Business And Economy Archive

A frequent topic regarding the economy in SWG is that pricing on player crafted items seems to be very high. A second topic is that there is no demand for low-level crafted items. Before I go into my solutions to the economy, I will lay out what I see happening.

The progression of credits:

Combat classes take missions for credits. They then used the credits to buy player crafted gear (armor, weapons, foods, buffs, etc).

Now, those credits are in another player’s pockets. Those credits are in turn used on maintenance for harvesters, vendors, houses, factories, etc. As well as on fees for traveling, bazaar, JTL ship repairs, etc. Normally the fees are already considered in the price of the product.

Another expense for the crafters is on items that are looted or harvested. These expenditures go back into the combat players’ pockets and some of which are spent on maintenance or fees.

Then the cycle continues.

The problem is that there is an infinite source of credits. Missions. If a combat player needs to buy an item and is short of the credits, they just need to take missions until they have enough to buy the item.

The result is that the majority of credits are kept in the game, this causes inflation.

A possible solution is to raise the maintenance costs and fees, but I think that would just raise the prices of products crafted.

Instead, I would suggest that mission payouts be reduced. Before you flame, please read the rest.

From what I understand, mission terminals were designed to help new players, in a new game, when other players might be hard to connect with. What we need to see is an easy way for crafters to hire other players.

Currently, the best system is to go to starports and spam what you are wanting to buy. I would instead love to be able to go to a terminal and input that I am buying X item for Y costs to max out at Z units (some tweaking would need to be done here to allow less establish players a chance to buy the items, I am open to ideas).

There are plenty of things that new players do, that are considered valuable. For example, I deleted the weapon components that I picked up going through a themepark, just because I didn’t know any better! It could have been put to great use with a crafter, and at the time I wasn’t interested in crafting.

This is a two part solution. At the same time as mission terminals are reduced, introduce the player terminal. Make certain that both crafters and consumers are aware of the terminals and have easy access to them.

Opinions?

Message Edited by noobskillz on 03-14-2005 02:35 PM

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RelicOMO wrote:

The player terminals is a fine idea, and should be in. But the premise that credits coming into the game causes inflation is not quite correct - yes, more creds have come into the game, but the price ofjust about allcrafted goods, including at the high end,has held steady or fallen for the past year or more. Inflation is a myth - while the causes would seem to be there, the effect (rising prices) is not. Compare the prices on any item - name anything where the price has risen in the past 6 months, in the past year. There isn't anything. There is no inflation.

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This is indicitive of a priorraise in pricing, though. The reason is because the economy stayed the same, even after they closed down the payouts to solo-grouping. This has in essence caused the pricing to stabilize somewhat. But if there hadn't been inflation, you would have seen prices dropping after this change, in order to meet the demand for cheaper products, and they have not.

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noobskillz wrote:

This is an interesting idea. i really like the part about the terminals and the system you're proposing. However, I think that regardless of what solution is used to address inflation you can't make everyone happy. That being said this basic proposal has alot of potential. I think if you lower the payouts on missions that may be only treating the symptom and not the problem.Because if you just lowered the mission payouts players would just find other ways to make credits, like they already do in terms ofmissions, loot from space, regular npc loot and high end loot.

So in other words if we want a balanced SWG economy we will need to propose a solution that balances out all of the methods of earning credits.

Message Edited by noobskillz on 03-14-2005 02:35 PM

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Actually, I want the players to find other ways to make credits, especially in loots from space (sold to Shipwrights) and high end loots (sold to other players).

That being said, I know that this won't make everyone happy. It is like they don't want to have to interact with other players.

Thank you for opinion!

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Greywulf0 wrote:

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RelicOMO wrote:

However, I have noticed that since I started purchasing buffs, the pricing on that has gone up. It stopped going up and has held steady for a long time, and has recently declined a little. Probably the biggest reason for this was that my server had a poor series of avian/herb spawns. For months the best spawn that we had for avian was on Tatooine.

