Game Economy

I think in general the game economy is broken.

I like the idea of allowing players total freedom of choice with respect to crafting, however, it also creates an environment for self sufficiency which affects overall trade. Why buy potions when they drop like rain or can be made easily for yourself with minimal effort. Pretty much the same for nearly all consumables in the game from repair kits, to scrolls and potions.

Looking at potions, many are fundamentally useless. The Haste Potion could be a very useful potion but it lasts for 1 1/2 minutes. Who is going to purchase a potion which basically lasts for one battle? It is the same for many of the potions. I have hundreds of them in the bank which are more trouble to use than their value. Sure, they have value when attacking a group mob, but not so much for continued use.

The developers could help the players and economy if they would focus on making some of these consumables actually worth the time to the player. If Haste lasted for 10-15 minutes, it would be a very nice potion. Perhaps adding a skill to alchemy which would extend the timer on key potions would be a huge benefit to the player economy. And the ability for the Alchemist to increase the duration should not be something easily achieved. It should only be achievable for a player committed to the Alchemy profession.

Honestly, the developers should be working on game features which improve game play. All of the rusty spoons, ceramic bowls and wooden mugs now dropping from mobs is a total waste of developer time and player time. Is there really someone out there happy about all of the junk drops which were added to the game? To me they take more time to weed through than they are worth. Just my opinion, I am sure.

Soryu

 

I agree with your points. There is a trade off in design between creating a working economy and allowing players the freedom to be self sufficient.

To me, a well functioning economy adds so much value to the game so I would like to push it more in that direction. But others really value their freedom to be self sufficient and they will argue against it.

There are also problems with supply and demand which goes deeper. A lot of people want to be crafters because it's a big part of the game. But the demand for goods is only a fraction of what this over sized collective of crafters can make. More specialization would indeed help this problem, but not erase it. There will still be many more people who want to be blacksmiths than what is actually needed to outfit the whole population, and same for other crafting schools. To get better balance, we would have to somehow limit the number of crafters (how?) or make it even more resource and time consuming (won't be popular, and for good reason).

 

The number of crafters are effectively limited by the decision to have many of the recipes only available as drops. We had one guy in our guild who could make carapacian straps but not carapacian spools because he didn't have the recipe for them. Its this more than anything that is driving away people from starting crafting. Essentially the people who you have crafting now is the limit, new players coming into the game simply can't compete and many give up on the idea of being a crafter.

 

The crafting economy is seriously out of whack. Raw materials still sell for considerably more than any finished products. Making things not blow up hasn't made a big difference here, we just end up with a lot of half-made junk that nobody wants that you can't even give away. The randomness is the problem, and until that's addressed, gear-for-profit will not be a thing.

With consumables, the problem isn't so much that "everyone can make them" its that most of them aren't very good. Once you get past "low level" potions in combat isn't really useful, they don't heal enough to be worth the time it takes to execute them, generally. While there is a small market for food and poisons, its pretty saturated, and most people can as you say, self-sufficiency their way through what they need.

The big issue I see is that 90% of the consumables there is zero demand. People will eat the +5 and +3 stat foods, and the dragon food, but other than that, all the other recipes are pretty worthless. The nicest healing potions have their place, but aren't generally necessary for everyday grind. And now even with these consumables, we see the same pattern - raw materials sell for considerably more than finished products because now the exp is worthwhile.

Other than a complete economic revamp, the simplest thing to do would be to look at all the things that people never eat/make/use and re-think the effects.

I do like the suggestion of a high lvl alchemist/cook having more potent effects, but the reality is getting these skills to 80 requires very little effort. If they did something terrible, like limit how many crafts a player could learn, people would simply make alts to retain their self sufficiency.

 

Yes, it's harsh for new players. But the number of crafters is already too large for it to be profitable.

10 dedicated blacksmiths could make the metal weapons and armor needed for the whole population. In the real world, 200 more people wouldn't just decide to be blacksmiths when there is no need, because then they would starve. But in SOTA they can and they will, because it's how they enjoy playing. The result is that everyone will have to sell at a loss or have the items just sit on the vendor. Compared to all the resources a crafter will spend on making unsellable items or sell them at a loss, paying 10k each for recipes is just a small beginning.

I really think that this basic problem is not solved at all by making crafting less random or increasing the power of items. Making new uses for crafters, like more potions or removing scrolls from drops etc. could help a little I agree, but not change all that much.

Edit: I realize I sound like doom and gloom. I still enjoy playing and crafting though. It's just that I think there is no quick fix for the economy because it works different in a game than in reality. We play for fun, not for profit.

 

You're absolutely right re: the supply and demand thing. Its been a problem since day 1. Making crafters rely 100% on a player market that is simply insufficient to sell wares, makes crafting inherently unprofitable.

The simplest, easiest solution would be to make it possible to earn money from NPCs "the gold faucet" for crafting as an alternative to adventuring. Perhaps at slightly less potential gold gain per hour compared to fighting due to the lack of risk. There used to actually be a few ways to do this, but they were quickly stamped out because it was called "printing money". I have never understood why the objection to players "printing money" crafting, but its fine to go and kill 1000 mobs, take their rusty weapons, and sell them to a blacksmith who never runs out of gold. You would think that crafted goods would be worth more to the npc, not less, but alas, we are where we are.

