with lots of things going on the game right now I would just like to bring this issue up again.

Any more thoughts?

I think the fastest and perhaps easiest solution is being able to sell stock to the city.  At this point I would be happy just to get rid of the stock even if it’s a week at a time.  I would hate to just totally stop accepting the materials and cut off a lower levels means of making any type of money. albeit the money they’re getting from it probably isn’t even worth the effort at the moment.

heh put the city smelter back in!

i dont know.. iv all but givin up hope on the metal situation

how much would the city buy? at what price? and from whom?

Does one smelter get the contract from each city? maybe based on a quest, task, or standing within a city or with its leader?

It had been posted earlier, should make it a weekly event, auction type available to smelters w/in that city.  Each city getting their own and pylus maybe be part of Exe’s auction? dunno.. This should also be extended to smiths as well.  Allow them to bid on city contracts to make armors and weapons.

Break it down, possibly have it so Smiths attend a weekly auction that each city would hold.  Then purchase stocks from smelters in order to fufill those contracts.  Personally I think this adds the most dynamics to the game.  Make it so ppl are eager to login more often in order to participate in these auctions.  I bet it’s pretty damn boring to be a smith nowadays with the low player base their stock probably sits for months at a time.  I think this would be the quickest solution to the metal conundrum as other additions are thought over and coded.

I think the main reason for the glut of low/mid metals is not as much the player base at it is the nature of the player base—that is that once you class, the time it takes until you are using the best types of weapons, and especially armor, for your class, is nowhere NEAR what it used to be.  I spent 2 years , 94-96, as a level 9-12 fighter who seemingly had Dagda’s Svaerd permanently lodged in my throat.  Now, as soon as anyone gets the hang of the game, it’s smooth sailing to full suits of ac9.  Back then, I would always buy ac4 to the limbs and 6 to the head and body.  Now, there’s no stumbling blocks that keep you in that niche market for long.

A word about alloys—they should be a SMITH skill, not a smelter skill.  A smelter sells the metals to a smith—the smith makes alloys out of them.  Or else, it’s heavily slanted toward smelters.  For instance, say steel/silver makes mithril.  Steel and silver get bought at .5, maybe 1 per?  meanwhile mithril gets bought for 3 per and sold for 5-6 (roughly).  That’s an insane profit for smelters, not to mention any movement of steel and silver is going to be welcome, as I believe most smelters have a crazy existing stock of them.  When there is an excess stock, the smelter gets all of it sitting around.  If alloys are handled on the smelter side, smelters are going to get a sudden infusion of cash as they suddenly have a crapload of highs that they bought dirt cheap, and can still sell at normal prices to a smith.  However, if they were able to sell those lows at normal or slightly elevated prices to a smith, that would be a welcome infusion for both, I belive.

a word about socialization of smiths and smelters—divvying up city contracts shouldn’t be to hard, even without an auction.  Just assign a percentage of the business to each city guild, dependant on total assets—the poorer guilds get the most help.  It’s not like we have a ton of guilds around anymore.

maybe the smelters can disaffirm my idea that smelters have tons of low stock sitting around gathering dust, but I think that’s the way it is, currently.

This whole post came off a little pushy.  I didn’t intend it that way, I’m just irritated and bored at work.  I’m also to lazy to go back and edit for politeness.  Just take it with a grain of salt. 

hmm.. so what you are saying… is....bring back newbie pking?

Well the idea for alloys was for armour and Weapon smiths.  Not for smelters.  Smelters just smelt the metal and hand it over to the smith’s to work the magic.

As for the how the contracts would be divvied up.  I’ll have to see what smelters are still active.  I’m pretty sure Indel has 2, Pylus has 0, and I think one more for each other city.  Have to double check that.

Once I get some time to put in some research on this I’ll be able to make a proposal and see how it pans out to the wizard community.  This may not be until the summer though.  So keep the ideas rolling

i know of 4.. brimes, Q’s, doom and griffen

Lairds

The game has money sinks, designed to offset some of the massive amount of money brought into the game.  As such there needs to be a sink for smelted materials.  Now the cities could buy some of this stock and/or outsource weapons and armor as part of it, but is that going to be enough?

I see it as a first step in broadening the players relationship with the cities.  Right now players exist to kill stuff, and the cities are really nothing more than simple backdrops that we move thru to kill stuff.  Lets add a few more layers of depth, have the cities grow and shrink based on the influence of the players and the guilds.  I’ve mentioned elsewhere about war between the cities and that could be used along with the intense proliferation of arms leading up to it.  We could also see city residents becoming more involved in our play, by building into them responses to players based on the players actions.  Can you imagine going into Vesla and its in utter ruin and helping to rebuild it? or being part of the group that lead to its ruin?  To have NPCs love or hate you based upon your history?

Just in case anyone is unaware of this (from Merc Board):

Message number 43, written by Abbot at Aug 1
Subject: new feature for Smelters!

Believe it or not, we are always figuring out ways to help guilds in the
background somewhere. This new feature is from an idea of tarmon’s (which he
forced me to code, slap him for me!).

There is an office up from this room in which metals can be sold to each city,
depending on that cities need. This need is determined through select city
guards who need material for their gear. The more these cities have to replace
their guards, the more the city will need.

Each smelter is allowed to sell up to three lots per week (reset the same time
as rent is taken out). So be careful not to waste your sales on super small
lots. We realize the prices are not high, but the cities are cheap and refuse
to pay any more at this time.

Please inform us immediately of any bugs and if you see any way it might be
abusable.

We will be trying to figure out ways to help the other guilds too, might just
take some time.

Ab

Message number: 43

Many thanks for this feature!

haha tarmon made abbot code

good idea.. takes away my bargining chip tho

hehe...Abbot is over exagerating I wrote my idea down and he hammered me fordetails for like an hour on it.  I came back two days later and he told me it was coded, just needed to be reviewed....that and all the grunt work of adding it to the NPCs

Something I wanted to mention to the guilds using this is to wait till closer to the end of the week before making the sales.  You are allowed 3 lots of 2k units each.  If you want, and if it’s available, they can be 3 lots of the material.  So as an example, you can sell 3 lot of Iron for of 6k units of iron, but maybe they all go to different cities.

2k limit.. ok.. i can still haggle i think

what are they prices they are buying at?

I can’t recall off the top of my head.  I know that they are not quite as good as what would be sold to a wep or armour smith, but are better than nothing.  If needed I can check the rates, or some one with math skills can check the site.  If they look at what Anshelm Needs, they can figure out all the proces from there as Anshelm needs a ton of Material.