Warhammer Economy

Arkdawg · June 2006

How do you all think Mythic should keep a handle on the economy of the game. One of my biggest problems with WoW is the fact that the economy of that game has become so inflated that it has allowed the farmer/elite raiding guilds make it hard on individual casual gamer and even smaller guilds to compete for some of the items. The auction house is a cool idea, but I think think the price of things is so over inflated that it is outrageous. What avenues do you think Mythic should persue to help prevent the redicoulous escalation of prices in WAR.

For one I think that they should avoid the bind on equip. I feel that if Wow would simply remove this on most of their green/blue items it would allow players to sell their old items/armor to other players and would reduce the cost by putting more of the items back into the market.

If nothing else perhaps put in some sort of npc atoner who for a fee can re-attone an item to a new owner, I think this would greatly reduce the blatent over pricing of items, particularly lower lvl green/blue drops.

Also which system of crafting would you prefer to see, the farming style of wow, the merchant driven system of DAoC (buying mats from merchants), or a mixture of both?

We all realize that there will be those individuals who purchase their gold online (WACK IMO), but what sort of steps can/should Mythic take to help prevent this from screwing up the economy of the game for the rest of us who enjoy actually playing the game we pay for each month.

iduums · June 2006

I hope they add some form of housing or guild barracks or something similar to DAOC, but make it similar to the AH in WoW. As for the farmers, i think it gonna be very hard to stop people from selling gold, but if anyone can do it, it's mythic.

Arkdawg · June 2006

Originally posted by iduums
I hope they add some form of housing or guild barracks or something similar to DAOC, but make it similar to the AH in WoW. As for the farmers, i think it gonna be very hard to stop people from selling gold, but if anyone can do it, it's mythic.

Yes I certainly hope they put in some sort of housing, guid hall system as well. I agree that it is hard to stop people who will buy their gold online, but what sort of measures can be taken to ensure that it doesn't provide a drastic advantage, or lead to an imbalance of the economy as it has in WoW IMO. I am hoping that the fact that Mythic has already hinted that the game will not be heavily Item dependant will help in this situation. DAoC's system of allowing a majority of items to be player tradable helps keep the prices from being drivin too high, as opposed the the soul binding of Items in WoW, which I feel leads to a inflated price of items for the casual player.

Unknown · June 2006

Originally posted by Arkdawg
How do you all think Mythic should keep a handle on the economy of the game. One of my biggest problems with WoW is the fact that the economy of that game has become so inflated that it has allowed the farmer/elite raiding guilds make it hard on individual casual gamer and even smaller guilds to compete for some of the items. The auction house is a cool idea, but I think think the price of things is so over inflated that it is outrageous. What avenues do you think Mythic should persue to help prevent the redicoulous escalation of prices in WAR.

I agree.

For one I think that they should avoid the bind on equip. I feel that if Wow would simply remove this on most of their green/blue items it would allow players to sell their old items/armor to other players and would reduce the cost by putting more of the items back into the market.

Yeah, I don't really think bind on equip really contributed much to anti-twinking or whatever Blizzard was aiming for. Proper level restrictions are good in my opinion; I REALLY liked the DAoC item system. For those who don't know, equipment itself had it's own level. You 'consider' the item in the same way you would a mob, from (low end) gray-green-blue-yellow-orange-red-purple (high end). If a piece of equipment were vastly higher than you, than you wouldn't use it as well as a weapon suited for your level. In addition to this, items higher level than you wore down much faster. I wouldn't mind at all for Mythic to adopt DAoC's system into WHO.

In WoW if someone REALLY wanted the 19 uber weapon that was bind on pickup, they would just grab some max level guildies to blitz the mission with them. Pointless system IMO.

If nothing else perhaps put in some sort of npc atoner who for a fee can re-attone an item to a new owner, I think this would greatly reduce the blatent over pricing of items, particularly lower lvl green/blue drops.

I didn't really like WoW's grey-white-green-blue-purple-etc system. I think it's stupid to have a level 30 weapon that is automatically inferior just because it has a higher color. All level 30 weapons should be comparable with very few exceptions of exceptional items (hence the adjective 'exceptional').

