A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.
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This is a rant, not an edited work.
The system as is does not work.
Item durability is so high they never get replaced, no replacement means no market activity, no resource drain, no reason to harvest resources.
Recipe and other resource drops are so random and rare that getting what you need could never happen or cost obscene amounts of money (if anyone has any spare to sell) and once you do get the set then you never have a reason to hunt for or buy recipes again. This also reduces desire to farm resources... why do it if the chance of getting it is vanishingly small?
An argumet that was put forward to justify this was that the cost to enchant and make the equipment is so high that if it did not last a long time then it would not be worth while...
Then just reduce the cost to enchant and make the items.
If you really want to reduce the avalibility of the items then it is much better to have limited use recipes than high cost materials.It wont matter if the market is flooded by cheep dragon souls if you can only make 5 pieces of equipment per recipe you find/buy.
This same restriction is inherent on enchanting if you keep the current drop rate of gems and use the imbuing system... the enchanting resouces may be plentiful, but the restriction on the gems keeps the rarity and value up. Using the imbuing system would also create a valued market resource as people are much more likely to buy the imbued gem they want then fiddling with enchanting each piece of equipment.
Also, if you wanted imbuing to be a bigger resource sink, make them like poison is on weapons. Socketing an item with a gem gives it a counter for how long the imbued effect will last. You could do a timer or charges (times hit?).
If the resources to make the item are cheep then it also encourages merchants to use their recipes to make quality items with their limited recipe uses. This means less basic leather / linnen/ copper crappy tiems for sale in the market and more usefull items that people will actually buy because they are good.
Making the bottleneck the recipes means that players can farm whatever mobs they like for other reasons and have a chance of getting a recipe which they can either use or sell.
With the bottleneck being crafting materials (like death crystals) you can spend all your time farming mobs you already have at 100% just waiting for that 5% chance to drop, which dose little good for you and makes the mob unavalible for others who may need the kp and skills.
Anything that promotes market activity is something that contributes to the resource drain of the economy which allows you to see where there may be economic and market problem areas which might need buffs or nerfs to obtain ballance. No or low market activity means no data to work with.Items need value and cost. Value measured in demand and use, cost measured in time to obtain (at this time measured as 6k/hr average).
Right now not all things have this and itis the responsibility of the devs to ballance the economy so that everything does by manipulating sinks, supplies, and bottlenecks.
Right now food has little to no value. The sinks are vanishingly small compared to the surplus that can be created such that they cannot justify their cost in time from watering, harvesting, bagging, transporting which would suggest about 1k/bag.Wood weapons -should- have no value since they are also very easy to obtain and make, but they still carry moderate value simply based on convience of buying the item of the material you want instead of going to the hassle of harvesting and transporting that material. This is the effect of convenience, not of recipes, as once one bow recipe is found it is easy to flood the market with the product and as soon as there are two recipes found there is market competition to drive the prices down to their practical cost. If their durability was lower, causing need for regular replacement, this would be the ideal situation; lots of production, lots of demand, and value held primarily by convience of material avalibility not scarcity. If you introduced limited use recipies as a bottleneck then you could create artificial scarcity while at the same time increasing overall mob hunting in order to keep up supply of recipies which is far more sustainable than specific mob harvesting for specific rare drops.
Right now Gold has no value as what you can get for it is entirely restricted by the avalibility of the drops. It dosent matter how much gold you have if will stones are so rare that everyone keeps them for themselves. The market price and value of an item cannot be negociated when the item is not avalible in sufficiant quantities to make trading practical.
If I cannot reliably get what I need with gold then I will be spending time doing anti-social activities like pk'ing around the areas where the item does drop or going with a group to camp those areas thus denying the kp/skills and resources to any others. If the resource is rare enough then this may continue indefinately.
The whole idea behind gold/currency is that it can be traded for goods and services... but if the goods and services are rare then the currency is worthless. Just as you cant eat money in a famine, you cant make Mithral slayer armor with gold coins...
