I’m with you on so many things, but higher competition only leads to faster price discovery and a reconciliation of global supply and demand in equilibrium (asymptotic time). It does not lead the equilibrium price to fall because the moment that the switch was flipped the supply and demand haven’t changed and neither have the number of actors participating in the global system.
[Since the profit margins of individual traders are a wealth transfer in the closed economic system and not wealth created to the system, they’re irrelevant here to a discussion of the economy as a whole.]
You’re essentially arguing that a lack of rational actors and price discovery prevent the market clearing equilibrium price from being found so it will be higher if we don’t globalize and lower if we do. If that were true, it’s only because the current prices are not at equilibrium, not because of a market change.
There are rampant deflationary forces in this economy causing a decline in prices that have nothing to do with a globally linked market. The linkage will speed that price discovery up and yes prices will fall. But it won’t be because of the globally linked market.
It will be because of a declining player base (lower demand shock) and constant bot supply.
I agree that it’s not a panacea for outlying regions, and some of your suggestions are intriguing. I have my own concerns with the planned change…a change I think none of us here is going to change AGS’s direction on.
Convenience is going to rule the day, most players won’t care as long as it’s easier, and - at least in the commodities categories - the new globalized markets will be dominated by those players (or consortiums of them - perhaps as a company endeavor) who already have the liquid funds to buy out all of a category below XX gold per unit and relist it at XX+margin gold per unit. They can then hold the price where they want it simply by creating massive buy orders just below their sales price and then make their money on volume.
Those people will control the prices of commodities on the Trader. From my personal perspective there are no commodities I don’t go get for myself as a rule, so all I lose is my business model - which has been to gather my chosen commodities and take them to the higher demand/selling price settlements. But that business model is dead shortly after the markets get linked.
It isn’t just coincidence that the best places are in the middle of the island. If you have to run everywhere being in the middle means less distance over time.
Quick travel cost is based now in part on distance traveled and weight carried. I think getting rid of the distance traveled part of the equation would help. Would remove one penalty for basing in a coastal town.
To fix the problem there would still need to be incentive for players to stick around beyond just the local quests. Not sure what that incentive would be. Short term I don’t think much can be done. Long term adding random events or giving slightly better rewards for doing some of the existing events in low population areas might help. Problem being it is always tough to balance rewards. You want them good enough to entice people but not so good that they give undo advantage or feel required.
This also only gets players there temporarily. Something needs to keep them there. I am thinking company loyalty maybe but when a company owns several settlements that kind of flies out the window.
We are still early in the life of a very young game. Population is the problem. As we move forward this might be something that eventually corrects as player demographics within the game changes?
I do think the central buying is a mistake and also believe it does not address the population dispersal problem.
This most likely isn’t going to be the easiest to read because I’m more of a numbers guy and not a language guy and forgive me for working up the thread here. Also I’d like to note as a crafter I typically focus most market data from this perspective and I’m typically blindsided by market developments outside the realm or have little knowledge there of. An example of which was my initial ignorance that, any player has the ability to play the servers book keeper if they so wished as they have access to the books.
Correct. Typically people gather around something in order to form a community, for example fledgling civilizations in ancient times typically start near rivers or fresh water sources. There’s access to fresh drinkable water and the land is more fertile. In other words consumable resources. Trade and traffic between such places usually results in a common meeting ground to act as a neutral trade station. If we take a look at our game world we see this.
Now among all the iron veins the only place you can actually read on the map is, Windsward. Now this is from the crafter viewpoint, but I typically consider the most valuable place on the map to be 1. Centralized and more less equidistant from everywhere else. 2. Surrounded or abundant in the most commonly used materials. If we also add hemp to the list of resources we are tracking the map looks like this:
Now as you can see, the space within the center which there was no iron has been filled in with hemp. Trees grow all around the world and typically surround every settlement so just about anywhere has raw wood. Rawhide comes from any animal you can skin that is level 1-40, which is just about anywhere for those level ranges, but I should note those plains in Windsward also just so happen to have Bison which net 60-80 rawhide a head. The core materials required to make virtually every piece of equipment we require to function within this world, Iron/Hemp/Green Wood/Rawhide, are at their highest density in EF/WW which is also, conveniently, dead center of the game world. This checks my 1 and 2 as “The most valuable place.” from my crafter’s viewpoint. Due to a vast majority of my required resources being within this area, I have no incentive to venture out and interact with other lands outside the occasional visit for a lesser needed resource or for “Adventure” and quests. Quests dry up, and (personal opinion here in terms of budgeting) lesser resources are not a sufficient enough reason for me to own land in these regions. With trade linked I would be able to purchase these lesser resources without traveling myself thus resulting in these outer regions seeing sales. However that would require those resources to be gathered and sold there. If I have little incentive to do so being a primary consumer with clear access to do so, why would anyone else? It would remove distance part of the equation, yet I can still simply retrieve these materials myself when I required them anyway due to ease of access. While this maybe more opinion than fact, as a crafter it’s often far more beneficial budget wise to gather the resources yourself when training the craft when the end product costs less than the base materials or the time it would take to sell the resulting product is far from ideal. Lastly I agree, population is a key root of the problem.