Also which system of crafting would you prefer to see, the farming style of wow, the merchant driven system of DAoC (buying mats from merchants), or a mixture of both?

The less farming the better IMO. DAoC wasn't too bad, but it was kinda boring. It was a matter of time and money. From the little bit I played from Trial of the Isle on EQ2 it seemed fairly more interactive than most. WoW's was, like you mentioned, the matter of farming skins/cloth/metal/whatever; and ultimately felt like most of a waste of time. I would lean more toward a DAoC kind of trades, because it at least made sense; WoW--"Hi! I'm a tailoring NPC, here's everything you need--except cloth of course. We don't stock that." wtf?

We all realize that there will be those individuals who purchase their gold online (WACK IMO), but what sort of steps can/should Mythic take to help prevent this from screwing up the economy of the game for the rest of us who enjoy actually playing the game we pay for each month.

I don't think there will be any way to stop the gold farmers, but; I don't know how they did it, but in DAoC it felt like money had very little value in a good way. You didn't really need to buy anything very often, and when you did you usually had enough. If you needed some, it didn't take too much effort.

I suppose the only advice I would give is keep doing it however you do it Mythic, hehe.

Personally I would like to see an MMO one day with an emulated real world economy...though I hate economics so much; someone else go do it ;p

Greyface · June 2006

What I'd like to see:

- No "no-trade" items. In my experience, this encourages elitism. The value of an item should be determined by what it actually does and not by who doesn't have it.

- Item decay. In games without this, a piece of equipment often becomes part of a character, again leading to elitism. It also kills the player-to-player economy... once everyone has their widget, what good are crafters?

- Various and sundry "gold sinks" that will leave lower level players with plenty of money to re-equip every few levels, but will drain a larger portion of the game's gold from max-level characters. Inflation in MMOs comes almost exclusively from the top of the player heap. Housing is always a good way to do this, and I'm sure there are others. I'm always in favor of "fun" gold-sinks, rather than punishments if possible.

- The best items in the game are player-crafted - again, in combination with item decay, it keeps crafting meaningful in the game. It also gives higher level players a bit more freedom in how to spend their time. In games where drops are the best items, there's a feeling of obligation... "If I don't go to the Molten Core, I'll always have crappy armor" etc. I think that a game should have as little "have to" as possible, and focus on the "want to's."

As far as the secondary item trade - I don't believe that you can design the RMT out of a game. Like cockroaches, these guys will always find a way. The only thing a game designer can do is make gold gathering as fun as possible so that the players will want to go out and make their own money. In the case of WAR, I think there should be cash bounties for RvR kills. Not only will that keep the RvR areas full, it'll be impossible for farmers to bot against players and it'll keep everyone's pockets full enough that fewer people will turn to the RMT. Again, players should get gold for doing what they want to be doing, rather than gathering gold as preparation for the actuall fun part of the game.

Flavius6 · June 2006

They are good idea's but i think if you implement an Auction House of
some sort that there need to be capped prices for items, so that ppl
can't overprice them.

Further more like the first guy said, items should not be bound ot a
person, make em so that they will fall apart after to many repairs (
like in DAoC )

Arkdawg · June 2006

Originally posted by Greyface
What I'd like to see:

- No "no-trade" items. In my experience, this encourages elitism. The value of an item should be determined by what it actually does and not by who doesn't have it.

- Item decay. In games without this, a piece of equipment often becomes part of a character, again leading to elitism. It also kills the player-to-player economy... once everyone has their widget, what good are crafters?

- Various and sundry "gold sinks" that will leave lower level players with plenty of money to re-equip every few levels, but will drain a larger portion of the game's gold from max-level characters. Inflation in MMOs comes almost exclusively from the top of the player heap. Housing is always a good way to do this, and I'm sure there are others. I'm always in favor of "fun" gold-sinks, rather than punishments if possible.

