PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Enlightened on December 20, 2009, 01:00:41 pm
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Hello everybody!
i noticed that Gold prices are cut to half!
a "finest gold stock" is 10k tria down
it is not really good for buisness.
was wondering if that is a bug!!
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Simple economy. The law of offer and demand
No Platinum, so miners mine gold
More gold but the same number of demand (buyers). Price drops.
There are lots more of people offering gold, merchants buy them at the lowest price, and miners begin to sell gold at lower prices; Slowly, prices drop.
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i did not know that NPCs follow (offer and demand)
these "complex" economy rules are more realistic!! wasn't aware of such an update !
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nope thogrin... platinum has killed the economy and now those who really do craft and sell (not pled) have a big problem..
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the engine has support for economy changes (only in runtime it would reset on server crash or reboot) but this isn't the case, gold was lowered because it was just too pricey making it a second platinum.
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I don't think it's so, all prices went down, even for platinum or silver. With current prices the prices should be linear with quality, so 1535 for Q300 gold and 768 for Q150, but it's only around 175 for Q150 gold ingot, that is too low, because even at level 55 in metallurgy you work about 20 minutes or more to get 5 ingots from 20 over Q250, which is 767 tria. The same is for silver and platinum, prices are too low for quality under 200. With linear prices with quality it would be good even with price 1535 for Q300 gold ingot (and relative prices for other metals).
My character Delrid worked for 2 days to get 20 gold ingots with quality 260 - 300 to gain only around 25k Tria? That is not fair at metallurgy level 55. With linear pricing it could be about 50k in one day, which is more fair, I think. How can guild gain 10 millions Tria (at least I heard the price is around this amount) with so low prices. If I calculate 5 people online per day for 4 hours (and only 2 or 3 with proper metallurgy level), then I see gain for all around 50k, and where are money for training? With broken NPC server where creatures are very hard to kill even for experienced players and some key NPC missing it's not easy to gain enough.
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weltall: maybe but all mined plat and those who mined gold used it for crafting.but gold is now not even much worthy mining for sale sice way is long and quality factor is a big thing.
making q300 gold stock is hard. (with melting casting at least)
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I understand, and correct me if I am wrong, that there is no automated "market" that balances prices at NPCs, right? All this inflation and deflation is generated then by dev's financial engineering, what surely has the defect of over- or under-reacting and specially reacting always too late.
My impression now is that nearly nobody mines (because it's become a too tiresome work for the produce) and that might mean that players do not have enough trias in their pockets (specially as training is so expensive), so they can afford less "luxuries" like good weapons and such, detracting from the profit of artisans.
Low base incomes is, as far as I can see, not good for crafters, who have to lower prices maybe, nor for gameplay, as training is heavily limited by its proportionally higher cost.
I understand that a game and virtual economy like this one needs sufficiently good basic incomes, that allow normal players (lowbies, midbies) to spend comfortably for their needs without excessive work (they are players after all, not real life workers who need a salary not to starve or go into mendicity). I understand that there must be some balance too but it's surely better for the system to be somewhat generous than the opposite.
Ideally I'd suggest an automated market engine, that would compute all transactions and be fine-tuned to keep an optimal economy based on real-time (or almost) adjustments between prices and basic productivity. Private transactions should also account though this may be highly impractical to implement, so guess that using NPC market evaluation would be a proxy decent enough, at least for precious metals.
This, as I say is just a suggestion for hypothetical development.
But another thing to balance the economy should be to fine-tune the availability of minerals and other items of some value (some skins?, what else?). Why are gold and diamonds so expensive? Because they are rare and you have to strive to find any. Why is iron cheap? Because it's one of the most common ores of Earth. So you should be able to dig and sell iron at a speed maybe 10 or even 100 times and at almost any location.
This natural correlation does not exist in PS but seems to be central to the value of things, at least at the simplified fraction of raw materials. Doing basic jobs as iron mining should be minimally profitable (easy access mine, geting an ore per try even at lowest levels...), reasonably decent price that pays for the work, if nothing else. Nobody is going to do a job that does not pay, not if they can just sit at a virtual tavern driking virtual beer that costs nothing instead...
Instead gold (or diamonds, or platinum when it existed) are almost not harder to get than iron. And they should be, however in a well pondered system.
