#1 threat: An unwillingness to implement unorthodox measures that are critical to keeping inflation in check because of how one thinks they may be perceived.
#2 threat: Failure to address all contributing factors to a rise in inflation.
#3 threat: Leaning too heavily on "static" preemptive measures to combat inflation at the expense of "dynamic" reactive measures.
1) Cash shops - people buying stuff for real money and selling it to other players which lead to hogging absurd ammounts of currency and buying craftable gear or crafting ingreadients without much concern for the ammount of currency that "was earned" very quickly and easy, which leads to global increase of prices.
2) No world reset after beta - most mmorpgs have plenty of exploits early on which allows alfa/beta testers to gather/farm ridiculous ammounts of currency. Many developers decides not to do a clean start on proper launch which leads to broken economy from the very beginning.
3) Multiboxing - Some people above said that farmers and/or hoarders are the threat to economy. I disagree - If a person wants to farm something then thats perfectly fine (not to mention that farming is big part of any mmorpg). The problem arises when single person is allowed to play multiple characters at once and gather multiplicative ammounts of ... everything.
AbsoluteTerror said:
- RMT
- CashShop, also to include cosmetic and the like that spawn from it
- Bots
- PVP/PVE on the save server w/ no control to prevent random gank
- Over the Top hughe weapon, armour, coloful cartoony graphic that dont fit the lore
- Treadmill quest or Daily that becomes a chore everyday.
- No Controller support for the game client <----- personal but not really necessary game breaking
- Bad customer service
- Constant crashes and slow to fix bugs <----- not game breaking but devert my attention to play something else
- Mounts that dont fit the lore
- False Open World *cough* FfXIV <----- debateable
- Over the Top Solo MMORPG no community building *cough* Black Desert Online <----- debateable
- F2P
- Cheap subscription causes white knight to support/defend cometic cash shop, tokens, etc for "It keep the company light on" nonsense.
- Pantheon has an awsome community, devs, and forums <--- win-win
- mybad i could space these out
- EDIT:
- Vertical Pregression, Where your weapons and armour become useless with every expansion at least make it survive two expansion.
- Last Edit seriously: I Dislike constanly having to repair weapons and armour <---- not game breaking just annoying
Could you elaborate on your reply a bit?
I fail to see how several of your remarks would impact the game's economy. Or are you thinking of another economy outside the game itself? Either way, please explain?
@philo "Not enough money sinks. Too much straight currency dropped. To large of a return from vendors." Yep, fully agree.
@starblight * "We want items to be tradable and not bind on pickup or equip. Items never break permanently." I might be pulling to out of context here, but how would items permanently breaking negatively impact the economy?
* "Limit how many times an item can change hands based on accounts. Say every item can have 4 accounts only. I feel like this might be a compromise. If you were buying it you would be able to see how many more owners are left." Yes to the first sentence, no to the rest. For me, it would feel really awkward to see an item that states: can only be traded 1-3 times. It ripps me out of my experience to talk about or consider accounts while I'm looking at items themselves.
* "Like one of the ideas above destroy item and you can now wear it as cosmetic only item any time you want. Or only in cities. I could see people wanting to collect all the items just for this." I usually like this in a game, but it doesn't do anything to prevent threats to the economy. Especially knowing that you have an infinite supply of collectables in the game. To me, it's just a fun feature.
@mathir "Rare and desireable items need to be rare as hell." Perhaps the rarity could be based on server population? I'm not certain that's a feasable callibration for the devs. If rares have that degree of scarcity, wouldn't the abundance common goods still threaten the economy? Possibly dropping in price quite heavily and rares being overly priced, which would create a gap between the rich and the poor players, or the casual and hardcore gamers? Once this snowball is rolling of the mountain, there is no stopping it.
@Akom * "Once you have 10 or 20 tokens, you can trade them for an item you can add to any recipe in that same tier that guarantees success if it's within the skill range. This would allow crafters to be able to craft extremely rare items without fear of losing the materials."
