Money System, Items, and NPC shops

[Dellis 0]

NOTICE:

Col. Earning Methods and NPC shop Prices updated.

We've reached 5 votes! The proposal will be reviewed. Let's hope this gets approved, even with some modifications, if necessary, that would be cool.

As I’m sure any of you have seen, at the moment we have a good crafting system in place, and it’s working very well.

Strangely, though, there aren’t many crafting shops open out there. I’m positive my shop is the only one which is active right now, and I believe I know why, and with this proposal, I’m going to try and fix it.

You see, in shops, you usually pay with money. With that money, that shopkeeper aims to buy something else – materials, other items he can’t craft, things like that.

Our problem, at the moment, is we don’t have a money system. Sure, there’s the Col., but have you ever seen someone find any Col. In any adventure, let alone use it to buy something from someone else? No.

That’s because, at the moment, with Col., you can’t buy anything. With the rules for self-made RPs, you can decide you find them on a monster, using the loot dice, but no sane player would accept it for their crafted goods, since they can’t use them to buy anything else.

How to get the economics going? You must make it so that Col. can buy things. Since we cannot force players to accept them, you must make it so they can use it another way. Which one? Npc shops.

I’m gonna explain further.

I propose that in the Floor 1-10 the GMs open a sticky thread, so it stays on top, which lists some easy to find, general usage items that players can buy with Col.

For example, they could be able to buy teleport crystals, or healing crystals, or poison flasks, or traps, or even food, and why not, materials for crafting.

All these items would be available for Col.

This system would have a double effect: It would make useful having some Col, since there would be things which you can buy only with Col., and additionally, it would get some items usage flowing into the game. This can only better up the gameplay.

At the moment, for instance, everybody just assumes they have infinite teleport crystals. If someone’s about to die in a RP, they lift the crystal and teleport.

If we implement this proposal, they would have to make sure to: 1)have bought it beforehand 2) not use it like it’s candy, since it’s expensive. I’ve always been fond of rules which make players think about what they do beforehand.

Plus, what use is having an inventory in our journal if everyone just makes up what he has? He needs a rope in that quest, tada, he has it. No! This is an RPG, and in RPG you have to buy things and keep them in your inventory for when you'll need them.

Now, you’re telling me, this is all well and good, but how do players earn Col.?

By doing adventures, and killing monsters. Just like that. These are the rules.

• You gain 400 col per page of a topic.
  Standard creatures drop 5 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.
  Bosses drop 10 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.
  You divide the amount between the participants to the battle.
  Only Standard Monsters whose health is at least half of the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward
  Only Bosses whose health is equal or higher to the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward.

Now, you could object that this way, we don’t know if players cheat. Well, it’s simple enough to avoid. Every time a player gains or spends Col., they must record the transaction in their journal. The ten most recent transactions are

displayed, if you do more, the older transaction gets out and the new gets in.

This way, GMs have an easy way to check if you’ve been cheating, if they suspect anything.

It sounds difficult, explaining it, but it’s actually very simple to buy an item: post what you buy in the NPC shop thread, go to your journal, deduct the money, record the transaction. As simple as that.

As for what you could buy in the shop and its costs, I’ve took the liberty of making a simple list, for starters, more may be added by yours and the GM's ideas.

Teleport Crystal – Gets you out of a dungeon once. It disappears on use. Some areas or boss fight may not let you use it, so use caution! 1000 Col.

Healing Crystal – Heals some of your HP once. It disappears on use. Restores a quarter of maximum HP. 500 Col.

Normal Poison Flask – Adds to your next successful hit with the weapon it is applied to the poison status. This drains 1 HP from the enemy per post, for three posts. 400 Col.

Normal Hunting Trap – This is an average hunting trap. It is undetectable if not with the proper skill. If triggered, it does 1 HP of damage, and the monster or player hit can’t move for one post. They can still attack and defend, though. 400 Col.

Small Bomb – A small, gunpowder made bomb. Once lit and thrown, it explodes damaging all monsters and players in the target area for 2 HP of damage. Sets fire to flammable objects. 700 Col.

Normal Quality Food – You can eat this to recover part of your energy. Usable only out of combat. It disappears on use. Once used, it restores half of your health over the duration of two posts, which must describe the player eating. 100 Col.

Crafting Material – This is a general crafting material. You can use this to craft an Item if you’ve got the right profession. The specifics of the material are up to you. 800 Col.

These are just examples, there are many more that can be thought of. Even if you do not accept the Col. system, or the NPC shop system, it could be useful to implement them independently, some way.

Of course, at the NPC shop you can buy only Normal quality items. Higher quality items, weapons with enhancements, particular foods, bombs, traps, crystals must be crafted. There you can have Fast Food, which requires just a post to restore half your health, or Smoke Bombs, which blind the enemy, subtracting one to his next battle dice roll… the possibilities are endless ™.

