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Thread: Fixing the Economy

  1. #1

    Fixing the Economy

    As many are no doubt aware, AO has suffered from its fair share of exploits over the years, be it profiting from tradeskilled items whose constituant parts could be purchased from shop terminals or acquiring free Funcom points to use in the store. This has resulted in an economy that has been flooded with credits (literally trillions were made from the tradeskill exploit over a period of 5 years). It has also left the wealth dsitribution skewed to a few veteran players.

    I feel this is a giant elephant in the room that is not being tackled. It has resulted in the following situation:

    • An economy that is punishing to new players (and this game really needs new players).

    • Credit rewards provided from quests/content feel unrewarding. They contribute so little towards actually being able to buy stuff.

    • Established players tend to just buy whatever it is they need without engaging in content making teams for PvE less prevelant.

    For those of you that follow Greg Street (the former lead developer of WoW), having meaningful rewards and real choices makes a game interesting and appearling to players. There's a lot of pseudo-science to game design and I'm not expecting the AO team to suddenly acquire the insight of Sid Meier, but I do think they are missing a trick by not taking steps to rebalance/correct the economy.

    Highly subjective bit... I personally feel taking measures to correct the economy prior to, or on release of, the gfx engine update will lead to a greater intake of new players.

    Some ideas that I would personally like to see in game to help achieve this:

    • More NODROP tags. Likely to be highly unpopular but it would incentivise PvE content a great deal and encourage more groups. An empty LFT is good for noone.

    • Introduce more credit sinks. The option to buy funcom store points with credits (much like Guild Wars 2 and a bunch of other games allow), Repair costs for armour, new social items for sale for creds etc.

    • Introduce credit rewards to daily missions to provide a consistent on-demand source of a small amount of credits. Important for a new player as they may not wish to spend hours camping inferno dynas / solo AI raids (or even have the gear / means to do so for that matter).

    • Reward the winners of a BS with a small amount of credits.

    • Introduce an entire new set of endgame gear superior to Combined armour to help reset the playfield a little. Make it NODROP. It's almost impossible for a new player to catch up on 8bil+ worth of gear to be able to compete in PvP content.
    Last edited by nat3s; Mar 5th, 2014 at 14:17:24.
    Defrag 220 Crat
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    Chipbutty 212 Fixer

  2. #2
    Superior Combined is a bad idea.

    They could make items of varius sorts that are easily recognizable that cost 1-2b + for all the people sitting on trillions of creds to buy, so we would instantly know who has "creds to spare".

    My guess is egpal has the excess credits though, as well as all the 300 combined sets that "appeared" from GMI, since they expanded their sales to armor too.

    Broken game.
    Quote Originally Posted by Vgman01 View Post
    With a kite team you generaly pay for your lvls. Imo this makes it ok..
    Quote Originally Posted by Vgman01 View Post
    Pocket teaming is fine to because (most of the time) players actualy step up and kill the hecklers.
    Quote Originally Posted by Hvyshadows View Post
    OST is actually a good thing. In many Ely heck teams where there is a pocket the rest of the team sits around and chats every once in awhile.

  3. #3
    Divide everyones credits by 10.

    But yeah, people have a ridiculous amount of credits to spare, someone bought a stat buffing ring I had on GMI for 140m credits. It cost 10m credits and 20 seconds to make.

    Also saw someone WTBing a 6 slot belt (any QL) and 6 QL 200 NCU mems for 50m!
    Last edited by reids; Mar 5th, 2014 at 15:08:49.
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  4. #4
    First, I would like to say that the notion that there are trillions and billions of credits floating around causing mass inflation etc etc is highly speculative. I wont deny that there is some sort of problem but how bad it truly is, no one really knows for sure without a concrete number and the devs probably dont even have that ability to see how many credits are floating around. One of the problems, that I believe is the cause for high prices, is supply and demand. The population of AO has drastically fallen over the years and the people that use to farm that stuff, no longer are around or no longer do so. The population has grown too accustomed with being able to buy anything and everything that they wanted to until it all got gobbled up. When those common, yet rare items do pop up, because there is no competition they are going to sell for a lot of credits.

    One of the problems is the ability to sell nodrop loot. Adding more nodrop tags to loot, in any form, is just going to get people to buy more loot rights. The game needs a serious overhaul in loot mechanics and raid mechanics.

