Economy Suggestion - Server needs help!

[Cetra]

Even tho I looked like as I have something agains you @Epic , thank you your calm response.

My main ideology was, that people are just stupid, that's why market is jumping now. Like they are selling Regrade Braziers constantly for 50s 1c, which is after AH cut is less than vendor price. It always amazed me.
I was a bit angry, because all I hear all day on trade chat that ,,people don't have gold", and things like that. Meanwhile it's just that all the old players want to buy items (like Serendipity Stone) cheap from new players, and trick them. That's what I don't like.
I don't know about you guys, but my gold hasn't halved under the last 2 weeks, so have no idea why everyone is stating there is no gold ingame now, after bots got banned. Were you all operating those bots?

Btw 1-2 hours ago credits were again above 1200 on AH. Thank you Sloth.

Yea they pulled out the big gun costume and sloth to get the cash shop moving again, might help a little but not sure what if anything people will freak out over and want after this. Financially, busting sloth & chimera was smart at this point in time.

 

[Justcuz]

It's late for me atm and I'm kinda laughing here cause credits are dropping in price now. Lot's of people going for glider this time. I'm curious to see how low credits will go with the over supply of em. Good time to grab all the cheap materials ;3. Also GL to everyone going for sloth!

 

[Rebel1]

(snip)

My main ideology was, that people are just stupid, that's why market is jumping now...
I was a bit angry, because all I hear all day on trade chat that ,,people don't have gold", and things like that...
I don't know about you guys, but my gold hasn't halved under the last 2 weeks, so have no idea why everyone is stating there is no gold ingame now, after bots got banned. Were you all operating those bots?

What a rude reply. I personally am new to this game and never bought gold. On retail I was a crafter and tried to set up a crafting business and swiped a bit to get my set-up and BOOM... market crash, no one is buying anything, I go bankrupt listing the same items over and over even at ridiculous prices which would barely cover the cost of mats... and still things don't sell. Dude, crafting on this server is dead. The problem no one seems to be evaluating is that XL as a company undercut their own game with gold-selling teams. The game was designed to be a harsh gold sink, with things deliberately high cost, such as regrading, and regrade fail ratio, etc... precisely to drain the gold which the Korean version deliberately inflated. Once you have a hard ban on bots... and I'm no fan of bots.... the game is so designed that only a trickle of gold is coming in. People defeated that on retail by making an army of alt accounts. Here we cannot. There's simply more gold being destroyed by DESIGN then generated. If they are going to do a hard ban on bots and gold-sellers fine... but they have to fix the core game design as well, and increase the gold which enters into the game. RNG boxes and credits don't fix the gold problem... and this is for ordinary players and irrespective of those gold millionaires who bought gold and then hoarded it and haven't got caught... or launder it through credit selling at knock down prices.

 

[Jareth]

While I agree that something needs to be done, I personally don't think the idea in this thread is the best idea.

What this idea will do is it will see whales buying top end item from other whales. This is obviously good for whles, but it is not good for the game, nor the games economy.

The backbone of any economy is the anonomus worker. In Archage, that is the farmers, the traders, the fishermen, the coinpurse openers. The proposed solution will totally circumvent these people.

Any solution to fix the games economy absolutely needs to be done at this level, not at the whale level.

The proposed solution would work well if the "trickle down effect" was real, but it has never been observed to work. The "trickle up effect", however (where you work to improve the lot of those at the bottom, which in turn pushes those at the top even higer) has been proven to work hundreds of times over.

 

[Andrew Wade]

there are many different ways to make gold in this game from gathering to crafting to trading to farming mobs the only time "the economy drops" is when a player gets so stuck into one way of making money that they asume theres no point in doing anything else.

my wife and i started playing AR less then 2 weeks ago and already have multiple properties a healthy income and plenty of ways to make gold,(and in addition to our properties and supplies over 3k gold on hand at this moment).

and we havent spent a cent of real world money on the game either.

the game is set up so that you can either invest time or money that has always been the principal of archeage before it ever left korea.

you always have to have a back up on your back up thats the way the world works both in game and out, and if someone isnt willing to exercise there creativity in order to find out how they arent going to succeed thats all there is to it.

dont blame the game and definitely dont blame the devs they are doing an amazing job for both the p2w and the f2p players and honestly if they did anything else to the trade and crafting system to make it easier on the players they would have to break the game.

so devs please dont destroy what is a great game in order to coddle those players that dont want to put in any effort at all.

 

[andreal cen]

a while ago, before donation is still easy to do for everyone. 100 credits is only 20-40g. everything seems to be fine and went up to 100-200g when trion shut downed this game donation system. i think the problem is ppl got fixated on how gold flows in this game especially ppl buy credits for real money.

