A discussion on unborking the in-game economy
The in-game economy seems to be broken to me; do other players share this sentiment?
If you do agree, please respond with your thoughts on:
While suggestions may have a negative effect on your preferred playstyle,
please limit the scope of your feedback to the effect itself without attacking a commenter.
If you do agree, please respond with your thoughts on:
- What game mechanism contributes to this?
- What suggestions do you have for how to change the mechanism?
While suggestions may have a negative effect on your preferred playstyle,
please limit the scope of your feedback to the effect itself without attacking a commenter.
- Is the in-game economy broken?24 votes
- Yes, it is broken.75.00%
- No, it is fine as it is.25.00%
- Should steps be taken in an effort to fix the in-game economy?24 votes
- Yes, steps should be taken.66.67%
- No changes should be attempted.33.33%
Comments
Broken mechanism: vendor sell-cap of 175 million gold.
Suggested fix: vendor sell-cap of 1 platinum, as several items are now unsellable on vendors at current market prices.
for people who wanted to go to a more populated shard? they should have implemented a system where you can transfer all characters on an account (all slots, bank boxes, and stables) only once every 366 days …
allowing players to transfer between all shards in less than a month’s time is what has screwed everything up … very few games allow people to switch servers … most games require you to start from scratch if you begin on a new server …
that said … changing anything about it now would be disastrous for what is left of UO currently, so nothing can really be changed from a development standpoint.
"Insanity is a naturally occurring mutation; humanity has just managed to perfect it." -- JMK [[me]]
economy is a very broad word,
The OP is very vague”
In reality, players go buy things on Atlantic and bring them back to their home shard and sell for a profit. Which we can not do with shard bound items.
Right now a 30 charge Horned runic is 3M on LS. 90s are 7 to 8M on Atlantic. So you pay more on your home shard because there is not enough supply.
This has been going on for years, I have made lots of gold to buy deco by buying pet scrolls on Atlantic and putting them on my Vendor at home.
I don't think Shard transfer screw up the economy, but as some player said it correctly, its because it is only available to one group with 14 year account.
Economy lesson will tell us increasing the supply will force prices to fall. Scarcity drives up the price. Open up cross shard trading for everyone and level the playing field.
I don't think stopping shard transfer can "save" economy as it reduces supply, but it will definitely increase the exodus of non-Atlantic population in the years to come.
So I vote not to stop shard transfer but make vendor buy a feature across all shards for every player regardless of age.
Did some of you ask for shard consolidation?
No way, I want my castle in its prime location.
Buy yes, pls open up trading cross shard instead so every has access to same Supply as if we are on the "same" shard.
Or make a trading shard where all travel to that market place to buy and sell stuff with no limit of account age.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
I built my first two characters on Atlantic, moved to Legends and never looked back. Small shards can survive and grow to the point where the economy problems many vent about aren't that big a deal. But you have to grow them deliberately. The players do that in this game.
On this we agree. And I use my shard shields a lot but would not complain if they were decorative only or only spit out 1 token per year.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
Never be afraid to challenge the status quo
Inflation is rampant.
There is inequal access to the market.
Transaction types are unequally incentivized.
Transaction records are obfuscated.
id say overall UO economy is better than ever, easier to make gold. easier to spend gold. healthy inflation (sign of strong economic growth, strong consumer base)
you can gear a character for comparatively much cheaper than 15 years ago, with a ton more options.
idoc items being deleted also caused higher prices, but also in my mind a good thing. avoids a saturated market, any 1 year old account can sell a reward for 175m now. vet rewards should be valuable.
store items contribute to inflation, but also allow those who dont want to spend time in game to essentially buy gold (sell UO store item for gold)
powerscrolls and the pet revamp raised scroll prices, meaning people want those scrolls, making doing spawns worthwhile again.
Looks pretty good all around. no, its never going to be fully in game because of UO store / rmt / game time codes. but if you take all those into consideration seems healthier than ever to me.
"Insanity is a naturally occurring mutation; humanity has just managed to perfect it." -- JMK [[me]]
So, we are down to the usual, fix something because cheaters are doing X and the fix always hurts legit players more.
Smoot said: This doesn't cause inflation. It just moves gold around.
it was already explained if you have them the prices of things will increase,
and you all wanted them anyway, now complain about inflation???
And people sometimes wonder why devs don’t listen to what players ask for..”
I don’t think xsharding is an issue. Yes things move around. If you have it too low priced and ATL is more someone will buy and xshard it. - raise your price.
* Sell artifacts. Crimson cintures. Tangles. Etc. price appropriate. By buying from EA store the gold is deleted. People acquiring these can always undercut on price but many will sell removing gold.
A surge in demand for products and services can cause inflation as consumers are willing to pay more for the product. Some companies reap the rewards of inflation if they can charge more for their products as a result of the high demand for their goods.
Whatever you call it if you don't like the term inflation, buying up all the high-demand, low-supply items to monopolise the market and push up the prices; at the end of the day, has the same effect as Inflation because consumers pay more.
ESRB warning: Some Blood. LOTS of Alcohol. Some Violence. LOTS of Bugs
"Insanity is a naturally occurring mutation; humanity has just managed to perfect it." -- JMK [[me]]
While it is unreasonable to gather and dig a sufficient number of Treasure Chests to put together the same skill 110s needed to bind into a 120 PS (120 x 110s which it means well a lot more then 120 Treasure Chests to have to dig up and, thus, of Treasure Maps to find....), if Treasure Maps had 115s inside, then it would still require time, both to gather the number of Treasure Maps and to dig them up but, at least, it would be more reasonable and it would help reduce the high prices that some Powerscrolls have.
Until players will be able to make real money from selling in-game stuff, of course that there might be players interested in power gaming to get items and gold to then sell for real money....
The solution, to my opinion, to solve this, could be making items more readily available in the game.
If players could get items just by playing the game, without having to spend a ridicolous amount of their time in the process, why would they want then to waste their hard earned real money when they can just get those items playing the game ?
It is when items have a hard chance to be gotten in the game, and require a whole lot of their time to get them, that some players might start thinking using real money to get those items (and thus save up their real life time....), rather then have to spend ridicolous amoung of time in the game in order to get them.....
At least, that is how I see it.
The more there is of an item the less value it has.
Example the more money a government prints the less value each dollar has (or yen, pound so on).
In game that means every time a player kills a rat more "gold" is produced with the direct effect of each existing "gold coin" being worth just a little bit less. Increasing the supply of the things people wish to buy with an ever expanding supply of "gold" helps but will never stop inflation.
I seem to remember a story about a economics student using UO as a basis for his/her doctorate thesis on run away inflation.
As I see it there is no quick or easy solution that does not fundamentally change the game. Gold sinks would work but they would have to closely balance the total gold introduced to the game with out destroying the in game economy.
If you can come up with a simple solution there are a couple hundred world leaders who would like to have a chat with you.
P.S. God yes to 115 PS in treasure chest!!!!!!
compared to world economies. There is nothing but a monetary base money supply and it completely managed by the game. Imagine you could go out and get $$ off a tree. That’s killing monsters for gold. Gold out is things that are bought that removes gold - namely vendor fees, npc vendors, and insurance. Even money on houses can be got back when your drop it.
gold in banks and on vendors each day. That’s the net increase from day to day. With an expanding player base that increase is spread out muting the effect. With Uo where population is constant it’s just an amplified inflation trigger.
stabilize. It’s literally that simple. I posted gold sink ideas above. Some are big ones. IDOC auctions even for just a period of time would work wonders.