Economy - My Deep Dive Version

From watching last telethon what is an economy deep dive for the dev team :
- how many cotos got bought or sold ( sold by the game)
- how many reagents got sold ...coal, creosote,wax..so on ( sold by the game)
- and some new boar recipes coming in the game.

Everyone seem very pleased about how the economy is going, inflation seemed to be under control or so we were told.


My version .

Economy is not about cotos , or reagents or store bought items and resold ... economy is and should be about what people craft and if they are able to sell their stuff for a profit.

The way i see it we have 3 categories in the game : Fighters, miners, crafters. You can be all 3 , but you cant do all 3 at the same time. These 3 categories rely on each other to provide need it goods. A fighter goes and kill stuff like dragon and sells the neckbones to a crafter for bone armor who in turn sells the armor back to the fighter. A miner sells his ore to the crafter who in turn provides the miner with gear to kill stuff faster so he can mine faster. Win, win for everyone. Once you break this chain economy goes down also.

Recent aditions to the game seem to bury the economy more and more....everything is losing value at an alarming rate , but that doesnt seem to be a concern for the dev team.

Lets take the artifact market ... the horde of supply bundel crashed the market on this one:
- Attunement rings used to sell for 50k now they are 20k-25k
- Crossbow of accuracy sold a few for 75k now they are 15k
And i could go on and on ..point is even at these low prices they dont sell anymore.

Wood market :
Wood used to sell at 50k /1000 , then sieges came along price stabilised at around 40k now i buy wood at 20k-25k easily . more then 50% loss.

Ore market :
Silver ore/ Gold Ore used to move at 50k/55k -1000 ore , now its gone down to 40k- for gold/silver ore and 40k for copper , iron ore... it will go to 35k , maybe even lower ,in a month or two ( that is my prediction, doesnt take much to figure it out)

Now to the most important part of the game Crafted Gear


Some may not think so but the game its all about THE GEAR... everything you do in the game turns into gear. Killing boses like Torc or phoenix or dragon result into components which in turn result into crafted gear... and gear does matter..A LOT.

I mentioned that chain earlier fighter gets components , sells to crafters, who in turn make armors or weapons to sell back ..same for miners. Lets take a look at how easy it is to break that chain and what the consequences are for the crafting economy.

Not long ago Elisium mine was remade ..everyone wanted an empty mine, '' im a miner , i wanna go there to mine not to fight'', and the devs listened. What was the impact on the economy ?

I dont know how many people spend their time in elysium but if its the same as before..probably alot. I remember in first version of elysium pulling like 400 ore/ hour. To do that i need it best gear , to kill stuff fast,so i can mine faster, i need it best speed to cover the large areas faster , that meant artifacts like fleet flute a must... being an efficient miner in the old version meant best gear and especially very good weapons.

The new elisium version . I can still pull 400 ore/hour... i no longer need best gear, i no longer need best weapons....theres like 1 archer and 2 ghosts standing between me and the nodes. Ill probably change my armor once a year...never if its bone armor..ill change my weapons after months of use instead of weeks.
This new version sounds much better no ?

Well lets look at it more closely , if you keep pulling more ore without the need of gear from a crafter..your ore price will go down, because crafter gear keeps piling up on vendors , he wont craft anymore till its sold, so he wont buy your ore ...that means your ore price will keep going down.

Its just an example how easy it is to break The chain and remove a big chunk of players (miners) from the crafting market all together.

Lets talk crafted items .

I dont know about other people but i myself preffer quality over quanity , that means higher failure rate when im crafting ...but even so i still end up with thousands of crafted items sitting in my chests... between this and the failed crafts ... what the hell am i gonna do with all these items ?? Thousands... Just last month bought like 30k wood for my wands... 100 plus ashen hearts (1 mil plus). tons of ore ... to craft good stuff so im sorry but i really dont like it when dev team tell players not to worry about gear, gear doesnt matter much.
So what do we do with all hundred of thousands of gear stockpiling on vendors ? It seems in the future masterwork will no longer destroy item..that would mean a whole lot more junk entering the economy. Is anyone in the dev team looking for a solution to this ? I can suggest one if not .
Give us runes :
Salvage a lvl 1 sword get a 1% success chance for masterwork/enchant rune
Salvage a lvl 5 sword get a 5% success chance rune
Salvage a lvl 10 sword get a 10% success chance rune
This will clean out vendors , recycle items back into crafting... 10 weak items can help create 1 stronger item , once this chain is created there will be no more junk items and everything will be usable.

