Game Guides Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Economy Stats April 30th
PreacherPeace wrote:dang gimme an edit button, they even managed to implement them in the planetside forums
Community Veterans and above have edit buttons.
Message Edited by vagrant13 on 05-01-2004 10:50 PM
DFH wrote:
This is a typical economic analysis: a mountain of data interpreted in a very particular way to support a conclusion that does not correspond with the daily experiences of the people purportedly studied.
As an earlier respondent mentioned: I run missions, I pay fees, at the end of the day I have a profit. This is the basic engine that runs the game's economy. Anyone who does what I do makes a profit. For all such players, the economy is inflationary. Don't you think we'd notice if we were going broke? The only time my bank balance takes real hits is when I'm buying things from other players, and that money's not leaving the system. Put simply, it does not matter to me, or to anyone who can run missions, if the economy is "running at a loss" in some big-picture sense, because we can just print what we need. If I want something that costs a million credits, I can go run missions for a million credits.
This is not a good thing.
Assuming the analysis isn't flawed (and it's entirely possible that it is), the only people for whom the economy could be deflationary are people who don't run missions but have high costs -- pure crafters maintaining structures, basically. Of course, these people are the ones with the huge bank accounts too. So we have a hard-working class of adventurers that adds value to the economy which is sucked away by bloated elites to support their decadent lifestyle...POWER TO THE PEOPLE! VIVA LA REVOLUTION!......whoops, channeled Che Guevara there for a moment.
Which brings me to my last point, the following quote in relation to the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few:
This isn't necessarily something to be discouraged by - rather, we take it as a sign that the game economy is replicating characteristics of the real world economy. Since one of our goals was to have a game economy that can provide ongoing interesting strategy gameplay, seeing real world patterns manifest is something we were looking forward to.
This quote is pure Koster. Game balance isn't important. Whether or not the system is entertaining isn't important. What matters is using the paying customers as lab rats.
As I've said before: Sim City isn't fun for the Sims.
Seemingly what you are wanting is a communist type system where everyone shares everything equally. As we have seen in real communist economic models, that doesn't work.
Capitalism is a great thing. Anyone who picks up SWG can become any class they want. If they want to become rich, they can do it in a multitude of ways. I'm a weaponsmith and am doing quite well, but I know Commandos and TKAs that have even MORE money than I do. Anyone can make alot of money through various avenues, it just depends on how entrepreneurial (is that even a word?!) you are.
But to those who receive alot of credits (the ones you call the "bloated elites"), alot of credits are spent. If they have a big PA Hall for a home, that eats up alot more credits than your small or medium sized home. They have to buy alot of resources that go back to other players, hunters and miners.
It kind of sounds like you have the view alot of people have that tax cuts "for the rich" is a bad thing because they might go spend that money on a yacht or a 5th house. But even if they do buy those things for themselves, they are redistributing that money to the people who build the yacht, who in turn redistribute the money to the people who make the batteries for the yacht or who mine the materials to make the boat. Same thing for the 5th house. They are paying an architect, construction crew, hardware store workers, lumberjacks, etc. etc.
It's a natural thing for the money to get into sort of a bottleneck (your bloated elites), but the wealth is redistributed.
In SWG, doctors make a killing on buffs. But then they pay scouts and rangers 100cpu for meat. Weaponsmiths make alot of money selling weapons, but then they pay the hunter for the Krayt Tissue he got from hunting and the miners to get extra of that awesome copper that just spawned.
To say that the only economy that is "fair" is the one where everyone is equal is extremely short sighted and unrealistic. It can never happen.
sciguyCO wrote:
Tavian_McMaster wrote:
Think about the addition of speeder repair costs.Those costs hit almost everyone and certainly hurts the lower-end players far more than the uber rich. This would be the real-world equivalent to a Food Tax.
