boot strapping the economy


Pathfinder Online

151 to 197 of 197 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Goblin Squad Member

I agree with Dario. If such is designed, players will find ways around such vulnerabilities. Only inexperienced players will suffer for it.

Why code in something like that?

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I also agree that with the hybrid system as an MVP solution, but I have hopes that down the road there will be an expansion on that design that does not create those vulnerabilities or force players to work around them, but instead creates further ways to have manful interaction with the economy of the game through funds manipulation, weather that is through sacking a settlement, PVP or merchant interactions. I personally feel that treasure in the form of PP,GP,SP and CP is a core element in Pathfinder, and to remove that wholly from the Settlement/Nation level of a focused PVP game would detract in many ways. Economic warfare through the acquisition/destruction of your enemies supplies and funds, should be possible.

I don't think that the sacking of a settlement should give all of its members funds to the sacker, but possibly a portion of those funds that belong to the settlement via taxes, payments, and so forth. That way the players themselves would still have available funds to start over with in the case of a lost settlement, while still giving the victor more meaningful reasons to conquer their rivals.

At the Company level, this could possibly occur with the sacking of a POI, that is if any funds belong to the Company instead of just it's individual members. If the system is setup where upkeep for POIs is pulled from the Companies funds in the bank, this would work.

There are many ways the above could work, or could be worked around, depending on the mechanics, none of which are in place, or even planned to my knowledge. I feel a system could be built though, that would include many ways for these to be possible, without making the players suffer more than a normal death level of loss.

I do not want systems that punish inexperienced players or that can be gamed or worked around, but meaningful financial aspects of the game that keep the feel of Pathfinder, as well as PVP warfare, on a larger scope than the individual level. The individual level will be pretty well covered by the hybrid system. I do hope it is expanded to give more options down the road though.

Goblin Squad Member

I'd rather not have any monetary incentive for destroying a settlement or POI.

Making war should be a cost burden, not a revenue generator.

I would like motivation for attacking a settlement or POI to be political or territorial, not a source of income.

Goblin Squad Member

Well, few things in life are so absolute. I think profit should be possible but not guaranteed. It should be incidental, perhaps to glorify the event in the cultural narrative.

CEO, Goblinworks

2 people marked this as a favorite.

Mechanic: If you destroy a Settlement, you get some portion of the coin in that Settlement

Behavior: If a group feels there's a reasonable chance they might lose that Settlement, they'll pull every unneeded coin out of that Settlement and move it to a secure location.

Result: A game mechanic that has no material impact on play except for the rare corner case where a group was cohesive enough to organize and create a Settlement, but not cohesive enough to do the obvious thing when that Settlement comes under siege.

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:

Mechanic: If you destroy a Settlement, you get some portion of the coin in that Settlement

Behavior: If a group feels there's a reasonable chance they might lose that Settlement, they'll pull every unneeded coin out of that Settlement and move it to a secure location.

Result: A game mechanic that has no material impact on play except for the rare corner case where a group was cohesive enough to organize and create a Settlement, but not cohesive enough to do the obvious thing when that Settlement comes under siege.

But what if the individual settlers running of with the coins could themselves be targeted by bandits for their share of the village treasury? I guess, this ties in with the other thread on wether or not money should be real, lootable coins or just an ethereal number. I for one am in favor of lootable, yet weightless coins...

CEO, Goblinworks

2 people marked this as a favorite.

@albadeon:

If coin has weight and mass, the economy becomes crippled. Merchants cannot move enough coins fast enough to the market hubs to engage in production at scale. As a result, Letters of Credit (LOCs) will emerge to replace coin. These will be agreements between players to credit and debt large amounts of coin by proxy. The LOC system is opaque to us which means it will be filled with rampant fraud and abuse - but at the top end, where a web of absolute trust will develop, really big concerns will have a workable system. Result: new players, players excluded from the top end, and anyone other than a documented "Real Person" will be unable to operate in the LOC economy and will be cut out of becoming a meaningful concern in production.

If coin has no weight or mass, the Settlement will divide its wealth among a large number of proxy characters that will be created expressly for this purpose. The wealth will be loaded onto them, perhaps a several hundred or a thousand of them, and in waves they'll scatter from the Settlement in all directions of the compass. When they have reached a safe distance, they'll log off. After the battle is over, they'll be carefully logged back in, one at a time, when local security can be ensured, and their coin will be transferred out of the area under guard, or, if the Settlement was saved, they'll run back to the Settlement and re-deposit the coins. Other players might manage to stop a small number of these runners, but they'll never get more than a tiny fraction of the coin.