    Hypothetically speaking, if credit rewards were added to the things listed (also higher credit amounts on RK mission rewards) then there would need to be a lot more credit sinks. The devs could create some new shop terminals that have some desirable items on there, like old school phats that a paid player wouldn't use except for social maybe. Or very rare twink items or even phats that dont drop anymore like ELLTS, could sell them for a ridiculous amount of credits.

    Also since AO is a game where being in a team allows people to level and kill quickly they should introduce a mercenary system that charges the player money to use the merc every so often and it should have higher tiers that can be unlocked which cost more money to have around. This alleviates the thought process that people need a pocket tank or to be dual/triple/quad logged to do anything and the merc itself should take up a spot in a team and cant be used in raids. The merc itself should be tough enough but not OPed and should level with the character. Also different forms, like a healing merc, damage merc, tanking merc, crowd control merc.

    The thing is, those people sitting on those billions of credits really have nothing new to buy so things need to be created that provide them with a credit sink.

  5. #5
    Bump for credit reset

  6. #6
    Limit the number of AI armor part you can wear. 3 part max will be a good start (option: beast sleeves, Greave of Malfeasance, Ofab, kergen)
    About twinking Fc should find a way to let us ekip 7 part that would buff skill for like 10 min then after that armor goes OE 50%.

    That would nerf Ar/def too
    Eilistrae 220/30/70 MA equip pic //Araushne 216/30 NT equip pic // Nhaundar 220/30 pic equip // Ahlysaaria 220/30 equip
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    Nhaundar 216/16 Trox enf <3 equip

    * http://forums.anarchy-online.com/sho...d.php?t=544974 <3 ty, how some ppl can be
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  7. #7
    When I started playing I had all the time in the world to grind nodrop stuff. Nowadays I barely get one hour of uninterrupted playtime so buying nodrop lootrights is the only way for me to progress. And that is fine with me, then I can tradeskill and farm stuff to sell without leaving a whole team hanging when a diaper needs to be changed. Selling nodrop lootright is one good way to transfer creds from those who have them to those who need them.

    This game could use credsinks though like ip reset points and other stuff like social junk.

    Cred reset is not fair. I for example did an experiment the other day and spent 100 creds buying 100 items from gmi and then shoofooding them for half a million. Whiners just have to come up with a better way to spend their time instead of whining and beeing jealous.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Metafizis View Post
    Superior Combined is a bad idea.

    They could make items of varius sorts that are easily recognizable that cost 1-2b + for all the people sitting on trillions of creds to buy, so we would instantly know who has "creds to spare".

    My guess is egpal has the excess credits though, as well as all the 300 combined sets that "appeared" from GMI, since they expanded their sales to armor too.

    Broken game.
    This is truth. People had literal bags of duped combined armor, igocs, etc. I expect someone will sell their bags of igocs to egpal soon enough.

  9. #9
    armors/weps are now "bind on character" only low & common ql are "bind when equipped"

    /runs and hide ^_=
    "Don't think...feel, it's like a finger pointing towards the moon"

  10. #10
    This problem will never be solved it's existed for a long time just have to learn to deal with it
    Lutze - 220/30 Martial Artist

  11. #11
    It all sttarted when artyomis was monopolizing everything to begin with, then credsellers were introduced and then n*tw*t candle trying to increase prices by being a greedy lowlife t*rd (sorry for overstepping boundaries

    There's good ideas and there's bad ideas
    Bad is definately bringing in new gear that would be superior to the alien armor, thats just plain bad idea
    maximizing the amount of alien armor pieces youc an wear, also bad idea
    Making more items nodrop again would certainly improve the social gameplay and teamforming to actually do stuff but it also might increase the chance of selling lootrights, perhaps the only way to fix that part would be to lock an instance, unable for outsiders to enter, however they'll find ways to surpass that
    I'm only giving my view on this, I will not say I know better or know how to 'fix' this, I'm a player that (due to personal and private reasons) usually plays by himself but most that know me (my mains are Terrortist and froob main is Completed), know I do alot of good and free stuff for people, which also includes new folks, it may not fix the economy but I know for sure that I gave a couple of new players a significant boost into the AO world
    I've always managed to provide for myself, I see the flaws in thiis economy, but I still get around, I've never held back on sharing how I make my credits, cause if new people asked me 'how-to' I gave them pointers on how to earn creds, depending on their levels
    EIther way
    I'm hoping a reasonable fix would be put in place, a fix is needed (and not just economy) but it needs to be sensible
    Perhaps a thought for discussion...
    What if they preset a price for every single item, depending on droprate/availabilty, sure a difficult task but I'm sure provided a certain time to think it through, its not impossible to do

  12. #12
    The easiest way to fix the economy is not to participate in it.

