A Economic Resolution: Blueprints/Books

[TheDeNuke]

A Economic Resolution: Blueprints/Books

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or the "third pillar" of the economy
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After seeing the progress of the server economy the past week I've come to the realization that there is very little "Roleplay" actually integrated into the economy. People effectively spend their time hunting for scripts and crafting scripts with no measures to stop them from doing so. The whole process feels exceptionally out-of-character and creates the idea that in our present skill system there is practically no roleplay at all.

Therefore I have come to the idea of making it so that rather then just instantly unlocking all recipes in the crafting systems: they must read a particular book or a particular blueprint.

The process of obtaining these key items is much unlike the rest of our skill systems. A book or blueprint can be obtained via either the bartering system or smuggling system but many of these items will NEVER be available in either systems and can only be given as a event reward by staff members. This has the important consequences of effectively demanding that if people want to build specific items they will need to first have a event to actually retrieve the book/blueprint item to actually craft the object.

These books/blueprints will be treated at the same importance as someone spawning a gun. A member of the adminstration team will have to have proof that they had embarked upon a proper sequence of events before giving these particular items since these will likely be one of the only lines of defense between the sewers being completely disarmed and the entire sewers being filled up with more weapons then a barracks arsenal.

This will also give the ability to open up a "book store" business with only approved cookbooks and basic material construction books. The far majority of books will remain illegal which means that there is a high chance that illegal "book store" businesses will also be opened up to sell these items. As said before there are limits and many of the books will remain event-only.

If we wished as such- we could also heavily flavor these skill books/blueprints with a unique title and description. We could even keep what recipe they would unlock as a secret only revealed once the item was used for further suprises on the part of the users (still displaying which skill-type the book unlocks recipes for as a convenience).

Finally, I advise that this is implemented as soon as possible (alongside the Smuggling System which will effectively create a sort of a Economy 2.0). The server economy is admittedly in shambles and this is due to both abuses by staff team members and abuse of easy to access resources through the CCA. If individuals were not able to build guns without first accessing the smuggling system or had gone through appropriately sized events then it would be entirely viable that what has already caused the economy to crash would not have occurred at all.

Questions? Feedback?

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[Gr4Ss]

Easy to do code-wise, just basically a single check to see if you can craft something in the crafting system and the blueprint items, neither of which is a lot of work or hard to do.

 

[Fabulous]

I don't think it would help a lot honestly. If anything, it would give more power to groups to monopoly on things by saving blueprints and books in their stashes. I also don't see a lot of roleplay possibilities out of it other than people going ''Hey, can you pass me that book that explains how to make a gun?'' and he goes /me reads the book only to pass it back ''Thanks, I have the knowledge in my memory now.''

 

[Gr4Ss]

I don't think it would help a lot honestly. If anything, it would give more power to groups to monopoly on things by saving blueprints and books in their stashes. I also don't see a lot of roleplay possibilities out of it other than people going ''Hey, can you pass me that book that explains how to make a gun?'' and he goes /me reads the book only to pass it back ''Thanks, I have the knowledge in my memory now.''

Solution there could be to not have it memorize until you have crafted it x amount of times, and until you have it memorized you require the book on you. Would make it a lot harder to pass the book around real quick, and instead force people to focus on having 1-2 people learn it for expensive recipes.

Group monopoly will be less of a thing that it has been on certain other communities where there are OOC rules for crafters/BMD's to be part of a single group. Also as it isn't an OOC app with only limited slots available but a world map event requirement, anyone can technically always apply for it - and I would consider admins to be especially open to it if there is a monopoly on basic items.

Also if I would implement this, I'd still keep level requirements as is right now, and basic items as craftable by everyone.

 

[TheDeNuke]

Solution there could be to not have it memorize until you have crafted it x amount of times, and until you have it memorized you require the book on you. Would make it a lot harder to pass the book around real quick, and instead force people to focus on having 1-2 people learn it for expensive recipes.

Good Idea. Having to craft a specific amount of items from the book before memorizing it should work.

Either that or what I was thinking with the "books" being outright consumables.

 

[Fabulous]

Solution there could be to not have it memorize until you have crafted it x amount of times, and until you have it memorized you require the book on you. Would make it a lot harder to pass the book around real quick, and instead force people to focus on having 1-2 people learn it for expensive recipes.

Group monopoly will be less of a thing that it has been on certain other communities where there are OOC rules for crafters/BMD's to be part of a single group. Also as it isn't an OOC app with only limited slots available but a world map event requirement, anyone can technically always apply for it - and I would consider admins to be especially open to it if there is a monopoly on basic items.

