@Ablabla

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.

@spoletta

Makes sense this way, thank you for the response.

@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:

1. Buy it off the market from players who spent the time collecting it. A reason to use Gold.
2. 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.

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.

@GamerSeuss

Thank you for the correction, GamerSeuss It does take 2 coal to make 1 Copper Ingot.

The misunderstanding of the cost of coal comes from me putting four coal into the smelter first without understanding the required temperature.

As a word of caution to other players to not make the mistake I made: Put in the ore required first and it will tell you the required temperature to smelt it. I was putting in four coals first, then the ore last. If you burn four coal when it requires 2 coals to make 1 ingot, you lose all four coals! It is a user error.

@spoletta

Well gathering the materials takes like 45 minutes, you're right.

Unless there's something I am not understanding about smelting, It takes 4 hours to produce 1 copper ingot from a smelter. So if you have 4 smelters, you can make 4 ingots every 4 hours at the cost of 16 coal and 20 copper ores.

It's easier and less time-consuming to grind mobs for gold than it is to craft quality materials for crafting.

For example, a player can grind mobs for 4 hours while it takes 4 hours just to produce 1 copper ingot.

So in four hours of mob grinding how much gold will a player make on average?

In order to produce 1 copper ingot I will require:

1 Smelter (24 Stone)
4 Coal
5 Copper Ores
4 Hours
= 1 Copper Ingot.

So making 1 Copper Ingot requires about ~5+. Hours.

Then you take into consideration the number of Smelters one can make on their land and then multiple the resources needed above to keep it running. It's... it's just too much for the average joe I think.

And grinding mobs all day with no way to sink the gold towards something just devalues it even more.