Architect Archive

Supply and Demand...the one law that rings true in all forms of business, in game or out. Now supply and demand have many contributing factors to establish a well balanced economic system. In the interest of keeping such a monstrous topic simple I have narrowed these factors to 5 items.

1. The creation of money
2. The destruction of money
3. Money Supply
4. Resource Scarcity
5. Time value of money and labor

The creation of money:

Currently money is created in gane by:
1. new players arriving with 250 creds or so each
2. missions ranging from 200 creds to 6000 on Dantoine
3. Killing of NPC's and select creatures

If there are other ways please in game e-mail Ancus.
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Destruction of Money

The destruction of money occurs as follows:
1. purchasing items or training from NPC's
2. building and equipment maintenance and operating fees
3. loss through uninsured death if body never revisited

If there is any missing items in game email to Ancus.

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The Money Supply

This is based on the above two items plus an ever increasing population base. It is obvious that the method of creation far out strips the method of destruction. The inevitable consequence is inflation and the eventual collapse of the economy. Currently there does not seem to be a properly functioning money supply regulatory mechanism. A currency has value precisely because it is limited and trusted as a median of exchange.
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Resource Scarcity

There has been a lot written on this subject already. Granted resources must exist in enough quantity to allow for a continuous fllow of products in game. Granted with an ever increasing population there is an ever increasing demand for resources. However there must be a limit to the amount of resources in game at anyone time. This very concept is what balances the number of architects to that of gun fighters. Scarce resources will dictate that there is room for x number of architects and x number of bio-engineers in the game at anyone time.

I agree the resource allocation algorithm applied in game is fundementally flawed. a sweeping resource shift is impracticle. With this form of resource management the economy will collapse for it is impossible to establish profitable and stable business.

Resources should be depleted over time causing the miners to mine for another non depleted resource on that same spot or pickup and move. In the real worl untapped resource dont move they remain until depleted.

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Time Value of Money and Labor

Jobs, jobs jobs...I thought this was supposed to be a game! We've managed to recreate an environment where we get home from work and goto work. Amazing - we dont even get paid! Enough digression - Of course each characters time spent on any task, be it mining, crafting or running a factory, is worth credits (money). This is a basic concept as we all have some sort of a real world job. The other probably less understood is the concept of time valued of money. This is essential for a successful in game economy. It ecco's through many of the threads on this site. If I cant make a profit for all this work then I am going to put my money somehwere else! The time spent in one proffession or on producing one item has a cost in time elsewhere. Since time is money, the time spent on one endevor costs you the amount in money you could have earned in another endevor. the trick is to find and maximize the most profit realization for your time. In order for this to self regulate the economic unverse of SWG the above five items must be functing properly.

This last concept will be what regulates the number of people in each profession. There must be a limit and a natural regulatory agent in the economic environment.

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Conclusion

This is not ment to solve any problems at this time. This article does not go indepth nor does it offer solutions. It is an economic analysis that reveals what I feel are the key areas to focus on in order to bring about a stable SWG economic environemnt. I will gather comments and suggestions and eventually formulate a few suggestions the devs can use if they wish.

Sincerely,
Ancus Marcius a hubble and struggling businessman.

The most stable economies in the world and for the longest period in time were those economies who did not permit the creation of money. They kept a very close watch on the measure of their currency. Babalon is one such economic infrastructure. It rose from obscurity to economic prominance in part based on this very principle. There are several prominant theories for money supply management. Some say the money supply must grow as people grow, others say have a fixed amount. For a game where there is a population cap I am in favor of a limited money supply. Granted this is only one issue put to question in the above article. If there were fewer credits chacing products the value would adjust naturally. Now I am not saying cut money creation from the game, how else would a new comer ever get started, rather I am saying the system must be balance. It currently is not.

As for inflation not being a concern, I say time will tell. In the current economic model of the game Architects will have a problem with this. Combine this with buildings that never degrade and you have a non playable class.

The base problem in my mind at this point is our Real world economic system cant be used in its entirety here. The biggest reason is there is a population cap to the server.

There's another thing absent from the discussion here. That is, unlike in RL, participation in the SWG economy is neither full-time nor mandatory. It's not full-time because when you are not logged on your avatar is in suspended animation. That creates anartificial obstacle to the free flow of money that makes deterministic economic planning virtually impossible. It's not mandatory because once you acquire some basic artisan and crafting skills you can function very well being self-sufficient and won't really need money except for maybe the occasional travel ticket. You won't have "prestige" or luxury items like the best weps or armor, but those are not strictly necessary to play and have fun.

The latter point I think is well done actually. There are a lot of casual players, including myself, who are ok with the notion of sacrificing the best things in order to be relatively independent, which permits gameplay the way they want it when they want it.They are true wanderers and reasonably content.

The first point though I think is a BIG problem and I've discussed this before. Any game mechanic that irreversably debits resources, in particular credits,from an avatar over real time, like what harvesters do, penalizes casual players whose avatars must remain in suspended animation while they are logged off. They are penalized because they end up with a higher net operating cost than players who can spend a number of hours a day on since they can't react to the shifting economy (supply & demand) and ecology (ore shifts) aseffectively. The solution is to change to a system that only debits a player on a per usage basis instead of a per unit time. A player who extracts only 10,000 units of ore should only have to pay 1/10 of the operational costs of one who extracts 100,000 units, all other things being equal. But this is not the case with cost over time and the casual player is the loser.