This way, crafters have a motivation to craft, and people to go buy from them. Everybody has more fun!

So, what do you think of it? Should this system be implemented?

[Nikki Styx 0]

Would it even be possible to put in another random dice at the top of the post, Say a D10, and whenever you do a post it rolls and whatever that dice rolls that's how much Col you get per post?

[Dellis 0]

Would it even be possible to put in another random dice at the top of the post, Say a D10, and whenever you do a post it rolls and whatever that dice rolls that's how much Col you get per post?

That is indeed possible, i think, but requires too much work. Erron should code another dice into the system just for this, and at the end of the adventure you'd have to sit down with a calculator in hand adding all the individual results one to the other. For adventures 60 posts long, that's a lot of math.

I'm all for adding some randomness to the earned money, but I don't think this method's practical. You got any other ideas? I could add them to the proposal!

[Nikki Styx 0]

Sadly not.

I wish I could be more helpful with a method to make this work. But I don't want to make things harder than they need to be.

I do greatly like yer idea though. It seems to be very well thought out.

[Dellis 0]

Thanks!

Then let's hope it gets to the 5 votes needed for the GM to review it^^. We'll see!

If anything else comes to mind, feel free to write here. I'll be waiting!

[Shard 0]

I'll vote yes to this, mainly cause I'm going to open an armour smiting shop eventually, but I do have to say, we would need to work on col prices for things. Personally, I would see Teleport Crystals as being the most expensive, with food being much cheaper then you put up as an example.

The price of items needs to be based around how much we make per quest. Getting ONE healing crystal per two RP's isn't going to be very economic.

[Dellis 0]

Ah, sure shard. I forgot to add that those prices are merely examples at this stage. I've just set off to write the whole proposal without staying there to think a lot on these details, since i was eager to get it out.

I agree, after reviewing them, they might be too high, and not proportional to the item's usefulness or rareness. Which prices do you propose should be fair?

[Shard 0]

Ah, sure shard. I forgot to add that those prices are merely examples at this stage. I've just set off to write the whole proposal without staying there to think a lot on these details, since i was eager to get it out.

I agree, after reviewing them, they might be too high, and not proportional to the item's usefulness or rareness. Which prices do you propose should be fair?

Ahm. I'm not quite sure. Food, I can say should be pretty cheap at our current level. Perhaps in the 100 col range, with some variation based on what you get, and how much. Same thing for drinks, if slightly cheaper.

Seeing as I don't see any teleportation crystals until later on in the anime, I'd assume they should be "expensive" if not level locked. Perhaps in the +1000 col range. Not as expensive as a new set of good weapons, but still high up.

I do agree, that col should be rewarded at the end of every quest, and should be available to acquire via selling items, wares, and service. We just need to figure out what that amount is- perhaps have it based on floor? The more advanced the quests (what floor they are) and what monsters you fight (again what floor you are on) decide how much col you make.

[Dellis 0]

Hmm, that might work. linking it to just the floor number won't work though. I'll explain why, since adventures are player driven - i get to decide what monsters I find and how many - even on floor 8, if i'm a player which enjoys killing lesser monsters, i'll put monsters which have low health and aren't that dangerous.

On the contrary, I can make quests on floor 2 and fill them with monsters of really high health and dangerous skills. I've done that myself in one of my quests: found a secret boss on floor 2 which had the same exact health of the level 7 floor boss.

That means floor isn't an accurate indicator of quest difficulty (and thus deserved reward), at least for player driven adventures, which are the majority.

Instead, if we want the Col. to be related to the "difficulty" of the quest, as I think is the goal you want to reach with your amendment proposal, I think it's better to tie it to the sum of all the HP values of all the monsters defeated in that adventure.

The Hp value is really one of the major things that determines the monster's strenght (and thus the difficulty of the adventure). That's since monsters have a fixed damage, no matter what monsters they are.

So, if we tie with a formula the earned col. to the sum of the health of all the monsters defeated throughout the adventure, we get a pretty accurate correlation between quest difficulty and col earned.

Something on the lines of,

You get X col for every point of health of every monster you defeated in that adventure.

Where X is set so it isn't too difficult to buy lower tier items.

[Shard 0]

Sounds pretty good to me, but we'll probably need to dumb it down some, just so its a bit more accessible a system. That or make sure we have a really well written tutorial. :D

[Shark 0]

That is indeed possible, i think, but requires too much work. Erron should code another dice into the system just for this, and at the end of the adventure you'd have to sit down with a calculator in hand adding all the individual results one to the other. For adventures 60 posts long, that's a lot of math.

I'm all for adding some randomness to the earned money, but I don't think this method's practical. You got any other ideas? I could add them to the proposal!