 

[drxela]

To regulate economy, you must not "force" change, like putting something on general merchant, or on credit shop. Best way to randomly break the economy.

Instead, you must do event to regulate the money/item flow.
Too much money : regrade event
Too much item on AH : gold event
Since one month, the number of new players (with transfer rewards) raised : those players need nothing, get easy gold, and farm mats more than they need (since they already have celestial obsi, etc). So offer > demand. Since offer raise, price lower. If you inject some gold in the economy, then more people gonna buy items, and price will rise a bit. And items will be distributed to everyone. Then, one month later, do a regrade event to flush the extra gold.

Economy is a constant up&down at end.

SO : what about a "traderun frenzy" : one week event with 2x gold profit on pack, 3x on sunken ship, extra gold/prize for charcoal/dragon run (2x charcoal would just give more offer, so drop the price), etc ? This will boost traderunning and pirating for one week, adding gold in economy

 

[CheburashkaNinja]

I am going to drop in my 2 cents into this thread.

IMO the only reason behind the economy state is not the fact that the population is low or there's any less buying power. The reason is because, frankly, there is very little that people can acquire for credits apart from cosmetic items, mounts or gliders.

The main driver behind the whaling on Trino and Mail.ru is the fact that you can use credits to buy Patron. With that out of the way on this server, we must look into introducing something apart from cosmetics that can benefit the F2P gold makers and the whales that sell credits on the market.

What I suggest is introducing an optional item, called "Покровительство сиоль" in Russia, for credits only:

https://aa.mail.ru/news/313005.html

This item, if consumed, allows for the following benefits over a month period:

* 100% XP recovered if you die from NPCs
* +10000 points to every craft
* 5% more profit from turning in packs
* -25% to auction house fees
* +2 to honor points for PVP kills during Sieges
* +8 honor points for PVP kills during Wars (+2 in leech mode)
* +15 to honor points for all arena wins
* +5 to honor points for all arena draws or losses
* +50 to honor points for winning the 12-man battle (not sure we will need this)
* +10 to honor for draw or loss in the 12-man battle (not sure we will need this)

Alternatively, we can introduce an item that gives an optional +5000 to the limit to Labor points you can have for a period of 30 days (standard with Patron on Mail.ru) and an additional 5% bonus for pack turn-in.

What do we get out of this? Well, first, we get whales selling credits (donating the money for support of the server) and F2Pers buying them to make more gold using the extra labor limit and pack turn-in incentive.

I may get slammed for saying this, but it's the truth it is inevitable.

 

[Tiptoe]

I'm not going to slam you Cheb, I think that's a terrific idea!

IMO the only reason behind the economy state is not the fact that the population is low or there's any less buying power. The reason is because, frankly, there is very little that people can acquire for credits apart from cosmetic items, mounts or gliders.

I think you're right, people are flooding the market with credits (trying to earn gold), but there's nothing to buy with them (so the prices are crashing). But if there was an item like you've suggested, then I for one would probably buy it (just for the +10k to crafting proficiencies).

'Limited time/Rentable' market place items is something I hadn't considered. But I think it's a great idea. Unlike the official servers, where you MUST earn gold to buy Patron (thereby turning you into a slave to the game) your idea is entirely optional.

What about things like rentable cars or ships? Would that be taking things too far?

 

[Jareth]

I am going to drop in my 2 cents into this thread.

IMO the only reason behind the economy state is not the fact that the population is low or there's any less buying power. The reason is because, frankly, there is very little that people can acquire for credits apart from cosmetic items, mounts or gliders.

The main driver behind the whaling on Trino and Mail.ru is the fact that you can use credits to buy Patron. With that out of the way on this server, we must look into introducing something apart from cosmetics that can benefit the F2P gold makers and the whales that sell credits on the market.

What I suggest is introducing an optional item, called "Покровительство сиоль" in Russia, for credits only:

https://aa.mail.ru/news/313005.html

This item, if consumed, allows for the following benefits over a month period:

* 100% XP recovered if you die from NPCs
* +10000 points to every craft
* 5% more profit from turning in packs
* -25% to auction house fees
* +2 to honor points for PVP kills during Sieges
* +8 honor points for PVP kills during Wars (+2 in leech mode)
* +15 to honor points for all arena wins
* +5 to honor points for all arena draws or losses
* +50 to honor points for winning the 12-man battle (not sure we will need this)
* +10 to honor for draw or loss in the 12-man battle (not sure we will need this)

Alternatively, we can introduce an item that gives an optional +5000 to the limit to Labor points you can have for a period of 30 days (standard with Patron on Mail.ru) and an additional 5% bonus for pack turn-in.

What do we get out of this? Well, first, we get whales selling credits (donating the money for support of the server) and F2Pers buying them to make more gold using the extra labor limit and pack turn-in incentive.

