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There's so much love for player-run economies but...
Deathofsage
Member UncommonPosts: 1,102
Now I realize that different games are different but FFXI is a shining example of how player-run economies can be exploited and *can* be the worst part of gameplay.
In FFXI, high-level crafters ran the economy, so much so that it was nearly impossible to cap a craft without buying "gil" (gold). In FFXI each craft had 100 skill levels, and you could rank up off of a synthesis .1, .2, .3, .4, or .5, and often times, the higher you got, a synth wouldn't rank you at all. A good drop that you could go farm solo or with a friend often didn't sell for very well or there was so much competition...
I'm not creating this thread to whine about the economy in a game too difficult to explain in a few words. I'm saying that I, for one, appreciate games where having gold is nice, with worthwhile crafted options, even where crafted options are superior, but I can equally appreciate where things are controlled by drops.
Farming (here specifically being farming the same weak mobs for drops to NPC or auction house) doesn't stay fun for very long and player-run economies are carefully controlled by the players to make farming, or buying gold (generally a TOS violation, and always an immersion-breaker), the only option to continue your existence in the game.
There's so much love on these forums for this old feature or that old feature (and I share a lot of that love like in fearsome worlds, death penalties, non-instant travel, strong communities, forced group play/not-strong-solo) but I don't understand love for games where even everyday players are suppressed by a controlled auction house/market place. I don't understand love for non-soulbound gear (as far as boss drops) because I'd rather the player be part of the group that earned it, than gone off to buy gold (or felt forced to buy gold) to get into the gear.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Comments
lots of people do different things to pay for lvling up their crafting. it sounds like you just don't know how to make money so you buy gold.
i played that piece of crap game for a month, and even i knew how to make easy money.
Never played it, but I have never played a MMO where the player run economy was stifling to anyone, and where if you didn't want to pay for stuff, you couldn't easily enough make your own crafter.....I just don't get the reference though, since I didn't play the game. I think in a good player economy, people should be free to just play/adventure if they wish, and they easily earn enough for gear...Then people that wish to just craft or both have plenty to do also. I believe in gear decay, and while it is nice, I do not like stuff that makes things invulnerable to decay/loss...It usually kills crafting/economy flow imo.
It sounds like he is upset that the established crafters make higher quality gear, and he can't sell his mediocre gear that he gets while grinding ot master level. Oh well... Another example of things being too hard for a casual player.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
In most games ive seen so far, you can only craft armour and weapons that are only so good. Better items otherwise have to be attained from raiding or killing high level mobs. Crafting takes alot of time and money to level up, so i agree witht the person who replied before me. let the crafter charge what they want. No one forces you to buy crafted armor, you can always make it yourself or go kill for something better if you wanted. Thats the great thing about a player driven economy is, you can participate and have some fun and make some money at it....or you can not have anything to do with it and just go level up and kill for your armor. You can have fun either way.
If loot dropped items are better then crafted items then you can not have a player driven economy.
Um... you can't go kill for better gear in a player driven economy. Please please please... Know what you're tlaking about before you chime in.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Ahh, ok thanks, yeah that is the pain, but it makes it worth it when you get to their level...I usually just craft for my characters,guild, and play the market very little in MMOs...I am more apt to sell raw materials that i have a surplus on, then finished goods in MMOs for the most part.
Actually, it sounds more like a case of yet again poor crafting design/game economy that can't make mid-level gear relevant and useful. A game such as EVE has no such issues.
Stop blaming the players for not wanting to do things that are boring, pointless and stupid.
You get no medals for managing to persevere through this BS.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
so you are saying that games with player driven economys have no monster or mobs in the game what so ever?? its just a big marketing sim mmo? Ive played games where the good stuff was not tradeable and you could not sell it. and the craftable sellable gear is not quite as good. but i guess since we are talking about marketing sims its all good, sorry your right.....
Um... you can't go kill for better gear in a player driven economy. Please please please... Know what you're tlaking about before you chime in.
so you are saying that games with player driven economys have no monster or mobs in the game what so ever?? its just a big marketing sim mmo? Ive played games where the good stuff was not tradeable and you could not sell it. and the craftable sellable gear is not quite as good. but i guess since we are talking about marketing sims its all good, sorry your right.....
No, but the mobs don't drop finished goods, they might for example drop resources, ie bone for a mages staff or gut, to make bowstring, or skin for armour. The fighters would then sell this on the market for gold. The crafters would buy it and craft it into goods of varying quality depending on their skill and then sell that on the market for gold. And thus the economy revolves. The wow equivalent is you kill a boss and get a purple, in a Player economy, the boss drops a rare resource that the crafter will sell his granny to buy for a shitload of gold which you use to buy better equipment.Looted weapons and items are just not as good as crafted items in player driven economy games. Perhaps some VERY rare weapons and items excluded or rare dropped parts for crafting. Mostly dropped items and weapons are sold to NPC junk dealers or are nice for a beginning low level player who doesn't have much money.
At least that is how Star Wars Galaxies did it.
(not a lot of those games around I think)
FFXI is a good example but also a bad one. It's economy was run by Japanese that had a year head start on everyone else and by players that engaged in RMT to catch up.
