Shops, Crafting, and Commerce

Qitorien

• I know I read that there are plans for some crafting skills. Will these be purely cosmetic? Will there be crafted items that are good for combat and/or varying mechanical effects?
• Are there plans for player-run shops? Is there much detail on these yet regarding how they'll be set up, run, taxed, and so on? Will it be possible to have them outside of cities/orgs? Will it be possible to turn my ship into a shop?  Will they be available early on or will it be more of a wait?
• What sort of comm/mat/resource accumulation we expect? Will it follow the gathering some comms and buying others in various places across the sector that we've seen in some IREs or something else? It would be cool to see some of the stuff that was starting to happen in Midkemia with crafting items that would be used in other crafting, (e.g. Tiles could be crafted, which would then be used to craft mosaics.) though preferably a little less tedious.

I realize each of these could merit their own thread. I'm looking more for general, overview tidbits, if there are any!

Tecton

1. There will be two types of tradeskills, custom design items, like clothing, which don't serve much in the way of mechanics, and there will be some item creation skills that will construct goods that have an impact on combat.

2. Players can sell their item through "shops", but this probably deserves its own information blog post some time in the future.

3. Nothing to say on this at the moment!

Qitorien

Thanks! Love mah tidbits!

Groot

I am Groot
(I always disliked the credit paywall behind cosmetic designing. I feel like it just punishes those who want to be creative from being able to actually design and make something fantastic. Not everyone can pay thousands of dollars towards their games and 100 or 200 credits could be impossible to someone who is playing more for social and rp-aspects of the game.

The argument "just submit it through someone who already has a license" has several problems too. What if I can't find someone who can submit it for me? What if they drastically alter the design or make changes that I don't want or like? What if they disappear or I can't get in contact with them? Who owns the design after it is submitted?  What if I'm making a special gift for someone (wedding, anniversary, etc) but the submitter wants to sell it in a shop? All of these are avoided if I can do the work myself.

I can understand that this creates a paywall that stops a flood of submissions from overwhelming the admin who are approving the designs, but this is an annoyance that could be avoided, especially since crafting is often used as a gold sink that is entirely opt-in.

Rather than cut off the credit price completely, I'd recommend adding in a way to be able to access the skills without requiring you pay for it. A series of tasks or quests that are well-known but difficult or time-consuming to do making it a time-cost instead of a gold/credit cost. You'd still be able to use credits as a short-cut to learning the skill, but it wouldn't be required.

All I ask is that you please consider what I've said as you continue your fantastic work on SM. Thank you)

I am Groot
(And yes, I can mean all of that in one "I am Groot". Groot is awesome like that, after all)

Sairys

@Groot

Maybe something like Lusternia's cartels or MKO's design books? (personal preference to the latter)

You could do all the designing/submitting yourself and then invite someone into the clan or otherwise give them access to the design sketch even if you can't make the item yourself (at least in lusterina, not sure about mko). Once they've made it you can remove their access and all done.


For skill access, a mark cost for licenses covers both avenues.
People with money can buy credits and sell them for marks, while people with time can grind out marks and just buy the license.

Mostly just cause I can't imagine myself honestly paying for a tradeskill if I can just do a quest for it instead.

Groot

I am Groot
(

Sairys said:

@Groot

Maybe something like Lusternia's cartels or MKO's design books? (personal preference to the latter)

You could do all the designing/submitting yourself and then invite someone into the clan or otherwise give them access to the design sketch even if you can't make the item yourself (at least in lusterina, not sure about mko). Once they've made it you can remove their access and all done.

Sadly, I never played MKO enough to dip into the crafting portion of it and I only have ...but the thing with the clan/cartel thing is that you need to either own or be a part of the leadership of one. If you don't have the gold to pay for a big upfront fee for one, you'd have to befriend someone who does and be willing to give you (at least partial) control of the clan. That has it's own problems and difficulties.

Sairys said:

For skill access, a mark cost for licenses covers both avenues.

People with money can buy credits and sell them for marks, while people with time can grind out marks and just buy the license.

There is no difference between "marks" and "credits". You'd still have this big cost attached to something cosmetic that has no mechanical/combat value (and usually has a big gold sink involved with it) being withheld from a person that wants to enjoy that part of the game but can't because of a paywall and lacking the ability to easily get over that paywall.

Imagine if other parts of the game had a similar paywall. "Bloodlining? That'll be 25 credits per person. Personal Descriptions? 100 credits. Emotes? Premades are free, but custom will cost you." These examples are extreme and unrealistic, but you'd still be holding back parts of that people love and enjoy. Sure, some will pay up front easily and others will grind out the costs...but others will be turned off by it completely.