Aren’t you just moving the problem further up the line? The one thing you’re trying to maintain (loss of ingredients) is just what you’re preventing from happening and that even on exotic/end of the line products? So you’re reversely impacting it multiple times: 1) you prevent rares to get lossed due to failed crafting, and by doing so it creates a second impact; 2) you’re preventing exotics or end of the line products to become rare by garantueeing their survival during crafting. And 3) thereby you’re pushing away the scenario of requiring new harvesting sessions or subcomponent production (which could stimulate another resource sink).
"However, getting a replacement for an item should be rare."
Although making things less available makes sense initially, I think it’s not the solution to everything. However you slice it, depending on the serverpopulation you’ll reach a saturation point in a matter of months or years. Where rare becomes less rare. If the serverpopulation (aka player demand) does not grow equally or faster to the amount of rares present on the market, putting a rare factor on something is not efficient enough to solve this issue that will arise over time. (just my thoughts here)
"Getting a usable drop feels good. You get that smack of reward chemicals in the brain. It's like hitting the tripple sevens on a slot machine. The issue with modern MMOs is that they've normalized getting that reward. It's no longer a rarity. "
Very true, if I understand it correctly VR is already looking into that. Fingers crossed.
@vjek "NPCs providing coin/tradeable currency rewards, especially for items, harvested raws, or any similar item that is generated as a result of the Adventure, Crafting, or Harvesting loops (ie "loot","gear","equipment", etc). That is, explicitly, being able to sell "stuff" to NPCs directly, for coin/tradeable currency."
I also think that this one is a major issue. Because from the start, you’ve designed your own doom. You design infinite resources and the option to gain stackable player values (coin/token/…). You’ve designed an internal loop where you stimulate the rapidly saturation and the devaluation of coin/resources/materials. Which ultimately leads to a broken economy, just by dev design alone, meaning that it's not taking into account clever players “trying to get the most out of their buck” (exploit tactics).
"You can even, if desired, allow the player to consume vastly MORE resources during this process to set certain flags on the object, such as tradable, enchantable, heirloom, and so-on."
I like this concept. Not sure how easy it is to implement in a game. And most items will already be tradeable and manipulation is widely possible throughout the different stages of item ID. Perhaps other flags could be a more useable/unique alternative.
@vandraad "The economy can be built to be mostly self-correcting through implementation of supply-demand calculations. Every NPC should look at their stocks and base the buy/sell price upon supply and demand. The more I sell an item to an NPC, the higher his stock climbs and the less he should be paying for every subsequent purchase from a player. The more I purchase from a vendor, the cost for every subsequent purchase should increase."
This can help to mitigate problems with the economy, but only to a certain degree. After months or years in the game, people will accept that low price due to oversupply and at some stage in time you’ll reach the bottom where many things are worth 1 copper coin. This could work, if the player population or it’s activity drops down over time (which is unlikely and quite frankly not to be encouraged for sake of the survival of the game itself), as the npc merchants would be raising their payments. Or the devs cut back on the amount of nodes present in the game. (feast and famine practices) This practice is doable, but it will stroke many players the wrong way as it impacts the players' choice to do things in the game at the time they want to play.
Barin999 said:@starblight * "We want items to be tradable and not bind on pickup or equip. Items never break permanently." I might be pulling to out of context here, but how would items permanently breaking negatively impact the economy?
-I am suggesting not having an item break permanently is a negative on the economy. But I feel it is important to make clear I hate any kind of durability and really hate the idea of a limited life for items.
Barin999 said:* "Limit how many times an item can change hands based on accounts. Say every item can have 4 accounts only. I feel like this might be a compromise. If you were buying it you would be able to see how many more owners are left." Yes to the first sentence, no to the rest. For me, it would feel really awkward to see an item that states: can only be traded 1-3 times. It ripps me out of my experience to talk about or consider accounts while I'm looking at items themselves.
-Items could have a lore friendly way of informing people how old they are. I am not a lore kind of guy but let’s say as example the more the item was traded the worse the item would look. This could be added to the description of the item.
Barin999 said:* "Like one of the ideas above destroy item and you can now wear it as cosmetic only item any time you want. Or only in cities. I could see people wanting to collect all the items just for this." I usually like this in a game, but it doesn't do anything to prevent threats to the economy. Especially knowing that you have an infinite supply of collectables in the game. To me, it's just a fun feature.
