Sydius wrote:
How many players do you think will be needed in order for a player-only economy to function? Or, are you considering NPC vendors that sell things for players?
That is part of the problem in a free shard. There is a critical mass of active players needed so that you have a reasonable chance of finding needed goods and services when you play.
CMS wrote:
Would the crafters possibly pay the "hunter/gatherers" for raw materials (meaning looted weapons/armor to smelt) so as to enhance their own raw materials gathering?
Could you have a sort of "trade association" to keep one crafter from undercutting another? Should you have?
Sorry, just thinking off the top of my head.
-Goldrush
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Those were ideas I had in mind as well. And again for the adventurer who wants some livelihood besides adventuring, a material gathering role is perfect, because we are talking about sacrificing only 1 skill. So mining, lumberjacking,fishing and of course hunting become natural choices. There would also be craftsmen who may not even have the skills to gather their own resources and would have to buy from others (maybe they would rather have fighting skills. I was thinking of how to make underused skills more useful as well and also to make being a dedicated craftsman require more; for example makeing armor and weapons require arms lore as well as blacksmithing, etc.
I think player run trade associations (guilds) would also be importan institutions for the reasons you've said.
HellRazor wrote:
Player owned vendors. All the vendors would be player owned.
My thoughts as well. Additonaly to stop the 1 stop shopping supermarket, each player would only be allowed 1 vendor, and vendors would be types just like the npc shopkeepers, so your blacksmith vendor can only sell what a blacksmith can etc. Now even housing can be player made with the right system (checkout the player town system for RUO) so really stables and banks and healers are the only thing we must have (it would really suck if there was no way to rez if other players werent around)
Of course as Rose said (not going to quote since it was mostly a recap) you have to strike some balance, and fun has to be the overriding design principle.