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Question about the economy

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some time ago the gc from monsters got increased, that worked out well, why would it be such a bad idea to increase again?

there are newer/more expensive armors/weapons then back then, while the amounts of gc dropped stayed the same.

considering it worked out in the past, it should work out just fine if it gets increased again.

 

@ Learner, maybe they dont work out exactly the same way, but some things are the same..

like consumers mentality, people wont spend what they dont have, making the mixers lower their prices untill someone can afford to buy it.

as it is now the mixers lowered prices enough to sell at big losses, and thats the problem.. selling at losses

Regardless of whether a fighter has 30k or 300k gc in storage, he will want to spend as little as possible for armor. Anything else would be considered overpaying. If a manufacturer sells steel greaves for 30k gc, while a bot sells for 25k, I doubt very many players would buy from the manufacturer. Thus, giving the fighter more gc would have no effect on his decision to buy from a bot vs. another player.

 

 

As for the question about troll vs. fluffy drops, trolls give relatively poor a/d exp, whereas fluffy rabbits can be an excellent source of exp anywhere from 70s through 100s a/d. Even with relatively lower drops, fighters will occupy most fluffy spawns around the clock. Increasing their drops would simply add excess gc into the economy. Simple supply and demand.

 

I absolutely agree that bots (well, rather the players who own them) currently set prices for items, even if players choose not to trade with any bots. Trinitybot can tell me the price for a serpent stone is 5k gc, however if a bot is buying 983 serp stones at 5.5k gc, that is the new "market" price. Nobody will want to sell for less. If I were to sell 100 serp stones at 5k, that just opens the door for a player to buy all of them, and sell to the bot which pays 5.5k per. That's a quick 50k gc profit for that player from arbitrage. When a player wants to buy a serp stone, he needs to meet the bot's 5.5k, or buy directly from that bot for 5.7k. Market minimum price is still defined by the bot.

Edited by asgnny

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According to Rraisa, bots pay 3300-4500 for serpent stones, while sell them for 4950-5500. This shows a room for buying serpent stones cheaper than bots sell (4501-4949), due to bot owners "pricing policies". That is a case for vast majority of items being sold. I do not argue that there might be a few exceptions.

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According to Rraisa, bots pay 3300-4500 for serpent stones, while sell them for 4950-5500. This shows a room for buying serpent stones cheaper than bots sell (4501-4949), due to bot owners "pricing policies". That is a case for vast majority of items being sold. I do not argue that there might be a few exceptions.

Many bots ignore Rraisa. Presently, at least one bot buys serpent stones at 5.2k gc each. A market savvy player will buy any serp stones under 5.2k, and sell for 5.2k.

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Well, I don't know, I'd sell to other players for let's say 4,9k instead of running from one bot to another in order to find the one that is not listed by Rraisa and buys for 5,2k. But that's just me ....

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Well, I don't know, I'd sell to other players for let's say 4,9k instead of running from one bot to another in order to find the one that is not listed by Rraisa and buys for 5,2k. But that's just me ....

Some people save and get as much gc as possible. They would do that go from bot to bot. Im with you though, I would rather just sell to a player.

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For sure, for some 0.1 gc per piece makes a difference, for others several kgc are not a big deal. These are just different playstyles, personalities and financial status. Today I've got an offer "I sell for 10 kgc less because it's you" which not only was nice, but also was showing that not only economy matters :icon13::devlish:

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LONG POST IM MINING SILVER SO YADDA YADDA .......

 

Its been said before if you dont like bot prices dont buy/sell with them. Only problem with that is , as has been pointed out there does apear to be a tendency for market prices to be decided by them on certain items .........

 

So you cant really get away from it , unless your like Cruella and people give you free/discounted shit all the time which must be lovely for you lol ( I might get a sex change and a name change in game and see how much free shit i get )

 

I wish in a way more manuers would do what I did, and just stop making things. That way eventually there would be an abundance of certain items and the price would drop........but alas player co-operation is pretty low on the EL list of things to do.

