The Economy - Resources

[Chewett]

"I dream of an industry"

I use this phrase a lot, its a great phrase I think no one(?) first popularized here. Lots of people ask me when we are going to have more metalworking after I created the ingots and sandy things after creating fine sand. The honest answer is, not soon. But I do have a rather nice metalworking tree already drawn out (on paper!) with ideas from Mag many months ago.

Before we can add many many more resources (which we will) we need to work out what they are going to be used for. There can be no more resources added until we have a good plan of getting rid of them. There must be an end goal and part of that is consumables.

So I guess the answer is, when do we get consumables? This is one of the first points I plan to address, in combination with the job titles once MD is technically up to scratch.

This is really really important to me, I have spoken with MaGoHi at length after he produced a very detailed idea of how we could have a web of resources and their uses and its amazing.

If you have ideas for consumables, or have opinions on this, you are welcome to give them here. This isnt me saying that it will be done soon, but know it is important.

[Aia del Mana]

This opinion I do hold, in terms of resources.

Presently, if one should require of a certain resource, she merely obtains of the tool required, and gathers of it herself.

In the other-realm, if one doth require of such resources, the preferred method were to pay a levy to another who hath profession to provide of it. In example, one who doth require of bread shall pay the baker, and receive in return. The baker shall require significant effort to create of this bread, and so to recuperate of her investment, she hath trained herself well, and purchased of large ovens, and hath made contracts with those that supply her flour.

If one should require resources to have value, they must be scarce, or require of significant effort to create, or have desirable purpose. An example of this were the Memory Stone - this were sufficiently scarce, doth require of a specialised detector, and were immediately purposeful as a conduit for spell-imprinting.

[Ivorak]

"I dream of a military-industrial complex"

In which resources are consumed by the machines¹ of war². Competition driving cooperation and innovation.³

Notes

1. Metaphorical and also physical, e.g. siege weapons.
2. Or other forms of land vs. land competition. Building the largest tower to be the first to reach the heavens, interregnum arms races, exploration expeditions (sailing or mining), alchemical research, hunting the snark, slaying the jabberwocky, building the largest botanical collection, breeding a better elucabration, ritual sacrifice of cake as a summoning ritual, competing to host the biggest tea party, an international legislative body (known as The Absurd Assembly) playing nomic⁴, etc.
3. A long time ago I wrote a little bit about how competition makes things more fun (in an essay that is equally about rules as a leverage point). Or at least I tried to. You can read that essay here.
4. "Nomic is a game created in 1982 by the otherwordly philosopher Peter Suber in which the rules of the game include mechanisms for the players to change those rules, usually beginning through a system of democratic voting. Nomic is a game in which changing the rules is a move."

P.S. Of course, we need a more general economy as well. But I think competition can be a driver for that, as well as something that consumes resources in large amounts.

[MaGoHi]

After reading this topic and   Job titles I once again reach the conclusion that the current stack system needs to be altered, especially with the planned Job/title system, now i fully understand that thats unwanted by many, but i think to improve the apparently intended/wanted trading of ressources between people with jobs and their guilds, the stack system needs some sort of rework, here again (think i saw these ideas somewhere on the forum) some ideas below.

1. Some sort of Tradepost/Shop that would allow you to go there and trade x amount of X and y amount of Y with each other

• to avoid abuse, offers could only be active for 5-10 min so nobody could place their stack there and missuse it as some sort of bank to collect smaller amounts meanwhile
• make offers non retractable, so people would think twice before placing one

2. Adjust the Stack system to a "stack of stacks" system, similar to how bushies work atm ( i think they still work that way), where the top of the stacks has 1 to 3 bushies, before reaching the next stack instance, this could be for example a random amount between 1 and 25, that would even add some weird unlogical system MD likes to have so much, so you never know how much you will actually trade xD

3. (yeah you guessed it) get rid of the stack system completely

 

 

In any case i think that to "save" or maybe rather start the economy we need to make trade more attractive and no matter how i look at the stack system, it IS outdated or at least not suitable in the way it exists to support an economy in the way it is planned/wanted

[Jubaris]

I feel like the players are too stretched. I think MD shouldn't encourage stacking over lengthy periods of time and persistent grinding, I feel like a player, if wants to be successful at one aspect of MD, he needs to dedicate to it completely, there needs to be a way for someone to participate in most of stuff parallel.

So I'm proposing something that befits my little world, yet remains fair:

Reduce requirements of consumables (like 1000 flowers for a wreath/reviving) to something like 100, but to counter this relative ease-over-time, introduce resource degradation, flowers disappear (or turn into inferior resource) after X days. That way we avoid the inflation and still encourage people to some effort.

Resource degradation can't be applied to stuff like iron ingots and such though. _{I'm wondering, where are we going with so much resource diversity?}

Other than that, I totally support adding more consumables and resource-spending ways, it is the way to go  

[Miq]

The thing is to find use for all the resources be it at level 1 or level10.

Make it into a creature. Make sand forms, melt metal ingots with wood and charcoal (moar wood atm) to pour statues of King Miq. King Miq statue gives 17 minutes of unlimited AP :)

If MD is to keep armorsets than alot of resources could be used for that (iron, jewelry, coal, gold, resins, park etc). That also would mean that all existing pro bono armors get stripped from everyone.

Honestly this needs a solid coherent work with known limitations of what actually is allowed to be produced with the resources. What kind of effects are off the table. Or is a diamond shield of dragon resistance a thing(0 effects and stats for any attaking drach)?

Miq

[No one]

21 hours ago, Jubaris said:

 

Reduce requirements of consumables (like 1000 flowers for a wreath/reviving) to something like 100, but to counter this relative ease-over-time, introduce resource degradation, flowers disappear (or turn into inferior resource) after X days. That way we avoid the inflation and still encourage people to some effort. 

Resource degradation on existing resources ... that is difficult. You will hit the existing stacks.

Consider spells that would get forgotten from memory stones or gold would turn to silver then to simple stones. Whatever you do to existing resources you'd just raise more frustration on existing player pool.

If you want resource degradation ... use it for the new resources.

As for 100 flowers ... please, that's an insult. I could get that many in a single day.

[No one]

@Chewett , as long as the current system with item creation is used (using entire stack instead of the required amount), the system will not be used to its max.

It was understandable at beginning as @Muratus del Mur wanted to withdraw from market the huge amounts of resources available and that worked ... sort of. Now we need the rate of item creation (thus consumption) to increase and for this we need to allow smaller amounts to be transferred / converted.

Also, to have an increase flow of resources, MD would benefit from some sort of Alliance stashes where and / alliance specific lands.

There is no competition anymore, there is no purpose as what is new is either too expensive for some or too common for others. We need to bring ppl to work together and to give them some sort of benefit thus we should shift focus to benefits for groups (aka alliances).

[Jubaris]

3 hours ago, No one said:

[...] You will hit the existing stacks. [...]

I was just thinking about it conceptually, I agree with you, existing stacks shouldn't be invaded just so. They can stay (and then apply only for new ones) or the owners can be offered compensation, etc.

And about the 100 flowers, the number was a wild guess, but your answer makes me think it's good  If it takes you, an expert herbalist, one day to farm it, it would take 'normal' people several, which is an appropriate amount of effort for revival in my opinion. And the fact that you can do it faster is deserved because of your dedication for grinding herbs.