    Period.

    End of story.

    There is nothing in game forcing anyone to buy from GMI.

    If you choose, you can outfit your entire toon/account/brigade with stuff that DROPS. DROPS do not involve any transfer of credits, except for the paltry sum needed to outfit your toons with stims/FM's/sitkits.

    The "Economy" is opt in. Not opt out. So anyone complaining about it should just stick to default and utilise the tried and true methods of equipping:

    1. get to the right level
    2. do quests/clicksaver your nanos
    3. equip armour that will allow you to complete content
    4. build teams to complete content faster
    5. learn who you like to play with and trust
    6. work hard, dedicate time to your pursuit
    7. achieve what setup you want after putting in the hard yards.

    That's what EVERY SINGLE person did before you, before the cred sploits, before the duping BP's, before the whatever other crap, people actually had to farm their first CC set. It took me about 8 months and AI 25-AI29.

  13. #13
    They should at the very least level out the prices on combined armors a bit by changing the TS order.

    Make 300 CC need
    240+ strong and 192 supple

    Because the reason why CC & CSS is so expensive, is because they are both the best armor version for melee / ranged toons, and both need 240+ supples. Making the demand for this ONE bot extremly high.
    220/30 doc [E]
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    158/21 trader [E]
    117/13 agent [E]
    56/6 trader [E]
    30/3 enforcer [E]


  14. #14
    I've said it in-game and been raged to high heavens for it but...

    Give froob accounts a limit of 100-200mill.

    Froobs have no need for more than that, and it wipes out trillions in 'bank' toons that caused this problem in the first place.

    If you can limit their char slots, you can limit their bank.

    Those so desperate to hold onto all those creds will upgrade the accounts, FC profits, we all see a rise in value of an actual credit, and perhaps one day items aimed at froobs and vanilla toons, might finally be affordable again to them.

    Finding teams and looting your gear is all well and good, until you wake up and realize everyone around you is buying their passage and their lootrights with all the credits stored on said froobs, and finding likeable, trustworthy people is now more of a challenge than it has ever been.

    Making it far less than 'opt-out' to an entire generation of leveling and progressing toons, being refused teams to get gear because 1, they don't have the gear they need (?!?) and 2, they aren't up to "your" standards of multi-billion credit equips.

    Not participating in the market stands to hurt far more than it helps.

  15. #15
    The reason why it's so difficult to find likeable, trustworthy people these days is because they are so busy gearing up their nine billionth alt, and know that if they stop to say hello or chat then it's time lost that could have been spent getting stuff done. That, and, everyone has 9 billion alts so you can never keep track of what the guy you used to like hanging out with is building these days. The only way to keep track is to be in the same org, or all sign in to teamspeak or whatever when you get online.

    Then you got other stuff adding to it, like account maturity/wealth:
    I don't need to stop to ask questions anymore.
    I don't need to stop to ask someone to borrow a buffing ring
    I don't need to wait for a healer in order to accomplish (X)

    At least part of the problem is a maturing playerbase. Another big part of the problem is dailies. Dailies pull people out of the teaming formula, which further isolates people who actually want to play.

    I had some good times last night, actually. I built a team for ado hecks and got a 180ish engi who had just gone paid (didn't have specs or any SL reflects yet), and a couple other fellas who were in various state of equip. We had a good time and I managed to tank nicely using tools at our disposal to make it work.

    Well the problem with so many people's perception on the economy is that you're often approaching it from the wrong angle.

    If you approach the economy from the side of: I have 8000 credits, but I want a piece of CC, sure, you're gunna have a bad time.

    But, if you are smart, you approach it from the other side:

    The present value of item X is 800 trillion credits: I'm going to farm one, sell for 750 trillion credits, and outfit every single toon on this account with a set of 300 CC in social.

    I mean, not to be retarded or anything, but ANYONE can participate in S42, if you farm your points, and win ACDC, guess what? You can sell LR on a invasion plan for 20B. Well, 20B is actually enough to get whatever you want for the next like 4 alts, even if they are expensive rolls.

    So ya, complain about the economy, but there's NOTHING stopping you from levelling up and using it to your advantage except brainz.

  16. #16
    McKnuckle has a point, except for two things which I feel are bigger issues.

    1) The Factional Elite Monopoly. "You have two options. Hellcom, if you can withstand the urge to punch everyone, Noraid, if you can withstand being given the bizznezz by self-proclaimed elites."