Remember that this extraction isn't going to happen on the day of the siege. Sieges take a long time to prepare and are the culmination of weeks of effort and skirmishes and reduction of outer defenses and structures. The Settlement will have days and days of time to prepare to protect their wealth. So they always will.

Result will be a system (looting Settlements) that rarely actually gets used.

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:

@albadeon:

If coin has weight and mass, the economy becomes crippled. Merchants cannot move enough coins fast enough to the market hubs to engage in production at scale. As a result, Letters of Credit (LOCs) will emerge to replace coin. These will be agreements between players to credit and debt large amounts of coin by proxy. The LOC system is opaque to us which means it will be filled with rampant fraud and abuse - but at the top end, where a web of absolute trust will develop, really big concerns will have a workable system. Result: new players, players excluded from the top end, and anyone other than a documented "Real Person" will be unable to operate in the LOC economy and will be cut out of becoming a meaningful concern in production.

If coin has no weight or mass, the Settlement will divide its wealth among a large number of proxy characters that will be created expressly for this purpose. The wealth will be loaded onto them, perhaps a several hundred or a thousand of them, and in waves they'll scatter from the Settlement in all directions of the compass. When they have reached a safe distance, they'll log off. After the battle is over, they'll be carefully logged back in, one at a time, when local security can be ensured, and their coin will be transferred out of the area under guard, or, if the Settlement was saved, they'll run back to the Settlement and re-deposit the coins. Other players might manage to stop a small number of these runners, but they'll never get more than a tiny fraction of the coin.

Remember that this extraction isn't going to happen on the day of the siege. Sieges take a long time to prepare and are the culmination of weeks of effort and skirmishes and reduction of outer defenses and structures. The Settlement will have days and days of time to prepare to protect their wealth. So they always will.

Result will be a system (looting Settlements) that rarely actually gets used.

These are all very valid reasons to not have these systems in the game. I hope down the road that systems that do not present problems like this make it possible. If it is enough of a factor at that time, I'm sure a system can be worked out that has meaning.

On a side note, what is in the design currently as a reward for sacking a settlement in war? A lot of time and resources will go into the process, and when done, the winner gets what? A burnt settlement where they could build something new? An intact settlement, somewhat damaged they can repair? Are there no spoils of war? Is the reward that your enemy is no longer able to fight back? Have these things not been designed or approved yet?

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:
BrotherZael wrote:
I'd like to point out in Runescape there were banknotes, where you go to the bank and could ask for a 10mil note. only weighed the poundage of one piece of paper, but with all that added value.

Yes, that's a letter of credit, the most basic form of financial instrument.

If we do not have virtual currency, there will be LOC almost immediately. If we do not create LOCs the players will do it. And if the players do it, it becomes opaque to us what is happening in the economy, ripe for abuse, and the source of endless grief and bad feelings.

But the LOC is just a system on top of a virtual currency. There are no coins. Nowhere at Goblinworks do we have a vault full of shiny metal discs. So the effort we would invest in making a LOC system is really just a duplication of work on top of having a virtual currency. It just does not seem like a valuable use of our time.

I don't see how a banknote or any other form of LOC will prove to be much a problem... unless we are talking a level of realism where the coin of one area is not equivalent to the coin of another. I specified banknotes because they, unlike some other forms of LOCs, can be reimbursed by just about anyone in their most basic of incarnations.

I'm working under the assumption that there will be coin within the economy, in direct reply to the issue of movement of physical coin. It seems, as you point out to Stephen and the rest, that have each coin weigh would be a disastrous proposal at best. This method would make that coin still have tangibility.

It could be I am misunderstanding what the "tagging home" does to coin. Does it simply make it weightless? I was under the impression it secured it from any harm. It also seemed people are eager to keep it that way (to me). If this is the case, a banknote or other form of LOC would be the most apt way of doing it, if not then I need not continue.

As you point out, players will do it no matter what, and wouldn't it be better to have it through an official way? Or does it simply not matter enough (at the moment) relative to the other problems GW is facing to warrant immediate implementation.