Just to remark on your speeder comment:
Repair costs only hit players who have speeders, which I don't think is nearly a requirement as you make it out to be. It hits players with swoops hardest, landspeeders the least, and speederbikes in the middle. A landspeeder's decay is about 1/5th that of a swoop, making it much more suited for those "lower-end" players you're worried about. Vehicles get you to missions faster, eases travel costs (since you can drive instead of taking a planetary shuttle), and have that insubstantial "cool" factor (especially the AV21). If the cost of repair outweighs those benefits, you shouldn't use a vehicle, simple as that. Get a mount or walk.
Vehicles really are a luxury, and so the maintenance costs of them are a luxury tax. The only reason I can think of for them to be considered a "requirement" at the same levelas food (real life, not in-game) is that they allow you to take more missions in a given amount of time. If using a vehicle gets you 5-6k more than than you would've gotten walking or riding a creaturein the time between repairs, you've come out ahead.
Right Right.... Technically I suppose speeders are a luxury. But then, aside from absolute total newbs, do you know anyone that doesn't have a speeder? The speed of the landspeeder is obnoxiously slow. No one drives them. I use mine as an "around town" car. Mostly because I can park it outside the cantina and not worry about it degrading to hell while I'm feeling up the twi'lek dancing girls. I consider speeders a requirement though because running to my harvesters would take me about 2-3 hours (believe me, I did it for quite a while!) whereas I can do it in my swoop in about 30 minutes.
I probably overstated my point though. A better way of putting it would be that the upper 1% of players in the economy hold far more wealth than they could ever hope to spend. The new tax on the system affects probably 80-90% of folks and the people it affects the least are the ones with the most money. Holo was questioning whether any economic system would be "fair" and my response would be a system which taxed those who could best afford to pay that tax would be more "fair" than one that taxed everyone equally.
I've always liked George Bernard Shaw's definition of socialism. It was essentially: the shifting of costs from those who cannot afford to bear them to those who can.
Well I'll eat four dolphins on toast!
Is that you, Holocon? I had counted you amongst the dead, believing that you in your Directors office had forgotten SWG.
Nice to see that you can prodded into life on occation. Can we see more of your useful presence, please?
Enix_Dayspring wrote:
Seemingly what you are wanting is a communist type system where everyone shares everything equally. As we have seen in real communist economic models, that doesn't work.
Capitalism is a great thing. Anyone who picks up SWG can become any class they want. If they want to become rich, they can do it in a multitude of ways. I'm a weaponsmith and am doing quite well, but I know Commandos and TKAs that have even MORE money than I do. Anyone can make alot of money through various avenues, it just depends on how entrepreneurial (is that even a word?!) you are.
But to those who receive alot of credits (the ones you call the "bloated elites"), alot of credits are spent. If they have a big PA Hall for a home, that eats up alot more credits than your small or medium sized home. They have to buy alot of resources that go back to other players, hunters and miners.
It kind of sounds like you have the view alot of people have that tax cuts "for the rich" is a bad thing because they might go spend that money on a yacht or a 5th house. But even if they do buy those things for themselves, they are redistributing that money to the people who build the yacht, who in turn redistribute the money to the people who make the batteries for the yacht or who mine the materials to make the boat. Same thing for the 5th house. They are paying an architect, construction crew, hardware store workers, lumberjacks, etc. etc.
It's a natural thing for the money to get into sort of a bottleneck (your bloated elites), but the wealth is redistributed.
In SWG, doctors make a killing on buffs. But then they pay scouts and rangers 100cpu for meat. Weaponsmiths make alot of money selling weapons, but then they pay the hunter for the Krayt Tissue he got from hunting and the miners to get extra of that awesome copper that just spawned.
To say that the only economy that is "fair" is the one where everyone is equal is extremely short sighted and unrealistic. It can never happen.
