Economy a mess

[HD2300]

^^ It is funny that some people are blaming p(l)ayers on everything yet again, when the devs design and develop the game.

Prices are determined by the rarity of the item and the usefulness of the item. These are determined by the devs. Many items are deliberately made very hard to get by the devs, i.e. you have to grind a long time to get them. This is deliberate, because if p(l)ayers reach they goals quickly, they are more likely to stop paying earlier and EA makes less money.

So to say p(l)ayers are greedy is nonsense, because if you charge too much no one would buy it. You can only get what someone else is willing for pay for an item, and the market demand determines the price based on its rarity and usefulness, and that is determined by the devs.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

^^ It is funny that some people are blaming p(l)ayers on everything yet again, when the devs design and develop the game.

Prices are determined by the rarity of the item and the usefulness of the item. These are determined by the devs. Many items are deliberately made very hard to get by the devs, i.e. you have to grind a long time to get them. This is deliberate, because if p(l)ayers reach they goals quickly, they are more likely to stop paying earlier and EA makes less money.

So to say p(l)ayers are greedy is nonsense, because if you charge too much no one would buy it. You can only get what someone else is willing for pay for an item, and the market demand determines the price based on its rarity and usefulness, and that is determined by the devs.

The price range is quite ridiculous despite the good argument you present here. To assume greed does not disctate the market is just as nonsensical as you saying people charge what others will pay. Keep in mind that when there are no other options the only option is to pay what is being charged. Sure the trend had to start between two players, but one said "lets charge this much" and another, either desperate or not knowing, goes "there is what I want". It would be a rarity that a person is selling something and someone would offer more than that person would have thought to gain, also this problem stems from another Co-created problem (co insinuating both players and developers.) That of the Duping that went on (or still does.) and scripting can be placed in a small sector of that as well. Also to assume the developers could stop this cheating so well that it would not cause anything to happen is a mistaken argument so let us refrain from such things and point out the facts. The players drive things to be so pricey because they can, the gold available (even more so to those who have been around a long time) is what maintains the prices being so high.

Availability is not the only factor in a price of something, and to claim usefulness matters at all is silly since the most expensive items in the game are nearly worthless as far as use goes. I would agree the more useful items would be worth more to someone who needs it, but a useless is worth more than anything to someone who wants it. =\

 

[UO PwnZoRs]

After SA came out, prices went thru the roof, probably because it became so easy for newer players to make gold from selling essence / imbuing ingredients. Also, suits / weapons became so easy to obtain (and cheap) that players could make solo the "money maker" monsters. So alot more gold became spread around, allowing more players to pay higher prices, and sellers to charge higher prices. Rinse and repeat time and time again and you get considerably fast inflation.

On a side note, its amazing to think that all the gold in UO was originally looted at some point.

Perhaps inflation will slow down now that hardly anyone actually loots gold, but i doubt it as the billionares still have plenty of gold to spread around.

 

[THP]

easy solution 1...gold sink castle in the malas stars....grandfathered to existing house......100k a ticket... unlimited tickets can be bought....kinda guessing 1-10 trillion per shard would be wiped out....and one person per shard would be the envy of all

bumps the solution of one massive gold wipe even new players that can make easy 5 m on there first day can have a go too

 

[Lady Storm]

When an item (no matter what it is) is easy to get the price at first is high for a very short time. This price is placed on it from who ever gets the first bunch out there... but days later when tons show up that price drops down to a more reasonable level.

BUT....

When that item is hard to get or very short supply and takes along time to gather, that price multiplys... Time it takes to get and the infrequency of its dropping dictates the cost.
Example is the Recipys that use Taint.... many of the items that are of the rarer gotten use this very item that has become quite rare on a vendor. 10 pieces of this item are going for 1 million gold. Blight on the other hand which is a bit easer to get sells for 50k per 10.

The major factor in this is availability...... this is Dev driven.

When a EM Event gives out a piece of floss where only 10 is given. Those who get this floss... are ether the ones who deal in rare event items (many do have full set fighters on major shards with active EM events) or as I have seen Chat is filled with hawkers yelling that they will buy all EM event items from this event or even from past events with Billions to spend.
**Floss is a represetation of any give item an event has put out**

I watched the Doom high end Arties drop down to the basement when the cursed items came out..... an Orni sold prior to this for 50 mill or more then hit the floor down to 5 mill.. *I did see it lower but it was a one time thing, yes I bought it!*
This was because the cursed took alot of business from the original item as many only play in tram anyway. But the minute they stoped the cursed items... the originals started to go back up but slowly... not to their past glorious prices but back up to a lofty place a new player cant aford first thing on shard.