Everything you say on these threads regarding the situation has been on point and I just find myself going “Ya what he said.” whenever I read it.
Ehhhh, while in most economies I’d agree with competition lowering prices, not in this one. Focusing on raw resources again, the price may dip a bit at launch but it’ll just go back up. The only materials with much worth are in fact the most abundant, Iron/Hemp/Green Wood/Rawhide. The higher end materials you can gather are already virtually worthless due to the supply and demand. The lower tier materials are constantly used so if the trades posts are linked they’ll just sell much faster resulting in the price returning after an initial drop. What will lower the prices of these primary resources would be a lack in demand and that would be due to lower population resulting in less crafters demanding it. Personally. my worry with that initial drop due to the implementation of linked trade posts is:
^ It’s the market window for this.
A keyword here is Start. Now personally I’ve stated I could go either way with the link, but I don’t see it effectively strengthening the economies of the outer regions. Which, is the reason they mentioned implementing the change. If it was introduced to be a QoL feature I would’ve just nodded and went “Yup, it would be QoL.”. Now, long term yes it will introduce more tax revenue to all settlements, however this tax revenue isn’t enough. Referring to my first post in this thread:
The current overhead, on my server anyway, is simply too high. Now I haven’t organized all the data to a pie graph like OP, but just eye balling it I can say “Ya that’s about right for my server as well.” The only solutions to this over head I can think of would be:
Reduce the upkeep costs for settlements and settlement upgrades. This is tricky because this very system is to fight against inflation within the game by deleting gold. I don’t believe a static upkeep cost would solve the issue if they were simply lowered, as higher population servers would eventually see inflation. It would have to be a dynamic system that responses to player density.
An increase to player population that generates enough tax revenue to cover the overhead. This is, not an easy fix and there are so many different variables to a server merge for this particular game I feel like it would be a logistic nightmare.
Each settlement specializes it’s crafting stations to a streamlined model in order to keep upkeep costs to a minimal while maximizing the territories economic worth. This would result in bareboned crafting stations overall and would more or less require linked trading posts to work, conveniently anyway, to allow a steady flow of imports and exports among settlements. Even then the bulk of crafting/refining tax would be seen from the process of training a skill. At 5% trade tax, 1.00 Crafting/Refining tax the process of 1-200 Weaponsmith in a streamlined fashion equates to roughly 10k in total taxes received if all base materials were purchased at .2 each. This isn’t factoring any possible discounts or salvaging finished products for materials either, this is if it was the most wasteful. So the settlement would still be required to be attractive enough in resources and location for crafters to do this.
None of these solutions are easy or convenient and a misstep could potentially make things worse. But honestly I can’t think of other solutions others haven’t mentioned. If you’ve made it this far you’re a trooper and I warned you I’m not a language guy.
This argument only works if WW und EF were already linked and only the rest of the world wasn’t. Until now the sellers are spread mostly evenly between the two cities. If for example you have 1000 Seller in WW, 1000 seller in EF and 50 in the rest of the world, combining them into a single place will hurt everyone because of undercutting from every single person the prices will be automatically much lower than now, even in those two cities.
And until now many items survived the fall to rock bottom only because of serparated auction houses. But because this design exists the linking will finally push many more items the rest of the way. And that is exactly why so many people are fighting this change because it is inevitable to happen.
The reaction of players to the injected oversupply of reagents already proofed what people will do with undercutting in a single place with to much oversupply within a short time. And after something hit 0.01 it will be really hard to get it back up again if possible at all.
First, can I simply say how much more enjoyable it is to have discussions like this than flame wars between 2 people wanting to throw out their professed achievements in WoW as proof of their personal opinions?
You all have made my morning.
Couple other anecdotes to keep this conv going:
Go look at the auction house for any T1 mat in Everfall or Winsward. This breaks a closed economy, but there’s no ability to see global buy orders, just global sells. Add up the QUANTITY of all sell orders and BUY orders in Everfall or Winsward. Sells>Buys, which is causing a downward pressure on prices in that town, even before global trade opens. There’s little to no return to crafting so demand < supply, exacerbated by a declining player base. Bots are hitting the buy orders and are marginally profitable down to ~.01 for each unit (their scripting cost is sunk and for all but skins, the scripts are move to fixed coordinates to find hemp, trees, ore, get encumbered and walk to town). This morning Mu.Everfall (with no global trading), there’s 37,201 quantity on Sell Orders at a weighted average price of .2336, There’s 32,390 Iron Ore on Buy Order lists at a weighted average price of .0476. Which way are orders going to go? Down, because mining bots are getting instant profit at the marginal (highest) buy order right now of .1…without a globally linked economy. My buy orders (before I stopped crafting) were filled within a couple hours…even at quantities of ~8000. Again, the key…no globally linked economy. Just supply/demand.