I agree with that 
I have never played a mmorpg before swg and cant say how it works in other games,I only used to play offline games. And I think the economy of swg is realy good, its a total different kind of feeling to offline games because you can get all things from players only, I dont think that mmorpgs that only focus on fighting and dont have a crafting system like swg will differ so much from offline games or multiplayer games like Diablo2. And I think it is a fair system, you are not restricted by anything, you can do what you want anddo every profession. Sure the ppl who play since the beginning and have harvested every good ressource spawn since the beginning have an advantage and more money, and they can buy up a lot of things you cant. But if you dont like that or dont like the prices others charge there is nothing that prevents you from for example become armorsmith by yourself, collect the ressources by yourself and define your own prices and make your own things. And if you are angry because the rich ppl buy all the krayt pearls or an av-21 is too much for you, there is nothing that prevents you from becomming a fighter and get this things by yourself. And if you are too weak for that there is nothing that prevents you from collecting a group of friends, negotiate how you do the things so that everyone gets a share, and get all the good loot. And if your group is to weak there is nothing that prevents you from becomming a support profession like a combat medic or squad leader which makes the group much stronger till they can do everything in the game.
I think the system is total fair because everyone can do everything
Actually, for normal weapons and armor I find the prices quite good due to competition as long as you shop around. Its the rare loot items that get way out hand.
Seriously, instead of making a rare weapon that ultra powerful and giving it to professions, make one that is new and readily available but in line with the scale of balance already in place. For rare loots just have unique items that are just a status symbol, the new land speeder is a good example of that.
Reply on the guy who was banned for selling millions of credits worth of brandy...
...dunno, but in a 12 hour time span..on hvy harvs, i made over 2.5 million credits last week due to Dolovite spawning (rare spawn) on my Master Architect...
...of course this was direct, not using my vendors...but still that was a huge amount (biggest i ever produced...wiped out all my resources..my will..my sanity...lol)
Holocron wrote:
I am unsure what salient facts would really be of use to you, other than for curiosity. Does it help you to know that on 4/2 the economy shed 601,519,132 credits, but on 9/26/2003 it gained 840,324,091? Let me know.
Yeah, those kinds of numbers are exaclty what I am looking for I'd love to see all the deficit/surplus numbers plotted out. Heh, and as you mentioned - see how they compare to Ebay prices.
Out of curiousity, that 840 mil number didn't include any dupes right? And was that a random date, or perhaps one of the biggest imbalances on record? Or maybe right before Vehicles went in
I assume that long term, we are aiming for a zero-sum flow here correct? Any thoughts on when we might be approaching that time and what kind of game changes we are looking at to accomplish that?
Also, I would imagine that a good bit of the money in flowfrom missions is related to how old a character is. From myexperiences, the newer playerstend to run missions to gain money while the veterans use the economy to trade for credits. As the player base has matured, it doesn't suprise me to see the Money in-flow from missionsdrop dramatically - and at the same time, the veteran players are competing harder than ever to make the shrinking economy work for them.
In practice though SWG is very close to a communistic economy.
1) wealth does not mean power over others **
2) wealth is owned by the creators
3) Many restrict their economic activity to a social group (PA or City)
4) the economy is managed tighlty (weekly meetings we hear)
5) Everyone is at an equal footing with respect to the means of production (craft stations, resources etc. are equaly available to all as are cash missions).
I think MMORPG economies are similar to what a 'transition' economy would look like as it moved from capitalist to communist. I'm not talking about Russia or China which had / have corrupt socialist economy rather than a communist one.
Edit:
It would be an interesting excercise to remove credits from the economy and just have the crafting mechanisms for production, perhapse missions would be rewarded by resources or items, then players would invent their own currency (probably a common type of ore) and manage inflation etc. themselves. I suspect that this is more effort than most people can be botherd with and if the economy goes to pot then players would leave.
** Except marginaly in PvP and then the diference between 'some money' and 'lots of money' is small (except jedi PvP where 20 million worth of pearls is significantly diferent from 2 million worth of crystals).
Message Edited by aachil on 05-03-2004 05:35 AM