 

There is someone I know who recently levelled manu to a decent level and instead of getting economically abused by selling his steel greaves on the market channel , he went straight to an NCP and sent them right out of the game for 19k......which is great for the game if you think about it. Just a story, hope you liked it.

 

Bots dont kill economys, players do ........... everyone is as bad as each other:

 

A) Bot owners for price wars leading to players having to go along with the crap

:pickaxe: Equally to blame are the players for selling / buying from them and encouraging it to continue

 

I remember when I first started playing admittedly there were less high end armors and swords back then but still , serp stones cost 500gc :devlish:

 

Thats a 100% increase in price in just over 2 years. Even EFE cost 3.5k , now theyre selling for nearly 100% increase to. Then, when rostogols went up from 17k to 20k ( wtf is that about anyway ? ) people hit the shit fan and went around saying it was insanity on legs. But thats only a small increase in 2 years. Imagine if it was like EFE or serp stones , youd now be paying more like 40kgc for a rosto. LOL so there is inflation in EL if you can be ''arsed'' looking for it.

 

I dont think the prices reflect shortages in the system, as I remember entropy saying at any given time there are like 4k ? serp stones in the game ......... so the prices of certain items are more to do with players attitudes towards each other, its not all the bots fault.

 

P.S do you want me to link you again to show you the wisdom meter ?

 

*quick edit* BTW !!!!!! LOL the halberd im selling for 40kgc isnt mine , im selling it for someone else so dont point at me and blame me for price of halberds dropping to 40kgc :icon13:

Edited by Ateh

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Higher gc drops -> Fighters have more gc -> fighters pay more for items -> manufacturers get more gc -> manufacturers pay more for ingreds -> w00t

 

I agree that bot-owners have a MUCH bigger influence on the prices and the economy then non-bot-owners. IRL it is a little bit different because not everyone buys stuff using the internet... If you look around in a store and find something you like, it is much harder to compare the prices with a shop 100 miles away... Ingame you just PM another bot to see if there is a better price available.

 

It is not so bad tho, well established prices (by bot-owners) are probably better then fluctuating prices. Without any bots some items would probably be wanted more during specific GMT times, due to more harvesters online for example...

 

EL game economics are very PRO compared to the average MMO...

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I want to make a few points, though I'm sure they'll be ignored :icon13: -

 

First- Competition

 

If someone sells an item for more, there is always going to be a person who sells for less... The person who sells for less WILL sell, the person who sells for more doesn't sell and gets not for their work, and their losses are even greater... Its competition.

 

 

Second- Manu Profit

 

There should be more profit for manufacturing. I am not a manu'er, but I hear people complain all the time. You cannot claim leveling is part of the reward for manu'ing an item unless the leveling rate were increased dramatically. Lack of profit begets a lack of interest I say.. Which is why I stick to harvesting..

 

Though I will admit, the manufacturing profit is down MAINLY because of the maufacturing community itself... If you raised the price of an item as a community, and just ignored all complaints, you will eventually make a profit. Eventually people will get used to the idea of everything costing more... Inflation is painful..

 

 

Third- Fighting Profit

 

Fighters should get more of a profit. Fighting tends to be harder than harvesting, so naturally gets a better pay.

Monster drops should be increased, if not in gold, then in content. The more items a monster drops, the more possible profit a fighter can gain, or the more they can support their skill of choice off of monster drops, without having to buy much.

 

 

Fourth- Self-sustaining

 

Harvesters are pretty self-sustaining. Manufacturers, however, have to buy all of their equipment, and some ingredients (like leather). Fighters, currently, have to buy everything unless they learn another skill..

 

If realism is an issue- What if a monster sacked a village and stole rare armors because they were shiny. Perhaps a troll could drop more iron or steel chains? Or an ogre more iron plates?

 

Manufacturing should include the ability to make manufacturing tools and some ingredients like leather.. Leather is just animal skin stretched and bathed in certain chemicals I believe... And the tools could just be an iron bar and wood log? Would be another use for logs

 

My examples were just examples, ignore them and pay attention to the main points please ^^ And please comment on my ideas!

