Fixing some of the economy

[Enyo]

I did read your entire and very long post which just basically repeats all that has been said before and I stand by my words that its mundane to keep repeating ourselves over and over. Its beyond the point of dicussion. Its at that place now where a nice thick steak becomes puree. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude and its not directed at you personally but this is how I feel.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Savyl

[Kedan]

Carone just one think about what you said about increase manu times would ruining the market for other items used like bars.

 

To start with the market for bars isn't that great anyway, most people already make there own bars. But if we also icreased the time to make the bars aswell as the final ingredents, then it would effected it to much, all it would do is ruining the market for buying harverstable goods. But then having people that use raw matrials harvest there own stuff isn't really a problem, as harvesting isn't much of a skill anyway (its even been suggested to get rid of that as a skill)

[carone]

Carone just one think about what you said about increase manu times would ruining the market for other items used like bars.

 

To start with the market for bars isn't that great anyway, most people already make there own bars. But if we also icreased the time to make the bars aswell as the final ingredents, then it would effected it to much, all it would do is ruining the market for buying harverstable goods. But then having people that use raw matrials harvest there own stuff isn't really a problem, as harvesting isn't much of a skill anyway (its even been suggested to get rid of that as a skill)

 

The biggest problem I see here is not being able to predict the outcome of such a step. We're talking about an enormous change at the TOP of the production chain resulting in, as you said, removing a whole skill!

What will that do to the game? As I see it right now one of the few things that are actually traded in the market are some harvestables. There's no way of tellling what it will do to the whole game if you remove that.

 

And what will all those people(and there are many) who harvest resources for money now do when they've lost their source of income?

They need something to do. Will they go fight monsters? Is there enough room in the world for all those fighters? The amount of monster drops flooding the market will increase.

Will they get bored of fighting after a while and start manufacturing items themselves, thus ending up being able to make everything they need themselves, decreasing demand even further.

What else would such a change entail?

I honestly don't know what would happen globally but I just want to express my concern of making such big changes.

 

I'm all for change but one step at a time.

[Kedan]

Well personally i dont think we can solve the problem without slowing down the production of alot of items in game, yes people we have to find other ways to make money, but the idea is that we see what happens after we have done this then do the tweaking so that people dont all choose the same skill, or even if they do they will bring the price of the skills goods down to a point where some people will give up with it and go to another skill untill finally all skills are spread out evenly. Like now all skills that are spread out pretty well, we can tell this by almost all items in games are flooding the market, not only a certain skill (showning that people do spread out when one skill falls) so what we basicly will be doing is reducing the amount of items in game but not effect any skill but harvesting. Which all harvests have a second skill that they spend there money they made from harvesting. So this would just get ride of harvesting being a way to make money, and make it so that every skill makes money (but its fighters that are bring it into the game, everyone else is just getting there money from the fighters)

 

I understand we can't predict exaclly what will happen, but at the moment the only other suggest than lowing the amount of items coming into game, is raising the amount going out, which would be either done by raise the breakage rate of items (which the fighters would hate as its already high enough) or having NPC's buying all items, leading to a more 1 player game as people dont actually interact with other players, but not only that, it leads to a massive amount of money coming into the game though them NPC's, which will just change it from flooding with items (which it is atm) to floodying with gc.

 

Back before the big wipe we had both, flooded with gc and items. I believe the gc problem was fixed when they stop NPC's buying items at a high price, so putting it back will just cause us taking a step back.

[Dimov]

What I consider a major problem is the large number of powergamers, and market channel's relatively high demands ( atleast when I started back in 0.9.9). This means, that a new player has a lot harder time to sell his items. Let's take this as an example:

 

Item A has a recommended level of 22. IIRC there was no-fail/ >1% with rec lvl + 25.

So player ^a^ attempts 100 of these items at level, and gets 50 ( 50% chance). each of these items costs 90 gc to make. So we have 900 gc invested, 50 items produced. So he should sell one at 900/50 = 180 gc to end up at zero.

however a person at level 47 would manage to make a full hundred, therefore, twice as less.

The lesson? Trivial items - an item does not award xp after a certain level.

 

 

Also, on the so dreaded and hated MM perk. Keep it. Instead make the cloak a more frequent and breakable drop. Thus it would be more affordable to newer players - therefore bought more often, as some might prefer it to the perk.

[Jamol]

Most of what you have said has already been said and posted by me earlier in the thread.

 

I would suggest that people actually READ the entire thread before posting more and more of the same ideas over and over and over again and also if you see that someone else has already posted certain suggestions, please don't just re-word it and make a new post.

