PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Marlow on April 11, 2004, 12:31:26 am
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Is anyone out there thinking about the economy of CB as a whole? I noticed that I wasn?t, up to now. I do not proclaim myself as an economist, but I see a serious problems evolving even before CB is out.
For example, many players will have large quantities of gems converted to tria, but none will have any items to trade (except those from NPCs), causing INFLATION to skyrocket. A possible solution is for everyone to start anew, or to convert only a small number of gems (e.g. no more than 500) to usable currency.
The second problem is that slain monsters will constantly provide players with money and items, again causing inflation. For this the only solution that would provide a stable economy is for the destruction of items and currency to occur at about the same rate as the creation of new ones.
(I probably should have mentioned this before but by an inflating economy I mean that craftsmen charge ridiculous prices for their items, that real estate will be overpriced, the Mercenary Guild fees are shy high, etc. all of this would generally discourage people from starting new characters.)
Not being an economist I am not sure if my proposed solutions will stop inflation, but it ought to slow it down. I hope the Devs will somehow manage to keep a free economy that is neither incredibly in- nor deflated.
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That\'s one of the downsides of a fantasy MMORPG. There\'s nothing you could do about it.
I once played a game in which the currency was based on the dollar, but since PS is a free game, that won\'t happen.
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i thinks you shouldn\'t get any money transfered or if you did you could only buy items with it
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Originally posted by Marlow
Is anyone out there thinking about the economy of CB as a whole? I noticed that I wasn?t, up to now. I do not proclaim myself as an economist, but I see a serious problems evolving even before CB is out.
For example, many players will have large quantities of gems converted to tria, but none will have any items to trade (except those from NPCs), causing INFLATION to skyrocket. A possible solution is for everyone to start anew, or to convert only a small number of gems (e.g. no more than 500) to usable currency.
The second problem is that slain monsters will constantly provide players with money and items, again causing inflation. For this the only solution that would provide a stable economy is for the destruction of items and currency to occur at about the same rate as the creation of new ones.
(I probably should have mentioned this before but by an inflating economy I mean that craftsmen charge ridiculous prices for their items, that real estate will be overpriced, the Mercenary Guild fees are shy high, etc. all of this would generally discourage people from starting new characters.)
Not being an economist I am not sure if my proposed solutions will stop inflation, but it ought to slow it down. I hope the Devs will somehow manage to keep a free economy that is neither incredibly in- nor deflated.
Well to counter inflation we must increase taxes! Only 80% of gathered crystals maybe be tranfred into trias!...Of course i thought of Fiscal policies but what the hell it\'s onlt a game..:P
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lol... Mercenary Guild =)
I really don\'t know how the crystal exchange will be but mmogs economy is *always* screwed up... but after some time it balance itself until it reaches a decent point, allowing easy entrance of new members. Although people who really want to play the game will enter no matter what. Lineage II has a \"jumpy\" economy, there are no \"mid items\", or they are cheap or they are expensive. I believe ps will cover all the prices ranges...
PS: Long live to the mercenary guild! =D
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i dont think its the sollution for the problem, but i had a idea for economics.
Whats about a King? You would have taxes, 10% or whatever of the items you sell go to the king. I know, this would be very complicated, not for the taxes, but for the king. Who would be king? wht could the king do etc... but i think it would be very interesting.
(killing the king means becoming the new king? only admin could be king?)
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Im sorry, I just can\'t see any problem with transfering crystals into trias...I dont think that has anything to do with your \"inflation\" that hasn\'t even happened and won\'t even be a problem IMO.
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1. I don\'t see much room for inflation in system with fixed merchant prices :)
2. Increasing supply of something leads to the opposite of inflation - the prices drop.
/me sighs and returns to studying those hundreds of pages in Advanced Macroeconomy course books
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I agree with Tangerine, In MMORPGs the prices are pretty much fixed. If, as a merchant, you undercut or overprice your product you either sell out, or sell none respectively(sp).
Of course in the beginning there will be few people who will be able to manufacture products, so naturally the demand will be high as well as the price. The economy will level out though as more manufacturers start to put their products on the market for less. Converting Xtals into Tri should have no effect on inflation, it would most likely speed up the leveling out of the economy.
