A bit of criticism - Part I?

I am compelled this morning to put out a few harsh words about the direction of some aspects of the game.

Now for the most part I'm fairly content but I must bring a few things up if for no other than to not regret doing so later.

Economy & Currency

Now I know there has been talk (but no firm commitment) about going multi-tier. Which I fully support.

My problem with the current state of the economy lies mainly with the prices and perception of "gold" as a single coin currency which began from its first day with artificially inflated prices. Most of which have not changed notably since merchants were introduced.

The accumulation of wealth is one of the driving factors of grinding. Grinding is what generates wealth in the game as mobs drop gold and merchants still have an unlimited supply of gold to buy whatever junk mobs drop.
People need this to meet the artificially high prices set on merchants.. and even more so from players who set insanely high prices on goods.. and these high prices become the standard because that's the perceived value of 'gold' as a single tier coin.

So already we have insanely high prices on goods and players who feel they can justify those prices because the hardcore player can pull in thousands of gold every day.

In short:

1: Merchants pay too much
2: Mobs drop too much

Prices MUST come down! I'm talking rock bottom as low as they possibly can.

If you want to control long term inflation it's generally a bad idea to start with an heavily inflated currency.

Just as a small example. I saw a single meal the other day on a vendor priced at 1,600 GOLD.. for a single meal. Just take at by itself outside the context of any game. 1,600 gold coins.. for ONE meal. Or even let's say this.. $1,600 for one meal. Does that sound right to anyone?

As an example of where prices should be.. garlic.. which if VERY common and used in not only spells, but also alchemy and cooking.. should never cost more than 1 or 2 coin.. especially if that coin is made of GOLD.

Ask yourself what would these things really be worth in real currency..

Now I recognize the economy is far from finished.. but if something isn't done the artificially inflated value of currency will be locked in before you know it.

Unfortunately, I'm rapidly running out of time. There's a lot more I want to get off my chest so this will have to be a multi-part rant. This will have to do for now..

 

I really can't agree with mobs dropping too much. And regarding that single meal... if it was made with Phoenix parts I think the price is fair.

 

What's wrong with a meal costing 1.6K GP? It's rather relative to the amount of gold people made. I don't think people will be happy to see they getting 5 GP from killing 500 HP elven warrior either.

 

"Gold" has an expectation in our minds as something of value. That expectation should always be considered, because, while innovation is important to any developing game, there are some concepts that transcend attempts to redefine them .

If the currency was called "Copper", this argument against inflated prices wouldn't be happening.

So, we are expected to just accept that gold just isn't as "valuable" in Novia as it is on earth, maybe because it is more plentiful.

But why buck common expectation? My only thought is that more "exotic" forms of currency will be introduced at a later time. But, why reinvent the wheel?

 

You're only helping to make my point.. a single yen is NOT gold but is a single tier currency. 1 yen is like saying 1 penny.

Try to look at the bigger picture here.

One of the largest complaints we see on the forums is grind, grind, grind.. why must we grind? One reason.. is to earn enough gold to meet basic needs.. This is also a chief complaint in regards to the cost of reagents and to a lesser degree repairs. Continuing down this path will add food to the list.

Prices are high because

1: It's too easy for some players to earn a lot..
2: Merchants are currently unlimited gold faucets..
3: Merchant prices began high to begin with.

All of which drives the value of currency down and prices up.

 

Remember a few months ago people went on full nerd rage when the loot prices were reduced down to 40-60%. At this point it seems the 10-20 gp drop on corpse and 40-80 gp from selling each item to the merchant. Starr ended up getting his team to change the sell to merchant value back up. Taken away would just make people angry again. As far as the price for food, I was able to buy a bunch of them for less than 200 GP before the food buff occurred. So it seems to be more likely the case of players are marking the price up to take advantage of the new demand.

Once things are more settled, the price should be where it should be IMO. If it's gonna be 1.6k GP each, then so be it. However, not many people may want to spend that much gold on the buff that goes away when they die. So the demand may go down eventually and the seller will have to reduce the price before it meets the equilibrium.

 

I believe it was a tier 3 meal.. but work with me a little here. Even if it were dragon stew the benefit doesn't justify the high cost unless the currency itself isn't valued highly. As previously stated.. if it were 1,600 copper it's be a different story.. that's more like.. 16 gold.

But perception is only part of the issue..

Portalarium is compounding the problem. Rather than making adjustments like bringing costs down on merchants.. they're creating additional gold faucets to make it even easier to flood the markets with gold. 100 gold just for visiting a new town crier? Daily gold for visiting the Oracle? What the heck is that??? That's not a solution. It's a short term dirty fix that will only encourage long term inflation.

