Allow Artists To Lower Work Value.
It helps with demoralizing issues.

My idea is that somewhere in the sealing process for artwork, allow the artist to set its actual value lower than what the code would roll for an artist on completion of sealing. It makes it so when an artist is creating artwork for other characters, for crime, for auctions, for silliness, for personal reasons, that they can set it for (only ever) a lower value but a more realistic value of what they hope other actual characters spend. And my reason to ask for this idea:

People don't value art.

At least not how the code values art. The financial worth of artwork determined by the system represents a character's skill and stats. It's great to know where you're at and in an ideal system it'd mean great things for the artist and the buyer.

But it doesn't really for the artist a lot of times. Artists, like tailors, aren't suppose to make artwork for the express purpose of selling to the markets or some other little neat areas around the game. And that's a good practice, because it's a bit scummy to do with any consistency. Artists can try to put genuine efforts into finding someone to buy their art and if it doesn't happen I think they're allowed to go and sell through coded means, but that still feels scummy sometimes.

But that's a guidance/suggestion/rule that only applies to the artist. It doesn't apply to the people who buy the art for far less value than its coded worth. And it doesn't apply to people who take down artwork from public places or when they have the skill to uninstall it from private ones.

I could be upset at players who take down public art/vandalism art only to just immediately go and sell it to the markets. I won't lie, I'm a bit annoyed even now but when it boils down to it that's just taking advantage of how the system is. It's demoralizing to put time and effort into a whole little story and creating artwork and some RP only to see it up for a day or two and then once it's down you worry it's going to be right up in the market, and it often is, because no matter how much you @holdback it's still pretty profitable after a certain point.

It'd be different if that artwork stayed in hands and was exchanged between characters and even sold to other characters. But I don't think it often is. So that ends up with a very unique set of events where artists won't get paid by characters what the game says their work is codedly worth but the buyers or people to take it down can sell high end characters' artwork for more than any character might ever pay.

"and it often is, because no matter how much you @holdback it's still pretty profitable after a certain point. "

It's right there in the post, Beepboop.

People are going around un-installing art pieces with no RP and then selling them in the market? That is really scummy.

I suppose taking pictures of art can be a way to help extend an art piece’s “lifetime”, especially if it’s vandalism art. Spread those pictures around and you’ve got a second act of vandalism.

Wasn’t there some kind of change where art doesn’t linger in the markets anymore for long, but ends up somewhere else? There are also limits on how much you can sell anything for in the market. Skilled traders rarely get more than 5K no matter the value of the item. I’m sure people aren’t getting extremely rich off of any single piece of art they sell there. The whole practice of it definitely does seem gamey though.

Would definitely like to have more control over value. When you make a holo-candle to sit atop the shitter and it turns out to be 300'000c, or even 10000c, it's a little weird.

I don't want to derail the topic, but I'd really love some other indicator for art quality besides value altogether. We have performance feedback that shows crowd response, I'd prefer a system like that someday. People viewing the art and getting a brief little buff to their luck or whatever. We need Ganger Dave hyping himself in front of his inspirational cat posters before he goes out murdering. I think art is great because it is so open and undefined, but little tweaks would be nice someday.