This post is motivated from a discussion elsewhere about coins and economic efficiency. I was wondering about using inflation and deflation economic trends in the market prices the shopkeepers charge and pay. It's unreasonable to think prices would stay static given the various ebbs and tides of political will, interrupting supply chains, etc..

The idea I had was maybe to have mob supply chains carrying supplies into the cities and hence giving different groups (i.e. Outlanders or others like thieves) a way to disrupt city supplies and force market prices up. It would be kind of fun to see bread going for 1 gold apiece from time to time as well as having that pimped out axe going for 100 copper when someone had pawned off too many of them. It might give thieves incentives to try and control the supply of items as well.

Admittedly, this is sort of a half-baked idea and not completely thought out, but I though it might be fun for you folks to think about, if you haven't already.

This would really make gold valuable. City ties thieves could have skills that would help them make extra profit in the auction house.

CF does not, it is considered cheating. Any such system other than what already exists in game - notes, the auction channel, tells, and cb would take an immense amount of effort to implement such that it was cheat-proof.

If you make it so that all acutions are public and have a minimum of 8 hrs duration, it will be pretty cheat-proof. Plus, if the imms are capable of dealing with drop-get cheating, this one will be a piece of cake.

A flexible, fluctuating and fully operable economy is one of the long-term goals of many of the current staff members. You've seen a lot of tweaks to it over the past few years; you'll continue to see them over the next few as well.

I'm a big fan of supply trains!

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

I can see lots of opportunities for Orcs, Outlanders and thieves to jump the supply trains. Also see opportunities to hire player mercenaries and Tribunals.

However, I don't know how it will work in CF landscape. Good idea too.

Without making gold sources "dry-up" I don't see how you can achieve anything other than a pseudo-economy. Making gold sources dry-up would likely have major funstick implications.

Characters who delete (either on purpose, or by autodeletion) often take their currency with them. You also have a cabal full of people that routinely destroys money they come upon. Also, many character consume cash just by existing, if only to pay for food. Finally, a number of things get bought (potions, mercenaries, weapons, whatever) and end up destroyed down the line.

Add to that practicing, training, bank fees, healers, etc., and money flows out of the system at a significant rate. The easiest way to assess if the sides are roughly balanced is to ask if money has value to players. (If money is too plentiful, as it was in the older days, no one gives a crap about it. If money can't buy useful things, no one bothers to obtain it.) I think it's pretty clear it does- it takes a combination of effort and knowhow to amass significant amounts of currency, and players do it regularly because the rewards (items in shops, healers, the ability to bribe other players, etc.) are worth the time it takes. You don't need a finite supply to accomplish those kinds of in-game goals.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Personally, I think barter is the best thing to happen to the game in a long, long time. Characters like mine that are constantly on the wrong side of the law really, really benefit from barter. In fact, I can't think of what I did without it, and I'm not even an Outlander.

Now, I have to think of how to flame Valg to balance this out...

That'd be awesome, and really give city thieves another dimension