An OOCly Economical Discussion

[tman]

The way I see it, the biggest problem with the in-game economy right now is this:

• Crafters are constantly producing goods in massive amounts, in order to train.
• There very little demand for player made goods.  Usually people buy one good set of armor and weapons, and that's it for a long time.
• Because there are so many more goods produced than players can use, players sell their goods to NPC merchants, who are an infinite source of tria.
• Tria used to leave the economy through training.  That's no longer the case.  There are almost no tria "sinks" to take money out of the economy.  (Pterosaur travel, stat training, buying ingredients from NPCs, purchasing mounts, etc. make a tiny dent compared to the amount of money flooding in from selling crafted goods to NPCs).
• With so much tria flooding into the economy and nothing taking it out, tria becomes pretty much worthless.  Prices of goods rise arbitrarily.

In order to fix the economy, in my opinion, two major changes need to occur:

• Demand for player made goods needs to rise, causing people to actually want to trade.  Goods like food and potions need to be more useful, so people actually want them.  Gear should probably wear out faster, to give an incentive to people to actually buy fresh gear every once in a while.  Maybe introduce a way for smiths to improve the quality of looted weapons, to make them viable relative to 300q crafted gear.  Stuff like that.  In addition, NPC-bought goods shouldn't be so effective, or should be more expensive.  Nobody is going to pay 1000 tria for a high quality player-made mana potion when you can buy 5 50q mana potions for that price and get way more bang for your buck.
• There need to be tria sinks taking money out of the economy.  The pterosaur is a great example, but there need to be more, and on a greater scale.  Methods of doing this could be a topic all on its own, but a few ideas off the top of my head are charging monthly rent for player and guild houses, renting rooms at a tavern before you log out granting you a "well rested" bonus to XP and practice gains next time you log in, renting or selling high quality crafting tools which help you make higher quality products, allowing players to leave an offering to Dakkru before exiting the Death Realm which reduces the duration of the Curse tenfold, etc. The point is, when there are more things to spend tria on, it becomes more valuable, and therefore people are willing to work or trade for it.

[bilbous]

I'd pay a million tria for a pair of gloves like those that were in the tent where that alchemist was held. It seems to me that you could leech a lot of tria out of the game if there was one elite item merchant selling triple mod items of a type that cannot be looted. Of course then you run into the problem of unkillable PCs. This npc could even sell things with 100% markup and not buy anything. Your newly bought item would depreciate by more than 50% the moment you bought them but they would be meant to be used, not resold.

If gear wears out faster it would lead to a rise in the number of people who can repair it perfectly, thus ensuring it never wears out. Improving the quality of looted gear is probably not that good an idea, how much protection could I expect from my million dollar hat with the 26 slash value if I could improve it 6-fold? Would anything be able to touch me?

[Dilihin]

Also if there would be more PvP it would increase need of high quality potions.if you only hunt NPCs ,after certain levels you just need to go and kill them.

Goods like food and potions need to be more useful, so people actually want them.

it's not the matter of usefullnes,it's the price.you need lot's of effort even for a stack of potions,wich increases the price.the ingredients are very expensive too.but perfect quality potions are actually pretty good.

[Rigwyn]

I agree with this point about potions. It's the one reason I won't use them to train. I'll just say that there are better solutions available. In fact, I rarely keep looted potions on hand. It' handy to have a stack or two for a quick heal via hot key, but that's about it. In fact, I'm not sure they even work like they used to.

[Bonifarzia]

I agree with tman, except for this detail

Maybe introduce a way for smiths to improve the quality of looted weapons, to make them viable relative to 300q crafted gear.

Looted weapons can be extremely powerful (lottery effect). I expect the upcoming system of enchanted weapons will make crafted weapons much more interesting (Go for it, Eonwind ). Also, it is cool that penalties can be repaired away from looted weapons already, e.g. ruined trigrain steel dagger of talad's arm (useless) --> trigrain steel dagger of talad's arm (pretty good).

Concerning all the reasoning about economy, there was already this:
http://194.116.72.94/pswiki/index.php?title=Dynamic_Economy (GSoC 2014 and earlier)

[cdmoreland]

Armor use to wear a lot faster. I remember killing rats and having to replace my armor often. Raise the prices paid for raw materials and you might get many more miners and harvesters working.

