Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2017 13:21:00 GMT -5
Prompted by a discussion with some friends...
What would or have your characters done with a hundred thousand sid, or more?
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jenki
Clueless newb
Posts: 139
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Post by jenki on Jul 15, 2017 18:06:11 GMT -5
While I haven't had over a hundred thousand sids to spend, I would use it to buy favor and services (overpaying to buy more favor) from other players. the problem here is when the other players have tons of coins they can't spend fast enough either so it gets to the point of coins becoming less valuable than information/rare goods/favors/friends. Money can't buy anything from someone who already has a pile of coins they themselves can't buy the things they want with. The currency of the realm then becomes favor/information/rare items/etc.
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A Girl
staff puppet account
"And what do you say to Staff?" "Not today."
Posts: 35
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Post by A Girl on Jul 16, 2017 6:50:54 GMT -5
Piss it away on random rare or unique or interesting looking shit you see, treat yourself to that 1 bite blue fruit that is 1/2 an aide's salary from the bazaar's candy stand, spice, boozes, gifts, big ass apartment. Backing projects for sponsored roles as a direct donation, too. I had a whiran/jeweler who donated tens of thousands of coins to oash's fund to update something or other. I think it was to build something where the burned out pavilion in the Quarter was, as an example.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2017 10:22:06 GMT -5
Piss it away on random rare or unique or interesting looking shit you see, treat yourself to that 1 bite blue fruit that is 1/2 an aide's salary from the bazaar's candy stand, spice, boozes, gifts, big ass apartment. Backing projects for sponsored roles as a direct donation, too. I had a whiran/jeweler who donated tens of thousands of coins to oash's fund to update something or other. I think it was to build something where the burned out pavilion in the Quarter was, as an example. I like your first point. Did the Oash thing ever get built? Having had pcs that backed nobles before, most of the time it seems like the coin is used for Kadius customs and parties.
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ibusoe
Clueless newb
Posts: 176
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Post by ibusoe on Jul 16, 2017 13:20:49 GMT -5
The currency of the realm then becomes favor/information/rare items/etc. Probably some valid points. I however would argue that since nothing actually happens in game, information is therefore not worth the premium that people pay for it. This makes the effective currency favor and rare items. Edit: And to answer your question, if I had to spend 100k I would mostly spend it on really nice diggs. I guess I could get some flashy armor, and a nice apartment.
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A Girl
staff puppet account
"And what do you say to Staff?" "Not today."
Posts: 35
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Post by A Girl on Jul 17, 2017 5:23:50 GMT -5
Piss it away on random rare or unique or interesting looking shit you see, treat yourself to that 1 bite blue fruit that is 1/2 an aide's salary from the bazaar's candy stand, spice, boozes, gifts, big ass apartment. Backing projects for sponsored roles as a direct donation, too. I had a whiran/jeweler who donated tens of thousands of coins to oash's fund to update something or other. I think it was to build something where the burned out pavilion in the Quarter was, as an example. I like your first point. Did the Oash thing ever get built? Having had pcs that backed nobles before, most of the time it seems like the coin is used for Kadius customs and parties. To be totally honest, I have no idea. This was forever ago, but I recall it vividly as it was with the last whiran I ever played which was Emere. And I remember the Oash she worked for wanted to build or rebuild something, and I believe it involved the burned out pavilion, but it was something in the mages quarter, and then not long after, I wound up blowing up after that thread where my post was deleted and replaced with a link of a video mocking me by Reiloth's player (Wug) while he was on staff. Or, I believe it was Reiloth that did that. There was Wug and another, one of them totally deleted the contents of my post, and the other one responded to it by openly mocking me, so I lost my shit, and came here and posted because I was drunk and gave 0 fucks after that. And that was four years ago now, and before the updates to or even closing down of, the temples there.
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jjhardy
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 280
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Post by jjhardy on Jul 17, 2017 11:29:24 GMT -5
My merchant about 8 years ago or so, maybe more, had about 90K Coin to the point where I put some of it in the bank and lots of it in multiple apartments in Tuluk. I had paid off enough thieves to leave me alone and leave my apartments alone. I died while chopping trees to a raptor that happened to make their way ALL the way past the road leading east into Tuluk. Now we all know that Raptors do not frequent that area because it was getting into halfling territory, but there it was. Obviously staff animated the dam thing.
I also exploited the system about 1994 or so and had about 2 mil sid on me, yes it was an exploit and I got a warning about it. Mind you, I told them about it and they ignored it, so I made it that they couldn't ignore me, with all that coin, I couldn't even move, so it was worthless.
The last time I had money working in the Red Storm area, I bought a skiff and a second one for a friend, I got so bored with my fully branched merchant that I went silt sailing, I am pretty sure my death was staff created.
