Economy Idea

[revi]

Sorry Aislinn, but I don't see your reasoning (talking gc only here, not items).

 

If a 'legit player' decides to sell his store prior to quitting the game, he collects gc from others. Then he sells this gc for $$

(This is the scenario Wizzy described and I responded to). In this case, the gc was shifted around among the active player

base, all the quitting player did was to put items back in game, which, I would expect, should lower prices of those items.

 

As for the army of harvesting alts, if market functioned as it should, that should result in lower prices for the main harvested

items. We see the opposite happening: ore prices are constantly pushed upwards (not rising that much yet, but silver is being

advertised at 2.6, iron at 4.2, etc).

And if the main then uses the time to get more drops, it's still the gc from drops that increases the amount of gc in game,

not the harvesting.

 

Seeing this, I start wondering if the problem is the amount of gc in game, or the concentration of that gc at a few players who then pay

whatever they have to in order to get the other resources they want, or something else again.

 

(note: couldn't use the 'quote' button, it only gave me the text you quoted, not your answer...)

[Aislinn]

I'm not talking about items, but gc.

If people are buying up gc with rl $ (and that is the only way really to do that when somebody quits and sells it unless it's a gift), yes, it is concentrating the gc amongst the players who are gc buyers. So they have more to spend than the average player who does not, which in turn makes them able to offer more and they do, in order to get the limited items/resources they want. Of course people are going to sell to get the most gc bang for their buck they can, which then drives prices up because they know there's people who will buy at these ridiculous prices.

 

Secondly, more and more people are not wanting to harvest their resources but prefer to buy them. Again, because they have the extra gc to do it. The problem I see, is the amount of people willing to do the mine/harvest labor are becoming fewer and fewer and the amount wanting to buy their resources versus mining/harvesting it themselves is becoming more and more. This also affects stones found ingame, etc.

 

We don't have the "pay the newbie to do the work and get him started" food chain going as well as in theory it should be, because newbies are very quickly learning the tricks to bypassing newbiehood and taking full advantage. We have new players coming in pretty regularly but it is appalling to see how many (and how early in their EL career) "buy up".

 

I see the economy problem being the black market in HUGE part. I also have always been a believer that shop items should be vanity items rather than stones, weapons, armor, etc that affect game play. There are loads of things (not just clothes) that could be applied to this (buy/rent houses/rooms, stables, better horse setup, clothes, hair, pets, etc.) and a way to buy these things straight from ingame would be a huge boost. But based on previous discussions, I doubt either will be changed. So unless radu has a change of opinion, I just don't see how it can be fixed.

[revi]

Thank you, that makes it a lot clearer. I agree it would be nice to reduce/eliminate the black market.

But I don't really see ways to do that, unless you make in-game transfer of gc illegal (other than against reasonable

amounts of items, that is, and perhaps only for amounts over a certain level).

[Learner]

Put a tax on gc that is traded.

[Wizzy]

Put a tax on gc that is traded.

 

That was suggested before, and worthwhile idea

[Aislinn]

Put a tax on gc that is traded.

 

That was suggested before, and worthwhile idea

How does that help? They will still buy the gc and given they have so much of it (have you people LOOKED at the amounts being sold and bought?!) a tax is an incredibly minor inconvenience that won't stop them.

[Learner]

A tax wouldn't stop the black market sales, but would at least add a little bit more of a drain the the gc flying around in the game.

[scarr]

Tax is way to annoying to use tho, gives another factor to calculate when selling stuff. i for one dont wish to see this.

Edited April 21, 2012 by scarr

[tsc]

i pay enough taxes in real ife, try to lower the prices of the raw ingredients ,ore`s and minarals to a small point above market. its gets gc`s out off the game, all day miners lose intrest or start other skills instead of mining all day for gc`s and maybe selling the gc`s for $$

[evilmangopie]

with taxes on gcs trades, black market could adapt to selling items instead, harv alts would just sell their iron for $$, instead of selling them for gcs, and the gcs for $$. And for those buying mass amounts of gcs, losing some to tax is no real issue. Would make very little difference other than annoying everyone. Would probably punish the average player more than the gc sellers/buyers.

