Economics of RK

[____________Jeremiah]

OK, Im going to start this off with a few things.

1) I do know about economics IRL and I think it would be an improvement to all players if we can improve them ingame

2) Can we please keep this as a serious thread, no flaming etc etc etc

OK, people, lets be honest we have a problem in RK. We have a situation of hyper-inflation, let me explain.

Inflation - prices going up
Deflation - prices going down
Hyper-inflation - very rapid, very large increase in the price level

Real world examples

1922 Germany 5,000%
1985 Bolivia >10,000%
1989 Argentina 3,100%
1990 Peru 7,500%
1993 Brazil 2,100%
1993 Ukraine 5,000%

Now, fortunately there is NOT hyper-inflation accross the entire economy, just select and rare items. As we would expect rare items WILL and SHOULD cost more, however recently the prices have spiralled out of control and lead to a much more barter economy where rares are traded for rares.

This has a number of effects.

1) The haves will continue to have. The have nots will have a very hard time getting anywhere into these items.

2) Money is becoming worthless.

We need to work out a fix. What we need to do is remove money from the economy, to slow it down, to bring things back into line with a normal 'stable' level of inflation, that is normally accepted as 4% max in the real world, probably more like 10% ingame. However the removal of this money must give a level of 'economic satisfaction' to the players otherwis your just going to get lots of unhappy people.

Here are two ideas, one comes from a friend who says a fixer (I belive) suggested it a while ago, but I can't say I know the link.

a) Advance Face graft options. The ability to use a terminal to choose faces that are NOT avaliable at character creation. This would also need a change to the Agent nano so that they get another benefit from it, perhaps the ability to CHOOSE size values (not random as most agents want to be small)

b) Renting. Have a number of shops in the game that will hire out items. These are slightly better than the 'normal' ones in game (not much just slightly) but have a reasonable level of hire chrage. This keeps coming out of the account every game day, so being offline with one of these will hurt, in fact there should be a 'after i have spent so much return' option. If the rent cant be paid, then the item auto disappears.

c) Tweaking. Have some mobs that can, for a short period, change items. Make a machine gun cold damage, make a piece of armor better etc etc

These are just some ideas to start the ball rolling. Hope to hear from you soon

[XtroXtreme]

The reason for the inflation ingame is that players have to get stuff that are ql 126+ from other players. that means that no such items can drain the market from creds gained from items sold to booths. Since people of high lvl thenonly increase the amount of creds ingame with no drain it automaticaly causes infaltion to increase as they give it to low lvl alts and guild friends.

If we are to decrease the infation there must be a credit sink for high lvl characters. If this is cool looking yalmas (with just a nice color) or big appartments doesn´t matter, as long as we get huge credit sinks that players WANT to throw their credits into.

[Czarina]

how about some wandering NPC's placed throught out rubika that sell special items that can only be obtained from them. These items should not be much better than current items (i.e. they should be slightly better than primus but worse than MKI if they are armor). These NPC's can be located in hard to get areas (but within fair range to fixer grid points). This gives fixers an easier time. The items should be sold for wildly high prices... say 5-10 million each... One example is that there can be a person who wanders in Aegean or in Mort and sells an armor on the line of knight armor (this armor should be clan only) and shouldn't be significantly better than current armor, just good enough and unique enough for people to want it. Each NPC should have a variety of items in a variety of QL's... there shop table should work like on a table like normal shop terms, with a recycle and every QL eventually available over time. These items would eventually be the "new cool thing to use"... and could help drain a lot of money out if a lot of players got them.

[____________Jeremiah]

Spook, thats my point, we need to drain money out of the system.

[_____________Borrace]

if items were sold over lev 125 in UBER shops, then money would be taken out of the economy.

i like these ideas:

- vehicle upgrades

- cosmetic surgery

- rent for upscale apartments or parking garages

- weapon/armor tweaking (like enhancing tank armor, and maussers)

how about some fun stuff too?

- clown suits?

- stilts?

- roller skates?

military stuff:

- mercenaries? (you can hire pets)

[coldwarkid]

I particularly like the rented weapons idea, although people would only go for it if it was something they couldn't easily get hold of by other means (ie. it'd have to be boss loot, in effect). I know I'd personally shell out to rent an Original Electronicum, but I wouldn't bother for a Desert Reet, for example.

