@Munch First, stop with the attitude and personal insults. Insulting me doesn't make you right. As for whether or not I am ignorant on the subject, I literally have a degree in game design and game development is my day job . So, no, I don't believe that I am ignorant on the topic. You don't have to agree with me. I could honestly care less whether you do or not. This comment was for the developers. That said...

In one of the last dev videos he essentially made a case for PVE w/o PVP, PVP light, and Full PVP. It's not so cut and dry as your 'pvp solves everything' idea. That's naïve in the extreme. You farmed for three days. Congratulations! How long will that last? Player have to hunt to mobs to reach the top end of the PVP game, simply by virtue of the way skills are acquired. Every one of those mobs will be dropping multiple items every single time they are killed, whether by you or someone else. The fact that it takes you, individually, some time to find the item you want doesn't matter in the slightest, because the items are still being generated constantly. If an item has a 1% drop rate, it will drop 1% of the time. That doesn't mean it will drop for YOU, but it will drop 1% of the time. If there is as much competition for mobs on higher population servers as you suggest, that means that the mobs are being killed constantly, with every kill spawning more objects into the game....constantly. Without knowing exact mob counts, drop rates, etc, it is not possible to calculate how many objects, but they won't be that scarce. It will be next to impossible for players to consistently maintain a sufficient drain, even on rare resources, to prevent the kind of economic inflation that occurs.

More to the point, your calculations appear to be missing a lot of variables. For starters, if you have a full server population all resources will flow into the system far, far faster than they currently do. Depending on server balance, if the distribution is split, to give you the benefit of the doubt, 20/30/50|good/neutral/evil | no pvp/pvp light/full pvp, capped at a solid 60 per city, and 32 cities. If those 60 people hunted low level bandits for 2 hours, pulling 4k each, that would add 240k*32 = 7.68m Gold pumping into the game's economy daily. In all likelihood it will be at least double that, if not more, although it will likely follow a Pereto distribution instead of being gained equally among all players, and it doesn't matter how that gold gets shuffled around unless it gets removed from the game. And that 120k gold you spent...where did it go? Taxes? To the auction house? Just how exactly did it get REMOVED from the game?

If they each filled up just a single horse drawn cart with heavy goods, (603230) 57.6k objects being added into the game. Light objects are worse because they respawn faster and can be carried at much higher capacity. Mob drops are the worst, because they spawn quickly and drop multiple objects per mob, even at the lowest levels. Couple that with 16 hour processing times for leather and the like and limited availability of land to put processing facilities (because there will be trade-offs between types of facilities, public vs. private plots, etc) and what you will end up with is a glut of low tier items flooding the market. They simply will not be able to be processed and/or consumed at the rate that they flow into the game. And those numbers don't even assume that people are really playing that much. Your description of your guild actually supports this assertion, because you will have a full guild donating and pooling resources instead of spending those resources on their own plots, and no doubt your guild will be attempting to min/max production on those plots. But, at the end of the day, it wouldn't get rid of the problem because if your guild was full and active daily they would overflow your capacity for both processing and storage in short order. The only reason you haven't seen it yet is because of server wipes and limited playerbase.

@GamerSeuss

I'm not on a soapbox about being right, I simply do not appreciate being called ignorant for expressing an opinion that someone disagrees with. I expressed a concern, not a certainty. Having a degree in game design or working as a game dev doesn't make me right, but it does qualify me as not ignorant on the topic of game economies.

Also, for anyone that is interested Extra Credits did a nice

about hyperinflation in MMO's. Maybe not as good as some others I've seen or read, but it is a nice TLDR for folks that are short on time.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

If those 60 people hunt low level bandits for 2 hours, pulling 4k each, they total something around 200k, not the 7,68m that you assume. That's because on this continent with 32 cities, there is simply no place where to farm gold for more than 150 players, and with anything more than 50 you will hit severe diminishing returns. This isn't World of Warcraft. The world isn't made to support a player base whose full playtime is supposed to be spent farming something. Most of the players will be doing a lot of different activities, only a small amount actually go around hunting gold dropping mobs.