 

At this point I don't see this thread going anywhere at all because its become so cluttered how could anyone possibly keep up. We have all debated and forumated this topic to death. I think several people have already suggested it and now I'm going to propose it again. Lets just give it a rest and let the devs have an opportunity to digest it all.

 

Thanks.

 

I agree here!!! The topic has been open for a week. Either we need a cool down on this topic or locked. The same stuff is getting repeated alot! Not unless ent wants to here input back on all the ideas here.

[Kedan]

Ok just an idea on how to slow down the making without to much work needin to be done (only a few new items need to be added).

 

Basicly all high used items (which include potions, essences, and rings(event hough there not used that much at the moment) only need there fomular exp and time to make slightly adjusted.

 

I'll give you an example, SR's need to take about 5 seconds to make instead of 1, that small incease will slow down SR's just enough so that fighters no longer make there own as it takes so long, and slow down the amount pot makers are making so that it matchs the demand. (this is all that really needs to be done for most, if not all, potions and essences)

 

Then rings need the fumaler changing, rings are like potions, they are used (or ment to be used) alot, but for some reason they cost almost 5x more than potions, this is why they are not in demand, i think if we just changed it so that silver and gold rings only need 1 bar, then they should sell for around 50-60gc each, which is what there selling for at the moment and just about matching the demand, so this should help them out (it might need to be adjusted to be slightly cheaper to make, but this will be enough for now, see how it worked out). Also i would suggest a increase in time to make to, im guessing they take 1 second to make like most other things, so raise them to about 5 seconds.

 

This needs to also be done with bars, but with slightly higher waiting times, maybe 30 seconds per bar?

 

This would then only leave manu able stuff. This is where the new items will be needed. Basicly i would suggest items take up to an hour or to of just mixing time, problem is waiting around for an hour will be way to boring, so we need it to be split up, this is where i suggest having "Part of <item name>". So using the serp there would be an item called "Part of a Serp". and they would need something like 1 tit bar and 1 fe to make it. Then to make a Serp you would need something like 100 parts of a serp 1 serp stone and 1 EFE.

 

This would increase the times of ever item in game just enough to match the demand without causing to many new items, or players having to wait around doing nothing for hours. Also the exp's would have to change to stop players bitching, but apart from that there shouldn't be to much bitching, apart from people who want to play a game thats so easy you only have to play it for an hour to "complete" it, but they dont really count

[Arnieman]

It's taken awhile, but I've read most of this thread - I want to make a few comments where I agree/disagree. I'll try to be respectful; all I ask is others to do likewise.

 

Breaking up by skill area.

1. 
   General suggestions
   
2. Removal of Perks. Bad Idea, perks add a certain strategy to the game - a gamble of taking a perk for a loss of potential attributes, or a crippler for more potential attributes. Taking away this strategy, or forcing people to make this decision with a cape instead removes this strategizing - I mean, as much as MM gets decried, if you never intend to fight, wouldn't you like to spend 5 pickpoints for an MM you can't lose? Or Artificier - no cape for this, and it's downright expensive, as perks go. Removing Perks won't help that much, I don't think. Besides, most perks with capes are capes that are worn, and few people actually take the perk (at least on their main chars.
   

1. 
   Harvesting
   
2. Stopping the NPC purchase of resources. Bad Idea, If you remove or lower this price floor, the prices will plummet even farther than they already have. The charge has been made that making money by selling resources to NPCs is too lucrative; I would argue that other market forms aren't working efficiently, promoting this one too much - in effect, other skills have the problem, not this. Also, as much as people decry the inflated 5k beaver pelts from "before the crash", it should be obvious we have the opposite problem, deflation. You cannot cure falling prices by removing more ACTIVE money from the already cash-depleted economy.
   
3. Removing Harvesting as a skill, altogether. Really Bad Idea, Harvesting as a skill is not as easy to raise as some people would pretend - while it is relatively low-risk, it is also very low-profit, in terms of experience. Not only that, but the skill-harvesters are NOT generally the same ones as those harvesting for money.
   

1. 
   Manu-labor skills
   
2. Tool Cooldown. Could be a Good Idea, if done properly. As per the current food cooldowns, the old mix-delays were better for limiting mass-manufacture than food cooldowns - sure, you could pop all the fruit you wanted then, but now, you can make almost 5 Magic Essences now, in the time you could do 1 then. I would say that the mix delays should come back - as unpopular as they were, they didn't allow people to pop out goods like PEZ dispensers. However, I would do a tool cooldown a little different than like the food cooldown - I would make the tool cooldown increase incrementally, and with each increase, the tool goes from a 0% chance of breaking (no cooldown) to 100% chance (full cooldown). This could give people the chance to break tools in the process of working.
   

