How do you think the Economy will actually function?
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@Gothix said in How do you think the Economy will actually function?:
Items not requiring repair, doesn't necessarily mean items must have decay.
Perhaps there is no item decay, as well as no durability (so no repairs).
That is one option, however, I remember that durability was planned... at least at the moment.
And the way sink will work is by limited storage capacity players will have and will not be able to store millions of items.
Then players will need to dismantle items to percantage of base materials, because materials will stack and be usable to craft other things.Limited storage capacity is one of the worst things what games can offer tbh. Forcing people to destroy items is what I do not want to see, in addition, the resources will also take storage space and typically even more than the salvaged item.
This percentage of returned base materials does not need to be high. It can be, for example, 20%. This will sink the materials.
Also perhaps re-enchanting an item will be so expensive that it will be more worth for a player to simply craft new, and enchant it from scratch.
Add loosing of gear, through PvP, people breaking stolen items, and you have efficient sink.
Item durability and decay arent the only ways to create that sink.
I thought gaming should be fun and loots actually rewarding. Why implement system and make it so expensive that there is no reason to use it? Moreover, why go to PK and get random resources from item salvages when you can just go to gather and get what you actually want or need?
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@Gothix and @Tuoni said in How do you think the Economy will actually function?:
@Gothix said in How do you think the Economy will actually function?:
Items not requiring repair, doesn't necessarily mean items must have decay.
Perhaps there is no item decay, as well as no durability (so no repairs).
That is one option, however, I remember that durability was planned... at least at the moment.
And the way sink will work is by limited storage capacity players will have and will not be able to store millions of items.
Then players will need to dismantle items to percantage of base materials, because materials will stack and be usable to craft other things.Limited storage capacity is one of the worst things what games can offer tbh. Forcing people to destroy items is what I do not want to see, in addition, the resources will also take storage space and typically even more than the salvaged item.
This percentage of returned base materials does not need to be high. It can be, for example, 20%. This will sink the materials.
Also perhaps re-enchanting an item will be so expensive that it will be more worth for a player to simply craft new, and enchant it from scratch.
Add loosing of gear, through PvP, people breaking stolen items, and you have efficient sink.
Item durability and decay arent the only ways to create that sink.
I thought gaming should be fun and loots actually rewarding. Why implement system and make it so expensive that there is no reason to use it? Moreover, why go to PK and get random resources from item salvages when you can just go to gather and get what you actually want or need?
@Prometheus has already stated that there will be equipment decay, so equipment will eventually deplete (that's why they have durability as an enchantment and item stat)
In regards to only selling resources, that seems very probable to be what the economy will fall towards. Though in truth, I really find it hard to grasp the mentality of a new player being able to just jump right in and play with the vets. If that is the case, then are all crafting recipes going to be easily available? if so, that would reduce the craft market, but support the reagent market. Also, how hard is currency for buying goods going to be? or is there a bartering system instead? Just how they intend to handle in-game currency or goods has a big impact.
So much is just still unknown, that I can not make a good guess on how trading will really work. However, on going with the devs saying that its the resources (not items) that are going to be seperated upon different planets, I still lean towards the market mostly being reagents and not readily made items or even enchantments, since it looks like anyone can enchant if they have the reagents.
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Really interesting discussion! My lack of experience in mmorpg means I'm completely innocent about how markets develop in a sandbox environment (whether it's pure or 'adulterated). I'm wondering...
Will players have an option to cooperate rather than compete? Am I the only player who considers that a more interesting/attractive mode of exchange?
Neither I nor my toons has any interest in getting 'rich' but I'm always willing to share what I've got if someone needs help, so I never think twice about asking for help.
Since folks in this thread seem to be assuming a completely 'free market' system developing, I just wanted to point out that even within this discussion there's an acknowledged need for some 'regulation' to prevent insupportable problems in game.
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From my experience, most markets usually just die out until they all fall into their 'natural' place/order.
Game markets are typically extremely binary as it is essentially a business caricature, they're extremely susceptible to changes in the meta as well.
As for... "will players have an option to cooperate rather than compete?" in the market, monopoly does/can exist but it's never really to a point of over competitiveness. It's still reliant on supply vs demand, so with the current restrictions that we know of, i.e; no fast travel and only port to port travel with inventory limitations, we're probably going to be looking at...
Players would either:
A) Buy (personal use)
B) Sell (personal gain/empty out inventory)
C) Sell (to re-sale in the same market/different time)
D) Buy and sell to a different market.And these are very common in almost every game/economy with a market. There are 'soft' regulations for it, i.e; taxes and travel restrictions, and 'display priority'.
'hard' regulations can be min-max item quantity, or item delay/cooldown for selling.
Some games even implement a 24 hour display for everyone to see before they could be moved to open bidding/selling to minimise players trading via personal accounts/characters.There are many ways to get 'competitive' in the market, I consider myself to be a market shark tbh haha
but generally speaking, free markets would always be at the mercy of two things; meta and item availability.Items that have multiple means of accessing it would be greatly devalued, items that have small means of attaining it would be more stable as there are fewer ways to flood them in the market.
End of the day, markets would always follow 'the path of least resistance' and no matter what 'controlled' inflation players does in the game would always reset back to norm once the demand has dropped.