It still takes power from players and hand it out to a certain chosen person, I think the current crafting system can be fixed and made better instead of this. People shouldnt need a certain book because not everyone will be offered that but instead they can get better at crafting by crafting an X kind of item more. I'm farming Medicine for an example because my character runs a clinic and I depend on some friends who have a high level of crafting experience, my character brings them some items and they help her disassemble them. Those people are easy to find when you settle in, if you'd just take it from people who crafted a lot to get the experience and give them to a limited amount of people who are holding a blueprint book.. It will be more like people holding the power of crafting and the rest of the people will depend on them instead of being able to craft their own things no matter how much they are willing to grind.

Why don't we instead make grinding slightly easier, increase the XP given from crafting things and instead start letting people find various more items from the trash? Right now you can only grind crafting from the trash nodes, why don't we start finding items that would help us craft medicine? Why don't we also start finding some food? That would help people shift their attention to other crafting branches and make a whole new market for people who wants to trade or professionalise on things other than metal scraps and plastic kinds of things. TLDR, don't restrict people on what they can craft and what they can't craft, just add more possibilities and they will spread out and make a whole new economy for you.

 

[adi.]

i think this is the best suggestion i've seen so far.

 

[TheDeNuke]

It still takes power from players and hand it out to a certain chosen person, I think the current crafting system can be fixed and made better instead of this. People shouldnt need a certain book because not everyone will be offered that but instead they can get better at crafting by crafting an X kind of item more. I'm farming Medicine for an example because my character runs a clinic and I depend on some friends who have a high level of crafting experience, my character brings them some items and they help her disassemble them. Those people are easy to find when you settle in, if you'd just take it from people who crafted a lot to get the experience and give them to a limited amount of people who are holding a blueprint book.. It will be more like people holding the power of crafting and the rest of the people will depend on them instead of being able to craft their own things no matter how much they are willing to grind.

Why don't we instead make grinding slightly easier, increase the XP given from crafting things and instead start letting people find various more items from the trash? Right now you can only grind crafting from the trash nodes, why don't we start finding items that would help us craft medicine? Why don't we also start finding some food? That would help people shift their attention to other crafting branches and make a whole new market for people who wants to trade or professionalise on things other than metal scraps and plastic kinds of things. TLDR, don't restrict people on what they can craft and what they can't craft, just add more possibilities and they will spread out and make a whole new economy for you.

The problem is that once people reach the level of crafting guns they will go straight into building guns with no limitations whatsoever.
Everyone will have a full arsenal on their hands without anyone having the legitimate knowledge to actually build guns. With only a arbitrary limitation (the skill level and item cost) stopping them from doing so.

The idea with these books is that SOME will be in the hands of admins (special items) and the rest will be brought through the smuggling system anyway (most normal gun recipes) so this is not taking power from the players. The players will still have the ability to take the time and effort to go to the back end of the Outlands to buy some books from the Smuggling System.

 

[Fabulous]

I'm not sure. I just think that this would be quite unfair for players who are not a part of the right group with good books. A lot of people have been grinding for hours to start getting guns and this will be a big no to all their efforts and fun.
The fact that this suggestion comes in one week after all the drama about admins spawning guns for their friends is just a cherry on top.. I just think this has a big chance of not ending fair and useful but rather just benefit a certain group of people who are chosen by admins. Which it will, as the books will only be provided from admins to those chosen people. Don't choose your own rebels for the server, let who works enough get it.

Edit, I would also hate to start depending on some random player who just suddenly shows up with medical books in their hand and tells me he will now craft my stuff and starts to profit over it. It would feel pointless doing what I'm doing because only difference between myself and them would be that they are chosen by admins and I'm not.

 

[Gr4Ss]

I'm not sure. I just think that this would be quite unfair for players who are not a part of the right group with good books. A lot of people have been grinding for hours to start getting guns and this will be a big no to all their efforts and fun.
The fact that this suggestion comes in one week after all the drama about admins spawning guns for their friends is just a cherry on top.. I just think this has a big chance of not ending fair and useful but rather just benefit a certain group of people who are chosen by admins. Which it will, as the books will only be provided from admins to those chosen people. Don't choose your own rebels for the server, let who works enough get it.

Please don't spread false rumors even further. Admins never spawned guns for their friends. One admin decided to spawn guns for himself and was severely reprimanded for it. And since then it has been made very clear to all admins that spawning in gun items is not done without running it by the necessary people.

And IMHO, after the events of last week, I am inclined to say I more trust admins to select groups than to just let it run... otherwise you just end up with a scriptwhore resistance that needs mugging & raiding rules to keep them from mudering each other into extinction. Sometimes an artificial barrier in the form of 'admins need to give/approve/help you to get x' is very good as quality control and to encourage people to try other than just scriptwhore and waltz over other people's RP.

 

[TheDeNuke]

Huh? No? It won't benefit admins exclusively because as I've said before:

1. Admins will be HIGHLY moderated regarding book spawns (they will be treated like guns).
2. The majority of these books will be available through either the Smuggling or Barter Systems.
3. The books will likely have a limited number of uses and need to be used to craft items several times before the recipe is memorized.

