I understand the problem with people overproducing and stacking on certain things, as incredible as it sounds that someone would do that. But why must all of us suffer as a result? And not just for a week whilst the system is fine-tuned, we have been crippled ever since commodity requirements were doubled arbitrarily and it just keeps getting worse.

I would not be against a reasonable stockroom limit and imposing decay times on certain items that don't have them right now (I am looking at you, flower boy), alongside other changes to ensure nobody is doing that. More things to spend the scarcely used commodities on would be a good idea too. As would the Charites putting their foot down on people creating nonsensical commodity replacements. Just go back on the decisions made for those items that were stockpiled (clearly they had to be cheap) and change their commodities - double or triple them.

The event to create the Aetherplex used up a thousand gems I believe? Lets have something that will eat up the stockpiles of useless commodities!

... if this was the issue, then why not just come out and say it? Make less items? Okay. I could do that.

However, depending on how many items you want to scale back on, you must realise that this will have impacts on a large number of things. Everyone is used to being able to carry around at least two vials of every known cure, most every enchantment, the best armour for their class, etc. If the majority of people can't obtain these anymore, it is going to have balance repercussions for both bashing and combat.

I am also very curious if this is a current problem (the game is already getting over-bloated with items), or a perceived potential problems (look at all those comms! If all of them are used to make new objects, we'll be in trouble!).

Actively discouraging people from engaging in Lusternia's vast crafting system to inhibit lag seems like a bad solution. Removing areas would also remove items from the game (mobs, quest items) but I doubt that would ever be considered.

You know what else might help?

Enforcing a 12 month decay time on all esteemed items, and forcing them to decay even in shop stockrooms and such.

After flowers, I'm preeeeetty sure stored esteem is the next biggest number of bloat objects. Just a hunch.

EDIT:

I can see it now. We must make a ensnare Drocilla, but require 40000 rope to make the next! In addition, we will need 50000 each of fish and meat to make proper bait. Yes...

For the commodities themselves, if you thought there were too many especially in reserves. You should have just put a cap on it 10k is not an overly high number but it is decent, when I was trade minister in Magnagora that was my goal for all reserves (though never met with certain high demand commodities). So there goes too high of reserves argument right there, there is no reason this could not have been done, it would act much like a players rift except with an obviously higher number. The next step would be to limit how much is actually for sale, maybe another 10k to make a nice even number of 20k of any commodity at a given time. Once both reserves and commodity shop have reached these marks, the villages could simply stop sending these items to the city until such a time those numbers are lower and the city/commune -needs- them.

For people making cookies and the like in excessive numbers, make them one of those decay items in your stockroom. There are actually only a few items I feel should be preserved when dropped in the stock room and those are the high price items such as greatrobes, weapons and kegs. I would also tack vials and pipes in there as well. But there is no reason, realistically, that a food product sitting on the floor of a stcokroom for over a year, should not decay. Because this would be hard more than likely coding wise, then just set everything to decay but have half the speed in the stock room. That way, a cookie that normally only lasts 2 in game months, would not last more than 4-6 real life days in the storeroom. This would make a shopkeeper go with demand rather than just what makes their shop look well stocked.

But yes.. I would really like to see commodities lowered back down to what they used to be to make any item. Bookbinders and artisan got hit the hardest in all this and well, a LOT of tailoring items as someone mentioned the gloves and scarves, you may as well remove the skill because there is no point other than RP to get them and I am willing to bet, RP wise, someone will just say they have them rather than actually spent the gold. Jewelry, it is really hard to say if anything is overly useless, there is actually still a LOT of demand (hint hint, why we have lots of bracelets.. well before, now we have lots of rings). It is REALLY not realistic that a ring should take 10 commodities, or an earring taking six! a real earring take like a piece of scrap metal, ONE piece and then maybe a single gem if you want to be a little fancy about it. Even if our commodities are only the size of pebbles, for a stud, three comms MAX it should take.

Now to say, I make 50 rings at a time of EACH basic enchant, perfection, kingdom, mercy and perfection. So yeah, myself, I am making a lot of clutter but they will decay. Really want to cut down on clutter of objects? Make wedding rings enchantable. They never decay, once you get what you want, you will never have to buy them again and the demand becomes nothing thus people would not be buying the rings shop keepers make. I personally watch for what sells in my shop and what does not. Jewelry wise, if it seems it has been sitting there for forever and a day, I will go melt it down because what I made it out of could have better use.

Just in all, I think there would have been a lot more options available if it was sat down and actually though about rather than just doing it and refusing to ever change it when players get in an uproar about it. These changes to trade have been like a knee jerk each and every time and they have come with little to no warning what so ever. Actually asking for suggestions before making up your mind about what "needs" to be done may actually prevent some of these results we have been seeing a lot lately.

At this point, I don't think there's anything I can say without people being indignant and saying ridiculous things like our goal is to discourage people from crafting. Come on! Let's get real and see it for what it is. The commodity system was broken (really broken not the "I-don't-like-how-this-works-so-I'll-call-it-broken" broken). We've rewritten the commodity system from the ground up and now it's not broken, behaves more realistically, and is easy for us to tweak. End of story. This has nothing to do with the previous design adjustments for commodities. I'm sorry I allowed this thread to get side tracked so it appeared the two were related when they're really not.

We have a new system, it'll take time to tweak, and I hope you'll give constructive feedback to help us do the tweaking.