Or give us repeatable quests where we can turn in items and get craft xp.. turn in a lvl 5 item get xx amount craft xp , turn in a lvl 15 item get more xp..make it worth while so people actually use this feature.

Lets take a look at the progresion in the crafting system :

Apparently the dev team is currently considering specialising for crafters. Very good i dont mind. but specialising means probably another tree where players will drop their xp. What do we do with the current crafting skills we have . We are long past the point where lvl 100 crafter meant something people are going for higher level and noticing there is nothing there..the improvements are almost non existent...you drop 50 mil xp into a craft skill and you get ...0.2 increase

How does a bad crafting progression affect the game. People dont lvl anymore ...no more need for ore - ore price goes down or people just stop at x lvl and branch out in other trees produce more items ...stockpile more on vendors then they just stop until they sell theyr stuff...if it doesnt sell they will lower prices until it barely cover material costs... but by then everyone is doing it... they will still end up not selling.

To summarize :

- Crafted stuff should be the engine of the economy ...
-Dont introduce features in the game that purposely devalues the markets.
-Fix leveling progression in crafting - getting 10 levels higher should really matter.
-Give us something else to do with the items we craft if selling them is not an option (due to bad enchants/masterworks, bad durability or other things that can make an item not wanted)

Funny how the only thing so far that maintained or increased its value are store items (cotos, lots, so on)while everything else in the game keeps going down. Can we work on finding a balance here ??

Gonna end this post here.. for now

 

Prices of raw materials (ore, wood, etc) is lower now.
Prices of crafted items is lower now.
Prices of dropped items is lower now.

I don't see a problem. The negative price movement exists in all aspects of the market. That's a healthy economy. Plus, it allows more people to buy from the economy, rather than being priced out.
More people in the market = more sales. So, rather than selling 1 Sword of Uberness for 100k, you end up selling 3-4 swords of uberness for 35k, which works out better for all.

You would have a problem if one segment of the economy shifted (one way or the other), but the other segments remained the same.

 

Prices go down and up and down i agree..... Prices keep going down only - not what i would call a healthy economy.

 

I couldn't agree more with this statement and your entire post in general. I also think COTOS have really hurt crafters because they are an easy fix for me to maintain my UBER gear, but I'll get to that.

Using myself as an example, an adventurer non-crafter, who plays maybe 2-3 hours a week. Gear is HIGHLY importantant! Thanks to my dear friend @Sara Dreygon I have a full set of Obsidian Plate (stats range from +8 to +10) and a +8 Obsidian sword. This gear serves two purposes, one to make me look like a bad ass in all black , but it also allows me to adventure solo in areas I really have no business being in (AL 74). On top of that, I bought a necklace from @By Tor that boosted my AL +5 which jacked up my HP even further! I can kill trolls all by myself now, like a big boy !

Now, after the initial gold dump into buying these items I have not spent a single penny on any new gear. I buy COTOS off vendors or from the add-on store so I can keep on repairing my items without ever having to worry about losing them. Don't get me wrong, this is great for me, but it definitely comes with a price. One, I had to have the money to buy them, which took a long time. Some casual/new players may not be able to afford these items, hence high inventory and low sales. Two, since players can use COTOS for full repairs, crafters need to charge more to break even due to lack of sales and the high costs associated with making the item.

It's a vicious cycle to be sure. Crafting, IMHO, simply sucks. It's so tedious and frustrating I give major kudos to anyone out there that does it. Moreover, it makes absolutely no sense that I need to chop down ten trees to make a chair or a wand, for example. Increase resource amounts per node and do it significantly. Gatherers would hate that because it would drive down prices tremendously, but it would also make the costs associated with crafting less. This in turn would translate to cost savings to the consumer. It's not a perfect fix, but it's a start. Just my thoughts, for what they are worth.