1. 
   Combat/Magic:
   
2. Required Equipment Levels. Good Idea. I think there should be some requirement about how good of armor you can wear, and what effectiveness it has when you wear it. I mean, beginners cannot weild the best stuff effectively - if at all. I don't want to say that a newbie who does get their armor in a contest or earning it fair-and-square shouldn't be able to wear it ever, but it should be largely ineffective if they try to use it.
   
3. Change in XP to per damage system. Good Idea, if done right. This could encourage people to start using swords - or, just prove why fists can be better. This however is only a band-aid solution - wasn't there supposed to be a level-per-weapon-type experience system introduced?
   

I've got nothing really to say for summoning, as I'm not really a summoner.

 

Anyway, I think this is most of the major points I see - if there's something I missed commenting on, feel free to comment.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Arnieman

[roswell_r]

Well I am going to be hated but I am still of the opinion that you drop items (ok as today) and the rest (that didn't get dropped) goes poof when you enter the underworld. That would help the economy by removing lots of items from the game and be an impact that would make ELians not want to die.

 

Of course a ROS stone circumvents this and you keep all your items at the cost of the ROS.

From here

 

Again i cant be bothered reading through 10 pages of crap & dont want to annoy you people by creating another thread but I thought id bring this to your attention.

 

Wont fix the economy but will help it as not everybody dies. Perhaps we can make this even better by decreasing the chance to find a rosto. Or taking the rosto out all together.

[Thordin]

Monster drops needs adjustment. Today I found 2 steel chainmails from small gargoyles, that isn't sane!

[Cycloonx]

Monster drops needs adjustment. Today I found 2 steel chainmails from small gargoyles, that isn't sane!

 

It's true, once 2 trolls dropped a steel chain, right after eachother. I don't feel bad with it, but it isn't good at all

[Mundaus]

Do poachers make the best gamekeepers? Ideas from Mr. Mind.

 

EDIT: This post has been moved to the memoirs of Mr.Mind thread, which has now reopened. Click on link above to view the post.

Edited May 1, 2006 by Mundaus

[Dent]

^This is a great post.^

 

I don't think that the social aspect of EL would be in any danger of drying up with reduced economic interaction. There are plenty of other social outlets, from #gm, to events, to the hundreds of thousands of channels.

 

There is a lot of work inherant in the solution steps, but the possible rewards (for the game) make them worth seriously considering.

 

I would only pick the tool cooldown as something to protest there. The reasoning behind the exp caps is right on the money and something I would support.

[Mundaus]

^This is a great post.^

 

I don't think that the social aspect of EL would be in any danger of drying up with reduced economic interaction. There are plenty of other social outlets, from #gm, to events, to the hundreds of thousands of channels.

 

There is a lot of work inherant in the solution steps, but the possible rewards (for the game) make them worth seriously considering.

 

I would only pick the tool cooldown as something to protest there. The reasoning behind the exp caps is right on the money and something I would support.

Thanks, Dent - it's always nice to get positive comments . You are correct that reducing player-player trading doesn't have much impact on the social aspect of the game. However, I do think there is a danger of making the gameplay itself more like a set of parallel single player games rather than truly mulitplayer. It is important that the actions of other characters in EL affect my character - the market is one way in which this occurs (another is getting PKed ).

[velle]

I want to start a small round of tweaking and adjusting items prices and possibly some formulas as well, in order to make the economy more interesting.

So for the next 2 weeks or so, there will be no new features in the game, but I'll focus on this particular task.

 

So please post suggestions on what should change in order to improve the game.

We are talking only about price changes, formulas changes, and exp changes (for produced items and summoning).

 

So, let me know what you think, this will be some sort of debate, and then there will be some poll related to the changes, and I'll make some decisions according to those polls, common sense, and other factors.

 

I believe that the reason that the economy is unbalanced is because items are sold for less than the combined ingredients they contain. For instance, it is cheaper to buy a spirit essence than to buy the mercury to make one.

 

What is needed is a standard formula which determines all buying / selling prices based on the raw ingredients. (harvestables)

 

NPC buying price = value of raw ingredients + profit

NPC selling price = buying price + double profit.

 

All ingredients which are harvestable are the raw ingredients which all other prices are based on...If the price of a raw ingredient changes, the price of everything with that ingredient in it would also change. The profit is double to allow competition of guild bots, trading etc

 

Example...

 

Red Rose $2

Red Snap $1

Sulfur $5

 

(these prices can be made to suit)

 

Fire Essence (1 RR 1RS 1S)

=(2+1+5)*2=$16 this price is what it would be bought for.