The battle dice is 1-10, crafting is 1-12, and loot is 1-20. It is possible to put another die in but how about you try to use what is already available to you?

[9Lives 0]

id really like to see a money system implemented as well. i think the amount per topic seems more like a quest reward which seems very MMO-ish. that with the fact that we don't have very many quests in game, it sorta leaves you with little to go on on various floors. many of the floors themselves have little to no info. instead of laying it all on the staff to constantly make more quests, a monetary reward would be nice just for completing topics. heres my idea building off of dellis' idea. it does involve a little math but its better than counting up individual posts. lets say we had something like:

all numbers are subject to popular opinion but for argument sake:

400 col per page of a topic

+5 x loot roll for each defeated standard creature (rolled on the post it is defeated)

+10 x loot roll for any boss (rolled on the post it is defeated)

Divide the total amount between the participants

if two players do a topic thats 3 pages, that's 1200 to start

in it they fought 4 monsters giving them somewhere around 25 each totaling 100

and they faught a miniboss and got around 120 (assuming they rolled a 12)

the total comes to 1420

divided evenly both characters earned 810 col that's a decent amount for the amount of work they put in both in length and in the amount of monsters defeated.

there was one other thing that came to mind by this post:

...since adventures are player driven - i get to decide what monsters I find and how many - even on floor 8, if i'm a player which enjoys killing lesser monsters, i'll put monsters which have low health and aren't that dangerous.

On the contrary, I can make quests on floor 2 and fill them with monsters of really high health and dangerous skills. I've done that myself in one of my quests: found a secret boss on floor 2 which had the same exact health of the level 7 floor boss.

I think this touches on a completely different issue such as making standards for what health ranges monsters should have per level. you shouldn't be able to have level 7 type monsters on level 2 or vice versa. the whole point of going up floors is to find harder to kill creatures. if you want to fight monsters that are level 2 then there's no reason you couldn't go down to level 2. fighting lower level monsters on higher level floors only cheapens the experience.

[Dellis 0]

I've read all your input, and decided to make the required amendments to the prices, and the money earning system.

I liked Nikki Styx's idea to tie the amount earned to a dice roll, but didn't know what dice roll tie it in, and I thought applying to every single post wasn't feasible.

Yet, I liked the idea of randomizing Col. amount gained, and I think 9Lives' proposal implements that fine, since the posts in which you defeat things are considerably less than all the posts that make up a quest. So, you'll end up having to check four/five posts at the worst, to calculate your Col. drops.

So, the new method to gain Col. would be like this

You gain 400 col per page of a topic.

Standard creatures drop 5 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.

Bosses drop 10 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.

You divide the amount between the participants to the battle.

I thought, though, to solve the monster difficulty problem which Shard's objections brought up, to add boundaries to what can be defined a worthy standard creature, and what a boss. Kinda like in MMOrpg you don't gain experience for killing much lower leveled monsters.

Added Rules:

Only Standard Monsters whose health is at least half of the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward

Only Bosses whose health is equal or higher to the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward.

So, the revised set of rules would be:

• You gain 400 col per page of a topic.
  Standard creatures drop 5 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.
  Bosses drop 10 x loot roll of the post in which they are defeated.
  You divide the amount between the participants to the battle.
  Only Standard Monsters whose health is at least half of the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward
  Only Bosses whose health is equal or higher to the highest leveled player's health in the topic give this reward.

Would that be fine?

Let's assume a medium completed RP has 2 pages, three standard creatures, one boss. Let's assume medium roll 10. That means 800 + 150 + 100 = 1050 Col., roughly.

That's for a single player post - more players normally get to do more pages, since there's double the posts - so the price will tune itself fine.

Aside from that, I need to tune the prices, as Shard said.

So!

Teleport Crystal – Gets you out of a dungeon once. It disappears on use. Some areas or boss fight may not let you use it, so use caution! 1000 Col. As Shard said, they seem rare in the anime. This will get players to use them with some thought. You can buy roughly one, with each adventure

Healing Crystal – Heals some of your HP once. It disappears on use. Restores a quarter of maximum HP. 500 Col. roughly two per quest, seems fine since they restore quite a bit of HP.

Normal Poison Flask – Adds to your next successful hit with the weapon it is applied to the poison status. This drains 1 HP from the enemy per post, for three posts. 400 Col. This seems fine, since 3 HP are quite a bit of damage, and there is no way to avoid it, once you've been hit. Roughly two/three per adventure.

Normal Hunting Trap – This is an average hunting trap. It is undetectable if not with the proper skill. If triggered, it does 1 HP of damage, and the monster or player hit can’t move for one post. They can still attack and defend, though. 400 Col. Same as Poison Flasks, they're quite useful, and having too many stacked can be an issue. So, a bit of cost.

