Economy Disconnect

[spacefiddle]

A recent Q&A answer (from 5/4) has me really worried about the future of the in-game economy.

 

I'll paste it in at the end, so you don't have to go poking around for it. Largely, though, what stands out is this:

 

Player: "I can't find what I want on the GTN, none are available."

Dev: "The problem with the economy is that clueless players don't post enough stuff, wink wink. Also, clueless players dump too much stuff on the GTN."

 

lolwut

 

Every economy, game or otherwise, is filled with irrational actors. You can't blame them for the state of your economy, nor can you rely on them to universally wise up and become smart business people.

 

Take the mishmosh of the above issues: one of the problems cited in the answer is that items are mass-posted on the GTN "well below materials cost."

 

Whose fault is that? The GTN, in addition to its many interface flaws, chooses a laughably small default price for all items. These two issues are tied together. This is important, so really consider this for a moment:

 

The GTN is a pain to navigate. If it wasn't, more people would research prices on items before posting. Since doing so is a slow misery, they just tend to dump items up there at whatever default price, sometimes with minor tweaking; i've seen +/- 15% or so. And tons and tons of mass-posted crap greens, and does anyone remember the amusing state of Augment sales before 1.2?

 

Couple that with how low the default price is, and you have a ton of items for sale far below mats prices. The long-term fix is to retool the GTN to have a far better flow for the seller (and buyer); but an immediate solution is to also change the default price of items to more closely resemble their baseline value!

 

If you KNOW there are many irrational actors out there posting items "below mat value," are you really expecting every last player to look up every single item they post and - manually, even if posting a stack - alter the default price on all of them? One at a time? Every time?

 

No. Most casual players, or crafters grinding for level, will always mass-toss items at whatever it comes up as, with as few clicks or keypresses possible. It's already a tedious process; few will want to make it worse.

 

Aside from these very specific issues, however, the position that "we must have players be savvy business people before our economy will work right" is somewhat worrying.

 

Original Q&A

DarthZaul: Other than the planned Hutt takeover of all GTNs (which will make them all neutral), do you have further plans to improve the economy? Below level 49 it is almost nonexistent. The crafting changes in 1.2 were supposed to improve it but instead they just gave people more incentive to RE everything they make instead of put it on the GTN. I had to make enough characters with different crew skills to create a self-sufficient Legacy economy, making all my own armor, mods, and stims/medpacks because there are none available to buy.

 

Damion Schubert (Principal Lead Systems Designer): It sounds like there is a legitimate hole in the economy that someone who has a whole bunch of crew skills could be taking advantage of (hint hint). In all seriousness, a key part of selling your wares in any MMO is understanding supply and demand. In most MMOs, the economy flattens out because all the crafters take the 500 pairs of boots that they craft and plop them on the auction house, which drives the supply wildly way above demand, which pushes the prices down to be below the cost of materials and makes it so that selling stuff isn't economically worthwhile - which kind of destroys the 'I'm a successful shop owner' vibe that aspiring crafters are hoping for. A huge part of the reverse-engineering feature is that it encourages players to remove these excess goods from the economy, which hopefully will bring supply and demand closer to what they actually should be, and should create more space in the GTN without lots of competition. That being said, we can always do better, and I'm sure this will be something we will tweak further in the future.

Edited May 8, 2012 by spacefiddle

[GnatB]

Problem with economy:

 

1. Commendations (mods, in particular). Should be far more rare. Like, get them from ONLY doing flashpoints, possibly heroics.

2. 50 item limit. It isn't possible for a crafter to put up for sale even a fraction of what (s)he can make.

 

 

 

I don't really feel the "default price" factors in all that much to the economy problems. But rather the two previous items are exactly what's causing the problems the dev himself cites. Namely, holes in the economy because players can't put up enough items to fill them. And oversupply in some areas due to people dumping mods on the market. (probably bought with commendations)

[spacefiddle]

You're definitely right about the commendation mods. Not only can you buy a ton of mods yourself with planet comms, they're BoE and can be given to alts, guildies, or sold to anyone! (I still maintain the default GTN prices are far too low to be healthy ).