 

[Fabulous]

Please don't spread false rumors even further. Admins never spawned guns for their friends. One admin decided to spawn guns for himself and was severely reprimanded for it. And since then it has been made very clear to all admins that spawning in gun items is not done without running it by the necessary people.

And IMHO, after the events of last week, I am inclined to say I more trust admins to select groups than to just let it run... otherwise you just end up with a scriptwhore resistance that needs mugging & raiding rules to keep them from mudering each other into extinction. Sometimes an artificial barrier in the form of 'admins need to give/approve/help you to get x' is very good as quality control and to encourage people to try other than just scriptwhore and waltz over other people's RP.

I mean.. People want to kill eachother right now because some people have guns and some doesnt. Do you think they will stop wanting to kill eachother when some people have the ability to craft and some doesnt?

 

[Gr4Ss]

I mean.. People want to kill eachother right now because some people have guns and some doesnt. Do you think they will stop wanting to kill eachother when some people have the ability to craft and some doesnt?

Imagine a bandit group gets their hands on a high enough crafting level and starts pumping out shotguns, which they then use to raid other groups, which lets them make more shotguns, raid more groups, more shotguns, ...

 

[Fabulous]

It will literally be the exact same. They'll just kill eachother for books in some cases and in some cases such as myself will simply feel demotivated because I have a certain establishment going and somehow I'll start depending on a random admin chosen rebel and start paying them the materials that I already don't have to be able to keep functioning?

Yeah people will keep killing eachother I can guarantee you, just this time it will be over books. Why let a group of admin chosen people profit over the people that work most? I still fail to understand.

Correct me if I'm wrong but stopping people from randomly raiding eachother is one of the reasons we have admins too no? It literally takes some moderation which you guys are already doing to ensure rules are being enforced and people arent going full ape mode. You don't need to choose a group of people and allow them to sell people the ability to craft, we don't need to create our own rich people within the rebels, let them earn it through IC means.

 

[TheDeNuke]

I think the problem of bandits can be resolved by better quality control in roleplay and moderation rather then anything mentioned in this thread.
Basically what I'm trying to say is that people should have a reason to kill one another and not just killing each other over scripts. That's idiotic at best.

Back on-topic- as stated Books are are a good idea if at least to potencially invite the gathering of such items via events and use of the smuggling system. They are also likely a balancing factor regarding admin misuse since it should lower the chances that a admin will game the system by spawning parts to craft guns and make excuses for it.

 

[adi.]

how about you make it so that very 'primitive' weapons such as the pipe rifle, very small and weak handguns can be crafted without needing to read a book, but the big boys such as shotguns, rifles and what not require you to have one.

 

[friendlyman]

Lack of roleplay is an inherent problem with the skill-based system. In a system that encourages you to grind out crafting and farm as many scripts as possible, there's not really much you can do to fix this.

The lack of rogue rules on CCA characters hasn't really helped the problem either, with some groups just funneling endless supplies through CCA alts/characters in an effort to try and win some sort of arms race.

Really, there's a million ways you can criticize the current system, and while I think that the blueprint idea is overall a positive one, how do you stop it devolving into 'My mate's a GM he'll give us the blueprint for it dw' - It opens up the system to even more GM abuse than it's already been criticised for

(Btw I do agree with your idea, but it's very hard to funnel them through events when the events on the server are currently A: Shit or B: Non-existent, we need competent event makers for this to work and right now we ain't got em.)

 

[TheDeNuke]

Really, there's a million ways you can criticize the current system, and while I think that the blueprint idea is overall a positive one, how do you stop it devolving into 'My mate's a GM he'll give us the blueprint for it dw' - It opens up the system to even more GM abuse than it's already been criticised for

Simple.

You stop the admins spawning the blueprints in the first place and you penalize any admin caught doing it without a event of legitimate difficulty or direct approval by the correct staff members.

 

[AdamCF]

Doesn't each every item have a unique ID? Like, that's how they caught hackers in TN.

If a blueprint exists and someone wants to know how it exists, staff are required to search logs for that exact item (if searching by item IDs is a thing), or show logs proving that it was collected through RP

 

[Sagsworth]

I don't see how this changes this from a roleplayless grind, all it seems to do is add another layer of grind in terms of buying and selling blueprints/books.

The advantage of the current system is that it is open and stops you having BMD / Crafting leads and players who monopolise the market, this seems to remove the only advantage (because now there is something gatekeeping the majorty of players) and I honestly do not see how this will add any roleplay other than "Hi can I buy a book" "Yes" "ok" which is the exact same as "Hi, can I buy adhesive / scrap / plastic / parts / tools"