Ideas for a healthier game economy

I'll just quickly say my peace. Disclaimer: I have not read this entire thread.

I think the vendor stalls, while a very cool idea, don't work very well.

There is something very frustrating about endlessly searching for an item, or trying to compare prices, to make the best deal.

While an auction house system is very efficient and easy to navigate, it's also very impersonal and seller unfriendly.

Ac2 had an interesting way of doing it by having several "mini" auction type vendors that weren't all linked but resided in major cities. The vendors auctioned only specific item groups such as trade reagents, or gathered resources, or quest items, or weapons, or armors, etc... it was an interesting mix between two systems of vendor stalls and auction house.

I don't know the answer to the economy thing but I hope the vendor system changes as its current form is just hard to work with.

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Originally Posted by cratoh

4. No. Why should someone be penalised for making alts? People enjoy making alts. Synergy skills for example from level 35 carpentry giving +1 hammer makes it worth levelling it - and levelling industry on extra toons is to be expected - making alts is expensive.

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Why should someone be punished for *not* making alts? If the devs character-lock everything, then players who have paid for an account but only play one toon don't have all the resources they've paid for. (note: "paying" in free alpha means paying through bug reports/testing/feedback, but later on we'll also pay money for accounts and subs).

When specific game elements (storage, work orders, etc.) are account-locked then the person with the account gets to decide how to distribute their account resources the way they like.

If you have one toon, then you get all the resources on that toon.

If you have multiple toons you get to distribute those resources to the toons that need them.

This neither rewards nor punishes either play style.

So, with an account-wide system, if I had 4 character slots, I'd get 4 sets of account-wide bank slots. 4 sets of account-wide starting bag slots. 4 specific work orders per 30 days. As I unlocked favor, I'd get 4 sets of favor storage slots and 4 favor vendor cash pools, and so on. I'd still pay the same "costs" in councils or favor gifts or time played or cash, but I'd be able to use the resources the way *I* wanted and apply them all to my single character.

If you like alts, you should enjoy your alts. You should be able to play the game the way you enjoy playing. I don't care what you do as far as advancing your character(s), the rate you do things, how many councils you have, and so on. I want you to have fun in your corner of the game, just as I want to have fun in mine, and that means you being able to play the way you want to play.

I want to play the way I want to play. I only play alts in games where skill trees or classes are locked to characters. If a MMO has 10 classes and I want to play half of them, I'll level 5 alts. The same with crafts. But I don't *like* alts. Alts are a necessary evil in those games to get to the content/powers I want to experience.

I got behind Project Gorgon because the skill system is designed to slightly favor single characters. I can get all "content" on one toon. I'm *so sick* of alts and I don't think I'll play on a new MMO where I need to alt to get my content. By tying all of the sunk-cost play benefits to characters (things like work orders, favor gains, storage), there's this back-door pressure to alt/mule. Having come into the game thinking "I've finally found a game where I don't need to alt", and discovering I do need to alt after all is very frustrating.

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Originally Posted by cratoh

5. Muling is part of practically every game I've ever played. People who play a lot always seem to end up doing it. I'd rather it stayed.

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You'd *rather* mule? Really? You'd *really* prefer to log in/out to get to your things, drop stuff on the ground in obscure corners, and make notes in a text file or the in-game notepad on where you stored that one stack of needed items?

You'd rather do the muling dance than have a well-designed storage system that allows you to put everything you need on the character(s) that need it? You know what you like better than I do, but I suspect you wouldn't "rather" mule than have a better storage system. I think you'd "rather" mule than have the storage system we have now without mules.

People mule because newer MMO game devs repeatedly design storage systems that *require* it. In the early days of MMOs storage limits were designed in general so everyone (even crafters) had enough storage for their role. Crafting systems were designed differently (as far as the ratio between the number of pieces needing to be stored and the amount of storage you had). Games that weren't built this way collapsed because in a subscription-based economy a single account had to have everything a player 'needed' to play.