 

I know I end each planet with several or half a dozen leftover comms I don't ever use, after buying anything I might want, and the next planet will have a new list of stuff. There's little incentive to go check the GTN for basic "replaceables," like mods every few levels. Don't even get me started on the decision to take a prime source of a consumable economy and let permanent reusable versions be made...

[G_Vega]

What economy?

 

The only ones making money are the Hutts.

[TSgtSeuss]

While you have some merit to your worries about the clunkiness of the GTN and the low default prices, the dev has some merit to his answer also...

 

He was asked "How come I can't ever buy something for my alt on the GTN?" And the answer is, "because nobody makes L15-41 items to sell"... This game is designed around people making several alts to see all the story lines... Anybody trying to scrape out a living with the GTN that DOESN'T sell L15-41 items is screwing themselves and screwing the economy. Credits flow (relatively) freely at high levels, and people WILL pay for blue armoring/mods/enhancements/crystals/hilts/barrels for their "twink" alts, but nobody is selling them...

[JoyProtocol]

While you have some merit to your worries about the clunkiness of the GTN and the low default prices, the dev has some merit to his answer also...

 

He was asked "How come I can't ever buy something for my alt on the GTN?" And the answer is, "because nobody makes L15-41 items to sell"... This game is designed around people making several alts to see all the story lines... Anybody trying to scrape out a living with the GTN that DOESN'T sell L15-41 items is screwing themselves and screwing the economy. Credits flow (relatively) freely at high levels, and people WILL pay for blue armoring/mods/enhancements/crystals/hilts/barrels for their "twink" alts, but nobody is selling them...

 

This is true. I regularly sell low-level (11-39 so far) purple and blue Armstech items.

Edited May 8, 2012 by JoyProtocol

[spacefiddle]

This is true. I regularly sell low-level (11-39 so far) purple and blue Armstech items.

 

Ah i see, I blended his answer incorrectly. He's specifically addressing the low to midlevel market in his answer, as well as expressing the belief that RE removes the glut of unwanted items.

 

You're right, and I think this ties into Gnat's point too: there's just too many easy mods and items while leveling. It's a weird extreme where quest rewards are marginally-useful bad greens, but planet comm vendors sell decent blues. Still, if a few smart crafters are doing well with low to mid-level stuff, maybe I'll join y'all and see how it works on my server.

[Drewhat]

I still think anything that cannot result in an RE should give higher amounts of mats. My rule of thumb: look at the default price of a piece of gear, divide the price by the rating. Then use that as a comparison.

[Sithhelmet]

While you have some merit to your worries about the clunkiness of the GTN and the low default prices, the dev has some merit to his answer also...

 

He was asked "How come I can't ever buy something for my alt on the GTN?" And the answer is, "because nobody makes L15-41 items to sell"... This game is designed around people making several alts to see all the story lines... Anybody trying to scrape out a living with the GTN that DOESN'T sell L15-41 items is screwing themselves and screwing the economy. Credits flow (relatively) freely at high levels, and people WILL pay for blue armoring/mods/enhancements/crystals/hilts/barrels for their "twink" alts, but nobody is selling them...

 

Nobody is selling them because relatively no one is buying them. Nor crafted items like armor.

 

Before 1.2 you could sell a ton of low level items for alts. Keep in mind that only alts with high level mains could afford them, due to the cost of materials. The first time through player couldn't cover the cost due to the price of training skills.

 

Remember that level 40 or 50s have extra planet commendations from flashpoints and leftovers from the first time through. Months ago it was less easy to get moddable orange gear at level, so there really wasn't much to spend the commendations on. That changed dramatically with 1.2. Now someone with legacy 10 can buy a full set of orange gear at level 10 for very low cost- especially what was once the bread and butter of crafters, wrist and belt items (which were rare drops) and are the cheapest of the lot.

