Subjectivity has nothing to do with supply and demand. You can spend half a million on a car and feel it was incredibly worth it, while the cars actual value is closer to 100k within the market that you bought it.
What are you even talking about? Subjectivity has quite a lot to do with supply and demand. If I personally like red things and hate blue things, my demand for red things will go up and demand for blue things will go down. Thatâs sort of basic logic.
Or to keep it in Boundless terms if I really donât like the aesthetic look of cloth torches but really like gem torches, my demand for gem torches will go up and my demand for cloth torches will go down.
Also as Iâm sure youâre aware, supply and demand are typically discussed as intersecting curves. There is indeed a point on a graph for a car where the demand for a car is 1,000,000 even if the âequilibriumâ is at 100k.
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So, to sum up and move on - what?
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To sum it up an move on we are creating a market on Berlyn with cheap goods 1-250 coin. We have glass for sale for 25 coin. So far with more stock being added depending on builders needs.
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thinking on it,
though i would like more coin to be had, the concept of dropping from animals doesnt really work for me.
sure creatures could have an affinity for shiny things so swallowing coins they find is possible⌠but if all creatures are to drop some or have the chance to drop some
A) there should be enough coin laying about for them to find and eat and as such there should be coin laying about for us to find (and swallow if thats your thing)
B) they would likely swallow other things that are shiny as well, like copper silver and gold ore as well as gems.
I dont really want to see them dropping ores and coins. What would be nice as an alternative is a separate consumable for portals, while coins are for other things in the economy.
Enemies could drop their life essence or some other magic force that we can capture and refine into a consumable that pays for portal use. The consumable could be found laying about or in blocks. Higher tier enemies could yield larger amounts. Perhaps it could tie into the magic aspect of the game, casting or learning spells etc later on.
I honestly think the only real reason there is a coin âproblemâ right now is because there is almost no economy in the game, due to the fact that everyone is 100% on equal footing when it comes to making things. Once there are talent specific items in the game, or advantages to talenting you will see the coin âproblemâ very quickly disappear. At the moment there is no point at all in trying to flood money into an economy, or invest in creating a fluid tool business(obviously outside of intentionally selling things dirt cheap so that the selling/buying system of the game can be tested). To put it another way, imagine you have a town full of wheat farmers you wont really see bread being sold in stores. That is the position every player is in right now, we are all wheat farmers and there is really no need to try selling our product. However later we will get some squash, carrot, and maybe even apple farmers showing up. But for now we are all wheat farmers. I am hungry.
I think the people that are really feeling a hurting in the coin department are people that go world exploring. Like some people have said, they donât really understand where all the lack of coin comments come from, cause they havenât gone to every world possible.
Ultimately what I really want to try and say is, having this discussion now is a literal waste of time. There are so many things that we have been told about that are missing that are apparent to be integral to the development of a game economy. Like talent exclusive items, and building speeds. I understand that this is something of concern, I will admit I was stuck on a world for a few days while I mined enough to be able to port. However we are at a stage in the development of the game where this is kinda irrelevant. There is no need or incentive outside of testing to actually even make selling/buying plinths. I think thatâs probably the only thing I havenât built because I canât see a use for it right now.
One thing however I would suggest, is creating cost estimates when setting up an item in a plinth. Example in most games when you are setting up a store stand or an auction, you are given a rough price of what the game values the item for. IN some MMOs you can even get addons that will scan auction houses for you and tell you what the competing prices are so you can setup yourself. Maybe setup something that when a player decides to sell glass when you are asked to set your price, the default price that shows up is what the game thinks you should sell glass for. And that cost can be based off the base cost of the materials plus some algorithm to convert time to coin.
