Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Money Sinks bad, just lower (@&%$ing inflation and set prices.
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Darth_Doofus
Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:49 pm
#1
All money sinks do, is deprive the non-l337(elite) players of content. What we need is to fix prices, force merchants and weapons and such to set their prices for certain objects at a set price, or to at least send out a guide on what an item SHOULD be priced, and to avoid anyone who sells for more.
Inflation also causes massive problems. On the Naritus server, a set of composite armor goes for 100k. On Starsider, the same suit, with averagely slightly less stats. sells for 300-400k. People sell and buy items for over 10 million. No one player should have over 15 million, unless they own a monopoly on a server. I had a friend who went into the business of SELLING RIS ARMOR, he'd buy the pieces, have the armor made custom, then sell in BULK! We're talking losing and making 30+ million credits a DAY. How can this be intended by the Developers?
Call me a socialist, call me a commie, but the game's economy has gotten worse since the game came out and after a level off period for about 3 months it's now starting to get worse and worse.
MMORPG companies in South Korea (current leader in the MMORPG market), Like the makers of Lineage 2, Are Hiring REAL ECONOMISTS to set their prices and keep inflation in check. I'm glad there is finnaly a board like this, but it should NOT have taken over a year and a half to put it here.
Thanks for your time.
Inflation also causes massive problems. On the Naritus server, a set of composite armor goes for 100k. On Starsider, the same suit, with averagely slightly less stats. sells for 300-400k. People sell and buy items for over 10 million. No one player should have over 15 million, unless they own a monopoly on a server. I had a friend who went into the business of SELLING RIS ARMOR, he'd buy the pieces, have the armor made custom, then sell in BULK! We're talking losing and making 30+ million credits a DAY. How can this be intended by the Developers?
Call me a socialist, call me a commie, but the game's economy has gotten worse since the game came out and after a level off period for about 3 months it's now starting to get worse and worse.
MMORPG companies in South Korea (current leader in the MMORPG market), Like the makers of Lineage 2, Are Hiring REAL ECONOMISTS to set their prices and keep inflation in check. I'm glad there is finnaly a board like this, but it should NOT have taken over a year and a half to put it here.
Thanks for your time.
EdOWar
Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:11 pm
#3
Darth_Doofus wrote:
All money sinks do, is deprive the non-l337(elite) players of content. What we need is to fix prices, force merchants and weapons and such to set their prices for certain objects at a set price, or to at least send out a guide on what an item SHOULD be priced, and to avoid anyone who sells for more.
Inflation also causes massive problems. On the Naritus server, a set of composite armor goes for 100k. On Starsider, the same suit, with averagely slightly less stats. sells for 300-400k. People sell and buy items for over 10 million. No one player should have over 15 million, unless they own a monopoly on a server. I had a friend who went into the business of SELLING RIS ARMOR, he'd buy the pieces, have the armor made custom, then sell in BULK! We're talking losing and making 30+ million credits a DAY. How can this be intended by the Developers?
Call me a socialist, call me a commie, but the game's economy has gotten worse since the game came out and after a level off period for about 3 months it's now starting to get worse and worse.
MMORPG companies in South Korea (current leader in the MMORPG market), Like the makers of Lineage 2, Are Hiring REAL ECONOMISTS to set their prices and keep inflation in check. I'm glad there is finnaly a board like this, but it should NOT have taken over a year and a half to put it here.
Thanks for your time.
Yes, make all these changes and watch all the crafters leave the game. If you want a fixed economy with set prices, maybe you should be playing WoW instead (or just about any other MMORPG out there). What makes SWG unique is that the players set the economy, not the Devs.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Pawlin
Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:39 pm
#4
SWG is a player driven economy. It is by design a capitalist system where upply and demand determine prices. I don't see any game wide general inflation.
Money sinks are required. Money comes in... money must go out. If we didn't have money sinks then we would get inflation because of it.
Darth_Doofus wrote:
...No one player should have over 15 million, unless they own a monopoly on a server. ...
Why not? You can grind that much on missions within a few months fairly easily. Why 15M that too much?
There will always be rich people and there will always be poor people. The thing separating the 2 is time invested and ability.
CyrilNagal
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:12 pm
#5
The economy will never be realistic.