The key piece is the producer-consumer, the working class, so to say. What does need one from real life? Food, clothes, shelter and some caprices, including leisure time. What does a PS citizen need? Training, armor, weapons... tools and materials if (s)he is an artisan. However nothing of all that is strictly necessary to play, so they are more in the sector of "caprices". For this reason you need some "welfare state": you need that people finds their way into the basic layer of the economy easily and without too much effort. They should be able to afford several hours of questing, training, maintaining weapons, etc. with not more than half hour of work at the mine. Roughly speaking but that's how it is: they economy will only flower if there is enough purchasing base, which is not to different to the virtual GDP.
Not sure if it helps or if it's clear enough but I needed to say this.
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Hey folks the prices paid by the smiths for crafted weapons has gone up. So has the prices paid for other crafted items. I know of a way to make a lot more tria doing something other than mining for gold. The new lower prices for gold are opening up possibilities for earning a living in other ways. With higher prices for crafted good it opens up some possibilities. Like maybe crafters of swords and shields being more willing to pay for iron and coal so they can concentrate more in crafting. Hopefully there will be some new skills coming along soon that will also pay a decent amount and give even more possibilities for earning trias instead of just mining.
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Hey folks the prices paid by the smiths for crafted weapons has gone up. So has the prices paid for other crafted items. I know of a way to make a lot more tria doing something other than mining for gold. The new lower prices for gold are opening up possibilities for earning a living in other ways. With higher prices for crafted good it opens up some possibilities. Like maybe crafters of swords and shields being more willing to pay for iron and coal so they can concentrate more in crafting. Hopefully there will be some new skills coming along soon that will also pay a decent amount and give even more possibilities for earning trias instead of just mining.
The question is how long will stay the prices for crafted items higher, because it can happen for these too. You can work few days on crafting and then you will come to sell them and it can be the same as for ingots and stocks.
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This is how balancing works, remember, you asked for it.
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on a related note: THIS IS A GAME. money should be easy to obtain. this isn't real life. i don't want to waste hours trying to gain virtual money when i could be doing something productive irl. i'd like to train and explore yliakum, but there isn't rly time for exploring either. maybe you think it's more realistic this way. but this is a game. people play it for fun, not boredom.
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An unbalanced economy isn't fun at all. X-/ I hope any new price changes do help keep the past from repeating itself... The gold rush was a mess. :o
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on a related note: THIS IS A GAME. money should be easy to obtain. this isn't real life. i don't want to waste hours trying to gain virtual money when i could be doing something productive irl. i'd like to train and explore yliakum, but there isn't rly time for exploring either. maybe you think it's more realistic this way. but this is a game. people play it for fun, not boredom.
It's also my opinion, I am playing for fun, but when I can't get enough money for training while playing many hours daily, it's not that fun, additionally I don't have time for RP while I need to work 2 days for 4 or 5 hours to gain enough money to buy training for next level (i.e. 8000 for level 25 in magic + 8000 for level 55 in metallurgy - I don't remember exact price but it's around it). With price 380 Tria for Q200 gold ingot it's not too easy to get enough for training, because (at level 55!!!) it's about 5th refining to get quality around this (for max. 2 or 3 ingots from 8) and even more tries to get quality to 225 which is equal to price from old version which was price after first smelting. While it take also time for mining the ore and often not enough space in inventory to carry enough ores at once (I mean weight). I would like i.e. to get enough tria for next training level in 2 hours and rest spend for helping others less experienced people, who can't smelt the ore for themselves, show them the way between cities, teach them how to do something, sitting in tavern and seaking about something (which reminds me the question why I can't turn my head to see what is around me while I'm sitting) or anything else what can be done in free time, which is not easy to have with so unbalanced prices. Standing 2 days near furnace and smelting ores or ingots to get around 30k Tria for training while I level up 2 times while doing this and I need 30k more to train other abilities, is little boring. While the same is with killing creatures, cooking food, crafting weapons (little better prices but still not too much, because low quality weapons can't be disassembled and improved in quality for better prices).
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380 for a q200 gold ingot? ah hah hah hah. might as well make yourself a standard knife, the iron and coal are easier to mine, the knife uses slightly more ore and you will never need to pay large for a weapon, oh and it pays at least as well as that gold ingot. I have never owned a q300 weapon as I feel the player prices are ridiculous, I always have, even for looted weapons. I'll own one if I ever make one and then only until the first repair.