 

Yeah, it seems a little weird that we have Gold Piece and also also gold ingots, which they are valued differently.

 

Which is why it's better to do it sooner than later. Caving in to that kind of pressure during pre-release is not good design.. not if you want to really fix problems. Granted starting with high prices was probably a mistake to begin with.

No argument here. The 1.6k price tag was just an example of perception. But players also have a tendency to keep driving prices up.. especially if currency input allows for it.

 

I wont touch on this too much, but you need a better example then * someone stuck food up for this amount *.
People were selling fero wolf spiders for 15 -25k . I stick them up for 7k.

Just because someone listed a meal at 1600, does not mean thats the value of it. Where that player THINKS the value of that food is, is not relavent. You can list spiders for 15k all day, and maybe someone will buy it. But then you have someone like me come in, set a more realistic value to it, and everyone else either needs to adjust, or not sell.
Im willing to bet no one bought that 1600gp food. So how can you claim that was the value of it?

I think more then anything, being able to perma repair gear, is why market is high. People arnt selling things, becausr ill spend the extra week to make it myelf.. and once i do i never need to get a new copy of it. Theres also 0 cap on crafting which is redicoulous. So is that 1600 gp food going to sell if i can make 50x of it myself?

Lets be honest. None of that redicoulously high priced vendored gear is actually selling to any casual players. There might be a few hardcores exchanging bundles of money but.. heh

Ive under cut prices hard, but because theres 0 repeat market.. thats why the economy sucks.

- fix loot tables.
- add real advantages to having high end masterworking.
- find a balance where gear isnt permenent without bankrupting people.
- either make a crafting cap so people actully need to interact with other crafters or their goods for sale / or -
Make the advantages enough it takes real devotion to get high end items.
- consider reduced durability useage chance on making or something by gm smiths or as a gm masterworking bonuse that comes with exceptional crafts.

- agian. theres no reason to buy things after the first week into the game, and when u do, you almost never need to agian. what market?

Im sure i could go on but i wont.

 

Just because someone is selling them at that price doesn't make them worth it for that cost or even if they are getting any sales at that cost. In perspective my best level 5 food is selling for 175gp...a fair price where i make minimum amount profit really. You can see this all over with prices, there is some insane prices out there and i personally if i see any vendor with anything like an inflated price wont buy anything off that vendor as i cant trust them to be selling at a fair price on any of their items. Sme vendor is selling some nice bows in Owls head at the moment, great +11 things and i quite fancied but at a ridiculous price of 80-150k...when i looked more at the items, one of them had only 11 durability, and its not even that good, my bow is just as good with 80+ durability...They wont be getting any of my custom...ever due to that stunt.

All my items, pets included i offer at a reasonable price, usually at least 2-3 times less what they are in somewhere like Owls head, and that's on a fair price for Owls head.


I do agree with you on drops and gold and vendors though. If i had my way vendors wouldn't buy anything, or sell anything, it would all be player made and sold, but in order for that to be viable, all resources and crafting materials etc need to be found/made in game, and more options for player vendors to be able to advertise and get custom will make places like Owls head and silly priced vendors compete, they don't have to at the moment as its such a chore going anywhere else to shop.

 

I didn't claim that was the value of it.. I claimed someone perceived the value of currency was such that they felt that price was justified.

You're assuming all players are willing to do what it takes to be self sufficient. First off, if that were true then it's another thing to be critical of.. if crafting is so easy everyone is willing to do it.. But it takes a special kind of player to spend a week just to make 1 set of gear. The majority of players don't want to do that. Which leaves them at the mercy of crafters.

This leads into another topic I'm generally unhappy with.. at least in the original approach intended which was to be artificially inflated repair costs over time.. which I've always hated the idea of.. but eventually there's supposed to be a mechanism to force you to replace your gear.

 

Again the point was in regards to perception of the value of gold currency. There will always be players who try to get away with massively over priced goods.. but it wouldn't even be conceivable if the value of the currency itself was thought to be high. Unfortunately, it seems far too easy to find overpriced goods and much harder to find vendors like yours.

 

People power - drop your prices folks, see what happens?

I don't buy food, personally I think the buff obtained versus the disproportionate price isn't worth it. Now if the price were fair, I would stock up for the marginal benefits. I may even dip into the market more for upgraded kit and weps if it wasn't 9000 gold for a +8 sword with a tiny benefit.

By the way, a question - for us poor, down at heel, non-property owning underclass; does the price automatically offered by the public market trader reflect and actual average or trend with public market prices? If so and it works, should not market forces deal with this over time?

