Mature game economy

I agree with Beornin and Avari.

If anybody tries to argue, Karl Marx will pwn you:

Credits are by themselves have no value. They are means of exchange. And the basis of your exchange is labour. All value that you have in this game is through to your labour (ie. you playing the game).
Inflation by itself is not a problem, because you compensate the increasing let's say clump prices, by the higher price you sell the lootright for.
If you barter a set of CSS for a set of CC, it means that the effort of making these two sets is equal. It is completely irrelevant how much creds they go for, because the effort to obtain them is the same (and statistically it is indeed the same).

As long as you have players playing the game and not just a bunch of whiny kids wanting to buy lootrights instead while doing nothing else, you will have a working economy as well.

Instanced raids give access to all players to prosper and this is what differentiates this game from real life, or pre-2012 AO. The difference between rich and poor was MUCH greater back then.

Yup, this is why this game is beyond fixing.

I rest my case. People who don't actually care for improvement and comment just to see a post with their names on it are just not worth my time.

Btw, just fyi: The main purpose of the European Central Bank or national banks, worldwide ( i just happen to work in one for almost a decade ) is price stability and prevent market inflation.

But hey, since everyone is such a big economist here, i will leave you all to share expert opinions and brag about your exploited credits.

As a banker you should know that the ingame economy is not compareable to real life where the gain of employee s is mostly controlled by other people and also the amount of money in the system is controlled by said national banks, where a gaming economy like AO has a steady growth of cash and never had a strong enough burn to even that out. The real problem here is you not responding to good arguments by throwing out phrases, you think have any worth to make your statement stronger. What you should also consider as a GRACE buyer is that GRACE s are indeed no guaranteed feature of AO. Them being ingame relys on people willing to pay RL cash to have a little more play money. Once people stop doing that or the stream of new/returning people ceases, the prices on GRACE will skyrocket as the demand of people like you will stay but the supply will just vanish. The payment mode of AO as it stands right now is still a subscription I really cannot understand anyone relying on GRACE s demanding anything on this forum or of FC in that regard. I rarely post here but stubborn people like you just make me sad for a game I still love after all those years, seeing that people like you just deny facts and creating their own reality where they are the poor treated victims of a system and or other people.

disclaimer : sry for the bad english

regards Zungichan

I'm happy to see this thread is serving its purpose. Returning or new players who stumble upon it because they are doing some research after hearing the game economy isn't working, will in most cases understand this isn't the case. The very odd sentences, not even formed as arguments, are very nice examples of unsubstantiated claims that the economy is broken.

Thank you.

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Originally Posted by Zungichan

As a banker you should know that the ingame economy is not compareable to real life where the gain of employee s is mostly controlled by other people and also the amount of money in the system is controlled by said national banks, where a gaming economy like AO has a steady growth of cash and never had a strong enough burn to even that out. The real problem here is you not responding to good arguments by throwing out phrases, you think have any worth to make your statement stronger. What you should also consider as a GRACE buyer is that GRACE s are indeed no guaranteed feature of AO. Them being ingame relys on people willing to pay RL cash to have a little more play money. Once people stop doing that or the stream of new/returning people ceases, the prices on GRACE will skyrocket as the demand of people like you will stay but the supply will just vanish. The payment mode of AO as it stands right now is still a subscription I really cannot understand anyone relying on GRACE s demanding anything on this forum or of FC in that regard. I rarely post here but stubborn people like you just make me sad for a game I still love after all those years, seeing that people like you just deny facts and creating their own reality where they are the poor treated victims of a system and or other people.

disclaimer : sry for the bad english

regards Zungichan

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QFT!

bottom line is: you dont have to farm more than in 2008 to progress in the game. in fact you need to farm less, despite whatever the prices might suggest

to be fair, there are a few people who actually lose on the market developments:
- those who bought credz for IRL money
- those who accumulated some wealth back then, return to the game and expect to buy all the goodies instead of actually doing new content

But if you play the game, your character will progress towards your endgame goal, and not by an iota slower than before.

Just few more arguments:
Cashflow of credits in AO is certainly in negative values, if we count only legit ways. Credit sinks are huge (SL nanos, gmi fee, greedy shade, jobe clusters and city upkeep). But new credit sources are very limited. Don't start talks about farming pearls, at best you can get hundreds of millions per month for 24/7 farming. Did it personally and few my friends too, so I know the results.
For new player it is black/white decision. Either he play the game and be poor or just buying one Grace from Funcom net him 4b credits ingame, enough to get to 220 with almost top equip.
Worst situation is for players paying for theirs account(s) with Grace. To get enough credits they have to play with gmi and sell services/lootrights. In short second job instead having fun.

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Originally Posted by Amickson

For new player it is black/white decision. Either he play the game and be poor or just buying one Grace from Funcom net him 4b credits ingame, enough to get to 220 with almost top equip.

