I need help understanding the regional economy theme.

I don't at all understand what this regional economy is all about. What I do know is anytime I ask about having a networked banking system I am told no because it impacts the regional economy. How does it do that? How does forcing a player to use just one bank help any economy?
I don't gather resources in just one region. I have to take those items to where ever I process them, then on to either guild members or my house for storage, or my vendor. Those locations are again different than where I gathered them.
Shoppers browse vendors during their travels most likely and that can be in any area of the game. All this leads to my confusion. Can someone explain this idea to me so it makes sense?

 

If you don't care about regional economies to begin with and prefer the convenience of global banks.. what argument or explanation would possibly convince you that it "makes sense"?

 

The way I see it is that certain good will only be attainable at certain regions. Making each region dependent on the other for raw materials for crafting.

For example in my region Obsidian chips fall off most mobs, perhaps that will be the rare good found in Grunvald.

 

I just reread my post and I didn't see anything there that said I didn't care about regional economies.

 

I think many of the issues you describe in your original post ARE the regional economy scheme. The plan is to have certain areas be rich in some things (and have unique crafting modifiers), but need to supplement with items from other regions, so that trading freely will benefit us all. If one area is rich in maple wood and another in coal, then players can make gold by moving these goods to the areas where they are rare and selling them at a higher price. If we have networked banks then that all goes to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.

There's probably more to it than that, and I am mostly posting here to see what everyone has to say, but that's what I think of when I hear "regional economy".

 

I equate regional economies to lets say tourism dollars. Cites/towns advertise events to create interest in going to the location. These places benefit from the tourist spending their money. They have fixed businesses that require people to come to them to make money.
In the game it is players that benefit from selling items they make. Advertising is difficult in this game. The best way we have to sell items is have a vendor in a high traffic location in the game. That location may not be where the resources are gathered and made. So how does the term regional come into play? Isn't this a global market place? Or are we all hoping to draw players to all our areas to buy our goods?
This is where I get confused. I am not making this post to get flamed or be cantankerous. I am just trying to understand the mechanics of the reasons for regional economies. It totally eludes me is all.

 

Your post makes a lot of sense and I understood it all right up to the "If we have networked banks then that all goes to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly." part.
To eliminate any confusion people may have when reading my post this is not about networked banks or no networked banks. It is about the term regional economies.
Getting back to your post I don't understand how our carrying the items we make to market or being able to withdraw those items out of the bank at market changes everything.

 

@Cally
I think you have a very valid question, judging by the fact that I can't answer it and am waiting with interest for some good explanations that will help me understand it.

 

Cally, first, let me thank you for bringing up a salient point that most folks forget when talking about economies in general - it isn't all(ways) about money and where it flows. that is only half of it. the other half is what i think you are asking about, correct? the goods, and how that will be marketable?

what do you know about Artisan communities? i believe that on a non-monitary side of the economies, they are trying to promote that type of community itself. a lot of what @margaritte stated was also true to my understanding of WHY they are doing this. y'know, nodes of artisan communities scattered all about the land, where many of the vendors will have the local materials or unfinished goods for sale, and other vendors will have the finished products with makers marks and the special perks that localization of crafting provides. i think they want you to look at a sword, and go "thats from xenos, cool! i can tell by the....." it adds extra value to the items when it has that personal touch, that only a community of that type can provide.

 

That's the very point.

Imagine that copper is present exclusively in Grunvald. And nowhere else.

Imagine that tin is present exclusively in Hidden Vale. And nowhere else.

And maple exclusively in Elysium. And nowhere else.

To build a succesfull business around bronze axes with maple handles, you have to either:

1) collect the different materials from the different places of the world and find a way to efficiently carry large amounts of the various items in a centralized point;

2) Develop or leverage an existing hauling service to avoid 1);

3) Develop or leverage an existing intermediate market (i.e. bronze ingots or maple poles) to avoid also 2);

All of these are great opportunities to develop a regionalized system where local entrepreneurs can become exceptionally good at transferring massive amounts of resources rapidly from market to market, or to produce and distribute semi-lavorated items for crafters, or to flood "foreign" markets with raw gathered resources - gathering them where they are abundant, putting them on sale where they are scarce or absent.

All of the above would be totally annihilated if the banks were insta-transfer systems.

In virtual markets, convenience is the greatest driving factor to profit.

 

The intent, as far as I can tell, is to create the illusion that Perennial coast, Drachvald, and South Paladis are isolated.

Of course, with teleportation in the game, they aren't isolated, so it is a bit of a head scratcher. Even without teleportation, players have to be able to traverse the control points in order to reach their homes or to do quests, or even to just start the other quest lines.

All common materials can be gathered in all scenes. Exactly the same raw materials for reagents, hides, cotton, pine and maple, for example. There is no regional variation on these raw materials, nor their availability. Players can plant whatever crops they want, and grow them on their lots so again, that bypasses any attempt at regional raw materials.
As for crafting, while there's apparently(?) supposed to be some kind of regional variation for enchantments, I've seen no information that is in place in R29.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Unless in-game mechanics rigidly enforce regional economies, they will not exist in any tangible way. Allowing teleportation or travel of any kind to or from each region prevents such a design goal from ever being reached.

 

@Katrina Bekers I'm glad you are awake enough to express what I was thinking with the "hell in a handbasket" cliche That's exactly what I was talking about.

