SotA Economics - an opinion piece

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by macnlos, Nov 30, 2018.

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  1. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    From what ive read the plan is to keep crafting a gold sink so having that be the base for exchanging gold between people, that would effectivley make a little money get removed for everything somone sells to somone else thats crafted.

    Crafting specialization will make it easier to target specific consumersand i deffinately notice things wearing out faster.

    You dont need thousands of people to have a player economy but you do need desired goods that get removed and need to be repurchased.

    I buy my gear when i need it if i can find it, and i always buy food and potions. Food and potions are the only crafted goods people need regularly, and how many people arent crafting them themselves?
     
  2. Vladamir Begemot

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    Player time opportunity cost, and "what will actually inflate the economy less?"

    Player A makes 10k an hour in Adventure Land (so I've heard, tough adventurers who know what they are doing)

    Player B makes 100g an hour farming. Or even loses 100g.

    Player B is inflating the economy 100x less than Player A.

    A win from the Devs perspective in the case of Player B?

    Not if Player B gets frustrated and leaves or becomes an adventurer when they would rather be a crafter/farmer.

    Player B, tired of being a poor farmer, becomes an Adventurer, and soon is inflating the economy at the much higher rate of 5k, then 6k then 10k an hour!

    If Player B could make 2000 gold an hour farming, they'd probably have been pretty happy.

    Yes, I make gold crafting. But I've built up a big system to do so, mail order catalogs, locations at key spots, etc. I also try to stay very disciplined and not over-craft. But if I REALLY wanted to make big stacks of gold in Shroud, I wouldn't be a merchant, I'd be an adventurer.

    As a side question that might get some hairy eyebrows raised at me, do NPC's screw up supply and demand by selling reagents super cheap? Would the prices settle at a higher price point if they NPCs weren't an artificial ceiling? Should their price fluctuate with the price player vendors are selling at, rising slowly until no one buys them?

    (Before the healers freak out, you should be getting subsidized by your team.)
     
  3. Synergy Blaize

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    YES!
    Growing Plants is EXTREMELY time consuming (But I enjoy it & would rather be growing, than adventuring ~ most of time)
    However, the profit for the time invested, is poor IMHO...

    Something needs to be done about the Magic Vendor Prices, so that for those of us who are willing to supply adventurers & crafters with their needs, can be adequately rewarded for our time & effort.

    The alternative is just as Vlad described it....
     
  4. Eric White

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    @Vladamir Begemot and @Synergy Blaize ... your posts immediately above this one are spot on as a starting (first) step.

    If the NPCs prices were raised so that it cost twice as much to buy "regs" from NPCs than player farmers... and the player farmers were able to make some profit, we'd have the beginnings of an economy in SotA.

    Next I'd say make weapons/armor wear out quicker and require repair kits that (like the above reg system) either needs player blacksmiths/tailors/carpenters for repair kits OR purchase them from NPCs for twice the cost. Stop dropping repair kits as loot. This too would create an economy.

    Neither of these things requires a huge system overall for devs to spend tons of time on. Just adjust a few small things and check stats every so often to regulate the system and keep it healthy.
     
  5. Elrond

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    I think repair kits should costs resources to make

    tailoring kits should need cotton
    blacksmith - ore to make
    tool - mix from farm and mining

    so on...
     
  6. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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    ...what? they DO cost resources to make.
     
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  7. that_shawn_guy

    that_shawn_guy Bug Hunter

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    any thoughts on npcs that run out of inventory?

    i know we already have a system to raise prices as people buy more from an npc. i don't know that it really works well enough to do anything for the economy. but, what if npcs just plain ran out of items at some point? maybe make it region wide and last for a novian month.
     
  8. Elrond

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    Good point ..got confused from a mushroom ...only made engraved kits assumed rep kits are same just ingots.
     
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  9. Elrond

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    It could be used as a measure of control for crafting if you limit the amounts of wax, coal so on ... if you refer to reagents only ... at this point even wiping them off the vendor the current farming industry would still have surplus of goods with none to buy them.

    Already asked about the NPC prices ( any chance to be increased ) 2 months in a row ...even though other questions i had were answered this one ...no reply .
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2018
  10. Vladamir Begemot

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    But you would never make them. They are loot drops or 100g off a vendor, far less than their crafting cost.
     
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  11. Eric White

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    AND that is the problem.