-I might be alone in this but I fear item inflation far more than currency inflation. Because of this I want to see as many ways for items to leave the economy as possible. I also follow the philosophy that the carrot is better than the stick. By making people want to destroy an item vs having an item just have a limited amount of use till it breaks.
Barin999 said:Aren’t you just moving the problem further up the line? The one thing you’re trying to maintain (loss of ingredients) is just what you’re preventing from happening and that even on exotic/end of the line products? So you’re reversely impacting it multiple times: 1) you prevent rares to get lossed due to failed crafting, and by doing so it creates a second impact; 2) you’re preventing exotics or end of the line products to become rare by garantueeing their survival during crafting. And 3) thereby you’re pushing away the scenario of requiring new harvesting sessions or subcomponent production (which could stimulate another resource sink).
A while back in one of the streams Joppa talked about not making the game too punishing. Having to camp a crafting material for hours (or more) only to have it eaten by the crafting system with no recourse might walk that line. Especially if it's an item that required multiple rare materials from different dungeons, etc.. that could represent days of a player's time. Yes, that kind of thing could happen in EQ back in the day, but the point Joppa was making was that things don't have to be like EQ (or any other oldschool MMO) for Pantheon to be a social MMO.
Does it move the problem further up the line? Not completely, IMO. The rarity of the best crafted items can still be controlled via material drop rates.
One of the biggest threats to the economy, to me, is saturation. Loot will constantly drop. Crafting materials will constantly be gathered. I recently played EVE Echoes and while in the long run the game wasn't for me, something I found interesting was the economy of the game. Sure there were some things broken in EE that effected the economy, but the root of its economy was that crafted "items" (ships and mods) were constantly being destroyed and needed to be replaced. The solution I presented was intended to create two ways for crafting materials, resources that will constantly pour into the economy, to leave circulation (failed attempts without the "saving" item and turning in crafting items for the tokens) while fitting with VR's vision of "not too punishing."
This system could be expanded as well. For instance having any item, crafted or dropped, able to be handed in for tokens and allowing the tokens to purchase other consumable things like raid buffs and acclimations (this is not an original idea, I've heard a similar concept presented either by a dev or someone on reddit before). Something akin to WoW's gear levels would probably need to be used to determine which and how many tokens would be rewarded for handing in a particular piece.
This would all contribute to a typical supply and demand system. As the value of items drop, they become more compelling "trade in fodder." But as more of those items leave the economy, demand will increase causing the price to increase to match. Ideally this would lead to the ebb and flow of a healty economy.
That said, it's just an idea. I'm no economist or expert on MMO development.
Some threats that I consider to be noticed:
1) Lack of war/conflict, natural disasters impacting town or node availability. Economies thrive on war and conflict. The game offers conflicts but most of the time not to a degree where a nation is actively at war. Usually it's a small scale scenario where you supply npc X and after a x# repetition the issue is solved, war is over. And actually during that scenario the availability of resources or amount of demanded materials is hardly impacted. So you're kind of skipping the essence of economy-meets-war/conflict. Natural disasters or not common in games. Disasters such as a devastating fires, meteor strike, cave ins, hailstorms, floods, etc. These are things that could impact the economy in two ways: it depleats available resources and it increases the demand for supplies causing a fluctuation of pricings and perceived values to npc's or players. Because this is lacking, you're presenting a semi-stable peaceful world, where everyone can get and stack anything as nothing unexpected happens that could impact this process. Imagine rolling out a forest fire, that cannot be tackled by players and lasts for X days. Meat, wood, mobs would have a increased perceived value during that time. The fire can fade away, whenever the dev feels like it.
2) Transportation, fast travel. I want to eat a kiwi from New Zealand every day. That's the real life scenario. The kiwi is pushing away local products and pushing prices of these products down due to the larger variety of available products. The difference here is, we have seasons and availability fluctuations and producers that manipulate the economy to keep prices high. In game however, you have infinite resources. If you're able to get dwarven ore and bring it to a Skar market or Human market to sell/trade. You will threaten the local economy. (similar to how local shops are pushed aside by large distribution shops) If you want local products to maintain their value locally and keep higher value to products coming from outside that region, you want to prevent fast travel/easy transportation from becoming the norm. It should not be common for players to get resources from one place and put them on markets that are very distant to the place of origin. Yes, you can still do it, but most players won't be willing to do the efforts and that's a good thing for the economy.