 

I think the biggest hindrance to have a healthy economy at this time is the fact that gear lasts too long. That means people don't really need to buy gear that often, and when they do there is almost no reason to purchase mid level gear. There is only two reasons to get heavily into crafting at this time and one is that you just want to craft your own stuff for specific needs and two is just because you enjoy being a crafter/trader. If you want money you will always be better off selling the raw materials at this time.

To put it short. The ease at which gear goes into the economy is GREATLY superior to the speed at which it gets removed.

 

I agree with the problems, i have some suggestions:

1) Make weapons and armors unrepairable by COTO; (You can use repair kits till 10 durability then use a COTO and restart the process, it harm the crafting skills)
2) Set a limit of 5 repairs per item with repair kits; (Gear least almost forever in this game, no chance of having a good market for crafted itens if you only will change your gear every 1000 hours of gameplay)
3) Make the refining/crafting process more quick; (Because the benefit of the time you spent don´t worth if you need a huge time sink in those activities)
4) Grandmaster crafters should have a higher excepcional sucess rate; (for example 100 in carpentry give you a 35% excepcional chance... 120 ... 40% ... 140...50%)
5) Grandmaster masterworkers should have an option to increase the max durability (30 at level 100..... 40 at level 120...... 50 at level 140);
6) Higher the enchant/masterwork higher the sucess chance (the sucess chance of the 3th and 4th enchant/masterwork is steady, about 45% and 15% since skill level 80.... above 100 this should raise a little bit, for example 1% each 3 skill point)

 

You do know that COTO repairs after the first cost more COTOs, right? The way it is right now, you would have to have some really uber gear to be worth giving it 5 full repairs with COTOs.

 

I think he meant 5 repairs max with repair kits.

 

correct

 

Is this a new change Elwyn? It used to cost only one COTO for a full item repair.

 

I agree coto repairs affect crafters alot, a person buying a chest armor instead of buying another piece after a month or so , he just uses 1 coto to make it brand new basically buying that armor again for just 3.5k gold. Then after another month has passed he can do it again granted with less repair efect but still totally worth it. The coto repair is a really bad apple for the crafting community. Problem is if it gets removed how badly will it affect port revenue streams , if they lose money means development money . Cant really be partial here. They have choices to make give the crafting economy a 100% boost in sale at the cost of real money income... or leave it as it is ....and black hole will just deepen. Even with new players coming the number of items will just keep on piling up on vendors. They cant control how much we produce but they can control how quickly items dissapear from the economy...so far they havnt created any means to achieve that lvl of control for crafted items.

 

I keep having to say this because people trying to examine the economy of this game fail to notice it, the most basic of factors. There are not enough people participating in this economy to yield any value from analyzing it. This is for two reasons:

1 - Minimal new players becoming a part of the economy (not playing the game, playing it to the point where they engage with non-NPC's to spend gold consistency and with enough volume to be significant.)

2 - Supply and Demand is completely and totally out of proportion to the point where even mentioning these terms in the context of SOTA's economy is almost not even worth doing. I keep saying it's the last time I'll explain this, but here we go again:

Why is supply and demand not relevant here?

Progress has been counting over a year and a half. During which (insert whatever term you'd like to use which really means exploit)'s were available to the playerbase in many forms and fashions that were -heavily- utilized. Exploit doesn't mean, in this context, violating the rules or mechanics of the game. It means using what exists in the game efficiently to make more resources than anyone with a brain capable of objective thought would deem safe or reasonable.

Super efficient farming routes. OP taming at launch. Swapping sessions/multi/friends only, etc. to force faster respawns. Straight up item duplication.

And of course, RMT (real money) transactions of players abandoning the game, selling their assets in bulk and then those assets being dumped into the economy, instantly, by anyone willing to drop real $ on them to save time/tedious game play. Some of this stuff has been ridiculously cheap at times when handfuls of well-established players dumped a ton of stuff within a few days of each other.

TL/DR

Supply at this moment is essentially infinite thanks to:
- Progress for over half a year building up a surplus of goods for players that have never shown up to buy them.
- RMT allowing players to acquire vast amounts of digital wealth, quickly, with zero in-game effort required.
- Many, many ways to exploit the game and obtain resources.

