Business And Economy Archive
Thread: ECONOMY REBALANCE PROPOSAL: NPC Merchants & Central Markets
BaccaLaurean wrote:
I think basically the intial post on "revamping" the markets in-game has been successfully shown to be unnecessary - unless the assumption is that the game *should* provide high-quality equipment, enhancements, etc. by default.
Here's an interesting case-in-point.
Buffs on Ahazi have historically sold for 10K with varying potency and duration. Lately, you see a range of 12K to 15K from docs in the starports. Since players need buffs to operate with comp armor, etc. buffs become an essential commodity in the current (pre-CU) economy.
Doing the math, let's say a complete (6 stats) set of really good buffs cost 85K per set. With an average of 30 hits per pack, this is a hard cost of about 2800cr per set of 6 stats. So selling at 10K per buff, the gross for those 30 hits is 300K - this marks a profit (factoring only the cost of the buff packs) of 215K per 30 complete set of buffs.
Why do players continue to pay 10K per buff when (if they knew the cost-breakdown) they might reasonably demand only to pay 5K or so? After all, this "discounted" price gives the Doc a small profit margin and should they want to increase their margins, they could try and acquire good resources cheaper and thereby lower their cost on a buff set. My example of 85K per set might be high - on Ahazi you often see price/set of 60K-70K, which just raises the profit margin for the Doc.
The reason players continue to pay 10K is that Docs charge 10K (this is a player-decision), either for historical reasons or because that's what players are used to paying. Maybe when buffs first came out (wasn't online then) buffs were crazy-expensive to make, or the resources were really good, and the elements of Bivoli, Doc clothing, droid, etc. etc. made that cost like 8K-9K per set. And while there are certainly other costs than just the buff packs, you would be hard-pressed to add all those things up (robe/droid are one-time for example) to get near 8K-9K hard cost for every buff set in the current economy.
As an example (and because my Doc toon was able to get great buffs at clearance prices), I decided to start selling buffs exclusively at 5K per set of 6 stats. These were at or within 50pts of the "standard" of around 2500 for 3+ hours. I used bivoli and my robe, droid, etc. on every buff.
You can guess what happened: Players gravitated towards my Doc. Other Docs kept spamming 10K, 12K and even 15K in the face of my 5K offering. I had lines of 10-15 people at peak times. The other docs usually got customers when my line was so long that someone didn't want to wait. Or probably they were repeat customers of that specific Doc. But the general marketplace was "dominated" by my 5K-slinging Doc.
The most interesting thing? People regularly complimented me on how great my buffs were (same as all the others) and how my prices were really great. Many people asked " How can you make any money? You're giving these away. " The fact of the matter was that my cost per set was less than 2K, so why charge 10K? Or god-forbid 15K? Sure, I could have hyper-inflated my profit and made BANK. But why? Players looked for me - I got all kinds of tells as soon as I logged in, where was I, could I get them a buff. The concept of a 5K buff was at first nearly insane.
After about 2 weeks of solid buffing at 5K per set, there started to be several other Docs selling buffs at 5K as well. In effect, my experiment had (to a degree) changed the marketplace. Why? Because I was apparently the best deal in town. In reality, I was making what I felt was a decent profit on a commodity which is essential to other players. This resulted in repeat business and a reputation of quality and respectibility in the market. But I was selling the same thing the other docs were selling.
And guess what, when my Doc wasn't there other Docs were selling at 10K, 12K, 15K because that's what they chose to offer (another hallmark of the player-economy). Players were buying them - but the number of tells I got when I logged in told me that people had in their heads the concept of a 5K buff.
This whole example is to illustrate the point that the SWG player-economy is just that, a player economy. Every toon can make a change if they're willing to do so - the market will respond accordingly. And after a while, with enough players making the change, a new standard emerges.
BaccaLaurean
The Bacca Shop | Mos Eisley 2597 -4473 (Ahazi)
Personally I don't think 10K for a buff is that bad. Even without solo-grouping that money can be made back very easily in mission payouts and/or loot. That is why Docs can and do charge 10K-15K for buffs...because their customers know it's a good deal. When another doc comes along and starts offering similar buffs for 5K, naturally players will gravitate to the cheaper price...that's just human nature. But clearly they were willing to pay 10K or even 15K for buffs...so why not charge that much? If the customer doesn't think it's worth it, then they won't pay...simple as that.
I don't think your impact was as substantial as you think. As you point out, the other docs still charged 10K up to 15K when you weren't around. I would also hazard to guess that even when you were on and buffing, docs in other cities were charging 10K to 15K. They only dropped their price when the "low-baller" showed up (don't mean that as an insult, but that's probably how they think of you, hehe). Even your regular customers were probably more than willing to pay 10K or more when you weren't online. I doubt they went without buffs when you weren't around.
After the CUcommercial buffingwill likely disappear. 10K for demi-god mode (as someone else put it once) is a bargain...but 10K for a 10% or 20% bonus isn't worthwhile. In fact, such a low bonus probably isn't even worth 5K. I'm wiling to bet that most Docs won't find it worth their while to do commercial buffing for less than 5K, especially when you consider that the resource requirements will be about the same, and that they won't even be able to make their own buff packs anymore.
