Economics question

Darksylph - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The only way to fix it is to increase the supply of gold (everyone has to be willing to spend more $$$), or to decrease the supply of coins. Unfortunately the game has very few coin sinks (things that destroy coin and remove it from circulation). There's bidding for TW, and buying certain items and services from NPCs (teleporting, repairing, etc). The majority of coin in the game remains in circulation, traded between players in exchange for items.

That means the amount of coin in the game is ever increasing. Since the goods you can buy with gold have a fixed price, the value of gold remains relatively constant. Since the amount of coin is always increasing, it suffers from inflation and their value is always decreasing. So gold prices will slowly rise over time.

Actually I think this game has quite alot more coin sinks then most game economies have. One of the LARGEST coin sinks, is spending coin on spirit-skills. Many in their 70s & above simply do not have the coin to spend all the spirit they're beginning to amass. Those whome exploited may (unfortunately) be able to buy & catch up on alot of that unspent spirit & needed skills, moreso then most people. Giving them yet another advantage. However, As the game coin circulates, one of the uses people will put it towards is their own skills. As the coin goes from user to user, more and more will get removed from the system. One might think that the same amount would have been removed had we not had exploiters. But due to my experience with talking to people, about how much shear amount of unspent spirit budget high level characters have, most people simply have not had the coin to spend. Since the cost of these skills does not increase in an inflated economy, these skills will now seem cheaper, and they would be in a relative sense. We'll simply end up with more people having skills they might not have otherwise had.

Another Note, is how money enters the flow. One of the largest insrtions of new coin into the game economy, seems to be the selling of DQ items to NPC. That tends to be the standard way to get coin. However, the prices offered by Venders will not rise in an inflated economy. People will find their needs not being met as satisfactorally by selling DQ to venders. The helps to create an equilibrium of inserted cash. As goods tend to cost more, people will tend to drift towards methods of farming goods which do share the inflated prices. Things such as Crafting supplies, TT items, etc. Any money made from selling those items however comes from other players, rather then from NPCs. So this in fact causes less money to be introduced into the economy from NPCs, or less money to be "created".

In most other games, the coin sinks tend to just be frills. Nothing very extreme. But in this game the very ability to improve yourself through skills is in fact a coin sink. Conversely, in most games, selling goods to NPC venders tends to be a very poor way of earning money, where as in this game it becomes a base amount which can be drifted away from when prices are too high, and gone back too when prices are lower. While there are long term effects from this debocle (and bear in mind i was in favor of a roll back) i dont think the effects will last forever. In fact one sort of observational proof (not empirical (sp?) evidence mind you) is that around the time of the halloween event the prices of Gold soared to nearly 150k on auction. While the prices came down at a slower rate then they increased, they still eventually fell back to the norm of 100k.

Wow i didnt think i had that much to say. /End wall of text.

Saitada - Sanctuary

angellicdeity wrote: »

Right now, its more like 1 dollar spending to 3 dollars income

Well, it might be that way where you are at, In Hawai'i anyone who makes less than $10.00 an hour spends 2 dollars to every 1 income. Yes I know this seems impossible but it's not when you have entire families working and all pooling their cash to just try and stay afloat w/o loosing everything. (3-4 full time job holders in a family all working to just keep a roof over their heads, and **** the amenities)

Give you an example. On the mainland a Hamburger, Fries and a Soda cost about $8.00-$15.00 in an average restaurant. Here... $20.00-$30.00 for the same thing.

2/3 of this is pure greed because Hawai'i's economy is driven almost exclusively by the tourist industry so prices are artificially elevated to leech money from the Tourists. LITERALLY 85-95% of Hawai'i's economy is directly, or indirectly driven by tourism.

It's not a stable system, and it's starting to collapse. We are just starting to see the edges begin to crumble and people are already freaking out lol.

~S

Estepario - Sanctuary

Ethas - Heavens Tear wrote: »

STOP BUYING

After 1 day they will lower prices

Not accurate enough, but for sure points to a way players can force a drop in gold prices. Actually a DON'T BUY FOR MORE THAN (place your ideal price here) from all players that base their economy on grinding/crafting/reselling instead of buying zen would force that ideal price for AH gold transactions.

That kind of a global non-formal "agreement" is called collusion (may be mistyped) in economy.

And it could actually be possible to achieve such goal as most useful items (armor, weapons, DQ items, pets, and basically everything you equip except mounts and clothing) are created/dropped/quest-reward-awarded ingame and are far more necessary for players than fancy items. That's why zen buyers indirectly pay real cash for them.

What it takes is for ingame "producers" to be willing to set back their coin/gold exchange and CS buying plans and save coins or bid the standard 100k and not more for each gold.

Of course, that "willing to set back" part is the difficult part.

Michaeas - Sanctuary

Wow, so many thoughtful replies. Where were you guys and gals when I was trying to pass this course?!?!?!

One of the things I have always liked about this MMORPG is the community.


So, from what I read I have three options:

1. Sell gold at the asking price to help take out some excess coin from circulation

2. Not buying any gold to kill the demand and make those in supply rethink their prices

3. Only buying at "normal" market prices, but that would take me and others in a determined effort of solidarity


If I missed or misread anything, please flag me down and let me know. Otherwise...


I will see what I can do.

Thanks.

Kingpiccolo - Heavens Tear

Well unless you have a stupidly high stock of gold you can't really influence the market through unloading your gold at 100k. What you can do however with a smaller amount of gold is to slowly drag down the market price by putting in selling offers of 2-3k lower than lowest sell offer, this will still take a substantial amount but not as much as having to flood the market with cheap gold.

Economics is a very inprecise science, at this point you can try to influence consumer confidence but chances are there are people in the server who are too rich to care and will thwart any efforts you make to re-adjust the economy.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

There is an alternative, although it'll be difficult to implement. You need to find people who aren't shy about paying $$$ for Zen, but are also principled and don't want to support exploiters by selling them their gold. Like the OP.

You put together a group of "trusted" members - people whom you know are equally principled, didn't exploit, and won't exploit. Then you bypass the Auctioneer entirely and trade gold/coin within you group.

The group is highly unlikely to get enough members to affect the economy at large. But within the group you'd be insulated from the inflation in the cost of gold due to the bug. You could even set up an eBay-like web site where group members would post their gold/items for sale, and others would bid on them. The seller and winner would then meet in-game and conduct the transaction. (In the case of gold, the seller would have to buy the item the winner wanted from the cash shop.)

The hard part is going to be finding principled gold sellers willing to get less for their gold than the market rate, and preventing an exploiter from slipping in and taking advantage of the lower price of gold the group makes available.

OMGLAZERZ - Heavens Tear

The market is still trying to stabilize itself from the buying/selling frenzy.

Give it time. It's not like several billion coins weren't removed from the game by PWE.

Ence - Lost City

I find it somehow odd that Lost City is heading the opposite direction as far as money prices go compared to other servers. As mentioned in my previous post, I was worried to see how prices might be affected with the exploit, but today I saw that charm prices have dropped an average of 20k compared to what I was seeing last week.