Are we in a self-inflicted economic recession?

Yeah except the sell for gold part isn't realistic no one has that kinda gold. Sell for piles of COTOS. Piles of gold meh not so sure bout that!

 

Good OP.

So, I was actually starting enjoy the new normal. 500 gold an hour meant I just had to be more careful with what I spent money on. It wasn't the end of the world.

I started to sell recall and teleport scrolls (because they're so cheap and easy to sell @Lazarus Long). I made some good money off of that, but I didn't get rich.

But the problem of taxes being what they are really made it tough to imagine that things were "right". The devs realized this and instead of lowering taxes, made a very smart move and just flooded the economy with more money. This prevents people from crying and saying the taxes are too high (well ok, it doesn't prevent them from crying but it prevents them from being right). But that doesn't really leave us in a good position. This just means that we'll all have a lot more money to spend and we'll begin to see inflation, which is going to hurt people paying taxes disproportionately.

I wouldn't call any of this a recession, it's more of a broken and fragile economy that hasn't stabilized and is very unlikely to stabilize anytime soon. What I've learned from all this is we're in for one wild ride. We haven't seen anything yet.

 

That's part of the issue though. Reducing the price any further than 10 gold per piece (1000g for 100 cotton) would make the profit margin almost non-existent or not even worth it when factoring in the cost of the seed and the cost of the water to keep the plant growing.

 

There are definately people with that kind of gold in game right now.
I saw POT only town deed yesterday, that was in my price range and I thought about picking it up to hold on to for "some day", but then I remembered..
I have rent free deeds, and kept my money.

 

I don't know for sure, but I wonder if the OPs issue is the cotton. I bet if it was gold or silver ingots he would have sold them. It may just be that there are some materials that aren't as useful as others. Most things you can make with cotton aren't very good IMO. It may be the actual solution is to make certain resources more useful. Perhaps adding layered clothing like a cotton robe or tunic wearable over other armor types might make it more usefu.

Unless you are willing to sacrifice stats for RP or aesthetic purposes, cotton armor is practically useless, even for pure mages IMO.

 

I make a few sales each day. I only deal in a couple of types of items/categories of items at the moment. The amount is not always large, but it is a constant flow.

Like the OP has mentioned, cotton is a desired commodity, but it's very twitchy in its pricing per day and constantly has to be adjusted.

 

As I see it, there are many factors:

Taming was nerfed so a 5 min old char can no longer farm 5 skulls all day.
Gold drop and item you sold was nerfed to Hel.

Combined with:
An insane respawn rate on resources ie 350+ ore an hour (Who even lacks any resources by now?)
People dumping lots of gold into raffle tickets, and a few other items.

The result:
People are afraid gold drops will be nerfed again, and hold onto their gold for now.
Some people have LOTS and LOTS of resources in their banks.
Prices may drop even more due to low demand and a high supply.
Vacations for higher educations and most jobs are over, and there are less time to grind/play.

I like to add that the respawn rate on resources IMO is still way to high.

 

Cotton is definitely the way to go for pure mages... so IDK what you mean by that last sentence. Carapacian Cloth (uses cotton) increases your focus by quite a bit and also adds spell critical chance.

Total benefit of a full Carapacian Epic Cloth set is:
+27% Focus
+5.8% Spell Critical Chance
No Fizzle

How is that not the best armor for a pure mage? There aren't very many sources of spell critical chance in this game, this is the best one. The only other source, besides intelligence, is your weapon which gives you +5% spell critical chance if you're using a staff or +2.5% spell critical chance with a wand.

 

And not to mention, the time required to maintain the farm!

Thus the reason I decided to purchase 3 lots and turn 2 into farm fields. I play a 90% mage/10% blades build and wanted a business that could support my play style and also pay for my taxes and regs. I made this business plan under the assumption that player-run economy would sustain it via cotton sales (even if it is purely for mage players).

 

Yep, and the startup cost of buying the beds too at 800 gold a piece. I sold two stacks of 100 Raw Cotton at 2k gold each stack 2 weeks ago on the public vendor in Ardoris. Since then, I haven't been able to sell any more. Even at half the price.

 

Of course there are but not enough for everyone who wins deeds to sell off to in any meaningful manner, which is what I was trying to imply. Good for you that you have so much not sure anyone cares bout that though bro. Honestly anyone can have lots of gold if they wanna buy COTOS and resell them but why even bother what are you gonna buy with that gold...

 

Not mine. I can't keep items in stock. Of course, all three of my accounts are undercutting prices found elsewhere. It's a tough job running from town to town, dropping 12g notes on the public vendors with my address, gathering average prices, and then posting items for 1/2 of what everyone else is selling them for.

But I'm making $$ so...yay.

 

Seems odd to make final declarations about systems that have barely got off the ground. The economy is just starting with persistence. I hardly played earlier releases because I knew it would get wiped. Plus, I don't think we even have anywhere near final stats on gear, production or bonus.

I don't even know where to buy seeds if I wanted a farm on my keep rooftop.

Time to go knock off a few wolves and skellies... i got bad cloth armor to make. Or rugs for the floor, always rugs.

 

And, BTW - thanks to all for contributing to this discussion in a positive and thoughtful manner. I'm not trying to grow rich here, I'm mostly trying to help the player-run economy find its secret sauce.

 

Definitely a tough job! The ol' Walmart roll back strategy. I hope further down the road the Devs will have analytics on a commodity exchange to give us some average daily, weekly, monthly pricing trends so we can price accordingly. Its such a huge guessing game. I think I'm competitively priced based on my cost to produce, but some in this thread have said they believe my pricing is too high. Who knows?

No final declarations. I consider this the opening salvo for discussions on the economy's current health and performance. And, hey, if you need cotton for those rugs, I know a guy.

 

Full epic fustian is +40.9% focus. Just sayin'. If, as a pure mage healer, for example, focus pool was what you were looking for, +27% vs +40.9% is a pretty significant difference.

Spoiler: Pics

 

My goal isn't to get my stuff to sell, it's to keep your stuff from selling.

Naturally the money flows my way. It's an age-old modified Goon PvP strategy from Eve Online, courtesy of Darius:

On PvP: "My goal isn't to ruin THE game, it's to ruin YOUR game.

Once put into play, everything else falls into place.

 

My 2 cents:

1- merchants who over charge, won't get many sales...

I sold everything that was on my vendor to one player last weekend, and half of my stock to another when I restocked... I purchased silver at the lowest price I've seen anywhere, and they had a bunch of it... I purchased what I needed...

Granted, my budget is tight, but do able... But when I have to buy coal at 30 per, I start traveling around for a better price... Water and seeds are another story all together, growing cotton hardly seems worthit as I see many, many cotton farms which should be driving the price down, but sadly it's not, so there's your explanation as to NO sales...

 

If we have people in this game from Eve Online that are merchants they will crush them, no doubt

 

That's the plan. ;-)