Future of trade ???

[MrDDT]

Greetngs,

Starting out Id like to say even though Ive only been in game a week Im greatly impressed with the players and dev community here. I think the game overall has huge potential and can fill a niche sorely empty in the mmo world. That being said, since I have been here Ive seen a large amount of discussion about trade and economy. Most frequent being how the trading is going to be done and how much things are worth. It seems to me, more important than thise questions, is WHAT are you going to trade. Without a set medium of currency all the other discussion is kind of putting the cart before the horse imo.

For example I saw in game yestersay that the going rate for a cart is 3200 nails. So for cart makers nails is an acceptable form of currency (not going to address the type and quality issue here). But lets say I dont make carts, I make bone armor so nails are useless to me because I already have a dozen carts sitting around. I want bones. But Joe next door makes water bags and wants tar so nails and bones are worthless to him.

My point is everyone has a different idea of what is worth something to them peraonaly. The problem with that scenario is people dont want to spend all their time in game trying to figure out who to trade nails to to get bones so they can trade them to someone else to get nails so they can trade them to get tar so they can get that water bag they so desperatly need. Not to mention that noone wants to haul a cart of tar for a hour to get that waterbag. Thats why we all dont still carry beaver pelts to the grocery store

This of course leads to the question of what to use and how to introduce it to the game. Most games use NPC traders or mission rewards to inject currency into the game. We dont have that here. The other thing we dont have here is a currency sink. So even if everyone decided bottlecaps were an acceptable form of currency, since we can all go and just dig them up to inject them into the game but have nothing to take them OUT of the game, over a short period of time they will be worthless and that beginners crafting knife will cost you a fortune in bottlecaps.

Sorry for the length of post, and Im not saying I know everything about the game because as Ive said Ive only been here a week, but Ive played mmo's since MUD's and more than pvp, pve, or any other mechanics of a game, a proper or improper economy can make or break a game.

Just my 2 cents worth!

Chris

You do have part of the idea, however, the idea behind this trading system is that tribes will set up their own currency. Which some have. Its starting to make its way more and more into the world of Xsyon as tribes are setting up currency of their own.

If you would have said this 2 months ago I might have agreed with you. But I've seen more people agreeing on currency than anything.

I think to solve this they should allow items to broken down a bit more. Like metal could break down to ore. Losing some of its QL (or weight). People will start to value the ore based on its weight in KG, and the type of ore it is. Chrome likely being the highest.

Because of the QL factor, I dont see anything becoming a currency though because that wont be fixed. Using my idea of metal being melted down. You could base it on weight, and QL rating is how much the ore is worth.

1QL nail could melt down to .1 ore. While 100QL nail would melt down to 10ore. (Whatever type that is).
Same goes for if you looking to make a 100QL nail again you would need say 10 ore.

You could even go further with this and make it take more to remake the nail. Say 10% more. So you might not want to just metal everything down.

[ceej389]

I dont mean to hijack the thread but if what you say is happening MrDDT, then great. And it may work right now with a few dozen (maybe) actively trading tribes with a few hundred(maybe) active members, but dont we want a few HUNDRED active tribes with a few THOUSAND players? Remember that this needs to work a year down the road, not just right now and if you have that many players all using different currencies, new players will be so confused they'll quit. Everyone is looking at it from an experienced players point of view, which is to be expected, but from a NEW players point of view thats confusing as hell lol. Im all for immersion and a player driven economy (played eve for 7 years lol) but that economy NEEDS a standard form of currency.

I like your idea of breaking things down excpet for the transportation issue (like loading up a truck to go buy a gallon of milk lol) and again you'll have dozens of different things used as currency with a different value set on them by different groups.

For example right now in game I need a recipe for shears. Whats the going rate for that? Nails? Rivets? Leather? What if I dont have enough of one? Will you take nails AND rivets? Oh wait....I dont have enough pack space to bring you nails AND rivets and since Im new I dont have a cart....crap, now what do I do......melt it all down...crap thats more WEIGHT than I can carry and still no cart.......And right now the community is awesome and Im sure I could work something out with someone, but that tight knit group wont last forever cause the devs want and need thousands of players here, not just us.

Again sorry to hijack the thread and I apologize if in my newness Im not "getting" it. Im just going from what I see as a new player......and Im at work and cant do anything but prowl the forums lol

Chris