I'm not sure how this ensures more will be available, really. We either pay a lot more for them, or we spend a lot more time doing the quests to keep them in stock. Either way kind of sucks, especially for those of us who don't have a spare two hours a day to spend running around the game doing the comm quests. Personally I don't see "stabilized" prices being worth that trade-off. Although I'm also unsure how this stabilizes prices, and I didn't think they were that unstable to begin with.



No, I understand how it works; like I said, I tested it to see what happens if you buy more after buying ten. What happens is the price goes up by about 3 or 4 times as much as I think it should. The concept in general makes some sense, I just think the numbers are way off (the amount the price increases each time you buy, as well as how many you can buy before the price increases).



I didn't know how many sheep were in each place. That's good to know. But like I said, for those of us who have busy real lives and a lot of GA work, going around chasing sheep for a couple hours a day just to make a single set of robes is... not very practical...



You're right, for the most part, although I do know newer players who forgo robes for a long time because it takes so long to save up for them (considering other newbie costs such as curatives). I think more people actually will go without them if their price doubles, and those who do still buy them will complain even more loudly. Yes yes, I know, just ignore the whining. I will. Doesn't mean I don't feel bad for them. (Also, I think Aubrey's splendour robes are going to live in her dresser from now on, because the thought of making new ones at this cost just makes me cringe.)




Didn't see that thread, sorry. I guess I still don't know what "normalizing" was needed. What was really that wrong with the old system?



Thanks. As I suspected, I did know about it, just didn't know that's what it was called.

It sounds like as long as we encourage people to do commodity quests, we'll be able to pretty much have much cheaper commodities than previously. Just have to wait until everything's pushed down to a stable minimum price and everything you turn in afterwards becomes surplus you can buy without raising the cost of the comm. Seems to me that it should end up making things cheaper in the long run.

It'll also make comm quests more attractive, unless I was misinformed somwhere. Instead of having a delayed reaction to prices (like I believe it was earlier; I've never really used comms much), there's now an immediate change. Meaning you turn in rockeaters, you get cheap gems. You turn in sheep, you get cheap cloth. You turn in spinnerets, you get cheap silk. Etc.

It's all part of an intricate plot to make everyone buy cowbells.

The most important power a guild admin has is called "Allocation of Duty", or as I like to call it, "point and click". Send out your nublets to do comm quests! Make them bring those sheep in if they want robes! Hold contests!

I agree with Shaddus, Conductor Syridean sent Yiila to get comms for robes as quest, and it was quite a pleasant experience.

You may have to pay more for them, but they will be there, because the prices change directly dependent on the stock available, and there will be a point where people who do spend their play time on doing commodities things will pass them by. I wouldn't pay 40 gold for cloth, for example, but there is some available in villages for this price now. Your claim was that there was none to be found. This is no longer the case. Before, we could buy 250 cloth for 15 or 16 gold. Now, we will not be able to buy this many without the price spiking to a ridiculous point, thus, there will always be -some-.


If it helps, consider the point where the price goes up prohibitively high in the same way that you considered there being zero available before - in other words, don't buy there (except if you really really needed to, for one of e-life's many cloth emergencies, you still could). At the same time, once all the village stock quantities normalize, and get within range of these points where the price is good, it will become the case where further production yields available stock at prices lower than before. Already seeing this in the case of gems, steel, and cloth in some of the villages where we have been playing around with it. Eventually it will get like this everywhere as people do more comms quests, that's what I'm referring to in terms of normalizing.


No one is saying you have to spend 2 hours doing this every day. You can continue visiting villages to buy what's cheap and available just as before. If you did spend one day, once in a while, devoting this amount of time to it, you could build up a nice supply for yourself purchased at rock bottom prices, that would last you all the rest of the days.


From the other thread...

Formerly, the prices dropped immediately upon completing of the commodity quests. They just didn't go back up immediately, meaning you could buy it all out really cheap.

This, I am sorry is wrong. I have no clue why but right now, I have turned in about 100 rockeaters, and this is what I have noticed in Angkrag at different times, and yes people were buying the gems which was annoying but guess they have the right to do so.

Gems 349 152
Gems 350 150
Gems 354 147
Gems 305 195

Yesterday when I started there were 100+ gems and they were for over 700 gp which is outrageously high. Now, today i visited the other mountain villages and they had considerably less gems yet their prices were much more decant:

Southguard
Gems 60 200

Rockholm
Gems 110 225

Anyways, from what I have noticed, up till 350 comms in the store, the price changes at every 10 comm/rockeaters in the case of gems, turned in. After 350 each one will lower the price. Why this is frustrating? Because people see there are a LOT of gems there (in the case of Angkrag) and people who are actually working on lowering that price (hoping 108 is still achievable) it is not going to happen. So no, in this case, you cannot just go do the comm quest and expect decent prices because there is always someone else willing to pay more than you and jack the price right back up.

That is correct market behavior.

I'm torn on this.

