Cleanup, limited items and game economy.

[Zetetic]

I think we can all agree that limited item hoarding and stagnation is a problem on PVP realms, and possibly one on non-PVP (if you are from that realm, please make suggestions that make sense for your realm, I lack any real knowledge of non-PVP culture).

We can probably also all agree that our in game cash economy is broken. It doesn't take long before there is so much cash on the ground that no one needs to save money for anything (in game cash actually being useful is an entirely different point).

I suggest that any item or cash that is hidden when daily cleanup happens is flushed to the sysop room (or perhaps a different room created for this purpose) after cleanup. This room could then be flushed daily or on a schedule of the sysops choosing.

Outcomes:

Cash economy suddenly becomes much much harder. There is only two days worth of cash on the ground (current day visible, previous days hidden), so people will need to script for cash and do proper cash runs.

People will have at least 24 hours to retrieve their gear. Get cracking.

Stashing items is only temporary. You may stash an item just so that no one finds it immediately and you can retrieve it later, but the clock is ticking.

Limited item turnover should be considerably higher.

Unfortunately, holder accounts will likely become more popular under this system. However it seems likely that they will be much easier to spot as well. Sysop time investment for ground sweeps will now be reduced dramatically, and with the aid of some of Gardner's op tools, finding a hoarding account should be the only time investment needed for limited items. Gardner, perhaps you could comment on what you think of this in terms of op time requirements? I'm hoping it would reduce total time spent, but I could be naive in this regard.

Things to think about in conjunction with the above:

We may wish to increase cleanup time to every 48 hours. There would be less on the ground to clean up each day, so in theory the extra buildup of ground items between cleanup times should not cause issues. It would allow people a little more leeway. It may also break things that were better left alone.

If you remove gang houses on the PVP realm, the opportunity for people to hide items that are not on characters would either be non-existent or so tiring that I couldn't see people bothering.

[Stalkerr]

I don't understand the PVE culture either, but I don't understand why players in the pvp realm feel entitled to the Limited items.  With the exception of holders either offline of in safe rooms, you can get items from people, you can find stash spots.  I can quite easily remove the ability for people to simply idle in a safe room for days on end while they masturbate with their collection of shinies.  And I would prefer that over the current system.  But I wouldn't ever want to remove a players ability to have backup gear.  When you die...you drop all your gear to the ground, it would be really unpleasant to have your only retrieval option be store bought items when you need to get your gear back from the 4 elder spawn room before oz.

The cash economy really is a driving force in early game, and it will be more so once we apply a cost to training, which will happen soon.  Depending on how the balancing of defenses works out, part of that might be drastic increases in the cost of high end armours. which would of course further boost the economic burden of the early game.  As for late game the economy limits itself because there simply isnt anything to buy.  But that could be easily changed by including some extremely expensive semi-alternatives to some of the highly sought after late game limited items.

[Zetetic]

I've often heard people complain that one person is carrying all the limited items on the PVP realm (sometimes that complaint has been directed my way), but I'm a person that scripts wearing their limited items, and those same people never came to attack me to take those items from me.

What I feel entitled to is a reasonable chance to get access to limited items by putting in effort (ie attacking players that have them). I have a problem with people that stash all their limited items and never wear them. I agree that a stash can be found, but people stashing limited items is one of the causes of game stagnation. How many rooms are there in GreaterMud? Time wise it is completely impractical to search the entire realm to find a persons stash. Now we all know that people tend to be more predictable in their stash locations than that, however the point does stand. If stashed limited items were not a problem, why would Sysops spend time attempting to prevent it?

Ideally, what I would like to see is the game keep a record of what has been hidden in each room each day, and if it has been there for longer than a configurable number of cleanups those items are flushed. You could then have a set number of days before you have to go and un-hide and re-hide your stash. Simply increasing the number of times that a person needs to go to the stash in order to keep it running will make stashed items easier to find. And having stashes require this greater amount of effort will make them less viable as well. The problem is that this would require a great deal of work to implement and there are plenty of more pressing issues to be dealt with first.

You brought up an excellent point of the need for backup gear, and I hadn't considered it in my thinking (somewhat foolishly). Another option would be to have the system as I described it in the original post, but have it only flush limited items and cash. Under this system drop rates of many limited items would need to be increased, and the spawn time for some of the bosses that drop them decreased (Thrag, the Guardian Golem and Stormmetal Greataxe are prime examples).

I would argue that the cash economy is a driving force only early in the game because later on, cash is everywhere. If we remove the amount of cash available at random, cash as a commodity will gain in value. If you increased the cost of the gang houses with vaults and make the upkeep cost of them higher, suddenly your ability to hoard items relies on a cash economy.

[Gardner Denver]

I don't understand the PVE culture either, but I don't understand why players in the pvp realm feel entitled to the Limited items.  With the exception of holders either offline of in safe rooms, you can get items from people, you can find stash spots.  I can quite easily remove the ability for people to simply idle in a safe room for days on end while they masturbate with their collection of shinies.  And I would prefer that over the current system.  But I wouldn't ever want to remove a players ability to have backup gear.  When you die...you drop all your gear to the ground, it would be really unpleasant to have your only retrieval option be store bought items when you need to get your gear back from the 4 elder spawn room before oz.

The cash economy really is a driving force in early game, and it will be more so once we apply a cost to training, which will happen soon.  Depending on how the balancing of defenses works out, part of that might be drastic increases in the cost of high end armours. which would of course further boost the economic burden of the early game.  As for late game the economy limits itself because there simply isnt anything to buy.  But that could be easily changed by including some extremely expensive semi-alternatives to some of the highly sought after late game limited items.

I'm not sure how giving someone a max of 5 days to use their limiteds or loose them is a bad deal but I'd listen if you had a better idea.  We're talking about on an inactive/idle player here and not in a stash.

[Greater]

But that could be easily changed by including some extremely expensive semi-alternatives to some of the highly sought after late game limited items.

There are a lot of slots that don't even have upgrades past level 35-50...this wouldn't be too hard.

[Stalkerr]

If stashed limited items were not a problem, why would Sysops spend time attempting to prevent it?

I have no idea.

[Hurricane Omega]

On the PVE realm, once you have a limited item, it's yours to keep or do whatever you want with.  This might explain some of the expectation on the PVP realm.  I started on the first day and didn't have much trouble getting the gear I wanted on either of my characters other than some ridiculously low drop rates.  For someone starting early and playing some of the more popular classes, I could see them having to build a character without many limited items.  If you look at the limited item list and the list of floor items, you would find that only about 15 to 20 total items were being stored in gang houses, so I don't see this type of hoarding as much of a problem on the PVE realm.  Most of the items are either recycled regularly, or in use for a very long time.

The last floor list was posted here:  http://www.greatermud.com/forums/index.php?topic=4402.0