Guild Barter System

[Mahi]

I'm working on a system for us to use at launch, and I want input to iron out potential kinks. Common sense dictates that we will be more successful if we operate as a collaborative group than 30 individuals who happen to have the same tag.  Each of us has things we want to accomplish as well as things we prefer to farm or grow. This sort of specialization has potential to allow us to slingshot guild progress at launch and become a dominant force on our server.

The challenge is to give thirty individuals a tangible reason to work together that is more than just "greater good rhetoric. Why hand over hard earned materials that could be sold at inflated prices now for an eventual collective benefit?

My idea was to create a system to encourage internal trade within the guild at a time when no one will have gold, and in a way that wouldn't hurt the individual farmers.

What I'm proposing is an internal trade system to encourage us to buy local so that everyone wins.

The outline is this:

We create a price list of the most commonly used items.

When guildies have a project that needs materials they can request them from another participating guildie.

The value of the items is recorded and subtracted from one account and added to the other.

At the end of a predetermined time the system is shut down, all negative balances are paid in, and all positive balances are paid out.


Issues:

We will need a trustworthy guild accountant to run the system.

We are at the mercy of members' integrity.

We will lose gold if people with outstanding balances gquit or stop playing.


I'd like to hear ideas on how to mitigate these issues or any I haven't thought of.

[jahlon]

I agree with this theory.

For example, everyone who wants a farmer's workstation is going to need 9 Green Coral. This is going to be hardest part of the whole process (well that and the polished Rice).

If everyone tries to get their own coral, and everyone tries to get their own lumber and everyone tries to get their own stone, then we won't have a very good or speedy process.

The only hard part is working out the comparable rates.

How many Iron Ore is 1 Raw Stone worth?

What is Lumber worth?

What is Green Coral Worth.


But yes, if we need a Quartermaster at Launch, I plan on playing pretty much 20 hours a day for like 5-6 days, so i'll be around. And I will be dual boxing with a character that can easily stand near a mailbox/warehouse doing this.

[Mahi]

How many Iron Ore is 1 Raw Stone worth?  

What is Lumber worth?

What is Green Coral Worth.

What we would need to do is decide on gold/silver values for all of the most commonly used items. We can either use the (relatively) stabilized economy of Alpha, or we can come up with our own values using some other metric. I think coin value is the only way to ensure that I can trade my stone for your iron, and then you can use the value of your iron to get lumber from someone else.

[Teti_AA]

If you want Polished Rice.... I wouldn't suggest counting on me. The RNG Gods just gave me my first ever Polished Rice... at over 7k Farming prof. =/

[Mahi]

If you want Polished Rice.... I wouldn't suggest counting on me. The RNG Gods just gave me my first ever Polished Rice... at over 7k Farming prof.  =/

That's actually a great reason why we need a system like this.  If we have people who come across it randomly or are super lucky with it, they can hook you up, and you won't have to get to 7k farming skill to get yours.  I got two from my very first rice field on a small farm.

[Mahi]

Here are some potential issues along with potential solutions with the system. I'd like feedback on whether I've got the main points, and if the solutions lessen the issue enough. (Everything is up for discussion at this point)

Issue: Abuse of the system by bartering for mats, and then selling them for gold.

Solution: Guild kick, and kill on sight status. This is the biggest thing that will break the system.

Issue: Bartering for mats, and then selling the finished product.

Solution: This is grey area. It would be best if this didn't happen, but people leveling professions might end up with things no one needs or wants. Suggestions here?

Issue: We are reliant on the honor system.

Solution: Only vetted members can use the system. A vetted member is anyone we've come to know in Alpha or someone a vetted member will personally vouch for.

Additionally, we should set a limit for how deep in the red any one member is allowed to get. This helps limit the risk of one person accruing massive debt and then not coming back because of a fried computer or something.

Issue: Members who get big ships for the good of the guild will also get big debt, or the debt will need to be written off.

Solution: It would be best not to write off things completely. Instead, what about asking for volunteers to assume part of the debt for things that are for the guild?

Issue: Not everyone wants to farm or knows what to farm.