You want to do everything for yourself (as I do) you have to accept a slower pace. Personally I'd think you could stop training metallurgy once you are able to do everything it can do. 55 seems a bit excessive but perhaps not.
This isn't a game it is a game development project, sure you can be content to just play it but all games get boring after a while. At least the devs are trying to fix things up.
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An unbalanced economy isn't fun at all. X-/ I hope any new price changes do help keep the past from repeating itself... The gold rush was a mess. :o
nope the plat mine was a mess..
but thegoldprices now are a bad joke.. it was nothing todo with balacing of economy.
btw im crafter and im willing to buy ore (if i wont crash all times) but there are nearly no miners or those are from guilds hording the ore for their purposes.
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I think there should be a valuable metal/resource for economy to be based on!
in real life there are valuable resources like Gold, Fuel, etc ... when their prices crash, world economy crashes too.
Back in Steel Blue, in the plat mess "as you say" there were some balance : "midbies and newbies sell their plat to advanced players, these players smelt it to make their own money" = Everybody is happy.
but now, everything is different, how do you expect newbies to make their money: no resource is worth mining and they are not good in crafting.
they will spend days doing quests to make just 5k tria! that will make them leave the game prematurely.
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Kra think this economy is being manipulated or controlled (or at least it seems so) at some developers whim. Kra think that things should be at least logical and left to balance themselves. Kra think too much attention being given to crafted weapons. Look what has happened: repairing only lowers the quality (see the other thread); looted, named weapons are hardly ever used; and npc prices of all things, not just gold, do not make sense.
Player-player trade seems a much better way to determine price. This indeed has happened with glyphs, special weapons, crafted weapons too. So why not have player-player trade determine the price of gold and other resources. The difficulty to get can be determined by the devs, but the prices, let the players figure it out. Kra is quite sure this will provide a lot of fun trading.
Please use logic in how things work and how they are acquired and let the players have some fun. In other terms: it is not the price of gold that needs control, it is the availability and ease of acquisition that need some logical tweaking.
Food for thought: Kra like gold, yum.
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I hesitate to jump into this discussion... but players didn't set the price before this change either. The price a smelter would pay was based directly off of what he/she/kra could make off of selling the cast ingots/stock to a NPC. I know this because I was/am a smelter. I had one price I would pay for the general public and another that I would pay to those in my guild, but the actual price was based on how much I could sell my ore to an npc. You may not make the huge profits of yesterday now, but hopefully we won't have 10 million tria auctions either... oh how the devs were barbecued over that...
Perhaps it is all the newer players that are concerned here, but it amazes me how short peoples memories can be.
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Keep in mind also that most items in game are not really that expensive. I think the training system needs to be overhauled more than price changes. It takes a bit too much in terms of resources. Just be patient, one day it will all even out.
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If I was a new player now, I would be annoyed by the toil it takes to make tria.
But I'm comfortable and happy in my riches, :P.
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Most of your comments reflect a narrow view of the situation...in some cases only slivers of the whole picture.
First, new in this release is Quality-Based Pricing with the NPC's which simply calculates their offers based on the quality of the item and this applies to everything. With that, high quality crafted stock and ingots were producing rediculously high returns, so base prices for all of these were lowered substantially. In other areas, more price slashing is to come. In concert with this, crafting has been thoroughly reviewed and updates will be released shortly, which will change (in a number of cases reduce) the material required to craft things. Weapons pricing is probably safe for the moment, but if you're hording, this would be the time to sell excess stockpiles. As material costs come down, you may find that you'll be upside down in your cost basis if you don't.
In the larger picture, yes this is a game, a game in development, and changes have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen. For the new people, this is probably a bit baffling, and I'm sorry for that...it will get better for you and soon, just bear with us. For the veterans, you really should be accustomed to change by now.
It should be noted that there has been no one at all attending these aspects of the game for quite some time. I came into this only recently, found where things went wrong, rolled up my sleeves and dug in. More of you could stand to gripe less and help more...apply to Rules if you wish to have real impact on the future. Send me a PM if interested.
