Encourage the player economy - Suggestions thread

[Rinlul]

The only other MMO I've consistently played besides LOTRO is Star Wars Galaxies, and I think one thing that makes SWG stand out is its robust player economy that makes you actually feel more connected to the world.

I'm curious to hear some ideas y'all have but these are a few that pop off the top of my head:

- Increase the duration of items posted on the auction house to at least a week (easier to keep it stocked with crafted items instead of getting taken down)
- Raise the cap for amount of items posted to the auction house (I think restricting sales to the point that it's not accessible for F2P players hurts the overall community and experience for everyone and makes folks less likely to invest $$ in the game when the auction house has huge dead zones of crafted content)
- Boost the stats of crafted content to be at least a few levels ahead of looted/skirmish/quest reward content. I definitely don't like it when the situation gets to the point where it's impossible for casual players to be viable without a massive investment in gear, but creating more demand for folks to buy crafted gear as they level up would be sweet.
- Increase frequency of looting components to be competitive with getting them from a skirmish vendor. If it takes way less work to get a Beryl shard by doing a skirmish and bartering for it, what's the incentive to actually go out and find them in the world?

[krypto182]

I would like to see free players have the ability to post auctions with out having to spend any LP. Give premium players a boost up to 10 listings and then give free players up to 5 listings with both accounts still being able to buy more in store if needed. Yes I would also like the ability to post something for up to 7 days anymore then that would be too long.

[OghranNasty]

For a more or less functioning economy it should be possible to know for what prices things are actually sold, like an average price over the past weeks as I've seen in other games.
Now only buyer and seller know the true price.

[krypto182]

For a more or less functioning economy it should be possible to know for what prices things are actually sold, like an average price over the past weeks as I've seen in other games.
Now only buyer and seller know the true price.

Now that would be awesome but implementing something like that would probably be a huge time sink for the engineering team as I do not believe the game is even setup to even support something like that.

[Strider5548]

The only economy SSG is going to promote is the LOTRO store.

They don't care about a thriving in game economy, this is why the AH is pointless and gold isn't worth anything in this game. Everything is bought from the store.

In an ideal world, you would have far more items available for trade, crafting would be meaningful, you would have auction houses that function like real auction houses (location specific items, even have it be like EQ1 where your character would become like a merchant NPC). They could introduce a concept of caravans as well to facilitate trade between cities.

None of this will happen though unfortunately.

[Oofamisi]

Its clear that store is the priority. Has been for a few years ( no lootable keys for example)Just look at the new Rohan housing nonsense for the latest example. Its becoming increasingly obvious its a last ditch moneygrab before they shut down for good or maybe eek out a few more months of flaying the loyalties of long and short term players. Its a shame because the game is great but sadly run by incompetents ( fanboy flame expected)

[Zonflux]

Now that would be awesome but implementing something like that would probably be a huge time sink for the engineering team as I do not believe the game is even setup to even support something like that.

Would it though, would it really?

Everything actively stored in the game should already be stored in a database.

On the in-game AH we change the functionality so that when you proceed to post an item to sell it queries the database to pull a list of post values within a timeframe to calculate an average, probably ignoring odd lows and highs that fall away from the average median. A default post value is then given to the user based on the calculated median average.

If you really wanted to simplify it then do away with the averages and just get the lowest AH price and use that as the default post value, though again I would have it ignore intentionally created low posts.

In terms of time investment there is no changes on the database side, this is all done using serverside forms. From the personal standpoint of being a programmer and database admin this is a little project when compared to class balance code. Honestly I don't see why this would take more than a week to implement, with me leaning towards 3-4 days for coding & design and 6-8 days testing and bug-fixing.

[DavidmeetHal]

Would it though, would it really?

Everything actively stored in the game should already be stored in a database.

On the in-game AH we change the functionality so that when you proceed to post an item to sell it queries the database to pull a list of post values within a timeframe to calculate an average, probably ignoring odd lows and highs that fall away from the average median. A default post value is then given to the user based on the calculated median average.

If you really wanted to simplify it then do away with the averages and just get the lowest AH price and use that as the default post value, though again I would have it ignore intentionally created low posts.

In terms of time investment there is no changes on the database side, this is all done using serverside forms. From the personal standpoint of being a programmer and database admin this is a little project when compared to class balance code. Honestly I don't see why this would take more than a week to implement, with me leaning towards 3-4 days for coding & design and 6-8 days testing and bug-fixing.

Nice guardian guides in your sig!

[katiejane15]

If you really wanted to simplify it then do away with the averages and just get the lowest AH price and use that as the default post value, though again I would have it ignore intentionally created low posts.

This is how it is done in Rift and it is very convenient, except it does not ignore intentionally created low posts. You have to pay attention so that you're not selling below what a vendor will give you for it.

[Once_of_Bree]

The best suggestion I've seen to restore player economy is the one about charging the AH commission when placing the item - the original suggestion had all the details well explained but think it boiled down to reduce silly prices and speculation as the risk is up front. I can't find the post now but it would actually make a difference to the player economy for the better.