This whole scenario should be very interesting to watch from an economists point of view, might make for some really good research.
I remember seeing somewhere that all items will degrade with time and use, that would take care of problems with the market being flooded. I also feel that the primary model for the economy will be an \"As needed\" basis. An item will be created when a costumer needs it.
you have to keep in mind though that the conversion to Trias will be initiated in the next release, so it is likely that the impact on the economy in the final release will be negligent.
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I hope I was worried about nothing, as most of you seem to state :). What I was thinking is that, at least in the beginning, too much money (from converted crystals) is going to chase to few goods (those sold by NPCs) causing player made goods to be over priced if the NPCs are lacking any goods. Call me crazy, but this is inflation.
Originally posted by slabertooch
I remember seeing somewhere that all items will degrade with time and use, that would take care of problems with the market being flooded.
I hope you really mean all items even exceptional and externally rare ones, but even the destruction of some items satisfies me. *puts some worries to rest*
The prices are only fixed if NPCs will be able to offer the exact same items (in the quantities needed by the market) as players are able to produce. If players are able to produce unique items than the prices of these items are not fixed and they will charge the max they can get, so in the end only the richest echelon of players (those who play the most) will poses these items and the power embedded in them.
You are right about that tangerine, but I thought that the monsters will drop more gold than the equivalent value of items ? more capital as compared to supplies would be generated, giving rise to inflation.
Btw, I was thinking we?ll have a free economy ? would be much more interesting I think, with inflation, depressions, etc.
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I\'m pretty sure it involves all items, including weapons and other stuff, however I\'m not sure if it came from a dev or was just a wish by the community.
It wiil be good when players start to develop unique items, by creating compitition, and lowering prices. But in the end run it all boils down to the community.
Say Mary Sue is a Uber metalsmith and as a result charges Uber prices. If the product is worth the price people will pay it, if not she will not be able to do business. For example; Volvo, Mercedes, Audi, and many others make vehicles that are very expensive, yet people still buy them.
The reason people are willing to pay the price for these products, is because they are worth it. If a company comes out with a Million \"Tria\" car that drives like crap and is generally uncomfortable and unsafe, that company will generally go by the wayside.
Sorry for the rant, just started that one up and she ran away. In short the people decide the worth of a product by voting with their wallets.
p.s. I was surfing and found this article on msn might be interesting http://slate.msn.com/id/2078053/
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When I beta tested Star Wars Galaxies they mentioned phasing out bot sellers when players who manufactured items were strong enough to meet the demand. This of corse would eliminate fixed pricing altogether. I haven\'t played the game since beta so I do not know if they ever did this or if it worked. They did have the manufacturing skills set up for players to be able to produce anything that could be used in game as well as being able to create new items are resources changed. They had planned to make resources on worlds limited and exhaustable, then replacing those resources with new ones that had different properties thus giving rise to new items or similar items with different specs.
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Originally posted by tangerine
1. I don\'t see much room for inflation in system with fixed merchant prices :)
2. Increasing supply of something leads to the opposite of inflation - the prices drop.
/me sighs and returns to studying those hundreds of pages in Advanced Macroeconomy course books
So there is not going to be crafting in CB?
*poke*
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Originally posted by Monketh
Originally posted by tangerine
1. I don\'t see much room for inflation in system with fixed merchant prices :)
2. Increasing supply of something leads to the opposite of inflation - the prices drop.
/me sighs and returns to studying those hundreds of pages in Advanced Macroeconomy course books
So there is not going to be crafting in CB?
*poke*
Not necessarily... if the players can only craft items that the NPC merchant sells, then the players would have to sell their items for less than the NPC.
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Originally posted by Marlow
Is anyone out there thinking about the economy of CB as a whole? I noticed that I wasn?t, up to now. I do not proclaim myself as an economist, but I see a serious problems evolving even before CB is out.
