Economy, the downward spiral

In today's AO economy, the value of the credit is rapidly decreasing.

There are a two reasons for this:

a) Ease of monetary generation
b) Need or desire for rare and special items

The first is almost a non-issue. At lower levels, it really isn't easy to mass produce credits, but there are low quality items that can be farmed and sold on the open market. At higher levels, it is much easier to notice when one person can produce 50-100 million credits in a day if so inclined, without any interaction with the open market.

The second case is a bit more delicate. At the higher levels, there is little to do except camp for rare or special loot. The rarity of certain items, combined with the fact that most of this sort of loot is not of the nodrop creates an interesting problem. These items are often farmed and stockpiled... The credit value of these items tend to rise as more and more credits are generated, reflecting the devalued worth over the entire economy, until credits become worthless and the only form of trade that is accepted is in bartered items. We are beginning to see this now.

Is the AO economy broken? Some would say no, but then again when someone says "Blitz yourself 500mill and you are game... I for myself wanted 2 Ga4s for a friend and my fixer and got them" you can see the state of the economy.

Is there a way to mend the economy? I believe so, but it is something that cannot be achieved without a great amount of work. The main obstacle is that there are too many items which negatively impact the economy, so that 'mundane' items are essentially worthless. This is the thing that needs to be handled first.

Here are my suggestions:

a) Fix the UNIQUE item code to scan all layers of a player's inventory, including equipped and bank slots (as well as bags within a player's bank).

b) Make all special loot NODROP. This includes Shades of Lucubration, Heavily padded coats, ELLTSes (unless they drop again), etc. The combination of suggestions A and B will remove these items from the market, as well as make it easier for players to obtain them for themselves since they will not have to compete with players who want or or feel the need for duplicate items.

c) Since the public opinion of disc-only nanoformulas (Grid Armor and Nullity Sphere) is that they are uber, remove them from the drop tables and institute quests for these nanos in NODROP form. The questswill cost a large, yet reasonable amounts of money to take, and may need to be accomplished by a team or two. This will ensure that every one of those professions has the chance of gaining these items, but it will be hard.

d) Alter the shop inventories to sell all armor, weapons, medical supplies, implants and nanos (except quest or boss-only) up to quality level 200. Basic shops will sell up to quality level 50, Advanced shops up to 100 and Superior up to 200. This will serve as an additional money sink. Those who wish to mission for thier equipment will still have that option, and those who wish to sell on the shopping channel will have to compete with shop prices.

e) Alter team mission Boss and Chest loot tables to have a small chance of dropping select special loot (and, NODROP), or quality level 200+ items to help distribute some of these.

This was all that I could come up with at this particular time. There are certainly other things that can be done to help the ailing economy back to it's feet.

~Hoopspro

actually this is an interesting post, I agree with you fully on these points, about having more items as no drop to prevent large guilds from hoarding it all. However the only problem is that fc won't implement it, they know the moment these things take place they will lose a large amount of customers. The reason people play these games it to absorb all sorts of rare and interesting loot that they can hold over other people's heads. For example, you see a person decked out in a full set of dragon armor or grid armor mark 4, it's quite impressive and that person most likely likes to brag about it, it was an amazing feat to get. Now if just anyone could get such items, they wouldn't be interesting at all. remember things like Katara sunglasses, and rememebr when omni elite was hella rare? and nano armor? now you can get the sutff for next to nothing, no one even wears it hardly anymore except if they're going for a fashionable look. They'd rather camp sd for mk2 armor which is way better. So the reason whyan idea like this wouldn't work is people don't want to all have the same things. I agree with you though, the economy is in a bad way, credits after level 100 or so become worthless and a bartering system does come in instead..unfortunately I believe that in any mmorpg it will be like this. there will always be that uber gun or uber sword or uber armor that seperates the people who can get it from the people who can just wish for it, it's a shame because most casual gamers don't have the time to camp spawn spots for 8 and 9 hours straight. The problem needs to be addressed but i don't think there's sych an easy solution.

Checking backpacks and banks though is a really good idea, it would prevent any one character from hoarding unique items, or better yet there should be a check against that person't item database to see how many times a certain item has been in their inventory and restrict it after a certain number. In that fashion people could still have their unique items but at the same time it would allow other person's a fair chance too.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Shizara
However the only problem is that fc won't implement it, they know the moment these things take place they will lose a large amount of customers.

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Yes. Funcom will lose customers, but it will be those who bloat the market by trading in items with largely imaginary values.

Every person who wants a particular item, can still go and farm or camp the particular item, they just will not be able to trade it and use it to negatively impact the economy of the game. It is a rather small price to pay for a balance game and game economy in the long run.

