Gold is a problem now

Yeah, I am losing interest in the game now. Can't make enough to feel worth the time. Certainly not enough to pay taxes, level crafting, and buy stuff. I could understand nerfing the gold a bit but to knock it down like this is too much for my taste.

 

I'll make a general statement. Most people really dont know basic economics. They really dont. They may listen to politicians who also claim to know economics, but those people dont and usually just use falsehoods of economics to gain favor.

Im no expert in economics, but I did study it in college. The first thing you learn about economics is that as you learn more about economics, you only realize you have much more to learn. It is extremely complex.

Over the past 20 years I have also seen economics being an issue in every game I have played. Largely because game developers are great software engineers and usually not very good at economics.... supply and demand... etc... etc... Unfortunately many dont realize that (I am by no means making a comment about Pol, this game is alpha and they are clearly feeling the economics out).

If new players are feeling extremely pinched for gold and items without the ability to sustain casual play, they need to come here and be loud about it since the devs at this point just dont know yet and I am 100% sure they want new people to have a successful transition into the game.

 

This kinds of stuff drives me nuts. There will always be rich people no matter how much you try to control the system. People who have time to play "24x7" are following the rules and will outpace us in gold, loot, and skills - period.

I do not want to see graduated controls to kill ROI. An hour in game should be an hour in game for everyone. Everyone is not out hardcore farming. People with no taxes are more likely to just chill in town than they are to go out farming. They will go out to work on skills and as a by product get gold and loot.

The "problem" - I don't think there really is one honestly - is that games like this can create an infinite amount of gold which is completely dependent on player's in-game efforts. Just like in any fiat money system the money is printed as more money is deemed "necessary". This devalues the existing money, but since not everyone has tons of money prices for common items remain relatively low and achievable and rare items will trade for unbelievable amounts of in-game currency simply because some people will have it. Some believe that having a limited resource or "maximum" amount of gold in the world would help keep prices down. I can understand the logic behind the statement as it would keep the gold as very valuable and only a little would be needed to afford a lot of other things - and hording of the gold would just make everyone else's gold worth more.

For games like this, however, maximum gold/coin/credit/money is tied more directly to the amount possible to make per hour. Items will eventually be tied to the same "hourly" rate needed to acquire the resources, build the item, list it and other costs associated plus a modest profit. Even then you'll have crafters who could careless about profit and they'll help drive the market down. Also groups will work to make crafting more efficient and that will continue to drive prices down except for the rarest and most difficult things to achieve.

Let's also keep in mind that a lot of the "hardcore" players are in guilds and they spend tons of their gold on things they give to guild mates and friends without ever caring one bit about profit. Remember this isn't real life, it's a game. People share in real life and in games it's even easier to do so. People making money are not the problem. People using money to control other people is the problem and that isn't really an issue in games.

With this said I will assert that I am against where the rent/tax levels are at in this game currently and I look forward to them dropping down based on the median earnings per hour/day and not the max earnings per hour/day.

 

All my mid difficulty (3-4 skull) spots that were decent money (for a newer player such as myself) now yield about 30% of the gold per run that they did before. That was, at best, 2-3k per hour before the nerf. Really disappointed that I can't even earn gold to buy basic house decor now through pve

 

This is normal for an early access mmo weins. The ITYS posts that you're becoming known for aren't productive and are rather annoying. You really want to rethink your approach, especially in a community environment of folks who support portalarium and their efforts to make a good game.

 

This might be true if the changes weren't a day and a half old. No one is even out of their 14 day grace period for tax payment yet.

 

This also affects PVP, which as I'm not the greatest, I die, and ransom is held, and I pay the ransom, but now my income is reduced easily to 30% of what it was, and that will absolutely make me think twice of going pvping because I know I'll die and intend to pay some ransom, but not if I have to spend all the time PVEing to even make even with reagent and repair costs... this needs rebalancing fast.

 

Ha, wow. 7 gold sellback now for a dropped weapon or shield?
Yeah, that'll keep the new customers rolling in.
When I expend more gold in reagents to kill a creature than I get from it? That's a mistake. You've failed, Portalarium.
If you actually want players to consume reagents? Then you have to let them make a profit from adventuring.
All of this "balancing" should have been done years ago. The worst nerfs the game has ever seen, 30 days after persistence? You're doing it wrong. (and repeating the mistakes of history, btw)

 

Taxes will never go down.

 

guess that's the whole point of crowns...buy them

 

Yea, lets hope not. That would really keep the new players away...

 

Exactly it makes no sense to nerf the gold income so much but keep the tax rates the same! When they did that the tax rates should have been lowered as well.

 

There was talk, and I assume it's still in the plan, to have user made items show up 'out in the wild' somehow. Not sure how they could go about taking actual interesting items from people, but something like taking user-crafted items that are sold to NPCs and sticking them in the loot table would qualify. If the level of the item is matched up with the level of the mob, then perhaps the person who acquires it would care about it more than the person who sold it.

 

From an economic standpoint allowing the hard core to accumulate endless gold in huge quantities leads to massive inflation and pricing the soft people out of the game (as they accumulate all of the wealth). We can see parallels to this issue in current real world events. "Trickle down" economics has widely been disprove and considered an utter disaster (well, except by politicians who know nothing about economics). Pol has to be able to limit vast amounts of gold from entering the economy as well as ensure the lower income people are taken care of and not priced out of the game. Surly people can also see how this applies to the real world of economics. In truth, games like this are actually usually run more like say the Chinese economy which is a heavy mix of capitalism and government control backed by a lot of statistics and data and price setting for basic supplies (like say coal and other crafting supplies).

 

I'm not a new player and am incredibly pinched for gold. It's ridiculouslyrics grindy to get gold for low level players right now. If I purely do runthroughs of Kingsroad I make roughly 400-500 gp/HR. It feels quite unrewarding at the moment.

 

Not being balanced before persistence was the problem. Of course the skull 2 long bows will net a huge profit, so the 24/7 player will legitimately jump on that until the expected nerf.
But it is still not launch, they have time to fix. A balance 'nerf' was overdue, but it will cause whining for a bit.
People inherently like to complain... that is what I know about economics.
But give it time, play something else for a bit, it is not a race. It is just fun for you. (Me too).

 

Per the telethon, loot tables are also being actively reworked to offer more tangible drops.

 

@OP nobody likes it when the gold rates go down, but hey, it's an online game so there needs to be balance. Sure everyone wants a mill per hour but that's just gonna wreck the economy son.

 

Sorry to buck the trend but made the most gold I have made since persistence today, got 6 crafting tables and am working towards the rest. Think R33 got it right at this point, remember its not a 100m sprint your doing.. The node spawn seems right to me and I think things are looking good, if your impacted I suspect you are trying something which was beaten hard and needed the dial turned down those that milked it are currently top of the wealth stakes at the moment. It's a big world go explore.. +1 for R33 thanks Port

 

Then likely you found a scene that missed the nerf hammer.