Platinum was a hamfisted over reaction to circumstances of the time, and has created a well and fully acknowldeged imbalance, which we're making efforts to correct. Correction will take time, and in some instances initial changes may seem equally hamfisted, but they are in fact necessary. As time progresses, and things start to naturally come in line through spending down of excessive wealth and shifts of player activity focus and diversity, adjustments will be continually made, and they may be so subtle you may or may not even realize we've done it.
The long term goals are along the lines of diversity in character advancement, such that various paths will provide progression on a fairly equal scale. There should not be any one path that largely dwarfs the others. Up to now, every new character quickly discovered that there was only one way to do well in Planeshift: get a rock pick and start digging...become a millionare in a week, making everything effectively free. Exploits notwithstanding, hopefully that time is gone. Explore the other paths to success...I think you'll find there is more to Planeshift than Mining.
Stay tuned!
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uh, huh, dig silver people ... at least in case of standard ingots, silver does win!
Cello
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Uh, hello, hasn't anyone figured out that both the BDRoad1 Brigand and Relliom (in the sewers) drop crazy amounts of loot, crazy enough to finance training without needing to touch a rockpick? :D
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Nairan: nobody dug gold befor and sold it. everyone was on plat.
No we have a chance to talk to the miners and get them to dig gold/iron/coal.
Lets make them a good offer. They cant deny, the dont have platinum anymore.
*laughs*
Thob
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well i dont know bout you mining fenatics but i can be hapilly content makin money off ulber loot
which i noticed earns a little more money then before ^.^
just throwin that out there
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Nairan: nobody dug gold befor and sold it. everyone was on plat.
No we have a chance to talk to the miners and get them to dig gold/iron/coal.
Lets make them a good offer. They cant deny, the dont have platinum anymore.
*laughs*
Thob
well i tried to but fighting monster and diggin plat was the better income and no one mine then a few (mostly iron and coal since thats used for weaposn) , so i was most time alone getting ore myself(gold tin copper). and if there was one they didnt sell it. (or rarely)
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Maybe a simulated economy e.g. like the one done with OpenEstragon http://sourceforge.net/projects/openestragon/
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/openestragon/) would work, although it is still a lot of work to set up an economic cycle even when the programming already has been done.
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Honestly PS is getting to complicated Gold has halved which is only going to course problems. You need to think out side the box for these problems. (e.g) implimenting food as a need. Implimenting farming, drawing/painting, etc. Or has anyone thought to keep platinum and gold and make it that you need a level in mining. I mean like ooc i could pick up a rock pick and just start diging at the ground and get just as much as someone else who has proffesionaly trained at it... Its not speed science you dont have to make solutions straight away take some time to even things out then to cut prices.
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We've given it more thought than you can imagine. These things take time, I know it seems like we don't know what we're doing, but you've been enjoying us "messing things up" for a long time.
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I support the decision to get rid of plat and make gold less valuable.
Seriously, looting mobs (the way in which you usually make money in MMOs) is once again the fastest way to make money, albeit not too fast.
I'm happy. Suits us people who like fighting stuff.
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I've read through all the posts here, and I think that I support the dev's descision...
But... I think that the best path for the GMs to take is to implement a WoW style auction house... That way the price variation is controlled by the players (albeit to an extent). That way nobody can complain about the pricing... I'm sure that it must have been recommended before though, but I don't see any problems with it.
:offtopic:
Planeshift is a good game, but I think the GMs need to pay more attention to the new players... They have no idea how the game changes, and things change frequently in Planeshift... Maybe another forum dedicated to game changes and tips & tricks just to help the new players.
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This decision wasn't made by GMs... it was made by developers.
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We've given it more thought than you can imagine. These things take time, I know it seems like we don't know what we're doing, but you've been enjoying us "messing things up" for a long time.
im on their side lol
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Well straight up. This is will corse PLing not RPing because how are the players out side oja tavern that stand there until someone come and they begin to have a convosation with, (RP) how is that player going to get tria so they can buy a beer every now and then?
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1 beer = 1 rat death
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now if seeling guild houses for a big amount of money is bad and giving them free to roleplaying guilds is bad... what is good?
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now if seeling guild houses for a big amount of money is bad and giving them free to roleplaying guilds is bad... what is good?
Pleasing everyone.