Today, the economy is driven mosly by hard-to-get items. Cash is of little value when you are attempting to by something like Grid Armor. Remove these items from circulation and the economy will settle back down.

~Hoopspro

This was an excellent post Hoops. I completely agree with you on this.

Shizara, I think you misunderstood Hoops a little; he's not saying to make Dragon Armour, GA MKIV, etc. a very COMMON thing....just that it will be NODROP, UNIQUE, etc.

This will prevent people from hoarding items like this and selling them.

Instead, make them more difficult to get! Simple as that.

People can still brag that they have "so-and-so" item, but instead of bragging about how much credits they spent, it will be about how hard they worked to the get the actual item. :)

I hate making comparisons to other games, but EQ has a HUGE number of NODROP items, I think mainly for this reason alone.

Just my two cents.

I Think that one of the key elements that is overlooked here is the lack of money sinks.


When Ao first started there was a significant difficulty in producing large amounts of credits, simply because everyone was low level.

At that time one of the bigest money sinks was Yalms. It took up quite a bit of a players time to raise the money to get said item. Then we started to out level that stage, and money started pouring in from battlesuits, etc...

And then, you top the lack of a money sink off with the extreem amount of credits that were poured into the market through duping. This is what blew the economy out of proportion, the ability for a player to get billions of credits through a very simple process. This my friend is why money has been depreciated, because there are no money sinks.

I do think that Funcom relizes this though, why else would they "nerf" one of the fastests sources of income, Battlesuits, and fix/ban those that took advantage of the credit sploit.

We dont need to make things like GA, coats, etc that arent already nodrop, become nodrop... and we shouldnt add quests to get them either. That nullifies the work that others have put fourth to get them.

The value of an item is not imaginary, GA is worth alot because its rare, ELLTs are worth alot cause they are rare, etc... not because people desire them.

(I can compare this to RL, because its simple economic principle)
I desire to have a lamborghini sitting in my driveway, in fact one of every color, the manufacture doenst raise the price because I want one, they raise the price cause they only have a few to sell. Rarity determins price, when wen-wens were first ingame, they did absolutely nothing, but people paid alot to get one, because they were rare. The desire to have rare items is a natural part of any MMORPG, in fact I think thats one of the founding principles. Sure, everyone wants to have something, but that doesn't mean everyone should have it. It takes away from the meaning, and value of it.

Some of the sugestions that you make take away from the rariy of items, this doesnt compliment the fact that money has been deflated due to exploiting and fast generation. Its easy to make a few mill of a mission, or whatever, but the high prices that you see on the forums here are mearly a re-distrobution of the extreem amounts of credits in game. I have a feeloing that we will be seeing some Money sinks introduced in the near future, maybe with the booster, or one of the upcoming patches...

In responce to the thought of making 'quests' for items like grid armor, and nullity, that sort of defeats the purpose. If funcom wanted every fixer to have all the grid armors, and every NT to have the appropriate nullity for thier level, they would simply up the drop rate, therein increasing supply, and lowering the price.

Watching the AO exchange, it demonstrates very well, the simple fundamentles of economy. The peoblem isnt in the items, thier respective supply, etc... its the lack of viable money sinks, to dry up the masive credits that 'snuck' into the game...


Just my thoughts, nothing more, take them as you will.

Initial post is a horrible idea.

Unless Funcom plans on increasing my Crat and MP's damage output to equal that of all those KSing MA's who outdamage me on practically every boss spawn they better not make it so that every item of value is a NODROP.

Besides some of us actually want to play tradeskills and then make enough money to buy items off the people who go out and get items. Then, those people who in turn need our services to get stuff made.

Thats called Economy.

So you are going to penalise certain classes but not others?

Soldiers go quest for your gun!

Etc

Hasnt the Alvin quest shown that you get bottle necks??

Er why would anyone want to put a moneysink in here? If I recall money sank rapidly before that "Everythings loot" patch a while back. Some of the newer players don't remember paying 20 mil for a Q 200 nano cloak tho

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Originally posted by Psiraven
Initial post is a horrible idea.

Unless Funcom plans on increasing my Crat and MP's damage output to equal that of all those KSing MA's who outdamage me on practically every boss spawn they better not make it so that every item of value is a NODROP.

Besides some of us actually want to play tradeskills and then make enough money to buy items off the people who go out and get items. Then, those people who in turn need our services to get stuff made.

Thats called Economy.

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This post sums up my thoughts. If dragon armor were nodrop most of us wouldnt have it. The fact that gaily hood is nodrop hurts a lot of docs out there.

