I think a big thing a lot of us have probably noticed by this point is the low trading post value of higher tier materials as well as gear.
Now, I’ve played both Albion Online and Prosperous Universe, both games with a player driven economy as the focus of the game. Eve Online is another one, but I haven’t played it myself.
Currently, as it stands, the crafting system is progressive, meaning you require lower tier materials to make higher tier materials. This is good.
The problem stems from the surplus of higher tier raw materials that comes as a result of this. Higher tier nodes drop way too many materials. I can easily obtain 1000 gold ore as easily as I can obtain 1000 silver ore, however due to the crafting recipe, I constantly have a massive surplus of gold ore, and I can make far fewer ingots of gold than I can silver, but only because of how much more silver I need. This drastically lowers the value of higher tier materials and raises the value of lower tier materials.
Solution: Drastically lower the rate you receive higher tier resources per node, balancing out the input and output so that higher tier materials are actually worth the combined effort of lower tier materials.
Second problem: almost all crafted items are XP fodder. Gear is worthless until end game, so crafting isn’t worth the amount of work it takes until you can actually hit end game. You do a single expedition, and you’re swimming in gear, most of which becomes salvaged for repair parts, and will always be easier to obtain than crafting item themselves.
Solution, and this one’s gonna be a little dicey: In the open world, inventory should be dropped on death.
“No, that’ll make the game too hard.”
Look, we’re already swimming in dropped gear, and crafting gear yields dozens of items. This would not only create material sink, but also create a gear cycle where gear has value, because you’d have to continuously replace it. And this drastically increases the value of armor that has good perk rolls. As it is currently, you can’t lose gear. Yes, it cost a lot to repair, but that also would make keeping your good armor and weapons a worthwhile cost, and the cost of repairing isn’t raw materials. It’s only repair parts. This adds value to materials.
Look, maybe these ideas don’t appeal to you, but in games that attempt to have “player driven” economies, you have to have costs associated with an economy. This means items have to have scarcity to them, otherwise nothing is worth anything.
You can’t have an economy if everything is worthless and nothing has value. That’s why other games which have these player driven economies have systems that create scarcity. If all materials are infinite and you can’t lose items, they’re not worth anything.
If you don’t like these ideas, then this game shouldn’t have a focus on players running the markets.