If the npc sale value of crafted commodities was adjusted to a slight profit position, crafters could ply their trade, sell the junk, and save the nice items for player consumption instead of bloating every vendor for miles with the same garbage that nobody wants. The only real argument I saw against this was "people would macro." So ban macroers, what is the problem? That starts a whole different argument over why you make something so boring and repetitive that people will run a script rather than play the game...like, I dunno, needless refining timers and tedious chores like drawing water buckets one at a time...just poor ideas, really.

Time equals money. I think crafting is just as worthy a use of a player's time and should have a similar payout. As it is, a crafter must also adventure just as much to even be able to afford to level crafting and there's no reason to do so if your eventual goal is profit - just sell raws, job done. For those players to whom crafting is an important part of gameplay, this is somewhat face slappy.

 

In regards to potions, most are useless. Haste Potions, Smelling Salts, Cure Poison, Cure Plague....all vendor fodder. Healing and Focus potions...useful when starting out.
To use a potion, you need to pop it onto your combat hot bar. Who is going to do that when combat actions are limited and you often have too many skills to put on your bar in the first place?

In regards to raw materials being worth more than refined and finished products... yea, that's totally true. That probably stems from the need of so many raw materials to make items, and the intrinsic "grindy-ness" of gathering raw materials; it's long, laborious, time-intensive and tedious. This is reflected in the final price.

 

Technically, it would be hard to scale potions/food according to the crafter level because, with the system as it is, one +5,6 health food could not stack with the same food which has a +5,9 bonus in the inventory and it would be a mess.

One solution would be to rethink the recipes in order to allow only the very best crafters to be able to craft the best products without the "very" rare ingredient (obdidian chips, lich skull, troll head, deamon hoof, and alike),

To add different quality versions of the potions of might, deftness, haste, explosion....

...And to narrow a little bit the gap between the best and the worst effects (for food, at least), in order to make the most common potions/foods a bit more interesting.

...With only lesser potions being drops and more upgrade recipes like the last ones.

That way, the best crafter would be able to craft a lot of iterations of the best recipes without any restriction while the more common crafter could chose for a slightly weaker version.

 

I think potions should activate instantly , perhaps with a 1-2 sec longer cooldown ...would definetly make more people use them in larger quantity ..and keep the potion industry going.

 

Greetings all, just wanted to add my 2 coins to the debate. I agree the economy needs some adjustment. Personally I think all low level loot should sell to vendors for next to nothing. Quantity would be where you make your money on low level loot. But I am happy that the best items in the game are player crafted instead of raided. Since I have never been in a game where I started out as a master crafter I knew going in that I was going to be making 1000s of potions, food, armor, and weapons that were not worth anything. It has to be done to learn to master craft. That means 100s of 1000s of worthless items in the world that would be better destroyed or given to new avatars instead of sold. But since everyone loves to craft and there is no thought to quit producing items that are over produced then there is no market control on crafted items. The Devs could add a specialization tree to crafting like there is with combat and like combat limit how many specializations you could have at one time. This would help but like @kaeshiva said "people would simply make alts to retain their self sufficiency".

To sum it all up... I don't have a good answer. My recommendations would be Lower the NPC buy price on low level loot, Add specializations to crafting and limit the number, and give us a button that sells or destroys all low level loot in inventory with one click.

 

Not sure if you know, but you can put the potions on your passive bar and still use them (via shift+number combo) in active combat. I definitely do this without an issue for the greater health potion.

 

Agree with this. It takes an eternity to use a potion, so you can only really "afford" to use the best one due to the time constraint. And even then, it takes so long you're probably dead.

If they were instant use I would use them A LOT more. Speaking specifically about healing types right now, I use poison all the time.

Yes, it takes a long time, but it works for a while and the payoff is worth the moment of inaction.

 

I’m don’t have a master degree in Economic, but I’m been exposed long enough to know a bit about it throughout my business career & education.
To make the story short, one easy fix is to stop the classless system. I know many would disagree with my point of view on this, but hear me out.

From a macro economic view, we must create an environment where player A needs player B, player B needs player C, and player C needs player A.

Demand: At the current stage with classless players, we can produce pretty much everything ourselves. Why need someone else while yourself is the revolving economy. Therefore, the demand isn't there and the needs for the other players to make something for you isn't required. This is the flaw to the SOTA's demand. We don't depend on someone else with a specific class/specialty to satisfy our demand; therefore, we have very little to no demand.

Supply: Unlimited resources is another problem. Players have access to unlimited raw materials. We don't fight for resources, we can go to private or party mode and we have no competitions.

Lastly, it's so unrealistic for someone to do or know everything in real life. I got it, this is a game and it's not real. However, the law of economy, supply and demand, still applies when we have players interacting with each other for land & resources. Imagine our society has unlimited raw materials and classless people, we would have to shut down the malls, shops, factories.

 

Not a bad thing in my book....