Small Bomb – A small, gunpowder made bomb. Once lit and thrown, it explodes damaging all monsters and players in the target area for 2 HP of damage. Sets fire to flammable objects. 700 Col. The damage is instant, and at area of effect. They can be useful even to destroy walls and the like. Seems fair that they be a little pricy.

Normal Quality Food – You can eat this to recover part of your energy. Usable only out of combat. It disappears on use. Once used, it restores half of your health over the duration of two posts, which must describe the player eating. 100 Col. Since you can use them only out of combat, it's not an issue if you buy a lot of them. Plus, food isn't that rare.

Crafting Material – This is a general crafting material. You can use this to craft an Item if you’ve got the right profession. The specifics of the material are up to you. 800 Col. This is the one I'm more edgy about. Too little cost, and crafters will never need to do quests to gain materials. Too high, and it becomes too expensive to be efficient.

EDIT: Since we reached 5 votes, this proposal will get soon into GM review. I'm editing the first post so the up to date proposal gets reviewed, and not outdated ones. I'll keep editing as soon as you express your ideas!

[Saix 0]

First off, minor note on the Teleport Crystals. Teleport, Healing, Antidote, etc crystals were extremely rare and pricey. In the SAO novels Kirito mentions several times that he is surprised to see other characters use crystals because of how expensive they are, not to mention how difficult they are to obtain. It requires extremely high level alchemy to transition from making the basic potions to making the crystals, and he mentions during the encounter with Ilfang that the teleport crystals would not appear until further in the game.

My prattling about pointless details aside...

I would suggest looking into adding a Currency Mod to the board. When I was running The World of Tur which was built on the phpBB system, we used Zaranth's Shop mod. This allowd the admins to set an amount of col earned per post, as well as directly moderate funds per player account through the User Moderation Control Panel so that rewards could then be awarded per topic and quest completion.

On Tur, our unit of player currency was the Azruli, and players would earn 5 Azruli per post, 50 Azruli for abandoned topics, 100 Azruli for completed topics, and a set amount of Azruli for completing our quests, which scaled according to the difficulty/length of the quest.

Since we are playing in a setting that is essentially an MMO, I would really like to see the quest mechanics stressed, to give it more of that authentic feel. I believe that having Col and Skill Point rewards available for tackling some truly monumental length quests (upwards of 4-5 pages) would be an awesome way to promote community activity and group work. This would place a little more work on the staff however, and would require them to add an additional step of adding the topic/quest reward to the profile via the UMCP.

When we used Zaranth's mod, we had a fully automated shop set up that allowed players to buy basic items/weapons that were then stored in an inventory accessed through each player's account, where we had created tile icons with pictures of every available item. It is really amazing what you can do with some of these Shop/Currency Mods.

However, since adding such a mod will likely require paying for said mod, I offer to pay the full cost of any mod used for adding a Currency/Item system. If the idea is adopted, Erron can simply shoot me a pm with an amount, and I will hit him with a donation.

[Dellis 0]

That would really be quite awesome, and I hope Erron listens to your proposal. In the meantime, let's see what they do with this one, which might make for a good transition, till we have yours in place.

As for Crystal prices, I've thought these healing crystals to be "poor" grade. As you can see, they heal 1/4th of all the HP, while crystals in the series heal a lot. That's why they're not that pricy!

While teleporting crystals, well, I believe it's fair one per RP average. RPs in this forum can take quite a bit to be completed! So, even if maybe not really adherent to the story, it's gameplay wise acceptable.

Obviously, GMs can modify prices every second, if they deem them to be unfair, so it's not really a problem!^^

[Shard 0]

How should we price more advanced weapons and clothing? Assuming a player wants to go to an NPC over a player to get equipment.

[Shard 0]

However, since adding such a mod will likely require paying for said mod, I offer to pay the full cost of any mod used for adding a Currency/Item system. If the idea is adopted, Erron can simply shoot me a pm with an amount, and I will hit him with a donation.

I would be willing to put into this mod as well, assuming it isn't too huge a sum of money.

Having another system to doll out Col would make this all a lot easier, and give us merchants more ability to do our jobs.

[Kay 0]

I'm afraid this might be a bit much.

[Shard 0]

I'm afraid this might be a bit much.

If we get the money mod for the site, it should be pretty manageable.

As it is now, Col is pretty much useless. MAt's are the only form of actual currency, and that just seems weird. As said, I would be willing to put in for that mod that Saix spoke of.

[9Lives 0]

are you guys adding a crafting system to this build? i think we could use a good system for crafting that's more direct and repeatable with expectable results based on the crafting roll. also i would like to see the attribute stats for items written out clearly as to what they do. any ideas?