Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Inflation What to do?
fgetce wrote:
Lost my train of thought half way through writing the post. My point is the game needs some in game system to monitor the games economy in some way.
The player base is not mature enough to create and maintain an in game economy. Right now we have an exponetially growing economy that is causing in game problems for the player base.
Even if there is a means to monitor the economy SOE would never release it to us. They have a policy of being tight-lipped about server populations, and population is a key element of any economic stat. (I am not ragging on SOE or anyone’s suggestion here, this is just the situation as I see it.)
I believe the chief problem with the economy is the lack of competition. SWG is, after all, primarily a combat game. Relatively few players play primarily as crafters. (These are my assumptions, I have no facts on this) Since there is little competition, crafters get are able to operate with a huge profit margin. In the end everyone loses. Combat players pay more, and crafters have no challenge at all.
I have never liked turn based combat, and so never joined any of the MMOG’s before this. However when I read about SWG’s player based economy, I saw a real potential for an online economic strategy game, and signed up. Unfortunately, the economic game has not lived up to it’s potential. The economic game meets it’s minimum requirement of serving the combat game with the goods it needs, but the economic game is not particularly challenging or engaging in it’s own right. This is really too bad as there is enormous potential here. I am an avid strategy gamer, and as such, am hungry for a viable online game. Most strategy games simply do not translate well online.
I would like to see mechanisms put in to increase competition in the economy. (Many players have posted ideas for this elsewhere.) If this was done, SOE could, and should, market SWG as an online economic strategy game (in addition to the RP/combat game.) It would give SOE access to a whole new market.