CEO, Goblinworks

@Wexel: If the only thing you got was the control of the Hex and the ability to make a Settlement, that would still be more than enough to generate conflict.

There will probably be more, but it won't be necessary.

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

Being wrote:
KarlBob wrote:

Bluddwulf, you may have singlehandedly ruined my productivity for the rest of the day.

"Wow, the Romans had a technological advantage in wagons? How much technology goes into wagons, anyway?"

Reads part of linked article.

"One-piece fellies? I wonder what a felly is. Better check Wikipedia."

Links open up from Technotronic (who had a member named Felly) to Wheelwright ("Oh, fellies is the plural of felloe, not felly.").

At that point, you might as well have lured me into TV Tropes!

Learning is not a loss of productivity. From that example we can infer that benefit can be gained from unexpected avenues. We might be inspired to enhance our lives and increase future productivity by identifying even one way this information can be made useful in our own practical lives. Thus learning is an investment that can pay dividends the rest of our natural lives if only we capitalize upon the knowledge somehow.

From a seed grows an oak.

Thank you. I'll forward that to my boss when he asks what I accomplished yesterday.

(Luckily, I overcame the myriad temptations of Wikipedia and got some work done yesterday.)

Scarab Sages Goblin Squad Member

BrotherZael, from what I gather, the problem with LOCs is that even if GW implemented official LOCs, people would probably not stick to an official version, but make up their own through in-game mail, email, text chat and voice chat. It's the unofficial, unregulated, player-created LOCs that threaten to give the devs nightmares. Even with weightless, abstracted coinage, players could still develop these off-the-radar LOCs, but they have much less incentive to do so.

Over the history of EVE Online (yes, the forbidden reference point), virtually every player-created bank/savings & loan/financial institution has either been created as a deliberate scam, or devolved into a scam eventually. For CCP, that's not usually a problem, because their players know that scams are allowed, and caveat emptor is official policy. For GW, who seem to want a less scam-ridden, newbie-friendlier game, a banking scam would be a problem.

Goblin Squad Member

I believe GW is going to have to actively look for ways to incent players *not* to go outside the game for their financial arrangements. It's easy to believe they'll have to tweak whatever they come up with--perhaps more than once--as outside-arrangements can be quite seductive, especially among close friends.

Goblin Squad Member

KarlBob wrote:

BrotherZael, from what I gather, the problem with LOCs is that even if GW implemented official LOCs, people would probably not stick to an official version, but make up their own through in-game mail, email, text chat and voice chat. It's the unofficial, unregulated, player-created LOCs that threaten to give the devs nightmares. Even with weightless, abstracted coinage, players could still develop these off-the-radar LOCs, but they have much less incentive to do so.

Over the history of EVE Online (yes, the forbidden reference point), virtually every player-created bank/savings & loan/financial institution has either been created as a deliberate scam, or devolved into a scam eventually. For CCP, that's not usually a problem, because their players know that scams are allowed, and caveat emptor is official policy. For GW, who seem to want a less scam-ridden, newbie-friendlier game, a banking scam would be a problem.

Given that some will want/need to spend more than they have, there will be a lending "system" established. Call it what you want. This alone will drive the team (more ops than devs) crazy, but has an inflationary effect that can not controlled, maybe adjusted for.

This may be even more interesting than s MERE merchant.


I know the conversation has moved away from the initial topic, but wouldn't the reference point for the value of a coin be the amount of time it takes to obtain one? For example, if I can obtain 10 coins per hour on average, then the amount I charge for a crafted product would be equal to the amount of time it takes, on average, to gather each of the required materials (even if you buy the materials, you're really just paying someone for their time), plus the amount of time it takes to go through the whole crafting process, and a little extra for time spent becoming a crafter and profit, right?

Goblin Squad Member

Fierywind wrote:
I know the conversation has moved away from the initial topic, but wouldn't the reference point for the value of a coin be the amount of time it takes to obtain one? For example, if I can obtain 10 coins per hour on average, then the amount I charge for a crafted product would be equal to the amount of time it takes, on average, to gather each of the required materials (even if you buy the materials, you're really just paying someone for their time), plus the amount of time it takes to go through the whole crafting process, and a little extra for time spent becoming a crafter and profit, right?

That is usually a factor in how much I value my coin. :)

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Additionally, there's the hard to value costs of crafting queue time and capital experience spent on crafting as well as capital investment in the facilities.

