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    Your Elvenar Team

Provide some way for lower-level cities to facilitate sentient trades

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Summary: Provide a way for lower-level fellowship or neighbor cities to facilitate sentient trades.
Details: We all know about the terribly imbalance of sentient goods on some servers and most of the proposed fixes are just band-aids. One of the problems is that if there is an imbalance in regular goods, your FS can attempt to recruit members to balance production out. For Sentient Goods, which are already traded across the entire server, this isn't possible. When the entire universe is unbalanced, there is not much that can be done to fix it.

If Inno introduces a third round of boosted goods, the problem will be even worse as the number of players that can take those trades will be very tiny.

The suggestion is to have some mechanism where players that have not yet reached sentients (or the new tier) a way to facilitate the trades. Trade facilitators would still have to be either fellowship members or local traders (same as for standard goods). Neighbors far enough away to require a trade fee would not be eligible to be facilitators.

There could be many ways to do it, but one suggestion would be to have 2* or 3* sentient trades appear as normal good trades for players that are not yet producing that tier of sentient. For example, someone posting a trade of 1000 Moonstone for Tree Gum would appear to a lower-level neighbor as a trade of 1000 Planks for 1000 Steel. That lower-level person can pick up that trade (exchanged in normal goods from their inventory)

Why does Moonstone become Planks? This is to preserve boosts. This is because someone boosted in Moonstone would be boosted in Planks. I think converting boosts both preserves balance in the FS even when only a fraction of the members are in sentients. If we didn't convert and all of the plank producers are in sentients, then someone demanding Tree Gum and can't get it from fellow sentient producers also couldn't get it from low-level members because none of them are boosted in planks. It also potentially prevents abuse of using a combination of standard good trades and sentient good trades to "launder" goods.

Why 2* or 3* trades only? Allowing 1* trade to be facilitated would allow sentients to be created directly from normal goods: Find a low level player, have them post 1* trades in standard goods to be given some standard goods "for free". Then post 1* sentient trades that the low level player picks up with the "free" standard goods. Result: sentients directly from standard goods. With 2* trades, while the same thing could be done to have the 1* person assist in making the trade, you're still not gaining or losing any amount of total sentient goods.

Benefits / Pros: Greatly increase the trading population for sentients and leverage the existing FS balance of boosted goods to balance out availability of sentients.
Downsides / Cons: You could "pay" (using unfair normal goods trades) the low-level person to pick up your trades. I don't see that as a big problem.

I'm open to other ideas for how low-levels could facilitate trades: the key idea is to allow everyone to participate instead of just the limited number of people who are in the final chapters.
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
If you limit the sentient trade that can be facilitated to 2* or better, it means that while you could "pay" to have one facilitated, the sentient player isn't gaining new sentients -- they have to spend 1000 of one sentient to get 1000 of another sentient.
 

Palavyn

Well-Known Member
This is a great idea! The amount you can trade in this way should be limited, though. Maybe link it to the Simia Sapiens Ancient wonder's level. Or some other ancient wonder.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
If you limit the sentient trade that can be facilitated to 2* or better, it means that while you could "pay" to have one facilitated, the sentient player isn't gaining new sentients -- they have to spend 1000 of one sentient to get 1000 of another sentient.
Could you walk me through this, please?

As I understood it

I post 5,000 Moonstone asking for 5,000 Gum
tiny city sees "5,000 planks for 5,000 marble" and takes the trade
I get Gum, tiny city gets marble

Is that right?
 
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ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
I will not, yet again, burden you all with a discussion on free and open markets....see I know when I overdue an idea -- but this might be a step in the right direction.

One of the things we have here is a the excess inventory in some things and restraint of inventory in other things. By allowing this type of trade, even under the restrictions noted, we move inventory out of where it's "stuck" (because the demand is too low and the selling price artificially held too high for those with the demand to access the markets), into the inventory where there is a demand. This, in effect, loosens the flow of goods and accelerates the economy of the game -- making more people prosperous. By prosperous I mean they now have the goods they need to move ahead -- and ultimately this game is about moving ahead. Any time a player gets "stuck" for too long he/she tends to leave. Smaller players often get stuck because they lack the goods they need even when the goods are there in the bigger players inventory. Yet, because those smaller players are not in fellowships, the fellowships they are in are also smaller players, or some other thing, there is not easy way to move them even when those larger players are willing. This idea would help, therefore, retain smaller players.

Retaining smaller players is no small thing. I learned very early that you don't get to be a medium or big player unless you are a small player first...big revelation, right? ;>) So if we want medium and large players we ought to let the small players avoid the frustration of not enough goods to move ahead by adopting this idea.