Solution: We should also have a going rate for labor points. People who don't want to farm for themselves can make gold by farming fields for crafters so they can focus on leveling their crafts instead.

[Dusk Dusk]

Ok I love this idea (in theory) and it really exemplifies the term and concept of the Guild.


First, I third the idea that abusers are kicked from the guild; second that we kill on sight. And then propose that we announce that that person was kicked in faction and alliance chat for cheating his/her guild.

Second, the value. I think you guys are making this part harder than it has to be. Simple solution, the game has already assigned an equal and static value to every item in game. It’s what’s known as the vendor price. Here is why I say that:

A. This Market in alpha is not stable, the market in Beta will be less stable and I have a very good feeling it will take Live months to stabilize. And it will probably fluctuate every wildly at time that new items are introduced such as major patches or expansions. So the only way to have a fair market based system is to update/verify prices almost daily… a week is too long and a month is far too long. SO! Who is volunteering to update 300-500 items a day? Not me.
B. The goal of this system isn’t profit, its guild advancement. It EXP for our crafters so we can have a leg up on our less organized competition. Its more directed EXP for our gatherers for a higher chance of rare drops. Most important, it’s a far better use of labor for all of us.
C. As a personal gold total is not the goal. I don’t care about getting my full money’s worth. But what I do care about is that I get equal weight of materials of finished products in return (I think its call the barter system). So the final vendor price of 100 logs to 100 iron ore to 100 coral should be different. But I would hope that the true value and its vendor cost is mostly equal when the cost, time and labor are all taken into account by the Dev’s (although that is an assumption and needs to be verified). So what if I give 30 silver in iron ore, I should be entitled to 30 silver in logs or coral.
In theory, if I grow and harvest both red and green coral and try to sell them; I usually make more on green coral as it has a better demand. But a guild alchemist should get as much EXP from a red coral as a green coral. Thus there vendor prices are the same because the EXP return, seed cost, production time/tax and labor are all equal. Yes the alchemist will make less gold in the end because a red potion sells for less than a green potion, but he or she leveled just a quickly. I think that is the underline advantage to this in early game where it will truly matter? Plus we’re in a guild; just tell me to grow more green coral because you like it better and stop growing red.
D. where this falls apart is on finished goods. Is a completed set of armor at the vendor cost roughly equal to all the vendor costs of the materials used to make it? I’m planning on going all gathering (gather, farm, mine and logging). And I will be more than happy to give ~50% of my mats for a guild advantage if it means we have boats and gear faster than the rest. But if I give a ton of mats to 5 different guild crafters and I ask for a set of level 30 or 50 plate armor in return is that a fair trade?

Third, cloud base the tracking file(s). It could be a shared forum thread, an excel file in a share point, or a custom webform. But what it shouldn’t be is a single file on one player’s hard drive.

Lastly, my solution to crafters getting extra finished goods. Supply finished goods back to your guild and your gatherers. Or put 50% of you Auction house profits (from those items) into a guild bank as the whole guild was responsible for the profits. And there is your money pool for paying off debts of very large guild efforts.

[jahlon]

Draft Point Values

1 Point

50 Tumeric 50 Silver - 1 Gold Investment
25 Green Coral 43 Silver - 87.5 Silver Investment (Plus 14 Gilda Invested)
25 Peanuts Silver Investment
200 Cotton 44 Silver Investment
100 Iron Ore 0 Silver Investment (Labor Only)

2 Points

100 Logs Variable Investment
15 Bananas 1+ Day Turn Time on entire Small Farm

33 Lumber In ~
30 Lumber Out

30 is needed for Farmer's Workstation so can be turned in at 33 for same credit as 10 Logs. Not its 33 In for 2 Points, but 2 Points will buy you 30 to place the Farmer's Workstation. If everyone is ok with this, this methodology allows for a small "tax" if you will, but eventually allows for the supply system to generate a lumber for either more farmer's workstations, more large farms, or ships early on.

3 Points

100 Raw Stone Rarer Gather from Iron Ore Nodes

33 Stone Bricks In Gather + Labor Invested (and saves someone else Labor)
30 Stone Bricks Out

Same mentality as the Lumber, as the Trade Pack requires 30, this small tax allows for the Supply System to generate stone for other people to do their trade runs.

