Thoughts on the Availability of Gold (at launch)

It's my belief that MMO players are so used to selling every item with at least three zero's and a K at the end of the price, that the SOTA economy is going to be up against a wall from the first day of launch.

If you look at the Vendors in Owl's Head, Kingsport, and Ardoris today. This is what you will find: (btw, I'm trying to save up for the Elvish Karma Sutra)

Owl's Head:


Kingsport:


Ardoris:



Prices are set to these amounts, no doubt, because someone is paying for them. But that doesn't mean the prices are valid, it only means that someone has more gold than they know what to do with. Of course, it's easy to point to the Temple of the Shuttered Eye as being a huge impact during R20, but something like this always happens in our testing, and in MMO's in general.

@DarkStarr
@Chris

If the plan is to have NPC vendors resell items that they buy from players in an effort to keep inflation down, I would suggest we start testing that soon. Because inflation is inherently something that players in MMO expect and are used to exploiting for personal gain.

 

Can anyone say 3 tier currency? (for starters).

Another reason we're seeing these numbers.. is the pre-alpha economy has nothing to base itself on. None of the numbers are final so nobody really knows how to price other than perceived value.

 

Yes, agreed. But it's time to start testing now that player vendors are in.

It no longer helps to have placeholders where NPC vendors sell things for 1 gold that cost 60 gold to make if you're a player.

 

@Drocis, what was with the Tower of the Shuttered Eye? Did I miss something?

 

People were getting a ton of loot out the tower so they kept doing it over and over. Or so I've heard.

 

Thanks Bowen. THey must have fixed it before I got there. p.s. where is the key to the top room?

 

No idea. I haven't been there since the hat quest when it first went in.

 

is anyone really buying stuff at those prices? I'm not ....

 

I'm having trouble affording skills, no point for me to even look at vendors lol

 

Yes, there are a lot of people that have endless streams of gold due to exploits, having a strong network of friends that allows them to kill everything, and just because the economy is so unbalanced at the moment.

 

Hope this helps...

1. Visit the town crier at Soltown, Solania, or Ardoris. Ask them about "mail". They will give you a job of delivering mail to one of the other three towns. It's worth 75 gold per trip!

2. See a hooded archer in Soltown. He goes by the name of Ashton. He's looking for help. If you're the type that doesn't shy away from a fight, it's worth 750 gold to ya.

 

was not aware of these quests, much thanks

 

Might want to become a woodcutter to gather an ingredient for baking and job change to a baker (bars in Owl's Head have a thing for it) for awhile - it's ridiculous how fast it adds up

 

In today's market, the values show very well may be what supply/demand economics supports.

It may be much different when many more players are in game.

 

Agreed. I would be surprised if it didn't chance drastically.

However the point of the OP was to TEST the developers ability to impact supply and demand in a meaningful way.

 

I hope there are other items in game that are used as sort of a currency. Much like motes/slivers/shards/sturdy steel keys/singularity keys etc..... were in Asheron's Call
I know we have resources, but those will mostly go for coin and not be used as a currency type.

 

There's no way to tell, my guess is "no", the person placing multiples at 60k just waits an hour or so, then pulls the sale, to try and fool the market. As I was just at Owl's Head and there was only one 60k lot of 100 cotton there... In Barons screeny, there were three... It could be that a player listing those, logged on a family members account and bought the other two lots, so the left hand is feeding the right...

Somehow gold is plentiful to some players, either they constantly play as a group, or there's some exploit... I've heard some players bost on this board that it's easy to get to 2m gold and that they give it away to family members to get them started... I play SPO and have a hard time getting to 100k gold after two months of playing/crafting/selling, I would never spend 60k for 100 cotton, thats like 600 ea, and when it takes 4 per spool of thread, 2 spools per bolt, 4 bolts to make a cloth chest, there's no way I could or would buy the materials needed...

A 3 tier currency doesn't solve the problems of "inflation", so you have G:S:C (100:00:00 looks a lot like 1,000,000 to me), all a player needs to do is play more hours than another player and they will have more gold, the over achievers will always have more gold. So how do we curb inflation? In a real market economy, materials are scarce, there is competition between sellers...

I don't support having a finite # of cotton in the world, but I do support "competition" between players, and the only way that I see that happening is if all players can search all offerings of cotton through a Global or Regional search engine... Many of you hate that because others would undercut your outrageous pricing, with cheaper prices, but that is the nature of "competition"... Some would just resign themselves to list their goods at the same price, but that doesn't give them sales, because guilds would only buy from their own members...Friends would only buy from friends, etc... To break that kind of loyalty, a seller would need to drastically undercut outrageous priced sellers, and let the almighty gold piece speak for itself... Gold has no loyalty to any player, and only a foolish buyer would buy at high prices, when there is another lower offering to buy...

 

the gold exploiting bugs have to be weeded out and a wipe happen in order to find out how much gold is being made. Also crafting skills arent in yet, and once they are, a truer set of values may come up. Before release, it's important that we as testers find and report any big money-making exploits so they can be fixed before launch. If the game can launch without gold-exploits, then market prices will even out naturally.

It's probably a good idea to keep out gold farmers as well.

 

We weren't talking about it as a solution to inflation but the OP is touching on the perceived value of gold (intentionally or no) which in turn is an influence on early price setting. It does mitigate other issues and there's no real reason not to have it.

 

But it's the same thing, my friend... If someone percieves the "value" of a 100 stack of cotton to be $60,000 gold, and then places 3 stacks up for sale, that would send a red flag up for me... I'd be wondering if they duped the 300 cotton, or the gold, whatever, this is like 1.5 weeks after r20 released (after a full wipe), and some one has that much gold or that much cotton for that matter... There's Big trouble in little china (its a movie reference Kurt Russel stared...

Some one is duping something because when I looked at the same vendor 2 of those 100 stacks were gone, you can think they were bought or not, if they were bought some bunch of someones has a lot of gold and I question that they got it respectfully and if that's the case then the game is flawed in some maner, there shouldn't be that much gold dropping off a boss... I remember UO boss events when the big guy fell about 500k fellout to the ground, and no body wanted it, but whom ever had the patients to bring a few bags of sending to pick it all up... time and time again that happened... No wonder the economy was all screwed up, everything costing millions...

I'd like to see all players bank balance each day, how many hours they play, and who they play with, the data should be public record, this is testing what does it matter... At least we as backers could see what we're up against, what's being used as a cash cow... and who's exploiting it...

PS: the 3 tiered currency would be fun, it's easy to figure out...