Full Value Gems

[Shuricain]

Please make gems sell at full value. In traditional PnP D&D, gems were sold at face value e.g. a 5,000 gp gem could be used for 5,000 gp. It would make sense to sell gems at their base value, especially since the influx of loot gems over gear since U17.

Please make gems not worthless stones that take up inventory space.

[gphysalis]

/signed

This would also increase the amount of money that you can get by picking up static gems in quests such as rainbow and coal chamber, which would be cool.

I can just imagine:

"Hey! You stole my gem"
"Run up the ramp faster"

[droid327]

Economically this doesnt really pan out...if you make gems worth 10x their current value, you're just going to make people grind gems, and that's going to lead to inflation. Anytime you vendor anything, you're printing money and putting it into the economy.

As a countersuggestion, the full-value rule represents the intrinsic value of gems - how about instead, to represent that, you get 10x your Haggle bonus (if positive) when selling gems?

[CaptainSpacePony]

Haggles should affect how much a vendor buys stuff from you. Gems should not be exempt.

[cdbd3rd]

Please make gems sell at full value. In traditional PnP D&D, gems were sold at face value e.g. a 5,000 gp gem could be used for 5,000 gp. It would make sense to sell gems at their base value, especially since the influx of loot gems over gear since U17.....

While I agree that gems should sell for a higher percentage than they do - most DMs I've known over the years never allowed gems/jewelry/artworks to be bartered at full appraised value. (other than use as spell components for certain spells.)

The increase in gems drop rate was the first 'fix' for resale value of gems. Rather than increase the % of return, they just started giving us more gems.

[Karavek]

I suspect what the OP is harkening back to is the use of gems as a way to carry large amounts of gold wealth while keeping weight down, this was actually done in the real world in different cultures through out history and even today many wealthy people invest in then insure valuable jewelry.

In D&D the common use of gem brokers in various parts of the setting would treat gems at very close to their value around 80% usually, this allowed them to make logical profit while keeping adventurers happy and eager to come to them to sale the rarest jewels.

Wise players learned to keep a good amount of GP converted to gems sewn into the linings of their clothing as a way to help avoid carrying to much open loose coin.

No I think it could if we had a real large world MMO work to make gems have regional value increases to add something of a merchant mini game to DDO. However I doubt that would be popular enough to a large enough part of the player base to actually warrant the dev time.

[trailblazer_dk]

The increase in gems drop rate was the first 'fix' for resale value of gems. Rather than increase the % of return, they just started giving us more gems.

The same increase in drop rate will force many toon to buy a bigger gem bag or have them spilling out of the backpack.

[rj5k]

They need to give gems another purpose like crafting, augmenting, trade-ins, etc. Right now they're just to dump on a vendor at first opportunity.

With that said, I have a haggle bard with max-size gem bag that I drop all my gems on just in case. The "value" of the bag right now (after a year or so) is around 300k plat so you can see that even keeping these for $$ is not all that lucrative.

[Mastikator]

/signed with two caveats.
1) gem prices are unaffected by haggle
2) you can buy gems from vendors at the same price (basically convert platinum to item)

[Shuricain]

Economically this doesnt really pan out...if you make gems worth 10x their current value, you're just going to make people grind gems, and that's going to lead to inflation. Anytime you vendor anything, you're printing money and putting it into the economy.

As a countersuggestion, the full-value rule represents the intrinsic value of gems - how about instead, to represent that, you get 10x your Haggle bonus (if positive) when selling gems?

Yes, it would cause inflation in a fixed economic system by injecting more coins. However, the inflation can be offset by various money sinks / diminished gem drops. 2 Examples: The first is to use gems as ingredients for augment gems that have a % failure on craft. The second example would be to change loot tables to have less gems per chest but sold at a higher value; the reason being that a worthless gem's inventory space creates a negative externality (the gem's value does not reflect the real marginal value of the inventory space it occupies e.g. a 1 pp gem is taking up a spot that requires more time & effort to sell/junk then the value it offers.)

Personally, I'm am starting to have a hunch that they'll be moving toward using gems as ingredients for augmentation gems; letting the price of gems float in the auction house based on supply & demand. The influx of gem loot being generated was a first step in the implementation of the new augment gem/slot introduced in the U17 patch, which would allow them to gain some sample data to create a viable model for gem crafting to be included in the game economics w/out major disruption & exploitation. Long story short: start hoarding your gems (if you can afford a larger bag) now since they have the potential value to be worth a lot more in the future.

[Ducaster]

/signed with two caveats.
1) gem prices are unaffected by haggle
2) you can buy gems from vendors at the same price (basically convert platinum to item)

Now THIS I can sign off to.

As far as they are now? I fail to see the point in Gems. If Astral Diamonds and or the new Astral shards (mebbie even Gems of fortune too) cropped up once in a very long while IN GEM LOOT (Not chests) I'd see why folks might go for them. But as of now?

Meh...

[mobrien316]

Please make gems sell at full value. In traditional PnP D&D, gems were sold at face value e.g. a 5,000 gp gem could be used for 5,000 gp. It would make sense to sell gems at their base value, especially since the influx of loot gems over gear since U17.

Please make gems not worthless stones that take up inventory space.

In the PnP campaigns I was in, the value of a gem depended on a number of factors. It wasn't like currency. A diamond that might get you 5,000 gp in one city might get you 6,000 in another and 4,000 in a third.

The only constant was that gems were never going to be completely valueless, and carrying around a pouch with five or six gems in it was vastly easier than leading around a mule with a pack on it containing 30,000 gold pieces.

[LordMond63]

IIRC, 2nd Edition had gems listed by a general value range- Lapis Lazuli might be 50gp while a Diamond might be 5000gp. Dragon magazine introduced a Gemcutter NPC and vastly expanded the value range of gems by introducing the "Three C's" (cut, clarity, carat) and a whole bunch more factors that could increase or decrease the value of gems substantially. I generally looked positively on Dragon magazine alternative rule suggestions, but I found this one to be far too cumbersome to make implementing it worth the effort (and this was well before a computer could crunch the numbers and do it for you).

In DDO, I can't really see the need for this. The principal reason I could see wanting to use gems as a form of currency would be to avoid being Encumbered, but coins have no weight in the game so their weight isn't an issue. It can't be a space issue, because various gems take up more room than coins (which take up no room at all). The only logical reason I can see is to be able to transfer larger amounts of wealth between characters than you can now (at least easily); you could transfer 100 5000pp Diamonds far more easily than you could 500,000pp. Is there a need for such transfers on a regular enough basis to code the change?

[FestusHood]

New DDO store item: Jeweler's Loupe (eyepiece) 495 tp.

Equip this to receive full listed value for gems upon sale.