3) Ability to stack and stash. If you can stack large amounts of goods in your bags/banks, due to infinite resources, over time you'll end up with players having everything they need in their bags. It will push the scarecity of items up to the top tier of challenges (hard to get resources or items). And this will continue with each expansion. I would limit the stack amount. For example up to 20-25 (2 minutes worth of resources). Anything beyond that would require an addition space in your inventory/bank. What this does is, it pushes players to a point of decision. Where they need to decide: will I fill another space of my limited inventory with an item of the same ID OR will I try to convert these extras into something else? If this design choice, is maintained throughout the game's lifespan, people playing this game will just accept that. As with all games there are things people like or dislike, but still they play the game and accept the good with the less favourable. Not to underestimate the influence this has on item value!
You could say that this means that players will end up with their inventory filled with stacks of high end products. However, the way VR is designing resource interdependcy throughout the tiers of the game, you'll need space for those lower tier resources aswel. Or you'll need to depend on other players to deliver those goods for you, which is ultimately a very good thing for the economy.
4) Infinite resources. I believe this speaks for itself. There needs to be a design where the demand remains higher than the supply. Possibly in combination with a continous recalibration of available resources as time goes on.
5) Resource conversion. Usually we see products of a lower stage having a 3-1 or more conversion ratio. But products of a higher stage have a lower ratio and lead up to a 1-1 ratio. If you don't have resource loss due to failure in the crafting process implemented, this conversion ratio will lead up to a saturation point. I'm not saying you need 2 hilts to make 1 sword. Rather that for 1 sword you need multiple subcomponents that have a higher conversion ratio. VR is already tackling this, but the threat here is when they do not maintain that conversion ratio throughout every item in the game. And that's a big thing to keep into consideration.
6) Global channels. Another quality of life feature, we as players have become accostumed to and "we" expect to be implemented a game. Let me put it this way, if you allow the big players to influence each other, it will have a massive impact on any other player who's not able to uphold the standard those big players are offering. Yes, you can still work in tells. And that's fine, that's a one on one commercial deal and has less impact on regional markets or the economy of the less then hardcore players. I like the alley approach of EQ1. Where players can reach out to others within their own region. The prices would be more stable and less impacted by interregional/intercontinental flows of resources. If you want a new player to feel of value years after launch, you'll want to keep it regional. If a global market has been established, new players or casual players will struggle or at least negative experience at first. They will be stimulated to look up at the high end players who stear the market. And that just means players rushing through lower content as fast as possible to catch up and feel meaningful in the game. All due to global channels (at least from this perspective).
starblight said:1) -I am suggesting not having an item break permanently is a negative on the economy. But I feel it is important to make clear I hate any kind of durability and really hate the idea of a limited life for items.
2) -Items could have a lore friendly way of informing people how old they are. I am not a lore kind of guy but let’s say as example the more the item was traded the worse the item would look. This could be added to the description of the item.
3) -I might be alone in this but I fear item inflation far more than currency inflation. Because of this I want to see as many ways for items to leave the economy as possible. I also follow the philosophy that the carrot is better than the stick. By making people want to destroy an item vs having an item just have a limited amount of use till it breaks.
1) Ah, I get what you're saying now. Thanks for explaining.
2) That would be a good approach indeed. "This belt appears pristine. -This belt looks used. - This belt appears old. - This belt is nearly worn out."
3) I agree that the carrot is better. I believe it's there that we as community can be of worth. By coming up with alternative carrots instead of having to rely on sticks due to a limited amount of inspiration.
Akom said:1) Does it move the problem further up the line? Not completely, IMO. The rarity of the best crafted items can still be controlled via material drop rates.
2) One of the biggest threats to the economy, to me, is saturation. Loot will constantly drop. Crafting materials will constantly be gathered.
3) ... but the root of its economy was that crafted "items" (ships and mods) were constantly being destroyed and needed to be replaced.
I'm no economist or expert either. :) I just find enjoyment in openly discussing these subjects with the community.
1) Wouldn't these drops be camped or consumed as soon as they appear? It might not have enough time on the market for it to be of positive influence on the economy and the mindset of players.
