Okay, here's something that I've been thinking of for quite some time, and would love the input of everyone.

Making money. We all know it's a pain in the butt (both in real life (what's that?) and in the game), so I've been trying to think of ways people can do so, especially at lower levels.

Tasks are always a great way to do this, though they require you to be RP approved. Some new players may not even know about it, or the staff may be too taxed to do RP approvals as quickly as we would like.

So I've been wondering... what are some ideas you guys can think of so players, at any level but concentrating on lower levels, can make money? I'm not talking about some 'get rich quick' scheme, but enough to get them what they need: money for practicing, potions and scrolls for useful spells they may not know, food and gear.

Jobs come to mind, but which jobs could be available and how much should they pay? Should the pay be level-based, or more appropriately, "job experience" based? We could end up having players start a whole new city with player-run blacksmiths, cobblers, tailors and everything else under the sun.

Right now, there's only a few ways I can think of to make money in DL:
[list]Gems
Looting kills (many low-level mobs don't have money)
Selling in-demand equipment
Selling things to shopkeepers[/list:u]

I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of any right now. But as you can see, the ability to effectively make money for food, practicing and such is rather limited.

So what are some ideas you guys have?

Totally agree with you there. I love the idea of a player run blacksmiths, shopkeepers, etc. I think it would turn out to be a person who can fix standing in the armory or wherever just shouting "fixes at the blacksmith, 1k per item" or something along that line. But, if there is more money in the game, it's okay to pay for fixes from players. A healer could stay at his temple and shout heals for 100 coins each or something.

I think the easiest possible way for newbies to make more money is to allow shopkeepers to buy more of the smaller items, maybe buy a maxx of 99 of each item and stop buying more until the world reboots. Items like those found on doom street. We all know those small items we don't even bother looking at items anymore or even consigning and just donate it. Me for example, I donate just about everything from the incarnates, or from the new area "the isles". All decent eq for the smaller folks, but not worth the bother to uppers. Even uppers could still sell the items, but it's the possibility to allow those smaller people to sell that item no one wants that they find and make a few coins. Maybe not a ton of cash, but something atleast. It would surely allow for more money in the game and if we get enough in the game, then people won't mind buying potions/scrolls/traps/ etc from the shops. I play a different mudd from time to time (how dare I!) and there the money is abundant enough and the shopkeepers always buy. The point there is that it's okay to cost 5k for a scroll that casts detect invisi, or 10k for a scroll that heals you once. People don't mind spending money that on DL would seem far too much just for a small spell. Items from the donation rooms no longer have a value. When you look at the item, you can tell how much it may sell for. There is a skill called haggle there that allows you to sell higher and buy lower, about 10% difference than those without the skill.

I feel it comes down in the end to the buying and selling power of shops. Even if they bought at a 5th of the appraisal value and then sold it for it's appraisal, that's okay, people are still making that money because they can continue to sell items in the shops. It would do away with consig of course because you're actually making money off the items.

Now, with money, people would be able to finally purchase homes. Wow, people becoming more involved and actually have a home they can use for rp purposes, etc. I almost have enough coinage to buy a home outright. My hopes are to add regen to the one room I can afford so that anyone can stop by any time and regen there. I was hoping to make it safe for newbies to hang out there, get some food from a chest or something and maybe a little eq they could trade out from the chest. I would love to start buying black leather ninja suits from people for a few K and keep them in the chest for anyone who needed it. I also find that bags of holding are needed for newbies because they find all this cool sounding gear and can't hold on to it because they only have a sack that can't hold much so they may miss out on eq that will work for them soon, but they have to limit what they can hold. With help from other players, we can let them know what eq they may need, but often I find myself giving an item to a newbie and he has his hands full because he either hasn't found a back pack yet or it's full and he's holding on to items he thinks he'll need. If shops bought and sold more, he could just sell it and buy it later if it looked like a decent item.

Cheers to ya man. I hope some more ideas pop up for money in the game. Good idea on the job thing too. Maybe you can go to the shops and type "job" and the shopkeepers will tell you specific items they'll buy constantly and you get more money when you accept the job and try to find the item and give to them, or maybe when you type job and see what they need done you can also get exp from completing the small task. Ideas for jobs... hrm. Maybe the innkeeper could use some help cleaning rooms and you have to accept the job and go to a closet and grab a mop and bucket and hold it. When you walk in to the room it gives you a few emotes saying you're cleaing or something, gotta clean every room and return to the innkeeper and he gives you some gold for the job. Maybe the jeweler is looking to mine a few diamonds. With the digging skill you could go and buy yourself a shovel and maybe dig in a mine somewhere until you found a certain number of diamonds for him. Possibly those special diamonds don't appear until you can take the job, like a task. Who knows, loving the idea though.

