Showing Posts For Kian.3769:

Why The Economy is Borked

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

I saw it mentioned that the TP is world wide and not just server? Is that true?

That is an interesting setup. On the positive it helps lower population servers from having supply issues. On the negative it can allow just a few big servers to set the costs of goods which can adversely affect smaller server economies.

No, given how everything works, it can’t affect smaller servers. Given the way the game is set up, as far as the economics side is concerned we’re all in a single huge server.

Why The Economy is Borked

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

Let me run through a few issues I see in your post.

The original price of the mats was not set by the people leveling crafting professions. With a set of players whose game is to buy low and sell high, who neither supply the market with mats nor take them away for crafting, the price climbs as high as the people leveling those professions can pay. They have no way to influence the price except by not buying, and that means not leveling your profession because farming for yourself is a waste of time. I tried, it’s simply not viable as you level up.

But you are missing the important bit in what you said. He isn’t dominating the market because of some unfair advantage or some flaw in the system. He is dominating it because he can somehow produce 4k claws on a whim.

Now, if he has an army of bots farming and giving him the stock, that’s bad. If he used an exploit to have infinite monies, spent a month buying claws and now decided to wreak havoc in your market, that’s bad.

But if this guy is getting his claws legitimately, and somehow managed to get his guild to all farm these mats just to mess with you, then what wrong with that? Do you suppose a fair game is one where you can beat an unknown number of people working together to stomp you?

At worst, the guy is squandering his resources by pushing the price of something he is supplying down. If however he has the resources to keep the supply in line with the demand, then you’ll have to learn to live in a world where the price of claws is 70c, not 1s20c. That’s just basic economics.

If you are so sure that he is doing it for some nefarious purpose, buy up all his claws then put them at the proper price. He’ll eventually break and you can enjoy the profits.

ECONOMY FIX: Get rid of random equipment drops

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

I would actually much rather have them do the reverse – increase the drops of gear and materials in such abundance that you never have to grind out anything to obtain your gear. All players can easily be 100% self-sufficient.

Why stop there? They could just automatically level your equipment as you level, make sure you’re always wearing a full set of exotics and legendary weapons. They could even make you spawn at level 80 and you wouldn’t even need to farm anything.

It’s not being self-sufficient if everything you want is handed to you. I’m not sure self-sufficiency is even a goal in a multi-player game.

ECONOMY FIX: Get rid of random equipment drops

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

Because I don’t want to spend my hard earned gold on gear I will out-level in an hour. I’d rather “hunt” for my gear, or find drops and replace my old equipment with the new drops. That way I don’t have to blow my money on items that will be obsolete every time I level up. Plus, if the drop is worse than what I currently have equipped, I can vendor it or sell it on the TP and earn money without having to farm my life away.

You’re either getting very different drop rates from me, or you are wearing equipment that you out-leveled anyway. I doubt you are managing to find full sets, plus matching runes and sigils, every five levels. So it’s not reasonable to compare the cost of a full set with finding useful drops now and again as you level.

Changing one piece of armor per level, however, should be easily achievable by even casual players. With the benefit that you can ensure you’re always wearing a matching set, or at least find the bonuses you want.

Mobs would still be dropping loot, just not equipment. You shouldn’t need to farm beyond how you regularly play the game, and it wouldn’t require intricate knowledge of the market. Just being able to use the interface to find equipment that is of use to you.

I wouldn’t be concerned with lack of options either. If you check right now, you can probably find every craftable bit of equipment, going for base price + listing cost. Due to how the crafting mechanic works, the best way to level the profession is to make a wide variety of objects, not make several copies of the same one. If you had people actually interested in buying them, there would be a lot more of the popular ones, but there would still be reason to produce the rarer ones.

Why The Economy is Borked

in Black Lion Trading Co

Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

Anyways similar recipe for items being manipulated would help the cause every now and then. and I know they have the charts that show suspiciously fast change in price of certain items. They CAN intervene!

What I don’t understand is why you think there’s a ‘right’ way to play the market and an ‘unfair’ way to play the market. And that keeping the price up is right and lowering the price is unfair.

