OK. Given how the economy is in fair part driven by commodities and availability/price, I think we need additional control in the city comm shops.

We get our comms through tribute and in theory it makes sense that a city would sell those commodities to its citizens for a reasonable price. However, at least as far as I know, the price that is set in the comm shop is the price that ANYONE can buy at. Which means people come to Magnagora and buy us out of stuff if we set the price where we want our citizens to be able to buy it.

I do some village comm quests. In particular, I do those that contribute to comms that I really need. And the shop is STILL always sold out.

I think we need to avoid what comm shops are in achaea, just a buffer against people buying out the world from comms, and make them an active part of the world. I SHOULD be able to go to the shop in the city I've worked hard for and buy some wood or steel for a decent price.

My proposal is that those who set city comm prices ought to be able to control separate prices for citizens and non-citizens. If the master shopkeeper liscense works like it does in achaea, I imagine it would work somewhat similarly. It would allow us to protect our city comms while still providing to our own citizens.

Otherwise, I expect people will just take a city shop and someone with a MSL and set it up ourselves. I'd much rather we didn't have to do that.

/Edit: I hear Celest has locked the door to their comm shop and only two people have a key. I don't know if this is in fact true, but it points at the problem...If we sell at the comm shop what we want citizens to buy for, everyone else swarms to either horde comms or sell them for profit somewhere else. This is NOT how the system should work, and it seems like a really artificial limitation on how we can sell. PLEASE help us.

I sent a large email with ideas for the city commshop a week or so ago. no responce.

It is true... not exactly sure why, but it's to do with a low number of commodities, and preventing people from Magnagora and Serenwilde buying us out and reselling the comms themselves. This is already the case in villages, when you look at Serenwilde's commodity shop it's a bit ridiculous. They go around buying villages out of commodities and reselling them themselves, and as a result now basically control the market.

I'm not trying to complain/bitch/whine, but it does seem like the type of thing that IRL would be labelled unethical. Sigh.

Has celest always had a door at their commshop?

As far as i've known. I think it's been there since things started to get organized, if not before. Don't other cities have them? I know they're in 'shop'-type places...

I think most everyone agrees.

I whole-heartedly agree. Running a commodity shop isn't easy when you are receiving no tithes and are constantly on the look out for Bau who runs rampant buying everyones commodities for Serenwilde.

I have sent several ideas on how we could reward people from Village commodity warehouses for completing a certain amount of the same quests. Such as if I lead five sheep to get sheared I can receive five wool from the local town commodity manager as a bonus.

Markets should be more controlled and it is the only way we can stop whoring of the market place. Since everyone relies on at least one tradeskill which means that everyone needs commodities at one point or another. If the lower skilled cannot find commodities a lot more people can suffer because they can't find the resources they need at adequate prices from which they can buy and sell from.

A piece of gourmet food can cost well over 500 gold to produce. Who would want to buy such a thing when they can go to Bob's and buy two fishcakes for the same effect? The price just isn't worth it when you compare raw commodity prices in comparison to how available they are.

Another thing which concerns me is how commodities constantly go up when bought to zero and some commodities are at a fixed rate to begin with no matter how many goods you return in commodity quests. I think the amount of quests done or not done should increase the rate at which commodities rise. It is far unrealistic that they go up so fast when you have all the hemp farmers, or that you have done over 50 fish quests in a three month span.

I think more rewards should be given to those who actually work hard to allow villages to produce more goods and there should be benefits pertaining to how many quests they do. I know I am not the only one who does a lot of quests and receives no commodities as a result. Maybe have villages not sell to people who constantly outsell the village and not return anything in terms of commodity quests?

Commodities are so fundamental to the game. This includes all herbs and things of that nature. Most commodities are too rare to come by such as sugar crystals from alchemy or perhaps mercury from coal making. A lot of recipes in cooking are too scarce to even consider making! I think there should be other ways to get these 'failed attempt' commodities as their is a large shortage in comparison to sugar crystals to mercury. The more people that come to the game the more these commodities will be needed and the more things will get out of hand. Achaea's commodity system worked for it. However, Lusternia requires a more complicated mercantile system that retributes appropiately to what has gone in in terms of quests and what has gone out from purchases.

I do like however that Lusternia has put in odd recipes that require out of commodity resources like with the recipe honeycakes. You need a honeycomb from the Ethereal plane to make them. This then substitutes for the sugar commodity you now don't need. If I were to make calamari I could just go kill an octopus and use it to make a delicasy in cooking. These kind of recipes really help the market as these things require you to look for them not exactly buy them.