The newer systems we're all used to now come from F2P. Monetize everything. Want a mount? Buy it. Want storage? Buy it, one row/tab at a time. Want content? Buy the zones in a handful of mini-packs. It's an entrenched part of MMO culture. F2P (and B2P) works off the theory that there are things the devs know you need and they deliberately give you "less than" what you need to the the point that you feel at least a little bit uncomfortable playing. Then you give them money to release the tension of that discomfort (buying it in the cash shop), or stubbornly making yourself more uncomfortable by going through the incredibly annoying process of setting up multiple mules for "free" (or the one-off B2P price).

There will always be compulsive/OCD-ish packrats who must own "everything", but they're a tiny portion of the population, even for MMO players. Getting to the state where "people who play a lot always seem to end up doing it" is because storage is one of the two *easiest* ways to extract more money out of players (the other is experience gains).

The devs here at PG didn't (and still don't) "have" to create systems that push people into muling/alt-ing. They chose to do this. At any time they can also choose to extend the existing systems so the various "sunk cost" benefits apply to be account-wide, and then give players the genuine freedom to play the way they like.

In the future, they can sell extra character slots in the store. The more slots you have, the more "whatever" advantage you have. Then, the people who put the most strain on the game are paying for it.

And for those who don't want to pay extra? They're at least getting the benefits they paid for on their single account without the annoying mule/alt dance.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

1-make the vendor stalls cheaper but limit the types of items. For example if the room says "Potions" you can't place armors and weapons in your shop. Even NPCs refuse to consign certain items. Imo this system would encourage specialized shops, thus specialized crafts (not necessarily a craft like leatherworking or tailoring but also surveying, gardening etc).

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I don't necessarily like the idea of forcing people to limit their shops. I saw a suggestion elsewhere in this thread that the shop tables should display the contents of the shop, and I liked that.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

The stalls are currently too chaotic to find anything and there's no price competition when you simply have to check every single stall for a certain gem you eventually give in and buy it at 250 cause you don't have time to search ALL the shops.

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I'd like a way to *search* all the shops while only being able to *buy* at the specific shop table.

This provides a benefit to both buyers and sellers.

Citan wants to protect sellers from a central Auction House system. AH's (in general) drive prices down (the lowest price wins the sale).

Without aggregating selling information, it's difficult to find price (or inventory) information. Also, inexperienced sellers have no idea what to sell their items for.

So, by listing the items available in a central place, it helps give people the information they need to make the buying choices they want, but you still have to pick it up at the tables (so geography still "matters").

When we eventually have vendor tables in other cities this will still protect regional sellers.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

2-remove the stalls kept for storage. If a stall is empty (the content is not shown) that stall should be closed. Maybe with a penalty for using it as storage room.

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I'd rather the storage system be overhauled so that people don't feel the need to use vendors for storage, rather than punishing people for using them.

I do think if you insist on using a vendor for storage the stall should appear closed. Also, storage vendors should automatically relocate to the far back corner of the merchant area -- prime selling areas near the doors in/out should be reserved for people actually selling stuff.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

3-remove the option to sell things to certain NPCs or/and lower their money pool.

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I like the NPC vendors and I wouldn't want them to significantly change in function (other than to perhaps find a way to limit the amount of new money they inject into the economy).

Maybe part of a NPC's cash pool comes from money you've given them to buy stuff they sell (so that swapping alts wouldn't make a difference because the alt wouldn't have given them money either?)

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

4-remove work orders or account lock them just like player stalls, per account. I lvled crafts w/o work orders and it's doable. At the moment it only creates inflation and forces people into exploiting the system.Related, next point

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I'd like to see work orders account locked.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

5-don't allow dualboxing/multiboxing on multiple accounts for muling or any other purpose. One account should be enough. Let me detail why before anyone flames and the topic gets locked.

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I agree 100% with the sentiment behind this. Instead of trying to hunt down and punish people who multibox, the devs should adjust systems so there's no "perceived need" to.

By setting all the passive unlocks that come from councils, favor, or play time (*OTHER THAN SKILLS*) to be account-wide, and then selling additional character slots on a single account for real $$$, there's *NO LEGITIMATE REASON* for a single player to multibox.