It would seem like the guy who lowered the price of goods is actually helping all the people who are leveling crafting professions. Those are the people who give the items value in the first place. Without people leveling their crafts, the value of the mats would be zero. I hope you aren’t arguing that the price of the crafting materials is based on the price of the finished product, because crafted equipment simply doesn’t sell on the market.

ECONOMY FIX: Get rid of random equipment drops

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

Ruin the game for 90% of the players so the 5 or 10% of maket enthusiasts can be happy.
GOOD IDEA!!!

How does it ruin the game for 90% of the players? The change would simply mean that instead of comparing every drop to your current equipment, and swapping when you find something you like, you would press “O” and check the market for equipment that’s actually of use to you. It would actually help people keep their equipment up to date.

What exactly do random drops add to the game that you find lessened by removing them?

ECONOMY FIX: Get rid of random equipment drops

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

hmm… while interesting, this could lead to one problem, being it would be almost impossible to be self-sufficient unless you make multiple toons, or constantly pay to swap professions. for a character to fully equip himself with armor+all types of weapon he can use, you would need 3-4 crafts for 1 character alone (1 for armor and 2-3 for weapons, depending on profession). Add jewellery on top and we looking at 4-5 crafts to sustain one character alone. And then we not even touched food as well, or the fact that many crafts require the same base materials.

This does NOT mean I don’t support your suggestion, but would likely need some kind of adjustments to make it work properly.

Being self sufficient is kind of the problem. With everyone being self-sufficient because random drops give them everything they need, no one needs to buy anything. Without people buying stuff, an economy doesn’t work. People are currently only buying what they need to level the crafting professions, but these produce no useful output.

Anyway, you can have up to 5 characters. Make 3 alts that each train two professions. Need armor? Log to the armorsmith, make the armor, bank it, log to the char that needs it. A single character can’t do everything, but you still have access to every profession from your account.

ECONOMY FIX: Get rid of random equipment drops

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

I’ve seen a bunch of these posts, trying to ‘fix the economy’, and I figured I’d throw my hat into the ring, for what it’s worth. Honestly, I’d just like to hear from people why I’m wrong. This IS the Internet, right?

I’m a new player. Been testing crafts and fiddling a bit with the TP. Mostly selling my extra resources. I managed to find myself at level fifty-something with about 4 gold. I believe I have achieved some level of success at least.

I’m mostly a casual player, so I may be blind to certain things, but here’s what I’ve found: crafting professions exist solely to produce trash items in bulk until they are maxed out, at which point they provide high level characters with the equipment they need to make their builds, at least until they can farm specific items that fit them better.

The reason crafting professions serve no useful purpose is that you can find equipment that is just as good in random drops as you go through the game. And even if you don’t find a decent weapon drop in twenty levels, you can probably still go through the PvE content with little problem — I have.

Contrast with EvE, where all equipment is player made and you only find scraps in drops.

With no need to go to the TP to update your equipment, the only purpose of crafting materials is to gain crafting experience through discovery. This explains the counterintuitive situation where craft materials lose value the more they are refined. A plank in the TP costs less than an equivalent number of logs, because the opportunity to refine them is lost. Dowels lose value compared to the equivalent plank for the same reason. At the end of the chain is the finished product, which goes for vendor value. We only have an overabundance of supply because demand is stuck at zero. Random drops hold the entirety of the market.

My solution would be to leave the TP alone and get rid of random equipment drops. Make mobs only drop broken equipment (salvageable) and raw materials. Equipment drops are nonsensical from an in-character perspective (why was this bear holding a longbow?) and they destroy the other big mechanic that is all the crafts.

I’d love to hear from anyone thinking otherwise though, and to know what random equipment drops actually add to the game.

Gold Deflation and Vendor Prices

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Posted by: Kian.3769

Kian.3769

Isn’t EVE’s market a lot more complex though? As in, crafting seemed a pretty big deal, and then distances were also important. I haven’t actually played EVE much.

Yes, EVE’s market is localized (each zone has an independent market, and you have to travel there to put things up for sale or get your items), and there is no instant travel. r it was like that when I played some time back.

So there’s room for actual trade routes and such (which also allows for pirate ambushes,, yay). I would like to see something like that here, but the cry babies already complain that the instant teleports are too expensive. Just imagine all the QQ if you removed it entirely.