.000 = 1 Gold
1.000 = 1 Silver
100 = 10 copper
10 = 1 copper
1 = 1 copper bit
Item binding:
Common to Rare class Items bind to the player on equipping, making them unusuable by others. This prevents poluting the player economy with old items, while still allowing people to gift items to others. Quest rewards, Extremely Rare and Artifact items bind when they are touched.
Selling items:
Since object prices will be re-adjusted (which generally means a sharp rise in value), object sell values will be adjusted. Depending on your charisma, objects sell from 5% to 10% of their full price.
Note that NPC's will never pay more than 1 platinum for any item, whatever the worth.
Crafting and the Economy:
A hard egg to crack. Enchanting sits at the core of our problem. Stacking enchantments has absolutely ruined gameplay, with the low cost for high level enchantments (just enchant a low level item ten times). Combine that with the over the top quality of crafted gear there is no reason to even wear game equipment. I have got some ideas, but I do not want to drive any established players away from the game, so they need to be reviewed. Leather and bone armor has no use, and I think foraging is just a tad silly for its fixed list of items to forage.
Generic Crafting changes:
- Allow crafting of ANY Abundant and Common class items that are available in game.
- Players can buy or quest for the recipies required for item crafting. They can reverse-engineer Abundant and Common items that are easy for them to craft anyway.
- When a player is skilled enough to craft an item, and pays the resources for them, he will always succeed.
- All crafting items require 50% of the objects normal price in coins, the rest is supplied by resources, and possibly, quested or looted reagents.
- Creating Rare and Extremely Rare pops that can be combined with the rarer resources into Rare and Extremely Rare crafted equipment. Since a rare craft-component pop comes in place of a normal rare object pop, this is a fair exchange and doesn't pollute the player economy, while still giving crafters the ability to make 'Uber' items.
- Item resource type is defined by its original recipy.
Reforging:
- Reforging is removed. Instead, people can use their crafts to perform 'Upgrade' and 'Salvage'.
Upgrading:
- Upgrading costs 400% of the items value in coins, and two times the normal crafting resources. (but not additional reagents).
- Materials are split into levels. You can only upgrade an item from its original material to a material one level higher (copper->bronze).
Salvaging:
- Depending on the item salvaged, may jields one (or more) of its original resource type.
Enchanting changes:
- An enchanter requires enchanting tokens to enchant an object. These tokens must be of equal or greater level of the item needed to enchant.
- An enchanter can gather enchanting tokens of a certain level by destroying items of that level.
- Depending on the item class, an item may jield anywere between one or five tokens.
- An enchantment can be selected from a list, each priced at a certain amount of tokens.
- Like Rare and Extremely Rare pops for common crafts, special enchantment tokens can be found that allow special enchantments. All 'uber power' enchantments will be put under this list.
- Enchanting a new enchantment costs 10% of the items value in coins.