Premature discussion.
The game hasn’t arrived at the state where most people are 60 and do what they enjoy with the limited time they got and pay gold for things they do not enjoy doing or have no time for.
Also you do not have the real vision at the data making any observation anecdotal and resulting conclusions inherently flawed.
Reading the dev post on NW economy again, I think they definetly know what they are doing plus they have the tools to make sensible decisions as necessay.
My main concern with the dev post on the economy being good is how much of that gold was from duping?
Sooo … player driven economies don’t work because they work too well?
This is what free trade looks like.
Sadly the population of a single server is a fraction of population EVE has. There is no way the demand is high enough to sustain local markets in NW. If we talked about 10k players - sure. But in reality it is a few times less than that.
To me the biggest problem with this so called player driven economy is that its not. Too many drops make crafters nearly useless for too much of the game. Nothing you craft to level your skills has resale value except a couple of items.
That’s the equivalent of cheap goods from China … linking the auction houses is killing regional markets just like NAFTA did and TPP tried to.
The markets in this game barely matter and probably never will. Crafted goods have barely any value. A well made game for a player driven economy cant have the drops this game has for loot.
until they do.
Again … I agree that crafting has become something only for the rich at lvl 60.
Domestic manufacturing is being driven out of business by goods from outside markets coming in at a lower cost. Explain to me how that’s NOT like our own economies?
mmm… eve online would disagree.
@Ardrea 's reply is technical but spot on.
However, I think we’re often too fast to respond to win rather than understand. What version of the Original Poster’s intent, if reworded, holds water?
[Not necessarily my opinion, but i’m trying to help him make his case]
Why Player Driven Economies Generally Fail and Represent Risks for Developers
Player driven economies (PDE) market well as an added dynamic and layer of experience that is appealing to the average buyer, both hard-core and casual.
PDEs with little to no external controls represent dynamic systems and a means for economic PvP between skilled and less skilled players. One cohort loves it and the other can have buyers remorse once they learn about it
PDEs, by their very nature, attract bots and gold sellers because it represents higher margins and opportunity sets than non-PDEs. As such, they also represent a dramatically increased surface area of risk for rampant inflation/deflation on underlying supply/demand imbalances as well as supply shocks of the underlying fiat currency.
Developers who can control that risk can have a hit on their hands. Most of them cannot, and often opt to not participate in PDEs and focus their development efforts on combat balancing turning and other areas.
Euhm… Not only are you wrong about it in RL but trying to compare NW with RL seems pointless.
Linking the auction houses will actually somewhat help solve many issues, especially in low/med pop servers. The only issue it may cause is that it is taking down import-export profits. A small price to pay imho.
I dont really care if it is like our real economy, its broken in game.
to fix economy is indeed very simple:
No more useless loots.
No more chest runs. Chests should be connected to a kill and not by people doing 22 chest runs per day and then selling mats for 4g on market to casual players. *this forces alot of people to buy gold also.
Adjust spawn timer on resource nodes. They need to be on a random timer and if possible also spawn in random places so they cannot be camped anymore.
REPAIRS Should not cost gold but just repair items.
Income from holding a zone should NOT be obtainable by any player other then for usage in zone upgrades. NOT PERSONAL BUYING.
Set minimum sales prices of 0.10 cent.
ADD A TRASH VENDOR WHERE PLAYERS CAN SELL TRASH!!!
see? Very simple
Game markets are behaving exactly how real markets behave.
I made my comparisons very clear.
I’m sorry you disagree but “you’re wrong” isn’t as effective of an argument as “you’re wrong and here’s why”
Maybe next time go with that.
Well, I don’t believe this is the right place to delve into a RL Economics/Trade debate.
But comparing NW economics to RL economics is silly. RL is a Hardcore Full Loot PVP setting where boars don’t drop BMW’s and AR-15’s when killed and than magically respawn. And let’s not forget in RL billions interact with the much more complex real life market.
Regional markets in NW would have made sense if there were more players per server and there was full loot PVP. Now it’s just a way to concentrate trade in some hubs and ensure the companies owning these two hubs earn lots of coins. It’s actually KILLING regional markets outside Everfall and/or Windsward.
Props for Steel-manning the OP’s argument.
I feel a good case can be made that NW’s player driven economy is not working well even as just what it is intended to be.
On top of that, PDE’s are not fun or engaging for every kind of player.
If NW’s economy is not already either a well balanced, efficiently operating, or even player-run as the devs intended; then there’s a few directions one could go in. First, one could identify and address the design problems with the economy and change them. Second, and not exclusively, one could make the economy less player driven.
An example of this would be to add NPC merchants who will buy many materials and items at a fixed price. This would change the demand curve and establish floors on prices, but it also conflicts with the developers intention that the economy be player driven. I’d prefer this over the OP’s suggestion that players simply cooperate to establish agreed upon standard minimum prices for goods. The problem with that is that it would not create any real additional demand for goods; they would simply pile up, unsold, if players didn’t defect from the agreement and undercut anyway.
In general, once we agree (as if we possibly could agree) that there is a fault in the game’s economy in some aspect, we can’t just hammer it down from the top with things like price controls; we need to look at the economic and behavioral root causes and and address those.
So if we agree that it’s killing regional markets… which I already said … why exactly are you arguing with me again?
Is it because you disagree with my parallels ?
I like this part of your post, a lot. <3 The rest less so, but you make good points.
I think multiple regional markets could have been viable with the right revelatory information in the UI and with more nuanced interactions with listing fees and taxes on market trades based on who owns the town. There should be more monetary disincentive to list or buy in towns your faction doesn’t control.
And, editing, because I’m old and forget things I meant to address
I believe one key failing of the economy as being “Player Driven” is that so much of the productive side of the economy is driven, not by players performing value-added transformation of raw materials into finished goods, but rather from NPC mobs dropping finished goods, such as weapons and armor. It’s just another NPC store, except you pay in sword-swings and spell-slings, and you can’t pick out what you get.
I may have wrongly expressed myself. The current way the trade posts work kill regional markets because all the trade is concentrated in Windsward and Everfall. Linking all the TP’s will at the very least increase the amount bought in other towns but also likely sell orders as people will no longer believe listing things in other towns is a waste of listing fees. Linking TP’s will revive other towns.