Any thoughts re: shop receptacle that can store esteem and sell like charges/fills, Estarra?

Falcon:
Miniatures can last indefinetly, needles can't.
Miniatures can hold more esteem, needles have a limit.
Offering keeps the original miniature, needles are disposable.
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The amount of people who buy miniatures will reach a limit at a certain point.
The amount of needles that are bought at intervals lasts indefinetly.

Wait.. if you offer the miniature it's destroyed, not kept? And as far as I know miniatures don't last forever, unless you battle with it regularly.

Miniatures do have a lifespan, yes. Unenchanted/uncarved it's 75 (IG) months, although I believe it's planned to have some way to extend that. And yes, they're destroyed when offered.

And therein lies part of the problem: a figurine costs 4k in commodities to make, probably 4.5k-5k to buy a generic model from a shop. That means that either the price of overhead increases drastically on smaller sales of esteem, the amount that poorer players can be expected to buy or sell.

Yeah. Personally, I'd rather either see a reversion of the cost to make a figurine, or some way to only offer part of one (either by, as someone suggested, removing "esteem spheres" from it, or the ability to OFFER ESTEEM FROM FIGURINE).

Hm, with miniatures there is the whole personalize aspect, with people getting miniatures of what they like. So for entry novices selling esteem, they don't need to worry about the initial cost of buying a miniature. Instead, they would just sell it to people who already have one. if 655 u is 10k gold, 500 u, would be 7,653 gold. Esteem prices move down, higher level players collect esteem in miniatures. Also they can buy 10 miniatures, battle them out, raise the level of the minature to 5 or so, sell the esteem at a higher price. Profit made, entry level novices don't need to worry too much about selling the esteem. One or two rounds of pilgrims can get the 4k base gold, problem is leveling them up, which would mean that with all chances, higher leveled players can make more money off the novices by gathering all the esteem into a level 40 miniature.

So. We divided the rich and the poor.

Omg, let's Occupy Avenger.

Seriously, though, I like the changes. It allows for more flexibility.

One suggestion I would make with the changes is if we could get karma gains shifted more in favor of imbuing items rather than offering. Say switch the karma gains you get from imbuing and from offering around, especially since items can be imbued with far more than 100% worth of karma gains.

A small thing, but could the spellcraft miniatures ability be moved down to enchantment?

It doesn't directly affect me, but tinkerers(and tattooists) have no actual miniature abilities from memory and the enchantment is one of the two required abilities from tradeskills in relation to miniatures.

I was actually going to see if anything else is done for miniatures and use my envoy slot for next month to even out what trades can offer to miniatures. I was thinking maybe a tinkering ability to increase the decay time.

can we get rid of mini cloaks and minifood as well? those are stupid. Miniatures were actually fun when the admins kept it simple, but then it had to get more complicated

Just to weigh in on the "DON'T DESTROY FIGURINES" calls. I think it's pretty clear that the admin (Estarra and Iosai at least) are not going to take away that aspect of offering esteem, and it'll make more sense as well, for the level of the figurine to be a one-off bonus thing.

However, I think it might be cool and will save communes/cities from stockpiling hundreds if not thousands of figurines (needles) of esteem if defiling/sanctifying is made to drain a set amount of esteem from a figurine, instead of destroying the figurine and using it up. This will also prevent the inevitable OMG, I JUST USED MY 500K ESTEEM FIGURINE TO DEFILE A SINGLE ROOM, AND IT'S ALL GONE NOW howls. This mechanic can then be used to balance shrine raising/defiling as is being disucssed in the special report for shrines thread, via speed of the esteem drained and thus speed of the defiling/sanctifying etc, or additional costs. Obviously, figurine level should have no bearing here, since defiling/sanctifying is being used as a combat mechanic and so should be equal.

The current system eliminates the need for thousands of needle stockpiles for individuals, because they can put it all into a single figurine. However, it still requires a stockpile of tousands of figurines with exact esteem numbers to fully sanc/defile a shrine room, for cities/communes. This is disingenous, and if steps can be taken to make orgs no longer need to cram their stockrooms with lag-causing spam, then I don't see why not.

From what I understood, it already works like this. Defiling/sanctifying doesn't destroy the entire figurine, it just drains the appropriate amount of esteem.

Lerad:

However, I think it might be cool and will save communes/cities from stockpiling hundreds if not thousands of figurines (needles) of esteem if defiling/sanctifying is made to drain a set amount of esteem from a figurine, instead of destroying the figurine and using it up. This will also prevent the inevitable OMG, I JUST USED MY 500K ESTEEM FIGURINE TO DEFILE A SINGLE ROOM, AND IT'S ALL GONE NOW howls. This mechanic can then be used to balance shrine raising/defiling as is being disucssed in the special report for shrines thread, via speed of the esteem drained and thus speed of the defiling/sanctifying etc, or additional costs. Obviously, figurine level should have no bearing here, since defiling/sanctifying is being used as a combat mechanic and so should be equal.

Defiling/sanctifying with needles worked like this, no? Has anyone tested to see if this is still the case?

When I raised shrines to Isune, sanctifying would only drain a part of the esteem from whatever I used to offer. The item wouldn't get destroyed until you offered the very last of the esteem to sanctify.

Either way, if it becomes possible to but figurines for sale and make them work like cubes, I'd find that very awesome.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think this idea is going to be at least functional. Assuming there is going to be a way to reliably increase decay times, players will be able to maintain a single figurine for storage and sale, and need only buy additional figurines when they wish to offer. While this will have the obvious effect of making small offerings of esteem less common, I don't think this will end up being problematic.

This was actually a pretty ingenious solution. Great job guys!

While I am in favour of more gold sinks, this seems counter-productive to novices. I wish we could have changes which weren't that. Something to carry esteem is a pretty basic and essential need. I'd have liked it better if figurines would give awesome bonuses so that richer players would get them and even want to level them but poorer and newer players still had an alternative.

Even a novice should have no trouble getting the 5k needed to purchase their first figurine. Now that transfers between figurines are possible, an influencer who isn't offering doesn't need more than that one. Hopefully we will get a way to extend decay time on figurines. If not, paying 50 credits to get yourself one non-decaying figurine isn't too large an investment.

ANNOUNCE NEWS #1886
Date: 10/27/2011 at 19:08
From: Estarra the Eternal
To : Everyone
Subj: Jewelry Figurine Update

We decided to drop the price slightly on creating figurines in jewelry
(i.e., the miniatures skill).

Penned by My hand on the 14th of Kiani, in the year 309 CE.

Does anyone know how much "slightly" is?

Pretty much in half. It is now: gold 5 silver 5 platinum 5 marble 5 powerstone 1.

Also, I intend to discuss with Estarra the idea of allowing figurines to be placed in shops and sell esteem transfers.