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Post by gloryhound on Jul 17, 2017 13:03:30 GMT -5
Just need to look at the things one would do with the coin to understand why things are as they are.
Want to have a building or tower constructed? That would require staff effort.
Want to have a wagon built? That would require staff effort.
Want to commission a statue or mural or sundial or memorial marker or whatever? That would require staff effort.
No, the staff is very comfortable with the way things are. And I don't totally fault them for that, having had some experience of my own with player demands. Once you open the door, it's just relentless, and there's a lot of asking why (to put it politely) <x> doesn't have his <y> yet (just like with special orders to merchants).
I figure the medium would be to allow characters to slowly accrue 'points' as they age, which could then be 'spent' (along with coin) on building requests if that fits the character's ambitions. Something like 10 points for a single-room shop, 20 points for a two-room hall for a group of dwarves, 40 for a three-room wagon or whatever. That would limit the demands for building while still giving players some hope and outlet. Also, to provide some means for characters to officially transfer ownership of properties.
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jjhardy
Displaced Tuluki
Posts: 280
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Post by jjhardy on Jul 24, 2017 10:18:34 GMT -5
Just need to look at the things one would do with the coin to understand why things are as they are. Want to have a building or tower constructed? That would require staff effort. Want to have a wagon built? That would require staff effort. Want to commission a statue or mural or sundial or memorial marker or whatever? That would require staff effort. No, the staff is very comfortable with the way things are. And I don't totally fault them for that, having had some experience of my own with player demands. Once you open the door, it's just relentless, and there's a lot of asking why (to put it politely) <x> doesn't have his <y> yet (just like with special orders to merchants). I figure the medium would be to allow characters to slowly accrue 'points' as they age, which could then be 'spent' (along with coin) on building requests if that fits the character's ambitions. Something like 10 points for a single-room shop, 20 points for a two-room hall for a group of dwarves, 40 for a three-room wagon or whatever. That would limit the demands for building while still giving players some hope and outlet. Also, to provide some means for characters to officially transfer ownership of properties. I totally support this and I think that if people want a place of their own that is still virtual, have them actually do the work to write up the desc etc.
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Post by sirra on Sept 15, 2017 9:27:39 GMT -5
It was never really that hard for even a lowly merchant clan hunter to rake in tens of thousands of sids. You didn't have to spend it on an apartment, and you had all the water you could drink, and mek steaks you could shove in your stupid, fat fucking grebber mouth. There wasn't much to do with the sids after that, except placing the occasional order of random shit that mostly had the same stats except a different description. I accrued stupid amounts of sids, and anyone who had me as their underling was going to be rich too.
The problem of course, is that sids don't matter a whole lot. You could get a million sids, and whether you were allowed a merchant warehouse or not was determined by your karma/staff discussion and consultation about how they liked you, or thought you were adding to the game. The actual price was negligible. You couldn't really employ people effectively, since they could join any clan (later, even the T'Zai Byn), and get all the food and water they needed for free. You couldn't buy a base, or a wagon. Even people that staff liked got effectively sabotaged for years, just out of staff laziness. Sids became effectively meaningless. A favorite tactic of staff is to just keep pushing a request further out in hopes that you die and they don't have to do it. Or failing your death, that you either forget, or they get cycled to a new clan and you get to repeat the process. That happened to me three times in a row, with Salarr.
There are certain roles, which were 'cash-strapped', more in the South, like Allanaki Bynners, who were dirt poor compared to even 'rinthers. Especially when they didn't get water for free. Mostly though, you're either a newbie, or being deliberately poor as some kind've elaborate affectation. Allanaki Byn Warrior was pretty much the only occupation where a veteran player would be kept poor for any length of time. (Hilariously enough, this was also the case for nobles and templars who had a very meager income).
Either way. The direction of the game ensured that sids gradually became nothing more than an RP prop, just like spice. Even though it would have been super easy to make both spice and sids legitimately desirable.
But yes. Allanaki Templars were often so hilariously impoverished, that bribing them could be legitimately useful and funny. As always, I never had a single entertaining experience with the Tuluki templarate. They were either unbribable warrior-saints or mindbending cunts. I liked a couple of the Jihaens, but I was sure as hell never entertained by them. By contrast, dozens of the Allanaki templars were fucking hilarious.
I had an incident with a naki templar, where I told him that I knew I was scum, and I totally did just murder that guy, but I could just get a price check on what it would take to avoid having the rest of this conversation...and he gave me one. It was great.