    2) The only other option to those Raidbots are friends, and if they ain't into TL7, then you're stuck with LFT/iRaid.


    I personally believe this should be fixed -first- and it should theoretically reduce the prices of raid items, which include some combined armour.
    I'm Batman.

  17. #17
    Here are my opinions:

    • I agree that willing and able people can slowly grind CC to close the gear gap but is that compelling gameplay that will keep a new player subsctribed? It could take 6 months+ of daily alien city raid grinding to do so and very few new players are going to be entrusted with city control to allow that to happen.

    • A credit reset in my mind is punishing on those that grinded credits legitimately (albeit having acquired credits that were created through exploits - the amount of creds in the economy would be far lower were it not for these exploits - hyper-inflation set in). I would prefer optional sinks to gradually reduce the number of credits avaialble. This should help reduce prices which, alongside quest rewards, should help rebalance things and feel much less punitive.

    • Grinding creds through alien sector raids, 12m, vortexx and miitar is the kind of content that I believe new players would prefer as it's engaging them in PvE team play but I'm not sure it helps fix the economy. I would prefer PvE content was rewarding for the gear it dropped rather than the creds it allowed you to make. Many new players may not have rolled a class that naturally fits in a 2/3 man farm team.
    Defrag 220 Crat
    Chuckle 220 Doctor
    Nates 220 Shade
    Magnite 219 Enf
    Chipbutty 212 Fixer

  18. #18
    1. I do not understand why FC was/is unable to track and ban exploiters and delete credits and duped items.
    2. Economy is still f..... up for 2 reasons:
    a. More credits are leaving RK (city upkeep, SL nanos, GMI commision, perk resets etc) than beeing legitimately created (shopfood, quest rewards)
    b. The amount of sploited credits is/was sooooo big that those credit sinks will never solve the problem. Making more credit sinks will only hit new players and old, honest players.

    3. The only sollution is some kind of credit wipe which have to be properly planned and executed.

    I would propose the following scenario:

    Few weeks before new engine is ready to be launched announce some global cataclysm (SL falling on RK, chain reaction of notum creating huge eruption of RK, whatever else you like....
    Scientists discover a way to transfer population to pararel world (or whatever storyline crap you imagine).

    Create special portal to pararel world that have the following restrictions:
    1. Every character have to step through this portal (paid and froob)
    2. Every character have to take with him his personal belongings, everything in bank will be deleted
    3. Because of nauture of this portal you can only take up to 2 of the same item (all excess will be deleted) so you can have 2 CC sleeve or 2 igocs but you will not pass with 20 RBS....
    4. Paid char can take through portal max 100m credits and froob 10m (anything more is deleted)

    Economy fixed
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  19. #19
    McKnuckle, You honestly don't think people selling any one item in a game, for 20x more than a single toon can hold, is a problem?

    You don't think that the single fact you know you NEED that much to get anywhere, is a problem?

    You people are so stuck in this "Must buy and sell everything" mode, that even a thread to "fix" the issue gets turned into...

    "Nice people won't talk to you anyways, all busy on alts and don't have time for helping you"

    "Have an alt on follow at all times so I no longer needs Buff x from him, or Aura x from her"

    "Farm XXXX bot, Buy LR with points, Sell LR, Profit"

    "Farm XXXX 24/7 camped mob as you get OD'd by toons from above, Profit"

    I'm not too sure we're playing the same game here...

    Maybe you get supple drops and mesh's from %100 of your kills... /shrug

    If anything your post does nothing but encourage people to join in an make the problem worse... That's pretty friggin sad to my eyes.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by westyfu View Post
    McKnuckle, You honestly don't think people selling any one item in a game, for 20x more than a single toon can hold, is a problem?

    You don't think that the single fact you know you NEED that much to get anywhere, is a problem?

    You people are so stuck in this "Must buy and sell everything" mode, that even a thread to "fix" the issue gets turned into...

    If anything your post does nothing but encourage people to join in an make the problem worse... That's pretty friggin sad to my eyes.
    Who says you need armor for trillions of creds to play the game? Who says you have to be twinked to complete content?

    If you're into twinking and short of cash, it takes effort. But that's what it's all about... effort.
    My first AI armor was made from months of farming city raids. Sure, my toon was a beast, but I did not need the AI armor to get groups for content.

    Why people are obsessed with having the best gear at any given time is beyond me. Getting things done in a group is far more enjoyable than twinking a toon to solo the content.
    [Blahm] [Solitus] [Fixer]

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