The Auction House mod we were using has not suited our needs. Among other problems, it does not allow for auctioning between tribal members. We will be removing this mod from the server as a result. Please note, that your game should not be affected in any way. We have two main options from here: Abandon all efforts for a in-game economy based around a unified currency and revert to bartering between individuals. Expand upon the Glory Coin Currency mod. Regarding this latter choice, the mod is modular so we can choose what you can or cannot do with Glory Coins. Here is a list of available options: Glory Coin Currency Mod - base mod we are currently using. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=747539326 (NOTE: the following all use Glory Coins for trading) Props Trader - buy/sell cosmetics for Glory Coins http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=771279262 Trophy Trader - buy/sell artifacts and trophies http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=784166441 (if yes, this will ONLY be an admin tool) PICK ONE: NPC Trader - for fully automated trading huts (cannot trade with players) -OR- Player Trader - for direct buying/selling with other players (better than previous auction house system) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873746971 -or- http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=873749349 IMPORTANT!: I am looking for feedback to base my final decision. If you don't provide feedback, then don't complain if the decision is not to your liking. SPEAK UP AND BE HEARD!
I'm not really interested in a coinage based economy. I don't think it fits all that well with the overall theme are Ark. I'm not against cosmetics, but the props trader doesn't have anything that looks interesting. Player trading is a lot more interesting that NPC trading.
Having been playing Primitve+ on Ragnarok for a month now I can say that normal ARK on The Island might not lend itself as well to "trading". Cosmetic based trading is good and fine but not really a "market". For trade to happen you need a supply and demand situation. ARK, especially with access to certain dinos(*cough* fliers *cough*) all you have is supply. If you limit the blueprints and engrams some then you could create a situation where a tribe might want a crafted item and be willing to trade some other good for it. On Ragnarok you also have certain "resources" being very common in some areas and less common(or absent) in others. That could lead to some "trading". The problem then becomes that the server is PVE which means that as a player you can't control a resource except by building it out of existence every where but where you block others from building. Example would be building a pillar everywhere crystal would spawn that blocks those spawn points EXCEPT for a single deep ocean cave and building a gate blocking the cave. Only those with the ability to survive in that area and get through that gate would have crystal so now you would have something of value that people can't easily get for themselves. ARK is just designed for a group to be able to gather everything they need in some way. You probably can't develop trade on an existing server as people will have grabbed most of what they need already, but it might be a good idea for a future one. Thoughts on how to created supply/demand: 1. Map like Ragnarok where certain resources are limited to areas of the map and absent elsewhere. NOT BASIC BUILDING SUPPLIES, those have to be available easily everywhere. Stone/lumber/adobe and similar Tier should be available. 2. What you can tame might need to be limited. Once you get certain dinos some things become trivial in the game. If you can pick up an Ankylosaurus and transport it to and from a metal field metal is now a simple resource. Once you have a few large carnivores other dinos become a bit less of an issue. 3. Engrams may have to be limited. Maybe edit out certain blueprints and engrams, but this is a sticky situation. Example, eliminating the scuba tank means the Oxygen stat is very important to a tribe wanting to get resources from the sea to trade. Lazerus Chowder would become needed as well. Another thing you need to dive deep is fortitude and the Scuba helps with that. So now you need to have Fortitude and Oxygen to make up for removal of an engram. If you were to remove Fur armor instead you would only need Fortitude to make up for most of it. There are a lot of little weird balance issues like that you would have to think through carefully. 4. For monetary trade each step of the process needs to be limited so that it is valuable. The labor involved in generating raw material can't be too simple or people won't need to trade. The labor involved in converting the raw material into tradable goods can't be too simple or people won't need the trade. The labor involved in moving either raw material to a production area or tradable goods to a "market" can't be too simple or people won't need to trade. In ARK all of these are really simple and just get more and more trivialized as the game goes on. Gathering gets easier as you get better tools, dinos, and level up stats. Creation is typically simple, either you craft it in your inventory or you craft it at a station. Only a few items have multiple steps to create a final product. Transport is simple because of tamed dinos. You can do several things, but then the game almost becomes unfun. Say you make fliers untameable so people have to take more risk to transport, so they use multiple Allosaurus escorting a dino with awesome carry weight. So you limit big carnivores. Now a trip across the Island becomes really tough and some trade goods are always in demand because of the timer on them. Imagine trying to trade Laz chowder and then having an hour trip across the Island on foot to deliver it to your trade partner. You would have to produce X more to account for the spoil timer. Limit people to Stone Tools so mining metal becomes more difficult with raises the demand for metal objects, but some items take a ridiculous amount of metal when you have to mine it from river rocks with a stone pick and you HAVE to eliminate taming any dino that can mine metal. I don't know the answer, but I think these are the things you have to look at and think about to try and create an economy.
Blocking spawn points with foundations/pillars would be a dick move, but you are right; there really is far more supply available than demand. I'm really unsatisfied with flyers on The Island. I feel like they can carry way too much weight to the point that all other methods of transportation are a waste of time. By accident, it turns out our server doesn't have any Quetzal spawns (related to the Flyer mod we use), but this turned out to probably be for the best. Would like to explore that idea more for Ragnarok, but more on that later. Looking forward to Ragnarok when it's done. I really like the level design for that. Same goes for Aberration. Definitely want to look into the idea of limiting what you can tame for Ragnarok. Not to say taming predators should be impossible, but it should definitely be more limited and difficult. Taming most herbivores makes sense, but the vanilla methods of taming adult apex predators is ridiculous (even if the lore says otherwise). I would really like to implement quests for taming most predators. Not only would it make their acquisition more interesting, but it would also make their presence more unique and important. I'm a big fan of limiting Engrams. We already have the auto turrets locked. Might be others worth adding to that list. Would definitely need to think carefully about those kinds of changes though. Been looking at total conversion mod that improves upon Primitive+. It addresses a lot of these issues. Might be worth a look http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=829467257 My biggest worry with the Capitalism NPC trader is that it will completely negate any need to trade with other players. I'm certainly seeing the argument that bartering is the best form of trade. My only problem is that without a standardized currency, it makes my job as GM exceedingly hard to figure out appropriate quest rewards. When it comes to materials, what is trash or treasure can vary depending on what a player values. A unified currency made this easy, but I may have to abandon the idea. Perhaps implementing the limited predator taming would partially resolve this, but I need to put more thought into it. I think one thing that might help would be if they added a limiter to the number of creatures you could personally own. It could represent as how effective you are at maintaining your tamed creatures. Said limiter could be increased by pumping engram points into a "husbandry" engrams or something that you could unlock and improve every 10 levels or so. Therefore, a person who isn't interested in playing dino-rancher could leave their tame limit at 5-10 dinos and put their engrams to some other use. A rancher could pump engram points into husbandry that allowed them to own 100 creatures, but they would have to rely on others to unlock and craft certain engrams. This is all pie-in-the-sky thoughts, though. As far as I know, no such mod exists. Even if I knew how to make it happen, I have no time to mod for it. I definitely see your point, though. It appears that meeting demands for materials gets exponentially easier as you acquire more creatures to harvest materials in larger numbers.... and there's no real downside to owning a ton of creatures, either. So much that in late-game, acquiring any materials becomes a trivial matter. Real-world economics can't really hold up against that. Typically, the greater the production, the more upkeep and organization you need. But in Ark, that never really happens. There is no significant increase in managing 3 dinos compared to 30. As far as I can tell the real trick will be in somehow limiting how many dinos you can tame without being unfair about it. Some food for thought for me, anyway. Thanks for the feedback, Merc.