One other which is brought up fairly regularly is a buffing machine/vendor. I can understand why Funcom might be reluctant to offer this, since they prefer to see players interacting and trading buffs between themselves, but it would at least be popular. One way to go about this would be to sell the buffs as pills or blisters, then either hack them yourself, get a friend to do it for you or visit the "Shady Fixer" vendor lurking in that alleyway over there...

Cheers,

~R~

[BGumble]

Just some random ideas...

There are all sorts of things that could and probably should have been done.

Firstly a hard limit on the amount of creds any player can have (far lower than the current one) would flatten all prices, including rare items.

A state taxation scheme - we live in an advanced society but dont get taxed according to our income? daft. A sliding scale of taxation where a percentage is taken from each transaction based on the total creds you would have after the transaction completes. Non existant at low levels, minor at medium levels, heavy and hard at high levels.

Find things for guilds to spend money on - I favour advertising. Imagine how much big guilds would pay to be able to put up a nice clear graphic sign boasting how much better they are than their competition. You could rent signage space throughout RK, prime spots/small adds are cheap a big billboard by omni ent could cost many millions per month to rent. Smaller guilds could advertise for members for lesser amounts of money. Yes there are technical issues but if games like Quake and CS had spray logos years ago I'm sure something could be done. It would sure make RK feel more lived in too.

Gambling. Hooo yeah! Lets get some casino tables in the bigger clubs and you'd find far more people in the clubs.

Random items > QL125 available in special shops/terminals at high prices. You *can* buy the item you want if you are prepared to spend a lot of time searching and spend a *premium* price on it.

High cost searches of shop inventories planetwide. Special orders of items at an exceptional cost.

Different vehicles, different skins for vehicles. Custom skins for vehicles.

More clothes.

Name/Sex/Face changes at a *high* price.

Upgrades - spend the cash and have your weapon upgraded by n levels or your implant. Would cost a *lot* though.

Increased cost for rolling missions.

Transportation charges (grid/whompa)

The ability to name things after yourself or your guild (streets, buildings, shops etc).

[Jynne]

As long as you can clicksaver up almost any item of any QL in the game in a solo mission, there'd never be any reason to buy something from a shop terminal if it was really expensive. Just get a run buff and blitz the mission for an extra item and a cash reward.

Cash sinks would have to be items that must be paid for from a shop or vendor, but aren't so overwhelmingly good as to make missioning/sneaking/blitzing for items nonviable. I think, actually, that putting basic implants of QL 125-200 in shops would be a good cash sink for people with a lot of money. Making implants is enough of a pain in the butt without having to roll up the basics in missions.

[____________Jeremiah]

Firstly, thanks for taking this thread seriously people.

Few points.

1) Nothing should be taken away from classes in the game, I am personnally against machines that say do an essence.

2) A raising of prices in the game already would just cause MORE inflation, yes money would go out the system, but would hurt newer players, it has to be new ways of getting money out of the system, not the raising of the ingame prices.

3) Advertising - great idea.

4) Items that are already in the game should NOT be for hire IMHO, they shold be different to what is aleady there, encouraging people to hire not mission for them.

There are other points, but I'll not flood this, I want to see what others think.

[_____________Borrace]

no one likes the mercenary idea?

maybe you can 'hire' mercs to go attack a specific player of the opposite side when they enter a political zone! the higher the level of the other player, the more it would cost....

i also think we should be able to equip our vehicles with weapons.

[____________Jeremiah]

The merc idea is interesting but if was an 'attached' pet would it not take something away from the 3 pet classes?

As to sending in assassins, convince me, my gut is saying no.

Planes with weapons, never happen I guess, would give those with planes to big and advantage.