Why? There is no scarcity of resources and they never run out.
There are unlimited spawns of creatures. You can get unlimited jobs on terminals. Where in the real world can you find things like that? In the real word, if you could go out and kill elephants everyday, and get paid, and elephants would never become rare or extinct...well, you get the picture.
Rodian-Bob
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:13 pm
#6
Also, what you want is completely possible, if you want establish your own community within the game.
All you have to do is find 20-50 like minded individuals and organize. Share everything. Craft all your own stuff. Support each other and set your own prices within your own community for your items. Have giving, caring, loot-campers get out there and kill stuff and get the best loots and contribute them to this ideal community.
There is nothing in the game preventing you from doing this and withdrawing from the rest of the Capitalist Societies in SWG.
Nothing at all.
-Bob is Robii D'Luminatii
oscabegra
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:14 pm
#7
Horrible idea. The economy on most servers is not spiralling out of control like some people seem to think. If you go back and look at the first pages of the trade forums you'll see that over a year ago prices were pretty much the same and in a lot of cases higher for items that you see now. At the same time the quality of items has improved greatly in that time frame due to the high quality resources that spawned.
Rodian-Bob
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:15 pm
#8
What I object to is trying to fix a 'broken' system by forcing a specific economic worldview on everyone else...
I vote for Freedom.
sciguyCO
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:18 pm
#9
Why not let the "market speculators" or merchant players have their game? It's just as interesting (to some people) as the combat game, and AFAIK is pretty unique to SWG.
Crafters usually get most of the complaints about this, because they're the ones the majority of the players deal with. But (IMO) few crafters are actually deliberately gouging their customers. They have costs they have to cover. Most of those costs are for resources (although there's overhead for vendors, factories, and the value of their own in-game time). So Starsider armorsmiths may have to charge higher prices because they're paying more for hide / polymer / reinforced panels / whatever.
On the other side of things, prices wouldn't stay high if people weren't buying them at those prices. If a vendor stocked with suits of composite priced at 250k sells out in a day (after requiring a week or morefor the armorsmith to manufacture), the crafter is completely justified raising prices to reflect that demand.
Also, it's pretty difficult to actually determine the value of any particular item. A crafter has his base costs, which isn't too difficult to put a credit price on. A customer should judge an item by it's benefit to him: how much more income could he get with this item compared to without it over the lifetime of the item? The market value of the item should be somewhere in between those two. If the market value is lower than the crafter's cost, the crafter is losing money. If the market value is higher than the benefit to the customer, the customer would be better off without it (although not all customers realize this).
Fixed prices wouldn't really be able to deal with individual variations in those crafter/customer value judgements. One crafter may be very self-reliant, gathering all resources himself, allowing him to sell for a lower price due to his greater efficiency (but requiring more in-game time commitment). Another may put a higher value on his play time and purchase all his resources, which means he'd have to charge a higher price to get the same profit. A third crafter may charge a premium on her items due to a very convenient store location which saves hercustomers' traveltime.
There are also out-of-game factors that effect the in-game economy. Despite attempts by SOE to crack down, there are still sites that sell credits for real cash. So a person with extra real life money can compensate for lack of skill in-game. From the game's point of view, one player got something for nothing (because the other side of the transaction was outside of the game).
One thing that I would like to see (and was brought up in passing during the whole "galaxy wide vendor search" fun) is some sort of "commodities price tracking" where a player can get information on average prices across the galaxy. Variations in item and resource stats would make this tricky, though. Plus, a resource that a chef may pay 50 cpu for might only be worth 20-30cpu to a doctor or combat medic due to different stat requirements between the different crafting professions. I'm somewhat opposed to global price searches for individual, since there isn't that much variation between game items, and I fear that would lead to price wars with large "megacorporations" as the only winners.A player should have some information on whether a given item's price is a good deal or decide if it has some other benefit (location, service, etc) to justify a higher-than-average price. I think that would reduce at least some of the economic frustration that crops up so often.