[Eonwind]

Since when skill training has been changed we knew one of the main tria sink would be gone, but rebalancing the tria sink was a major task. In the next updates you will see a few action to rebalance a few factors:

• armor and weapons will wear out more quickly
• there will be ways to spend your trias to get long therm benefits from NPCs (sort of blessings to buff stats)
• in the future, once implemented a few weapon styles will be taught by NPCs for a price

One more consideration about consumable items like potions: we balanced their effects so it's worth ot use a better quality one that a fewer quality ones since the HP healed over time are bigger, this is due to the delay between each consume of such potions. If you can take your time and don't need to hurry up you may have time to consume all the 50q potions you need, otherwise a higher quality potion will help you stay alive longer.

[CheatCat]

Items wear down keeps being rebalanced, sometimes they wear down too slow and sometimes too fast. It is hard to please everyone.

I do not like the idea that higher qualtiy potions should have longer cooldown, it is very hard to decide what quality the potions should have when creating them. Instead it might be different kinds of potions: smaller and quicker and bigger and slower.

Appart from that I am looking forward for the dynamic economy stated in wiki to be implemented.

[Eonwind]

I do not like the idea that higher qualtiy potions should have longer cooldown, it is very hard to decide what quality the potions should have when creating them. Instead it might be different kinds of potions: smaller and quicker and bigger and slower.

That's exactly the way they are, quality do not affect the cool-down time.

[Nimenoe]

The way I see it, the biggest problem with the in-game economy right now is this:

• Crafters are constantly producing goods in massive amounts, in order to train.
• There very little demand for player made goods.  Usually people buy one good set of armor and weapons, and that's it for a long time.
• Because there are so many more goods produced than players can use, players sell their goods to NPC merchants, who are an infinite source of tria.
• Tria used to leave the economy through training.  That's no longer the case.  There are almost no tria "sinks" to take money out of the economy.  (Pterosaur travel, stat training, buying ingredients from NPCs, purchasing mounts, etc. make a tiny dent compared to the amount of money flooding in from selling crafted goods to NPCs).
• With so much tria flooding into the economy and nothing taking it out, tria becomes pretty much worthless.  Prices of goods rise arbitrarily.

In order to fix the economy, in my opinion, two major changes need to occur:

• Demand for player made goods needs to rise, causing people to actually want to trade.  Goods like food and potions need to be more useful, so people actually want them.  Gear should probably wear out faster, to give an incentive to people to actually buy fresh gear every once in a while.  Maybe introduce a way for smiths to improve the quality of looted weapons, to make them viable relative to 300q crafted gear.  Stuff like that.  In addition, NPC-bought goods shouldn't be so effective, or should be more expensive.  Nobody is going to pay 1000 tria for a high quality player-made mana potion when you can buy 5 50q mana potions for that price and get way more bang for your buck.
• There need to be tria sinks taking money out of the economy.  The pterosaur is a great example, but there need to be more, and on a greater scale.  Methods of doing this could be a topic all on its own, but a few ideas off the top of my head are charging monthly rent for player and guild houses, renting rooms at a tavern before you log out granting you a "well rested" bonus to XP and practice gains next time you log in, renting or selling high quality crafting tools which help you make higher quality products, allowing players to leave an offering to Dakkru before exiting the Death Realm which reduces the duration of the Curse tenfold, etc. The point is, when there are more things to spend tria on, it becomes more valuable, and therefore people are willing to work or trade for it.

I like every bit of this and think it is extremely relevant ^

Since when skill training has been changed we knew one of the main tria sink would be gone, but rebalancing the tria sink was a major task. In the next updates you will see a few action to rebalance a few factors:

• armor and weapons will wear out more quickly
• there will be ways to spend your trias to get long therm benefits from NPCs (sort of blessings to buff stats)
• in the future, once implemented a few weapon styles will be taught by NPCs for a price

One more consideration about consumable items like potions: we balanced their effects so it's worth ot use a better quality one that a fewer quality ones since the HP healed over time are bigger, this is due to the delay between each consume of such potions. If you can take your time and don't need to hurry up you may have time to consume all the 50q potions you need, otherwise a higher quality potion will help you stay alive longer.

This generates much interest and potentially 

--

Those of us who have been discussing reviving the economy know that it's going to take a lot of work and patience, as well as more implementation of actual game mechanics as well as luring more people into the community.

Which is all the more reason to set up a good roleplay base for it to be structured upon, yes?