Thoughts to stimulate the economy

I cant imagine they can sustain themselves via the online market. You are sure it generates this much income with the relative low player base? I am personally totally put off by the online store.

They sell unique stuff not available in-game and make those items un-lootable and indestructable. Thats good for their real-life "economy" but very bad for in-game economy and PvP. I simply refuse to play a game where i am required to buy stuff at an online store to be able to compete in PvP. Thats utter BS.

There are tons of "other things" threatening launch...

I would risk some money for having a PvP+ server but i am not sure how many will follow due to a lack of trust.

// Armar

 

What are they selling that is required to be able or competetive in PvP or at all???

 

I've been hanging around Soltown trying to get a feel of the state of new players. Most are running around with incomplete armor. The one that was fully geared in plate belonged to a guild.

 

Why isn't there an equivalent of conflicting or complementary attunement in crafting ? How many skilled blacksmiths do you know of are equally good in chemistry (ie. alchemy ) or tailoring?

 

Its required to compete because if you dont use store stuff you can loose your armor and weapon. Right? So thats basicly a must for a regular PvP player. The problem is better solved by either making every one (flagged PvP+) fully lootable or make everything on your body unlootable but everything else lootable.

Increasing inventory management time (splitting stacks, loading trash) for PvPlers is the worst possible solution someone can come up with.

// Armar

 

I don't like any of the suggestions in this thread, if I may say so. Locking skills will not solve craft, you'll just have the active players with multiple accounts doing the same thing. More decay also seems excessive. And many don't want full loot, myself included. We need more players, period. Then there will me a market buying these things we're all crafting. In the mean time, they could create repeatable quests that take in some crafts to decrease the supply some, but it would have to be worthwhile.

 

My char only has trash on him after 30+ hours playtime but "i can live with that". I for sure cant afford to buy _anything_ from a vendor. Those rates did blow me away.

// Armar

 

You will always have those players but it still will have a positive effect on the economy. Limiting how many skills you can have in total makes crafting more meaningfull. I dont see why everyone should be able to do everything. Doesnt make any sense at all.

// Armar

 

I was in the same boat when I came back to play in R35 after skipping several releases. After I tried what passes for gathering in the game I gave up and bought raw materials from a much higher level player who could gather hundreds of wood or ore without a problem.

After crafting furniture and stuff for my row house and the public library in the POT where I live - my crafting skills are double my adventurer level LOL.

I never would have finished any of my construction projects had I relied on player vendors. Too expensive, some furniture were hard to find or too few. The economy is broken no doubt about it.

What adventurer level are you now? I'll be glad to help out if my blacksmithing /tailoring/carpentry skills are up to par (all at level 50 -70). No charge, it's Xmas

 

Afaik there are no negative effects Atunement related to diametral magic schools.
But it sure need to be!!!

 

Doesn't have anybody starter gear?
You cannot loose those afaik.

 

Indeed i still have some crappy starter gear You expect me to PvP with starter gear? I doubt that will result in a lot of success.

// Armar

 

LONG POST WARNING

TL;DR below

The biggest thing in SOTA's economy, is demand. If there is no demand, no matter how you twist it, nothing much will happen. Why there is no demand right now? - because there are no players to create that demand. I think that even though we are now in PU, they are still using us as testers and the economy is not the priority for them because game is not released yet. You can 'plan' the economy, but it often flops on it's face, since planning and an actual number of players and their demand will never be the same.

Port wanted to make crafted items of high quality very rare, well, they sort of achieved that, but as I've mentioned before, they often change one thing and don't balance anything that this thing affects. They just use their logs and go based on situation, which is absolutely a WRONG thing to do. The live data doesn't represent the possible outcomes and circumstances, it's just a raw data that shows how things are now.

It is clear by now, that we were never supposed to have hundreds of thousands and millions of gold on a single character. I can bury myself in text, by just going through all things that they have done and that negatively affected the game, not because changes were done, but because they never followed up on balancing all the other aspects of the game that this change affected. They just tell us that they go by their vision, but in reality they are burying the game deeper every time they change something and forget the connected to that change game elements. How many forms I can use to describe the same thing...

Then again, my opinion is just a point of view of one person. Some people love all these changes, but I don't believe they look at a whole picture.

So back to crafting - they made it very 'difficult' in a case that you have to invest a lot of time. Even to craft something that you can buy from the vendor for few hundred gold, you will spend hours harvesting the mats. So, in say 2 hours, you can make about 3500 gold, some people can make more, others less, depending on where you go and how beefy you are. Why they do that, you ask? To promote enhanced item repairs with COTOs. Keep reading.

There is simply no one to buy these items because, as OP mentioned, it's easier to craft your own, than make money and buy the crafted one, which often forces crafted to sell with a loss. Is that supposed to drive the crafter to play more, or drive them away from crafting in general, as in case with OP?

Port can fix things, I'll explain how and also will explain why they won't do this:

How to fix:
1 - Give equipment's "natural" life span (This will increase the demand and will promote the sales of the crafted items already on vendors)
2 - Monitor the vendor logs and allow currently placed equipment to be sold before making the next change
3 - Based on #1 and balanced to it, somewhat decrease crafting complexity and number of resources required to craft one piece of armor/weapon ( this will allow crafters to get their crafts back on vendors again, after the first round is sold)

Why they won't do it:
The COTOs are now involved in repairing the items. If the above changes are done, or anything made 'easier' for player, the demand for COTO will decrease, which decreases planned income to Port's budget. I am not saying it as a scorn, just pointing out the fact.