 

This is good news for cybertechs and artificers, right? Nope. Quest rewards still spit out armors, mods and enhancements. I've been on an alt today and in Voss I've racked up 29 commendations and at least 7 item modifications- and just entered the Nightmare Lands. The lowest amounts of commendations I have are Korriban- 8, Quesh- 13, Belsavis- 17, the rest are in the twenties and thirties, save Taris, which stands at 142 (Farming credits and Ashara reputation!)

 

Also, add in to the irrational sellers, they are somewhat rational. The umpteen million blues that drop vendor for chump change and you can still mark them up and undercut crafters and come out ahead. This also goes for the purple modifications, I can't count how many times crafters have complained about the number of cheap purples that are "less than material cost" and not realized that there's no made by tag- which means they're drops.

 

Look also at 1.2 and what it did to crafters. Non-augmented armor and weapons run from just under 1k to 5k on my server. Why? Because they can't be reverse engineered. They took the "500 boots problem" that didn't exist- because players would RE to GET MATS BACK and level more- and made it a problem that NOW EXISTS because you can't RE non-crits.

[JoyProtocol]

You are missing the big picture here, and are part of the problem I'm afraid. Commendation mods are subpar at best, and are less appealing if you are also trying to keep 1-2 companions with decent gear.

 

At the same time, mods/armoring/enhancement literally do not exist on the market - I play on Swiftsure, which I believe is still a fairly busy server, and I only occassionaly see a mod around my level - it's usually a purple mod for a force user, priced at 46,000 credits. You can buy an entire purple item for less money than that.

 

I harvested materials as I leveled, and I have an excessive number of materials on my Armstech. The only reason I'm not flooding the market is that I can only craft so many things at a time

 

At the same time, I would happily buy mods/enhancements at 5k, and consider a 10k or even 15k. I'd pay twice as much for decent Armoring unit. But, alas, they don't exist on the market, so I'm stuck using my Patron Armor and other crap.

Edited May 8, 2012 by JoyProtocol

[TSgtSeuss]

People also complain about stuff being priced "below mats cost," but green mats are free! In the time it takes you to spend $10K and 1 hour sending your companions out to gather green mats, you can gather TRIPLE that if you spend 20 minutes walking your happy *** around a lowbie planet to gather them yourselves...

 

I spend an hour or so each night sending half of my companions out to gather blue/purple mats and send half of my companions to craft items to replace the ones I sold the previous day... I gather my "green" mats myself... and as a small cherry on top, random chests in lowbie areas and greys you get from killing mobs that guard green nodes -almost- make up for what you spend sending your companions out for blue/purple mats... it's not glamorous... it's not exactly "fun," but it's efficient and nearly pure profit.

 

That being said, I don't disagree that the economy is borked... but it's not as bad as people make it out to be.

[Sithhelmet]

Commendation modifications are NOT subpar, in fact, they're above par. I have an alt on the Swiftsure as well, in the 30s (another in the teens) and, yes, the market there is a joke despite the population.

 

The difficulty with crafted gear vs. the modifications is that crafted gear, no matter how highly researched, is still a green, albeit with more secondary and tertiary stats tacked on. This is one huge issue- an augmented green is better than a blue and often a purple, simply because the stat increase is ***-backwards. The costs go up exponentially just to get more accuracy, surge, whatever- at levels where there's so little other ways to get these stats it's pointless to try stacking them.

 

Modifications, blue, or even green ones (which are often sold cheaply by planetary vendors near planet comm vendors) make orange items superior all around, with very little exception. Why? Because you're increasing primary stats with the armor and mod and secondary stats with the enhancement.

 

The character I mentioned on Voss can make Force Master Boots, a green level 49. I can make them, RE them, get a blue and RE again to purple. The stats will still be the same, with a little power added, and surge, perhaps. 50 endurance, 62 willpower, 25 power, 29 alacrity rating.

Now here's what she's wearing: Orange boots, with level 47 armoring, level 47 enhancement, and level 45 mod. The stats together are 72 endurance, 73 willpower, 6 power, 17 crit, and 27 surge. I have the same stats in my legs, gloves and headpiece as well, and the chestpiece only differs slightly since I'm using an older enhancement.

