These are prices that I was trying to buy at because I 100% agree thus far with your predictions. But I was facing allot of scrutiny on the discord auction house.
I’m going to weight in on this economy conversation also, I agree with Helios is saying also. Because from my opinion the only major new wealth in the way of coins is coming from active new players from progressing with feats and objectives while they level. As they get higher leveled and it gets harder to complete feats the rate they gain coins slows down.
On the other hand you have the same new players spending money without market knowledge, this also means they are spending coins warping and paying tax where a more experienced player may not. Warping and Taxation removes coins from the economy held by players thus shrinking the total available coins players trade. This pushes down prices because coins are worth more, while resources gained while mining for example are replenished and are more plentiful on the market as the player base grows. This will also push down prices.
So currently the only way to get coins is to level up, do feats, challenges and gain coins from footfall. I don’t feel this is sufficent enough to stop prices falling until coins are not traded.
So as things currently stand, I see that in the future coins will become more valuable and thus prices will drop. I am already trying to buy at lower than market price because I feel my coins are valuable as it is, because I don’t think copper tools are worth 100 coins as I’ve seen people trying to sell them. I don’t think rock is worth a coin each, because of what’s being said here in this topic I think unless there is a way to producing coins so they remain valuable they won’t be traded with as the amount of items to trade increases.
I think that if for example, we could craft coins of varying amounts from copper, silver and gold this would strain resources used for tools and keep coins valuable.
Those suppositions come from a market that’s not expanding. True, coins shrinkage will happen through warping and taxes, will make coins seem much more valuable. But with the introduction of new players, comes more coins and a bigger market, thus giving a use to those “extra resources”, money won’t devaluate, since it will be always moving.
Consider also the fact that our current situation is a very strange one, with coins prior to progression, stocks prior to it too. The situation we’re currently facing is a truly exceptional one, and basing balancing and statistical information upon it will result in a wrong forecast of the situation.
Take in mind, we’ve got no further information on the advanced engines; objectives and feats are not working fully, no one has reached level 50 yet. We’ve got no information on further taxes mechanics, that could change the game, and in the future setting up a warp and portal will be different, since there won’t be available portals.
My guess is once 1.0 comes and we hadn’t had a wipe prior to it, we’ll have a possible change or balance of economy or the situation will be well managed by the community and the devs won’t have to participate in “fixing” stuff. After all they’ve gone for a player driven economy.
As a conclusion, I think it’s better to wait a few weeks for future releases and further discuss this topic once we have more information at hand, taking measures and decisions with ignorance on the table, most of the time produces bad results.
The simple question is. How will supply and demand interact?
@Lynxdragon the scrutiny you were facing was based entirely on the volatility of your statements, and nothing else. The current market is indeed skewed as to what blocks and tools will be worth what, but the fact stands that you took it upon yourself to insult in a very personal manner specific prices, and then proceeded to offer to sell easily obtainable blocks at incredibly high prices hours later.
Therefore it stands that any “scrutiny” faced was based entirely on the perception that you were indeed trying to buy at incredibly low prices and sell at incredibly high prices (essentially a seller’s market) but with a blatant disregard for the rest of the market around you as well as the consumers themselves. Your actions were, in essence, hypocritical and malicious.
As to coins and the market, I would agree that footfall doesn’t seem to be injecting nearly the amount of coins we originally predicted, and I still am experimenting to find out whether or not there is indeed a daily timer on individual footfall or a 1-time-only system.
You yourself are to blame for any offence you take, given in that conversation you yourself did not actually say you were taking about yourself. Instead you phrased is as if you were speaking about the market in general. So take back whatever offence you feel I have caused you, it’s without basis.
You claim I offered to sell easily obtainable blocks for a higher price later, when in fact they are just as easily obtainable as the rock I always seek to purchase for my build. I offered to sell them at the same price I offer to buy rock for. Bear in mind this was an offer, no one negotiated at all so they did not get sold. So given sand is just as easy to obtain as rock, selling it for a similar price is not unacceptable to assume. It was discussed that there was the idea that 1 rock should be worth 1 coin as part of this conversation, I don’t recall who as I’m not in discord right now. But I disagreed with that given the effort to collect 100 rock is not the same as the effort to make for as per your example a copper tool that you sell for 100 coins. This is the whole reason I buy 2 rock for 1 coin and also offered to sell the sand at a similar price.
So now I’m going to tell you again as I did in discord, you can’t expect to act like your taking about everyone or someone else and then take offence when someone disagrees with your opinion. You can sell it for whatever you want, I’m not going to stop you. But as that conversation was not intended to be directly at you because it was not in conversation that we were directly discussing you and your shop but the opinion of prices, I feel that your taking personal offence over something that is all your own perception. So cut it with the personal attacks at me, I’ve already apologised to you as it was not a directed attack on you ever. It was simply a conversation about the prices on the market.
I’d also like to add that there is nothing malicious about trading, markets are exactly that. They fluctuate, they are affected by people. This is simply what I feel I wish to trade for, don’t like it don’t trade with me! But don’t go around throwing insults because I won’t conform to market prices, because I feel given the current situation they just don’t add up right. I don’t have to pay regard to anyone else’s prices so not to hurt their feelings, it’s trading and it’s a marketplace. You don’t get anywhere without competing, no matter how minor or major it may be.
I also forgot to mention earlier that currently I don’t think there is many new active players generating coins given how small this games community is. So that’s one of the reasons I believe the value of coins will raise the longer things stay as they are now. If there is any updates this in my opinion will change. I don’t see how this game still has such a small community given how good this game actually is.
It’s a wasted effort both for a small community and dev team to discuss balancing related to player base pre 1.0, when the expected numbers of players is not even close to being reached.
