Money, gotten completely out of hand?

[Mysticknight]

my lvl 75 noncombat doc is probably the poorest doc in Omni
doesnt even have pharmatech raised so plasma is out

the reason money is out of hand is because after QL 125 you have to get your items from missions/loot
so you save up money to buy from other players and the money just keeps switching hands and never gets removed from the game
if they were to make a new store sorta like the ones that sells yalms aka 1 item at a time with items over 125 and make them expensive you might just might get a handle on the money

[Sohjiro]

Here's a quick easy fix to the money situation...

Make vendor machines give more money for an item that you find.

Lets face it, this game isn't fun without credits at low or high levels. I've blitzed missions, cursed chests that are unpickable, and tried to sell the most useless crap that I've found as loot. You know how hard it is to sell a QL 94 Bow or a QL 102 Implant that ups Adventuring, Vehicle Air, and Fire AC? Especially when you need the credits bad.

I can understand that funcom wants a player driven economy that forces interaction between players, but I thought this game was solo-able up to level 200? Hmm.

Why not just implement a SUPPLY and DEMAND system at vedor machines in cities? A perfect example of how this works is Ultima Online. (I haven't played it in a few years, so I don't know how accurate this example is).

When I played UO I played woodcarver. I'd go in and around town chopping as many trees as I could for wood to either carve into bows or sell to a vendor. The max amount you could sell to a vendor is in batches of 5. Well lets say I had 20 pieces of wood on me. I'd sell a batch of 5 (since that was the max) for 11 gold. I'd get 11 gold per batch until I sold my third batch of wood to the vendor. At that point I'd only get 10 Gold per batch. Why? Because he already had a few stacks of wood I sold him before (Supply goes UP), and therefore the wood I was selling to him now was worth less to him (Demand goes DOWN).

Now lets say another woodcarver walks in frustrated because he can't find any trees to chop (snicker). So he goes to the vendor and buys two batches of wood for 20 gold pieces per batch. The third batch he buys now costs 22 gold. Why? Because the demand has gone up and the Vendors supply has gone down.

I've listed two possible solutions for the economy problems in the game, the first is rather easy to implement and would help out newbies and solo players a LOT more. The second solution is a little more difficult to implement, BUT would solve the problem that trade skill professions are having and actually offer an alternative to running missions, hunting, and killing monsters nonstop for XP.

I apologize for any inconsistencies in my Ultima Online example above. Flames and suggestions are welcomed.

[________________Crin]

If you want a money sink, have maintenance and/or insurance cost associated with each item the player owns. The cost should be progressive and based on the QL of the item. The scale should be weighted so that the costs would hardly affect the lower levels where money is scarce, but hit the higher levels harder. If a player couldn’t pay it the bank would loan it to them and the cost would be taken out of any future earnings.

This solution also would help the over-equipping a little because even if a player could wear a high QL item, they couldn’t afford to keep it.

[Meetshield]

ok, just thought I would chime in here cause this is a big haves/have nots thing going on.

The main reason high level chars have tons of money is, THERE IS NOTHING TO BUY IN THE SHOPS OVER QL125. Thats it, nothing, so the money they make (which is considerable) just circulates between themselves.

Now, the only way it seems that that money makes it to lower level chars is ebay. Yes the dreaded scourge of online gaming is in fact providing a service in this respect, cause otherwise the money would stay at the top, and would never trickle down to the lower levels (and no that wasnt a reference to a horribly flawed repugnican econ system).

You want to add cash sinks to this game that will effect the over all economy? Add items to shops that go up to QL200, especially armor.

The fact is, money is tight til you get over lvl 50, then it becomes easier, and over 100 its a piece of cake to make boatloads of credits.

There are missions you can start running in the 40s that make tons of cash - battle suits for one. These sell at the shops for 80 to 90k and up. Im not gonna give any more hints cause half the fun is finding this stuff out for yourselves...

[____________Ejeckted]

i like the idea of houses.
costing insane amounts of money of course.

not just placeable anywhere ..
dont want to mess up the exisiting gameworld.

say invent 1 new zone that is truely enourmous
with a varied landscape and varied mob levels
and players can 'build' a house in this zone only.

you would have whole player-created cities popping up.

this should be a 0% zone too. we are settling a newly
terraformed landscape afterall .. no suppression gas
infastructure yet .. and much more wild wild west in concept.
only inside the houses themselves would be 'safe' ..
with portable gas devices installed.

i think 50mil would be a good starting cost,
with better houses going up in price from there.

say there is a small village of builders somewhere in this zone
where you can purchase a house from; setup like a store.