Of course one could argue that Architect is then not for the casual player. Maybe. But I don't think that was the original intent and would like to hear the Devs say so if that is the case. Otherwise I'll just assume that theydidn't put a lot of imagination into this aspect of the crafting trades.

I like the idea of charging maintenance based on the amount of resources drawn rather than for real time. However, this would only work well for harvestors or factories (or anything else where you can measure piece-rate work); it wouldn't work out as well for house or PA Hall maintenance. Still, it should be possible to implement piece-rate maintenance for harvestors/factories and time-based maintenance for houses.

The problem with that is that you are neither rewarded nor punished, except in terms of speed, by the strength of the deposit you have found. To do that would negate the role of the explorer, which seems to be one of the Holy Roles that SWG wants people to play.

I forgot the bizzar and vendor fees as a means of destroying money.

Thanks for your post!

You have forgotten a few very important things and misinterpreted several, however:

1.) There is as much a market for experience as there is for currency/credits. Characters leveling/grinding will be inclined to sell at distorted prices in order to gain experience. There are three distinct price scales:

A) Powerlevelers - These will sell at vastly deflated prices.

B)Standard - These will sell at standard, market average prices, within some band of variation.

C) Masters - These will (generally) sell standard or inflated prices, as they can afford to wait for items to sell.

2.) Inflation doesn't indicate any sort of economic collapse by any stretch of the imagination. It simply indicates that those who do not actively take part in the economy continually will see their held liquid assets depreciate in value as their held structures, weapons, armor, and resources gain in value. Since the ability to gain credits is far stronger than the necessary expenditures for the average player, prices on items will indeed go up. However, since we are assuming that the player can easily gain these additional credits, then his ability to afford the items has not changed.

In the real world, inflation itself is not a problem if it is standard and does not vary from the expected. In-game dynamics, though ultimately quite different, also follow this pattern - the increase in credits held by players should hurt no one unless they do not go out and take advantage of the ease with which these credits can be obtained themselves. If they neglect to do so, then yes, their personal impact on the economy will be diminished.

The problem is money is to easy to get.

1. People are making 50-100k credits an hour doing missions.

2. The cost of a resource is to cheap. It cost around 1 credit per resource.

Money is not going out of the economy fast enough. There are to many artisan right now.

We will use architect for example there are probably 20+ master architect now on our server. The causes more supply than demand. Even though the buyer has a ton of money, he doesn't want to over pay. In the near future the supply will continue to increase and the demand will decrease more.

We need a larger money sink in the economy. My ideas are:

1. Decrease the effectiveness of personal harvesters. keep cost the same, but move them to 1.0 instead of 2.0.Mediums could cost 1.5 more than they do now and large can be the same as they are now. This would cause more of a money sink. It would also give a good reason to buy larger harvesters.

2. Introduce architect decay. And increase decay throughout the galaxy.

3. Introduce more items that fighters can get for crafters to improve their crafting. These items would improve the end product. For architects maybe a special mechanism to improve harvester speed, or factory cost etc... For weaponsmith maybe increase dmg etc....

4. Fix any and all exploits on missions. There are missions that people are completing because the mob is to slow, or that they can destroy the nest even though they die, etc...

If this fails then they may have to lower mission pay outs.

Unless you can produce something that is rare or hard to get, the prices will go down.

So if you make uber gun of power, that does 10 more dmg you can charge a ton. Everyone wants the best weapon. Same with Armor, but all architect is the same. So it will continue to go down in price.

My thoughts on earning money from missions:

At first I thought that earning money from missions, though important for earning cash to buy better equipment, distorted the economy because missions seemed so easy to do. I can easily earn 10K an hour on Tatooine doing destroy missions, and I've heard of people earning much more than that on some of the harder planets.

My first impression was that this was like giving warrior-type professions a printing press and telling them to print all the money they wanted- i.e. hugely inflationary. However, I reconsidered this position when I realized that SWG has no securities or financial markets. In RL, a person starting a new business can get a loan from a bank. Corporations can issue stock or bonds to raise funds to finance new business operations, buyouts, purchase new equipment, etc. Financial activities in effect create wealth, which is almost (but not quite)the same as creating money.

Considering that SWG has no financial or securities instruments and no financial markets, the only way for newmoney to enter the economy is through the completion of missions. Yes, there is some inflation and yes, the supply of money grows faster than it is destroyed through training costs, etc. However, healthy economies need growing money supplies, so that economic growth is not impeded.

In conclusion, I think that earning money from missions is not as bad, or inflationary, as some people worry because it is basically the only way that the money supply can grow in the SWG economy.

Well, that's just my 2-creds.

Slim Vargo, Corbantis, Mos Eisley

Ok, I'm still organizing my thoughts on this issue, but I have to say first and foremost that buildings not decaying is illogical and damaging to the game. Decay and maintainenceare how money leaves the game, from overused weapons and armor to harvesting maintainence and redeeding. I think that this is something we must drive home to SOE and our correspondent. I'm going to go look for more posts on this topic, because someone smarter then me must have brought it up to a dev before. If anyone finds any posts about it, feel free to drop them on me.

A question: If I buy a house, then never play the game again (but keep paying) will that house sit on the server forever?

Crossbreed,

If you bought a deed and put it in your inventory it would last forever as the game stands now. Of course if you put it down you have to pay the maintanence fee.

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X-EQholic wrote:

Crossbreed,

If you bought a deed and put it in your inventory it would last forever as the game stands now. Of course if you put it down you have to pay the maintanence fee.

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Thanks for education. What's the maintainence fee on housing?