For example, many players will have large quantities of gems converted to tria, but none will have any items to trade (except those from NPCs), causing INFLATION to skyrocket. A possible solution is for everyone to start anew, or to convert only a small number of gems (e.g. no more than 500) to usable currency.
The second problem is that slain monsters will constantly provide players with money and items, again causing inflation. For this the only solution that would provide a stable economy is for the destruction of items and currency to occur at about the same rate as the creation of new ones.
(I probably should have mentioned this before but by an inflating economy I mean that craftsmen charge ridiculous prices for their items, that real estate will be overpriced, the Mercenary Guild fees are shy high, etc. all of this would generally discourage people from starting new characters.)
Not being an economist I am not sure if my proposed solutions will stop inflation, but it ought to slow it down. I hope the Devs will somehow manage to keep a free economy that is neither incredibly in- nor deflated.
take into consideration that this is a pre-Alpha Tech Demo... Does it matter if Inflation is caused? I mean... does it really matter? Its a game? not like the damned Game world will fall because of inflation...
Eoghann Adair
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Thanks for the link slabertooch, really interesting study ? check it out if you guys have time.
Btw, I would love to see resources (preferably exhaustible once, like the once pointed out by Bytecon), but I don?t know if the Devs will put them in CB. It would be interesting to se for example ore being transported in escorted convoys from mines to industries in cities.
Mercenaries could be protecting these convoys as raiders are trying to loot them, guilds could gain their own resources to manufacture cheaper goods for them selves, explorers could search for new resources ? sorry for the ramble, but there could be endless role paying possibilities around this idea which.
Before I forget ? er ? I meant inflation in CB, not MB. And it really wont fall because of inflation :D.
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I don\'t think that very much inflation will occor for quite a while at least. When Cb comes out(if it ever comes out) it wont matter that much. If there are NPC\'s to set base line prices it wont matter. The Problm is though that over time money is created from looting monsters, and no money is ever destroyed. I think eventually inflation will occur on special items NPC\'s don\'t sell. it will take 1000\'s of players and many months (if not years) for it to have any mojor impact though.
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I had a pretty funny discussion with acraig about this topic, which lead in pretty much all diffrent directions except the right one. Anyway, I\'ll try and tell what we figured out would happen.
This isn\'t the official stuff, and if it happens in a diffrent way, at least we had fun figuring this out.
Anyway, most of us know CB will be mostly about monster bashing. What few know, and some do, is that it will take an empty char at least a few months worth of monster bashing to get to the top item in the shops. Now, the other guy who hasn\'t monster bashed at all and just bought the top weapon and armor for his transferred money misses a big part of CB, the bashing. And if he starts ranting to the powerfighter about being a n00b because he has no armor, remember this... Who has the experience in bashing other stuff up? ;) Anyway, you know what I mean. You wont get much of an advantage because you get money transferred, no matter if it\'s a lot or almost nothing. It all comes down to the person who works hardest in CB...
Btw, there\'s no real need to worry. Things will figure themselves out over time, and besides. Who says that some people start out with 10,000\'s of tria? It might be just 10% of your crystals that are transferred. Who knows? :)
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It might be just 10% of your crystals that are transferred. Who knows?
Aaaaah, your torturing me! ;)
You can still have some start up cash and work hard. You can just start with a slightly better weapon (not necessarily the best) and bash more efficiently than a \"naked\" character with nothing. :P
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I really don\'t think we should worry about it, this is still a beta. If the economy is incredibly messed up, who cares? The database will probably get wiped out several times before we reach \"gold\" anyway. I mean, the whole reason we have crystals now is to 1) test the ability to pick up and hold items in an inventory, and 2) give people something to do besides get married :D
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I think the worst thing that could happen to the economy would be if people started selling there products on Ebay like Everquest.
This would effectivelly make it very hard to buy items of people as they would be charging real money.
Which would make the ingame price sky rocket or just that they will no longer sell it, I think people caught selling there characters and items for cash should have the item or character deleted as this would ruin the ingame economy.
So put short I think people found selling items on http://www.gamingopenmarket.com, http://www.ebay.com should have the offending item deleted becasue what right do people have to make money of this game whent the devs themselves arn\'t getting any money.