50mil for a log-cabin or wood-shack
75mil for a brick or stone house
150mil for a more modern looking steel structure
...
...
etc
right up to some 1,000,000,000 fortress structure.

i think there should be 2 or 3 designs/layouts for each
price break, with matching styled interiors, and floorspace
getting larger with more expensive homes.

obviously you cant carry around a house with you
so we'll call the icon you purchase a 'deed'.

place it on the landscape and the house pops up.
the house must be movable like other objects incase
1) you place it wrong
(ever tired putting furniture in an apatment? it's hard to set right)
2) you want to 'move' to wherever your friends / other players
are setting up thier homes .. so cities can develop and appear
more planed/organized.

however you may only own 1 property.
(to prevent some guy with a ton of duped credits
taking all the available space)

um.. yeah.
i think this would really give much more depth to the game.
and forever solve the money/inflation probelm.
you gonna give all the lowbies in your guild 5mil
to get his yalm if you could be saving towards a house
in player-built cities?

[____________Phonokol]

The Economy is just fine if you ask me. It works pretty much as in real life. Take the prices of decus coats for instance. Right after the tank armor nerf prices were insane. I sold two ql100ish coats for 6 millions and a friend of mine sold a ql200 primus for 50 million.
Now, when coats are very common and the shopping channel is floating with coats, prices are very low. My two ql100 coats would probably sell for 500k or less now.

Same thing with 6 slot belts. Before the current patch they were virtually non existant on the market and prices were sky high. Now, when they are spawning again, prices have dropped and you can be pretty sure that prices with drop rapidly the next few weeks.

Rare items that are in high demand are expensive, while common items are cheap. Isnt that the way its supposed to be!? I beleive its called capitalism :>

[Sohjiro]

Matica, the argument here is that the majority of the money in the game is handled by the higher level players. It doesn't trickle down because the players just pass credits between eachother trading for high level items. The money never goes back to shops because the highest QL items (typically armor and weapons) found in a store are QL 125.

Yes supply and demand is a working factor BETWEEN players. Not between player and vendor machine.

There are hardly any tradeskill professions out there that exclusively make things to level and earn money. I still see traders and engineers hunting with soldiers, enforcers, and agents. The fact is that all the items needed to create a weapon cost a lot more than what the weapon would sell for in the store. So no one will buy it. If the costs for parts were lower, and the actual Supply and Demand system for vendor machines I suggested above gets implemented I'm pretty sure that a full working tradeskill system for newbies and higher level characters alike will be more appealing than a 100% combat oriented character.

[_______________Axist]

The money system does *not* work as in real life Matica, in Rubi-Ka money just keep gets poored in world from missions with no ending. In real world there is a limited amount of money that is somewhat supposed to symbol the national productivity.

You can in a way say that this is the what happening in Rubi-Ka, since the missions and loot symbols the productivity, but its not, since theres no goverment that have a limited amount of money in circulation, and in addition the inflation doesnt affect the stores.

Therefor, FunCom must find a way to keep the inflation down, since there is no way the money goes back to the game from players using ql 126+ items/weapons/armor etc. (except tradeskill that u can find up to ql 200 like clusters) They must have moneysinks in high level, that is why this thread got sticky. FC asked for what we players would like to spend money on.

However, still will this not fix the balance. The fighting professions will still have a hughe avantage since the only way of money coming "into" the the game is by doing mission. I know it isnt easy to make new ways of making money in Rubi-Ka for FunCom, since they must figure out a security against exploiting, and in addition it should be implemented with reason in the roleplay. But i think they are working on it.

[____________Phonokol]

Well, i agree that we have a constant inflation, but this is only has an effect at levels where ql126+ items are used. My experience at level 100+ is that I actually spend LESS money now than i did at lower levels. This is because I get most of my stuff from mission rewards, chest loot and guildmates. When I need a rare item then im happy to pay a high price for it.

Items of ql 125 or less will allways be controlled by shop prices except for rare items, which are SUPPOSED to be expensive.

As for tradeskills, im all for it, but you can be pretty sure that it wont be cheap to have someone make you that ql200 uber custom gun you need. This however, might be better than the current mission camping lottery thats going on.

Phonokol lvl 112 soldier
Matica lvl 78 MA

[Yyerinfahr]

Is a QL60 disc ever supposed to sell for 10Million credits? I sure don't think so...

[Meetshield]

Blame that on the rarity of it. Thats Funcom's fault, and not anyone elses. If you dont want to see things that are that expensive, get on Funcom to increase the drop rate.

[______________Zpirit]

If you want to get rid some of your money problems try RK 2,

prices are ok, lag is ok ; ) and the zones are not as crowded...

just try it and se, you can still get good stuff for ok money from players..

Se ya there

Zalt

[MrGorak]

The MP attack pets look the same [as far as i can tell] from level 1-100, the highest level pets seem to be identical to the lowest...y? Shouldn't there be sum kind of variation between the two, like making the high level ones scarier sum how? maybe give them longer 'spines' or sum kind of halo, or demonic red eyes or sumthing...That is one thing I would like funcom to change soon...