On the one hand, making the system more closely ape an actual market mechanic is neat.

On the other, its sort of an awkward imitation, and making it that much harder for everyone (and especially newer folks) to get their commodities for vials, armour, robes, weapons and the like, especially after doubling the costs of these things, is not so good.

Sidebar- I wonder what would happen if I went to work, and saw an elderly lady with six cans of beans, approached her, and said:

I see you have six cans of beans there. Well now, the first one will of course be a dollar, like the sign says. However, since that caused a shift in demand, the second will be 1.50, the third will be 2.00, and that last one, well, that'll be 3.50.

Have a nice day!

For the newer people this has no effect unless the tradespeople in their orgs nolonger stock their shops. Obviously though this has an effect on the tradesmen, who now like the herbalist can choose to spend quite some time working on their trade in order to make a larger profit then those who do it more as a hobby.


You are look at the wrong side of economy, It is more like grain, oil, fruit prices. Which fluctuate on a regular basis because of world events.

Just some quick comments.

You don't have to personally buy comms, you can buy them off others who take the time to maximize the system! Why not let those who spend the effort to make a profit?

Also, we're watching to see how the commodity system runs. One thing I will mention is that it is VERY easy for us to tweak the commodity system (before it was next to impossible without a great deal of headache) so we can adjust costs or production on the fly. This was a substantial under-the-hood coding rewrite which I'm sure no one but the admin can appreciate, but here's a shout out to our invisible wonder coder!

and just to prove a point with my last post, this makes me sad, last night there was a bit more than 300 gem commodities in Angkrag, went and checked them today and they are now:
Gems 165 385

People are not going to let anyone who actually does the work benefit from it. I refuse to buy gems that cost more than 120 gp because then I do not make a profit off it or I have to jack my prices up even more which I do not want to do because what sells most that i have are things EVERYONE needs (basic enchants) it is bad enough rings already cost so much to make (seriously, 10 commodities is way too much, RP wise my character is wondering when she got so bad it takes twice as much to make the same thing she could make cheaper as a novice). That aside yeah, if we are doing commodities like this, could we please have our old costs back? Since the upped prices was just a bandaid for the bad system in the first place and a way to get people to quit hoarding.

As for the whole hoarding thing.. making things cost so much only encourages. Take this for example, I will not buy gems for more than 120gp, I find a comm shop (obviously only city/commune now) I am going to buy them out because I might not get the chance to get them at the price again. I used to do it with villages too though, I would turn in rockeaters until the price got to where I wanted it then I would buy up all my work (I never bought to 0 always leave 10 to be nice). So I really don't know, all the changes that have been made to trade over the past months has really upset me, that is what i play for, it is about the only thing I am actually GOOD at in this game, and it just keeps getting harder and harder without making me feel like I am ripping people off. And to top that off I have put a good deal of money into my trade as well, my hammer 500 credits, my workbench 500 credits, my shop 1000 credits, my paintbrush 400 credits and probably a few others I am not thinking about right at the moment. I want to take up a second trade skill to ease costs I already have and to keep my prices reasonable but right now, not sure any trade is really worth the hassle of fighting everyone and their mother for the commodities at a reasonable price.

So to sum it up, I really do not mind paying higher prices, we are being forced to anyways, but at the double the cost that was put in before, no, I am not willing to pay for that it is not fair to the trades people (especially if I do work to get my trade items into stock only to have others come buy up what I worked for).

Here is an idea though, since my main argument is over gems, dingbat item! Give us a gem refinery, make 100 gems per day or something, we already have the minting machine (10 gold bars per day at the cost of 100 gold coins per) and the smelting furnace (100 steel per day at the cost of a coal commodity and one iron and have a chance to get TWO steel). Yes something like this WOULD hurt gem production in the villages, however, it would make people who actually go out and do the work but cannot profit from it, happier.

Last idea, I really do not remember but I do not think any villages passively produce gems, as in, the minors the passivize produce whatever they are there mining you just have to keep them there. IF there is no passive production (especially in mining villages) I suggest that there is. Digging in a mine why wouldn't you come across a gem? Or have minors directly looking for gems but I sort of like the idea better that mining for something else and you get the gem instead of what you are looking for (like herbing and you get a spice instead of your herb).

But.. this is my two cents.. from a jewelry who is sad that she has not been able to buy gems for months (RL) and the gems I need for my craft my stockpile was gone last time I restocked my shop.

Gems were always funky and didn't seem to be passively produced. What -did- happen, is that turning in rockeaters would result in more gems being produced by the village when they next tithe gems to their sovereign org.

Example from the old system. Glomdoring controls Southgard. Xenthos collects 85 rockeaters at once and hands them in to the jeweler in Southgard. It results in 85 gems being available at 125gp per. He buys them all, leaving the stock at 0. A few hours later, Southgard tithes 85 gems to Glomdoring (equal to how much he turned in, since no one else turned any in - however, this is only if Glomdoring has a commercial governance. If they are conquest, the tithe is about 10% of that, if not less). In addition to this, 85 more gems appear in Southgard's General Store.