This is indicitive of a prior raise in pricing, though.

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I think prices on Buffs are a seperate issue, not connected to the econmy at large. why? BBecause the price for buffs is so heavbily based on the laws of supply and demand that the effect of credits coming in to the game/goining out of the game and the other measures of the SWG economy have little to no effect on this one area of pricing. Wheter true or not, the perception of the player base at large is that every single person needs to be buffed at all times that they are in game, and that withoiut buffs, you cant play the game. As such, they are willing, although grudgingly at times, to pay whatever is needed in order to obtain buffs and as such, the docs can charge as much as they want, no matter what else is going on in the economy, and the player will pay.

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Greywulf0 wrote:

This is indicitive of a priorraise in pricing, though. The reason is because the economy stayed the same, even after they closed down the payouts to solo-grouping. This has in essence caused the pricing to stabilize somewhat. But if there hadn't been inflation, you would have seen prices dropping after this change, in order to meet the demand for cheaper products, and they have not.

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This would be true only if prices rose when people started solo-grouping. They did not. Prices have held steady or fallen for a very long time. All crafting economies in SWG have undergone similar patterns - for the first few months after launch there was significant inflation, where there were very few masters, very limited supply of resources, and very high demand. After that short rise, prices fell, as crafters began to try to undercut each other to generate more custom. Prices fell more in some areas than in others - crafts such as architecture, where there was a finite demand and ease of mass production, fell a lot more than crafts with constant demand and limited production, but the general trend of falling prices was across the board. Solo grouping was not commonplace at this point, and did not become commonplace till prices stabilised and have held steady or generally declined ever since.

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Greywulf0 wrote:

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RelicOMO wrote:

The player terminals is a fine idea, and should be in. But the premise that credits coming into the game causes inflation is not quite correct - yes, more creds have come into the game, but the price ofjust about allcrafted goods, including at the high end,has held steady or fallen for the past year or more. Inflation is a myth - while the causes would seem to be there, the effect (rising prices) is not. Compare the prices on any item - name anything where the price has risen in the past 6 months, in the past year. There isn't anything. There is no inflation.

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This is possibly true, I'll admit that I am not an economy major. However, I have noticed that since I started purchasing buffs, the pricing on that has gone up. It stopped going up and has held steady for a long time, and has recently declined a little. Probably the biggest reason for this was that my server had a poor series of avian/herb spawns. For months the best spawn that we had for avian was on Tatooine.

This is indicitive of a priorraise in pricing, though. The reason is because the economy stayed the same, even after they closed down the payouts to solo-grouping. This has in essence caused the pricing to stabilize somewhat. But if there hadn't been inflation, you would have seen prices dropping after this change, in order to meet the demand for cheaper products, and they have not.

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MaxellSnow wrote:

I think player terminals would hurt the already weak merchant class. The only thing preventing their permenant death is the 6k price cap on bazaar items. Now, if merchants ran player terminals and could charge a fee....

The recent faction changes in the gcw will, impressive move by the devs, pull cash from the economies of every server. Without the smuggler cap on buying and transferring, those that have the cash and want to, can convert faction, be a colonel, have a base, and have an atst. All the uber pvp'ers will clean up the bases, and the cycle continues. Smart move.

Does the constant influx of credits cause inflation? Normally, it would. However the server population (speaking for my server) is dropping due to WOW, and EQ2.... Meaning money is esentially pulled from the economy (irl, this would be the equivelant of migrant workers). So this 'loss' of money prevents inflation from running rampant. Were we not loosingserver population, inflation would be a killer.

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bluejanus wrote:

Ahh but if the server were gaining new people then those would be more people to consume products. And btw any credits that just sit in bank accounts are temporary credit sinks.

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well, yes, new players do equal new consumers, but how is that relevant to my post? I was talking about inflation and the money supply on any given server. You have someone that quits playing with 5 mil in their bank and compare that to a noob that starts with 75k....big difference.