 

--Air :devlish:

Edited by Airakose

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Though I will admit, the manufacturing profit is down MAINLY because of the maufacturing community itself... If you raised the price of an item as a community, and just ignored all complaints, you will eventually make a profit. Eventually people will get used to the idea of everything costing more... Inflation is painful..

I disagree with this point.

There will always be someone who will sell for less. Something like "manufacturing community" does not exist and i doubt it would be possible to "create" it.

Just compare creating (and selling to NPC) of unicorn medallion and iron shield or iron sword ... Making uni meds you level quite good and make nice gc, compare it to iron swords or iron shields ...

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Yay! A responce. ^^

 

I disagree with this point.

There will always be someone who will sell for less. Something like "manufacturing community" does not exist and i doubt it would be possible to "create" it.

Just compare creating (and selling to NPC) of unicorn medallion and iron shield or iron sword ... Making uni meds you level quite good and make nice gc, compare it to iron swords or iron shields ...

 

Yes, there will always be someone who sells for less, I even admitted that ^^

 

But there is a manufacturing community, it might not be an organized one, but so long as there is a group (2 or more) of people who manufacture, there is a manufacturing community.

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If realism is an issue- What if a monster sacked a village and stole rare armors because they were shiny. Perhaps a troll could drop more iron or steel chains? Or an ogre more iron plates?

 

No no no no no no no and NO. This is what creates a no profit situation. For example the Titanium Long calls for an efe which is priced at 6.5k-7k. But yet the titanium long sells for around 1kgc. Why? Because of monster drops.

 

If monsters are going to drop more profitable things, make it things such as bindings, serp stones, rostos, efe's, etc....

 

@ Radu:

 

What ever happened to the recycle idea? Where you could take armor/weapons to npc and get recycled ingreds for it? Is that still going to happen or what?

Edited by Kidberg

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It is not so bad tho, well established prices (by bot-owners) are probably better then fluctuating prices.

 

not really, they drive prices for EFE up over a period of a few weeks ( at the beggining of 2008 ) and at the same time drive the price of steel grvs to 22k and some great swords to 20k

 

so id rather not rely upon them to be setting any prices thank you very much ..........

 

btw are we tuned in to Radio Nobody Is Listening 99.2FM ?

 

we can talk all we want about wats going on but f.a is going to change :laugh:

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What ever happened to the recycle idea? Where you could take armor/weapons to npc and get recycled ingreds for it? Is that still going to happen or what?

 

I don't know. No plans for it for now, maybe in the future.

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When did we start having a manu community? It's always been every man(u) for himself as far as i can tell. In the past attempts were made to organise and cut production and raise prices but all failed. There were always those willing to take up the slack. I switched to fighting a long time ago and was much happier with it until the attribute cap. I might suggest other skills if you aren't happy with manu.

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some time ago the gc from monsters got increased, that worked out well, why would it be such a bad idea to increase again?

there are newer/more expensive armors/weapons then back then, while the amounts of gc dropped stayed the same.

considering it worked out in the past, it should work out just fine if it gets increased again.

 

@ Learner, maybe they dont work out exactly the same way, but some things are the same..

like consumers mentality, people wont spend what they dont have, making the mixers lower their prices untill someone can afford to buy it.

as it is now the mixers lowered prices enough to sell at big losses, and thats the problem.. selling at losses

Regardless of whether a fighter has 30k or 300k gc in storage, he will want to spend as little as possible for armor. Anything else would be considered overpaying. If a manufacturer sells steel greaves for 30k gc, while a bot sells for 25k, I doubt very many players would buy from the manufacturer. Thus, giving the fighter more gc would have no effect on his decision to buy from a bot vs. another player.

 

 

dunno about that, played WoW for some time and if players want something they want it immediatly/as fast as possible.

WoW has auction houses at which people bid on the items you put on it, and you can set a "buyout" price aswell, meaning if someone pays the buyout price the auction will end and the buyer gets the item immediatly.

 

i have never, ever had a bid on an item there.. ppl just press buyout and pay the extra gold to get an item right away.