[Sunseekre]

The best suggestion I've seen to restore player economy is the one about charging the AH commission when placing the item - the original suggestion had all the details well explained but think it boiled down to reduce silly prices and speculation as the risk is up front. I can't find the post now but it would actually make a difference to the player economy for the better.

Hi there,

That was me :-)

Here is a cut and paste of what I posted in August.....

The spiraling inflation and price increases will not change until the AH posting fees calculation changes - currently the AH posting fee is based on the vendor price of an item and IF IT SELLS then a percentage of the sale is calculated as the AH posting fee.

For example, the 48 hour posting fee in AH for a universal solvent is 2 silver 48 copper no matter what opening bid price you post it at and no matter what price you put as the buyout - the ONLY time the AH takes a fee is when it sells.

This game mechanism provides an all reward with no risk method for causing hyper inflation for anyone wanting to buy up all reasonable priced items and resell them as it is only a few coins to post. If you buy up the reasonably priced items and repost them at an inflated price, you are only out a couple silver coins. If it DOES NOT SELL, it is only a couple more silver coins to repost.

If someone were to keep buying up all the lower priced items and reposting them at a higher price, eventually, the market price of that item will be forced up. The total cost to repost an item 15 times (reposting the same item every 48 hours for one month because it does not sell at the posted price) will be about 67 silver coins, but the cost for the people who want to buy the items once the market value of that item has been increased on the server can be hundreds of gold in the long run.

IF the AH posting fee were based on the opening bid, then people would be more apt to price the opening bid at something that would sell rather than risk another posting fee. Until then, it is a buy low sell high or buy at market price and force the price even higher with no risk scenario.

In your example, the whales buy out the cheap stuff and mark it up to sell at outrageous prices. If the AH price were based on the starting price, they would probably have much more reasonable opening bids to allow for a market economy of goods rather than what we currently see - pages and pages of items posted at pretty much the same opening and same buyout bid day after day. The items you see on the AH are the items that HAVE NOT SOLD - the items that are priced reasonably sell.

Just my opinion.

[Nosdracir]

Hi there,

That was me :-)

Here is a cut and paste of what I posted in August.....

The spiraling inflation and price increases will not change until the AH posting fees calculation changes - currently the AH posting fee is based on the vendor price of an item and IF IT SELLS then a percentage of the sale is calculated as the AH posting fee.

For example, the 48 hour posting fee in AH for a universal solvent is 2 silver 48 copper no matter what opening bid price you post it at and no matter what price you put as the buyout - the ONLY time the AH takes a fee is when it sells.

This game mechanism provides an all reward with no risk method for causing hyper inflation for anyone wanting to buy up all reasonable priced items and resell them as it is only a few coins to post. If you buy up the reasonably priced items and repost them at an inflated price, you are only out a couple silver coins. If it DOES NOT SELL, it is only a couple more silver coins to repost.

If someone were to keep buying up all the lower priced items and reposting them at a higher price, eventually, the market price of that item will be forced up. The total cost to repost an item 15 times (reposting the same item every 48 hours for one month because it does not sell at the posted price) will be about 67 silver coins, but the cost for the people who want to buy the items once the market value of that item has been increased on the server can be hundreds of gold in the long run.

IF the AH posting fee were based on the opening bid, then people would be more apt to price the opening bid at something that would sell rather than risk another posting fee. Until then, it is a buy low sell high or buy at market price and force the price even higher with no risk scenario.

In your example, the whales buy out the cheap stuff and mark it up to sell at outrageous prices. If the AH price were based on the starting price, they would probably have much more reasonable opening bids to allow for a market economy of goods rather than what we currently see - pages and pages of items posted at pretty much the same opening and same buyout bid day after day. The items you see on the AH are the items that HAVE NOT SOLD - the items that are priced reasonably sell.

Just my opinion.

This would just cause all those whales to stop using the AH and sell their overpriced goods in /trade. A number of them already do that to avoid the fee that's taken from the profits. Anyone who does post on the AH at a reasonable price will often see it snapped up and resold in /trade.

One of the biggest problems with an MMO economy is that the game currency may be gold but the real player currency is time. I've got a whole stable of crafters yet I have no reason to do any tier 1-11 crafting other than to make gear for my own lowbies or for friends because it's not a profitable use of my time. If I want more gold then I can make far more gold per hour running around with a Hunter pew-pewing gray mobs and looting them as well as backpacks etc. In order to boost the game economy SSG would need to come up with some incentive other than gold for selling goods, especially crafted goods, on the AH. They'd also need to think it through to prevent it from being exploited. The probability of this happening approaches zero.

[Froyo_K_Baggins]

One of the most useful things they could do they'll never do. I played another game where the developers opened the AH database to plug-in creators. there were multiple plug-ins you could check out that would give you all sorts of stats, most importantly, they'd show the difference between asking price and actual sale price. That helped both posters and buyers while controlling the inflation that is rampant here.