As a 100+3 Smither, it was virtually impossible to make any profit on actual crafts. I made most of my money exploiting the people that bought gold to power craft and sold them overpriced materials. The problem only compounded itself with all the new crafters.
I'm just no longer a fan of such an economy after seeing the extremes people will go to in order to monopolize. Too real life for me. I like to get away from that crap when i play.
Just because a good idea can be implemented badly does not automatically make it a bad idea. Any idea can be implemented badly.
If you want a player-driven economy with a heavy dependence on crafting, then you'd better have a good crafting system. A mundane system of, click a button once to make an item, and make a thousand junk items before you can build the stuff you actually want, is not a good crafting system.
See Puzzle Pirates for a player-driven economy without the grinding.
You could probably cut and paste the highlighted line in just about 3 out of 4 threads in these forums I think.
Pure gold.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
That's incorrect.
It's a point of players, through coordination with other players (ie: making sure things cost such an absurd amount of gold) keeping the rest of the community out. Between RMT/CGF competition and poor execution of anti-RMT/CGF tactics, there wasn't much in the game worth farming. The game's casuals bought gil only so they didn't feel like farming was all they did.
I did fine in the game, but I never did cap a craft. I got a few crafts to 70-80 and made consumables like ninja tools, potions, and food.
FFXI is the only game I've experienced with a real player-run economy and as it was executed poorly/mismanaged so as to stonewall new players out of it, I don't have a lot of faith in player-run economies. Obviously, others here do like them so I'm curious what people have seen that make them great.
* Should point out each character could take all crafts to 60, and had basically 40 points after 60 that could be spread to the crafts above 60. So you could have 5 crafts at 60, 1 at 100, or 4 at 60, 2 and 80 (1 at 90, 1 at 70.. you get it).
Some of the best pieces in the game, most of them, required a high main crafting skill (like Goldsmithing 100) and a supplementary skill like Bonecraft 55, and sometimes a few supplementary skills.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
Star Wars Galaxies ahd a great player ran economy. The loot you got never was comparable to the crafted stuff until the NGE hit. In that game a low level crafter could still make money by supplying parts to bigger projects. The dedicated crafters like my old guild leader who had 8 accounts were the power players though. Just like in real life economy the people who are established and have a popular product tower over the dollar store brand cheap knock offs.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
Thus, implementation is what counts.
SWG is a good example of a player economy spiralling out of control. I played from launch til the NGE dropped and during that time had a really good feel for what most items should cost. Fast forward a year or two, I come back to SWG to give it another shot and find that not only was my gear completely obsolete (thats another story) but the cost of even the most basic piece of armor had sky rocketed. A bracer or glove that used to sell for maybe 200-300 credits was going for 3,000,000 credits (yes 3 million)
Back before the NGE, you could by a guild hall for 3,000,000 credits, now people are charging that much for one mediocre piece of armor! I was absolutely dumbfounded and just logged out and uninstalled the game.
That was a direct result of the NGE though. Had the game been left alone ti would have remained in balance. NGE drove away the real crafters, and what was left were price gougers who took advantage of new players.
"I am not in a server with Gankers...THEY ARE IN A SERVER WITH ME!!!"
http://www.mediumdifficulty.com/2012/03/06/how-i-helped-destroy-star-wars-galaxies/
I'm sure most SWG fans saw this linked in the SWG forums the other day. This guy sounds like the high end FFXI crafter, except that in FFXI, they were all like this. They were quite capable at shutting out people trying to level a craft. As long as they were willing to pay high enough prices for materials, sellers would sell at the inflated price.
To try to put it into perspective... The endgame xp mob (for merits, the game's talent system) was Colibri, and they dropped beaks which sold for 250 a piece and didn't stack. Colibri feathers stacked to 12 and sold for 121 (1452 per stack). Cheap DPS food sold for 4000 a stack and lasted 15m per use. Ninja shadow tools (used by 75% of melee for xp'ing and probably 40% for endgame raiding) stacked to 99 and also sold for 4-6k a stack.
To combat RMT/CGF, SE made most Elite drops Soulbound and would gut the resale price of regular mob drops that npc'd too well when they found out rmt farmed it. I had one friend that logged out before maintenance with 50,000gil in beastmen blood in his inventory and logged back in with something like 7k gil worth because they ninja-patched the price of it.
I hate to sound like I'm talking about the real world, but in FFXI, until Abyssea (which destroyed much of the beloved game), the only ones who had gil always had gil, or cheated their way to the top which was quite the risky factor.
Spec'ing properly is a gateway drug.
12 Million People have been meter spammed in heroics.
The strange thing though was that the economy did balance itself back out from that crazy inflation period. I remember during the inflation time I could sell a full set of Boutny Hunter Armor schems for around 40 mil. After that time people were selling fully crafted sets of BH armor for 10-15 mil.
So the economy did finally settle back down it just took time to replace some of those crafters that left the game with new ones.
SWG pre cu is a great example of a well implemented player run economy. The NGE is really what caused all of the problems.
Agreed, it is the money shot quote.
In TTS you cannot grind farming mobs really since when you kill a creature it is just gone. No constant static respawns.
I do think that assholes at the top can ruin any emergent system. Just look at human history.
I remember that they ripped a system from UO during the beta that simulated an ecosystem but players came along and the system couldn't really keep up.