Teleportation is a head scratcher, like agra said. It doesn't seem to help regional economies at all, but I do like it as a means to quickly join up with friends for group hunts and events. At least we have weight limits, so folks can't move massive quantities around though. If you could load up your bank with rare ore from Elysium and instantly move it to the Hidden Vale that would be much more detrimental to the idea of regional markets.

 

Remember, if I recall right, the devs have said that control points in the future will be only cross-able by either a very high level person or a group of people which means it will be very difficult for you to get in and out of different regions then your home area which will build a regional economy. You can see that all the new scenes they have added in over the past few releases is to balance the 1-5 skull areas (As well as mines and such) in each region. I think from a logical standpoint, their plan is sound when all content is in.

 

Recall and Teleport scrolls make it quite easy to cross control points.

 

I think @Katrina Bekers covered most of this.

But a couple of points here.

It's also about volume of goods that can be transferred from one location to another.

Teleport and recall limit the volume I can bring to my encumbrance this really limiting the amount per trip. It also adds the cost of the scroll to each such trip I make.

In a free of charge global bank system you could take a mass volume of enormous proportions and bring from one region to the next.

So please note what will be added instead is a transfer between banks service which comes at a cost. So you can have the stuff in your bank in Ardoris send some item for a fee and a slight delay to your bank in Brittany.
That has been planned from the beginning.

So a limited volume transfered for convenience at a fee still keeps the regional economy plausible.
While unlimited transfer would make it moot.

Now back to your ordinary programming.

 

I never understood the need for a regional economy, I hope someone can explain the need. I really wish I could access my bank in any zone, its quite inconvenient. I wonder if its to limit us from exploring, which it indeed does for me.

 

I had not heard of this transfer system maybe it was before I came to the game. Would this be like the commodity deeds we had in UO?

 

Putting something in a bank and taking it out at another bank is not the same as in our real world situation and experience. The current limitation in the game recreates the real world regional economy. So that it is more realistic.

 

The regional economy concept is most difficult to grasp from those whom are only seeing things from the perspective of viewing the 'game' and not the virtual world underneath.

The Regional economy is no one thing but rather an array of features that aim to promote three basic principles of the virtual economy:

• The first, which we're already seeing in game, is regional identity and localized pricing and availability of goods.
• The second, is availability or scarcity of resources based on regional location. This is not completely in game yet as the economic passes will only come in the next release or two.
• The third, which is more far down the line, is a unique nature or statistics to items produced based on regional location.
• And finally, to incentivize regional crafting and production while adding a risk vs. reward situation for obtaining those materials/goods from other regions or moving them from regions they can be produced at to other regions where they would be more scarce.

Now the first bullet mentioned is only available now largely because of community building. The community has supported that to some degree based on level of activity of the areas in question IE Grunvald vs. Elysium vs. Perennial coast vs. hidden vale. The other three following bullets are features to further support the first. Ultimately this means rare goods being produced and rare resources being gathered and distributed based on where they were obtained. It also means one could create a wholly seperate profession just buying goods from one area and making them available in areas where they are needed.

So with bullets 2 and 3, there may be a need to gather rare raw resouces in one region while wanting to transport them for manufacturing in another region - as that region will produce specific modifiers for the item they want to produce that are only found when crafted in their chosen region. Then, we get to the point where the person who gathered those materials from one or two other virtual regions and then crafted them in a third and now they want to sell it on the market in another region. The price of the item would not only include the market price for the materials and work included but also each stage in the travel of goods from one place to another would be a different price point that might fluctuate based on the day to day ease of travel from one region to another.

It is also important to remember when taking the above into consideration that the state the game is in now is NOT the final state of the game. Those resources arent spawned unique to their region yet and the travelling from one region to another is intended to be MUCH more dynamic - so some days travel will be much easier than others.

So taking ALL of that into consideration, travel becomes an important and dynamic part of the game. This is why teleport and recall scrolls are very limited especially since you can not use them whilst encumbered. We only see very small quantities of things moving and transporting right now largely due to the wipe cycles... but once we see a no wipe scenario we will start seeing very large amounts of these goods being transported and shipped from place to place to start filling out peoples/organizations stockpiles. Developers here are ensuring that systems for instant travel between one place and the other of GOODS will not be interrupted.

Global banking would mean goods would be able to be stored en masse in one place then pulled out of another without having to go through the steps above for travelling place to place. And travel, as well as the economy, is intended to be a very dynamic experience its not not finished yet so we only see the very barebones of all of this. Teleport scrolls and recall scrolls do let you teleport from place to place but they are limited in several ways - so while you can use them to travel point to point if you want it becomes costly and they can not help you ship items around the world any faster except in very small loads This is because they want to support the features and functions in the four bullets above which, when all are put together, create the dynamic virtual economy we will see in the game upon release.

SO.... the real reason you havent had anyone explain it to you in depth was probably because it's very complex to describe from a game design point of view. I do hope ive done it justice though.

 

But is being a GM hauler/mover what I want to be, or do I just want to spend my time making items for sale? Everything you say is about moving mass amounts of either finished or partially finished goods to a market to sell. It says to me that I have to spend more time making logistic arrangements to move my goods in this system then I would if I have a connected bank system. With the latter I am having more time to enjoy the game and less time making arrangements to sell items? Currently there are no hauling systems in the game. If what Spoon posted arrives that would change that, but would increase final cost of a item. Am I understanding what you said correctly?