I have a theory that the property owning classes with their NPC vendors are cornering and inflating the market. No one is putting good gear on the public vendors (possibly understandably), so you have to go to a private vendor for anything of any real quality and you often get stung.

 

That's the issue of it all in short. I don't even go looking for good vendors in POT's or PRT's or even NPC towns, because 99% of the time you don't find what you are looking for, most people don't bother to have a vendor as people don't visit, and thus people don't visit because no one has vendors, catch 22..... I know we will never get but runes and marking allowed, but it encouraged exploration, and vendors in all manner of non-prime spots. What we have now is a fractured populace with too many POT's and towns for the reward to be worth the effort for a merchant or a shopper. Thus Owls Head rules over, and the capitalistic %*£$ can get away with robbery..well not me i wont buy diddly from there....hmm...did buy a Ferocious Red yesterday for a tidy price mind , but i did look all over first and couldn't find any and it is for an experiment to see if worth training up the rest of taming to get my own.....But they will get nothing more ever...promise...unless of course i got no choice...and that's the meat of the sandwich...give merchants and shoppers more choice somehow and prices will be fairer and players will be happier

 

Looting (and selling to merchants) doesn't create much wealth if you're trying to pay taxes on a larger lot :/ That requires a lot of grinding time. But, yes, if you're living tax-free or on a row lot you can save up a lot.

 

Thank you for bringing us back to what originally prompted me to post.. Grinding. One of the leading drivers behind the need to grind is accumulating enough wealth to meet basic needs. Largely due to the high price of consumables and property taxes. It's always a tough balance but it would be better for the initial balance at "commercial release" to be low rather than high.

There will always be those who grind for wealth when they don't need it.. but many players would rather not and feel they're forced to. Especially casual players or players who'd rather RP more. I'm not advocating making things very easy but Portalarium has regularly said in the past that they don't want to be grind centric (paraphrasing), which is exactly what the current economic conditions encourage. It should not be frustrating for any player beyond a certain reasonable difficulty, to earn just enough to meet basic needs.

The time and place for a higher challenge are for those players seeking higher achievement. If you're just trying to have a modest home and get by day to day.. that shouldn't be a daily frustration.

 

Most of that is more because we're in pre-release. I know all too well the effects of a large world without the population to fill it with no centralized location to bring folks together. But that isn't something that's going to have much effect on how players price their goods. I've seen enough of that over the years as well.. it is not a SotA specific issue but one of player nature in combination with the state of the currency. Those who have a lot think less of spending more and there's a disconnect between that and those who have a hard time earning as much. Thus they price according to their own expectations. There aren't enough market factors and specifically not enough merchants like yourself to really drive those prices down to reasonable levels.

I have to disagree on recalls.. they don't encourage exploration.. they discourage it. Too many people would rather just buy a recall ruin and have free fast travel while ignoring everything in between.

 

Is there a player-run website showing what npc vendors offer from their craftsmen masters? It's a drag running all over Novia randomly clicking on the myriad of obscurely named private vendors right now. I partly agree with what Bowen implies above about the current player pop; I guess over time I will remember who offers what and where, but it is currently a time wasting pain.

For the total realists, who want no 'gamey' assists, I appreciate that in reality I would have to travel widely and ask many tradesmen to finally get that special item... But this is a game, I think, and surely some assists aren't totally sacrosanct? How about a Town Craftsman notice board?

 

from what ive seen theres no market cornerd. public vendors generally have everything. people use it because people dont look at other players vendors. very few people are actually going around looking for specific things on player vendors.
So no, what you see on public kinda states the price of things. THAT BEING SAID, check multiple public vendors. Ardoris compared to Owls head is a different ball game. I dont even waste time browsing in owls head anymore because the perceived value of stuff is hilarious.

And heres the thing. because everyone can and is doing everything. your grinds are going to yield x amount of resources. even not going after wood, i still end up with enough to do a few bows here n there every few days. so my point was more, without any real extra effort, you can get a +6 bow yourself.. that works till your well past 5skull areas. And by time your past THAT point, you have another 10 or 15 attempts from just accumulated wood and such.

I think theres like 15 or 16 people i play with regularily. Between all of us i bet you weve bought maaaybe 2 peices of gear off someones vendor.

When i first started out it was me and 1 buddy, we self geared as it was easier then coming up with what people wanted for it. so really the underlaying issue, is until they fix or come up with a permenent degrade of gear or something to make me have to buy new stuff once in a while, theres no economy/ trade.

Even if you did dabble in the market and get a +9 sword, for lets say 5k. you will have 0 reason to ever buy a new one. so it doesnt matter if the other swords were a good value on that personal vendor. *shrug* hense why people stick up ludacris prices and never look at the vendor agian