[Blackwing]

frankly i am lazy ...

i guess alot of players are.

if i were able to walk into a shop and just buy stuff then the economy would be alot more relaxed.

i guess the main reason people amass crazy amounts of cash is not because they really try hard to or are clever enterpreneurs but simply because they stop buying stuff at level 100 or so when they reach and surpass the level limit of stores.


face it, what do you spend cash on past 110?


ammo, nanocharges and treatment kits (unless you gather them in missions) and ... well alts.

a shop where you can buy the balancing boss loot
(electronicum, x3, div9, class nanos etc) would rock.
i think it is the most unfun thing done so far to camp bosses for random loot - no wait thats camping static mobs on 18 hour spawns with random loot hunting being second.
camping is an entirely different rant *slaphead*.

the idea about the "fluff" ... details/accessories you can customize your character with - i would really enjoy that.
being part of the faceless mass of dress wearers searching for individuality is hard i tell ya.

[Gearbox]

You mentioned the barter system that has arisen, where rare items are traded for rare items, creating a "have and have-not" sort of dynamic.

I think that one way of remedying that situation would be to make these rare high level items obtainable by average low level have-nots. Not to devalue them by flooding the market with them- but allowing them to drop from regular low level mobs occasionally. Keep it random. And rare.

A high level NT-only item might be useless to Joe Schmoe, the level 12 Adventurer- but a high level NT would pay major cash for it.

Let the low level players be a money sink, in other words.

[Dharien]

Need to look at this realistically, any ideas that you come up with that would actually require any sort of real programming just won't get done.

What you need to do is think of the current system of how the game works and come up with ideas there. Adding or removing items shouldn't be considered too time consuming.. putting in a rental system, although an interesting idea, would be intensive.


One of the best things to do, in my opinion, is this..

Stock (and WELL stocked, not those damn vehicle 1 item booths)those empty Shop-o-Fortune's with.. very high priced.. boss loot. Tack on a cost multiple of 8-12x. At that price most items would still be cheaper to buy from players and if you are looking for a specific QL it'll still be more convenient to try to buy from a player.

Sell all the nanos in the store! Same deal with the pricing.

Uniques should stay unique to whatever drops them, the spawn times suck, yeah.. but there is no other way to do it without making them too commonplace.

[XtroXtreme]

Originally posted by Jeremiah
Spook, thats my point, we need to drain money out of the system.

I know, it was a support post to a good idea.

[______________Cronos]

hehe...the point for me is i'm actually looking forward to not having a money sink, so for once i can have rich alts and freely give money to low levels .

Bluecat i'm all for your idea, but i must warn you that sometimes newbies wont know that they picked up something special and will just sell it to a shop. as an example: when i made 2nd character after about a couple days of playing i was level 10 or so. someone walked up to me and gave me a full omni med suit. i tried it on, then decided it didn't look as good as the armor i was wearing before so gave it to another low level. he must have been an alt because he was really thankful. the point is not to trust low levels to use that situation to their advantage.

A state taxation scheme - we live in an advanced society but dont get taxed according to our income? daft. A sliding scale of taxation where a percentage is taken from each transaction based on the total creds you would have after the transaction completes. Non existant at low levels, minor at medium levels, heavy and hard at high levels.

I dont know about you but i'm clan, and that would mean i'm not taxed....i think that would be a cheap way of a money sink. personally i'd rather my guild up the tax (that comes every two hours) a lot higher than present. i mean come on its so silly some people leave because of a 50 credit tax every 2 hours of playtime! ha i would have no problem with 1,000 credits.

heres an idea, people in guilds are taxed according to their level, or current money.
say lvl 200 pays : um...a lot
lvl 50 pays : not so much
lvl 1 pays : 1 leet's worth

[____________Jeremiah]

Dharien: Need to look at this realistically, any ideas that you come up with that would actually require any sort of real programming just won't get done.

I disagree. If Funcom felt it was a wortwhile thing then there is no reason for it not to be coded, some of it is already in the game just needs to brought together.

I do notice no comment from anyone from Funcom on the thread on any of the matter, so we don't even know if they are reading it, which is ashame.

[____________Jeremiah]

Couple of questions that have prung to mind...

Whats the situation on RK2?

Do we feel that RK1 really does need fixing or, can it continue its merry way?

[______________Menlas]

Hmm it seems that the future land control feature in the booster will allow to drain a lot of credits from Rubi-Ka.
Indeed, the guilds will have to pay ( rather high prices i suppose) to build defense towers that will give them protection and special advantages.
Hope that helps

[____________Jeremiah]

So non-guild characters or guilds that dont bother?