32 cities, 60 players each, 4k per player per day, so (60 x 32 x 4000), for clarities sake. And that was based on a light assumption of 2 hrs. Later in my argument I mentioned the Pereto Distribution which is the 80/20 rule. On a server of 2k people, an average of 400 will generate 80% of the gold wealth that flows into the game. The same is highly likely to generally hold true for other resources and player distributions.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

I didn't count them, but I estimate around 500 mining nodes in the map. They have an 8 hour respawn time. 1500 ore minerals added to the game each day in the ideal case where all nodes are mined on cooldown. That means around 220 ingots (each ingot takes 5-9 minerals, depending on the required heat). Each player wearing metal, breaks around 1 weapon every 4 days and one armor every week. That's around 2.32 ingots per day. The full capacity of production of all mines can cover less than 100 players wearing metal.

Hence the reason I said large items, which includes wood which spawns 6-8 pieces per spawn.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

So, given that those are the actual numbers, do you still believe that there is a problem of inflation?

Yes, actually. For starters, if metal is that rare players will use more wood and leather items, which are not as rare. The problem is a cumulative effect that will appear over time. It will not happen instantly. In the beginning, it won't seem to exist at all because of high demands for goods. Then housing saturation will set in, reducing wood/stone consumption. Then workstation saturation will set in as players complete their buildings. Bear in mind that this will occur even if they raise the building technologies to include stone walls and castles and such. It won't remove the problem, only delay it. Eventually, even things like coal and metal ore will become super saturated.

Of course, anyone is welcome to disagree and I would be happy to be proven wrong. Time will tell. That's the beauty of predictions.

@GamerSeuss said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

Let's face it, if a + b = c is all you needed to know to be a Game Designer or an Economist, we'd all be doing it, until supply would so way overload the market that it would get abandoned as not profitable enough to merchandize.

That happened in the 80's and is kind of in the throws of happening again. Just sayin'.

@GamerSeuss said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

That being said, there is still an easy limiter here, in the Devs only have to limit the mobs availability for gold farming, and, if that still causes a problem, they can lower the gold drop probability and amounts, and increase the taxes on the marketplace and crafting that go to the 'system' and not the Governors.

Static solutions generally fail. In short, game economies can not go negative. The most that could happen is that they reach 0, which would be game breaking for obvious reasons. A workable solution would involve allowing the resources to accumulate until a certain threshold has met with normal systems at work, and then slowly increase downward pressure on the system until it reached a sort of slowly oscillating equilibrium where the downward pressure would increase and decrease with the number of goods/gold coins in play. Dynamically adjusting what mobs drop is one way, having npc's that buy/sell/dispose of goods is another. The more systems that a player is able to choose to interact with instead of being forced to interact with, the better. Hence the reason to suggesting alternatives to simply increasing taxes or decreasing drop rates.

@GamerSeuss said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

Let's face it, if a + b = c is all you needed to know to be a Game Designer or an Economist, we'd all be doing it, until supply would so way overload the market that it would get abandoned as not profitable enough to merchandize.

That happened in the 80's and is kind of in the throws of happening again. Just sayin'.

@GamerSeuss said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

That being said, there is still an easy limiter here, in the Devs only have to limit the mobs availability for gold farming, and, if that still causes a problem, they can lower the gold drop probability and amounts, and increase the taxes on the marketplace and crafting that go to the 'system' and not the Governors.

Static solutions generally fail. In short, game economies can not go negative. The most that could happen is that they reach 0, which would be game breaking for obvious reasons. A workable solution would involve allowing the resources to accumulate until a certain threshold has met with normal systems at work, and then slowly increase downward pressure on the system until it reached a sort of slowly oscillating equilibrium where the downward pressure would increase and decrease with the number of goods/gold coins in play. Dynamically adjusting what mobs drop is one way, having npc's that buy/sell/dispose of goods is another. The more systems that a player is able to choose to interact with instead of being forced to interact with, the better. Hence the reason to suggesting alternatives to simply increasing taxes or decreasing drop rates.