Dev should learn from this if you want to curb the gold... stop the rare item making...make things the same level of difficulty and availability. Im not saying make it easy but the less rare it is on shard the lower the gold required to buy...

I can hear the screams about the rare items now but I am right if you want to fix our ecconomy stop the EM rares and put in the gold sinks that are easy... I suguested the placement of castles and keeps in malas and selling them as they did Magincia house plots... that will eat major gold in game.

 

[Petra Fyde]

One of the main differences between pre AoS and now is the permanence of items. Before AoS if you had a vanq weapon, or invul armour, you enjoyed it, but at the same time you saved to be able to replace it when it wore out. One of the reasons Siege's economy is in better state is because your kit either wears out or gets looted periodically. I would therefore remove PoF from the game. Stop things lasting forever, require them to be replaced. Got an orni? Great - enjoy it while you can, but get ready to buy a replacement when it wears out.

 

[Frarc]

One of the main differences between pre AoS and now is the permanence of items. Before AoS if you had a vanq weapon, or invul armour, you enjoyed it, but at the same time you saved to be able to replace it when it wore out. One of the reasons Siege's economy is in better state is because your kit either wears out or gets looted periodically. I would therefore remove PoF from the game. Stop things lasting forever, require them to be replaced. Got an orni? Great - enjoy it while you can, but get ready to buy a replacement when it wears out.

I would not remove PoF from the game but for every repair you do, you would loose atleast 10 durability. And limit the use of PoFs on a single item.

 

[Longforge]

From an Economist's Mind:

Let's face it, UO is a merchants game - period. The best part is the huge commerce that is a part of this game, while at the same time you are a plethora of other skills. All of them playing into your ability to do as much or as little commerce as possible!

The economy isnt a mess... player desparity is a mess. There isn't too much gold. Why? Because there are two classes in this game, the "Rich" and the "Middle Class". There is no lower class. (In regards to Gold Pieces owned) Gold is not a constant, it is a consistent. While it moves, most of the wealth held in this game does not. You can attribute that to the fact of endless item use without a reasonable need to replace it. What does that do? Kills resources, kills crafting, kills sales, kills the "use of content", thus... kills subscriptions that further isolates "the wealth" into not changing hands or progressing unless you are a "website name here".

There is a solution and it has been suggested in this thread.

There is no calculable reasoning or logic in not insituting a Global Vendor System. The real world teaches us this fundamental reasoning and the limitless possibilities via the "Global Market and International Trade".

For example: Smaller and less fortunate countries (Ie: Smaller populated shards) are brought into the entirety of commerce with an ability to compete and find success. In this instance, it would remove the isolation of the player base and connect it as one on one of the intricate components of the game - commerce. With commerce comes purpose. Purpose to play, purpose to stay and purpose to come back.

Players need to choose their shard according to their ping on the norm. Smaller shards see attrition rates that punish subscription numbers. Who the hell wants to play where they "basically have to" in a socially and economically dismal environment? Or - you can go die due to latency and lag and not enjoy your game time as the local players do.

The start is a global vendoring system that connects the shards via commerce. Instead we have a "will pay IRL" crowd that sacks smaller shards to profit on the bigger shards. And they're only really buying items that are Event Items or something in line with a rare or super duper arti/replica.

Eliminating the need for that would produce far more subscription revenue than x-sharding revenue IRL. That's just simple business figuring.

The Bazzaar... great idea. Fundamentally, it really only gave tamers a vendoring outlet with minimal usage on the other end of the game. Build from there.

There is nothing from globalizing the commerce that could really go wrong except for to spur more activity and demand. But first, you have to eliminate the endless usage nonsense on the items in this game. Endless usage has sacked the economic and "citizen ability" of this game.

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

/hard fail

There is no calculable reasoning or logic in not insituting a Global Vendor System. The real world teaches us this fundamental reasoning and the limitless possibilities via the "Global Market and International Trade".

It is a RPG >game< Role Playing Game ... *bites fingers* ... you are misinformed.

A reason to NOT place a global vendor system in, is: to prevent UO economy from becoming yet another Walmart
A) Real world experience shows that one walmart will kill off a LOT of mom and pop operations
B) ONE(provided) reason to "not" do a thing is sufficient to thoroughly rebut your key proposition

A global vendor system caters to a single player model
no >need< to interact with other players in an MMO ...
Like npc pet rezzing ... no >need< to allow for or plan around finding a REAL player to rez the pet
Like repair deeds ... no >need< to find a smith or tailor for repairs ...

Put a global vendor system in ... and you and the rest, won't need to take two steps to find an NPC
at MOST ... you'll mark a rune.

commerce? you don't know commerce
the art of the deal
the way of the haggle
how to negotiate a fair deal in a fair manner
how to take a sucker for his last tuppence and shirt

*shrugs*

 

[Longforge]

/hard fail



It is a RPG >game< Role Playing Game ... *bites fingers* ... you are misinformed.