Good idea.

AJ
 

michmarc

Well-Known Member
Correct @SoggyShorts . But note that you're still trading Moonstone for Gum (in equal amounts). It doesn't just cost you 500,000 planks -- it also costs you 5,000 moonstone. I don't see that as a problem. The engagement that the smaller player gets may help increase retention and demand for those members in stronger FS and may provide secondary benefit to the game.

[If you could turn 50000 planks (and no moonstone) into 5000 gum, then that would be a problem.]
 
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SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
note that you're still trading Moonstone for Gum (in equal amounts).
Yikes, I don't know why you had to explain it to me 3x before it sunk in. This is a brilliant idea and I'm going to edit out my earlier posts to keep the thread clean.

Smaller players get more trades too, and I like the idea of interacting with them more. My Sentient requests are in the 10K range which is doable for an early chapter player, but my T1-3 trades (that I almost never post) are in the 100K+ range.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
Despite being sure this had to be exploitable, it looks pretty clean.

Each transaction preserves the total amount of sentient and non sentient goods in the world, but tends to alter the distribution. I don't think that's inherently problematic, but I don't know.

It might be a good feature to incorporate into the Blooming Trader,, which suffered a bit from PP and in later chapters? Prevents people from using a tiny city just to balance their Sentient goods
 

Pheryll

Set Designer
Why does Moonstone become Planks? This is to preserve boosts. This is because someone boosted in Moonstone would be boosted in Planks.
I am not sure that preserving boosts is necessary and it may not be as helpful as preserving type (e.g. moonstone -> marble). If a sentient trade is not accepted and is left to decay, then the goods received by the boosted player are not his boost and actually help to offset the standard goods imbalances. Letting a non-sentient take a sentient trade (that preserves boosts) allows for the non-sentient trader to receive the same standard good as what the sentient player would have his goods decay into. This means that if one standard good is overproduced on a server, and the sentient distribution keeps the same over-reproduction ratio, then the issue of trading standard goods will get worse, rather than better. If type is preserved instead of boost, then the standard good market would be helped instead of hurt.
 

Deleted User - 4750465

Guest
Yikes, I don't know why you had to explain it to me 3x before it sunk in. This is a brilliant idea and I'm going to edit out my earlier posts to keep the thread clean.

Smaller players get more trades too, and I like the idea of interacting with them more. My Sentient requests are in the 10K range which is doable for an early chapter player, but my T1-3 trades (that I almost never post) are in the 100K+ range.
I can't really speak to Sentient goods since I'm not there yet, but the developers need to be really careful with tiny cities. I know the new tourney format addresses it somewhat, but it's way too easy to be a tiny city. Large cities can easily fund tiny cities with their pocket change.
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
  • I think it's going to take complex coding.
  • I'm not sure there's value to the devs in restricting it to two and three star trades (though I know it would make a lot of players happy.)
 

Ashrem

Oh Wise One
I have to admit, if I could offer gum for platinum and have a cohort member fill it with steel, the number of available trades would plummet. I'm starting to feel like it would not necessarily improve the problem. And it would (as with so many things) favour people in large, active fellowships.
 

Kekune

Well-Known Member
And it would (as with so many things) favour people in large, active fellowships.
But only to the extent they're including small cities. It might help level things a bit for those very largest groups that won't take anybody who isn't at least 250k points or so. If only small cities can provide this help, then it incentivizes having smaller cities around...

...or alt accounts, now that I think of it. Scratch that. It would be pretty easy to make a smaller city just for this purpose, wouldn't it? You'd have to load them up with regular goods first, but that's easy.
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
The whole "push" mentality using alternative accounts is, at it's core, a problem and invitation to exploit the system. If any of this idea makes sense it can only make sense in a clean system and for that it would take a massive effort at Inno to eliminate push accounts. Personally I do wonder how many of my smaller inactive neighbors are just push cities and thus players who will never return visits or take trades. In thinking about it, maybe they would take more trades in the scenario suggested, but that would means they would be milking the system even more.

I'm still for the idea but only if the whole push economy is closed down or dealt with somehow.

Just a thought.

AJ
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
It would be pretty easy to make a smaller city just for this purpose, wouldn't it?
I'm still for the idea but only if the whole push economy is closed down or dealt with somehow.
Maybe a simple 7-day ban(or longer) on rejoining a FS that you leave could help. This way if you had a little alt account at least you'd be stuck with it in your FS most of the time.
Edit: or...what if FS members were excluded from this? Too much RNG based on map?
 
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