@munch Ok my dude. You know everything. Have fun with that.

@GamerSeuss said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

YES, the Economy is a concern in the building of the game. That being said, there is no need to sling slurs and name calling over it. You can get on your soap box and claim all kinds of credentials about game design and how long you've been testing...shoot, I've played and tested MMOs since they started in the 90s, and I TAUGHT Game Design. doesn't mean I'm the world's biggest expert on the game. (Granted, I may act like it sometimes, lol) all opinions have merit, just remember that in an Alpha state, you are nowhere near where you can judge the final product's viability.

I'm an old timer like you, and I don't claim to be an expert, I just claim to not be ignorant. There is a world of difference between the two. Yes, the game is in an alpha state and it will change. Yes, the economic balance will change as a result of any number of changes that can be made between now and beta. It is, however, fair to say that this is something that should be looked at and consideration should be given to before the game reaches beta because the process of rebalancing an entire economy that late in development is very difficult.

@GamerSeuss

I'm not on a soapbox about being right, I simply do not appreciate being called ignorant for expressing an opinion that someone disagrees with. I expressed a concern, not a certainty. Having a degree in game design or working as a game dev doesn't make me right, but it does qualify me as not ignorant on the topic of game economies.

Also, for anyone that is interested Extra Credits did a nice

about hyperinflation in MMO's. Maybe not as good as some others I've seen or read, but it is a nice TLDR for folks that are short on time.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

If those 60 people hunt low level bandits for 2 hours, pulling 4k each, they total something around 200k, not the 7,68m that you assume. That's because on this continent with 32 cities, there is simply no place where to farm gold for more than 150 players, and with anything more than 50 you will hit severe diminishing returns. This isn't World of Warcraft. The world isn't made to support a player base whose full playtime is supposed to be spent farming something. Most of the players will be doing a lot of different activities, only a small amount actually go around hunting gold dropping mobs.

32 cities, 60 players each, 4k per player per day, so (60 x 32 x 4000), for clarities sake. And that was based on a light assumption of 2 hrs. Later in my argument I mentioned the Pereto Distribution which is the 80/20 rule. On a server of 2k people, an average of 400 will generate 80% of the gold wealth that flows into the game. The same is highly likely to generally hold true for other resources and player distributions.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

I didn't count them, but I estimate around 500 mining nodes in the map. They have an 8 hour respawn time. 1500 ore minerals added to the game each day in the ideal case where all nodes are mined on cooldown. That means around 220 ingots (each ingot takes 5-9 minerals, depending on the required heat). Each player wearing metal, breaks around 1 weapon every 4 days and one armor every week. That's around 2.32 ingots per day. The full capacity of production of all mines can cover less than 100 players wearing metal.

Hence the reason I said large items, which includes wood which spawns 6-8 pieces per spawn.

@spoletta said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

So, given that those are the actual numbers, do you still believe that there is a problem of inflation?

Yes, actually. For starters, if metal is that rare players will use more wood and leather items, which are not as rare. The problem is a cumulative effect that will appear over time. It will not happen instantly. In the beginning, it won't seem to exist at all because of high demands for goods. Then housing saturation will set in, reducing wood/stone consumption. Then workstation saturation will set in as players complete their buildings. Bear in mind that this will occur even if they raise the building technologies to include stone walls and castles and such. It won't remove the problem, only delay it. Eventually, even things like coal and metal ore will become super saturated.

Of course, anyone is welcome to disagree and I would be happy to be proven wrong. Time will tell. That's the beauty of predictions.

@munch Didn't miss those things. They simply don't do enough to combat the issue. Time will tell.

@Daarknes said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

Right now you are playing an alpha build with, if we are honest, a tiny fraction of the number of players that the developer would (hopefully) expect at launch.

@munch said in Economy Feedback and Suggestion:

I don't know where did you take the impression that they will only have a tiny fraction of people that they are expecting in launch, but you are very wrong, there are alot of people waiting for this game, and were playing it in previous alphas.