Goblin Squad Member

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Ryan Dancey wrote:

@Wexel: If the only thing you got was the control of the Hex and the ability to make a Settlement, that would still be more than enough to generate conflict.

Yup. As the saying goes: "Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff."

Well, until the expansion comes out. :)

Goblin Squad Member

Lam wrote:

Given that some will want/need to spend more than they have, there will be a lending "system" established. Call it what you want. This alone will drive the team (more ops than devs) crazy, but has an inflationary effect that can not controlled, maybe adjusted for.

This may be even more interesting than s MERE merchant.

Maybe I don't understand the economics of it, but how is player to player lending inflationary? A player gets a 10k loan to buy an item and pays back 15k in a month. That means at the end of the month, the player has 5k less than he would have had and the banker has 5k more. Where's the inflation?

Goblin Squad Member

Urman wrote:
Maybe I don't understand the economics of it, but how is player to player lending inflationary? A player gets a 10k loan to buy an item and pays back 15k in a month. That means at the end of the month, the player has 5k less than he would have had and the banker has 5k more. Where's the inflation?

tldr: stuff is being bought with money that doesn't exist yet.

Player one wouldn't lend it unless he had that much as a comfortable reserve that he didn't expect to spend. For that month, there's 10,000 more in the economy than there would have been if it sat in player one's vault gathering dust. Somebody who didn't have money to buy something was a pull against the total of available goods and services.

Next month, Player one can afford to lend out 15,000, again increasing the number of coins chasing goods and services.

Grand Lodge

I think he means to imply with bankers in place there will need to be an IMMENSE pool of funds available to lend from that you cannot spend in order to keep your money making business working.

Something like 100k Coin is static to earn an income of 10k Coin in a month. That money is "removed" from circulation to insure their loans and future in the market.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Loans aren't money stored in the bank, even on the part of the lender.

Unless you think that players will sell on credit but require the seller to maintain some kind of fractional reserve... somehow.

Grand Lodge

I mean more like no lender would ever lend out more than half of their reserve money they pull from to make loans.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Do you mean "more than half of their total cash reserves"?

Goblin Squad Member

Until, of course, Lender A and Merchant B come to an agreement that the merchant will sell to Client C, without actual coin being present, merely the LOC. At which time we have private currency from fractional reserves and the supply of money is effectively directly increased.

Or, bypassing the lender altogether, the merchant provides goods on credit.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

What are the odds that any given group that purports to be a lending agency will pay off their debts to all of the "Merchant B"s and/or "Client C"s, or even a significant fraction of them?

How would you differentiate between a lender that honestly wanted to do so and a Ponzi scheme?

Goblin Squad Member

I am not claiming to be in favour of any of these things. I'm saying they will happen, as part of identifying how player lending is inflationary.

Anything that lets someone buy goods with money that wouldn't normally be part of the economy (yet), increases the scarcity of goods and contributes to inflation. (Instead of haggling with the one person who can afford my +3 sword, I let that person get in a bidding war with the two people who are willing to borrow the money to buy it.)

People don't lend more than they think they'll get repaid. Sometimes they are wrong, and amount by which the cost of borrowing exceeds the losses to defaults is profit.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

All true, but the coin drains will be largely non-discretionary.

Goblin Squad Member

Ryan Dancey wrote:
If coin has weight and mass, the economy becomes crippled. Merchants cannot move enough coins fast enough to the market hubs to engage in production at scale.

Cashier's checks. Using the escrow system, the ownership of money can be transferred without it physically being displaced. I believe there is a lot of value to be had in the resulting ramifications.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

If coin has no weight or mass, the Settlement will divide its wealth among a large number of proxy characters that will be created expressly for this purpose. [...]

Result will be a system (looting Settlements) that rarely actually gets used.


  • Settlements would not be able to vanish their money on a whim.
  • Looting settlements retains a high value.
  • Goblinworks can easily track the location of these funds.
  • Players would still need to move money to the bank by hand after adventuring.
  • Players would be able to access large amounts of wealth without issue.
  • Players and even Settlements and Nations are passively encouraged to proactively spread their wealth to facilitate trade, and possibly to protect their wealth if they are weak.

I would be very interested to hear what negatives you believe a system like this might entail.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

Darcnes wrote:
Ryan Dancey wrote:
If coin has weight and mass, the economy becomes crippled. Merchants cannot move enough coins fast enough to the market hubs to engage in production at scale.