I may get slammed for saying this, but it's the truth it is inevitable.

I'm not going to slam this so much as give honest feedback.

The result of this would be segregating the server in to two distinct groups.

There would be those spending money, selling it for gold, adding that gold to what they earn in game, and gearing up far faster than others. The there would be those spending their time in game to make gold, giving it to the first group in order to get this buff, resulting in them gearing out slower.

Essentially, this idea imports the same issues many of us left Trion servers for.

The way I see it, the devs here have two options. Try to work on the economy itself, or try to turn this server into Trion version 2. I would rather see them work on the actual economy by boosting the base gold generating activities - turning this server in to the game we all knew Archeage proper could have been when we were beta testing Trion's version.

Having a day a week each where fishing, commerce and larceny have increased profits would go a very long way towards fixing the issues.

 

[Tiptoe]

Having a day a week each where fishing, commerce and larceny have increased profits would go a very long way towards fixing the issues.

I agree with you Jareth. This would be the best solution. But I can understand why the Dev's are focused on increasing the value of credits. Cause if people stop buying credits then that's the end of the server.

 

[kyleran]

Since larceny is classified as bot profession here, would it be possible to increase trade packs gold value by 20-30% ? Like for week or two ? Make it like an event.

BTW I have 180K+ larceny, Someone please purify exeloch lodestone.

 

[CheburashkaNinja]

I'm not going to slam this so much as give honest feedback.

The result of this would be segregating the server in to two distinct groups.

I disagree. As mentioned, the item is entirely optional to have and provides strictly additional perks, which are not an absolute requirement to have to be productive in-game, unlike Patron.

 

[greatjustice]

@OP
what you are asking for is the ability to just buy gold from the developers instead of gold sellers. Personally I find the game much more interesting without the gold sellers. Now that gold is a little harder and not as quick to make we actually get to see more of the game as XLGames intended. Some positive things are coming out of the lack of gold.

1)People are forced to do more trade runs in PvP areas for the higher profit, which is what I assume what PvPers want and it puts more of a feeling of danger into the game.

2)More people are doing trade runs so now the world looks more active. The only suggestion I would have for the developers is to increase the cap on how many packs are brought in before the price starts to drop

3)People are having to get more creative and find other ways to farm and make money. There are plenty of "how to make Insert amount here of gold per hour" videos. Which might be worth a second look

4) It will bring more people on the ocean to do charcoal runs or fishing for more PvP


But honestly people just want to push the "I win button" without putting in any effort into getting toward any end game goals.

 

[Jareth]

I disagree. As mentioned, the item is entirely optional to have and provides strictly additional perks, which are not an absolute requirement to have to be productive in-game, unlike Patron.

If there is a single month long "buff" put up on the market, it will - by necessity - be either undesired by the vast majority of players and thus ineffective at it's purpose; or it will be desired by the vast majority of players to the point where it is deemed essential.

From my experience, 90% of MMO players have the same tipping point where something goes from being worthless to invaluable. While it would be my argument that this is because many MMO players are sheep following advice of others rather than thinking about things for themselves, that doesn't change the fact that the end result is either a worthless buff, or a segregated population.

However, I perhaps didn't illuminate the point I wanted to make well enough, so I'll put another attempt in at it.

The issue with Arherage's economy at present is it's foundation is shaky. Whether the whales like to admit it or not, all versions of Archeage have their economic foundation in people doing trade runs for gold, sport fishing and opening coin purses. While it may be the whale blowing through 100k gold making top tier items, that gold was generated by those trade runs, fishermen and purse openers.

Anything sold from one player to another is at least one step removed from the economic foundation of the game - and that includes selling marketplace items on the AH. Before anyone can buy those credits or that new buff, someone needs to generate the gold. Trade runs for gilda or charcoal are also a step removed from the economic foundation of Archeage, as they produce items to sell to other players (or use) rather than generating new gold.

I am actually all for adding a few new worthwhile things to the marketplace. Rather than one buff that would be considered either pointles or invaluable though, I'd rather see a series of smaller (and thus cheaper) buffs that players can pick between boosting PvP gains, boosting PvE gains, booting yields to an individual primary proficiency (gathers, farming etc), various things like that. If there are multiple to chose from, each with a very defined use case, and where players can only ever have active for the duration of said buff, none of them would ever be able to be considered invaluable, but all could be considered useful and worthwhile.

However, until something is done to fix the actual economic foundation of this server, there is no point in trying to build up the walls.

 

[Tiptoe]

The issue with Arherage's economy at present is it's foundation is shaky. Whether the whales like to admit it or not, all versions of Archeage have their economic foundation in people doing trade runs for gold, sport fishing and opening coin purses. While it may be the whale blowing through 100k gold making top tier items, that gold was generated by those trade runs, fishermen and purse openers.

