Business And Economy Archive

• Not being able to afford whatever you want asa 2 week old newb. Thats called being a newb.


• Getting out bid on an uber tape or super duperpearlthat goes for 25M that you think you 'need'. Thats called a luxury item and those are expensive.


• New items fetching high prices. Thats called scarcity, check back in 2 months and it will be half the cost.


• Some guy somewhere selling something for a lot of money, OMGZ!!11!! Thats called not shopping around.


• You having a hard time making money. Thats just you being broke.


• You not being able to make as much from certain missions or ways of running missions. You're broke.

Now as an individual if you're broke or can't make as much money as you used to then then it feels to you like you can't buy as much and might feel like inflation. Thats more like being unemployed.

Prices for goods have to increase in general across the board for there to be inflation. To demonstrate inflation someone would have to track prices for a variety of common goods from week to week or month to month. If those prices go up on average then that would be evidence of inflation. Nobody has done that. Nobody has even cited any evidence of it.

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Pawlin wrote:

Dictionary.com has this definition:

A persistent increase in the level of consumer prices or a persistent decline in the purchasing power of money, caused by an increase in available currency and credit beyond the proportion of available goods and services.

So basically its less buying power for your dollar.

It happens over time so can't be observed in a relatively short period.

Inflation is caused by an increase in the amount of money circulating.

Inflation is an economic indicator based on price data.

SOE regulates the amount of money coming into the game versus the amount going out. Last time they said anything about it (April 04) there was more going out of the game in order to get rid of excess from duping.

Your individual money situation does not alone indicateinflation. If you're poor, unable to make money, etc. that does not mean theres inflation.

Inflation is system wide so it isn't just for 1 specific item or class of items but rather the average of all consumer items.

What is NOT inflation:

• Not being able to afford whatever you want asa 2 week old newb. Thats called being a newb.


• Getting out bid on an uber tape or super duperpearlthat goes for 25M that you think you 'need'. Thats called a luxury item and those are expensive.


• New items fetching high prices. Thats called scarcity, check back in 2 months and it will be half the cost.


• Some guy somewhere selling something for a lot of money, OMGZ!!11!! Thats called not shopping around.


• You having a hard time making money. Thats just you being broke.


• You not being able to make as much from certain missions or ways of running missions. You're broke.

Now as an individual if you're broke or can't make as much money as you used to then then it feels to you like you can't buy as much and might feel like inflation. Thats more like being unemployed.

Prices for goods have to increase in general across the board for there to be inflation. To demonstrate inflation someone would have to track prices for a variety of common goods from week to week or month to month. If those prices go up on average then that would be evidence of inflation. Nobody has done that. Nobody has even cited any evidence of it.

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I can only use my onw sales as an example.... when i first started out as a weaponsmith(some 20 months ago)I charged 5k-50k for my non-enhanced weapons.... 5k for a VK upto 50k for a T21... today I charge 200 credits per CL of the non-enhanced weaponthis means my cheapest weapon is 1k credits(CL 5) and my most expensive is 10.8k(CL 54) so I basically charge 20% of what I used to... that doesnt seem like inflation to me... but fi you look at my bank avvout at that time I was lucky to ahve 500k at any one time... now it is the rare excpetion when I drop under 40 million, and it is never for long.... so I twould seem that 1 credit would mean less to me know than it did at the time.

So, why do I charge so little for weapons compared to then?

I would guess it is because a weapon takes nothing for me to make now, I have millions of resources and about 20 factories... so for me to make a run of 50 T21s is nothing... back then making 1 T21 was a big deal cause I didnt always have the resources and it would take a large percentage of my resources to make one, so I imagine that is why I valued them so high, and now they are dirt cheap for me to make.

Perhaps it's time a post like this got stickied, and this is as good as any.

After all this subject rears it's head about twice a week in the form of someone complaining about inflation because there's something they can't afford to buy.

Do you think it was originally intended for players to have over 40 million in credits?

Just because you can sell weapons cheaper does not mean other aspects of the economy has increased in price. I've seen loot rise in price dramatically between the time I left pre-cu and the time I returned. Armour has gone to astronomical prices in some cases.

From what I've seen, a credit buys less these days than it did 6 months ago.

of course 'when the game launched' the credit bought more in terms of weapons and whatnot, but that was only because, 1, no master crafters were around and 2, everyone had little money.

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Supermite wrote:

Do you think it was originally intended for players to have over 40 million in credits?

Yes, otherwise the Devs would have set the credit limit far lower than 1 billion. The Devs themselves stated they wanted to make a free-market player-based crafting economy, and they acknowledged that some players would be wealthier than others, just as it is in all free-market economies.

Just because you can sell weapons cheaper does not mean other aspects of the economy has increased in price. I've seen loot rise in price dramatically between the time I left pre-cu and the time I returned. Armour has gone to astronomical prices in some cases.

In my experience, the only crafted item to raise dramatically in price is armor. All other crafted items have either maintained their pricing, or even dropped (not counted items crafted with loot--more on this in a minute). There are many reasons why armor is mor expensive now: 1) the resource requirements, especially for layered armor, have shot up dramatically, 2) the factory time requirements for making armor have increased dramatically--this makes it harder to mass produce armor, thus reducing the supply, 3) armorsmith is currently beset by a number of bugs, one of which is a colorization bug for armor pulled from factory crates--many AS are loathe to do factory runs of armor when the armor colors cannot be predicted when pulled from the crates, so they resort to hand crafting armor which further reduces supply.

Loot is a poor judge for "inflation". First off, loot is a luxury item, not a necessity to play. Second, loot is rare, yet usually in high demand. This means good loot will always be expensive. Third, the Devs tinker with (or mess up) the drop rates of loot all the time, which can dramatically affect the value of loot items. Two examples of this are premium krayt pearls (which aren't currently dropping), and krayt tissues (which used to drop plentifully just before the CU, but have been cut back since the CU went live). Besides, many loot items are far cheaper now than they used to be. Take No Division posters for example. When they came out they went for a couple million a piece; now you can get them for a couple hundred thousand. That's a huge drop in price.

From what I've seen, a credit buys less these days than it did 6 months ago.

A credit might buy less loot now than it did 6 months ago, but standard crafted items are basically no more expensive now than they were then. As for armor, it's more expensive (for the time being, at least), but it's also not as necessary as it used to be.

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Slim Vargo, Corbantis