Cashier's checks. Using the escrow system, the ownership of money can be transferred without it physically being displaced. I believe there is a lot of value to be had in the resulting ramifications.

Ryan Dancey wrote:

If coin has no weight or mass, the Settlement will divide its wealth among a large number of proxy characters that will be created expressly for this purpose. [...]

Result will be a system (looting Settlements) that rarely actually gets used.


  • Settlements would not be able to vanish their money on a whim.
  • Looting settlements retains a high value.
  • Goblinworks can easily track the location of these funds.
  • Players would still need to move money to the bank by hand after adventuring.
  • Players would be able to access large amounts of wealth without issue.
  • Players and even Settlements and Nations are passively encouraged to proactively spread their wealth to facilitate trade, and possibly to protect their wealth if they are weak.

I would be very interested to hear what negatives you believe a system like this might entail.

What happens to the people who accepted cashier's checks when the bank that issued them is looted?

Goblin Squad Member

Darcnes wrote:

Cashier's checks. Using the escrow system, the ownership of money can be transferred without it physically being displaced. I believe there is a lot of value to be had in the resulting ramifications.

I would be very interested to hear what negatives you believe a system like this might entail.

I'd say it's the same concern that Ryan has expressed in pretty much every related message. Anything that makes the in-game mechanism remotely unwieldy and complex will result in players turning to methods of their own that the system can't track. (Which is going to happen in any event, but anything that encourages it works against the devs' intentions.

Goblin Squad Member

DeciusBrutus wrote:
What happens to the people who accepted cashier's checks when the bank that issued them is looted?

1) It's part of the risk assumed by being willing to take any line-of-credit instrument, and

2) Given what Ryan said, with proper management and a modicum of luck, looting won't become a crippling event

Goblin Squad Member

I am game and can adjust to whatever way develops. I have played in games with "physical" currency and "virtual". Never both at the same time and never "physical" without universal bank storage.

I an certain that with "physical" currency and large amounts needed to be moved about, that very obscure (to the Devs and the newer player) systems will be developed. Everyone outside of that "system" would be majorly inconvenienced and/or suffer often.

Scams would also be very much more commonplace.

Goblin Squad Member

@Bringslite If the system were only physical, I would absolutely agree. Using something akin to cashier's checks the biggest point of abuse I could see is convincing someone to take a check connected to a city that has been sacked or no longer exists. It seems reasonable that in the latter case the item could be marked to minimize attempts at fraud.

DeciusBrutus wrote:
What happens to the people who accepted cashier's checks when the bank that issued them is looted?

Well, it sounds like looters are not likely to be able to take all of a settlement's money, at least not in one go of it. That said, pretty much what you would expect to happen; slips of paper become less valuable. I would think the settlement should owe into those escrows though, should it be able to recover over time.

Tying these checks to settlement wealth in the event of looting would be challenging I suspect, and it would primarily serve the purpose of allowing the the settlement to make good on it being looted instead of leaving its citizens with misgivings.

Caldeathe Baequiannia wrote:
I'd say it's the same concern that Ryan has expressed in pretty much every related message.

I believe there is a rather large difference between a line of credit and a cashier's check. One of them you are asking for money, the other you are providing the money and asking for essentially a proof of ownership through that establishment.

If escrows had to be introduced to accommodate such a system, it would be needlessly complex. As it is, contracts are already going to heavily depend on exactly the kind of system that would be needed. It would be the equivalent of a contract to hand this slip of paper in at this location to receive x amount of money.

The biggest change is, money stays put without deliberate effort. The exchange of wealth still occurs, but the physical funds follow the same rules everything else in the game is subject to. Think about the impact this is likely to have on the social and political landscape. Meanwhile, large-scale trading can be pulled off without hauling around wagons of gold, unless that is the subject of the trade.

Goblin Squad Member

@ Darcnes

Just to be sure that I understand, you are suggesting "checks" for large sums payable to the bearer? Non personal?

Goblin Squad Member

@Bringslite Aye.

Goblin Squad Member

Darcnes wrote:

@Bringslite Aye.

Ok. That would take care of the encumbrance issue and some of the scams. I will still use a player devised way to move my money though, rather than risk carrying a check for 100k coin through dangerous areas.

Also, how does it help me if the check is drawn on settlement A's bank and I want to deposit in my bank at B?