 

 

besides, bots would increase their prices aswell, using your example with steel greaves, where do steel greaves come from?

they get made by manufacturers, how do the greaves end up on bots? either a manufacturer with a bot puts em on it for how much he wants (30k) or he sells on market for 30k and some retard buys it and then sells to bot for less then 25k and then the bot resells for 25k.

i doubt anyone would make use of option 2, so bot prices would increase aswell given the fact that the only one capable of making steel greaves (manufacturers) would only sell for 30k

 

(i know, mentioning other games = t3h blasphemy! just needed an example)

Edited by Hardcore

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...bots would increase their prices aswell, using your example with steel greaves, where do steel greaves come from?

they get made by manufacturers, how do the greaves end up on bots? either a manufacturer with a bot puts em on it for how much he wants (30k) or he sells on market for 30k and some retard buys it and then sells to bot for less then 25k and then the bot resells for 25k.

i doubt anyone would make use of option 2, so bot prices would increase aswell given the fact that the only one capable of making steel greaves (manufacturers) would only sell for 30k

Some manufacturers oversaturate the market with goods in an attempt to make the special version of a given armor or weapon. A manufacturer might make 80 sets of steel greaves, hoping to make the rare "Steel Greaves of Ubber Defense". If the special version sells for 400k gc, this covers the losses (80*5k = 400k) from the intial production. Meanwhile, any other manufacturer trying to make a single pair with 30k ingredient cost has no way to offsest the 5k loss per set (barring incredible luck).

 

As pointed out, there is an opportunity cost of waiting to sell an item, which is another way bots earn lots of traffic. If I'm short on gc and need to sell something fast, if faced with a nearby bot in a known location, vs. waiting to find a player, finding a time when both of us are online, active, and on the same continent... all of a sudden, taking 1k fewer gc from a bot is a no-brainer.

 

One other issue now is that there are far more manufacturers capable of producing high-level goods without obscene failure rates, as it once had been. The introduction of saving stones actually makes this problem worse. I remember market pricing easily including a 5k+ gc buffer above the market cost of ingredients for goods such as Titanium Plate Mail, or Crown of Life when each was introduced. This was to cover the cost of failures.

 

Failures are rather minimal for enough people to the point where they are essentially negligible. Saving stones further cut back the losses from a critical failure. This lowers the liability to manufacturers or crafters, which would leave them with more gc, except for the fact that undercutting in pricing is a way of EL life. Giving more gc to fighters (via increasing monster drops) will not give more gc to the average manufacturer either. If anything, it would only serve to increase the market prices of luxury items, such as Ubber Def Greaves, which does nothing but exacerbate the problem.

Edited by asgnny

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dunno about that, played WoW for some time and if players want something they want it immediatly/as fast as possible.

WoW has auction houses at which people bid on the items you put on it, and you can set a "buyout" price aswell, meaning if someone pays the buyout price the auction will end and the buyer gets the item immediatly.

 

I never played WoW, but my understanding is that WoW is mostly a combat oriented game, where you go and kill stuff with your friends for loot. In WoW, the only purpose for money is to buy stuff to kill stronger monsters easier.

EL is a different kind of game, and money as a lot of uses, so many players would rather wait for a deal than rush to spend it.

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So you cant really get away from it , unless your like Cruella and people give you free/discounted shit all the time which must be lovely for you lol ( I might get a sex change and a name change in game and see how much free shit i get )

 

You might just get some friends lol. Or join a nice guild. Between friends and in a guild no bot dictate applies. Unless you live among greedy bastards ... :)

 

There are other options as well as I said before - raise your skills and do things yourself, get the ingreds and someone will make stuff for you for free, getting some exp. or make a network of friends where one does this, another does that, soon you'll become self sufficient and there will be just a few things you'll have to buy on a market. If there are ways around, no reason to buy overpriced items. It might take you longer than to go to the nearest bot and pay what owner asks, but it is certainly doable. You'll also stop bitching, complaining on high prices and enjoy thhe game more overall.