2) I fully agree. It's one of those things that is difficult to plan ahead and design it in such a way that it's balanced out and remains so in time.
3) What items would you envision being destroyed in Pantheon? Would these be items that require little fuel/resources? Or would it be the opposite, large projects breaking down and requiring a massive amount of resources. The question here, what is driving players to keep these large projects up or rebuilding them time and time again? There would need to be a feasable positive effect on the people that helped in the construction or people being near the location of that large project. Details yet to be determined.
Durability is a touchy subject overall. It will be interesting how VR finally approaches this and with what in mind, they made that decision.
1.One player( IE Account) Mastering to many tradeskills (crafting/Harvesting). To much self sufficiency.
2.Infinite coin dumped into the system without effective coin syncs to balance it out.
3.Player to player trades & Mail box trades, that allow and encourage illicit sales.
4.Lack of a sales cap on items allowing for illicit sales though market place/auction. A 20% increase on the current Average price will allow for some market fluctuation up or down, while preventing RMT using the market place/auction.
HemlockReaper said: 1.One player( IE Account) Mastering to many tradeskills (crafting/Harvesting). To much self sufficiency.
Most players wont have nearly enough time to "MASTER" all (most) tradeskills if they dont multibox. I doubt that those who do find the time for that will be numerous enough to impact the games economy in a major way.
Barin999 said:AbsoluteTerror said:
- RMT
- CashShop, also to include cosmetic and the like that spawn from it
- Bots
- PVP/PVE on the save server w/ no control to prevent random gank
- Over the Top hughe weapon, armour, coloful cartoony graphic that dont fit the lore
- Treadmill quest or Daily that becomes a chore everyday.
- No Controller support for the game client <----- personal but not really necessary game breaking
- Bad customer service
- Constant crashes and slow to fix bugs <----- not game breaking but devert my attention to play something else
- Mounts that dont fit the lore
- False Open World *cough* FfXIV <----- debateable
- Over the Top Solo MMORPG no community building *cough* Black Desert Online <----- debateable
- F2P
- Cheap subscription causes white knight to support/defend cometic cash shop, tokens, etc for "It keep the company light on" nonsense.
- Pantheon has an awsome community, devs, and forums <--- win-win
- mybad i could space these out
- EDIT:
- Vertical Pregression, Where your weapons and armour become useless with every expansion at least make it survive two expansion.
- Last Edit seriously: I Dislike constanly having to repair weapons and armour <---- not game breaking just annoying
Could you elaborate on your reply a bit?
I fail to see how several of your remarks would impact the game's economy. Or are you thinking of another economy outside the game itself? Either way, please explain?
JUST These:
RMT
CashShop, also to include cosmetic and the like that spawn from it
Bots
Mybad i got carried away :)
Hegenox said:HemlockReaper said: 1.One player( IE Account) Mastering to many tradeskills (crafting/Harvesting). To much self sufficiency.Most players wont have nearly enough time to "MASTER" all (most) tradeskills if they dont multibox. I doubt that those who do find the time for that will be numerous enough to impact the games economy in a major way.
I didn’t say they had to master All or even most, for it to be a problem.
HemlockReaper said:Hegenox said:HemlockReaper said: 1.One player( IE Account) Mastering to many tradeskills (crafting/Harvesting). To much self sufficiency.Most players wont have nearly enough time to "MASTER" all (most) tradeskills if they dont multibox. I doubt that those who do find the time for that will be numerous enough to impact the games economy in a major way.
I didn’t say they had to master All or even most, for it to be a problem.
My bad. It would be enough to halve the available crafting/harvesting specialisations to one spec per profession per account though - IF and when it would start becoming an issue.
Barin999 said:3) What items would you envision being destroyed in Pantheon? Would these be items that require little fuel/resources? Or would it be the opposite, large projects breaking down and requiring a massive amount of resources. The question here, what is driving players to keep these large projects up or rebuilding them time and time again? There would need to be a feasable positive effect on the people that helped in the construction or people being near the location of that large project. Details yet to be determined.
Durability is a touchy subject overall. It will be interesting how VR finally approaches this and with what in mind, they made that decision.