$16*2=$32 this is the price it would be sold for.

 

(example using todays prices below)

 

i realise this is a lot compared to what it is now, but the prices of raw ingredients could be adjusted to make it similar to what it is now.

 

I think a drastic change like this is what is needed though. Some items would increase drastically, but everyone could make money from manufacturing things. At the moment it is almost impossible to make a profit from manu. because it NPC prices are way too low for items. For instance, no leather goods make a profit even with leather quest (except for leather helm, which makes 1 or 2 dollars, but is not enought to pay for feasting pots). If people cant make things, make a bit of money from them, of course the economy is going to go to crap.

 

For items which increase drastically, the attributes could be adjusted accordingly, ie more attack armour etc.

 

Personally, I would like to see a experince / levelling system more like FF7, ie the highest monster / sword / armor, is 1000000 times that of the lowest. (and prices, ingredients accordingly). In EL the steel chain mail is not much different in stats to titanium chain mail, yet the titanium chain costs heaps more. My pricing system would fix this, but then the stats of the titanium chain would need to be fixed as well.

 

new_price_paid orig_price_paid old_sale_price new_sale_price

Red Rose 0.25 0.25 3 0.5

Snapdragon 0.25 0.25 3 0.5

Sulphur 0.6 0.6 6 1.2

FE 2.2 3 15 4.4

Coal 0.7 ? 10 1.4

Iron 0.8 ? ? 1.6

Iron Bar 24.2 25 ? 48.4

Steel Bar 33 35 ? 66

Iron Sword 558.8 125 250 1,117.6

Leather 5 6.5 10 10

Thread 0.5 1 (or Free) 1 1

Leather Pants 90 55 ? 180

*Mercury 10 1 10 20

Gold Ore 2.3 2.3 23 4.6

Silver Ore 1 1 10 2

Spirit Ess 26.6 3 9 53.2

 

*Mercury not yet harvestable

Edited May 1, 2006 by velle

[Thordin]

I will try to summarize this topic as short as possible:

 

1) Many times there has been a request on adjusting monster drops. This does not means less profit for fighters, only replace drop ratio of items to extra amount of gold, the fighters will then decide on their own what to buy for it, whether HEs or better some armour or BR or whatever. This could make some chance for manuers, potionmakers and alchemists to earn their living.

 

2) If you want cooldown on tools (ergo delaying production), the XP for items should be raised accordingly, so the ratio of XP/hour is maintained (less items but same amount of XP should bring some demand due to loss of count on items)

 

3) The books. Oh the books. How many books are there in-game, not sold? Many I'd say. DECREASE of drop ratio with raising the price of bookbuyer (Tania? in NC) accordingly (5x less drops, 5-10% the buying price)

 

4) Tweaking formulas. The pain in the *** is EFE in titanium longswords. This should be removed, or the book is useless to buy and read anymore. Bars could stand some less ingreds, with cooldown on tools (heck, why we don't need hammers to make bars? or perhaps some smelter come in handy to application on tool cooldown), but not necessarily drastic. Rather than tweaking formulas on bars, weapons should be adjusted, since too many (MANY) bars are used (steel two edged sword uses ALOT of bars).

 

I know this is not complete, but I tried to make some summary. Feel free to rip this apart, but constructive criticism would be more appreciated

 

EDIT: typos

EDIT: increase changed to decrease in point 3 (bit confusing, now it's how it supposed to be )

Edited May 1, 2006 by ThordinElement

[Atlantis]

Increase of drop ratio

nonono. You have no idea how many books you end up with after training on the higher level monsters. And the drop ratio is so high now, that no one even buys them for the most part because they get them free - or really cheap - from guild mates who have gotten these books from training. The drop ratio of books needs to be decreased, if anything.

[Thordin]

Sorry, typo, means DECREASE OF DROP RATIO, sorry for the confusion and for pointing this out

[darky]

I have a suggestion for creating new class of item to remove glut of weapon

Blunt sword of <weptype>

 

Formula

x <weptype>

y FE

....

 

= 1 Blunt sword of <weptype>

 

The Blunt sword will have 1/4th the original damage but 2 time probablity to hit and +1 def/probabilty to defend

 

What this will do

1. Convert <weptype> supply to 1/x

2. Cutdown damage so monster will be alive longer

3. Increase probabilty to hit so more exp

4. More def/probabilty to defend and again increased chance to avaid being hit

 

Also make these weapon more prone to breakage.

Proper combination of x, y and breakage can lead to bringing some life back in manufacturing and all item will have some destination to reduce the glut.