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You're forgetting the third, and most useful and appealing way to a new player: Play the game, sell stuff you get while playing or find your own way to make money ingame. Easy common ways like blitzing nanos, farming items, or more exotic niche ways.

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Originally Posted by Amickson

Just few more arguments:
Cashflow of credits in AO is certainly in negative values, if we count only legit ways. Credit sinks are huge (SL nanos, gmi fee, greedy shade, jobe clusters and city upkeep). But new credit sources are very limited. Don't start talks about farming pearls, at best you can get hundreds of millions per month for 24/7 farming. Did it personally and few my friends too, so I know the results.
For new player it is black/white decision. Either he play the game and be poor or just buying one Grace from Funcom net him 4b credits ingame, enough to get to 220 with almost top equip.
Worst situation is for players paying for theirs account(s) with Grace. To get enough credits they have to play with gmi and sell services/lootrights. In short second job instead having fun.

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Exactly!

Some ppl here pretend to defend AO economy and claim that everything is OK.
IT IS NOT OK.

All of us are using exploited credits.
Trading any item for credits or even buying Grace does not change the total number of credits within AO economy.
As Amisckson explained with a lot of credit sinks (some introduced not a long time ago) and not a single new legit way of "credit creation" we should see deflation and prices of everything going down.

The above facts + huge increase of prices only prove that there were a lot of credits pumped into AO economy by duplicating items (from what I ve heard stacks of QL300 stims were duped and sold to shop terminals)

I am not even sure if FC managed to stop it because over the years on many ocasions we all saw that AO had (and probably still has) some serious security holes.

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Originally Posted by Amickson

For new player it is black/white decision. Either he play the game and be poor or just buying one Grace from Funcom net him 4b credits ingame, enough to get to 220 with almost top equip.

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How about another alternative? The new player joins a noob-friendly org and plays the game.
Two of my IRL friends have returned as paid players, they quit around 2008 and they were broke back then as well and seemingly piss poor now: they had no items of value and no 220 characters. Together with a few of other friends we helped them level up to 220. During levelling they used cheap stuff, like cheap symbs, alien weapons etc, so they were not useless deadweight in medsuits during levelling. Now we do the occasional raids such as the DB ones, Beast, 12man etc. They get stuff and now are able to stand on their own feet. One of them is in Athen Paladins now and can participate in raids even if the others are offline or doing something else such as PVP.

Isn't the game about playing it? It is not about buying all the stuff, and then quit the week after since you have all the stuff. Am I missing something? :D

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Originally Posted by aramsunat

Am I missing something? :D

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Yes, you are missing any logical argumentation about AO economy of exploited credits, and your post is hardly related to any economical problems.
I ll comment on some parts of your post:

1. There are not a lot (if any) noob-fiendly orgs.
2. Two of your IRL FRIENDS !!! ......... you would not be even 1% that helpfull if those people were not your IRL friends.
3. You (together with even more friends) helped them to level to 220. How much of that "cheap stuff" did you give them or bought for them???
4. Now (which probably means at level 220) they are able to stand on their own feet, which mean that you have babysitted them up to level 220 and helped giving cheap items and/or credits.

Now imagine a genuine noob player with no IRL friends who play AO that decided to download AO and start playing it on his own.

Atm what bother me a bit it is all the neutnet lootright sellers (DB3/PoH mostly) using Wts X items. No price because it is an auction not a sell (yea WTA isn't as good as WTS).
Then they will ask you to do an offer. And use it to bump price up.
Here come the boring point. People know they are credz farmer to get Grace. If you think about it they need to sell before X time to get a Grace.
You can just force them to do FAIR price instead of making price skyrocketing.

It is a chain, people will increase their price too in order to offer inflated service.
Well and ofc those who play with GMI. 100M a VTE. please :X

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Originally Posted by hans76

Yes, you are missing any logical argumentation about AO economy of exploited credits, and your post is hardly related to any economical problems.
I ll comment on some parts of your post:

1. There are not a lot (if any) noob-fiendly orgs.
2. Two of your IRL FRIENDS !!! ......... you would not be even 1% that helpfull if those people were not your IRL friends.
3. You (together with even more friends) helped them to level to 220. How much of that "cheap stuff" did you give them or bought for them???
4. Now (which probably means at level 220) they are able to stand on their own feet, which mean that you have babysitted them up to level 220 and helped giving cheap items and/or credits.

Now imagine a genuine noob player with no IRL friends who play AO that decided to download AO and start playing it on his own.