I would argue that mastery would be more valued if it increased enviromental resistances. A person would be much more willing to gind/buy an item they can use in more enviroments than one that they can only use in hot or cold enviroments.
Some durability increase is all well and good, but anything above 400 is just silly.Thoughts?
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I'm personally opposed to limited use Recipes.
I agree with many of your other points, however.
Limited use recipes aren't thematically viable, and really the whole recipe system is out of character for what FO looting schemes are. Bears would not carry Recipes to be looted, nor would Giant Spiders, for instance.
Durability does need adjusting, for sure.
Recipes access should be tied into craft mastery or be in its own talent tree. ..mayhap thru a Library or Research Bldg
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At the current rate of recipe drop mostly farmers are getting them. So limited usage wouldn't be a good idea. Not to mention it takes a lot of repeats to master.
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We came to pretty much the same conclusions https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/15099/on-the-matter-of-economy-durability-masteries-gear-drops-imbuing
I'm confident that the devs understood that there is an issue in that area and will try new solutions.
By the way, I'm also in favor of limited uses for recipes, but unfortunately it doesn't math out. If we go by the concept that they should be a limited resource (and so just as many are dropped and just as many are lost), and you consider that someone changes gear every 2 weeks (6 or 7 items) then even assuming that a recipe has only 1 use, it would need to drop less than what it does now to have a real effect on the market. Since this is clearly not acceptable for many, I unfortunately think that recipes cannot be fixed.
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Valid rant. Economy issues are fundamental and only implementing bandaids will easily cause new expected and/or unexpected problems.
There is not enough resource, item and gold sinks in the game which are the core problems. Current durability and enchanting systems are kind of anti-trade, and there is only three tier levels (or two meaningful) on gear anyway, which all makes the situation even more challenging.
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@spoletta
HEh, i totally forgot that this has been argued over before and still we have no response from devs.very sad.
Thanks for the link and reminder.
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I think the issue with the economy comes from a small player base on a huge map. The market economies are spread out everywhere. While I understand wanting to have every town have its own market, this only works if there's a population that sustains these markets.
If the marketplace for each town was glued together, you'll start to see a more positive fluctuation in the economy because now people can buy what they need from any town. If there are taxes, the taxes go to the town you bought from.
As it currently stands, the market, the value of gold, and the economy will suffer because there are not enough players to sustain multiple town economies, gold generation is very high compared to gold circulating around the game. Gold sinks are great, but you need gold circulation also. Having players with 100k gold, but no market to spread the coin around the game is not healthy.
Gold circulation is just as important as gold sinks.
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@OlivePit said in A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.:
@spoletta
HEh, i totally forgot that this has been argued over before and still we have no response from devs.very sad.
Thanks for the link and reminder.
Well someone asked about economy in two AMA's ago and Jacopo answered that he is not worried about the economy. I almost choked on my coffee at that point.
I really think they should be worried because basically nothing works atm
.
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@Eldriken said in A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.:
I think the issue with the economy comes from a small player base on a huge map. The market economies are spread out everywhere. While I understand wanting to have every town have its own market, this only works if there's a population that sustains these markets.
That is somewhat true, however, some data could be collected when there still was more players and some things can be seen even with smaller sampling.
If the marketplace for each town was glued together, you'll start to see a more positive fluctuation in the economy because now people can buy what they need from any town. If there are taxes, the taxes go to the town you bought from.
That would help but ruins the local markets. No need to travel to get resources or trade and all resources and items have the same price. The base idea is that different resources can be get from different locations.
As it currently stands, the market, the value of gold, and the economy will suffer because there are not enough players to sustain multiple town economies, gold generation is very high compared to gold circulating around the game. Gold sinks are great, but you need gold circulation also. Having players with 100k gold, but no market to spread the coin around the game is not healthy.
Gold circulation is just as important as gold sinks.
Gold circulation is good point and now it has felt that trading does not happen that much. There is not much things on market in general and a lot of goods won't sell. Now you hoard resources until your storages are full and after that you start to destroy stuff.