Sairys said:

Mostly just cause I can't imagine myself honestly paying for a tradeskill if I can just do a quest for it instead.

The whole point of the quest is that it takes a long time to do and/or it's very complicated. You might not pay for it...but someone who has an extra $40 or $80 USD (100 vs 200 cr) why not? Imagine the effort it could take you to raise up 100/200 credits IG if you're broke in real life.

It could take ages IF you have the knowledge/skill since all the best ways to make gold to convert to credits either requires a gold/credit investment (lessons for trade skills, any gear for high level hunting (ignoring the investment it takes to GET to the high levels), commodity/other trading methods). And you STILL have a massive time investment it takes to gather the gold to turn into credits. Plus if the credit market is high or inflated, you'd had to work even harder/longer to be able to get the amount

But if you'd rather not pay the cost, just have a friend submit it for you after all : ^)

Sairys

Groot said:

I am Groot
(

Sairys said:

@Groot

Maybe something like Lusternia's cartels or MKO's design books? (personal preference to the latter)

You could do all the designing/submitting yourself and then invite someone into the clan or otherwise give them access to the design sketch even if you can't make the item yourself (at least in lusterina, not sure about mko). Once they've made it you can remove their access and all done.

Sadly, I never played MKO enough to dip into the crafting portion of it and I only have ...but the thing with the clan/cartel thing is that you need to either own or be a part of the leadership of one. If you don't have the gold to pay for a big upfront fee for one, you'd have to befriend someone who does and be willing to give you (at least partial) control of the clan. That has it's own problems and difficulties.

True, however, if you're capping out on money each day from memory it's about 10 days of work to get one without doing anything like tradeskilling for profit. They're worth just under 50 credits each with the credit market right now.

The MKO difference was that it was cheaper but it's a personal book of designs that's not limited by trade, you could also make designs public from memory.

Sairys said:

For skill access, a mark cost for licenses covers both avenues.

People with money can buy credits and sell them for marks, while people with time can grind out marks and just buy the license.

There is no difference between "marks" and "credits". You'd still have this big cost attached to something cosmetic that has no mechanical/combat value (and usually has a big gold sink involved with it) being withheld from a person that wants to enjoy that part of the game but can't because of a paywall and lacking the ability to easily get over that paywall.

Imagine if other parts of the game had a similar paywall. "Bloodlining? That'll be 25 credits per person. Personal Descriptions? 100 credits. Emotes? Premades are free, but custom will cost you." These examples are extreme and unrealistic, but you'd still be holding back parts of that people love and enjoy. Sure, some will pay up front easily and others will grind out the costs...but others will be turned off by it completely. 

There's a big difference between them, one you can get in game without a real world price tag attached and you're not reliant on the whims of the credit market.
There also needs to be a balance between what's generally available and the game making money so it can continue to exist. (this does not mean charging ridiculous prices for things so only the few can buy them, that's not great either)

Another consideration is that while cosmetics might not have mechanical value, they do still have value, otherwise we wouldn't even be talking about it. Each of the games charges 50 credits for customisations for items, which people regularly pay, Lusternia has manse dwellers which can have limited functionality.


Also the more stuff there is that's attractive that costs marks, the more incentive people who can drop cash into the game have to do so and sell their marks for credits. Which typically should lower the price of credits for those who buy them off the market, less incentive means less credits which means higher prices.

Groot said:

I am Groot
(

Sairys said:

Mostly just cause I can't imagine myself honestly paying for a tradeskill if I can just do a quest for it instead.

The whole point of the quest is that it takes a long time to do and/or it's very complicated. You might not pay for it...but someone who has an extra $40 or $80 USD (100 vs 200 cr) why not? Imagine the effort it could take you to raise up 100/200 credits IG if you're broke in real life.

It could take ages IF you have the knowledge/skill since all the best ways to make gold to convert to credits either requires a gold/credit investment (lessons for trade skills, any gear for high level hunting (ignoring the investment it takes to GET to the high levels), commodity/other trading methods). And you STILL have a massive time investment it takes to gather the gold to turn into credits. Plus if the credit market is high or inflated, you'd had to work even harder/longer to be able to get the amount

But if you'd rather not pay the cost, just have a friend submit it for you after all : ^)

You're not really quantifying what you feel would be a reasonable time frame for the quest alternative would be, just time-consuming and difficult.

For time-consuming, as a Lusternian, I've done a quest that's taken me over a week to complete (6-7 hours a day five times then three days of solid work that people thankfully helped with).
Tough, but would do it again if it gave me something, not all orgs are that long but I believe the four cities are roughly that. Something that long, even twice that, I'd just knock over.