1 Stack Iron Ingots Benefit is free Proficiency from Converting Ore to Ingots


4 Points


1 Stack Cloth (Labor is not being compensated, since crafter earned Proficiency)
1 Gold 66 Siler Investment

5 Points

Polished Rice These are rare, and needed for Farmer's Workstation


6 Points

1 Stack Lumber 300 Logs... 2 x 3 = someone got proficiency for free, but that's the point of this

9 Points

Viscous Oil Full Value of all 4 items taken from Guild, but with a 1 Point Premium placed on this to encourage more items being in stock.



The purpose of the quartermaster system is to help keep everythin as streamline as possible during the 4 day Headstart and about the first 7-10 days of Launch as we can.

Instead of everyone doing everything for themselves, if we all pool our resources, we should be able to get at least 20/25 large farms set up in the first 4 days before the servers open up to the masses. I say 20/25 because the major time-gate is going to be

1) Bananas for the run (these have a crazy long growth time)
2) Having a clipper as soon as possible (and the investment it takes to have it)
3) Getting 14 Gilda for an Aqua Farm and having currency to operate it
This is a semi-high goal especially if they fix Farmer's Workstation Access rules and everyone can use them, then we realy need to get 1 up for Guild use so we can all do that groovy 5 Gold, Chest and XP daily.




this is just the early draft.....

[fitchett]

The only way that a system like this, as good as it sounds, works is if very detailed and honest records are kept. The record keeper or accountant must be someone who is removed from the transaction and has nothing to gain or lose from documenting it, and the records must be public. It also has to be someone who is completely unbiased to the individuals in mention.

Regardless of how generous or kind we believe we are there are always protective and defensive feelings over what we earn ourselves in game. Whether it be farming iron or logs or whatever, it will always have more value to the individual who farmed it than whatever medium we come up with for assigning it value.

I don't think that market price will be a viable option for assigning value to commodities. Different in game items will need to be valued based on their difficulty to obtain rather than the value that the game applies. Even in my noobery I can already see that market value doesn't accurately depict an item's functional value.

If we can iron out the weight against all things measured this stands to be a great system for guild progression, but as mentioned before, it has to be completely indisputable and the records public knowledge.

[jahlon]

One of the things we were talking about was putting the accounting on a Google Docs so it was totally transpartent

[SerinaNight]

Okay, I have a few suggestions for either a hybrid of some of the systems Mahi mentioned, as well as a few ideas in general. Both of these are more long term, and easy to adjust as time goes on.

---

So, I like the idea of using the value of the item, since it's a static value and won't be subject to argument, but at the same time some items do have more value then others (or simply change value as time moves) so this doesn't really cover the real value of what people give. I liked the point system since it takes into account the value of items at the time not just the shop cost but it's also hard to keep track off, so I started thinking of a way to combine them.

Basically, we have each person's name in the guild (with a list of alts or whatever so we know who's giving what) and keep a record of the shop price of the items they send, easy. We know what they send and we know what they take, so we have that as our in game money cost. Then, we have another column for our point system. This ignores the cost, but we give them points added onto the cost based on several categories. For example, we might give them a point for the item being extremely useful at this point (early turmeric might be a point for that for example.) This could also be a general usefulness category, with extra points going to items of extreme usefulness. Another category could be if the item is worth a lot of money in the AH (extreme amounts of money might be worth another point or two, I'll get to calculating that later.) A third category could be difficulty in obtaining or creating the item (such a rare drops or high rarity crafts, though this might change as our proficiencies go up.) Maybe another point if they give an item to the guild but could really use it themselves (lumber if they are building a house, mats for their new armor, etc.) Maybe large deposits could be worth another point. Obviously these aren't required categories, but if we have say five or so options that we can add points for (with a few extra points for extreme circumstances) that would add on to the shop value well. We could also give points for items that are used in trade packs, since those have extra worth. We could basically decide how much in game currency points are worth (1 gold? 10 gold?) and that would show the effort or such that the shop value doesn't show. We could also show donations and withdrawals separately if we really wanted.

