Is the player economy headed for trouble?

[__________starknaked]

Ok, I am not high level so I could be wrong about this, but it seems to me that the player economy could get more and more messed up as time goes on.

High level players have nothing to buy in stores any more for the most part, and they keep gaining more and more money from doing missions and selling loot. The amount of money being held by high level players will keep going up endlessly, resulting in massive inflation of the cost of items that players sell to one another.

Also, they'll send some of their money downwards to lower level friends or secondary characters, resulting in the same thing happening at lower levels as well.

Is there anything to stop this from happening? And, will it be as big of a problem as it seems that it will be?

[____________Slivicon]

Personally I don't feel that the game has been out long enough for enough of the player base to start agreeing on standard prices for items.

As time goes on, however, I predict (as has happened in other mmorpg's) that more and more people will start to collectively agree on rough prices for items. As time progresses even further, prices will become more and more specific until you can basically tell a player "this is how much your ql100 tank is worth and that's what I'll pay".

The process is very long I believe. Also, since drastic game changes are still being made, this sets back the progression of the economy even further. For example, since the tank nano delta nerf, tank just got a whole lot cheaper and coats just got a whole lot more expensive. This was due to the sudden drastic change in supply and demand.

In another mmorpg I played, that had been out for ~3 years, the economy was different on each server (world), but within each server the economy had progressed so far that many items had very specific values. There was very little negotiating or variance in the prices of items. Instead, someone would put an item up for sale and the majority would already know its value. In fact, sellers were flamed for charging the wrong price and buyers were flamed for offering the wrong price.

I hope this progression will occur in AO. At the beginning of the last mmorpg I played, there were wild differences in values for items too. People paid incredibly cheap prices sometimes and obscenely expensive prices other times. It took a long time for things to start settling...

Keep in mind too, that as time goes on, items become more and more common, which eventually results in their value going further and further down. Remember when elite was uber rare?

[________________Txxx]

Stark.. Your view on the inflation makes some sense, but it may not be too bad. At least with the more common items. For the most part, the "unnaturally rich" players will only need one of whatever item it is. So they will suck up those items at that price. But as long as there are still quantities of those items for sale, they will have to be purchased by poorer players who can only pay a lower price. Sellers just have to be willing to lower their prices when an item doesn't sell at the higher price. Well, at least I hope it will work like that :-)

Slivikon, interesting observations about how things have developed in other games. So hard to argue that it won't happen here. I view it as a bit unfortunate though. I like earning cash off my knowledge. I spend time determining what stores buy and sell items for and base my prices on that. If a player doesn't want to spend the time, then they may ask for less than the item is worth or more and lose a sale. This kind of knowledge is just like the IP you get when you level, a higher level lets you earn more cash in missions and from mobs (or for that matter get your coveted title in PvP, if you want to talk about adverse effects on other players). This knowledge lets you earn more cash as you gain more of it s well, it's just not as formal.