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Im pretty sure the money has always been around, the demand is just higher now then it was some month ago. Sure there were exploits over the years but I doubt that kinda cash is even 0.1 % of all the cash that is around. Years of S10 with bountys made people way richer than any exploit could have. The only reason that makes sense to me that prices are rising, is that people want to buy GRACE s and there are not enough people buying them for RL cash to supply the demand. So they go up and all other prices along with them, because guess what those people still want to buy graces and need to sell their stuff for more to affort them. There been times when 300 CC was 1.6 b per piece on RK 1 and people were buying it and there been times where when it was like 200m ( population was really low and mostly Vet players who didnt need ****, also pre GRACE era ). Its just a natural behaviour of a market with lots of money lying around. Still the pure high number doesnt mean anything as, if you really want to buy something you can just farm something of equal value and sell it and that system works = working ingame economy. To your point 1., there are still a couple of active and helpful orgs around, seeing the way you spread your hatred here I doubt you ever make it in those. :)

regards Zungichan

Here's what I've seen:

a) I believe X

b) I know about RL X, you're wrong

c) a has a point

d) b has a point

a) Still believe X because some people believe it, too

b) [not really noticing a anymore] I see based on some of the posts [that agreed with b instead of a] that people accept my belief

Yay for confirmation bias.

I don't think you're ever going to get a consensus on this one.

The only thing we CAN agree on (I think) is that duped credits were a huge problem. Whether it is still occurring I'm not sure. But the damage was done.

The thing a lot of us agree on is ... nothing is going to significantly change unless there is a large influx of players to dilute the now-concentrated duped credits.

Greedy shade, IPR, etc ... are never going to suck up enough credits on to make a big difference in current prices. Those are one time events per toon and those same toons will be generating that much credit over their lifetime of pearls, shop food, rewards, etc. And most of the most expensive things are very optional.

If there was at least 1 player returning for every player who left, and the leaving players never gifted their banks on friends assuming a permaquit, Greedy/IPR/etc would make a big difference in the long run. But we know that overall the playerbase continues a slow shrink. Leaving what credits there are that much more concentrated.

GRACE doesn't net-drain credits, GRACE just spreads the credits out (and in general has brought more credits out of "hiding" as old big bank players return to play "free"). GRACE doesn't contribute credits, either.

Yeah, the GMI tax, especially on GRACE, is large. I hate GMI fees as a player but I see the need for the taxation. But they're still minor, optional, and avoidable.

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Originally Posted by Avari

I'll give you a free economics lesson: Inflation is not bad in itself. Inflation is bad for those with a saving. If you trade in goods then inflation has no effect on you. I'll try with an example:

2016: Blitz five nanos and sell for 4 mill á piece to buy a VTE at 20m
2017: Blitz five nanos and sell for 20 mill á piece to buy a VTE at 100m

The only place you have problems in the market is if someone exploits enough credits to completely corner the market as some people say is happening with GRACE. On everything else it's a simple question of supply and demand.

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I'll give YOU a free economics lesson since clearly you are no economist, Inflation IS bad in itself when it is caused by counterfeiting, which is exactly what is going on in the game. It is a direct devaluation of the game's currency. Especially in a game where the shops will only buy things at a set price, so traditional farming methods for an average player(blood plasma, filigree rings, shopfooding) become 100% obsolete. Before you could craft backpacks of filigree rings in foremans and sell them to trader shops for tens of millions, which would be substantial. Now that is just a drop in the bucket for players who need symbiants, dyna nanos, VTE's, etc...

However, the amount of credit sinks in this game is unreal. despite shops buying things at comparatively low prices, the updates to ICC and the shops in general have created larger credit sinks than ever before. So hopefully, if there are no more credit hacks, although the economy is incredibly inflated due to counterfeit credits the game economy should be slowly deflating (but not if people keep buying credits from sellers. That **** has to stop).

This is getting complicated ...

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Originally Posted by Blazeit420

I'll give YOU a free economics lesson since clearly you are no economist, Inflation IS bad in itself when it is caused by counterfeiting, which is exactly what is going on in the game. It is a direct devaluation of the game's currency. Especially in a game where the shops will only buy things at a set price, so traditional farming methods for an average player(blood plasma, filigree rings, shopfooding) become 100% obsolete. Before you could craft backpacks of filigree rings in foremans and sell them to trader shops for tens of millions, which would be substantial. Now that is just a drop in the bucket for players who need symbiants, dyna nanos, VTE's, etc...

However, the amount of credit sinks in this game is unreal. despite shops buying things at comparatively low prices, the updates to ICC and the shops in general have created larger credit sinks than ever before. So hopefully, if there are no more credit hacks, although the economy is incredibly inflated due to counterfeit credits the game economy should be slowly deflating (but not if people keep buying credits from sellers. That **** has to stop).