Edited April 22, 2012 by evilmangopie

[Wizzy]

with taxes on gcs trades, black market could adapt to selling items instead, harv alts would just sell their iron for $$, instead of selling them for gcs, and the gcs for $$. And for those buying mass amounts of gcs, losing some to tax is no real issue. Would make very little difference other than annoying everyone. Would probably punish the average player more than the gc sellers/buyers.

 

This is true, but I was looking at it in a different way

 

Instead of calling it a tax, call it a service. Let Radu me the middle man of gc > $ trades and he takes 10% of the gc and the $ as a tax, but this could also be a trusted method of payment for both parties. Instead of complaining about the $>gc market, or avoiding it, embrace it and maybe make a little something for your time.

[Learner]

The tax idea wasn't in response to the gc sales directly, but rather to help pull a little bit more gold out of the game. It would have to be a very low level though to avoid driving prices for normal in game trades up a lot.

[scarr]

start to ban people with suspicious trades of large sums of coin.

[_iNvoKeD]

Lol; tbh if someone like incubus can take a spawn of double yeti for 6 hours and earn like 80kgc minimum(plus rare drops, NMTs etc) (one session of HE/sr) you wonder why gc is so easy to come about... if you made drops past a certain a+d/2 or smthn less than what someone who is below that a+d range then you'd see a minor decrease there in GC trades(that side of things) because higher a/d chars with max PPs, or lots of negs aren't farming them excessively for much less profit, or it will take them longer to get it, meaning more time, meaning more money... no one trains for EXP anymore (of the 155+a/d players i have spoken to) it's just a grind for cash to either add attributes, perks, more nexuses, get different skills up, and they farm and dump gc (buying ingreds @ higher prices in bulk aswell) into other skills, or just hoarde, buy armors to look 'cool' lol... Depends on player style tbh.

Edited April 23, 2012 by _iNvoKeD

[nathanstenzel]

Have NPC's at the harvestables that sell them for half of NPC buy price at the shops in towns. Maybe less. Harvesters will be pissed or just haul the stuff to storage and sell for a markup. The market will turn upside down. People will power level on bought items, but the prices will stabelize for harvested items and items that use them without rare ingreds included

[Norad]

I dont think either ideas would solve the el economy problem

[ChrisC]

This thread was really just an attempt to address the economic situation, how it is turning into a downward spiral for the well being of this game. I thank the people that posted their ideas as well.

 

Regardless, I just hope something is done, pretending that there isn't a problem isn't going to make it go away.

[nathanstenzel]

I doubt even the segregation of lower level and higher level characters that other games sometimes do could stop the stupidy/impatience/greed of the players that F'd up the game's economy. It might perhaps help some, but it won't fix it entirely. It would be a headache to try to decide on the rules for such things since the main point would be to stop them from doing business transactions with each other.

 

Someone asked me if I would sell them steel greaves lately. They didn't realize bot prices were about 10k too low for current ingreds prices. In such cases, you can only trade undervalued items for undervalued items (with gc to make up any difference) if you plan on having both sides be happy.

[extrapolation]

Someone asked me if I would sell them steel greaves lately. They didn't realize bot prices were about 10k too low for current ingreds prices. In such cases, you can only trade undervalued items for undervalued items (with gc to make up any difference) if you plan on having both sides be happy.

 

When you make uber defense greaves let me know, I'd like to buy them at the price of the ingredients.

[nathanstenzel]

Someone asked me if I would sell them steel greaves lately. They didn't realize bot prices were about 10k too low for current ingreds prices. In such cases, you can only trade undervalued items for undervalued items (with gc to make up any difference) if you plan on having both sides be happy.

 

When you make uber defense greaves let me know, I'd like to buy them at the price of the ingredients.

ROFL I don't sell my rares or much of anything else. I have steel cuisses of mana drain so far.

Edited May 8, 2012 by nathanstenzel

[Mythos]

This thread is the living proof that people whose interest are affected don't even read Fancy's proposals. I 100% agree with his solutions, especially the second one.