Some types of restrictions would definitely be necessary and implemented if gold/money method are implemented instead of 'item as is' on a sale basis.
if gold/money are used, adding tax is usually more than enough to deter re-sellers, or to at least be clever about it.
if selling on an item-basis (barter system) is implemented and strictly barter (no monetary trade) then players would choose a certain item to replace the 'gold'.Example, in Diablo 2 (battle.net) players used Stone of Jordan (Ring) as a currency method to trade items as gold was worthless. A similar concept would definitely be adopted if a barter system is implemented, or if the 'gold economy' collapses due to multiple avenues of getting an item.
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The key factor is that the supply needs reply to the demand. If players can supply tons of useless stuff, it means that most of those items will not sell. Typically the core of markets are build around meta gear and consumables, other stuff can sell as well but clearly less.
Moreover imagine the number of different crafted/enchanted items in the market place and how long those lists will be, especially because items will not stack because the huge number of variations available. Therefore, selling crafted and enchanted gear is a doomed option imo.
The beauty of player-driven economy is that it somewhat balances itself unless there is a cartel or monopoly activity involved. Meaning that prices will eventually have an average price based on the rarity and tier of the resources or generally how hard those items are produce.
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Also note that those standard average prices will not be the same for each planet or even zone, as the devs have already said that markets will strictly be local. Meaning, on a per city basis. With this said, markets closer to the source will have lower costs than the markets that are further away or on a completely different planet.
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No item repair with decay/item damage means that items will need to be changed out. That will definitely make crafting viable. But if the crafting is so easy then I'm suspecting the trade business will be in materials and not finished items except for those who just don't like to spend time crafting at all. There is still a grind involved in gathering materials so that is where the hardcore players will make money over social players.
On enchanting, I expect the market to work like it did in UO when they introduced items with the plethora of resistance stats. You basically held onto the items that had very high stats on one or two specifics. There was always players looking to make suits with extremely high stats in specific areas. I once found a dagger I was told would be awesome in pvp for some stat is was high in. I made 3.7 mil in the auctions. It just made me farm dragons more lol. Without farming critters I probably would have quit UO alot earlier. One reason I'm worried about no treasure loot drops in this game.
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A lot of great information here! Thanks all
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@Ostaff Yes I know how local economies works.
Oh well, if there will not be crafting market, I will focus on consumables.
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@Tuoni said:
The beauty of player-driven economy is that it somewhat balances itself unless there is a cartel or monopoly activity involved. Meaning that prices will eventually have an average price based on the rarity and tier of the resources or generally how hard those items are produce.
that's a pretty big 'unless' my friend. I'm rather a naif re gaming, but even I know there's big buck$ made daily by folks who find ways around pretty much any mechanic put in place to prevent monopolies & cartels.@Zori - I wonder whether anyone has done any academic work around this? Seems like game market dynamics would be a natural sub-field of Economics, and allow someone to get their PhD by playing a lot of games!
In an earlier thread, I'd asked if devs could change the tool on our fireplaces to allow them to be 'public' - meaning any weary stranger who stopped by my place when I was away could rest & cook a meal.
The fact that a fireplace in Fractured isn't warm unless you build it isn't realistic, but it does reflect an assumption on the part of @Prometheus & the devs, which is exactly what I'm trying to push back on a little bit.
Building in scarcity/competition w/o building in the ability to strategically share/cooperate (except w friends/guildmates) belies the idea of totally open 'sandbox' as I've come to understand it in this forum.
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@PeachMcD said in How do you think the Economy will actually function?:
@Zori - I wonder whether anyone has done any academic work around this? Seems like game market dynamics would be a natural sub-field of Economics, and allow someone to get their PhD by playing a lot of games!
There's legit a lot of em! haha
Fortunately a lot of the paywalls can be bypassed by curious and determined people!Abstract result from this study:
This study shows that the most important factor of better ingame economy is a necessity of
trade. If a player earns the most out of trading, instead of generating new wealth, the
inflation should stay low. This of course means the economy has to be designed to utilize
even the least valuable materials, so no matter how long the players played the game;
they have a reason to acquire and consume those goods.
When comparing the results gained from these games, it is clear that not all game
developers understand how to build a stable economy even though the knowledge has
existed for over a decade. This disregard for economical knowledge has serious
consequences that ultimately are not good for anyone.
There's even a study done on pandemics based on a bug that happened in WoW. The quick synopsis of that incident is, players took their pet to a dungeon instance and it was affected by a DoT poison or sorts, when players stepped out of the dungeon, the DoT stayed and infected many other players who aren't able to survive the dungeon, thus a virtual pandemic was born!
The incident piqued a lot of virologists interests as to how people react to a virus. They found that some people avoided the cities to not get infected, some players stuck around the cities/hot spots and healed people.
Some players would intentionally infect others, some even had some sort of a visual sign that says they're infected/not infected so people would stay away from them, etc. etc.
It was a really good read. I bet there's even a YT video out for it loledit:
I clearly don't work in the gaming industry but I do tend to study a lot of random things to keep me informed, there are a few other studies/models done that's essentially became the base foundations of what MMORPGs take now, like Bartle's Taxonomy for instance.