- The best items in the game are player-crafted - again, in combination with item decay, it keeps crafting meaningful in the game. It also gives higher level players a bit more freedom in how to spend their time. In games where drops are the best items, there's a feeling of obligation... "If I don't go to the Molten Core, I'll always have crappy armor" etc. I think that a game should have as little "have to" as possible, and focus on the "want to's."

As far as the secondary item trade - I don't believe that you can design the RMT out of a game. Like cockroaches, these guys will always find a way. The only thing a game designer can do is make gold gathering as fun as possible so that the players will want to go out and make their own money. In the case of WAR, I think there should be cash bounties for RvR kills. Not only will that keep the RvR areas full, it'll be impossible for farmers to bot against players and it'll keep everyone's pockets full enough that fewer people will turn to the RMT. Again, players should get gold for doing what they want to be doing, rather than gathering gold as preparation for the actuall fun part of the game.

Absolutely agree that player-crafted items should atleast be comparible against drop equipment of similar level. That is one of the things that bothers me most about the WoW crafting system, is that it just feels empty because you know that regardless of what you make, there is probably a better droped item if you go farm for it or Raid for it, and that to me just sucks. So it becomes what the hell good is crafting other than being one more thing to grind out so I can say I maxed it.

flea1 · June 2006

How does one make an economy viable? Money sinks are fine but make them enjoyable. Daoc crafting system was just plain horrid. I had many lgm crafters. Its not fun hitting the same button 2000 times to raise skill. Hence why bot crafters were made. To ease the pain.

Id go for an auction house over 3000 houses to run to to buy goods. While a time sink again not a fun one.

Craftable over drop or quest items. Again a hard one some people dont want to farm gold and get ripped off by crafters who over charge. Some would rather go with a quest get the best gear and be done with it focusing on pvp. Others enjoy huge raids to get the best gear. Daoc when i think about went through all these stages hehe. At first it was farming high level areas for drops. Then the df raids on legion ect which promoted the takeing of towers in emaine ect but once df opened the place was abandoned for good loot drops to be raffled after the raid. Then spell crafting and alchemy came and once again craftable was on top. Though most couldnt afford the mp over sced gear people were chargeing. Then toa came it was back to massive zerg to get gear and then level the stuff to compete. Finnaly they went with do quests and get the best weapons in game again in the darkness falls expantion. Some were happy with the changes as they came while others loathed them.

What was best heck if i know. Probly the random drop gear off mobs imo. I dont like questing, nor mindless crafting and i dont like farming insane amounts of gold to line a crafters pockets. I did find the df raids fun at first was how a 40 could get to 50 back then though winning the lottery on a item was usually ruff.

markmcab · June 2006

Well, I haven't played DAoC but I think it wouldn't be nice and fun at all if for example you have a weapon or armour that you worked so hard to attain and will just eventually decay and be destroyed permanently because of too much use. So, why work hard for a rare and exotic item when sooner or later it will just be useless and be discarded? I wouldn't want to go thru all the process again of getting those same items over and over again. I believe it's a waste of time and just adds frustration to the player, and most specially its NOT fun at all. Maybe the crafter should just maintain the items constantly and of course a fee depending on the rarity and level of the item. Here's a suggestion, for a certain period of time if the player doesn't have his decaying item fixed right away by a crafter and still constantly uses that item then that's when it gets destroyed permanently. But if he periodically maintains those items then it will never come to a point where it will be destroyed totally.

Arkdawg · June 2006

My point was intended to be that no form of equipment (Quest, Crafted, or Random Drops) should be vastly superior to any other. WoW for instance with the Damn High end Raid gear. It caters to one type of gamer, the Raid Guilds, and power gamers. The Casual gamers access to comparible gear is dependant on guess what, finding a Raid to join. And heaven forbid you want to go PvP because you enjoy that, you better go get to Grinding those Raids or Grinding HK's because that gear you made yourself or the gear you got from random drops is so far below the Raid gear it's laughable. The system is not balanced.

