Mobs drop items crafted by players and sold to NPC (a.k.a. Albion Online)

I really like the item drop system from mobs, bosses in Albion Online. When you get an item from a mobs, chests, it is an item that did not appear out of nowhere, but was crafted by player and sold on the black market (NPC-market) and given to the mob. The market is where the world’s mobs get their loot from. As the need for dropped items increase or decreases, so does the price the Black Market merchant buys them for.Then someone killing the mob and takes an item. In this case, all items in the game are made by players. This will help to keep the market from inflation, at least a little.

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George_Black

I dont like npc gameplay.
Why should the players be able to easily sell items for a decent price to an npc?
Four problems:
Players loss the chance to buy said item.
Social aspect of the game falls as I said (npc interaction gameplay).
Players make gold more reliably by selling to npc, instead of looking for other, wealthy players to trade with.
Players have additional (and significantly increased) chances to loot full items from plain mobs, which hurts further the economy/crafting.

Such an unecessary idea. The less npc gameplay the better.

Glir

George_Black wrote: »

I dont like npc gameplay.
Why should the players be able to easily sell items for a decent price to an npc?
Four problems:
Players loss the chance to buy said item.
Social aspect of the game falls as I said (npc interaction gameplay).
Players make gold more reliably by selling to npc, instead of looking for other, wealthy players to trade with.
Players have additional (and significantly increased) chances to loot full items from plain mobs, which hurts further the economy/crafting.

Such an unecessary idea. The less npc gameplay the better.

If we take Albion as an example, then in most cases the prices are lower at the NPC called the "Black Market". Also price depends on the droped items from the world (mobs, world RB, chests). For example, there were 5 items at the NPC-marketand they were all droped from mobs and, accordingly, prices go up at the NPC. But that doesn't happen often, mostly prices are less than auction.

People who don't have patience will sell their items to NPCs, but on the other hand it's better than being "created" out of nowhere by mobs and creating inflation.

By the way, the NPC will not immediately buy your item. Sometimes it can take a couple of days for your item to be droped from mob. Not every mob drops an item, especially rare items.

Ludullu

Adding to George's points, how does Albion solve the issue of forgotten mobs? Do items move from mob to mob or does an item get "deposited" into a mob and waits until someone kills the mob? So, in theory, if some group of mobs stop dying, all the items inside just disappear from circulation even if some players want/need them.

And if items do move, how is that movement controlled? Can a lvl50 item travel from a lvl50 mob to a higher or lower leveled one?

Also, this kind of system implies that there's a shitton of unneeded crafting in the game, if a ton of people just sell their shit to npcs, and to me that sounds like a bad crafting system.

Arya_Yeshe

NPC trade = nasty gold faucets

Features in AoC that goes against a player driven economy:

there isn't enough item destruction
there's not enough loot drop
no gear drops
no items will break when durability reach 0%
npcs don't steal
caravan system is very vanilla, you can't contract packages to the public, there is no collateral to be paid (EVE Online, the best courier system ever)
you can't gamble a percentage of your gear in a specific arena division
there's only one tax rate, you can't set different taxes for housing, services and trading

I forgot if npcs will buy just any item, finished items, etc, if they do then it also goes against player economy

Features that help player economy

repairs demand materials
node destruction
it appears that mobs won't drop a ton of stuff, so players will have to craft
auction house, player stores, local market, npc vendors

For now there's more features that go against a player economy

Well... if players could have NPC bodygyards/mercenaries and players could actually gear them up, that would consume a bit more finished items and a lot more materials for repairs. There's NPC mercenaries already but I don't think you will be able to change their gear like we do in Diablo.

Depraved

Lineager wrote: »

I really like the item drop system from mobs, bosses in Albion Online. When you get an item from a mobs, chests, it is an item that did not appear out of nowhere, but was crafted by player and sold on the black market (NPC-market) and given to the mob. The market is where the world’s mobs get their loot from. As the need for dropped items increase or decreases, so does the price the Black Market merchant buys them for.Then someone killing the mob and takes an item. In this case, all items in the game are made by players. This will help to keep the market from inflation, at least a little.

if it works for albion, then it works for albion. but how long does crafting in albion take and how long does crafting in aoc take? for this to work in aoc they would need to make crafting really fast and easy, and steven has already said it would take a long time and a lot of effort.

Harlow

That's a neat concept. I never tried Albion. I liked Everquest's ability to sell items to an NPC vendor and those items were buyable by other players, so you always had to check the NPC to see what was new since the last time you checked. Some people vendored things that were good for crafters and/or worth a lot of money to list on the auction house.

WHIT3ROS3

George_Black wrote: »

I dont like npc gameplay.

What does this mean? Lots of the content in the game is planned around NPCs. This is a PvX game after all?

George_Black wrote: »

Why should the players be able to easily sell items for a decent price to an npc?
.

Why not? It means that there is always a surface-level demand for all items in the game. It allows crafters to explore different options in crafting that might not be the most profitable but can be reliable.

George_Black wrote: »

Four problems:
Players loss the chance to buy said item.
Social aspect of the game falls as I said (npc interaction gameplay).
Players make gold more reliably by selling to npc, instead of looking for other, wealthy players to trade with.
Players have additional (and significantly increased) chances to loot full items from plain mobs, which hurts further the economy/crafting.
r.

Four answers:

1. They don't. Crafting is a huge component of the game, as it is full loot, with high trash rates for gear. Hundreds of thousands of items are crafted every day.

2. The exact opposite is the case. All of the Auction house markets in Albion Online are localized and the singular location of the Black Market is in the Bandit city of Carleon, which is surrounded by full loot zones. Each of the cities has its own specialized crafting bonuses, which means you craft gear in one city and have to transport it to another for maximum profit. Or risk it all taking in through red zones to sell at the Black market.

Entire Discord groups have been set up (Market watch) and entire guilds involving hundreds/thousands of people to track the markets and compare the city prices with that of the Black Market have emerged.

3. This system actually keeps very wealthy players in check and allows an outlet for people crafting that don't want to deal with monopolistic, crazy guild leaders who are trying to shut down and manipulate the markets (which is fine to do in a sandbox but if you don't give ANY other way to offload gear then you will likely have a lot of crafted gear that never gets sold)

4. I don't understand this point. Do you think that mobs should only ever drop components and ingredients and never full items? Surely having full items that are crafted by the players, significantly helps crafting by creating a continual demand?

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