    This is supposed to be a player run economy, but the economy is constantly borked by NPCs and loot drops.
     
  12. Vladamir Begemot

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    In the end it comes down to two rules

    1. Adventurers can sell to NPCs for a profit
    2. Crafters cannot
    If you want to have two more
    1. Adventurers can get enough in loot drops to fund their gameplay, repair their gear, buy new gear
    2. Crafters pay to craft due to numerous gold sinks
    So in the end
    • Crafters MUST find people to sell from, or they are in a losing tailspin
      • It's possible, but considerably more work / potentially soul crushing than just going out an bonking a skeleton

    Now, I will still hold to "If you can isolate a PLAYER market to sell to, craft the right things for those players and put them in the correct location for them to find them, you can make a profit by transferring those players loot gains into your gold stack."

    But it's a hard life, you'd be better off just getting loot if you're after wealth. It's worth bearing in mind that loot was crap this time last year, maybe something will happen that makes crafting generate gold at an hourly rate as well, some day.

    But then we are back to THE most important question, what are the gold sinks? Without those we're all walking around with billions in gold that is actually worth nothing.

    Removing repair kits from vendors and lowering their drop rate would start draining an amount of materials from the system, and transferring gold to crafters. Some of that would be going into the gold sink in the form of fuels as well. That's not enough though.

    I will make a guess here, that if there were more accepted gold sinks in the game, the devs could loosen up crafting a bit. But until then, no chance. So come up with good gold sinks for them to adopt, ones that aren't going to make people mad.
     
  13. Elrond

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    My vote is on High Taxes for furniture we gotta stop these furniture moguls from taking over . :)
     
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  14. Eric White

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    I concure
     
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  15. Rook Strife

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    Farmed items need to be a different variety than what can be gathered in the world.
     
  16. Elrond

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    Shouldnt same principle work the other way also ?
     
  17. MrBlight

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    What would be the downsides of when specialties r introduced, beetles can only come from agric specialty or forge specialty? For example?

    Add some key crafting componentz to only be availible for specialized foragers or growers or one or the other, just to kick out some of that self sustain? Surr somr will multi account but it would have a huge impact.

    High end brand of wood ONLY comes from a pure woodcutter for example. Say a non specializrd has a 5% where they have a 15% to get.
    Unique dye components. Certain types of components really could be pushed more a specialty route to increase player to player sales, and would cut the populatuon that is purely self relient to start buying instead of runnen all out of 1 char.
    Go a step farther n drasticly cut foraged cotton gains, but add that unique material ( beetles ).. as where farming high yield of base mat.. cotton, witj tiny slim chance of beetle.
    Give actual meaning to crafting specialties.

    I hit on this a long time ago beforr first specs were introduced, and still hold to it being a smart economy driven move.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 5, 2018
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  18. Elwyn

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    "Everyone will scream that PvP/Full Loot / Open Killing is a bad thing."

    That doesn't sound like "having to buy new weapons". Nothing is destroyed by "full loot".

    Yet I know of someone who has been at an alchemy table for hours at a time the past three weeks, sometimes with two characters. Every day. Sometimes I'll log off with my door open, then come back hours later and the door is still open because he's still crafting. One guess what is being made. (not meth lol) And it goes straight to the vendor and into the money supply. It's probably even a factor in the big COTO price jump.

    Jokes: "Grinding Bad" "Shroud of the Alchemist"

    And player C finds the crafted item that sells to an NPC for a profit, converting it straight to gold without involving any other players, inflating the economy more than anyone else.

    Just wait until we get a large enough player base for demand pricing to kick in. Sure, you could always go out of your way to the back of a low-traffic POT or PRT and get the "regular" price, but it's already been observed that many players will pay the inflated NPC price without even noticing.

    To understand what a gold sink is, you have to understand the gold cycle. There are three sorts of transactions:

    1: Creation: Gold is created through certain actions, mostly as loot, selling something to an NPC, or awarded from a quest. That is gold which did not exist in the money supply before. This was especially noticeable the first week after a wipe, because nobody had enough gold for #2 until enough loot had been accumulated. Basically, gold is created in exchange for player time and effort. Crafting to sell something directly to an NPC for a better profit than selling to another player is overpowered. (But it's a necessity in offline mode!)