---

TL/DR (Recap): Name of character and alts in column A, shop price of donations/withdrawals in column B(C?), point value for extra considerations in column C(D).
Optional categories for points include:
Usefulness of item (extreme usefulness either extra points of entire category, EG: turmeric early game)
Worth of item in AH (if the value is very high, if extremely high we can award extra points as value dictates)
Difficulty in obtaining/crafting item (at low proficiency rares are hard to get, and high rarity armor is worth a lot)
Giving up an item they could use themselves (EG: if they are building a house, but decide to give away their lumber to those in need we could give them points)
Large deposits (huge amounts of items, EG: thousands and thousands of cotton might be worth points)
Trade value (items that can be used in trade packs might be worth points)

---

Questions? Suggestions? I was thinking about this a while, and don't remember all my point suggestions, but here you go. Let me know if you have any ideas or something I said doesn't make sense.

[jahlon]

Indulge me for a moment, as I'm going to probably ramble for a moment through military doctrine ideology and economics from a Cultural Anthropological lens.

For every objective you have (be it in life or in video games) you have to look at it from 3 levels, what are your Strategic, Operational, and Tactical Goals.

We must ask ourselves, does the Guild Barter System accomplish this? What exactly are we trying to accomplish? Are we attempting to set up a long term guild economy or are we trying to set up a short term get everyone settled in to the game at launch?

From the plans I heard last night, it seems like we are trying to author one system, which may work, however we really need to look at writing two systems. One for launch (which focuses only on the main about 8 items people will need) and then one for later on (when a stable in guild economy will produce better benefits than 50 individuals selling things on an open market).

The tactical goal for this objective is easy: Go gather lots and lots of items off this very specific list of stuff.

The operational goal is also easy: Ensure that the guild has enough of the fundamental construction items so that we can get a jump on the economy by not having delays between securing large farms and houses and getting them built and building our initial clipper and merchant ship so that additional trade runs can be accomplished before serious opposition develops.

However, what is our Strategic Goal? Our Strategic goal actually has nothing to do with gathering items or building anything. Our Strategic Goal is ensuring that synergy is developed between Alpha core players and the players we pick up in Beta and at launch. The guild barter system is a means to that end.

What I had suggested with the point values system, will function really only in a self-contained minimal evolving system, and specifically only for roughly 2 weeks at launch. The reason is when the guild bank hits about 300 Tumeric, Peanuts, and Coral, the guild can simply state that we are saturated on these items and we no longer need them. This prevents people from over-supply an easy item in exchange for more expensive items. Likewise, when we are saturated with Polished Rice and Viscous Oil, we simply stop trading in these items. When we reach a point when we are no longer really needing these items, we will most likely be in a position where we can transition to a larger, more comprehensive guild economy based on relative values.

The benefits of this system, is, that since you cannot withdraw until you deposit, the bank will always be at a positive balance. When we decide to stop using it, we simply do a round robin, with points starting highest to lowest, where you pick an item to withdraw, then move to the back of the line, to make your next selection. Yes, this means that people will get stuck with peanuts, turmeric, coral with some of their points, but it also means that during cash-out you will be getting wood, stone, fabric, and iron which are pretty much the universal items that always have universal value. Many of these items could then be returned to the next system, and the points (or value) regained.

Additionally, if the guild wanted to, it could simply write a conversion factor for the points remaining in the old system into the new system (it is our currency after all) so that the work people do at launch that helps others, gets rewarded in the longer term system. This would have to wait until we actualy write that system, but we have months before launch.

Another benefit to this sort of system as it is controlled by a minimal number of accountants with full public disclosure it is easy to see when people are making numerous withdrawals of the same product. People are less likely to do nefarious things when they can be discovered.

I like what Serena has started to spell out, and I think that we can flush that out for the longer term guild economy system, I just don’t think at release we want to be juggling 9 cats and a chainsaw.

As we move on into the long game though, it will be a perfect system to ensure the producers have somewhere to send their goods, the crafters can get what they need, the end users get what they need and everyone is working inside the guild instead of working with the Auction House.

[Sponsored content]