Hey Devs!! How about a fix for NPC Prices?

[Black Sun]

I realize why the change to the NPC buy/sell prices is necessary, but right now it's hurting the casual player more than it's hurting those it's intended to.

I'm all for prices raising as more of an item is sold to us and it going back down if/when we sell back to the NPC's.

But under the current system nobody is selling back to NPC's. It's not worth it. Now I'm not asking for the previous gold faucet to be turned back on. But rather a small tweak to the current system. How about this: At server up reset the NPC prices to their defaults and let them raise as we go through the day. There's a jeweler in an out of the way town that I was buying jewels from for imbuing. Last weekend (7 days ago!) I bought enough amber to make it go up to 65 per piece. It hasn't went down yet! Some of the busier towns are up around 75 each piece. This is just crazy. Odds are that nobody is going to sell enough back to the NPC's to get that price back where it should be. So, I ask, can you please make it reset prices at server up? Please?

 

[slavoie]

Not even reset, but supply and demand. When a period of time passes and nobody buys from it, the prices go down some, and so on.

 

[guum]

Not even reset, but supply and demand. When a period of time passes and nobody buys from it, the prices go down some, and so on.

Didn't it use to be this way? Prices were a lot more dynamic, and I remember that waaaay back in the day, UO started off by trying to model a "real" economy, which of course was impossible for a bunch of reasons that various amateur economists pointed out on usenet and such at the time. But anyway, yeah, NPC prices are pretty silly. I don' t know if I'd consider it a priority issue, but it definitely does hurt newbies a bit and just seems silly.

 

[Kiminality]

As I recall, the "fix" was that:
With every 1000 that is bought by a player, the price the NPC sells for raises by 1 per.
With every 1000 that is sold by a player, the price the NPC buys for drops by 1 per.

They used to be linked. Now they're not.
It was said that it was just a stopgap measure, but like so many things, it's probably dropped off the radar.

 

[Smokin]

I forget which pub it was but they stopped the prices from dropping when you sold them 1000 items. They changed it to a fixed price for buying things to stop people from making gold that way or a there was a bug that people were making too much gold from it. Forget which it was sorry. I think it was about a year ago or so.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Thier model was perfect. Go to a city that had low prices and buy all you could carry and then go to a city that has high prices and sell all your loot. Repeat this as long as you make money. Works that way in the real world.

UO saw this as a bug and fixed it. LOL

 

[Kiminality]

Thier model was perfect. Go to a city that had low prices and buy all you could carry and then go to a city that has high prices and sell all your loot. Repeat this as long as you make money. Works that way in the real world.

UO saw this as a bug and fixed it. LOL

Beyond that, I recall them saying something about there being an exploit, outside of trading between NPCs.

 

[Lord Frodo]

Beyond that, I recall them saying something about there being an exploit, outside of trading between NPCs.

Yes I remember when this was being done and what UO said. I just thought it was funny that they (UO) created the perfect supply/demand model and because people made money off it, it became an exploit.

 

[Black Sun]

Beyond that, I recall them saying something about there being an exploit, outside of trading between NPCs.

I think the exploit was scripters buying low and selling high, making easy gold and selling it for real cash.

It used to be every 1k of an item sold raised NPC prices 1 gp, and for every 1k they bought back it dropped 1gp. And the buy price was 1gp lower than the selling price. So it was worth it to sell.

Now for every 1k of an item sold prices go up 1gp, and down 1gp for every 1k they buy back. The change is the base price NPCs pay to us. They no longer pay 1gp less than the selling price. We get a low crappy basement rate, so it's not really worth it to sell anything to NPC's in most cases, so prices never drop. In the past I've seen arrows and bolts going for almost 100gp each. How is someone starting out supposed to work with that?

Something needs to be done to correct this problem.

 

[Nexus]

I did a bit of checking on Chessy, and came up with this.

Amber is 50gp each as a default price, since Jewels are needed for Imbuing this price scheme needs a tweak. Other consumable standard resources have a means to obtain them in bulk quantity outside of NPCs. Leather, Ingots, Boards all are obtainable in a reasonable quantity from Monsters, Animals, Mining, Lumberjacking etc. Gems though drop in low numbers on Monsters and of random types, coupled with certain types of gems are needed for specific attributes this is very restrictive to skill training or use.

Where as I can make an entire suit out of Barbed, or Horned leather or Iron or Valorite Ingots, I need a specific gem to imbue LRC or Magery +{X} to an item.

 

[northwoodschopper]

I'll let you in on a big secret...Ilshenar already has NPCs that sell at base price every day. Just go to the travelling/revolving gypsy camps. You can get cheap gems/arrows/bolts/ingots/boards/whatever as long as yer the first to reach them when they spawn.

Ilshenar was a huge gold mine for the aspiring merchant, until the devs nerfed item selling. Before, these merchants could make huge profits selling goods from Ilshenar to Luna or whatever city (or if you had gold skulls, sell some resources to Nix), which also drove those high prices back down to semi-reasonable. The devs stated that they saw this as easy money for no effort, and 'nerfed' it.

 

[Jhym]

No, they didn't care about us making money, as that was the intended effect for the system anyway.

The problem was there was some sort of exploit that would let people sell stuff at a high price constantly.

That's why GMs took to watching a lot of the off-main-path areas for a while with dogs and goats. I did a lot of buying/selling myself (you could make a huge amount of money buying jewels and hopping from Luna.) I would always know a vendor had been exploited because the sell price would be astronomical -- something like 30-50 per ingot for instance. I'd go to my iron stash and pull a horse load and sell them all, with the GM fairly obviously sitting there watching me.

It was quite funny sometimes. Since I have no idea what the exploit actually was, it's even possible they were setting honey-pots and I dropped their pricing back down.

In any case, they need to fix this problem and reset all the vendors. It is ridiculous that arrows are sold at 30 or 40 per, but if I sell to the same vendor it's 3 or less per.

Effectively they are penalizing younger players and those that don't screw with the system because they are too scared to try to fix the problem.

I find it sad, as the buying/selling between towns was the only way I could afford the major things I needed. I don't farm peerless or spend days making artifacts, so my money-making opportunities are limited unless I want to get major carpal tunnel selling crap to npcs for 1gp each.

 

[UOKaiser]

If they place it the way it was it wouldn't be a problem. The gold now is nothing compared to the gold that was made back then with this method. They can at least fix it enough so its worth while to sell things to venders.

 

[ACB1961]

The devs knew this would happen when they made it the way it is. In 2 months when everyone is at 120 the prices will go back down to the normal ones.

It's a gold sink.

 

[northwoodschopper]

the main point is that there are NPCs that prices reset, the Ilshenar travelling gyspy camp NPCs. if you're the first one to buy from them when they spawn you get to help yourself to thousands of low priced gems/ammo/resources with a bankbox right there for immediate transfer.

 

[Basara]

According to the way they talked, the devs said the exploit was more along the lines of doing something to a vendor, to where they would sell for lower than they bought back, without having to move from place to place.That would be a big issue.

And, I've been an evangelist for the virtues of shopping at the traveling gypsies for 3 years - I even supplied the information to add the 3 missing camping spots on the Stratics page for them, last week (so the page is up to date).