Just the same, I agree with you that a revamping of the economy isn't necessary. SWG has a player-based free-market economy, which is the most flexible and adaptable type of economy. It's essentially self-correcting. Static NPC vendor economies common in most other kinds of MMORPGs require very tight control, otherwise their economies can get seriously out of whack.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
And I would agree that the CU may act as a kind of defacto economy rebalance, though a subtle one.
WyldeOne wrote:
...I have been playing since day one and have spent way to much time trying to earn money for overpriced gear.
This is a free market so supply and demand set the prices.
If it is over priced then you won't buy it. Then they won't sell anthing and won't make any money.
If you do buy it then it must be worth it to you so it is not over priced.
Right now with the galaxy wide vender search plus the item name and price filters it is very easy to find the cheapest items in the galaxy.
...I hope SOE and Lucas Arts take a look at this post as they really need to fix this economy....
The economy is not broken and does not need to be fixed.
WyldeOne wrote:
In theory all your assertions about supply and demand should work. BUt due to the influx of credits early on in the game(by questionable means), crafters could be greedy because there were always rich players who could afford all the good stuff. To me the biggest clue to how backwards the economy has gotten is the ships issue. Outside of Mandalorian, RIS, and whatever unique special armor they come out with; no armor should cost more than ships! Or houses for that matter. I started off doing tons of missions and crafting for credits...never made a million. I only got a lot of credits when my in game husband left SWG and gave me all his stuff. I played honestly and was always scrounging for good equipment. If players hadn't cheated by duping, prices would have been at the nice levels they were when game came out. You would not have to be a millionaire to buy a set of armor!
Supply and demand still works just fine in SWG. The vast majority of the duped credits have already been removed from the game. And crafters aren't greedy for charging what the market will bear...I don't remember reading anywhere that only combat players get to be rich (and the loot whores are the richest players in SWG, by far).
What kind of standard armor costs a million credits currently? Ah, right, 90% effectiveness armor, which is A) very hard to get and B) in very high demand. When you combine A and B, things are always going to be expensive. And don't forget C) Most people don't need 90% effectiveness armor to play the game.
The reason armor is expensive is because experimentation and resource quality makes a big difference. The reason ships are cheap is because experimentation and resource quality doesn't make a big difference. It's also a lot easier to make ship chassis than it is to make good armor. Trust me, if making ship chassis were harder, and if experimentation and resource quality counted, then ships would be much, much more expensive. And people would gladly pay the price, just like they do for armor.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Message Edited by EdOWar on 04-19-2005 07:01 PM
WyldeOne wrote:
...no armor should cost more than ships! Or houses for that matter....
WyldeOne wrote:
In theory all your assertions about supply and demand should work. BUt due to the influx of credits early on in the game(by questionable means), crafters could be greedy because there were always rich players who could afford all the good stuff. To me the biggest clue to how backwards the economy has gotten is the ships issue. Outside of Mandalorian, RIS, and whatever unique special armor they come out with; no armor should cost more than ships! Or houses for that matter. I started off doing tons of missions and crafting for credits...never made a million. I only got a lot of credits when my in game husband left SWG and gave me all his stuff. I played honestly and was always scrounging for good equipment. If players hadn't cheated by duping, prices would have been at the nice levels they were when game came out. You would not have to be a millionaire to buy a set of armor!
Yterbium wrote:
Personally, I think that the obnoxious and absurd server economies have gone on long enough, and I would like to see an actual effort made to fix them.
I am sure this topic has been beaten like the proverbial horse, but I would like to propose a simple solution, and I welcome feedback.
Activate the in-game NPC vendors to not only buy junk, but buy normal gear and sell it as well.
Remove individual vendors and base all public market on the bazarre.
Now, admittedly, this may seem drastic, but don't panic yet. It isn't as bad as it seems. The NPC vendors would offer average or below average gear at fair market prices. This would rebalance the economy almost immediately, as players would finally be able to say, "Forget that! Why would I pay a QUARTER OF A MILLION CREDITS for armor that will be torn up and useless in a week of heavy use?"
And the change from local vendors to centralized markets would promote a REAL economy with actual consumer response and competitive pricing. No more wandering ALL OVER A DAMN PLANET looking for a suit of armor for HOURS, and then finally paying THRE QUARTERS OF A MILLION CREDITS for an average suit of armor because you are so sick of looking.
So anyway, that is what I think needs to be done.
that will take away the fun of player economy, and the game will be more like AO. combat only..
yay. lets kill the crafting even more
bluejanus wrote:
I don't really understand why people keep believing that duping set prices or duping broke the economy, especially since most of those credits were always removed from the game.
I think I heard of one horror story of dupers messing up their local server economies for a short period of time. Apparently some of the initial dupers ran around buying expensive things with their funny money. So that might be the basis of such ideas. If duping were rampant and widespread then it wouldruin an economy to some degree. And its hard to see exactly what damage duping has done or how much duped money is still floating around (if any). So I think its just people assuming the worse.
Duping is an easy thing to blame things on. Its cheating and a bad thing so people love to hate it. We have very little information on it and its effects so its easy to assume the worst. And nobody can prove it hasn'tseverely harmed the economy so people continue to believe it.
But duping wasn't unchecked. I don't think it was really that widespread and only a few people did it really. SOE deleted most of the duped money very quickly and drained the rest out of the economy over time.