Price fluctuations of items I own?

When I downloaded the patches for a last few releases, items in my chest had lost a huge amount of value. Some items lost 20% while other lost over 90%. I thought this is persistence so what you earned in the game you kept going forward. But I don't seem to be keeping what I earned. For example, the old Health Potions were worth 40 and now they are worth 20 gold each. I had over 140 in a chest worth 5600 gold. Now they are worth 2800 gold? So I lose 2800 gold?

This is not a rage post and I am not angry. I'm just calling this out as I see it. And I must say that it's at least morally questionable to remove value from someone's account without consent. I think the devs are all doing a great job and the direction of the game is very exciting but can we treat people's stuff with a little more respect. I mean going into the database and ripping out millions of gold with a few keystrokes is pretty abusive. Yes, the economy needs to be balanced, I agree. But, there may be better ways to do it.

Much more fair options:
1. Assign the new value only the new items generated in the game. So, the old Health Potions would still be worth 40 but any newly generated Health Potions would be worth 20.
OR
2. Refund the lost value of gold to the item holders. If 2800 of value is taken, then send 2800 gold to the player.

Yes, I realize it would take more time to do this. But I think it would reinforce the persistence notion we have instead of driving more players to 'I think Ill wait to launch to play'.
Hope you will consider.
Thanks for reading.

 

Yeah I see your point, but really the game is still in development and so prices will fluctuate as the game economy is still being balanced to accommodate new items, such as new 'greater' health potions.

They restructured the ingredients to make when they were added and they had to be balanced for the sell value because of the decrease in cost of ingredients to make. Otherwise, people could have been crafting them cheap and selling way over value. Just the way she goes, it's definitely not morally questionable hehe

Persistence just means no more wipes.

 

as a horder myself, this really bothers me.

 

Did you actually intend to sell those to NPCs at that price?

I have always ignored the NPC value of everything, as it's all so low that selling to them is pointless.

If you don't intend to ever sell them to NPC's, what does the value have to do with the price of health potions in China?

Not trying to be mean, btw. Just didn't know anyone did this, so I'm curious.

 

Not all but many of the players I talk to look at the NPC sell value of items as part of the gold take for a loot. Generally, anything they don't want to use is sold. These players don't want to use a vendor to sell to other players either. A good example of this is animal hides. I know a lot of people that have tens of thousands. They don't want to make leather armor or do any crafting. They expect to sell them at the NPC price of 7 gold. Many save them up to sell at one time or to sell to a player if they can get more than 7. If the devs changed the NPC sell price to 2, a lot of players would go ballistic. I can guarantee that. Imagine having 1000 hides worth 7k gold and now it's worth 2k. How would you feel?
Even if you use the hides in crafting, you still care what the NPC value is because it establishes the sell price of the things you craft. If you use 10 hides to make something, then your base cost is at least 70 gold. That serves as a baseline to know if you are making any gold.

I am very aware of these prices because I'm the guild treasurer for Memento Mori and I keep accounts for the gold and the gold value of all the items in the guild treasury. Building up the guild treasury so that we can fund and carry out projects once the game is release is what we and many other guilds are working on. It seems like we are being punished for doing this.

I think the devs should really rethink the economy balancing process. If not then just set the NPC sell value to zero on all the items and get it over with. Frankly the economy couldn't get any worse so there is nothing to destroy.

 

I'm having a hard time believing this is anything but a troll/flame bait post. Using NPC selloff value as a question about how you "lost" gold over time? Whether persistence is real because of this? What is going on here?

 

We all know that the game still is in pre alpha, but I would consider it polite if Port would announce prize changes in advance - for both directions (decrease to sell before and increase to buy in advance).
I need to sell off stuff to merchants to fund crafting mats (as a gold source). Vendors do only distribute gold between players, they are no gold source. The only real source is gold loot and selling mats to merchants. Would be nice to get (major) changes in the release notes in advance.
@monkeysmack: how do you get the combined value of items in a chest (except checking them one by one)?

 

Usefulness is he key to Value in Our SOTA
We hold them to use, or with hopes of those commodities increasing in value, one or the other. We still don't know if holding gold will be of value in the coming player based economy. The bottom of gold could totally fall out and become extremely devalued. There are some "soft supporting values" in their usefulness in our game, yet saving them is always a gamble in comparison with their "usefulness".

Whenever thinking about value here in our sota, it's best to think of our economy in an "early days" UO Siege Perilous way, because we may not be there now, but we could very well be in that position in our future, because these are some of the same developers who made that unique starting economy the way "it was in UO/SP's beginnings". Yet we also know, that they learned allot from that first UO/SP player based economy, which most likely would cause some changes.

But we're talking about the future when mentioning UP/SP, and not our present day "place holder economy", which is subject to drastic changes in it's player based economic future.


~Time Lord~

 

It has long been a goal to do a balance of the economy by adjusting the value and weight of various items in the game. Expect this to happen more as things get close to release.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

 

And beyond... Development will never stop... new items and features will be implemented that will affect the balance of the game for as long as the game exists.

 

All the more reason to keep your eyes open on QA, plenty of money to be made when you get tomorrow's stock prices today.

 

I'm having a hard time believing this is anything but a troll/flame bait post.

 

Ok, I could see giving players a chance to dump their 10,000 hides by warning them ahead of time, as @StarLord suggests.

But whether they warn us or not continual balancing is gonna happen. Everything will keep changing. The rest of the economy fluctuates pretty fast, and is part of the fun. If you were heavily invested in gold ore at 60, you're hurting now.

@Berek a request has been made to warn us if NPC prices are going to change.

 

I read the OP yesterday, please renamethe topic, it's misleading and offensive.
There is maybe a inflation, bit nobody has taken gold from your Account.

Overestimation Alarm

 

My mind just boggled at the concept of anyone having a stash of 10k animal hides

 

i just have 4

@monkeysmack well done

 

Goes well with my 2000 suet. I loved skinning for a bit but never settled down to tan anything. Eventually when they legalize marijuana in Canada I'll consider it.

 

Nope, check your gold balance again. You didn't lose any.

Holy exaggeration. If you had sold these potions before the update, and then the devs took the extra gold you would have made out of your account, I could see your point.

Option 1 takes way too much work for something that is a non issue in my opinion.
Option 2 is a very very bad idea. You want them to inject hundreds of thousands of gold into all the players accounts that are hoarding? Have you really thought about what that would do?

 

They kind of did. To the devs value is value, all items in circulation inherently hold the value of their selling price to an NPC merchant. They control the total amount of value in circulation by adjusting drop rates. Changing sale prices in a patch is a huge gold sink, which means it is likely that storing value anything other than cash is a poor desicion.