Now, in the current system, all that appears to be happening is that Xenthos creates the 85 gems on turn in. If he buys them out, Glomdoring will maybe get 1 gem on a tithe, and no other gems will be produced at all. None. This is where the huge gap in production is coming from.

This isn't the only feature that has been affected in the new system. For instance, Ewes and Steers getting moved from Paavik to Stewartsville don't affect tithe size at all, nor do they prompt these villages to produce any comms when the village tithes the appropriate comm to Glomdoring. They only create more cloth and leather when they are first brought in, and then turn utterly dormant.

We're working on a bug report explaining this all at the moment, but it's very complicated.

Gem-growing items are unnecessary if the system creates gems as intended.

They'll actually be counterproductive; the fewer people who do gem-quests, the fewer gems there are in the game. The higher the price, the lower the production, etc. So a couple of people get some more gems and completely shoot themselves in the foot for gems beyond that, along with everyone else.

It works for gold because the only way to get raw gold is to kill miners (and not many do that). There are hordes of rockeaters, though.

Fixing commodity costs back to what they used to be would be nice now, though.

My gem-growing suggestion had nothing to do with this system actually, I just want a wall growing gems in my manse!

Before I begin, I really applaud the overhaul to the commodity system. This is really great news to anyone who spends as much time as I do comms collecting and stocking shops. The new system looks to have huge potential, so thank you for putting the time in to update everything.

Following that note, I've been working on replenishing my cloth stocks today, and there's a problem emerging that I'd like to comment on.

I noticed Paavik had a large stock of cloth, over 300, at 16 each. On the plus side, it's nice to see more more available in each village.

Taking 3 sheep to Paavik dropped the price to 15, which used to be about the lowest price for cloth in villages. I buy 10 and it increases to 18.

4 more sheep turned in drops it down to 17. That's still an acceptable price. I buy 10 more and 10 more again at 19. After that it's spiralling out of my price range.

I've bought a grand total of 30 cloth at a decent price. There's still 313 available, but I can't reasonably touch it until I can get more sheep. At this rate, it would take me most of an hour of tiresomely running about collecting sheep to get enough cloth to make a single set of greatrobes - especially since the doubling of commodity requirements for designs.

In theory I could keep buying and just absorb the increased cost, but then I'm obliged to recall that the price of every design in Erudio has had to be raised recently because of the doubled commodity requirements. The prices in my shop are looking horribly steep to me, which I hate. I don't want to have to now pay 20-50 gold for each piece of cloth, or even more, just to be able to get enough, and end up raising prices yet again.

In short, buying commodities in a trickle of ten or twenty at a time is potentially a big problem for anyone needing large supplies of commodities - that is major shopkeepers, and potentially the Institute. I'll be able to get hold of more in one go if I start to see cloth at really low prices - one or two gold per - but whether that's likely to happen with the level of demand for cloth remains to be seen. Even then, buying cloth in batches of 50-100 at a time is still unworkable - I need cloth in the thousands.

All of this essentially means that the prices haven't really dropped - if I want to buy cloth in any quantity, the average price is far higher than 15 unless I spend hours collecting more sheep. Nor have the quantities really risen - I found that only a tenth of the available commodities were 'available' to me at any price I can reasonably pay, unless, again, I have a few hours to spare and I don't mind spending it all repeating the same comms quests. I've walked away and left 300+ cloth in Paavik because the price is too high and I'm out of time or inclination to keep collecting sheep; if this keeps happening, we'll be seeing hundreds (or thousands? Is there a new ceiling?) of commodities in the villages which no one will buy because after you've bought a few batches they've become too expensive.

One solution might be to increase the quantity of commodities one can buy in a 'batch' before the price rises - ten is, I think, too low. Another might be to reduce the amounts by which prices rise when you buy a batch - an increase of 2 gold for every 10 (on this occasion) is looking unworkable. And of course, seeing comms requirements dropped again would be just peachy...

This isn't necessarily true, and will be situational. Paavik/Shanthmark are a bad example for buying FROM the village at the moment, because their price doesn't reduce per turn-in as quickly as in other villages. In fact, I think they are the worst for cloth that I've tested so far.

I managed to get gems down to 1gp, then turned in another 20ish rockeaters or so after that 1gp point. When I bought my first batch of ten, it stayed at 1gp per. When I bought my second batch, it was still 1gp per. On my third? -Still- 1gp per. It wasn't until the fourth that gems went up to 7gp per. And this was when the gem level hit about 240~ in said village.

Angkrag seems to be an outlier for gems and is designed specifically to accumulate more gems before seeing a price drop. Whether there is a specific purpose to this or not is unclear yet (tithe size has been guessed, but not confirmed in any way). I recommend at least trying a different village for cloth - maybe Delport or Estelbar.