I highly doubt VR is going to go the route of players being able to fully lose items unintentionally. The only way you can really do that in a game is to make general items relatively easy to get, thus easy to replace. While that is a viable way to balance an economy, it doesn't really work for Pantheon. When talking about death penalties, the devs have already stated that it is likely that dying is going to respawn you with all of your gear, but anything not worn stays on your body. A while back Joppa said something about not wanting players to be able to fully lose their corpses. While that could have changed with the respawning with your worn gear idea, I still doubt they'll have full loss.
In response to your question about what items would be destroyed in Pantheon, in order to address saturation it has to be gear... armor, weapons, jewelry.. everything. So, starting with the idea that players will likely not be unintentionally losing gear, the problem becomes: How do we get gear out of circulation without "taking" it from players that don't want to give it up? The answer that has been presented by some (and what I reference above) is having players voluntarily give up items in exchange for a consumable item or buff. My idea expands upon that and ties it in with crafting, allowing crafting to be punishing while still having some leeway.
The really difficult thing to balance with that system would be incentivising turning in items enough to get even some higher tier items out of the economy without making the benefits so potent that you have to balance the game around them. A buff that doubles the HP of everyone in your raid or gives everyone 100% haste would certainly be worth trading in a really nice item for, but that would also require balancing the raid to account for that, making it much more difficult to proceed without the buff.
Something like acclimations could work, though. Acclimations are going to be used like keying in EQ. Without good enough acclimations you're going to have a bad time. Sacrificing a raid-level item could buy acclimations for your entire raid for a set time period would let you take on a "keyed" raid sooner. The raid itself wouldn't need to be re-balanced with this in mind. As more players gain their acclimations, it becomes less necessary for a raid-level buff. Smaller / less hard core guilds might always need to use the raid-buff. Or perhaps a hard core guild might decide that, for a particular environment, they'll just always take the buff and not worry about the additional acclimation.
Akom said:In response to your question about what items would be destroyed in Pantheon, in order to address saturation it has to be gear... armor, weapons, jewelry.. everything. So, starting with the idea that players will likely not be unintentionally losing gear, the problem becomes: How do we get gear out of circulation without "taking" it from players that don't want to give it up? The answer that has been presented by some (and what I reference above) is having players voluntarily give up items in exchange for a consumable item or buff. My idea expands upon that and ties it in with crafting, allowing crafting to be punishing while still having some leeway.
Sacrificing is indeed one way to go at it. I believe this has good potential to be worked into improving your standing with a faction. But there are other options where players can sacrifice /hand in their used gear. Such as cultural events, shrines in the world, religious buildings in cities. Gear specific NPC's, such as blacksmiths, leatherworkers, etc. One might even be able to hand their worn gear to an NPC "ruling" the black market.
One thing I hope they do not link with this is a currency return. Like you said, a temporary buff that can't be traded could do the trick. It should never be about trading one physical thing for another physical thing. (gear for coin, gear for tokens, gear for gear, gear for resources, and such).
I agree, that it will be tricky to balance that out, to give the players enough incentive. I was thinking about: a mob or specific area (note not multiple) that require that special buff. But as you receive that buff, it doesn't say that it's required for that mob/area. It explains what it does, but nothing more. This means that players might turn in an item for that buff and needs to match those two part together in order to use it to its best effect.
I wouldn't agree with receiving a portable consumable buff. Where the player can choose when to consume it. Because that means they can just get a stack of those. Turning a buff into a dangerous stack where more elements in the game need to take this into account when they create their challenge rating. You want players to come back to that sacrifying place and turn in more than ones. If not your gearsink is badly designed.
HemlockReaper said:4.Lack of a sales cap on items allowing for illicit sales though market place/auction. A 20% increase on the current Average price will allow for some market fluctuation up or down, while preventing RMT using the market place/auction.
My head might not be awake enough for it, but can you explain this a bit more please?
A sales cap on the market means there can only be 20 swords with the same ID on auction at the same time? Wouldn't this just make people turn to streets/channels instead?
Also, how would selling an item through the market place/auction be seen as an illicit sale? In my view commerce through market place/auction would be just as legal as it's by gamedesign itself to be there.