Goblinworks Executive Founder

So, every merchant will additionally be required to evaluate the creditworthiness of banks, and guess how likely they are to fold before he can liquidate his paper? Or when Bank of Exploits issues a cashiers check and then gets sacked and burned, do the looters not get the coin that became the check? (In which case, it's a complicated way of changing coin to have encumbrance, then making a special case of coin weightless without adding any interesting effects).

Goblin Squad Member

@Bringslite If you receive payment for goods with a check from Settlement A, that has zero to do with Settlement B. The wealth is yours, but it resides with and is in the care of the settlement it is drawn from. You have a vested interest in the welfare of this settlement until such a time as you transfer the money physically away, or exchange it for money elsewhere.

@Decius A merchant would likely want to deal in notes from established settlements. If player run banks become a thing, that would be great, but this is only accounting for settlement banks, i.e. the vault, where the exchange from physical to weightless would likely occur anyhow.

As mentioned before, I believe a system that includes these escrows in the looting is the way to go; beyond that, a settlement should also have a way to reimburse the escrow if they are solvent enough to recover. The devaluing of check escrows is one way it could be handled, or they could be off limits completely at the outset like any other contract escrow would be. That is something I would want to see crowdforged or developed by GW.

My main concern is to see coin be a tangible good. If the settlement is responsible for maintaining the value of that coin (in the form of the check escrow), all the better.

Goblin Squad Member

If sacking of money is possible, and it's ever possible to move large amounts of currency without the physical money involved, then the best organized groups will have an advantage over the uninitiated

If escrows or cheques are possible, it simply resurrects the issue that those who understand the system will have an option to get away with most of their settlement's funds by issuing one or more notes to various people and having them slip out before the siege begins, possibly on the persons of alts who are visitors or ambassadors of non-involved settlements.

In the case of player run banks, I can imagine several scenarios where it mightwill be used to fleece the unknowing via faux-wars and looting that never happened.

Goblin Squad Member

Why Sir Caldeathe! Surely you are not suggesting that some people might stage a "sacking" in order to divide up shares of stored coin in the 100's of 1000's or millions?

;)

Goblin Squad Member

Perish the thought.

Goblinworks Executive Founder

The Crimson Permanent Assurance meets The Producers!

Goblin Squad Member

Fair points all.

I was just suggesting if people will do it anyway, isn't it nice to have an official way? Because then we ALSO get our "Black Market" going on, which most of us have been dieing for. Sure we don't need an "official" avenue, but it does help out the legitimate merchants quite a bit, though I can only imagine the horror GW will have to go through to implement it. So as I said, it probably is a good thing Ryan is done giving it the time of day.

Goblin Squad Member

I'm agreeing that there needs to be an official, easy-as-pie, system-wide way to deal with it, or the unofficial way will be become the standard, which GW does not want. The way they've chosen is to make money (mostly) weightless and safe in order to prevent its manipulation in ways they can't track and reduce the ability of super-users to exploit the uninitiated. No cheque/LoC mechanism is needed if everyone has safe access to all their currency all the time in all places. (and it further represents a simple answer to MVP). Wanting it to be lootable is neither MVP, nor easy to ensure the chosen option won't get manipulated.

Goblin Squad Member

Hmm... true. Hadn't considered the method in place.

Well that is why there is not a time of day to be given, hey? XD

Goblin Squad Member

What they are looking at using is certainly MVP worthy. It should not be taken as good enough in the long run though.

If money is able to be moved, physically, yet it is not easy to do in large quantities without the same transportation needed to move actual goods, sure people will scatter but the aggressors could preemptively send bandits to waylay those who flee, if the city is convinced such a thing is necessary. Another opportunity for deep gameplay there.

Checks and the resulting escrows should be vulnerable to looting, so as not to make it that simple to move wealth out of harms way.

Anyways, I very much believe that something simple should go in place first, but in the long run money deserves to be as much a market as any other aspect driving the economy. The very fact that people could and would dedicate the entirety of their characters' lives to handling it says a lot to that end. That it could add another dynamic to politics, while not hindering trade just speaks volumes to the value of such a system.

I hope GW does not simply write this off, but I really do not expect to see more than they have stated at the outset.

151 to 197 of 197 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Paizo / Licensed Products / Digital Games / Pathfinder Online / boot strapping the economy All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Pathfinder Online