Because cheap, plentiful comms lead to cheap, plentiful items which leads to database bloat which leads to lag. (Can we at least agree that lag is a bad thing?) We do NOT want to a system that encourages thousands upon thousands of easy-to-create, cheap items. Yes, we want to encourage creativity, etc., etc., but it has to be balanced against the reality that we cannot have infinite items. So, yeah, I have to be the bad guy and reign things in and I know many people hate me for it, but it's something that just has to be done.

Anyway, we've adjusted the comm system and I'd like another week to monitor these changes before doing any more tweaks. Rather than jumping on the Commodity Apocalypse bandwagon, please be patient and give constructive feedback.

Most of those items decay, and in a lot of cases the large numbers of items are for things that are 'required': large piles of vials, or rings (for enchantments). People were not going out and creating thousands upon thousands of cheap easy-to-create items... because they were not really even cheap then (20,000 gold for master armour and weapons). Further, remember that your stated reasoning for the switch was to make Trade a more desirable governing style.

For trades-folk, creating too many items is also a bad thing! If you create too many, you end up not making your investment back because the target audience buys what they want and the rest just languishes.

I don't think anybody's suggesting that things be made 1 gold, or even close to 1 gold.

I don't recall Achaea running into lag issues because of items, instead they had them because of messages. Do people really craft that many more items or is this a theoretical precaution?

I'm thinking there was a reason Achaea put a limit on the number of items in a stockroom...

I do agree that these changes have kind of killed the sorcelglass industry. Personally, I used to use personalized vials just because they were cool to me, but now their costs far outweigh the benefits, so I've returned to using plain vials.

Bummer, but oh well.

I think with the two changes it will hurt new people in the warrior guilds the most. Yes, the good old-fashioned 'think of the newbies' argument, but really it costs 125k+ gold to make a full set of plate, helm, hunting weapons, and combat weapons. That is assuming that the forger in question uses powerstones with a mallet to temper otherwise things are much much worse.

Then clearly the real culprit is my flower garden.

Increased price doesn't stop people putting stuff in stockrooms, it just takes longer to accumulate some of them. Stockroom storage is a completely different animal than creating tons of objects, but I still don't see people creating thousands of items just to sit in a stockroom, not-for-sale.

I logged briefly to see what the fuss was about.

I'm literally astounded and boggled at how much more expensive Artisan goods suddenly became, with both changes to their commodity requirements (why?!) and the sharp escalation of availability and prices. This isn't a trade that generates 'thousands of cheap items.' My compendium is completely outdated now, and it'd be a nightmare to fix! Why oh why, do thrones need to be more than 1,000 commodities now! And buying in batches of 10 each...so that's 125 batches minimum of buying for a basic throne, with prices rising greatly for each batch bought.

I can only imagine what these changes can be like to trades that are actually used on a regular basis.

Well, you can believe me or not that people were making thousands of items but that's simply the reality (and I'm not talking about master armour or weapons but rather cookies and bracelets, etc.). Anyway, I'm not going to argue about whether there is such a danger of database bloat or not, and I could care less if another IRE takes it seriously or not, the fact is that I do and that's where we are.

Look, people, this new system is here, it's flexible, we're not going back, and it may take awhile to reach an equilibrium where everyone is satisfied (granted, some people may never be satisfied). As I said, we made some new tweaks and will wait a week to review again.

I think we'll all be fine once passive production is working like it used to be again (which might first take the admin figuring out why we aren't seeing the passive production they think we should be seeing, but hey).

Oh, and a revolt for Rikenfriez, plz. Glomdoring needs to share the fish.

Is there some way trademasters could work with the charities to fine tune designs? If the issue that made the admins decide to double designs was database bloat then you took a sledgehammer to a problem that needs to be closely worked with. Cookies, bracelets, tailoring accessories are constantly being made? Ok, double those and go through for things that are silly to double like special comms. Teas? I can see a lot of those being made but there is an issue with getting a lot of the tea leaves. Double everything except the leaves and go back to only needing one of those. Artisan designs, no one has ever made too many artisan items outside of maybe pipes or something. They were already expensive and limited and didn't need to be doubled. Bookbinding is the same, no one has ever complained about their being too many book binding items.

First of all, newbie requirements probably scale: no newbie needs all of that RIGHT OUT of the Portal of Fate. I made 20K+ on my first character from Newtons, using KICK (not KA KICK), and a similar amount on each character after that. And 125K is NOTHING after a certain point. I'll admit that between circles 20-50ish it is a harder to accumulate gold, but those levels can go by pretty fast. Doubly so for someone that knows what they are doing. And once made, those items do last quite a while. And it may take a little while (it's taken me about 12 hours for my latest ), anyone past 70 who has a problem with that cost isn't trying.

Same with master weapons / full plate.

Doing something like this would go a long way towards addressing the 'bad taste' mentioned earlier.

125k is not 'nothing' and I am way past that 'certain point'.

If you changed it because you were irritated at people creating massive numbers of cookies and rings and bracelets, why did you increase the costs on everything? That seems...wasteful...

Eh, I wouldn't say wasteful. It is an ungraceful response to a legitimate problem that in retrospect needs to be handled with grace. If I saw an abundance of comms and way too many items being made my gut response would be "double everything" because it is easy, simple, and would fix the big problem. Its really only when the whole abundance of comms becomes questionable that it seems worth the admins and player's time to go in with a fine tooth comb and pick what needs comms increased and what doesn't.

Really? Once that starting Claymore decays, they're going to have to move to masterweapon because there is no reason to waste the comms to make the non-master weapons. Leather armor to substitute for plate for a while, but they're going to want that plate so they can deal with something remotely high level. If I remember the arguing right, warrior bashing is very slow at those levels especially without masterweapons. The only way the last newbie was able to pay me was because he traded Dingbats for forging. Though, you've probably never been a warrior, so how would you know what it is like?

Make items decay faster. Honestly twice as fast or more wouldn't screw things over.

Except alts.

Cut down on the number you have?