The Regional Economy. Still Possible post R57? & an idea.

If regional markets were going to work in SOTA, they would already have done so. Any methods to force a regional market will create unnecessary hardship on the player base and make people angry. We lack a sufficient population to even have a functioning global market.

OP your system sounds good as a dream but far too easy to abuse and manipulate.

 

I love seeing those open gates !

 

I actually think the regional economies are working, but not for the reasons originally intended.

Want to go find everything you possibly could, but maybe at higher prices than you want to pay (some merchants excepted) travel up to the Central Brittany Urban Sprawl. Everything is there. I would assume if you saw it as a heat map, it consumes huge amounts of resources. Buy prices for resources are higher there too.

Want to have more limited choices, but also lower prices on both buying and selling? Go farther out. The farther you go the lower the prices. You can find stuff being sold for far under crafting cost on the PV's in the starter areas.

Remember Owl's Head? It always had higher prices. It wasn't because it was convenient to get to, it was just the shopping mall of the time. That region has shifted to the Sprawl.

It's fascinating.

And I would advertise cheap furniture over by Resolute here, but ANOTHER aspect of the player economy is making it all more expensive, supply and demand. No one's been supplying the wood, and prices have skyrocketed, thus everything made out of them is more expensive as well.

Seems like it's mostly functioning well to me.

 

Oh my God. I stopped playing the game just now because of dummies in Upper Tears. This is a breath of fresh air. Insight. Intelligence being applied to an idea. Kudos.

I guess I should add, I am educated in Economics and this post really brings home everything I have learned.

And for crying out loud, lol, I am not useless Mhtic.

 

From what I remember of playing BDO this is something similar to what they have there and was one of the things I really liked about that game (plenty I disliked too).

I think it could work well here but whether the Devs have the time to devote to something like this at the moment sadly seems unlikely.

 

This is a regional market. The real world has regional markets, you don't go to country and buy and bring it back without paying export tax. The reality of regional markets is it just makes a new play style for merchant types as an importer/exporter. As a consumer you would not bother, you would still be able to buy stuff everywhere, it just the importer/exporter would be making some gold off you if you are buying something from a different region. All player economies go this route, as player generally prioritise convenience over cost, and doing the importer/exporter thing in small volumes is usually gold per time inefficient.


Regards
Spung

 

I see what you're saying here, but from a practical point of view, what would be the point? I mean, I can buy apples here for 120g, or go buy them cheaper in the 'regional area' for 100g, but if I have to pay 20g tax on them to get on the boat home, I'm no better off.

 

If you implemented like that, yes it would pointless, but it would not be for sale from the npc in the other region.

So you would only get it from player vendors in the other region that would charge you for their time.

So they would charge say 130G, then if you wanted 1000s you may import it yourself but if you only wanted 10 you would just buy it from the closer player vendor and play 100 extra gold.

 

No, I think maybe I am not being clear.

We are talking about adding a "cost" or "tax" or whathaveyou to transport costs out of Region A into Region B.
If that cost exists for all exports, then if I go to Region A to "shop" just as a consumer, whatever I buy locally in Region A I am then subject to the same export tax.
Lets put some fake numbers. I want an item that say a player produces in Region A that is 'worth' 100g. Local seller sells it at 100g.
Merchant buys up lots of these, pays 20g per item to transport it to Region B, where he lists it for sale for 130g to cover item cost, transport expenses, and a margin for profit.

As a consumer who wants this commodity, which lets assume is only available in Region A, I have the following options:
Go to Region A and get it myself for cost/effort of say 90g, pay the 20g export cost and go home. (I spent 110g for the item plus my time plus travel time)
Go to Region A, buy it from a player for 100g (they get their profit), pay the 20g export cost and go home. (I spent 120g for the item plus travel time)
Stay in Region B, buy it from a merchant (130g) and have no transport costs. (I spent 130g for the item with no additional ime investment)

My question is - if we assume that time=money, I'm in the same position regardless.
If "merchant" prices get inflated (trying to get more for their transport effort) then the player goes direct to source.
If "merchant" prices are cheap enough to justify not making the trip, then the player buys from merchant.

