On stimulating the Economy

[AamerKhan]

You know how it goes...

it seems that eveyone is able to make any gear or weapon, they have collected over the years of play, all techs and forms. They are a veritable cornucopia of skills.

A new or returning player asks in Market Place, if anyone can make them a new set of cargo gear or some weapon... then asks again, and again, and finally on of the master crafters agrees to help them, but will accept NO money in return.

I myself used to do that very thing. My thoughts were as follows. Sine I am high level, I sure don't need the coin, and they really don't have the coin, so I will be kind and just give it to them. I felt I was being generous by doing this.

But now, I have changed my mind.

You see, we old timers have had plenty of time to build up our money. We were privileged to participate in the economy. But today, those that are totally new or are returning after a long absence, are not so lucky.

There IS a market for them to be a part of, but not if we continue to give everything away. Some will say that it's too late to help this economy, and it's not worth the bother. But those people are established and have many skills.

When we flood the NT connie with items we DO help the new players avoid frustration, but at the same time we are removing their chance to make the items themselves and make much needed coin.

So here is an idea. Why not encourage all your newer players in your guild to be the ones stocking the NT connie. Lets teach them what to do and get them to participate in the economy. Let's stop taking away their chance to make a profit.

Opinions? comments?

[Guaran]

Sounds good to me. As long as they can supply the demand. Likely a mix of both new crafters and old crafters would work best. With the old crafters filling in the holes.

[LOVWYRM]

sounds like a good idea to me!

[Xyndro]

What I have done in the past when I stocked the consigners is place the items at higher then normal price for the item. That way it gave the low level players a chance to undercut my prices with thier own products while at the same time making sure the connie had goods to sell.

[StalePopcorn]

What I have done in the past when I stocked the consigners is place the items at higher then normal price for the item. That way it gave the low level players a chance to undercut my prices with thier own products while at the same time making sure the connie had goods to sell.

That's a good idea Xy. What prices have you been putting on? Might be worthwhile to have some sort of standard "high price" for goods. Like 1s for T1 unteched items, 2s for T2? I just chose those numbers because it is just one or two clicks on the money counter when selling the items

High prices for new players, but if it means people that "really want it right now" can save to buy it, and new crafters can easily undercut for the first 2 tiers.

[Dhalin]

The problem with lowbies trying to make stuff to sell, is that it is too often too difficult for a lowbie to actually make stuff.

It takes a ridiculous amount of materials (and is oftentimes impossible to place techs on it) until you vastly out-level the item you're making (except for basic tools).

For example, by the time you can make a Platemail Chestguard, you're halfway into Tier 2 unless you're sporting some pretty nice +Armorcraft gear and/or using Expert shop machines.

Cargo Disks and Cargo Gear require Tinkerer, something nearly everyone knows to level _last_ because of the deconstruction woes of having to use a bronze or training awl and deconning everything one at a time (which takes up huge chunks of time).

What else is there to make that people actually buy? From my experiences, most people want tech'd armor and again, it is difficult for a lowbie to tech anything (due to a low level to go out and get the items needed for such techs), and so on and so forth.

Lowbies could really use some money, I think we all agree on that.

Cash is too hard to come by for the lowbies and too easy to get for T5 players. This isn't a playerbase fault, this is a game design flaw. Tier 5 mobs drop too much money/sellable items, Tiers 1-3 drop too little.

Even if the lowbies were churning out T1-2 armor/weapons/tools, just how much do you expect them to sell it for, that other lowbies could actually afford? 100c? 100c barely covers a teleport for a Lv25 character. Anything above 500c is too expensive for the T1-2 player. It can take hours just to get a couple silver if your highest school is <20.

Another Design Flaw: They made the Beginner and Jman Forms way too expensive.

Nobody <Lv60 has 300s+ to blow on forms.

[StalePopcorn]

The idea isn't for crafters to make lots of items (except for miners/gatherers), but for them to be able to make money from it. To tech an item you need the skill to create the item plus (going from memory) 10 skill points per tech you are adding.

For your example, the chestguard would be halfway into Tier 2 but you are trying to make money off it, not xp off it. So the difficulty to make the goods should be reflected in the cost to the purchaser.

(going OT here)
The problem isn't that there is no market - it's more a case of not knowing what there is a market for. Unless someone specifically asks on MP/chats/tells/in-game requests, how do you know there is a requirement for goods? You can only look at connies to see if items that were there one day are not there the next.

[Dhalin]

The idea isn't for crafters to make lots of items (except for miners/gatherers), but for them to be able to make money from it. To tech an item you need the skill to create the item plus (going from memory) 10 skill points per tech you are adding.

It is more than 10 points. I think it is more like 20 or 30, or, it goes by tier. I remember trying to put Tool Socketing on a Tool that I was barely able to make. I used an expert machine, and it went from halfway into the bar to barely having a sliver left after attempting to put 2 sockets on 1 tool. I'm thinking it is 20 per.

For your example, the chestguard would be halfway into Tier 2 but you are trying to make money off it, not xp off it. So the difficulty to make the goods should be reflected in the cost to the purchaser.

My point was, to even make a platemail chestguard, they have to first get the form (which cannot be purchased now, another design flaw. The 'higher recipes' in each tier are drop-only) which will likely take either a lot of tokens dumped into the robots, or they have to adventure (so the game requires you to adventure now, heh) or get extremely lucky and find it on the consigner. Either way, acquiring forms is pretty difficult for the newbie.

Can't make something without the form, can you? Even the beginner forms are kinda expensive. And what exactly can a newbie make others would want? Tools? If everyone is doing tools, then everyone can make their own tools, thus destroying the market on it anyways.