Otherwise.. I do crafting knowing that i spend more money making the things i need because...

I can not buy them the way i want have them.
I thought to be an archer (chancelled now because..stuff) and was not the opinion that crit chance does much good so I was looking for bows with high base damage and benefits for aimed shot usw.

Finding them in good quality and not astronomical expensive (I do know what it costs to make them) is very very hard, so i have to make them myself, same goes for armor.

There should be mechanics that you can post an workorder with money attached and crafters can fullfill them if they like the offered coin for it, as it is with tons of vendors having tons of things i do not need in them and ackward way to search through them i spend more time browsing vendors than doing anything else.

Specialisation is ok with me, craqfting junkies will make there alts offcourse, but they will do it because they like crafting, so no change there.

Make it easier to get what you want without sorting through piles of things you do not need, that was always one of the major things that motivated me to do it myself.

Workorders, at town level ways to search all vendors for what you need.

Tools to have markets specialised on a profession (metal armors/archery/summer dresses) what ever, but comparing prices, stats and so on is as it is an chore worse than grinding crafting exp and doing it yourself.

Markets too work in the way that you buy things from people that can do it cheaper and better than yourself you know...

If someone wants to do it all offcourse there is crafting alts, but that is the point, If one loves to craft it will happen one way or the other, and you do not need to be competitive to craft if you want to, you do not NEED to earn money with it, so go at it from the other side and make it easier to buy things, so the crafters we have who are good can sell things and make on demand.

I do not sell my things because it is too much hassle to do it for me, would not do it if prices where much better either because i do not need the coin so why bother.

I would think about it if i could do it with less hassle, less time spent on selling things i make, but given i am not forced to do so why waste tiome on an ackward systhem.

Then, sota is still kinda new, markets need time to establish, prices agreed on so one knows what is expensive what not, with farming prices for cotton dropped a little and so on.

But i think the big problem right now is getting crafter and customer together.

 

Not everyone crafts, and less and less are taking it up. I got people want me to sell them gear all the time, and I have others that just bring me mats for me to craft their gear. The garbage is not selling cuz well, its garbage. When you look at the crafted stuff on vendors 99% of it has focus and health enchants and masterworks and are just plain junk. You put something good up on a vendor, and it sell. How many wands did corp por sell cuz they had the right masterworks and enchants on them?

This is not a case of crafted stuff not selling, this is a case of crafters keep the good stuff they make, and trying to sell of the junk to others, then wondering why people dont want it when they themselves didnt want it either.

 

I think the most limiting factor is the ammount of vendors one has to go through to find what one wants, not the quality of the craft (I mean i know bows and leather armor prettymuch only, so even if all the other stuff is first rate, to me it is just stuff i have to go through to find what i need, totally not the issue here if it is junk, the stumbling block is that i need to go through it to find what i want.)

We need an systhem that makes it less painless, i know an global search engine would kinda take some of the magic out of it, but at least at the twon level one should be able to get some clues where the item in question is, if it is avaiable at all, some sort of pathfinder to the vendor who has it...

Finding crafters who work on special demand is another issue, aside word of mouth, there is no sort of register, and no prices one can go with to know what is fair....

With raw materials there is an established market and known prices so it does work, just the crafted item market suffers from "Where the heck is that thing"

 

That is what I am saying, 99% of the stuff is junk. Selling mats, recipes and artifacts and stuff is part of the economy too, and notice people are saying that stuff sells. Its not that the economy is broken, its just trying to sell the junk is not selling, cuz its junk. I think it would be more accurate to say the junk gear market is not doing well .

 

Not really... the market looses because i had the feeling that it is less time consuming to level carpeting and tailoring and alchemy to the point where i can make my gear self instead spending my time sorting through tons of vendors.
It would have been cheaper for me to buy what i need for certain, so the market has lost an customer due to the problem of finding what you need.

The vendors at owls head do stock very little i consider crap, the area is rather small and not too many vendors, but even there searching for an specific item is lots of trouble and time spend.

"Now if you go to an big market POT with arround 40 traders...

It is not the ammount of items or traders, it is the systhem than urged me to become self sufficiant, the ammount of junk or no junk plays only second fiddle, it adds to the problem, but the problem itself is the systhem itself.

Now consider Sota with how many players Polatarium wiches to have.... and not one of the people selling stuff selling junk, just decent gear....

 

The in-game economy is largely non-existant however it isn't worth sacrificing the game itself to create one.
Interdependency between crafts and specialization requirements do not work, they simply require a player to alts to play a crafter. They don't make the items more valuable.

 

The economy works fine, in between certain circles, the problem is that new comers do not know where to go and have little shcance outside of meeting the right people by accident to join them.

What we need is some way that people have a chance to know where to go and who makes what.

And the game wopuld profit from that, because then people who hate crafting would be compelled to play, or stay and play.

If you have not the option to go into an town and find in resonable time what you need people tend to leave, and that is bad for the game.

We do not have the week long camping for item X because the good stuff is playermade and most materials are not tied to super campy spawns, now we only need to have an systhem that brings the goods to the people who want them.