About fixing the economy, why don't we leave it up to the people who knew it best back when money was more relevant. Allow them to design a new cool and interactive system which
@Jonsoon briefly outlined above.
Guys like
@Jonsoon @Yavool come to mind.
What the Trade District is or isn't does not affect the reason why 99% of people choose Herocraft over another server or another game. Additionally, whether it is a centralized marketplace with places for each person to put their chest shops or is what we have now with the global market doesn't matter one bit unless we have at least 50 people playing HC at any given time and over 200 people at peak times. The Trade District needs patrons to succeed, regardless of what it is, and until those threshold numbers are consistently attained via whatever means HC needs to keep its player base coming back for more daily, then what happens to the Trade District is moot.
That being said, I have made suggestions in the past and also believe that we should:
have the TD turned into customizable plots;
have the length of the leases be increased at least doubled if not quadrupled, from weekly to every other week or monthly (monthly preferred);
make sure the rents stay low;
ensure there is sufficient room at spawn for *every single HC member* to have a trade plot;
have chest shops cost 50 and refund 25 (or whatever it takes to adjust for the current economy);
bring back villagers so that the villager's wares can be sold;
increase global spawns of mobs and animals to add to the general pool of mob drops and animal drops;
ensure that *everything* is tradeable (which requires the correct coding);
make sure the Merchant profession is appropriately empowered with a unique set of skills;
We can make policies that have it so "each Trade District merchant is allowed one locked double-sized supply chest, labeled "Supply Chest" to refurbish their wares on their plot. Periodic checks of all Trade District plots will be made, and anyone who is found to have items outside that one Supply Chest will immediately have those items confiscated and destroyed." All we would need at that point is a mod/admin to enforce it with regularity (i.e. once a month or so).
For all it matters, we could have *both* a Trade District and a Global Market. If people have preferences, then let them have preferences. We can "tax" the Global Market accordingly; in Dungeons & Dragons Online, there is a small % posting fee, and the House takes 1/3. For us, this would also work, as it rewards those who have the ambition to take on building their own TD plot, penalizes the ease of the Global Market, creates additional competition (which is always good in an economic sense), and gives everyone a chance to sell their wares without having to spend all of their time in the TD building and making chest shops if they don't want to.
There are a lot of benefits to a vibrant Trade District, but those benefits are more part of the composition of the glue that holds HC together, and less of the stones that create its foundation. The foundation is PVP, the Heroes mod, the Professions, building, wars between empires, character and class advancement/power. If we want HC to have its patrons to not get "bored" quickly, we need to create incentive for them to keep coming back day after day. Many years ago, I learned that imitation of success is the best way to ensure your own success (and after winning many Magic: The Gathering tournaments by using other people's deck creations, I can validate this concept); I believe that
@Kainzo needs to scout the top 10-20 Minecraft servers on each list, identify why they are having such success, and then implement those strategies into the Heroes mod concept. I am not a coder, but if someone else can do it, I imagine it wouldn't be like reinventing the wheel if HC did it, too.
-yav