I personally find it quite messed up that they are trying to promote the value of the in-game special currency, by adjusting the core game mechanics not into the player's favor. One thing, is if you sell something for $$ on a cash store, and completely another, if you add a virtual currency in game and make the core game elements based on that currency. I don't believe any other game has done it as directly, as Port is trying to do it in SOTA. Any game element, affected by the value of COTO, will always be limiting to the player. Going forward, many people will ask themselves either they should buy another weapon for in-game gold, or spend COTOs to fix that weapon. Fortunately Port left us some slack by allowing gradual increase in how many COTOs have to be used in repair of enhanced items.

TL;DR
Loot, money, crafting, acquiring mats, deed tax, etc - all these and other things, either directly or indirectly affected by COTO are and will be limited to players, and will become even more limited to promote the importance of this special in-game currency that you can buy from the cash store. Even if you buy it from other players, eventually, the amount of COTOs that are now in game, will be spent on equipment repairs and paying tax deeds. Port has to make money off of players somehow, and since they want more than just cash store, they will be limiting game elements, making them more complex and time demanding, to promote the sales of the crowns for $.

So they won't really be fixing anything so to speak, they are balancing things in favor of the income, since if they don't required income, they won't be able to support the game any longer. As fewer players play the game, as more they push us, it seems, which I find it wrong too. Old school tough RPG in today's business model terms means - limiting game elements to promote something that devs can make money off of. I just don't understand why Port does it upside down. Usually, where there is a lot of players in game, things are a bit more tough to promote certain things. And when players start to leave, devs usually make things easier... So either Port hopes that a lot of player will join the game and then use their strategy to ease up on things, or they are struggling to balance things.

 

So after seeing these changes

• Recipe Discoverability Limited:
• Scaled Full Durability Repair Cost:

in an email about R37 I decided to come back to the forums to check on the progress of SOTA after taking a few months off and not really caring about this game mostly because of my concerns over the state of crafting and the game economy. And this is the thread that I've been looking for to get me caught up on the state of those systems. While it sounds like some babysteps are in the works to try to help (ie. the above changes), there still seems to be a long way to go.

A major component to the game economy was supposed to be crafters making items that were sold to npcs and then became part of the loot tables for adventurers to obtain then sell for gold to npcs/players. Where is that at? I haven't heard much about that system in a while. Another major component was the bonuses weapons/tools/etc could gain from excessive use doing the same tasks. When they finally broke, you would then take the broken item to a master player crafter to reforge the item to keep the bonus. Haven't heard much about that since COTOs started to be used to repair items.

I agree with much of what is laid out in this thread (everyone can make everything, need for crafting skill caps, better/faster gathering, more gold in economy to spend on crafted goods) that I won't expand on them. And I hope the devs take some of this thread into consideration. Crafting and the economy still have a LOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG way to go. I'll probably play a couple hours now and again and also visit the forums every so often but it looks like this game is going to remain on the backburner for me for a while longer.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant post. it is a little, but I really had high hopes for the crafting/economy side of this game when I bought in a couple years ago and currently its barely meeting minimum expectations.

 

A lot of people seem to be in the same boat, as you are, me including, sitting back and watching if they break a game completely, or actually make something more meaningful than drastic changes across the globe and alienation of the core game components.

 

Hang tough. I have a good feeling.

 

There is no loot
There is no economy

Until we get loot, what is the point?
I am not spending 8,000 coins on a crafted sword when all I am getting off one enemy killed is 12 gold.
So, ....
Kill 500 mobs to have enough for a cheap player crafted sword? No thanks.
Add to that, rent, repair, reagents etc and now you all know why the economy and much of the game is borked.
With no real loot system, how on earth does SoTa expect to keep players?

 

Thoughts to stimulate the economy

1. Make it necessary to buy something off of players in the first place

2. Make it necessary to buy something off of players in the first place


With NPC vendors supplying everything you need from armor to reagents, why bother buying off players?

Removing the NPC vendors would kickstart the economy in a hurry.

 

You need to pair this with making it more difficult for everyone to just craft what they need for themselves. It is way to easy too be 100% self sufficient

 

If its so easy for everyone to make everything, I want someone to make me a 5 enchant, 5 masterwork meteoric heavy round shield with 6 dex 6 int, 4 str, both block MW, avoidance MW and both damage resistance MW. I also want this same person so make me a carapacian cloth chest piece with 5 enchant 5 MW 6 dex, 6 int, and deftness gem proc, avoidance MW, int MW, both damage resistance MW and 20 health. I also want this same person to make me a 1hd bludgeon weapon with 5 MW on it and as many enchants as possible. Is there a single player in the game who can accomplish this? Can anyone yet even get the 5th enchant or MW on anything? What level does your skill need to be to have a 5% chance to get the 5th enchant or MW? This is when you need specialists. For one person to be able to do all that is going to be insane.

The real reason things are not selling is its hard to make enough coin to buy the stuff. As well, most people selling crafted gear are selling the garbage stuff, things with 10 focus and a few abilities that are not exactly what the person wants. As well, you have people like me who just make gear for guildies and give it to them. They have no need to buy your stuff, we have crafters in the guild who make our stuff. Even if you limit the crafting skills allowed, this is going to happen. Don't make it sound so easy for one person to make awesome gear, because its not.