Inflation isn't some variable in the game code that the devs can just adjust up or down. Item prices are set by players for reasons of their own. The devs can attempt to tweak things either on the money supply side (reducing mission payouts) or on the money sinks. And sinks are only things like shuttle fees, structure maintenance, vehicle repair, 5% charge on bank tips, etc. A true sink removes credits from the game completely. Paying 300k for a suit of composite armor is not a sink, since those credits are still in the game (just belonging to another player). The non-l337 players don't have to pay any money to system sinks they don't want to. With JTL for inter-planetary travel, no house / harvesters / factories, never bank tipping, and either walking or using a creature mount for travel around a planet, a player doesn't pay out any credits to a sink.
I personally disagree with your statement that "no one player should have over 15 million". If a player puts in time and effort to gain credits and manages their costs, there's no limit to what they should be able to accrue. At some point, the value of those banked credits start to lose their meaning, just because eventually there's nothing worth buying with those credits. It's that lack of "stuff to buy" that leads to players accumulating a lot of cash (since gaining money isn't really that hard), leading to players who throw multi-millions at things like skill tapes, which may or may not actually be worth that much.
tralita_tusnami
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:25 pm
#10
Personaly if you look how the economy is set up in the game its very circular
money in- missions,loot
money transfers- players transactions
money out- player cities, vhicles, spaceships, new event perks, trooper fines, travel, faction sales
now look where most players get there money
if its a combat profession it most likely comes from missions, or selling loot
if its a server profession it comes from the combatants
if its a hybrde profession it comes from both
problem is in this type of economy its set up in a very exact ratio, if the ratio swings one way it gets out of ballance
like if there arnt enough people doing missions, and grinding and looting money then there is less money to transfer around.
a few months back there was a graph of this, because of a money exploit there was a LOT of money transfering around. the devs didnt like this. so they set up a money sink that would drain the excess cash off of people slowly but surely.
prob is some of us are getting into hard times, cause the money sink has caused us to run out. I personaly DONT run missions, i recieve 90% of my money from other players. but if people are looking less and less for services i provide then i need to start looking for a new profession. well that means that the loop is not ballanced anymore, its very tilted and crushing the little guy, causeing him to have a realy rough time. evidence of this is when they bumped up the noob starting cash. from what i hear it up to like 75k OMG THATS MORE THAN I HAVE.
setting prices is not the answer but the loop needs to be ballanced, the ratio of how much expensise cost needs to be ballance to the exact procentage of money coming in. in other words, if a server has 15% of its current total cash amount coming in, then it need to have the money going out to be ballanced to the same 15%. not the 35% it seams its set to right now.
money that sits in peoples banks is not in motion, sitting money is bad for a economy, if you have 10 million, and you spend 1million, and bring in 1 million, you only have a 10% cash FLOW rate. the rest of your money for all entensive pourposes is USELESS to the rest of the economy. now if you have 100k and spend 90k and bring in 95k then you have a cash flow rate of above 90% and thats awsome for a econemy, but hard on you. lol so everyone needs to find a ballance
Muzz
Thu Mar 03, 2005 4:51 pm
#11
First point, cross-server price comparisons are always invalid. Forget about them.
The economy and crafting is the SOLE reason I play SWG. I love the economy, the way it works, the way it fluctuates and many more things beside. I have a total combat toon as well, it's fun but it wouldn't keep me in the game if the economy was controlled externally.
I see the word 'inflation' used an awful lot, but is it really there? I have been playing since December 2003 and have been a WS for about 12 months. The base weapons I sell now are, in most cases, cheaper than they were even 6 months ago, and of higher quality. Even for high-end sliced weapons there hasn't been much change, infact certain high-end weapons have actually dropped in price the same way base weapons have. I have verified this by looking at my Merchant's Friend archives. I cannot speak for other professions, although from what I have seen Comp Armour has dropped in price and Doc Buffs have remained relatively constant.
Yes I am rich. Very rich. But I became rich through all the work I have put into my weapons and my WS business over a long period of time. It's not greed, although some may look at it as such. If I was greedy I would buy everything I could but I don't. If I like an item at auction i'll bid, but I won't keep bidding if it goes over what it's worth to me. Some people do, it's almost as if they become obsessed that they don't want to be seen being beaten to an item they want.