(going OT here)
The problem isn't that there is no market - it's more a case of not knowing what there is a market for. Unless someone specifically asks on MP/chats/tells/in-game requests, how do you know there is a requirement for goods? You can only look at connies to see if items that were there one day are not there the next.

Well, one can use common sense. What does EVERY newbie need?

1). Cargo Disks.
2). Cargo Gear.
3). Tools.
4). Weapons.
5). Armor.

#1 and #2 are quite difficult for the newbie to learn how to make, and they are only hurting themselves in the long run because of the deconstruction stuff that really should be fixed somehow. #3 everyone can make with a few levels invested in Blacksmithing. #4 would come with the said Blacksmithing levels, and #5... well, maybe. But then they are likely to get a guildie to make it for them, for free.

I don't think a Market is really what we're after here. Given the fact that Tiers 1-3 are so easy to work with, for anyone who has any levels, any T5 character can go out, whack a node a couple times, and churn out several pieces of T1 untech'd gear. You're not going to create a market in those kind of conditions. The only exception are cargo gear and cargo disks, and we already have a market for those, but not enough people are producing.

Awdz does well enough on order to keep the connie stocked with disks, but I rarely see cargo gear (maybe people slurp it up as soon as it appears?) on the connies, ever. Even *untech'd* cargo gear helps a lot. Also, off-hand bags are helpful too, but I rarely see anything beyond the Lv15 ones.

What we need are tweaks:

1). Slash the prices on the Beginner and Jman forms a little. 20s is too much for a single form for the Level 40 character. That should be no more than 10s.

2). Make ALL forms purchasable. If you want stuff like Platemail, and Fine Weapons to be hard-to-get, fine... but give us a good, decent way to get these without forcing us to adventure or pray every time we check the consigner to yet again, find that there are none up.

2a). Tweak the Robots. Instead of handing out a Random Form for your school, make it pull up a list that looked like the old lore token vendors, depending on your current school. That way we can BUY our forms with Tokens, still.

3). Adjust the Drops. This is a great time to discuss this idea -- they are revamping Tier2. What they need to do, is to make Tiers 1 through 4 drop more money/drops/etc and make Tier5 drop a little less. Tier5 People always say "I got more money than I know what to do with!!" Yet, here at Tier3, it is difficult for me to get any kind of money whatsoever and these absolutely HUGE form bills are causing me to run out of money and having to stop and farm up money -- something that turned me off on other games. We have enough grind in Istaria; grinding up money shouldn't be added ontop of that.

4). Adjust the PB prices on Tier1-4 stuff. Right now, T5 is great for PBing loads of crap that drops for some pretty nice money. Some craftable T4 stuff goes for ridiculous amounts of money (48s for 430 of a certain item? Okaaay) but yet, take Tier1 of that same item and you wouldn't get more than 1-2s, but yet that Tier1 of the same item wouldn't take much less time to make. Make it more gradual and balanced instead of Tier1-2 getting almost nothing, Tier3 giving 'meh', then Tier4 giving 'decent' and Tier5 giving "OMG!" amounts.

[AmonGwareth]

Just a heads up, you have derailed Aamer's thread. His topic was about what can be done NOW, in-game using existing players and items and skills, to stimulate the economy. Not what you believe is wrong with the game. Please return to the original topic or this thread will be cleaned up.

[StalePopcorn]

(Sorry that was my derail. We now return you to your regular programme)

Are there any specific items that are needed we should focus on? I would think T1 + T2 jewelry for health/armor, cargo gear, and tools at a minimum. Weapons too? Does anyone have any feedback from new players on what they have trouble finding?

[AamerKhan]

Full sets of starter gear, tools and spells area very good start.

But we should try to think what helps them take part in the economy not just what helps them in the short term.

I think if we encourage them to make their gear and sell to make money then we high lvl ones wont need to do much and the new players will become participants in a very fun aspect of the game WE all had fun with.

It will go a long way in retaining new players, since they are seeing accomplishment for the efforts they make.

Another idea is to encourage new players to sell the duplicate spells forms they get or any forms they get off the formulatrons on the connie. This way they make coin and help other new players progress and get what they need.

[StalePopcorn]

Sorry Aamer quite right - by "we" I meant new guildies making/selling goods, not high-level Istarians.

I hadn't thought about spells, that's probably more important than almost anything else. Particularly the Rev lines.

[Ry]

I think that having items for sale dropping to the vault after 2 weeks (or however long it is) is the main reason I dont even try to sell items like spells, armour or weapons. The chances that some one is going to want one of those items of a type, techs applied and level during the time it is available on a consignor is quite low (Order shard)
The same applies for cargo gear and jewelry.

Items such as hoard and trophies are usually a better option to sell as many more people want them. Hoard , well any dragon will usually want it though not all will buy. Though there is often a glut of hoard items for sale at times. Any trophies I see usually dont last long, though I dont sell them, I some times buy them.

Potions seem to be quite good to sell, again there are more people that will use them as they are not so dependant on class of character like the armour jewelry etc.

I have tried a few times in the past to sell these items of various types like teched armours and so on ,I would say 90 % of the time maybe more, it returns to my vault and so I have given up on trying to sell those things.

As to making items on request, sometimes I will do it if I happen to be in town at the time and the requestor doesnt take all day to arrive at the workshop/ town. Generally I would prefer to make a selection of items and place them on the connie for sale and let the customers buy it, if it is to thier liking.

One way to make more items like armour, weapons, jewelry and the like available from the consignors would be to remove the time limit on the sale of those items. This would make it more likely that an item of the appropriate type and level and possibly with the desired techs is for sale at the time that someone wants it.