If I'm understanding this correctly, I am asking what benefit does this add to the game, having this system, and why do we want it? Is it just to create a niche for "merchants" ? Is that worth all the effort/speculation?
With "global" banking and magic mover, wont 'transport' costs be inconsequential anyway?

---
The whole idea of a "regional" system is contingent on region-to-region traffic being at least the slightest bit onerous and there being some sort of cost, in either time or tax, to move items across these borders.
For every commodity currently in the game these borders do not exist, "regional" public vendors sit empty and unused, because of the way housing/recall system works.
IE - Despite location of mines, you do not see gold/silver cheaper "regionally" - it all gets hauled back to market towns. Reconciling regional market with the housing/vendor system is an impossibility.

The new land mass offers a new opportunity only if it is restricted by time or tax.
Who is going to want to live in Region A, if they can no longer freely travel to Region B or if there is a cost to do so each time? Will standard items from Region B also have an import tax to Region A? If not, then Region B becomes obsolete. ? Is the new land mass just going to be some sort of merchant haven where people park their 'local resource farming alt' and export goods to sell at markup?

It feels like we're just desperately trying to implement a regional system for no other reason than its own sake.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not just trying to be a negative nancy, I love the idea of having a regional economy, of having price fluctuations based on local markets and resource availability. But I don't think that works with fast travel, with the current housing claim methodology, and certainly not with global banking. If we're talking about just adding in a few items that have regional properties (like, you can only grow x crop on x landmass) I honestly don't see this doing more than adding a frustration.

From what we've seen so far, players are not typically willing to "pay extra" for "time" - we've seen this in the case of trying to sell ingots vs. ores (even before efficiency skill) they've always been harder to move. Despite refining taking hours and hours and hours, there's never really been a market for refining as a service - people do it themselves, get alts to do it, rather than pay someone. There's no service market or job sector as such, at least not on a widespread scale. What I'm saying is that with this perception that player time has no value why would people pay more for the same item in location X when they can for the cost of a teleport scroll go pick it up in location Y. Unless we add a signficant travel cost/delay to the new area, dont count them as part of global banking, disallow magic mover usage to/from, disable teleport/recall to/from that landmass, etc. etc. - which seems to be a step backward from current behavior or trying to REDUCE the amount of pointless "timesink", load screens, etc. And all to add what? A niche for someone to work as a cargo hauler? What am I missing?

The only way I can see this working is to invent completely new commodities, that have no purpose for players other than as 'trade goods' from npc point to npc point, but essentially that's just creating another cash faucet . Not against it, but I think its hard to justify, and I'd hate to get even -more- cash sinks to balance it.

 

What would be nice, since the gates appear "open" in the Overworld, is to create some in-game lore/reason to close them. Maybe seasonal? Maybe due to an attack? Maybe due to player activity in the Control Point?

I may be off (wishful thinking, having spotted a discussion on the forums in the past, perhaps?), but I thought there was an idea kicking around to make crafting require specialty items in the future, and that these items would be regional.

 

I hope so!

 

They probably could chance so control points was closed if you was carrying contraband (i.e smuggling) but then would have to prevent scrolls to work while carrying it to.
Perhaps could be a PvP smuggling quest.

 

The point is this is NOT an option, in your example only player merchants would sell the item in Region B and visa versa. If the good is only available in region A then no NPC should sell it in region B, or if they do it should be 300% uplift to a region A NPC price to leave that market for the players. So it would be more like it would cost 300g in region B.

Now you do want necessities to be available in all regions or as you say you turn regions into ghost towns as no one would want to live there. But in the OP idea of speciality goods or even certain resources needed for deco or tier 3 components or other non consumables, so not something you have to buy every time you adventure, this is option. So a new wood type and some deco requires that wood type.