The one way the economy would work well in the game is teaming up with a few people and making a small town of sorts, if you live in a certain biome And each person in that town or settlement doing there part in the world and not trying to do everything them self in that region/biome
So if you have 4 or 5 people in your area each you will have to decided one person just mine and one hunt and one build one to be a blacksmith then you will then have a reason to shop at each other places and then you would have to have a One person do a trade route with other settlements. So buying goods from each person shops and then traveling to another town to sell the goods or trade the goods with a shops from other worlds. This would bring in materials you wouldnât get in your own world or region.
If everyone in your area did this it would be like roll playing. And would give you , your own objective base activity to do each day. Like oh this person needed this many blocks of this kind because they would like to build a house. And then you would charge based on your time / cost of materials. Like how many tools you used to get that many blocks and buy from the blacksmith
(Example player A needed 1 stack of timber wood. Letâs say 1 stack of timber wood cost 100 to sell. And it took you 2 axes to get that much. Axes cost you 50 each from the black smith you bought it from. So now you want to make a profit so you charge 150 for the stack of timber and that is including the axes that you purchase so if you sell one stack of timber you made a profit of 50.)
I know I am going off a bit, but the question was how would a economy base system work.
You are right the way the game is setup right now, but that also isnât really an economic system. Thatâs just a township/commune type thing.
You have to take into account the fact that the current state of crafting and building is going to be incredibly changed. Once skill points and the skill trees are introduced, you are going to have profession specific things. THAT is when the economy of the game will start to develop. When some people will be able to make x, y, z tools, and some people will make u, v, w building blocks. Right now everyone can make everything. Any form of âeconomyâ right now is either partnership (what you described) or either gauging or freebies. Which is what I am trying to say, this discussion is incredibly moot right now.
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the system cant work even with specialists without coin to pay for their wares, period.
and with the way the game is currently, nothing that you are likely to buy is going to be permanent, unless youre buying machines which are probably easier to make than to buy with coin, with the way the game is now.
so in any scenario, coin must be introduced to the game outside of the little bit we get for earning ranks, and not simply changed hands.
I disagree. Could go hugely into why, but I have given the major reason time and time again. This discussion at this time is pointless. There are way too many features that are integral to an MMO economy missing in the game, and aside from snipets we have no idea how they will actually affect any economic system that could develop. Heck even as how the game is right now it is perfectly EASY to actually create an economy, incredibly useless and half-baked, but easy.
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Sounds like a good idea for a perk deep down the trader skilltree.
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I think deep down would defeat the purpose. At that point you already have your âbrandâ built and prices setup. Maybe an early talent, first or second tier. But anything past third teir would just make it an ignored talent. The whole point of it is to create a baseline that the devs feel is adequate based on how they design the game; in terms of item rarities, time cost, spark, and power.
the discussion isnt worthless LOL
its important to the game period, and as such should be hashed out early on while players are in fact experiencing it, having ideas and suggestions, and a system (for better or worse) hasnt been implemented yet.
one thing ive learned in my time spent in another game whos name i wont mention
is that the devs there will often wait till its too late to communicate with the player base, i.e. after its been concepted and implemented, and any real modification or significant change gets put on the back burner for a year or so till they have the âfree timeâ to work on it.
again, its going to be an integral part of the system and our opinions during the early stages of concept/mechanic are increasingly valuable
While I agree that this is an incredibly important discussion, what I mean is that it is pointless to have now. You canât discuss the framework for an economy when you donât even have any idea about all the stuff you can even have. Again all we can base a system off right now is non-exclusive items in the game. Honestly, the game is rather single-player right now. Outside of wanting to group up to build really cool stuff, or start connection for when the guild system is implemented, or to just get to know people, there is absolutely zero incentive to interact with other players. While I have interacted with other players, I have largely done everything I have done in the game by myself, as have many players. Main reason, there is no exclusivity at the moment. Since everyone has the ability to build everything there is nothing to actually force interaction. Which subsequently makes any form of economic discussion moot. Now later, once there is a much clearer idea of how exclusive profession items will work or how the system will work, THEN this discussion will carry A LOT of merit and be incredibly important. Having this conversation right now is way too premature and everything we discuss is bound to not work. Also having this conversation now, without any idea of what is coming, could actually do way more harm to development than help. Our ideas on how the economy should function and how trade should function could drastically alter what the devs have in mind and bring out a product that we wont like.