The Crafting system on DAoC is boring, but at one point (particularly pre ToA) you could take all player made equipment and go RvR and be very effective and close to evenly matched based simply on skill. The system was much more balanced as far as the Item Gap. ToA was like throwing a Freaking bolder into a swimming pool, it caused Huge Ripple's in the balance of the game. The Casual Gamer could no longer log into their account, run out to RvR and expect to be effective on a regular basis unless they went out and did all the ML and Artifact Raiding and Grind. Mythic IMO made a huge mistake and I think they know it and agree. The game became way to Item focused and lost a large part of its fun Factor, because it became more like a Job than the "Lets jump on and get in a Relic Raid/Defend for a couple hours"

I definately agree about the Auction House over Individual Merchants in Player Housing areas.

My intent was to discuss what sort of steps/changes would work best to strike a balance in the Games economy to keep Crafters/Farmers from being able to cause huge pricing issues for items.

Ramzilla · June 2006

The best way to not ruin the economy of any game is to have a clear policy on selling items out of game and enforce it. The only reason economies in game get killed is because of people selling things on ebay. If companies such as Mythic had a person on the payroll that pretty much did nothing but shutdown illegal auctions they'd make huge strides in keep inflation in check.

The biggest drawback to this idea is it costs the companies money so don't look for it anytime soon.

kiabasa · June 2006

Talking about high lvl player gold sinks, I think the ultimate sink/fun would be provided in bloodbowl teams. Have uber guilds be able to sponsor/own a bloodbowl team which they could play against other races, or their own. You could build a bloodbowl field in your guilds back yard, buy and design cool uniforms, hire players and publize matches using flyers or broadcasting over a bloodbowl/ merchant net.

I'm not sure if the players should be NPC or real players, NPC's would give the team owner much more control over the entire team to play them as he saw fit, while real players would make the game wild and unpredictable. You could have bleachers around the field which players could sit in while they watch matches. Every year you could hold a blood bowl championship and face all the teams on your server for the server championship (bloodbowl). How cool would it be to have that kind of game inside of a game which helped eliminate elite people from inflating prices, while giving the casual gamer something to entertain him/her. I think it would also do a lot for the community, you could have merchants pettling their wears at large games, people recruiting for guilds, crafters selling their services, and there would be the inevitable fights in the stands between fans.

Just a thought. All I can do is dream

Eindrachen · June 2006

WAR absolutely has to find ways to minimize the impact of itemization upon the PVP environment.

Why?

Look at WOW. You do not PVP at end-game without raid gear, because yes, that gear absolutely makes the difference between win and loss. We're not talking about a measly little extra damage with spells, or some more hit points; we're talking about the ability to take a metric a**-load of damage, and to do hundreds, even thousands, of extra points of damage with your own attacks.

So yeah. WAR better not go that route, or it'll be a cold day in Hell before I play it.

serapispa · June 2006

As for the economy... I think they just need to make sure there are a lot of of things that permanently remove money from the game. If there isn't the total amount of money will rapidly increase causing it to lose value and prices to inflate.

Coming from a DAoC point of view they did this but it was too little too late. They have repairing items, house rent, buying a house, buying a horse, buying respecs, etc... all these things drain money from the economy helping to slow inflation.

noctis · June 2006

Many threads on game economies have been written, but few have made any sense to me.

In all cases I've seen, there's no such thing as "overinflated". You may find the item too expensive, but if whoever's selling can manage to sell their items for a certain price then that's what it's worth. If someone's willing to dish out 100gp for a stack of wool cloth, why would someone selling wool offer it at 50s out of the goodness of their heart? Once the guy willing to fork out 100g for wool no longer needs wool, the price will drop back. Supply and demand!

It would only become a problem if it actually prevented you from playing adequately. Let's say mana/hps didn't regenerate normally and you'd need to buy player-crafted foods or go back to an inn and sit down for 10 minutes everytime you wanted to regenerate. That would be a problem, but then everyone and their mother would become a cook/brewer and the prices will drop again.