I do hope as time goes on and the economy becomes more mature in a player driven economy the NPC does not sell anything that a player can farm, gather etc. Just as ore and cotton is now.

There is an argument we are already at this stage for most reagents and vegetables. As long as the player base has the mechanics and the resource density to fulfil the demand, why have an NPC sell it in a player economy? Obviously black pearl is an example where we don't, a scene would have to be added with huge black pearl beds, so that availability is no longer a problem, it is just a matter of spending the time gathering it and/or allow black pearl agriculture on water lots (now water lots are available to purchase again so not limited to older players only) . Anything that can be grown via agriculture could probably be taken off the NPC vendors.

A pure player driven economy the NPCs sell nothing, can still allow them to buy stuff as a gold faucet if the gold sinks exist to limit the flow of gold into the economy. I don't think this economy is mature enough for that yet though.

In macro economics you don't want a faucet less or equal to the sink, as you don't want holding gold to a good idea, it kills liquidity of gold in the economy. What you want is like 5%-15% bigger faucet to sink per month or something like that.


Spung

 

Its great for crafting mentoring events though, less time for my students transporting their mats. Folks may have negatives but that is a huge positive for those I know.

 

I like the idea of the regional components, however we have a lazy crafting system. The answer of late has been to dilute the choices in MW and Enchanting (though I did hear there is thought of specialization in a limited capacity to be able to choose what you want instead of having to take lesser choices.)

We see new components only in the lazy way of a new loot drop, never from all those skills of gathering, woodcutting, mining, fishing, or skinning.

I would love to see regional components but not from the high leveled adventurers, or the tiny chance of salvaging. Throw a bone to the gatherers of the world.

So many folks have come up with recipes for food that sound good to eat. These take not much artwork to implement. There is no real bonus to be a cook in the game unlike other tradeskills, it seems a GM cook should be able to create better food than those with the minimum requirement to create the food. Instead of level to create being the gateway, the ability of the cook should be the determinant factor. To tie this in to the original post, regional cuisine.

But most importantly perhaps regional components from harvesting not hunting should be considered rather than overlooked as it is now.


Just one of my many thoughts.

 

It not for it's own sake, it is to create PLAYER markets in this items.

 

I defined "merchant" in this scenario as a player merchant, not an NPC merchant - ie, a "merchant" who is moving conmodities and adding markup.

 

So in this example the tax should only be paid on a commodity once. It should be flagged as having paid the export tax already, no new taxes are required moving it to where ever.

 

I'm 100% with you on creating player markets and reducing NPC dependence, but as you say, we are nowhere near this, needed items (like black pearl, coal) are not obtainable in sufficient quantity to retire the NPCs.
What I don't agree with is the need to make this "regional" nor do I think it would work.
If we remove the NPCs and have nightshade only grow in 1 region a corner of the world, people are still going to load up and go list it on a vendor convenient to them. Its not going to -stay- in the region - because of how housing and fast travel work.

 

Like a duty paid stamp on something?
It still doesn't change my example though

You go to region A, make it yourself, pay export tax (making time, travel time, export cost)
You go to region A, buy it from someone else, pay export tax to bring it home (travel time, export cost)
Or simply buy it in region B for increased cost, where another player has done the time bit and, paid the export cost, and presumably marked it up for their trouble.
If this markup is low, people will buy from the reseller player merchant. If it is exorbitant, people will do it themselves. We see this behavior throughout the game, such as with the refined good example. People don't put a high price on player time.


I reiterate that it is an awful lot of trouble to go to to implement something like this for no other reason than to create a niche for people to act as go-betweens, i.e. a "service industry" of importer/exporter. Since this would only be applicable to a small subset of goods going to/from the other continent, we'd need to impelement all sort of systems to prevent this being abused, such as magic mover disabler, teleport/recall disabler, make it so the items are not mailable (or bankable?), etc. I don't think the benefit here outweighs the effort.

I'd say lets straighten out the regular economy first, which is a mess, then worry about adding regional frills.