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You guys that say we shouldn\'t worry about economic problems in CB because it\'s pre-alpha are too optimistic...
If the economy is ruined now, more and more people will stop playing PS. If that happens, there\'ll be less beta testers. That means it\'ll be harder for the devs to make new versions, because the bug-finding efficiancy will be very low. That means that the versions will probebly have more bugs from preior versions. That means more fuss for the devs, and the players, wich means more players dropping.
It\'s one of those loops that never end, and why? Because someone thought that pre-alpha economy doesn\'t matter.
Kyp14, this problem can be solved in the TOS. If they say in the TOS that you\'re not allowed to sell money, chars, items etc. outside of the game, and with real money. Yeah, most people don\'t read the TOS, but it provides a legal backup. Also, if it\'s put in more places besides the TOS, like in the FAQ or something, people will notice.
I doubt that sites like Ebay would like to host illegal auctions, and if the buyers will read it they wouldn\'t want to buy it either. Less sellers, less hosts, and less buyers.
And those that will sell, host, and buy, will risk legal actions taken against them :D
I agree with Gronomist that those that will work hard will have more success in the long run.
And even if you\'ll have thousands of trias in the beginning, and you\'ll buy the best items (by items I mean weapons, armor, misc, and everything else that goes in the inventory), it\'ll be easier for you to kill monsters and stuff, wich means you\'ll die less.
But dying is learning too (atleast in games). Just like falling off of bicycles teach you how to avoid it.
Dying in PS will get you to this death maze thing. And the more you die, the more experianced you are at passing it.
Even if the maze will randomly change every time you die, there\'s still a pattern.
So a fighter with cheap items has more chance of dying than the other guy that got the best items, but the poorer guy has more chance of surviving against stronger monsters, and going out of the death maze easier and faster.
Toadman31, this can be prevented. If the NPCs will sell stuff that aren\'t forgeable by players, people will buy these stuff from them. So the money that is given to the NPCs will be drained out of the world.
If the money NPCs get won\'t be drained, but instead be the money that the NPCs will use to buy stuff from forging chars (if such an option will be available), then yeah, there will be inflation over time.
A thing that will slow the inflation is that people come and go. People that stop playing will stop using their money, so it\'s as if the money was destroyed.
This isn\'t enough to stop inflation, especially not if there are many people fighting monsters and looting them, but it\'s still a factor.
Inflation can\'t be absolutely prevented, and it shouldn\'t either. An economy can\'t be always stable, no matter what. Things change all the time, sometimes there are inflations, sometimes there are deflations. That\'s not the problem.
The problem is when there\'s a big inflation, or a big deflation.
I think that a major anti-inflation factor will be the deteoration of items. Even if deteorated things can be repaired, it\'s money that gets \'wasted\'.
If there\'s less money wasted than money that is created, there\'s inflation. If there\'s more money wasted than money created, there\'s deflation.
I think that forged items should be diffrent than NPCs\' items. Not necessarily better, or worse, but with diffrent specs, more customizeable.
Customized items might be a bit harder to develop, but it\'s better for the market.
Let\'s say I want to be a warrior, but an agile one, that avoids the attacks of the enemies, I\'ll need a strong weapon (warrior) but I\'ll need it to be light as well. So I go to a smith, and tell him that I need a strong but light weapon.
That makes specialization alot better.
I\'m sure that everyone would agree that an assassin, a warrior, and a mage, all need diffrent types of weapons. An assassin needs it to be small, and deadly, so he can strike his enemy from behind and run away. A warrior would want a very strong weapon, without caring much about weight. A mage will want a weapon \'just in case\' that won\'t take much space in the inventory, but will be good enough to face an enemy.
At this point you might say \'but then the smith can charge alot for it\'. Well, go back and read Slabbertooth\'s post, he got a point. If someone thinks a certain item costs more than what it worth, he simply won\'t buy it, or go to that other smith that sells a smiliar item cheaper (unless the smiths form a cartel, but that\'s solveable too).
I think I had more things to say, but this post is too long anyways so I\'ll just stop :P