I wrote more about this in a previous post in this thread.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

6-Increase/adjust some of the prices. My idea is adjust the face value for really valuable items like stomachs and apply point no 1 to create competitive pricing.

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I'd like the items with badly coded drop rates to be fixed (like stomachs). Items that are meant to be rare should be properly priced (like poetry books).

Then, after this is all fixed, I'd like prices adjusted.

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Originally Posted by Khaylara

7-Also needed-decrease the amount of gear drops but increase their value.

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I agree. I'd like less trash loot and more cash payment for the trash loot we get.

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Originally Posted by Eachna

I'd like to see work orders account locked.

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Do you mean lock the turn-ins? Because locking the work-orders to an account wouldn't stop the alt-itis.

And I like that I can pick up and trade the orders when I fail at them.

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Originally Posted by Crissa

Do you mean lock the turn-ins? Because locking the work-orders to an account wouldn't stop the alt-itis.

And I like that I can pick up and trade the orders when I fail at them.

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Yes, I mean turning them in by account. Right now you can turn in one specific work order per 30 days per character. So if you have 4 characters you can turn in 4 of that work order per month but you have to cycle through and log in each character to do so.

If we instead had it locked to the number of character slots, and an account had 4 slots, then one character could hand in all 4, or two characters could hand in 2 each, etc.

How do you fail at a work order?

Citan wants to protect sellers from a central Auction House system. AH's (in general) drive prices down (the lowest price wins the sale).


Im going to assume you know what your talking about on this one. And I am wracking my brain to the logic behind this. So lets keep prices artificially high so that people are either going to A: pay artificially inflated prices over a working AH or B) are more inclined to farm it themselves rather than go thru the hassle of searching thru player vendors, which ironically enough will alienate customers so the vendors make less money.

seems like circular thinking to me

-shrug- im over the whole system ive sent in suggestions, posted ideas, really unless/ until it changes I dont bother with them. To the people that do: have fun your a much more patient person than I am

-Yak

I played dozens of MMOG (maybe 40-50), DAoC, Shadowbane, Vanguard, WoW, Anarchy, Neocron, Face of Mankind, Age of Conan, Auto Assault, City of Heroes, Seed, Leelh... and a long list with them, since 1999.

I've never used mules. I HATE "muling". I can reroll a lot, i don't care, to play something new, different, etc, but the simple idea to "mule with an alt" always repulsed me. My toon should be sufficient to have a fully enjoyable experience. If i need out-of-game trick to play in "good conditions" (map, storage, skills...), i feel the game has some serious broken features.

And about inventory, i feel Gorgon has issues. Too small, too limited, too spread over in different places and access, too clunky to manage...

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Originally Posted by Yaksnot

Citan wants to protect sellers from a central Auction House system. AH's (in general) drive prices down (the lowest price wins the sale).


Im going to assume you know what your talking about on this one. And I am wracking my brain to the logic behind this. So lets keep prices artificially high so that people are either going to A: pay artificially inflated prices over a working AH or B) are more inclined to farm it themselves rather than go thru the hassle of searching thru player vendors, which ironically enough will alienate customers so the vendors make less money.

seems like circular thinking to me

-shrug- im over the whole system ive sent in suggestions, posted ideas, really unless/ until it changes I dont bother with them. To the people that do: have fun your a much more patient person than I am

-Yak

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Yep, I can confirm Citan doesn't intend to implement an auction house ever (he stated that several times in the past). So we kinda need the player stalls more organized at least by categories of items or with a proper search function.

Yay so happy we won't have an auction house and we will keep those stalls. I love that idea as it reminds me more of how DAOC was done (but with houses not stalls) and I had sooooooooooooo much fun in DAOC running around the neighborhoods shopping directly from the houses.

It was a good way to see peoples creations on their houses AND shop for good stuff. And guilds could sell stuff like that too. That was the best system I've ever seen but this one is a good runner up.

I would like a better way of remembering where everything is, though. Maybe your client could save the stores you've seen, and the search function could work locally, though that? Like, business cards or something we could collect. We wouldn't know there was new things, but it would be a start.