    2: Exchange: When an item (or service) is sold from one player to another, gold is transferred from one player to another, but the total money supply (existing gold) in the game remains the same. PvP loot and ransoms are another sort of exchange, also not affecting the money supply. Even RMT activity still only moves gold and items around.

    3: Destruction: When gold is paid to an NPC or as a tax to a game system, the gold is destroyed. This is a gold sink. Examples are buying something from an NPC, paying lot taxes, and public vendor fees. Items such as reagents, fuels, and repair kits are an indirect gold sink, when players need to buy them from an NPC. There is also a temporary form of a gold sink when a player stops playing. The gold still exists, but it is no longer active in the economy.

    Creation is a gold source, destruction is a gold sink. Too much money supply, and the value of IGG against other things (COTOs and real-world money) drops.

    There is a similar cycle with COTOs. The two cycles may interact via #2 above, and by the 1 COTO = 3500g lot taxes equivalence, but they have different creation and destruction. They are created mostly in return for certain things which give real-world money to Portalarium, and sometimes by a random loot drop. They are destroyed by Crown Merchants, lot taxes (for those silly enough to do so when the price is over 3500g), and major crafting repairs.
     
    Last edited: Dec 4, 2018
  19. Lord Tachys al`Fahn

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    Did you read the OP? Cause he says it in the OP...
     
  20. Bowen Bloodgood

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    Ok I told myself (and everyone else) I wasn't going to rehash this but.. what the hell.. here's what I would've done... (at least in part).

    World economy.. the world itself is an active force. You'll get what I mean in a bit..

    The world accounts for the unseen economy. It has it's own stock of goods and currency pool that simulates goods and currency "in the world" but not seen by the players.

    NPCs merchants should have finite resources. They should have stock, and a currency pool. If their stock is low they will buy goods from the world.. if they are overstocked, they will sell to the world. This could happen on a flexible timer or when a certain threshold is met.

    NPC merchants would adjust their prices based on sales and purchases of similar items on player vendors. If players are selling swords for a lot more then vendors would raise prices.. if players are under selling NPCs, NPCs would lower prices. This would be on a per zone basis and/or per region.

    Surpluses in the world could be quietly removed any way the devs saw fit.. otherwise anything sold off to the world could be purchased by NPCs to replenish their stock or appear in the loot tables.

    Finite resources on merchants would limit how quickly you can get gold out of them. So you'd need to compensate with other sources of currency to a degree.. depending on how much currency you really wanted floating around but really it just means you're tweaking different nobs and dials to regulate the economy but there should never be a limitless gold faucet. Also, NPCs should only buy what they personally need or can sell. None of this bakers buying rusty swords and shoddy bows business.

    Anything bought by an NPC should stay in that NPCs stock until they need to sell to the world or a player buys it.. You sell a +16 sword to a weapon smith, another player should be able to buy it first before that sword moves on etc..

    Switching tracks here for a moment.. as for everyone can do everything being an issue. I don't quite agree, and here's why. The law of least effort. Where I fall as a crafter isn't just because I want to be self sufficient.. it's because it seems easier for me and my play style to be self sufficient than it is to earn the money to afford the prices I see on vendors. Balancing fun and effort are factors here. Bring those player prices down and I'm sure you'll see fewer players doing everything and more players buying what they can afford. But in addition to this, gaining mastery of crafting skills currently has little meaning. I can make the same epic plate at 50 skill (or whatever it is now) as I can at 100 but also the average player does not need +16 gear to survive day to day.. making it that much less effort to 'do everything'. It's not the option that's the problem here, it's the perceived effort required to do vs the perceived effort required to buy. Which also varies directly with player level. You don't have to be epic adventure level to craft, but it's a lot easier to make money to buy at higher levels. So what option do lower level players have when they want new gear?

    Basically the power balance of gear (my opinion) favors the super competitive PvPer or maybe the really hard core high level boss hunters. Who else needs this stuff?? You certainly don't need it for the offline game. So where is the market for crafted goods for everyone else? hmm

    Forgive me if I'm jumping around here.. I had to go somewhere for a couple hours and come back.. but I almost feel like the economy is an afterthought. They wanted a 'player based economy' but didn't seem to give much thought to what a healthy economy for the game should look like. I don't know. I would've liked to feel like this isn't a social experiment economy that's simply left to its own devices. Well, I hope at least most of that made sense.. agree or not. There are other things I would approach differently too but I think you get the idea.
     
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