A discussion on unborking the in-game economy

JenniferMarie

Why blaze? It's truly *NOT* the best hue in the game. Not even the best hue on pets. Some EMs do very well with the colors of their mobs ... I'd pay some gold for a few different pets with some really nice hues.

Smoot

Arnold7 said:

I got my seed money selling forged pardons from treasure chests and mysterious fragments when their price was high.  You can also sell drops from events.  But the real gold is in buying and selling.  That might not be true for experienced players that have been playing for twenty years and have a dozen or more accounts, and players good enough to get hundreds of drops at the special events, but it is for most of the rest of us.  Learning how to buy and sell is an as important part of the game as any other.  When I spend the time I make gold.

great post, i feel like most who say the economies broken just arent adjusting to it, or utilizing it efficiently.  no, its not perfect or ideal but never will be.

i was dirt poor for years in UO until i decided i was tired of that and to really try to bank on farming Conjurer's Trinket's during the halloween event i think it was 2008.  even now limited time events are a very easy way for players to make quick gold in decent amounts.  

rares, farming high end pvp gear, crafting, idocs / selling houses, taming pets, or the ever available buy/resell.  lots of different ways to make gold.  for me i got into rares mostly but have to just find something that your good at, thats also profitable.  just like in rl its not a new concept or anything.  ive never bought gold, wouldnt consider myself a "power gamer" like the guys with 20plus accounts.  I have 3.  pretty average.  making 5-10p a month is pretty easy for me now.  fun with friends a few hours a week.  you do have to start somewhere, but with all the UO economy's flaws it seems better than ever for newer / lower gold players.  masteries, global event gear, imbuing and global loot.  its easier and cheaper than ever to gear a character that can do just about everything in the game.  thats kinda what you want to see in a "good" economy.  basics being cheap, un-needed luxuries being really expensive. 

Whitewolf

Helper said:

To get the ball rolling;

Broken mechanism: vendor sell-cap of 175 million gold.

Suggested fix: vendor sell-cap of 1 platinum, as several items are now unsellable on vendors at current market prices.

well except this is a big part of the problem, nothing in this game should be worth a plat except for maybe a castle, gold sellers and gold buyers have made this possible and this is number one reason why the economy is broken.

Urge

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the discontinuing of checks. It was rather hard to buy when you were limited to what your bank could hold. 

Seth

Urge said:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the discontinuing of checks. It was rather hard to buy when you were limited to what your bank could hold. 

Ah Ha! That is the solution!

keven2002

Urge said:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the discontinuing of checks. It was rather hard to buy when you were limited to what your bank could hold. 

I think checks being a thing in the first place might be a reason for inflation if it's true that people were duping bags filled with 124 - 1million checks.

JenniferMarie

I have heard people bragging in recent years about how they would dupe checks "back in the day". So that was most likely the foundation of whatever "problem" exists with the UO economy.

The current state of affairs is just a perfect mix of player greed and developer indifference coupled with developer mistakes.

Perhaps years ago something could have been done to stop dupers and third party RMT sites. Perhaps years ago someone could have paid attention to what some of the unofficial shards were doing and incorporate those people into the developer team for OSI so that the official game could live up to its potential.

We'll never know any of that at this point. I'm not certain we'll ever know unless we get someone in charge to care as much as we do.

popps

Whitewolf said:

Helper said:

To get the ball rolling;

Broken mechanism: vendor sell-cap of 175 million gold.

Suggested fix: vendor sell-cap of 1 platinum, as several items are now unsellable on vendors at current market prices.

well except this is a big part of the problem, nothing in this game should be worth a plat except for maybe a castle, gold sellers and gold buyers have made this possible and this is number one reason why the economy is broken.

Actually, recently on Atlantic I saw in Chat someone advertising selling a Keep, not a Castle, for 25 Platinums....

Good luck finding a Castle for 1P....

Grimbeard

keven2002 said:

Urge said:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the discontinuing of checks. It was rather hard to buy when you were limited to what your bank could hold. 

I think checks being a thing in the first place might be a reason for inflation if it's true that people were duping bags filled with 124 - 1million checks.

Through transfers so yes shut them down and delete all gold

Rocko

You can still dupe in this game?  If that is true, that should get fixed.  Other than that, remove all gold/plats.  People won't quit.

Theo

Grimbeard said:

keven2002 said:

Urge said:

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the discontinuing of checks. It was rather hard to buy when you were limited to what your bank could hold. 

I think checks being a thing in the first place might be a reason for inflation if it's true that people were duping bags filled with 124 - 1million checks.

Through transfers so yes shut them down and delete all gold

Sounds good to me. I don't hold gold - I hold items that I can flip for gold if I need it. 

Deleting gold only hurts those who hold their wealth in gold. I have bags full of ethys that I used my extra gold to buy when they were cheap.  More useful than gold and can always trade them when needed.   

Deleting gold is not the solution - creating gold sinks is the solution.  Insurance is not enough of a gold sink.

Theo

Merus said:

Seth said:

Prices are always driven by supply and demand, period.