Where do you place that 20% price increase? Would that be directly on the item itself or only when you post it into an ingame commerce system? It's a good incentive to keep players using that channel but similarly you're pushing people away because they need to spend 20% more on items bought. So again, they would just work with tells or channels to bypass this 20% increased cost, no?
Why would the 20% increase stimulate the market "fluctuation" to go down? If you mean by fluctuation the amount of items with the same ID present on the auction itself, you lost me. If you mean the overall pricings would go down, you lost me again. And how would that prevent Real Money Trading (RMT)? (apologies, I have a personal thing with acronyms)
I could use some more explaining here. But you don't have to if you don't want to. :)
to make use of meanly or unfairly for one's own advantage. Playing a game in a way not intended.
It will come down to VR policing this behaver weather it is hacking using boxing boting to hold camps or any other "Emergent" game play that hurts the balance of the game.
1 expansion later the latest raid gear being matched by easy content group gear. This was particulalry frustrating with EQ1 seeds of destruction. the drive to defeat difficult content = easy mode WoW like every other game.
not enough money sinks - a money sink to lower your level to play with friends is a good optional money sink you may be happy to spend as it's a lot easier than coming up with *another* unique name to heal or tank for your friends for every 10'ish levels
need for repair / item durability loss - Dark age of Camelot handled this well, equipment you use every day for 6 months level 30-40 , with weekly repairs, still had at least ~ 50 % durability and resell ability, but still fostered the need for more crafting, and seeking out a crafter for repairs that would help the durability / effectiveness endure.
1. Set prices. When a game company steps in and decides items on an auction house/broker can only be sold for X amount of money, or cannot exceed Y amount, I feel it can kill an economy.
2. No money sinks. When players have no way to spend the coin they accrued, the coin gets sat on and prices for things go up. Needs to be a way to repair items with coin, or mounts to buy, or something. If not, items on the AH/Broker goes up as people want to sell things for all that dosh.
Nephele said:Hi everyone,
I have another question I'd like to put out there for you all to discuss.
A healthy game economy is something that is helpful for all players, whether they're crafters or not. Everyone wants to have the opportunity to sell things to other players for a reasonable price, and likewise everyone wants to be able to buy things that they need from other players for a reasonable price. Yet history has shown that it is difficult to achieve a healthy, balanced economy in these games.
In your opinion, what are the biggest threats to the health of the game's economy? What are the things that we should be watching out for, or trying to prevent, that might cause problems for the game's economy both short-term and long-term?
Just like all the other questions I"ve posted, there's no right answer to this - I'm mainly interested in just seeing everyone's thoughts on this subject. There's no design decision that depends on this discussion or anything like that either. So, just talk about what you think the right answer should be!
Barin999 said:HemlockReaper said: 4.Lack of a sales cap on items allowing for illicit sales though market place/auction. A 20% increase on the current Average price will allow for some market fluctuation up or down, while preventing RMT using the market place/auction.My head might not be awake enough for it, but can you explain this a bit more please?
I'm going to hazard a guess that he meant a cap on the price. Allowing a price swing of up to 20% of some calculated 'recent average', but no huge jump. This would prevent you from putting a "rusty sword" worth 2 copper on the market for 10,000 Plat as a way for a gold seller to transefer your purchased gold to you in a 'legitimate transaction'.
But I could be wrong.
Jothany said:Barin999 said:HemlockReaper said: 4.Lack of a sales cap on items allowing for illicit sales though market place/auction. A 20% increase on the current Average price will allow for some market fluctuation up or down, while preventing RMT using the market place/auction.My head might not be awake enough for it, but can you explain this a bit more please?
I'm going to hazard a guess that he meant a cap on the price. Allowing a price swing of up to 20% of some calculated 'recent average', but no huge jump. This would prevent you from putting a "rusty sword" worth 2 copper on the market for 10,000 Plat as a way for a gold seller to transefer your purchased gold to you in a 'legitimate transaction'.
But I could be wrong.
This is basically what i meant. assuming “rusty sword” had an average price of 10 copper, you could post it 20% above that at 12 copper. When enough people post at 12 copper, agreeing its worth more, the average price changes to 12 copper and 20% cap raises to 14.4 copper ect.. Or the reverse.