We as players of an EA, are expected to test the features and get our opinions on those. When are things to be balanced? When they make the game unplayable and have nothing to relate to how big or small a community is (this is my personal opinion btw)
Right now we don’t have the sufficient tools or data available to be asking for features such as balancing or coins making.
It all boils down to “will it sell or not?”. If I put a price on an item I’m selling and it’s doesn’t sell that means my price is too high. It’s up to me as the seller to determine the items value TO ME, to determine whether it’s worth it TO ME to sell for a lower price or simply keep the item. Item rarity and amount of work put into crafting an item means nothing if it doesn’t sell.
I’m not asking for it to be balanced, I’m just playing the game as it is now. What I learn now is going to vastly change how I play after a possible wipe when 1.0 is released. So I’m just enjoying it now, and part of that is trading and debating prices.
But disregarding anything not affecting right now, we the players now are the markets. And if we are to trade prices will change depending on a lot of factors, and right now I’m of the opinion that coins will become scarce and more valuable. Resources will stockpile and become cheaper too. That’s my personal opinion that affect how I trade. You also have your opinion, and the collective opinion of all players will give an average price and expectation. But anyone can try sell or buy anything for any price.
Even tho it’s still EA, what the dev team see now will affect how they balance coins later. It affects the recipes to make items, it’s all part of a calculation that will be changed until they are happy. So to ignore balance entirely now is stupid, as it does affect the core game and it’s progression. It’s all feedback that’s relative, as any feedback is useful feedback.
That’s exactly true, the other day I was buying copper and some of the people’s prices was higher than others. I didn’t buy it because I felt given how easy it was to get for me it was not worth buying. So I ended up collecting half of it myself. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just how it works.
So, I fail to understand all these attempts at price control here on a free market. I mean, isn’t a free market where you sell what you feel is the right price, and people will buy whatever they feel is at a fair price? If it is too expensive, don’t buy it. No need to say anything more. Free market price flunctuations are governed by the buyers. Let your coins do the talking on the market.
I’ll keep it short. Free market reigns, but it’s proven that free market can lead to inescaple situations and might interfere with new players getting involved or veterans too. If this problem is kept to a low population, it causes no concerns, but if it extends to an important ammount of players, it might cause trouble.
I’m not saying there should be an entity trying to control the market, I’m saying we should have enough mechanisms (features) to help introduce and permit many types of players on a healthy market.
As long as its not the case that someone might be trying to scam, I think the rest of it is just the market trying to find an equilibrium pricing. It is not perfect, I agree.
Well devs only need to balance constant coin gain (footfall and repeatable objectives/feats/challanges, etc) and coin waste (the second only tax and warping). They really dont need to do anything with the PLAYER DRIVEN economy, just give us the tools for it. With world regeneration we have unlimited resources, and the fact that we cant kill or rob each other (at least for now ), a real free market can be achieved!
But face it, an experienced player will not waste that much coin (tax isnt unfairly high and warping can be avoided in most cases), and if footfall isnt a ‘once per player’ option, we already have constant coin flow into the economy. Coins are really just barter helpers, if player A and B doesnt even know each other they still can trade resources, cause player A sells rocks what B want and B sells copper what A want. In the long run they always have the same number of coins, but still exchanged resources. Of course they lost the coin for tax but footfall countered it.
EDIT: The only thing I dont like that you cant sell/buy stuff for less than 1 coin in shop stands and request baskets. Inject far more coin into the game (maybe will happen after more objectives, feats and dailies/weaklies/contracts will come into play) or let us choose less than 1 coin prizes (or stack selling, so like 10 sand for 1 coin, which ever the easier to implement).
Anyway if we want to accept a prize for everything as players, we need to start with the lowest value thing in the game for 1 coin, which one is… the stick!
to focus on taxes - with introduction of guilds we may have money going to them and I imagine the guilds using them to distribute them among their members (be it as regular payments or prizes) or simply guild-spending on materials and items, so that might spur trading; it’s half speculation though as I don’t know how tax vs. guild system will look like;
as for progression system: we will have contracts and entire post 50 world of coin-making features, so fingers crossed for thriving economy; it’s another part of the game that can keep people in game - a happy life of a shop-keeper and (on the other side) a shopping addict exercises
I agree with you there - I would like to sell rock and stone at prices lower than 1c per unit, but that’s simply not possible at the moment without direct trading.
Completely agree with all this. I have the same mind-set, anyway.
If you want to boil it all the way down to the meta level, things will sell for whatever people are willing to pay for them. The economy has almost no basis in reality, and this includes the real world economy. Lies, misinformation, mistakes, misdirection, illusions and delusions can all easily and massively increase/decrease economies.
The root of this is that money itself is an artificial resource, and as such can be regulated, modified, inflated and deflated in completely unnatural ways quite easily.
Right now we’re suffering an artificial deflation (in game), because the amount of money coming into the economy is sharply limited to a fixed amount per player, by all means except footfall. By contrast, the amount leaving the economy by tax and warps is, in all likelihood, much higher for most players. Prices can be expected to go down (slowly) almost indefinitely until a patch adds additional income sources. (Or, perhaps, a huge influx of new players hits the economy, causing a temporary inflation.)
HOWEVER, very soon we will have an artificial and perpetual income into the economy through dailies/weeklies/contracts. Tax probably won’t be remotely enough to control this. Indeed, I expect people to be warping all over the place, constantly, any distance further than about 200-300 blocks will probably just be warped if it isn’t a straight line run. Coins will worth very little unless the daily/weekly incomes are very low, and/or the contract payout is rather small or the contracts are very difficult for a reasonable amount of coins. In addition, taxes will begin to flow back into the economy via the Leading guild or guilds, or possibly through the capitol city structure.
The only net outflow of coin from the economy will be in the form of warps.
), a real free market can be achieved!