This is only half right.  Availability of gold is #1 in the cause of inflation.  If you hold the gold supply constant, prices may change, but that is not inflation… it’s a change in relative value compared to other products in the market.

Yay! A fellow economist has entered the chat.   I was getting frustrated with people equating a change in supply and demand with inflation.   

Inflation is when all prices rise. 

Supply/Demand change is when one item's price rises due to a demand change - like focus scrolls for pets.   The supply of focus scrolls has remained constant in terms of drops per champ and number of champs run.  However, there was little demand for them until the pet changes.  So Focus scrolls going up in price is NOT an inflation issue per se but here it is a supply/demand issue.  

One way to combat these spikes would be for UO/EA/Broadsword to sell Powerscrolls for gold from vendors.   You can either do the champ spawn or buy a 120 scroll for 10m.  That would cap all 120 scroll prices at 10m because you could always just buy one from the UO store for 10m.  This would also create a gold sink here of 10m everytime a scroll is sold. 

I'd be all for this sort of price capping.  You can run all the champs you want but you can't sell any of the 120's for more than 10m.   If you wanna work for your item - have at it. If you want to earn gold other ways and then spend it - done.  You have an option.  

I don't know why we don't have some of these consumables sold with UO/EA vendors.  

keven2002

Theo said:

I'd be all for this sort of price capping.  You can run all the champs you want but you can't sell any of the 120's for more than 10m.   If you wanna work for your item - have at it. If you want to earn gold other ways and then spend it - done.  You have an option.  

I don't know why we don't have some of these consumables sold with UO/EA vendors.  

The consumables aren't sold by UO/EA because that would likely be the final nail in the coffin for UO. Especially if you are talking about strong arming the prices down like making a 120 tactics 10m (currently near 100m).

This will be vague and watered down so apologies for some over simplification but what we have right now is more like a capitalist market where there are goods available on the free market that people can exchange their money for items. If people don't want or can't do X (like run a champ spawn) then they are able to take their money and buy items obtained by others for it. You are suggesting to essentially add a socialist piece where UO (ie governing body) is going to dictate the price of said goods. Now that PS farmer that was running spawns for hours a day with the hopes of getting a few high dollar scrolls will now be capped at a much lower amount per scroll (you said 10m so the PS farmer would get at most 9.9m).

If this were to happen, you would have a good chunk of people (from an already dwindling population) quit the game because it no longer makes sense to farm scrolls or work the roof or do whatever it is that makes money because those activities are what many people do to earn gold but now the UO Store can undercut the price. What you and others fail to realize about UO is that with the amount of powercreep over the last 25 years; people are not hunting dragons for "phat loot" anymore. That ship has long sailed and once you set down that path there is no going back (I know I'd be bored killing dragons for 2k gold).

I'm speaking from firsthand experience here when I say this. I've done just about everything worthwhile in UO and I've earned everything I really need/want at this point so when I actually do play (outside of a new event / content) it's usually something like champ spawn/roof/UW that I can do for an hour or 2 before becoming too bored and it gives me a chance at netting 100m+; which I've currently turned around to use during the last couple events to get some rewards I might not feel like using points on.

If UO store sold all the things people farm for 1/10th of the price, they would no longer have a reason to farm those things unless it was super efficient. For me personally, I'd have no reason to log into the game on a daily basis unless there was brand new content reoccurring all the time (which we've seen already doesn't happen); eventually I'd just turn off my subscription because I wouldn't be logging in for months at a time in between new content... but even then I could just take my current stash of gold and buy all the new items from the UO store and log off for another 6 months. That would definitely be the last straw for me and my UO journey.

I think the REAL problem here is that people currently have way too much time on their hands so they want to solve all of problems they deem UO to have. The REAL solution here is just give us more new content more frequently so that people don't have so much extra downtime to hypothesize the world's problems because they are too busy actually playing the game. 

Rocko

Supply > Demand = Price drops

Supply < Demand = Price increase

Inflation is NOT when all prices rise, however, yes it is possible to have all prices rise.  During the housing bubble, did all prices rise? No.  During the dot com bubble did all prices rise? No.  In both cases there were ripple effects into different sectors of the economy but not an increase in aggregate price.

Inflation can happen if consumer's expectations are that prices will go up.  Inflation will also happen if costs increase (cost-push inflation) and/or demand increases (demand-pull inflation.)  In the case of scrolls you have demand-pull inflation: this happens when you have too many dollars (gold) chasing too few goods (scrolls).

UO's "lender of last resort" is Broadsword and they are not that active in the game (they don't play? Not sure if that is true or not). Perhaps saying they are not that active in the game is not fair but it is my sense of it.  However, the solution will have to come from Broadsword.  I don't see Broadsword getting involved in the game economy, it is lose-lose for them.

Removing gold would work, either delete it or sinks.  People will not sink there gold unless there is some return.  Deleting gold will make people angry.

Price controls would work but where does it stop?  Control the price on housing, cameos, rubble?  Not sure how that would be accomplished.  Having consumables on vendors is a solution for items that can be placed on vendors but in this game you don't need a vendor to complete a transaction so the effect would be limited.