Take a really rare item (like one not yet dropping in the game) and you’ll see an inching up of buy orders. Globally linked markets can lead to a bidding war. It’s about supply and demand…not linkages (which is only an efficiency/liquidity argument) and the speed at which supply and demand imbalances will approach equilibrium.
[Again these anecdotes break a closed economy and prove nothing. They are merely an illustration to separate efficiency from equilibrium].
One final thought in closing (repeat from first post)
The core issue is a declining player base and roughly fixed expenditures for town governors relative to variable income (and declining due to player base).
The single, best and fastest means of making satellite towns viable is to correct the fixed-to-floating imbalance of a governor’s income statement…which assumes a certain population to be viable. Make the expenses variable in line with population…and this item is solved (and we can go onto other things).
ps: thanks for reading and contributing to a fun thread.
I think this point is additional overshadowed by a near future occurrence which not only will have an even stronger influence on the market in combination with the linking but also is putting a damper on the investment behavior of remote zones at least until it happens, even if they would get more gold out of this change.
And that are the server merges which are already talked about by official people here in the forums. No company will invest anything in a town knowing that they could possible lose it to a merge, no matter what they get out of this change. But remote zones need this leap of faith to invest to even have a chance to get somewhere.
I just want to thank the OP for the level of effort they put into this. It’s top notch whether or not people agree with every point.
What happens to market prices is probably complicated, but a number of things are pretty clear, in my mind, foremost among them is that people will just have different list of criteria to choose what town to hang out in.
I think what’s interesting is that the main issue the devs are trying to address is the burden of holding a low-pop town. But in the process of talking about this, an assumption has crept up that all towns should be equally desirable. It’s fair if people want that, but this game allows massive asymmetry. It’s part of it’s character. I see zero problem with First Light being quiet and Everfall being super busy. It tells a story about both locations. I do see a problem with guilds being burdened with a town. It should be a spoil of war, not a chain around their neck.
If someone wants that massive tax flow from Everfall, GO TAKE IT. I say that while not trying to lessen any of the issues we are talking about. Personally, I’m never going to own a town. I play with 4 friends. We are refugees that move around the map on the tides of war that other players create. I’ve been stuck in towns when someone trolled all the taxes to maximum.
Not everyone is going to be able to enjoy the spoils of war. I never will. I will be lining the pockets of pvp companies. I find this realistic and oddly enjoy it. Small companies might not ever be able to take Everfall and gain that income. Welcome to my club.
But what ever the case, it shouldn’t be a burden. I just really don’t think this change is going to create a situation where all the towns become equal, and I don’t know why we would even want that. Just lessen the burden.
Not only they should go ahead in linking the trading posts but you folks are way off base when it comes to the reasons you’re opposed.
This game’s economy is NOT localised, it’s centralised and it couldn’t be any other way as long as fast travel is a thing.
Globalization WILL NOT lead to deflation due to the supply/demand chain remaining untouched, it will however increase market volumes due to the decrease in costs for sellers and buyers alike.
The increase in competition caused by the global trading post will not be vast since anyone that hopes to sell in volumes already fast travels to the main hubs to put their stuff on sale where people will actually (also fast travel and) buy it.
Remote markets won’t see an immediate increase in trading taxed BUT they will become MUCH more feasible for house owners therefore inevitably increasing their economic value over time.
Crafting will slowly move from EF and WW to any other city where the owner company invested in facilities.
This will shift the economical landscape from a centralised one to a globalised one, heavily and inevitably moving wealth away from the center areas to spread it more evenly and FAIRLY, rewarding towns that offer the best services with the lower taxes instead of just shoving massive wealth in Everfall’s owner’s pockets.
Will the linking be enough? I can’t tell. Is it a big step in the right direction? It couldn’t be anything else. Does it have downsides? Arguably none.
This particular point is very arguable, if prices have a tendendency to go up due to a supply/demand shift, the items on sale at a lower price would sell out way before their expiring date. This is unavoidable, it’s actually inherently part of the process.
This part is very biased and devoid of a lot of crucial elements that need to be taken into account.
First of all the AVERAGE decrease in tax revenue is not a problem since at the moment the issue is not with the amount of wealth but how it is distributed.