Try reading for comprehension before making an argument.

@Munch First, stop with the attitude and personal insults. Insulting me doesn't make you right. As for whether or not I am ignorant on the subject, I literally have a degree in game design and game development is my day job . So, no, I don't believe that I am ignorant on the topic. You don't have to agree with me. I could honestly care less whether you do or not. This comment was for the developers. That said...

In one of the last dev videos he essentially made a case for PVE w/o PVP, PVP light, and Full PVP. It's not so cut and dry as your 'pvp solves everything' idea. That's naïve in the extreme. You farmed for three days. Congratulations! How long will that last? Player have to hunt to mobs to reach the top end of the PVP game, simply by virtue of the way skills are acquired. Every one of those mobs will be dropping multiple items every single time they are killed, whether by you or someone else. The fact that it takes you, individually, some time to find the item you want doesn't matter in the slightest, because the items are still being generated constantly. If an item has a 1% drop rate, it will drop 1% of the time. That doesn't mean it will drop for YOU, but it will drop 1% of the time. If there is as much competition for mobs on higher population servers as you suggest, that means that the mobs are being killed constantly, with every kill spawning more objects into the game....constantly. Without knowing exact mob counts, drop rates, etc, it is not possible to calculate how many objects, but they won't be that scarce. It will be next to impossible for players to consistently maintain a sufficient drain, even on rare resources, to prevent the kind of economic inflation that occurs.

More to the point, your calculations appear to be missing a lot of variables. For starters, if you have a full server population all resources will flow into the system far, far faster than they currently do. Depending on server balance, if the distribution is split, to give you the benefit of the doubt, 20/30/50|good/neutral/evil | no pvp/pvp light/full pvp, capped at a solid 60 per city, and 32 cities. If those 60 people hunted low level bandits for 2 hours, pulling 4k each, that would add 240k*32 = 7.68m Gold pumping into the game's economy daily. In all likelihood it will be at least double that, if not more, although it will likely follow a Pereto distribution instead of being gained equally among all players, and it doesn't matter how that gold gets shuffled around unless it gets removed from the game. And that 120k gold you spent...where did it go? Taxes? To the auction house? Just how exactly did it get REMOVED from the game?

If they each filled up just a single horse drawn cart with heavy goods, (603230) 57.6k objects being added into the game. Light objects are worse because they respawn faster and can be carried at much higher capacity. Mob drops are the worst, because they spawn quickly and drop multiple objects per mob, even at the lowest levels. Couple that with 16 hour processing times for leather and the like and limited availability of land to put processing facilities (because there will be trade-offs between types of facilities, public vs. private plots, etc) and what you will end up with is a glut of low tier items flooding the market. They simply will not be able to be processed and/or consumed at the rate that they flow into the game. And those numbers don't even assume that people are really playing that much. Your description of your guild actually supports this assertion, because you will have a full guild donating and pooling resources instead of spending those resources on their own plots, and no doubt your guild will be attempting to min/max production on those plots. But, at the end of the day, it wouldn't get rid of the problem because if your guild was full and active daily they would overflow your capacity for both processing and storage in short order. The only reason you haven't seen it yet is because of server wipes and limited playerbase.

@Munch: I never said there wasn't any drain, but rather that there is not enough drains, and more particularly, there are not enough drains that an individual player can interact with. Right now you are playing an alpha build with, if we are honest, a tiny fraction of the number of players that the developer would (hopefully) expect at launch. And as for the limited number of plots, notice that the VAST majority of them are not being used, much less used to their full extent, and still there is a glut of resources.

PvP doesn't solve much, the gear doesn't cost much, and even with imbuing, unless sieges are happening every few hours, the problem will still exist. If there are enough players for sieges to happen every few hours, or even daily, the problem will be even worse as every player that is active within the game will make the problem worse every time they go hunting.

But since you brought up gold, I made 4k in 2 hours. That means your 20-30k is nothing if a whole town is working at it, even without taxes.

Log the usage and add a bounty mechanic. Let the thieves get PK'd without penalizing the person that PK's them.