I'm personally not against out-of-game transactions. The only reason there's a market for these items is because of tedium in the game. I am not adverse to paying to remove the tedium from my game and enjoy only the good stuff. I have yet to find enough tedium that would be worth forking out real money, but if the game was really good except for one part, I'd not be against it. I take enjoyment in achieving something by myself, but that's me and I can readily accept that some people don't care about how they got their gear, they just want to be able to PvP effectively because that's the part they enjoy.

As long as said farmers aren't able to monopolize an item drop or resource, I don't see a problem.

flea1 · June 2006

cool idea for anti farmer potential. Once found to be a farmer make them ffa pvp open to all players. Now no mater where that account goes they can be killed over and over by the anti farmer hunter players. When i did play wow for 6 months i found that part the most enjoyable. Repeatedly slaying farmers knowing that they wont get there bowl of rice that night. 8) If more players did this it hurts the companys effrectiveness and they will drop the game eventually. Rl economics in a game let the players handle it.

karigaut · June 2006

I like a lot of the ideas here. I myself am a huge fan of player crafted items being more/as powerfull as any drop. I also think that there should be item decay, but players and NPC merchants should be able to fix the items again... in the very high end game this could become a "gold-sink" for those who support such a thing.

About the inflation: It is a perfectly normal thing for an acitve market but ofcourse in such a small market as one server is the changes in prices are ofcourse going to be much greater than in a real life 100 million people market. But the supply vrs deman will always even out in the end.

For example: In WoW when the crafting pouches first came out, they where going for 25+ gold in the auction houses since very few players could make them and the demand was very high... now you can get one for around 15g, since the production rate has gone up and the demand down. This is the good thing about a player driven economy, if player see that there is high demand for a certain item they will make more... but the ultra rare super drop will still be an ultra rare super drop (well I guess you could spend all your time raiding for it... but most of us want to have a life outside the game). This is one of the main reasons why player crafted items should be as good (or better) than drops... since the marked will work in a more normal way, in the long run.

Arkdawg · June 2006

Originally posted by noctis

Many threads on game economies have been written, but few have made any sense to me.
In all cases I've seen, there's no such thing as "overinflated". You may find the item too expensive, but if whoever's selling can manage to sell their items for a certain price then that's what it's worth. If someone's willing to dish out 100gp for a stack of wool cloth, why would someone selling wool offer it at 50s out of the goodness of their heart? Once the guy willing to fork out 100g for wool no longer needs wool, the price will drop back. Supply and demand!
It would only become a problem if it actually prevented you from playing adequately. Let's say mana/hps didn't regenerate normally and you'd need to buy player-crafted foods or go back to an inn and sit down for 10 minutes everytime you wanted to regenerate. That would be a problem, but then everyone and their mother would become a cook/brewer and the prices will drop again.
I'm personally not against out-of-game transactions. The only reason there's a market for these items is because of tedium in the game. I am not adverse to paying to remove the tedium from my game and enjoy only the good stuff. I have yet to find enough tedium that would be worth forking out real money, but if the game was really good except for one part, I'd not be against it. I take enjoyment in achieving something by myself, but that's me and I can readily accept that some people don't care about how they got their gear, they just want to be able to PvP effectively because that's the part they enjoy.
As long as said farmers aren't able to monopolize an item drop or resource, I don't see a problem.

I have two issues with what you have said and why I think it is flawed. First, as the game ages past the first 6-10 months, the prices on lower level items gradually skyrockets and in a system where crafting materials are farmed(gathered) the prices for low level crafting supplies becomes outrageos. The reason the example of 100g for wool cloth is mentioned is because as people have begin to have High lvl characters or purchase gold online they begin to have an abundance of money, so they begin to buy materials/items for alts or crafting at a redicoulous price. The fundamental problem with this is that as the population begins to grow, new players are unable to compete for these items, and without breaking the EULA(which clearly states that selling/purchasing in game items/money online is prohibited) they are forced to endure even more of the "tedium" that you mention, because the price of materials and items for their level are in fact inflated. If you do not believe that or havent seen it go stand in the auction houses on WoW and siimply look at the prices of items in the lvl 15-25 range. In fact run a toon to that level and compare the price of the items that are useful to you to the ammount of gold your character has without giving money to that char from an alt or puchasing it online. This sort of system helps support/incourage farming, because the farming guilds/companies can sell even the low level items/materials for a rediculous amount of markup over what the vendors would pay. For the casual gamer, the gamer who follows the EULA, or the gamer that wants to play the game
and enjoy a particular aspect, should be able to accoplish their goals without being subjected to an inflated system in which farming and elitest guilds have a drastic advantage.