Demand is non-existent thanks to:
- Minimal influx of new players sticking with the game long enough to earn and spend currency regularly.
- Many dedicated players undertook crafting as their main role/out of boredom. Current mechanics (how you gain xp through gathering your own resources, how you'll make most of what you'd want to buy while you level crafting, etc.)
- Significant amounts of gold available for insignificant amounts of real currency.
- Tedious gameplay has made people turn to external sources instead of tedious grinding in game. What they earn in an hour at their job, and how much in-game [resources] it can buy blows away anything anyone could earn in-game in the same amount of time.

How can it be fixed?

TL/DR
It can't be.

Actual solutions:
-I do not know of any economic principles which can be applied to fix this.
-We would need the players with the most wealth to essentially take those resources out of the market forever - nobody in their right mind would do this unless they're allergic to money and success.
-Nothing involving inflation. Want to know when someone who doesn't know about economics is trying to dissect this economy? They mention inflation as a problem or solution. This economy is so out of whack that the buying power of in-game currency isn't even something you'd consider when attempting to fix it.
-Wipe the game and start over. This should not, can not, and will not happen. If SOTA ever wipes again, for any reason, it's game over. It will be destroyed in the press and those who have spent over a year setting up their in-game RMT purchases will now have to do it all over again.

What about that second point, create a sink for the players with all the wealth to spend it. That's the perfect solution - too bad nothing like this can exist without HEAVILY penalizing the players that worked hard to get what they have, OR making newcomers feel like they're going to need years to catch up (most will quit when faced with this realization, nobody likes to feel they're starting significantly behind others).

If you know economics at all, I've left something out and you're (possibly already) getting ready to post about it.

The guaranteed solution to this is time, and a massive influx of players that will eventually create enough demand to even out the supply. This will take no less than the amount of time it took to get us here, and no less than tens of thousands of new people playing SOTA almost daily, long enough to become significant entities in this economy. They will eat up the RMT market as its individual surplus is finite and will disappear eventually if enough people get into the game.

This isn't a one time number of 10k concurrent players. This is thousands of people constantly playing the game AND getting far enough into it. Thousands of players playing five hours a week will not fix this economy.

I'm just going to cut and paste this the next time another blah blah economy here's my fix post comes up. The economy in this game has been destroyed. It will only be fixed by tens of thousands of people flocking to the game and progressing far enough in it to actually require significant resource consumption for them to continue playing.

Groan. This post is way longer than I wanted it to be.

 

i forgot this suggestion:


6) Higher the enchant/masterwork higher the sucess chance (the sucess chance of the 3th and 4th enchant/masterwork is steady, about 45% and 15% since skill level 80.... above 100 this should raise a little bit, for example 1% each 3 skill point)

 

That's pretty much what everyone is saying, except you are wrong that it can't be fixed because there are very easy ways to either increase demand or decrease supply.

 

Sounds to me like the market is "stabilizing", and the "price fixers" are getting upset about how a "Free market" is supposed to work... Competition and gluts is what drives pricing down... Players over farm an item to form a "Glut", now competition sets in and the price falls, then demand is gone... Sounds pretty normal to me...

 

@TheBalance an influx of new players is good for the economy but it don´t solve the problem, a new guy could spend some IGG in a good gear and play a whole year. A small city for example can have a wealthy economy because there are a steady demand for general goods, in real life you are always buying food, clothes etc.

 

Are there numbers available that some of us may have missed, showing that most gear rarely gets replaced by folk?

I have had to replace my gear quite frequently, granted very little of what I wear has exceptional durability.

 

If this was targeted to me you got me , so many players out there investing milions of gold into making wands i cant keep up with them anymore...please name me one single vendor where you can find more then 10 good wands like you can find on my wand vendor in novia.

 

i grind a lot in this game, my bronze chainmail chest is the same since 2350 hours of gameplay..... now i have 2800.. i have made 3 major repairs and hundreds of simples ones...

 

Consider this - how many a.lvl 80-90+ have stacks (300/400/500+) of materials around? New player ends up in your guild say level 20, and they have true 'spawned into the world' starter gear. How easy would it be to make them +4-+6 gear with mats on hand? heck spread it out. 7 people in guild donate mats to get them basic/entry armor. Not rares, just copper/iron, cotton/leather (depending on playstyle) and enchant/mw it.