Everything starts from need and when all or at least most of the resources and items are steadily needed for something, then also the markets and trading starts to work. That is also important to keep players interested of the game. This also helps players to progress when they can easily start to collect some gold via gathering and trading for example.
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I'd wait till the next big content drop, the game has lost the majority of the players since PoE new season dropped and V Rising today, let alone a few other things that dropped last two weeks. I bet when Arborea is released we'll see a massive influx in returning players and that'll kickstart the economy again.
Right now only the most dedicated players are left and a very small handful of actual new players so the markets are almost useless since everyone kinda already have what they want and as stated before there is no reason for any ranged class to change their armour since it never breaks.
I think if DS just modifies the durability system to stop making ranged armour basically neverending we'll start seeing the majority of players (who just so happen to play ranged) either start experimenting with melee more or just replacing their armour more often.
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@Tuoni said in A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.:
@Eldriken said in A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.:
That is somewhat true, however, some data could be collected when there still was more players and some things can be seen even with smaller sampling.
It's hard to tell the health of the market without a proper sample size but based on how other games have attempted to implement similar systems, local market economies fail without a population to sustain them. Is there anything you can share about the data collected between the higher population vs small population?
That would help but ruins the local markets. No need to travel to get resources or trade and all resources and items have the same price. The base idea is that different resources can be get from different locations.
It falls to not respecting the player's time.
If you want to keep local markets with their own economy then that's fine. This only works if you have a population to sustain that local market!You would still need to travel to collect resources to put into the market. You would still need to travel to collect Gold to buy off the market.
If resources are in a different location than the area I am in, I can now use my Gold to supplement what I don't have. If I don't have Tin I can use my Gold to now buy it without needing to haul my ass around the map for some ore. That's the point of Gold. Right now, I can grind the Gold but now I need to go to the town that has the ore to buy it. Completely pointless! Might as well just build a cart and mine it yourself.
Gold circulation is good point and now it has felt that trading does not happen that much. There is not much things on market in general and a lot of goods won't sell. Now you hoard resources until your storages are full and after that you start to destroy stuff.
Everything starts from need and when all or at least most of the resources and items are steadily needed for something, then also the markets and trading starts to work. That is also important to keep players interested of the game. This also helps players to progress when they can easily start to collect some gold via gathering and trading for example.Gold circulation happens when you have an active market the player can buy from. You can't have market activities if you have 30 different small, barely working markets with their own economy. Now imagine if those markets were combined, suddenly buying things off the market is viable and reasonable. I have a reason to use my gold and put things into the market. It all comes to respecting the player's time, and currently, the game does not do that. If I have to hoard resources just to destroy them, this bad design. It's ready a red flag something is wrong.
I need Tin. In order to collect Tin the player can do two things:
- Buy it off the market from players who spent the time collecting it. A reason to use Gold.
- Gather the ore themselves. Use it or sell it off the market.
If the market in my town is local with no Tin, I have to traverse all the way around the map, harbor or not, to now collect the Tin. I can not use my Gold for what I need. The point of Gold is pointless because now you're better off just collecting the Tin yourself. Why traverse all the way to buy it in the town that has it? Completely disrespects the player's time and makes currency pointless.
While I understand the developer's direction of the game is to have local town economies, it's primarily an issue of population. If the population is low, there's no way for the local economy to work because everything is spread out. This is why the market is the way it is now. You're already seeing that it barely holds together.
For the purposes of the Beta, I would recommend testing combined markets and seeing how it negatively and positively impacts the global economy.
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Market has been "global" for a test, meaning that you could buy stuff in a market from another market.
Mind, you still had to go to said other market and collect the items, and this will not change.
The game design is quite adamant in never allowing items to travel by themselves.
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@Eldriken said in A Rant on Crafting and market economy problems.:
For the purposes of the Beta, I would recommend testing combined markets and seeing how it negatively and positively impacts the global economy.
So you're suggesting a system where I could farm something myself, a lot of it, and use the market to completely bypass the travel weight system for the harbour?