Anything sold from one player to another is at least one step removed from the economic foundation of the game - and that includes selling marketplace items on the AH. Before anyone can buy those credits or that new buff, someone needs to generate the gold. Trade runs for gilda or charcoal are also a step removed from the economic foundation of Archeage, as they produce items to sell to other players (or use) rather than generating new gold.

Well said Jareth! You've hit the nail on the head. We desperately need to inject more gold into the economy. Until people can afford to start buying stuff again, the economy is going to stay in a bad way.

As it is, prices (and demand) have fallen so far that it's just not worth my time to farm or craft anymore. So I'm going to take a break from the game for awhile and wait to see if the economy picks up again.

But unfortunately, I think there are more people who would rather just buy their gold for real money than actually work for it in game. Trade Runs, Fishing and Coin Purse Farming are just too much effort for them. So unless these activities are made much more appealing (and rewarding) I don't see much changing in the future

 

[Bringer]

The server doesn't need more gold injected into it artificially.
That is what caused the massive price inflation in the first place.

Your items are still valueable, your gold is actually more valuable now than it was before, which is why the price is dropping. This might seem counter intuitive: how can my gold be worth more money if the prices are lowering? Because the excess, artificial gold is leaving the economy. The big ticket prices you were used to were being propped up by fake gold. Now that the fake gold is gone, you are starting to see the true value of items. People are saying "Deflation" which is technically true, but only to a point. It would be akin to a country

They do not, and should not, inject more gold into the game just to prop up the high selling price of high-end items. Especially not now when people are panicing, that is the worst time to make a big economic decision.

Keep in mind the make up of your game community. Most people who could afford a 40k Ayanad item, already have it. A new player is not going to be buying a 40k Ayanad item. Likewise, people aren't going to be buying as many low-ticket items as Azaleas or Corn on the Auction House, since at this point in the Server's lifespan most players already have access to an Upgraded Farmhouse and can easily produce those items themselves.

Go contest Abyssal Kraken or Delphinad Ghost Ships if you want E Z Gold.


Now, if they did something to slightly increase the amount of gold that can be earned through trade packs, fishing, and coin purses - that would be great. That would reward players who actively and actually play the game, rather than buy currency, and would get more people out into the world to interact with each other. Any 'solution' that prioritizes buying and selling credits on the Auction House isn't going to make the game healthier or the economy healthier as credits do not create gold, it's only going to feed RNG regrade addictions.

 

[Zinwowee]

@OP
what you are asking for is the ability to just buy gold from the developers instead of gold sellers. Personally I find the game much more interesting without the gold sellers. Now that gold is a little harder and not as quick to make we actually get to see more of the game as XLGames intended. Some positive things are coming out of the lack of gold.

1)People are forced to do more trade runs in PvP areas for the higher profit, which is what I assume what PvPers want and it puts more of a feeling of danger into the game.

2)More people are doing trade runs so now the world looks more active. The only suggestion I would have for the developers is to increase the cap on how many packs are brought in before the price starts to drop

3)People are having to get more creative and find other ways to farm and make money. There are plenty of "how to make Insert amount here of gold per hour" videos. Which might be worth a second look

4) It will bring more people on the ocean to do charcoal runs or fishing for more PvP


But honestly people just want to push the "I win button" without putting in any effort into getting toward any end game goals.

so very wrong, you forgot that for X duration where gold buying was extremely easy and cheap, so many players took advantage of this and achieved a level of gear that wasn't previously possible. Nowadays, if you are a new player; you have zero catch up mechanics in place that mean anything. you cant just have something in the market (in this case gold buying for 2$ per k) and then remove it without causing an extreme gear gap. The only thing they have accomplished is making it harder for newer players to get to a competitive level, or rather cost more. You are correct in saying that there is no push this button to win, but you forget there previously was, and as gear does not go away, the only thing you accomplish is discouraging new players.

the solution - better catch up mechanics, there's plenty of ideas out there. just implement something for the newer players. (Trion did it already)

 

[CheburashkaNinja]

so very wrong, you forgot that for X duration where gold buying was extremely easy and cheap, so many players took advantage of this and achieved a level of gear that wasn't previously possible.

This times thousand.

 

[Velorra]

the solution - better catch up mechanics, there's plenty of ideas out there. just implement something for the newer players. (Trion did it already)

They won't. I suggested they boost the stats on Celestial to make it worth wearing and got met with a glorious "the game was designed for Celestial to be worthless to make you want to spend money jumping from Unique to Divine and break at Celestial". So if boosting subpar gear is off the table, nothing will be done to fix the gear gap. Giving all players money will only increase the gear gap, as will modifying regrade rates. The only thing that can reliably fix the gear gap for new players is to make lower tiers of gear worth wearing and they won't do that.