(sry for my bad english)
Your English is 1000x better than my german! And I can understand you.
You mean 4 Horse Carts isnt that much... Do you play the Game by yourself? and do you did ride a Cart over multiple Servers? For Exsample... my Guild is known as a hugh Traiding Guild on Epleland and we have Claims on Server 9 and 34. When ride from one to another claim it takes 40-50 Minutes with a courier horse. When the Time comes that Wood needs to be transportet you can change the courier horse into a horse cart and multiply the Time by minimum 4. Because it is slow... very slow...
Firstly, I think 300 buildings logs for a mine shaft is too much.
A: I'm in a guild of 5-10 active players, used to be 10x those numbers.
Do you travel (on horse-cart) the whole journey(server 9-34) on slate roads that are correctly terraformed? or on grass?
I think roads are too much effort to build currently, so I made made a few suggestions in the post to make them much easier to build. I know horsecarts go faster on good flat slate(maybe marble aswell) paved roads but I think they could go even faster. Not faster than a horse, but faster than they are now.
The developers have said that they are bringing in
Buy Orders in the next major patch. (Which is great!) So you might not even need to travel at all. You could put a Buy Order for 300 Building Logs and
other people could travel to you with the building logs. They could be solo foresters, smalls or large guilds or just traders who move from place to place that sell the wood to you.
You could have 15 people/groups that contribute to the 300 building logs you finally get.
I kind of imagine solo guilds/small guilds selling there wood to a nearby large guild or well known trader state and then traders travel between the trader states buying low and selling high. Kind of how it used to work back in feudal times. Bulk Traders wouldn't necessarily go to each claim individually. But if you put up a Buy Order, your local hub would see this and try to fill your order through either there own warehouses or by putting up a Buy Order of there own at a slightly lower price. Traders travelling south from the North would see this buy order and make sure they have some wood, not necessarily 300 Buildings logs, but maybe 6 high quality Oak logs in storage (72 Building Logs). Eventually, enough wood would make it to you. Supply and Demand. The Traders will then fill up on Crops, Iron, Animals or animal productions and head North to sell it where the price is higher.
Further! at the moment you have to mess with too much bugs... crossing a server line with a horse cart und driving "near" (not IN) Water results into a dismount and respawn the Cart deep in the See ( happend to me multiple Time and i still can show you the Carts to proof it ).
True - But the bugs are much less common than they used to be. You cant do much about this. I know what you mean, but the only way suggestions wouldn't cause bugs is to not suggest anything. Bugs will happen, and the devs will try fix. Hopefully NixOS might reduce all the bugs.
As you said... not everyone in the World wants to kill you... there are always nice guys too. BUT that means not that there are no bandits. At the Moment we have a hugh problem with Bandits... and doe to the Server Rules you cant do anything against it... they kill our horses... we kill them... 30 minutes later they have retrained the fighting skills and come to attack us again... So the Only Faction who really loses is the PvE faction.
PvE players could do ZERO travelling if they dont want to travel far. They could focus 100% on gathering/crafting. I think most PvE players will be travelling to and from a local trade hub to buy and sell. They could get delivery, but I think most would probably go themselves to save on coin.
I also think that it is likely that the current bandits (people who like PvP and dislike crafting) are going to become either the Traders or
more likely the Mercenary Guards for the traders. Yes some will still be bandits, you can not stop this.
But maybe its best if 90% of them are fighting each other for meaningful gameplay reasons, apposed to picking on people for the sake of it. I.e. Bandit v Guards. This is my prediction, but I could be wrong, you don't know until you test it in a beta.
I can see "Bands"of people, small and large, who simply just move from town to town buying and selling and defending there transport resources from bandits so to not lose profit. Thinking "Abella Trading Company" or "Hudsons Bay Trading Company" or "East India Trading Company"
So the Only Faction who really loses is the PvE faction.
At the moment,
small guilds or solo players are not worth much or anything to large guilds other than just being a lag generator. But with scarcity, I think people time becomes a valuable resource, and
individuals could be able to contribute the greater economy/trade/market in a way that they cannot now. Well that is the hope. I think I would like to do a couple of months as a lone wolf forester in the northern woods. At the moment, that play-style is a waste of time and no one needs wood. All i could do is sell staves to "The Crown" who seems to need many staves... ha
As i said i am main Forester 100... As you say i understand it that way, when i plant trees in the desert it will only get Q25... no matter if i have Skill at 100 and use a Q100 sapling... the Regions rips it down to the cap. That means. that i am Forced(!) to leave my Home to do a good Job and get Q100 Wood or to hang my Job on the Nail... (german saying).
This is a main problem. I understand this one and I can understand why certain players would not like this. Foresters/miners/animal lore breeders would be most hurt I think. You would still need/use 25Q Iron/wood/leathers for items/buildings where the quality doesnt matter. You could still use 25Q wood for charcoal and repair kits etc.
Secondary/Tertiary crafters would not be as affected and could buy in high quality resources for the 1-2% of top quality armors/tools and weapons.
But yes, some people would have to make changes/decisions. I dont know how you could implement any concept of meaningful scarcity without causing a situation like the above. Maybe with the new larger map, they might have 4-5 places were people can produce high quality wood. Plus with the new map, people would be starting fresh and could setup in a region which had high quality wood if they wanted to be a forester.
Starting a fresh base is something I have done 10-15 times throughout LIF:YO, LIF:MMO Closed BETA and now LIF:MMO Open BETA and I have immensely enjoyed it every time. I think some people will be bummed initially but then might enjoy the change of scenery. Some, a small percentage, will hate it though, I understand what you mean.
im a member of a traiding Guild and i would really like to see more traiding in the World...
Same, I think if the developers fix the economy/trade before going free-to-play (if they do) then they will retain many new players and bring back many.
I Think. The Fokus should lay on the regional reccources that are in the Game right now... For Hughe Guilds its way to easy to get them.. Like you said with multiple Claims and (as i think the biggest problem) the countless number of Outposts...
First of all There is a absolute need of cap for Outpost per Guildclaim... There are Guilds with more then 20 Outposts over the whole Map... So they get Recources for doing nothing. In my point of view there should be a Cap by 1 Outpost per Claim Tier... so a hugh Guild can only place 4 Outposts so they have to think about what they really want and need. that would improve Traiding too.
Next Point... Multiple Claims... if you have 10 Chars on your Account you can Run a Guild claim totaly by your Own... at Tier 3 i only need to make 20 Staffs a RL Day to Pay the Claim costs... Thats nothing... and thats why Guilds can have Guild-outposts runned by one or two guys from the Guild.
I agree completely on all those points. I think Outposts could kill the game. It really takes a lot of point out of playing for a lot of people. I mean, it used to take me hours to mine regional Iron Ore. Now we have 1000s and 1000s of the stuff.
Herbs used to be hard to make, we had 100 herb gardens that took a lot of regionals to build. We would have to plant each one, which would use up water and fertiliser. Now, we don't even used them anymore, whats the point. People from my guild don't even log in anymore because theres no point... the outposts are producing all the good stuff we need.
They really need to be balanced and as you say. The sheer number of them and the amount of resources that they are pumping out is out of control. It is really really bad for the economy.
I think someone needs to make a separate post in the forum specific ally dedicated to talking about the negative impact of outposts and the long term effects. You are 100% right on all the points you made above about outposts. And I think it, as you say, it should be more of an initial focus than this suggestion, especially as they can quickly add these restraints in without much effort. I.e. reduce production rates, introduce the same chance of getting a regional as people who mine. Not all Iron ore should be regional, it should be like 10-15% in my opinion. Cap how many outposts a guild can control.