Even if you just make the market continent-wide, Myr is a big place, being able to get iron easily on the west side of the continent would be a really big deal, saves a good amount of transit time that I'd be worried about being attacked during. Wouldn't this seriously detract from pvping opportunities?
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@Eldriken Of course I do not have any data but I am sure that devs have.
If the game does not have enough population to run local markets then the game does not have enough population to do any activities properly, and the game can be considered, dead. Furthermore, if there is not enough population for current setting we can argue that the game world is way too large. Turning local markets to a global market is not actually a fix, it is a bandaid, which does not fix the root cause... Too large world or too less population or both at the same time. I would say it is the last one.I can see that global market reaches players way better. However, this removes the idea of localization and affects to certain game areas negatively, for example, resources can now travel instantly everywhere. This creates a gameplay where players needs to gather and farm next to their home city, sell goodies and buy all stuff they need from there. Local markets is a fundamental design decision by developers and changing that part will have impact to other areas as well.
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I mentioned before that current durability and enchanting systems are also anti-trade... Why?
What a player can do with a gear which drops from players they killed?
If you are lucky perhaps you can use the gear... If not, perhaps your friend or guildie can use it? It has weird enchants though... But what if you would like to make money with the gear you found? Sorry, you cannot, because you can't sell any items which does not have full durability.
- Imagine if you could salvage the gear and get back some of the resources.
- Imagine if you could repair the gear and sell it.
- Imagine if enchants would be in the gems which can be taken off the gear.
Nah, it would be too fun system.
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Makes sense this way, thank you for the response.
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It depends on the direction the developers want to go. It wouldn't say bypass the weight system necessarily - I wouldn't mind selling my Copper Ore at my town's market, have somebody buy it, then I use that gold to buy their tin ore. I then would traverse over there with bare weight once I've bought a cartload of Tin ore from the town to transport back via horsecart.
It promotes risk vs reward in a PvP-related world. If the developers support a system where they don't want resources transported from one market to another via buying it then I support it.
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The way the market (individualized) is supposed to work is 2-fold. 1, it creates localized markets of specific local products easily found in the area...doesn't sell to the locals, but visitors might buy it up rather than gather/process it themselves to transport elsewhere. 2. It creates a reason for enterprising merchants to gather the local resources, travel to a far away market, and list their goods there at an inflated price. They have taken the transport time and risk, and now, in an area that has No Iron let's say, they put up a wagon-load of iron (30 pieces) at 5x the price they could get at home, or 10, or more...and they sell out as fast as they can bring loads in.
This is how the Devs want the economy to work, in fact, this is how they advertised it from the beginning. No 'global economy' but individual merchants having to physically move stuff from place to place to stimulate the economic growth in an area.
This encourages big guilds to mine ore, and fill their inventory with items locally available, gather a few warriors/mages, and caravan across the continent together, killing mobs and PvPers alike as they protect their investment.
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why not have a section/tab/window with a list of recipies in game. have them sorted by type and material and then charge a fee for that recipie. get rid of this awesomely rare drop from a particular mob.
would help with the gold sink concept too.
Just an idea.
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There are a few problems with recipes, durability, drop rates and the economy.
The current bottle neck is on the drops for rare items to make the armor. I personally or my guild would never sell any of the rare items (will stones, death crystals), as they are too valuable. I don't see much more items hitting the market as the respawn times means that people will fight over those resources so they still wont make it to the market.The durability on gear is so high that there isn't or won't be much of a player economy when the game launches. If a poor set doesn't die after 4 weeks why worry about trying to become a crafter and work on the economy. Cut the durbality of poor and normal items way down.
No gold sink in game, gold has a meaningless value. Crafting costs are not high as you can solo farm 2K gold in under an hour at sea trolls or bandits.
The recipe drops are weirdly random and once you have them all as a guild what do you need from the economy?
Enchanting system is broke for materials. Some enchants super easy, some impossible or share resources with gear crafting items.
My rant over too!