Infact there are probably billions of credits that, in reality, are already out of the game. I have several hundred millions sitting in the bank, I mostly buy items from people using the cash in my pocket. I haven't touched the bank money for ages. I don't use those creditsever and I doubt I ever will, to all intents and purposes they are out of the game, although I do give credits away to people on a fairly regular basis.
Set prices? No thanks. The day prices are set is the day I cancel my account. Credits are there to be earned, but it takes time and patience. I am getting really rather fed up with the 'I want it, I want it now, and I want it without putting in any effort' mentalitythatseems to be creeping in. The economy is one of the best things about the game, SOE tinker with it at your peril!!! I've even seen posts suggesting that all bank accounts should be halved to take some money out of the game. Hmmm, okay go ahead and do it. Who would it hurt more, the guy with 600 million or the guy with 6 million?
Also, people always seem toinfer thatcrafters are to blame, but alot of the richest people I know are loot hunters not crafters.
Just my 2p.
Message Edited by Muzz on 03-03-2005 11:56 PM
MichailArris
Thu Mar 03, 2005 5:06 pm
#12
While inflation is a bad thing, your suggestions of dealing with it are flawed. And the main thing is, who is going to determine what a fair price is for a product or service?
Most of the inflation has occured either because of duping and the infamous "solo-groups". Both of these resulted in "creating" more credits goingin to the system than was going out. And resulted in a lot people having more "disposable income", and with just like real life when people have this "disposable income" they tend to spend it a lot more easier.
Anotherproblem of inflation is the resource markets for both inorganic and organic resources. This is always going to be a supply and demand system. The higher the supply the cheaper its going to sell for, the less the supply the higher the price is going to be.
When I first started the game Docs was paying 10-15 cpu for good to excellant Avian meat, now that comparable avian meat is going for around 150-250 cpu. And the main reason for this is not enough people around willing to harvest unless they getting paid per cpu as much or more that they did during the last shift of good meat. So the Crafting Docs are having to up the amount they pay people for that avian meat so they can get it. So the best way to lower or at least stablize the pricethe cost of Avian Mea,t is to have more people out gathering it when it shifts in.
The same thing happened with making Armor, not enough people harvesting the hides that Armorsmiths need to make armor. Along with the increased times now it takes to do factory runs. Has resulted in the cost of Armor going up, because most of the armorsmiths are competing for the low amount of hide which results in the price going up and the cost of the armor rising as well.
The same applies to the Mineral, Chemical, Gases and Flora resources. Back when I started the game 4-5cpu was thehigh endprice for these resources and this is back when personals was BER 1, Mediums was BER 4 and Heavies was BER 7. Now the Harvesters aremore efficient and the prices on the inorganic resource markethave pretty much tripled or more.
But if you really want to start lowering prices, which can be done if you get enough people doing it.
The main thing is to find a few reliable Weaponsmiths, Armorsmiths, Artisans, Doctors (who craft their meds and buff packs) and get a group of people that are willing to supply thesecrafters with low cost resources. If you have a group supplying these crafters with the resources they need for 3-5 cpu, not only does the suppliers make a decent amount of credits, but those crafters can make and sell their stuff for lower prices as well, and since they will have lower prices they will have a faster turnover. And this will result in other crafters having to lower their prices in order to compete for sales.
Basically what I've described above is simular to a Co-Op which also does function in a free market economy like we have in SWG. But the thing is when starting something like this its not going to happen overnight, and realistically it could take several months to really actually have an impact. And really the best way to go about it is to get several guilds together and hammer out a charter for supplying crafter professions and whats expected from the crafters.
Thehard thing for a crafteris because of 10 lot limit, it justisn't enough torun a couple ofhouses, at least 4 factories and several harvesters. So this puts most crafters at the mercy of people mining and harvesting resources they need to make crafted products, unless the crafter buys extra accounts.
But the Devs built interdependency into this game, every profession relies on just about all the other professions on a daily basis for things that are needed. So its up to the players to make their own way and it can be done fairly easily, and really the only person holding you back is yourself.
Its not that hard to make credits in this game, I started a character on Starsider and with just leveling up my pilot I've made over2 million credits. The only ground missions I've run was Jabba's Theme Park, and I need that for landing there for my Tier 3 missions.
So take advantage of the system that we have and when it comes down to it, the possibliities are limitless.
.
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