 

Modifications aren't a non-issue for making gear for levelling, modifications are THE issue. I'm sure no one would mind at all if they were crafted by players and part of the economy. Everyone's beef with them is that there are so many ways to get them that there IS no economy.

[JoyProtocol]

Commendation modifications are NOT subpar, in fact, they're above par.

 

Just wanted to add to that. As long as I've been buying commendation modifications, I have not liked a SINGLE one. I do like one enhancement on some of the 40ish merchants. As a Gunslinger, I can never find the stats I want unless I get them crafted.

[DonJuansen]

 

Anybody trying to scrape out a living with the GTN that DOESN'T sell L15-41 items is screwing themselves and screwing the economy. Credits flow (relatively) freely at high levels, and people WILL pay for blue armoring/mods/enhancements/crystals/hilts/barrels for their "twink" alts, but nobody is selling them...

 

I am actually doing exactly that, selling mods/enhancements/hilts/armoring i buy with commendations during leveling for quite a nice profit on GTN.

[Corlantis]

Just wanted to add to that. As long as I've been buying commendation modifications, I have not liked a SINGLE one. I do like one enhancement on some of the 40ish merchants. As a Gunslinger, I can never find the stats I want unless I get them crafted.

 

Yes, in my experience most people tend to overlevel the suggested level range of the planets while leveling up. When they get commendation mods they are then a few levels below them. Furthermore, the variety is restricted, particularly if you want to get mods that favor your primary stat.

 

For example:

 

Want a barrel? Sure you can have the aim barrel, but it's at level 33. Oh, you are level 39? Well, you can get the commando barrel that is level 35, but the aim is lower than the endurance in commando mods.

[Spuck]

While you have some merit to your worries about the clunkiness of the GTN and the low default prices, the dev has some merit to his answer also...

 

He was asked "How come I can't ever buy something for my alt on the GTN?" And the answer is, "because nobody makes L15-41 items to sell"... This game is designed around people making several alts to see all the story lines... Anybody trying to scrape out a living with the GTN that DOESN'T sell L15-41 items is screwing themselves and screwing the economy. Credits flow (relatively) freely at high levels, and people WILL pay for blue armoring/mods/enhancements/crystals/hilts/barrels for their "twink" alts, but nobody is selling them...

 

I am one of, if not the ONLY Armstech that sells Level 9-47 Augments on my server. And 9 out of 10 Augments sell long before the 2day max time. I can not keep up with sales actually... because it takes forever to replace the resources used to make so many in the first place. I use 3 characters sending out for scavenging, and 2 characters sending out for slicing mats just to try keeping up.

 

But all of this takes away from my regular game stuff lol. I now spend more time "alt-hopping" just to send companions out and craft items, than I do actually pve/pvp on characters.

[PendragonPrime]

Dunno. I think the dev's point was that if there's a hole in what's available on the GTN...that's an opportunity for an enterprising crafter to make some creds. I'm a pretty active crafter on my server and have noticed a couple of these myself. Unfortunately, I don't (yet) have an alt with the proper crafting skill to take advantage of them.

 

But I will. Oh, I will.

[RichyYoung]

50 item limit is the problem!

[TSgtSeuss]

50 item limit is the problem!

 

Raising the cap to 100 would probably help a bit... But I don't know TOO many people that consistently have more than 50 items for sale anyway...

 

Another minor annoyance/bug to crafting is the mail notification system...

 

40% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your sale of Redoubt Powered Assault Device has been sold for $XXXX"

40% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your sale of Powered Assault Device has been sold for $XXXX

20% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your Item has been sold for $XXXX"

 

It's a MASSIVE pain in the *** to try to keep track of what items you have to make replacements for when half of the time, I don't even know for sure what sold... I have to sift through 5 pages of my sale items to figure out what's missing...

[Verraton]

As the op said remove recommended prices from the GTN.

This creates a false market value and undermines crafters, sellers, and buyers. This is because the GTN is setting the default value for an item, where instead the market should determine its price, not some arbitrary calculation of value.

