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The single AH to all servers will seriously damage the economy and even gameplay of crowded servers
maccarthur2004
Member UncommonPosts: 511
This week i took knowledge that developers intend to create a single AH to all servers. In other worlds, will going to have free flow of tradeable itens between all servers without a free flow of characters.
This situation will be analogous to a free and desregulated international trade without a equally free and flexible people flux (by political, cultural or economical barriers): some economic activities in less competitive countries will die. This per se isn't 100% bad because, in the other hand, customers will have cheaper and better products to purchase. Few people will really care for the damaged economical activities and unemployed/empowered people previously involved in them, since the benefits of cheaper and better products will surpass.
HOWEVER, in mmos, the activities themselves matter more than the availability of products, since these activities are "gameplay" things, intended to provide fun, distraction and challenges (unlike in real world economic activities).
So, what will happens with a single AH to all servers?
The most crowded servers (or the ones that, for any reason, have more competion over world resources) isn't going to be able to compete in the AH trade with the less crowded servers. The less crowded servers will allow less costs, time and difficulty obtaining products (raw materials, blueprints, etc), so they can produce MORE products, and can sell then cheaper in the AH than the crowded server people. So, people in crowded servers will have more advantage buying the itens from less crowded servers through AH than producing it themselves (or buying from same server people). Since characters can't freely move through servers (to explore the less crowded spots on the other servers, balancing things), this will kill ALL activities related to the obtention of these itens (e.g: fights over farming spots, world bosses, open world dungeons, trade packs and so on).
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I liken someone's ability to try and corner the market for indecent profits akin to ganking low-level players. I'm all for stopping such gameplay and relish it when it happens.
I completely agree. They did this when they brought the new omega server online, with AH connected to alpha server. It messed the omega server from gitgo. The same rich people ruled the omega, as had ruled the alpha. Guilds that had farmed everything, everywhere, and literally gamed the system, were in control. The little guy trying to eek out a living was just SOL.
But, trying to get something changed in that game is like swimming against the tide. You're not gonna make any progress, just frustrate yourself trying to.
So, like it or not, we're stuck with it.
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Thanks OP for your pow on the matter; i actually haven't thought about it that way. There are several Pros to having a shared AH though:
-Lower Prices
-Harder for players to manipulate the market
-More demand
Since mobs only drop lootbags with money, the only resources that could be farmed easily in low pop servers are iron nodes. I think that's not nearly enough to damage the economy for crowded servers, actually it's going to make it easier for them to get the iron/stone as their nodes are camped 24/7.
The land plots are limited, and their ammount is the same on all servers. Sure a server could place their plots more efficiently then another; but still that's minimal when you compare it to the economy of all servers.
Another thing could be fishing; a low pop server might have more players fishing without getting killed, compared to a high pop server. Which means that the low pop fishermen could get more money out of their work. But they will use that money on the shared AH, so that money could go to a high pop server's player. Again i don't think that difference in money is any way near to affect the economy of a server.
So, your against Free Trade?
Also, its not ALL server. EU will be linked to one AH, NA will be linked to one AH.
I think this is a good thing. More Sellers and more Buyers.
I am not sure how this system works exactly but I am curious because it sounds like they are saying something will not work that already exists very well in a very popular MMO however that depends on this system.
Also, economy can be throttled to create balance.
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Auction house will be region locked.
EU has EU auction house
NA has NA auction house
Its a solid way as it promotes undercutting so the buyer always win and the sellers need to play smart and not seed the market with tons of the same items to prevent getting outcut.
Low populated servers win alot by this as they still have acces to all items they need.
High populated server wont be affected much as they are packed with players already.
So its better in my opinion for everyone involved.
its not a very clever way to do it.
Although the system is different they could do it like Eve does.
Hire an economist to throttle the economy so that everything remains in balance.
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OP, you scepticism is based on the assumption that there will be big differences in population from server to server but I don't think that'll be the case in this game.
Since there's a limited number of land plots per server I'm sure players will have more incentives to join low pop servers than they would in other games and you won't see the usual high pop "snow ball" effect that other games are privy to.
The only drawback I for see is the potential for a complete economy meltdown if an exploit is left unchecked. ESO had one of these at launch and it was fairly reasonably contained (opinions differ) with the lack of a server-wide AH.
I think AH's should be localized to specific zones for ArcheAge. ArcheAge's economy is heavily dependent on the distance one needs to travel. Trade packs and scarcity of items are real mechanics in the game and a global AH really takes away from this mechanic. I would really like to see vendors attached to homes a la Dark Age of Camelot. There was something about that that just seemed to work nicely.
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For whatever reason, that would seem to be the case, my guess is, they are either not expecting many people to get that involved in crafting, or they are more concerned about which types of crafting will be more popular, and they need an AH with more 'scope' in order to ensure that various goods are available, and possibly to prevent outrageous pricing of commodities by some of the more 'unscrupulous' traders, its probably a measure that would be good for WoW too, as it would undoubtedly help 'keep them honest'
It really all depends on the best way to obtain gold. If the best way is through playing the game, then low population servers should have an advantage, but if it is best to obtain gold by playing the AH, then it shouldn't matter.