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delerak
GDB Superstar
PK'ed by jcarter
"When you want to fool the world, tell the truth." - Otto Von Bismarck
Posts: 1,656
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Post by delerak on Sept 15, 2017 14:04:05 GMT -5
Templar bribing comes from the Tyr docs of Dark Sun. Tyr was the corrupt city-state, but really all templars took bribes in nearly every city. Tyr however was what Allanak was modeled after as well Tyr was the city with the most documentation in Dark Sun hence the same happened in Arm. Urik would kind of be what Tuluk was to an extent, Urik vs Tyr was a common theme in Dark Sun and they were pretty much bitter enemies. The differences were Urik had the obsidian mines and Tyr had iron mines. Either way Urik had Hamanu who was astronomically more powerful than the sorcerer-king in Tyr whom was eventually defeated in one of the books. Either way the docs from Dark Sun made so much sense Arm decided to twist them around and rename cities and take only a few things here and there, instead if they had actually copied most of the docs created by professional game designers and writers the game would have been better off for it because shit would actually make sense.
/rant
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Post by lechuck on Sept 16, 2017 7:22:21 GMT -5
It's pretty difficult for a game to offer a wide variety of meaningful money sinks, but there are things they can do that Armageddon never explored. Buying NPCs, renting more interesting homes (there's got to be like fifty pointless, empty buildings scattered around Allanak) and a less gruelling process of buying shit from GMHs. The latter is especially silly; it's completely normal to order something and maybe get it a RL month later, as if the task of loading up an item took more than thirty seconds. You can of course order one of the dozen shitty everyday items that the PC merchants can actually get without staff assistance, but that's hardly appealing.
However, the issue is also with where the money comes from. Look at the shit you can do to rake in hundreds if not thousands of 'sid. Even in the rinth, you can just loot stuff off of NPCs that killed eachother and pocket hundreds after a single stroll through the alleys. You can scoop poop in the stables for more pay than a sergeant makes. You can generate thousands per day making and selling worthless sandcloth garbage in Red Storm. The list goes on like that, and the fact that just about anyone save total socialites can make more money than they possibly need means that nobody is interested in doing unusual things for profit unless they just do it out of an obligation to RP.
Comically, nobles and templars are the ones who most need money because they can't just go out digging clay or grebbing, but nobles also can't justify displaying a desperate need for cash because it conflicts with their core concept. Templars can be bribed, but often taking a bribe means you don't get to really do your job. Taking a bribe can be interesting enough now and then, but if you don't refuse sometimes, your role is reduced to an arbitrary tax collector that nobody takes seriously. Often you need the money but feel compelled to refuse the bribe just so you can actually have an excuse to be a relevant templar.
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Post by sirra on Sept 16, 2017 9:35:49 GMT -5
It's pretty difficult for a game to offer a wide variety of meaningful money sinks, but there are things they can do that Armageddon never explored. Buying NPCs, renting more interesting homes (there's got to be like fifty pointless, empty buildings scattered around Allanak) and a less gruelling process of buying shit from GMHs. The latter is especially silly; it's completely normal to order something and maybe get it a RL month later, as if the task of loading up an item took more than thirty seconds. You can of course order one of the dozen shitty everyday items that the PC merchants can actually get without staff assistance, but that's hardly appealing. However, the issue is also with where the money comes from. Look at the shit you can do to rake in hundreds if not thousands of 'sid. Even in the rinth, you can just loot stuff off of NPCs that killed eachother and pocket hundreds after a single stroll through the alleys. You can scoop poop in the stables for more pay than a sergeant makes. You can generate thousands per day making and selling worthless sandcloth garbage in Red Storm. The list goes on like that, and the fact that just about anyone save total socialites can make more money than they possibly need means that nobody is interested in doing unusual things for profit unless they just do it out of an obligation to RP. Comically, nobles and templars are the ones who most need money because they can't just go out digging clay or grebbing, but nobles also can't justify displaying a desperate need for cash because it conflicts with their core concept. Templars can be bribed, but often taking a bribe means you don't get to really do your job. Taking a bribe can be interesting enough now and then, but if you don't refuse sometimes, your role is reduced to an arbitrary tax collector that nobody takes seriously. Often you need the money but feel compelled to refuse the bribe just so you can actually have an excuse to be a relevant templar. One of the most obvious moneysinks the game never explored, was simply having food cost sids. It was a weird game in that the only people who had a hard time feeding themselves were newbies. Anyone with enough sense to join a clan, instantly jettisoned all the 'survival' aspects of the game. I used to resent joining clans, because all of the skills I took pride in, in knowing where free water was, and in hunting/feeding myself, counted for jack shit. It would have been so easy for even a partially competent game designer to fix Arm's economy. But it was never even remotely attempted. It could only have improved the game. If I wanted to waste everyone's time, I could list point for point the many suggestions that I and others made. But the most they ever got was some cunt like Liz pooh-poohing anything but the status quo, (unless it was staff changing the status quo, then it was great).
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