 

One part that may be needed is graphics to accomodate the new blunt weapon and this may be done by using dark black stripes on existing weapon if doable.

thx,

Darky

Edited May 1, 2006 by darky

[Thordin]

AFAIK, Entropy did not wanted new items, he just wanted adjustment of current items/formulae/prices...

 

We are talking only about price changes, formulas changes, and exp changes

 

EDIT: placed quote

Edited May 1, 2006 by ThordinElement

[darky]

AFAIK, Entropy did not wanted new items, he just wanted adjustment of current items/formulae/prices...

 

We are talking only about price changes, formulas changes, and exp changes

 

EDIT: placed quote

 

I agree only the thread has moved focus to discuss fix to economy.

Also for formula suggestion I made a thead for just that but that is also not making any progress

 

I hope something will get rolling.

Thx,

Darky

Edited May 1, 2006 by darky

[Longsh0t]

Fixing the formulas is NOT something that 1 person can do within the hour. I've suggested this many times in this thread already (and sorry for repeating), but you can't blindly make up formulas. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

 

Don't get me wrong: i think changing the formulas is an essential part of fixing the economy. And it's the only tool we currently have got: <insert entropy quote here>

 

Fixing the formulas can be done in one way only:

1. Go through EVERY ingame item
   
2. Determine how 'valuable' each item should be
   
3. Assign experience, production time, NPC prices and other benefits accordingly
   

Of course, everyone has a different opinion on how 'valuable' an item, for example a sword, should be. That is why I'm not going to make a list of all the ingame items and 'redo' them to solve different issues like massproduction and the value chain (high lvl item = more GC/exp/etc).

 

Entropy (or other developpers) have to make that decision for us, or some sort of 'test version of the formulas' has to be made on which people can vote. But before that is going to happen, I would really like to see a reaction from them if we are thinking in the right direction.

Edited May 1, 2006 by Longsh0t

[darky]

Fixing the formulas is NOT something that 1 person can do within the hour. I've suggested this many times in this thread already (and sorry for repeating), but you can't blindly make up formulas. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

 

Don't get me wrong: i think changing the formulas is an essential part of fixing the economy. And it's the only tool we currently have got: <insert entropy quote here>

 

Fixing the formulas can be done in one way only:

1. 
    
    
   
2. Go through EVERY ingame item
    
   
3. Determine how 'valuable' each item should be
    
   
4. Assign experience, production time, NPC prices and other benefits accordingly
    
   

Of course, everyone has a different opinion on how 'valuable' an item, for example a sword, should be. That is why I'm not going to make a list of all the ingame items and 'redo' them to solve different issues like massproduction and the value chain (high lvl item = more GC/exp/etc).

 

Entropy (or other developpers) have to make that decision for us, or some sort of 'test version of the formulas' has to be made on which people can vote. But before that is going to happen, I would really like to see a reaction from them if we are thinking in the right direction.

 

Yes definitely a good approach for fixing macro economic issues plaguing the economy. Also we must not ignore the micro issues while while emphasizing too much on the macro issues. One of the things that is missing in the economy is "What do do with abundance of product created by people building to get exp?"

 

And this issue can be fixed by creating a proper DESTINATION for the products.

Possible option

1. Make a further product by using existing product.

2. Donate to GOD for gaining advantage and/or exp.

3. Destroy the product to learn, gain exp and get some raw material back

 

Well let us try out one or more of these ideas and get going.

 

Also there are some major issues with crafting and better we start resolving those more fun the game will become.

Darky

Edited May 1, 2006 by darky

[Jamol]

Entropy (or other developpers) have to make that decision for us, or some sort of 'test version of the formulas' has to be made on which people can vote. But before that is going to happen, I would really like to see a reaction from them if we are thinking in the right direction.

 

Yes same here! Because this thread is getting to long!!! And hard to keep track of what is all going on!

[DemonCowboy]

 

And this issue can be fixed by creating a proper DESTINATION for the products.

Possible option

1. Make a further product by using existing product.

2. Donate to GOD for gaining advantage and/or exp.

3. Destroy the product to learn, gain exp and get some raw material back

that's where u'r wrong. creating another dump for unused weapons isn't going to solve nething. u have to create USES for these items in their intended capacity. making dumps for them gets them out of game but defeats their purpose, they might as well b taken out of the game if that is the case. the economy is run by the players. players are the 1s that are the 1's that are supposed to buy these items for use. if no player is going to USE an item then it has no business being in the game at all. because it will only hinder the economy like the items not being used have been.

 

in short, if there's no player demand for an item, i should not b made. <---PERIOD!!!