morkai2004 · June 2006

its all comes down to playstyle and what aim the game has.

taking WoW as example, it starts out very balanced for lvl 1-59 for equipment. the green drops actually meam something as your leveling and quest rewards were useful thruout the leveling period. Crafted items had their use, specially in the 50s where the craftable blues becomes superior to what you could hope to get as a random drop and equally powered to dungeon drops for that level.

for 1-59 i found the game very balanced for regular drops, craftable items, quest items and boss drops.

60+ it takes a different path. either grind for faction to get the rare recipes made crafting a painful experience, or even a closed book since some of the recipes requires drops from places like MC that in effect pushed a lot of players out of the crafting market.

drops also started pushing towards the raiding, taking the path of requiring 40 players to get anything useful.

if your not into that type of playing suddenly a game like wow turns ugly on you especially if you didnt expect this kind of game change towards end level.

PVP equipment is comparable for most parts in WoW to the first set of raid drops from MC, but after that you will start see the gab between casual/pvp gamer and the raid gamers widen drastic. suddnely PVE becomes nessasary to be viable in PVP and for a casual your just out of luck.

Even if you do stick with the PVP grinding for honor to get the 13+ ranks you will not be able to compete with the new raid stuff comming out, and with the horrible ranking system that in effect ruins the pvp system past rank 10 most PVP players wont get the pvp weapons. they are stuck with that they can grind out for faction or quests.

so whats the solution.

definite avoid a PVE/PVP gap, make items equal in power for both crafting, questing, pvping and raiding. avoid the lure to make bosses the only viable source of items in the end game, to avoid forcing ppl into the raiding environment.

make craftable items widely available and the tradematerials tradable so everyone can sell the item even if they cannot use them, makes for a stronger economy. this is one of the things WoW does excellent.

but most important, move towards a skill game rather than a gear centric game. if the newest and best trinket will win the game for you (pve or pvp) skill will take second seat and build a lot of frustrations. not so much in raiding where ppl work together to nail the boss, but in PVP where overpowered gear might just ruin the effort.

there is a reason the pvp test server in WoW (where you get a premade lvl 60 char with tier1/2 mixed gear by default) is highly popular since the gear factor is eliminated by everone being more or less equal in power. suddenly skill plays a huge factor in the pvp.

sauna · June 2006

Bind on Equip/Acquire is rubbish so I really do hope they don't copy that from WoW.
All items should be tradable and things need to wear down over time for a good economy to build up and for crafting to actually matter.
Stats and skill caps need to be in the game as well so you don't get the incredibly stupid system like WoW has where people in zerg guilds just farm for items until their keyboards break down and their characters are twice as good as anyone elses.

Database82 · June 2006

I agree with you guys saying no Bind on equip or no trade items, muthic should keep it as realistic as possible, as is some supreme power in real life would stop me from selling my old soiled armor or whatever to Sir Bob(just an example

) i mean if Sir Bob is too low of a level and acqiures a "Sword of Zomg Pwn Face" he should be able to use it but just not to the full abilities of the weapon because of lacking in skill or lvl whatever. It makes it more fun and helps the economy not be over run by friggin chinese farmers (No offense to chinese out there I'm also chinese) back in the day when EQ 1 first came out I thought that is was so awesome that you could just trade off your old gear or give it to a needy lower lvl. (And yes I have twinked my character with the most ridiculous stuff) I mean what's the point of No Drop or Bind when equipped?? True it helps prevent twinking to an extent but if someone really wanted good gear as someone posted before me they can just have a higher lvl power them through any numerous instances.

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