However, it will completely screw over any new server that is implemented after the initial launch of the game. Players selling itmes in the AH at the start of a new server would have a considerable advantage by obtaining gold relatively easy.
A single AH reduces the chance of market manipulation by certain groups or individuals. In AA it also means that players on high-pop servers (without their own farms) don't get totally screwed by the landowners.
However, the downside of single global AH is that it gives goldsellers a massive market for their botted resources. However, in AA the only resources that are primarily obtained from wild nodes are metals and stone. There are other resource spawns, but they are insignificant when compared to the amount that will be grown by players. If the "popular" teleporting node bots infest AA, the goldsellers will own 99% of the stone and metal nodes in the safe areas. They will most probably quickly find the lowest population servers and bot those extensively as well.
But the potential goldseller problem in this case is outweighed by the benefit of having a global distribution of goods and resources, most of which are player-made.
I do not understand why they would say something like this with a game like EvE in the market place.
There seems to be two kinds of developers in the world. One that knows what currently exists, and what is possible and the other that either dont know or hope their consumer base has no idea.
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All people in support of this idea should think again. More sellers and buyers don't make a better market when the servers are different. There is a reason why weak economies in EU are going down the drain with the Euro as currency. It hurts them more than it benefits and when they go down it hurts all.
The generation of gold out of thin air is not equally hard on all servers. On low pop servers land is easier to get than on high pop servers and trade runs and grinding are easier/less dangerous on average. And before someone says that changing servers is the answer: Thats right for single players or small groups, but larger guilds looking for challenge and competition are bound to stick to a server and rather quit the game than rebuilding everything from scratch somewhere else just because some economical illiterate has a say in the games design.
For a real sandbox it would rather be suiting to have to transport wares and have localized markets. Unifiying the markets over a complete region is just nuts.
Because EVE also has a single AH ?
All the players in EVE potentially have access to all the regional markets in EVE, which basically acts like a single AH, because you can buy goods in one region and resell them in another. That prevents anyone "cornering the market" in a specific region, because traders will simply import from other regions and undercut any attempts at price-gouging.
If a game has multiple servers (like AA), but each server has its own AH, the players on server A cannot import goods from server B. Each server would have it's own local economy, which is potentially manipulatable.
like I have said I am unclear the details of this system in AA is suggesting but balance in a global economy even with different servers really shouldnt be that much harder.
Oh and if you think players in EVE havent controlled the entire market you are wrong, they have and it has created 'lore' for the game. only this 'lore' is based on real events.
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Interesting choice of words, on an internet forum.
There is no economic issue here. There is a game play issue, or possibly this is a fix for a game play issue. Players on high pop servers are going to face much more competition for raw resources than players on low pop servers. The players on the high pop servers would normally be SOL unless they joined a large guild farming all the resources. However, they have the choice of farming mobs for money to buy the raw resources from the lower pop servers, where players will have more choice about what they do to gather their resources. Overall prices will be more stable because the issues face by countries in the European Union* like duplication of goods and services or transporting goods and services will be unaffected by being on different servers. It won't be more expensive for a low pop server to sell goods to a high pop server because the high pop server isn't any farther away than the low pop server.
The only way it could be improved is if the AH was actually a stock market style system.
* Because, you know, it's a virtual world, not the real world, so parallels between different servers and the countries in the European Union don't exist. Not to mention the different AA servers won't have decades or centuries of history to impact their current economic status.
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Absolutely the most sensible answer so far........
So the people mad about this either:
1. Currently control the markets or
2. Planned on controlling the markets.
Now you have 2 choices:
1. Play the game with the way the AH will be or
2. Don't play the game
I can't understand what op expects by posting this in these forums. The chances that someone that can recommend changes to the AH on AA of reading this is slim at best. Not sure if you tried this thread on the official forums but you might have a chance of at least someone from Trion seeing it there.
GW2 have a shared AH and the people it hurt is frankly the crafters, they will get less for rarer crafted stuff.
None crafting players will be able to buy stuff cheaper so there is no downside for them.
So, yes. If you want to earn money on crafting or playing the economy (like buying up all of a certain thing to keep the price up) you should be very concern.
Frankly is any MMO economics less than player owned stores pretty broken, they should have gone for that instead.
If you are a crafter and you see that there are 10 rare item A on market but 2 rare item B then make B. Only the flooding of the market will cause these rare things to drop in value and if they do it will help those who have trouble with money as they will be able to buy and with more people buying it will allow room for more to be placed on the market.
Hmmm, looks like an upside for both.
It's a danger. If the market drops too low, how are you going to buy that neat stuff that comes from the cash shop that people resell for big gold?
Not saying this is an issue for AA, but I've seen it happen to were only super rare in game items and cash shop items had value. This lead those who would normally farm and craft for income to needing to buy gold.