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why some prices dont cover ingredient prices is easy to answer: experience.

on a partly free market there is no such thing as a 'just' or 'normal' price - and thats a good thing.

 

Look at the ppls motivation:

One of the main reasons to create anything (manu/craft etc.) is for levelling up, regardless of the reason _why_ you want to level up. As we learned that can be different reasons, making profit only one of them, another one being just playing the game and having fun.

So you have to take into account the experience gained by the process, its like a second currency that must be calculated into things.

And the second factor is time: like asgnny already stated, time is the reason that selling to bots is way easier than selling to other players.

Time is also the reason why Harvesting cannot be compared to other skills, since with harvesting you bring gc (indirectly) into the game. Time is also like a third currency, since some ppl who spend much time ingame maybe harvest all the basic stuff theirselves and dont calculate those prices into the end product so they just sell it cheaper - still 'earning' gc with it (in exchange for time). While Harvesting you can have fun in the game chatting with friends, while fighting you normally cannot.

 

It would be interesting to make a little calculation with prices (difference to sum of ingredients) and experience gain for some items to gain a rough relationship between gold coins and experience points.

 

I cant see why fighters should be treated differently to summoners or rangers or engineers. They all need to harvest/alch in a way or find other ways to make profit out of their skill.

As long as many ppl still train a/d , the motivation is ok and no need to change the game imho.

 

Of course there are a few exceptions to what i've said, since there are some other aspects like NPC buying prices and similar things that play a role for the specific item.

 

regards

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You might just get some friends lol. Or join a nice guild. Between friends and in a guild no bot dictate applies. Unless you live among greedy bastards ... :whistle:

 

There are other options as well as I said before - raise your skills and do things yourself, get the ingreds and someone will make stuff for you for free, getting some exp. or make a network of friends where one does this, another does that, soon you'll become self sufficient and there will be just a few things you'll have to buy on a market. If there are ways around, no reason to buy overpriced items. It might take you longer than to go to the nearest bot and pay what owner asks, but it is certainly doable. You'll also stop bitching, complaining on high prices and enjoy thhe game more overall.

 

Yeh your right thats a good part of being in a decent guild , everyone helps each other. I was talking more specifically in this thread about certain items such as serp/binding/EFE.........those things that are random to find and should really be payed for or exchanged for other goods. Buying those things is not so much about having good friends, atm its more about overpaying for them to create an end product that isnt worth the gc you invested.

 

It was fun, making great swords and steel/ti armors, but the enjoyment we all seek dried up along with the GC I spent making them. Which is why I gave up manuing , and I hope more people give up to so that the weapons/armors dry up and reserves of serp/binding/EFE get really high and the price drops :icon13: Im on manuing strike until a couple of k has been knocked off the price of ingredeints ( so that will be a permanent strike I suppose )

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Why don't you just advertise your skills and manu items upon request from customer's ingredients? That would allow you not to worry about their cost. I know it is not ideal, but at least it can give you some extra manu exp.

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Why don't you just advertise your skills and manu items upon request from customer's ingredients? That would allow you not to worry about their cost. I know it is not ideal, but at least it can give you some extra manu exp.

 

I secretly do that for my guild, but dont tell anyone

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dunno about that, played WoW for some time and if players want something they want it immediatly/as fast as possible.

WoW has auction houses at which people bid on the items you put on it, and you can set a "buyout" price aswell, meaning if someone pays the buyout price the auction will end and the buyer gets the item immediatly.

 

I never played WoW, but my understanding is that WoW is mostly a combat oriented game, where you go and kill stuff with your friends for loot. In WoW, the only purpose for money is to buy stuff to kill stronger monsters easier.

EL is a different kind of game, and money as a lot of uses, so many players would rather wait for a deal than rush to spend it.

 

its not only used for killing stronger monsters, even if it was.. dont we buy better items here aswell to be able to kill stronger players?

 

@anyone against increasing gc from monsters:

if it isnt a good idea then feel free to come up with a better idea \o/

you know the problems in the economy, you seem to know whats a bad idea and what not, so overwhelm us with some brilliant plan to make it better then.

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