A reason to NOT place a global vendor system in, is: to prevent UO economy from becoming yet another Walmart
A) Real world experience shows that one walmart will kill off a LOT of mom and pop operations
B) ONE(provided) reason to "not" do a thing is sufficient to thoroughly rebut your key proposition

A global vendor system caters to a single player model
no >need< to interact with other players in an MMO ...
Like npc pet rezzing ... no >need< to allow for or plan around finding a REAL player to rez the pet
Like repair deeds ... no >need< to find a smith or tailor for repairs ...

Put a global vendor system in ... and you and the rest, won't need to take two steps to find an NPC
at MOST ... you'll mark a rune.

commerce? you don't know commerce
the art of the deal
the way of the haggle
how to negotiate a fair deal in a fair manner
how to take a sucker for his last tuppence and shirt

*shrugs*

If it is an RPG then I challenge you to show me more people Role Playing than they are conducting commerce. You can't.

Using a walmart theory in this game is ridiculous. There's not going to be an influx of Wooden Benches and Sextants on the market with a Global Vendoring System. If you truly know the commerce of UO - you cannot come to that assumption correctly by a cheap crap wal-mart theory. There isn't even a remote comparison.

If you charge maximum price for an item - someone will buy it eventually. If you don't you get paid. Players that have endless gps reserves will leave it on a vendor at 10 million for 6 months. Another player will sell it for 8.5 million overnight. Laws of economics, and using Walmart theories is the same as saying "I know you are but what am I".

In case you've been absent from UO over the past 10 years... this game is heavily a single player game for the most part. People dont get together to craft, moderately to hunt any anything else is guild organized for the most part. Most group or 2x things that occur in this game are random at the very most.

I agree with pet rezzing. That isn't paticularly a commerce problem, but I remember the days where you needed people for certain things. Once again, you can trace the problem to there being about 4-5 shards that have any kind of reasonable population. Dead shard = good chance of bye bye pet.

I agree with repair deeds. De-socializing crafters and nerfing 75% of their value came with item insurance, pof and repair deeds. I loved the days where you would jump shops in hopes of finding a blacksmith at a forge. If you didnt, you was nakies until you did.

Regs, bottles and blank scrolls are about the only use for an NPC anymore, except if you want to sell gems to a provisioner. I think it should be utilized a lot more in the amount of exclusive items that they should carry.

And for commerce - haggling still exists, but is not necessary. If you really want that environment, it never paticularly happened in this game because of vendors from the very beginning. I do miss the Brit Bank days of commerce where transactions were a little more personal.

But we still have that today via the global chat system and activity at Luna Bank on Atlantic where I play. Quite a bit of trade still happens in person.

 

[Tina Small]

Reading this thread, I got to wondering how many people who are concerned about vendor fees are using the Merchant's Trinkets sold through the game code store. One version has 90 charges and the other has 40 charges. I believe both give a 10% reduction in vendor fees each day the vendor is wearing the earrings when vendor fees are assessed.

Second, would people even be willing to consider putting a cap on the number of insured items your character can equip or carry at one time on shards other than Siege and Mugen, thus opening up the possibility that once in a while you might lose something and have to replace it?

To deal with the fact that you would now have some of your gear dropping to your corpse upon death, you could take advantage of any of the available self-rez options; carry an insured Undertaker's Staff; hunt with buddies more often; store or buy extras of your uninsured items; get better and more savvy at hunting/fighting so you die less often; be prepared to offer to buy back some of your gear from your victorious opponent if you PvP and lose. And if you have items you need to get to the bank and don't want to mess with insuring them, use a Chest of Sending or a bag of sending.

Also, how about removing the automatic blessed status for virtually all modded spellbooks on production shards and require that you keep them insured? (I know there are already a few special ones that aren't automatically blessed and must be insured if you want to hang onto them.) Empty blessed magery, necro, and mysticism spellbooks you buy from NPCs would always have blessed status.

All I'm thinking of are just a few small tweaks here and there to the insurance system to open up a small window of risk for everyone so that you do sometimes lose items when you die, or at the very least, you keep a backup supply of less expensive and more easily replaced items on hand so they can make up the non-insured part of your gear. If nothing else, it might have some small effect on the economy AND by introducing some new risk, make playing for everyone a little more exciting and challenging.

 

[UOKaiser]

So many have such misconceived thoughts on the UO economy. Especialy you fellow old timers. Yeap the ones who still thing 1k gold is alot of gold or too much to pay for anything. Got to change your prospective.