More faboulous ideas, let me just add on a few thoughts:

- Gydin's description of a job is really almost enitrely accomplishable today with tasks (except they are RP only -- should jobs be RP only??) so that really might be a good place to start. I think maybe a job should be more permanent than a task though (which could make for interesting zone reset code requirements). Basically a task (or set of tasks) that you can do over and over without any time limit. Building the jobs available would be no small venture. Finally, I think this should also tie into "grouping" code so that you can have a group of people who are allowed to perform a job. This group would not have to be together and would not form a "group" as is currently known in the game. Instead, they would all have access to the special abilities the job gives them. You might even have different job levels where a player can get a raise, so to speak (perform these 4 tasks 10 times each and you can move up to the next job level or something). This grouping code might also introduce new spells and skills (can you say dig for someone who takes a job as a miner?) that are only available to that group (but are still retained once you've finished the job).

- I also think that shops are largely key in building a successful economy. I believe consignment shops have and will continue to have their place (probably even in more abundance) -- there will always be items valued higher than a shop is willing to pay (or able) for it. Consignment fits this hole perfectly. I'll admit that shops should probably be willing to buy more. There are two different ways this can be tweaked, we can add more gold into the game buy giving the shop more gold (shops already get additional gold via a zone reset type mechanism, we can just increase the amount they receive) or we can make it so they buy items for a lower percentage of their value (this can be set on an individual shop basis). There are other ways we can tweak the amount of gold in the game, we actually have a global variable that controls the flow of gold (this variable is currently set quite low to keep the amount of gold in check so that we CAN add more ways to get gold, but it could be adjusted). One of the areas where I think shops definitely could do better, is players should be able to own and run shops.

- This leads me back to adding more money into the economy and housing. Currently, it takes too much work for Staff to build houses, this needs to be more self maintaining. We should implement some code that allows players to build houses (and probably even shops), the rooms (possibly even NPCs) themselves. A few points about this: 1) The rooms should be submitted to a queue for Staff to review and ultimtately add to the game or reject -- much like descriptions and backgrounds for RP. 2) The editor/commands the players use to perform the building of these rooms should indicate a price requirement prior to submission. 3) Players should be able to automatically get a loan for houses/player shops of a certain amount based upon their credit rating (if we ever create one, this might be a good place to start) -- this loan should be maintained by the code, if they don't have the money, their place gets locked up and everyone who retired there loads in the start room, if it is in their bank or on their person, it is automatically taken.

Thanks for all the good ideas, keep 'em coming!

Best regards to all,

--Nezmar

Loving the ideas on the shops. I really like the job assingment. So for like digging, you have to accept the job and then learn how to dig, but after doing the job, you can now keep the digging skill and dig all around the game now. Or say with the digging job you can dig for small things, then the job foreman or whatever gives you a new item to dig for, or harder places to dig, etc. Then maybe finally it's like a task and you have to go into an area with some "job based" mobs and kill them and dig for the item(s). Getting exp for each successful dig and gold for completing the job. Possibly say you go to dwarves and in the miner area the foreman there has (Job) next to his name and you ask him about it and he tells you etc. You dig or whatever and say you need 10 small diamonds, each time you talk to him with them in your inventory he'll either thake them from you, or you give them to him and he'll tell you how many more you have to bring to him.

I'm using digging just as an example because I'd love to have the dig skill and dig up treasure, token, rare items, etc. There is also an area that I haven't been able to find the way in or out of yet but there are a ton of different mines down there, great for digging up gems. Only been able to get there via portal.

Player run shops, not sure how that would work, more or less could be maybe a player can sign up for a job: healer, armorer, scroll writer. That title will be next to his name maybe and people can ask him about his job and you tell them how much for spells, or fixes, scrolls, portals. Maybe some way to make it so when a person ask "ask gydin healer" or something and a list will come up with pricing. Then you talk to the person and they'll deal with you about spells. Possibly different rooms could be created so when the worker is in the room people know they are there to help and when wandering around away from that room you can still ask, but don't get mad if they turn you down. Possibly have those rooms that the spell casters can work in, give it far more regen for power, mana, song, but knowing that the worker is responsible for working for whomever comes in there. Would be similar to the old altars that were just a few west of the Fountain in Turien.

The best way to possibly allow more money in the game would be to tweak how much wanders around. If you lower the amount of gold shops pay, well then that's just letting them buy more items, but still end up having the same amount of gold. More gold = more money = more people buying and selling items. I personally miss the auction channel. Would it be possible to put in an auction house where a person can globally announce one time an item they are auctioning while standing in the auction house. And only while in that auction house will the auction channel work. It will only work for the person auctioning and the people who are standing in that room. Then you can auction off good items and hopefully get the best price possible. Still allowing for a minimum bid etc.

There's my nickle. I really enjoy the forum area.