With difficulty, if your notes about gold farming are considered issues you wouldn't expect for the questing. Then it's something that wouldn't require lesson investment, gear, levels, or trading.  But if the difficulty does include those then you could go gold farming. 


I guess the other thing is that if you can't afford credits, you can't grind for gold, and there's less incentive to use the credit market so credits are rare and therefore expensive. How do you expect to afford lessons to be able to use more than the basic abilities in the tradeskill?

Like, in lusternia... you could make shoes and taste food, and a few other really basic things.

Qitorien

Midkemia had gold prices attached to various crafting skillsets. I don't remember it being exorbitant. I can't speak to the other IREs.

zacc

MKO had a very low cost of entry. It was 1 gold, which was nearly trivial, to gain the license. Then, you'd train like any other skillset. You'd receive a designbook, which held all your designs, sketches, works-in-progress, and what-not's. Sketches had a small price as did submissions, but you could submit X number of completed designs at any time. No need to join an org, no need to share designs - you could mark them as public or private. You were given a certain number of upkeep-free slots for designs. You'd pay a small upkeep fee for each design in excess. Submissions with errors were returned but could be immediately resubmitted after fixing the error... with a small increase in submission fee. If you lost the designbook or it was stolen, the designs were still safe and you'd have to purchase a new designbook for 1 gold. My favorite parts were: no paywall, game-side design storage (for works in progress) via designbook, freedom to submit whenever and however many, complete independence from orgs.

I'd like MKO's method of handling tradeskills/crafting brought over to Starmourn. However, maybe limit individual players to one or two submissions per RL week and allow "cartels" (corporations) a number dependent on their total number of crafters (think: futuristic monopolies)? That might help to keep the need for volunteer/admin reviewers down and free them up for other things.

I remember reading somewhere that commodities would be handled in some sort of trade system. You acquire comms, you ship/transport them, they're stored somewhere that isn't a rift/vault/whatever. I'm curious to see if this will have anything to do with piracy and raiding. That would add an interesting dynamic rather than hoarding and sitting on massive quantities of comms that either never get used or end up becoming a surplus that affects the price of finished goods.

Oogah_Chakha

MKOs crafting wasn't really limited because of credits. You could hold 50 private designs in your book and then you could make an unlimited number of designs that were publically available. Private designs had a fee attached to them, something like...20 silver which was really cheap, where public fees only had the initial design cost. The only two instances of needing credits for that crafting system, was to buy an artifact design book, which could hold more and more private designs, or to spend for lessons to acquire multiple crafting skills.

Aurelius

MKO went out of business because nobody wanted to spend money on it. Let's just keep that in mind.

Qitorien

Aurelius said:

MKO went out of business because nobody wanted to spend money on it. Let's just keep that in mind.

Fair enough! I'm still hoping it's somewhere in the middle of too cheap and only the richest of the Shen can afford it after 10 game years.

Scathain

As I understand it, MKO went out of business because unlike every other IRE game, they had to pay royalties to a certain author, and eventually didn't have enough revenue to justify this expense. Otherwise, IRE is an expert at minimizing all other costs. And people did spend money on it, I know I spent about $30 on it myself, without getting any artifacts or such (which still makes it the only free to play multiplayer game I have ever spent money on), and some had bills in the thousands of dollars.

Anyways, crafting enriches the game greatly, and the lower the barrier to entry into it is, the more rich of a variety of designs you get. I was a crafter myself, and made weapons, art (which I got up to trans on Scathain), beverages, and jewelry, though usually my designs were too unusual to sell. I second bringing over the MKO crafting system to Starmourn, it worked beautifully and greatly enriched the game.

Aurelius

Scathain said:

As I understand it, MKO went out of business because unlike every other IRE game, they had to pay royalties to a certain author, and eventually didn't have enough revenue to justify this expense. Otherwise, IRE is an expert at minimizing all other costs. And people did spend money on it, I know I spent about $30 on it myself, without getting any artifacts or such (which still makes it the only free to play multiplayer game I have ever spent money on), and some had bills in the thousands of dollars.

MKO went out of business because it generated almost no revenue and so any license cost barring something totally minimal was too high, though the license cost was a lot less than the costs for the bare-bones personnel that got paid to try to keep it alive. 

Aurelius

zacc said:

That would add an interesting dynamic rather than hoarding and sitting on massive quantities of comms that either never get used or end up becoming a surplus that affects the price of finished goods.

Hoarding will be expensive, as you'll have to store most of those hoarded comms in a warehouse, which will cost Marks to do. 

Ataniiq

@Aurelius what was the price tag for the MKO licensing?