[Sohjiro]

What do MP pets have anything to do with the ingame economy?

[MrGorak]

haha, nothing at all, except they cost alot. but maybe better looking pets would in turn, fix all the money problems in ao!

no, I'm stupid, nevermind...

[MatronVima]

Hes not especially wealthy, hes lvl50 thou, makes his money
from bloodplasm. As a matter of fact he have .5m creds in
pocket as we speak. He have made very good money from
the bloodplasm, so that is ok. Its boring work converting thou.

Hes a combat medic, slowly converting to only medic.

As for asking team for donations - ehrm.... I teamed once
and there was this soldier there nagging ME for money.

I no longer team if not promised to have all the monsterparts
collected.

But ehrm all this is beside what I wantet to say, namely

pets for docs.

I love the idea, and by all means make them be doggies,
and only have /pet follow and /pet guard command. Heck
no commands only summon a guard doggie.

Way cool to have a mechdoggie following you around.

[Karma]

Well I play a level 50 crat. And as I see it nano users are those who sends most of the money back into the "void" in the form of nano recharges :-)


But most of the money and special equipment made from hunting and missions stay in game. And with a large increase of credits in the game the prices of "rare" items and "loot only" nanos goes up. The solution to this is to reduce the amount of money in game.....

The only way to do that is to provide services that players are willing to spend money on.

And now to something completely different the ideas :-)


Implement a upgrade vendor where you can upgrade your weapons and armor with no trade skill requirements but with a risk of failure depending on QL. If it fails you can always try again

To upgrade a weapon from QL10 to QL11 should be fairly cheap with 99% probability of success where as upgrading a weapon from QL100 to QL101 should be expensive with a lower rate 50% of success. (Characters with trade skill should have the same ability with items bought from a store)


You should be able to hire NPC mercenaries or bodyguards price depending on level

Unique NODROP items and general nanos found in stores at very rare occasions, these should expensive!!

Bring back the pills of experience from beta 3. (they were depending on level to use and locked the use of another for 24 real-time I think. Sell them in shops at a price of 10 cred a XP or more.

Make training facilities where you can hire a trainer and get training in skills and abilities (not beyond the maximum for the level) at the price of 100 cred a IP.

just some ideas

[______________Mrkane]

Hmmm

I can't say that I agree that the Doc's are nerfed. They just have a specific roele (and some problems :-)\

I'm running a doc, Dockane, and I have of course adjusted to that role. That implies that I almost always work in a team. I'm ALWAYS assisting my clan mates when they need assistance. In return they tank for me in missions and in XP hunting.

Gathering monster parts makes me a fair amount of cash. I'm not rich and I'm not poor.

Regarding aggro. Yes doc's aggro a bit. Esecialy if you are using team heals during combat. That is no problem to come by if your teammates are equiped with either aggro enhancers or nanos doing the same stuff.

THere is one bug that realy anoys me and that is the making of emergency tretment kits. You spend a hole lot of cash and effor to get a godd kit, but it's only one instance of it , not 50 as in the normal tretment kits. That makes it impossible to use for as a buissiness concept. FUNCOM plese fix that!!

I like the idea of a GUARD pet , realy nice! But I do not like the idea of making the Doc's a soloing class. Doc's should be team healers.

I would like to suggest another idea, and that is a special Kodiac and a special Yalmaha for Doc's. Basically I want an Ambulance :-) Just for the fun of it and to show off that I'm a healer not a killer!

Dockane

[xbmspec]

"Removing implant machines i think could be a good thing, except on low levels (they could keep backyard implant machine for lvl 5 and lower, like the auto xp save and newbie channel) Ppl have to find Nano Techs for assembling implants, why not let ppl find Doc to do a surgery on them? And let Doc gain XP on it as well. "

I love this idea! Ive reached my title change, im an offical "Surgeon", big whoopdie doo.

Its true. Do you realize that most players do *not* donate to any doctors out there? And frankly care more about them selves and their credits for their next brand spanking new weapon.

If you do get the Superior Treatment (80+ Treatment) Thats basicly all that sells for a decent price. But face it. 1 outa a total of 6 members donate a worth while donation. Heck lv90 still getting a laughable 5k from people. Har de har har!

[____________Ejeckted]

Originally posted by [CrispyChicken]
"Removing implant machines i think could be a good thing, except on low levels (they could keep backyard implant machine for lvl 5 and lower, like the auto xp save and newbie channel) Ppl have to find Nano Techs for assembling implants, why not let ppl find Doc to do a surgery on them? And let Doc gain XP on it as well. "

the problem with the above situation would be that some
players may be changing out implants fairy frequently;
and having to find and pay a doc each time would get
annoying and expensive fast.

take the example of a trader or engineer who has one
set of implants for tradeskills and one set for combat.
i wouldnt want to have to find a doc everytime i need
to assemble some implants for someone.