So it is clear now I hope that a more leveled system is needed for Lusternia to function otherwise people won't be able to afford the commodities to produce efficient and competing wares.

New Celest has always had a door to their commodity shop.



We had two keys but when Amaya became the new trade minister she took my key away. Tough love that is.

Not to mention she is never around to take care of our commodities.

Another thing that would be useful for Lusternia since it is a complete player run economy is allow cities to invest in farms and other such things whereas they can harvest grain and take it to market (local village) and sell it for profit and thus increasing grain commodities in that village. I think this would be very useful for chefs. Perhaps make a pet that can create milk commodities every month?

it annoys me that magnagora doesn't have a door.

But I think a simple system of allowing the trade minister to set a certain percentage of tithes to reserves, a percentage to citizens and a percentage to all people who shop would solve the problem

allowing for seperate prices for citizens and normal people.

Oh! Oh! Can I have a pet dwarf to mine steel for me??

But yes, I think we all agree that the economy is way to complex to use the standby comm shop standard. We have to be able to control our prices in a more sophisticated manner.

I don't mean to be harsh, but I'm sort of surprised this wasn't forseen...I mean, people in Achaea constantly horde comms WAY beyond what they are ever likely to use (although sometimes they do...I once had nearly 1k obsidian that is mostly gone). And that is even though the economy is not nearly as player driven as it is here.

Qaletega said it, comms are CRITICAL to the world, and I know You all know that...So what's the word? Is this an intentional choice? Something You're looking into?

p.s. Thank You to whatever Divine helped out ole' Butch figure out how to run his store. He was really stumping us. I figured when even the stupid bear didn't understand his economics, there was something wrong...

People are allowed to horde. In real life, people with a lot of money buy up key resources, stocks, and other holdings, and they get all the richer in the process.

The game shouldn't be any different. Its not all fuzzy happy tra la la land. However the comm shop should definately have the aforementioned ability to regulate different rates.

In real life, when people hoard, it only screws people over in the long run, not so quickly

and in real life, there are lots of ways to get around it that are not yet simulated, even in Lusternia. Bringing in real life doesn't always work. Trust me, I don't want happy la la land. But I want reasonable control of our institutions not for the good of the individual per se, but for the protection of cities. As it is, people from other places just come buy the comms we get in tribute and sell them somewhere or take them themselves. That makes NO SENSE if we control that store that we can't restrict who it sells to, if you want to bring real life into this. It isn't an independant comm shop I want us to control, but a city run institution!

Like tax evasion?

Bit tired of being bashed for buying comms out. One, I don't touch city comm shops unless it is personal business, so you can stick that one. And two, the comm shops are more often than not sold out before I get there. So again... stick it. We have Estelbar - grain and eggs are most of our tithes. And someone walked in and bought 800 eggs a few days aog, and someone else at least 400 grain. I have been told that a Magnagoran was responsible for buying out the grain (which until the last few days, has been all tithes).

To be quite frank, I'm flamed for everything. If I can't find gems, I'm slighting the jewelry cartel because I'm the tailoring trademaster and pissed off about not getting all my gems. I resell at 'ridiculous' prices when a number of comms are losing us gold, and others are next to impossible to get hold of.

Stop bitching about me cause I'm better at my job than your Trade ministers.

Maybe you define your job differently. If you feel it's your responsibility to ensure your city makes a large profit from commodities by selling them, maybe other Trade Ministers are more concerned with making sure their citizens simply have commodities to use at a low price, or for free in the case of things like statues.

If you're actually just trying to provide comms for Serenwilde's... living-there-people, you could always have spoken to one of your Divine about a door or some way to protect comms from non-citizens.

And a few more things - it costs me a ridiculous amount to make some garments (I mean, who wants to pay 1500 for a normal dress?). I, as a Trademaster and shopkeeper, am suffering from the lack of and expensive prices of comms. Yet I get -so- much sh*t from the commune, let alone people spreading rumours and stuff about me.

I don't buy below five commodities, and most commodities I need to buy are only at 20 or 30 when I get there anyway.

And I have been (very reliably) informed that Bob is being revised come end of beta. Which is anytime now - I don't know what time it is over in America.

I -have- spoken to them, they are presently ignoring my requests.

I am trying to keep the damn shop stocked, without draining us of gold, hard to do if you sell large numbers below the price you bought at.

Well, fair enough. It seems like there are problems with the system... I at least felt better when I was hating Serenwilde for your monopoly but if even you are having problems, I guess things still need to be worked out.