Secondly you are completely disregarding the fact that EF and WW have the power to invest in services (crafting stations) to keep the business, on top of already being favoured by position and resources so they will be free to keep taxes higher and still mantain a dominance.
On the other hand the ability of marginal areas to compete is a good thing, as I explained above.
I’m all on board with reducing but removing is absurd, it would crash the economy since a few individuals would get ALL the wealth.
Honestly your argument is very well constructed but not compelling at all.
Way too specualtive, not objective enough and flat out wrong in many key points.
First off, I just want to add, as others already have, that this has been a wonderful thread to read, with well thought out arguments, constructive feedback to one another, and civil debate.
I won’t go into whether or not linking the trade posts will be good or bad, but I do feel that it only touches on a small piece of the reasoning why EF and WW have thriving economies while outer regions have little to none. In addition to the already stated points of resource availability and locational benefits, there is also the simple fact of character progression.
As a new character, I will, logically, start in a starting zone. And even if that zone isn’t WW, as soon as I start moving along in the MSQ and go to the hermit’s shrine, the closest settlement to me is WW. So whether it’s grinding those first few levels, or taking a break between main story quests, many players will find themselves in WW. And, as they do things here, a couple of effects will occur. First, if they are doing any trading or crafting, the WW region will get additional taxes, allowing them to upgrade well ahead of the outer regions. And if they are looking to level, they may wind up doing town board quests, which again allows WW to level crafting and refining stations faster than the outer regions. And all the while, the character is gaining WW standing. So, by the time the character is levelled enough to start making their way out to those outer regions, they often already have not only the standing to buy a house in those starter zones, but have also used the standing to gain perks such as lower trading and crafting fees or lower property tax or higher storage capacity. Which in turn will encourage them to continue operating, trading, and living (if they buy a house) in those starter zones. That’s not to say they will never leave them, but a house and standing will lead to increased storage, and reduced taxes will lead to a preferred usage of those crafting stations and TPs.
Moving the TPs from a local to a global model will certainly generate a small amount of additional income to the outer regions, but only through the characters who already operate in those regions. To really bring those economies closer to the dominant starter regions, there needs to be an incentive to get characters who established themselves in the starter regions to pick up and move to those outer regions. And globalizing the trading will actually mean for many there will be even less incentive to go out and utilize those settlements. After all, this means that I can still sit in WW or EF and buy the goods posted on the TPs in ES or RW or anywhere else. Which is good from the position of generating some trade taxes for those outer regions, but still leaves the lion’s share of crafting and trading occurring in the same regions they currently do. I’m not sure what, if any, the solution to this would be, but it certainly is something that will need to be considered if the end goal is to balance the regional economies.
Where we are in the game this simply isn’t true for the majority of players. The cost of fast travel is something that has to be considered and can be a hindrance. Two or three months from now that could change. Quite a bit could change over the next few months.
My point of view is it is to early in the game to start reacting to player dynamics and player population trends. Especially so with a change like this that has the potential to have a negative impact on the economy and does little to address the problem it is suppose to address.
I know we are in a society that is more and more expecting everything be done and/or available almost instantly but I think it would be prudent to wait until server merges and the 2nd big round of server transfers happens. Could be as we have more players on each server and a larger percentage of those players at or near end game levels the population dispersal problem will sort itself out.
And I really do believe being able to buy from one location will lead to more market manipulation of high end items than we are presently seeing. It has happened in other games and with the gold distribution disparity in this game there is no reason to expect it will not happen here.
the prices will never go up. everything costs 0.01 -1 gold…BECAUSE we have too much from everything. guildmates just go farming ressources 1-2hours and everyone come back with 10k stones oder 10k wood or 10k XXX. Whatever you want you can get 10k within 1-2 hours…
as long as this isnt changed prices wont go up. who designed this ?? who had this idea? i dont know…
This was designed because they wanted to make items lose durability and break or be lost in pvp. But they not implemented this and all crafted / grinded items just garbage right now
I didn’t comment about prices of common and semi common items. I agree though I don’t see the prices ever going up especially with a global market.
I was commenting that the change does nothing to spread out the population and that it makes it easier for rare item prices to be manipulated. I do expect an increase in rare (not labeled rare by game but actual hard to find items) to increase a great deal in price.
Population will spread a lot. Earlier you need to stay in 1 city if you wanna sell or buy anything. After update i will move to other city i like more and be able to sell/buy with no problems.
Yeah, but most got their main storage in Everfall/WW. Why should they move, if at the same time those cities have all refining and crafting stations on max. You see the issue?
Crafting station in Everfall downgraded a lot every week, i need to craft in other cities anyway, same for other people.
More higher tier stations you have in city - more would be downgraded.
And it’s very bad when only few cities had decent amount of upgrades - they downgraded and you waiting or traveling a lot to craft something