IMO the only items that should be NODROP are the ones you quest for like, pads of dedication or notum hood etc. Things that drop off a mob that are nodrop just don't make sense. HOW DID IT DROP FROM THE MOB IF IT IS NODROP??? Man just blows your mind doesnt it!

I think there are those who can kill and those who can make, and like psi said its a good tradeoff, the fact that the new armor etc is all nodrop is kind of a pain, means you have to be there to get it. What if i am the guy who dies? means body is gone by the time I get back so someone else has to loot it. Kinda sucky huh?

There was an interesting point brought up here, about tradeskills. there's an idea. I really liked how FC made it possible to produce carbonum, they shouldn't stop there however, there should be other types of player made armors, heck even give us armor with different looks and animations...maybe even have it where you can rob parts off dead cyborgs, I always liked how their armor looked, and then a player with the appropriate skill can fashion it into a full suit. Another thing that wouldn't hurt would be the ability to color armor to your liking ala daoc. All I'm saying is give the players a choice, if there can be player made armors with special modifiers on it this would expand the economy. You could still have your quest items that are just slightly better, for those who like doing quests but if players had the option of making more items that don't drop in the game it would be a a shining beacon on a deteriorating market.

Also, why can't mps have special tradeskills? why do we have to stare at the miscolored bottoms of demons all day? We're supposed to be mistresses and masters of the meta physical and the best we can do is a meatball and a pantless demon? There should be a tradeskill line for metas based on nano programming and maybe a touch of pharma tech.. where we can fight certain mobs and extract their dna to create new kinds of attack or heal pets (notice I left mez pet out, as they still don't work anyway) Not only would their looks be different, but their stats would as well. How about an attack pet that looks like a large mantis? let's say it could hit faster than a demon for less points but has a high crit rate on it's attack. or a heal pet that looks like a medusa that heals slower than belamorte but heals for way more at one time. If you want, you can even make these pets of sorts a part of an mp type quest...options..I think that's what it boils down to for any profession, options.

Before they ever implement a system where there is more NO-DROP items, they better create a loot system that is reliable and trustworthy. They also better have longer decay on a BOSS corpse. If they made most nice things NO-DROP, you would have a bunch of loot hungry ninja looters around every BOSS mob because they werent able to kill it themselves.

if ITEM_IS_NODROP == true
then ninjaLooting = ninjaLooting * 100.0

BTW, mps have the most functional and useful tradeskill in the game. Granted traders and nts can go just as high with the same buff, but how about fixing the entire system (broken things) and adding to the crap skills first.

More armor would be nice, but make sure the pieces actually drop without cosmic rays hitting the server. (more people have whole dragon suits than nt metaplast parts)

Use different skills too, a crat-oriented armor ought to use some psychology in building it for example. It would be neat if you took a partially finished part (using your class strong points) to an armor builder and then they finished it.

Having the pppes drop in disc form and not >50m credit rarity would be good too. Otherwise its "go see the title5+ tradeskill gimps for armor". Making the tools rare was a dumb idea. Especially rare with a fixed ql boss drop.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Jeremiah
So you are going to penalise certain classes but not others?

Soldiers go quest for your gun!

Etc

Hasnt the Alvin quest shown that you get bottle necks??

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Pay attention, man. You are losing focus.

Have you noticed that the professions that you feel my suggestions penalise, are the onces who already have it 100 times as bad?

Try to buy Grid Armor mk4 for a reasonable amount of money, let's say 250 million. You will never manage it unless you get it from a friend. Take everything you have that is worth anything and offer it up in trade and you will find that people only want certain items even when you are offering 900 million credits worth of items. I can tell you that this does happen from experience.

How can anyone tell me that this is working as intended or that there is nothing wrong with the idea that only a couple of professions should have to go through this?

~Hoopspro

Quote:

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Originally posted by Mercatura
if ITEM_IS_NODROP == true
then ninjaLooting = ninjaLooting * 100.0

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This is a reasonable assumption. There are other alternatives that I could come up with...

a) Make the items more rare. This defeats the whole purpose of my suggestions. The existing items will rise in imagined value and they wil continue to negatively effect the economy.

b) Make the existing items nodrop and remove these items from the drop tables. Add new, nerfed items like the Corroded Ring to the drop tables. Some of these items can be trasfered, but are not as good as the orriginals.

I'm not if favor of either of these, as a matter of fact, I'd be opposed to both of them.

My original suggestions are not perfect, but it is certainly fair to those who have bought these items and it's particularly suitable for those who have built a stockpile of these items.

~Hoops