 

Remove orange rewards from quests or flash points that are better than crafted items or add a lot more orange items to crafters that people will desire.

 

With 1.3 coming and people being able to add their own augment slots. I can only see this getting worse. Why not, as others have said, let crafters make augment kits that they can sell? That would make a million times more sense.

 

Also this:

 

40% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your sale of Redoubt Powered Assault Device has been sold for $XXXX"

40% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your sale of Powered Assault Device has been sold for $XXXX

20% of the time, I get an e-mail saying "Your Item has been sold for $XXXX"

 

It's a MASSIVE pain in the *** to try to keep track of what items you have to make replacements for when half of the time, I don't even know for sure what sold... I have to sift through 5 pages of my sale items to figure out what's missing...

Edited May 9, 2012 by Verraton

[Crankyhobo]

There is nothing i want on the GTN as a 50, even if i could navigate it using the horrible interface from 1993... and there is no need to buy anything on the GTN <50. What is it for? i look for 25 armoring (since its slot locked) and that's about it. Now if they had introduced the ability to turn any item into an orange for the look, then introduced some rare looks there would be a secondary market of rare appearances - even people with the best gear would want to buy the right look.

[JMCH]

Although I completely agree the economy is broken, the issue with "below materials priced items" simply is false as far as we limit ourselves to crafted ones. It's only an issue if you consider all the RE process and a low production volume.

 

The issue lies in vastly too proficient trash loots with quite a lot actually useable, fast leveling and mid-term useless crafting skills.

 

Sure, you can craft augments and augmented items to improve storebought items, for the time being. What will augments market look like in, say, 2 months? Items have an infinite durability, so once you have them you're good for just like forever, or in fact for up to the next grinding-party patch.

 

So, all in all, the issue lies in the mechanics of the game, which simply don't apply to an MMORPG.

 

Edit : You should also note crafted gear at "above cost" price (with your own definition of this) would be considerably too expensive except for multi-50 players' alts. Even at suggested GTN prices, orange gear is too expensive while leveling a first char.

Edited May 9, 2012 by JMCH

[rjkishida]

There IS no economy in swtor. I don't know why people pretend otherwise. In MMOs there are generally speaking two phases to the economy:

 

1. The level up phase. This is where people on the path to cap buy the gear they want to help them with the grind. There are generally speaking holes in their equipment because they don't get enough from rewards/drops. Thus these players need to go to the player based market to fill these holes.

 

This phase has failed in SWTOR because there are (generally speaking) very few or no holes in equipment while leveling up. Quest rewards along with drops from FPs and planetary commendation vendors supply virtually everything players need. Even companions have quest rewards to fill in their equipment slots.

 

Another reason for the failure of this phase is the speed of leveling. Pre-25ish it is possible to get 3-4 levels for several hours of gameplay. Post26 to Pre50 it is possible to get 1 level (maybe more) for several hours of gameplay. This means that there is the potential to update equipment several times a day at lower levels. Most players do not have the money at lower levels to completely update equipment several times a day. At higher levels, updating equipment every other day is a joke. While leveling up players can get the equipment they need.

 

2. The endgame phase. This is where players at the endgame level buy rare/powerful equipment that they have not been able to acquire themselves. These items drop from powerful bosses or extremely rare spawn monsters.

 

This phase has failed because at present the best equipment drops from Ops/HM FPs or is bought from vednors. There is nothing to get from other players.

 

There is no economy in this game. There is no reason to buy or sell to other players at present. Bioware has failed at creating a player based economy. The economy is entirely based on NPCs at present.

[Distracted]

Take the mishmosh of the above issues: one of the problems cited in the answer is that items are mass-posted on the GTN "well below materials cost."

 

This happens in almost every single MMO. Why does it still surprise people?

[Helgarm]

This happens in almost every single MMO. Why does it still surprise people?

 

I guess people hope that new MMO developers would take the time to learn from the past mistakes of other MMO developers.

 

Equally naive, it would seem.

 

H.