One very clear thing I have learned from the many games I have tested. The WORST thing that can happen is when the community starts to hash out how an incomplete system should actually work in final form. It causes the devs to alter their own plan, and sometimes leads them to make something they arenât even all that comfortable dealing with. Which then makes the players hate it even more. That is what we are doing right now, we are trying to hash out an economic system for the game with 90% of the factors to the economy missing.
You are right that it is an integral part of the system, and our opinions during the early stage matters. I am not saying this isnât an important conversation. I am saying that at this very moment, it should not be had. We are not at the early stages of an economic system, we are nowhere near it. WAY too much is missing for that. To be completely honest I disagree with how early buying/selling plinths were introduced, for this very reason. Everyone wants to jump in to make an economy and dictate prices and how things should work, and we are still missing 90% of the things that will actually matter. We have no professions yet, we have no item exclusivity, porting from planet to planet is incredibly expensive and there is no facilitation for trade in that regard. Any one of those would drastically alter any form of economic system we can come up with right now.
An example; say you are on a world with no natural gleam. Because it costs 1k coin to go and come back to get that gleam, a person can sell that gleam for however much they want. They can keep doing that for as long as they want, what happens when portals are introduced? That gleam is no longer worth that, that market will just collapse entirely because people can just go and get the gleam themselves knowing it will cost them nothing. Not 1k coin, not whatever the vendors sell it for. Then lets say portals will have a cost. Will that cost be equivalent to that of 1k coin round trip? Will it be less? Will it make buying gleam at the local market cheaper than using a portal or self warp? WAY too many unknowns right there to even consider an economic strategy.
Again, I am not saying this isnât an important conversation. It really is, just right at this moment it is worthless. Way too many unknowns present to make anything that will actually benefit the developers, we have a higher chance of harming development than we do helping it right now. You canât open a lemonade stand without even knowing where to get lemons.
An ability to understand the value of an item really should be based on playset values instead of dev set values, else it will at large be worthless.
Doesnât matter if the devs think something is 20 coins worth if everyone sell it for 30, that would just mean that your stock would be bought up in seconds by sellers who would then continue to sell at 30.
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The point of the dev set value is to give a basis for players to set their price. It doesnât matter if people sell it for more or less, itâs just a basis so people can see what something is worth. So say you want to sell some glass, but you arenât really sure what price you should sell it for, once you put it into the plinth the game will give you a rough estimate. Then based off that you can sell it for more or less.No one ever sells at the default price, itâs just there to give you an idea. Itâs just an idea to help players out. I for one have no idea what to sell some of the stuff I make for. So I throw a random value based on what I think. Then if after a while it doesnât sell, I lower the price. I keep guessing until it sells. Then I write that down and next time I replenish I set it at that price or a bit higher.
I think that is the correct way to do UmbraVictusThe way you are doing it. Each player made town will set there prices to what they think a fair price is or not and if it is cheaper somewhere else then the player looking for items will have to either spend money to get to that other place with either a portal or your time to walk to that other place.
Right now because there is a small player base playing the game it is hard to see what is high or not high or to cheap the economy wonât truly be relevant until the full games Launch. But until then it will be fun to figure out what works.
Love to read all the discussions about this topic.
Dev set prices? Isnât that one of the core tenets of communism? Communist economics typically donât workâŚ
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No, they set an example price. Not the actual price. For example in most games when you open up the auction house and place an item into the auction slot, they automatically appoint a price. Not a fixed price, just an example price of what the system thinks the item is worth. That is what I am suggesting, just an example price.
That price is mostly based on what other people are selling the item for though, not whatever idea the devs are guessing its going to be worth. Stuff like that can never really take inflation into account.