I, for my part, have not been trying to say that the new system is bad, necessarily. Or that the old system was superior. What I have been trying to accomplish is pointing out where I think issues are - namely that the current level of commodity production will mean that current commodity use will outpace it very soon - and comparing the new system to functions in the old system.

I'm still not seeing any passive commodity production in villages. Maybe it is just small, or maybe someone is coincidentally buying the exact number of commodities every time, leaving the exact same number of commodities at the exact same prices at all the exact same villages. But I think that's unlikely. And I am not alone. Esano, Talan, and many others have noticed a similar issue. And if I am not mistaken... you've been saying that they should be passively producing commodities.

Perhaps you could either increase or decrease passive village commodity production at this time and we can wait and see if we can even notice it? Maybe, just maybe, there is actually a misplaced 1 or 0 somewhere that is the source of all this fuss. We simply don't see how it's working as intended.

I wish it was a simple enough matter for the pbase to just say "increase X comm by Y amount", but it's not really that simple for us either, or to back up such a suggestion with reason. When I make comparisons to the old system, I'm hoping to illustrate how and where the rift is occurring.

I'd rather not cling to how it works. I just want people to get what they need without expending enormous amounts of time on it, as per Nihmriel.

EDIT:

Hmm. Actually, the new weave just went through, and villages did passively produce commodities. Sort of. It looks weird, though. Estelbar gained 2 grain in the village general store, and the price went up... and they tithed over 200 grain at once. What?

Yeah, it may take a couple of days to level out as inventory levels and production for some comms in some villages were adjusted as part of the last tweak. (Hope nobody minds waiting a few days to gather info!)

It's absolutely not my intention to misquote you or be rude and punish you for presenting yourself to speak with the players, so I apologise for that. But earlier in this threat you did say:


Combined with doubled commodity costs across the board, this does come across as discouragement to engage in the system more than is necessary. ie. Get greatrobes, but not other clothing. Get enchanted jewelery, but not other accessories. Get basic vials, but not sorcelglass.

Works for me. In the meantime, I can use up flowers.

Ooh! I want robes made from flowers!

Edit: Preferably not too feminine...

Would you dare?

Disturbingly enough, one of my -Serenwilde- alts wears those.

Edit: But Rag's meat robes are the favorite out of my weird clothing collection.

I should have tripled the number of flowers in Aubrey's wedding gown. I was still designing with the mindset that 100 comms is a sizable chunk, though.

One thing that I think is a key point, and not nearly as subjective and disputable as most here, but which keeps being overlooked, is how these changes have widened an already-unsupportable gap between the tradeskills. It's always been true that a few of them have provided higher profit margins, higher possible income, or higher return for time invested, or all three, than others, and by a long way. Notably, those which don't involve designs have always been ahead of the others (with the possible exception of Poisons). Herbs has the highest total income possibility (though apparently at the highest frustration cost), and Alchemy beats the others in profit-per-time by a very large factor.

Doubling commodities on most designs greatly widened that gap, and was never matched by any increases or adjustments to similarly impact the tradeskills that were already better. Heck, even Arts didn't get adjusted when the creativity-based tradeskills did. Now, making commodities harder to get at reasonable prices further widens that gap.

For trades that use small quantities, like Cooking, the impact is significant. If you can only buy 10, 20, maybe 30 of something before the price starts shooting up, that's still enough to make a few items, but it might make you have to spend twice as long comparison-shopping and comms-questing as you had to before to make the same profit. But for trades that uses hundreds of commodities, you could easily have to spend 20 times as much time on gathering them to make the same item, with the same profit. The worst profit-margin tradeskills are hit the hardest.

I've always felt like Lusternia punishes those of us who chose the creativity-based trades, but only recently have I felt like it takes a sadistic pleasure in making that punishment worse and worse. We invest far more, in both gold and time, to make things of far less utility and demand and profit, and in most cases we also get far crappier utility/combat boosts, and that just isn't enough, we have to have the beatings doubled and then doubled again. Do you really want us to just all start being herbalists?

Certainty of cost is an issue, in the old system I could buy 150 of a comm and be certain of it's total cost.
Until I've figured out each and every intricacy of the new system I won't be making any large commodity purchase, this will take some time.

For those not interested in figuring these things out they will need to rely on player knowledge. "216 silver at
120 each currently, how much if I want 130 of them?"

My suggestion is'
ask shopkeeper silver 120
shopkeeper tells you "120 silver will cost you 17,000 coins"


I have 30k Comms in my rift, quite a few left over from my days as a herbalist.
If rift usage is a problem perhaps having two rift caps could be an option, 6 slots that allow the max 2000, the rest have a cap of 500.

If people kept too many cookies and bracelets in their stockrooms, then this did little to solve that. Cookies are still among the cheapest of trade goods, so they're still going to be made a lot. Sure, item production in general is down, but what goes really down are things that were not produced much earlier, such as thrones. I can't stock clothing beyond greatrobes, because regular clothing with no effect but decency doesn't sell.

^^This. Which is sad because, as mentioned, I love normal clothing with no use beyond decency. If I weren't a Bookbinder I'd be a Tailor, and a couple of my alts are already Tailors, not that I ever play them.

Actually, I rarely make cookies and the like anymore, because people only seem interested in buying something that will be more filling. In a way, it does seem like people are becoming more utilitarian in regards to food.

I stock the rat and pigeon loaves as flavour items (no pun intended), but they rarely sell.

Rifts are not a problem. In fact, rifts are a great solution. The uniqueness of the items is lost when you put them in a rift, thus removing many records from the database.

I really am wondering how many items are in shop stockrooms and what the average items / room would be there.