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I am sorry, but Avari is right, you are not. I understand that you apply valid IRL economic theory, but the game economy is quite different in many respects just to name a few:
1. IRL markets are very slow to react ie. your salary does not change proportionately in case there is a sudden bump of inflation. In AO economy you can instantaneously adjust your "income". ex: "higher prices? hookey, I increase the prices of my levelling service!" -> inflation comes to an equilibrium
2. IRL DIY is not an option usually. You have to specialize on a single area (your work), you get money for it that you can spend on goods. You can only indirectly and only very very slightly influence the price and supply of goods by making a "buy or not to buy" decision. For certain goods the prices are completely inelastic, you MUST buy them for the given price no matter what (eg food, utilities - the IRL cred sinks). In the game you can completely opt out of cred sinks, nothing compels you to buy anything and you can directly influence the supply by farming it for yourself. Too expensive? Bang! I will farm it. Fortunately, pretty much everything in this game is obtainable by raiding/farming (hasn't always been the case!).

Actually pre-ipande/icity/collector AO economy was much closer to the IRL economy where you were forced to WORK (farm credits or other ingame currency such as raidpoints) to get otherwise (almost) unobtainable items.
To be honest it was much much more difficult to be a noob back then even with the healthy population.

Sploited creds harm the economy, that is true, but so does/did blood plasma, pearls, ingots and other shopfood that create "wealth" out of thin air. Similarly does a returning rich player, who starts spending, even though his/her creds are 100% "legit". These creds do disturb the market, but as explained above, the AO markets are quick to react so the harmful effect is only felt in a very short timeframe. Max a month ingame time.

As a side note: the only whines I see are usually from people who sustain their accounts with GRACE keys and are distressed, that they cannot keep up with cred sploiters or otherwise very rich players. GRACE is a flawed concept from good intentions, but is probably the single most economy disrupting item of all.

Avari you are missing the key point!

How credits are created ingame?

If those billions or gazillions of credits were created in a legit way like (looting mobs, geting credits as quest rewards, selling foodshop items or pearls and rings to shop terminals) then everything you wrote would be corect.

However I estimate that more than 90% of credits floating within AO economy came from exploits and that fact alone ruined economy.
Selling lootrights or any items to other players does not create any new credits.
In fact if items are sold on GMI there is even a tax which takes out some credits from AO economy.

With so high and inflated prices there are less and less players who even bother looting any trash loot and selling it to shop terminals because it is not worth the time.
So if you take into account fact that there are lot more credit sinks than legit ways of credit creation you are acknowledging that huge majority of credits came from exploits ...

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Originally Posted by hans76

Avari you are missing the key point!

How credits are created ingame?

If those billions or gazillions of credits were created in a legit way like (looting mobs, geting credits as quest rewards, selling foodshop items or pearls and rings to shop terminals) then everything you wrote would be corect.

However I estimate that more than 90% of credits floating within AO economy came from exploits and that fact alone ruined economy.
Selling lootrights or any items to other players does not create any new credits.
In fact if items are sold on GMI there is even a tax which takes out some credits from AO economy.

With so high and inflated prices there are less and less players who even bother looting any trash loot and selling it to shop terminals because it is not worth the time.
So if you take into account fact that there are lot more credit sinks than legit ways of credit creation you are acknowledging that huge majority of credits came from exploits ...

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You are either not aware of, or ignoring, the many ways if making large amounts of creds that was available over the years. To mention one that added many many billions a day to the gameworld, ingots from hecklers. Everything sold today, at todays prices, would have been available to me from legit creds 12 years ago.

Yes, exploited credits would affect the economy a bit for a while, but your claim that 90% of current credits is not legit is just rediculous.

Many previously active veterans bring a lot of billions with them when they drop by for a few months, and poor them into the economy.

I am perfectly aware of all legit ways of making credits over the years.

I dont remember exact dates but more or less ignots were removed from hecklers about 10 years ago and bounties from S10 about 5 years ago.
You however are forgeting that number of heckler spots as well as their respawn rate were somehow limiting the maximum speed of credit generation and there was no limit to credits generated by exploits.

You are also forgeting about huge credit sinks like org cities upkeeps, all SL garden nanos (and especially recently Greedy Shade nanos) just to name a few.
Credits from Hecklers and S10 bounties are peanuts compared to credits that appeared from various exploits

I can live with present state of economy because over 13+ years that I ve been playing AO I have accumulated enough credits (or even what is more important with present inflation) and rare and valuable items.
What bothers me is that more and more players I know are quiting AO and one of the main reasons for their quiting is broken economy.
At the same time I can not believe that any genuine newbies that could come to AO (if AO is ever released on Steam) will probably quit within first 1 or 2 months.

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Originally Posted by hans76

What bothers me is that more and more players I know are quiting AO and one of the main reasons for their quiting is broken economy.

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No, they might quit because they perceive the economy as broken and they are generally dissatisfied with the game. That's something vastly different than an actual non-working game economy.

Not a single person here has said anything about what it specifically is they can't do in the game with the current economy.