Economy fix

[Keaneoo]

Hello,

Well, demand for almost all resources is dropping rapidly, and as a result prices too on Northisle. Free fall is a pretty good description, and it has coincided with the sever being closed to new players. Firstly i'll state what I think is the obvious, but I may be wrong, so it's best to list the reasons for this:

- No new players joining the server, so a big drop in the introduction of gold coin to the server.
- Player activity on the server decreasing in general.
- Active player base reaching levels where they do not require many of the resources in bulk any longer (building materials mainly).
- Players picking adventures that are most efficient in terms of losses.
- Being able to carry a base level of the more expensive units without losing them/losing few.
- Players in general producing far too many resources for the server's current needs.
- Adventure rewards of high level weapons being too great vs current ability to chose adventures with cheap losses.

Maybe there are a few more people would like to highlight, but I am fairly sure the majority are aware what the issues are already.


The problem this creates is that players will find it very hard to trade. Those unfortunate enough not to have overcome the L4 upgrade hump already will find it very hard to build up enough gold coin to progress their settlement and create a big divide between those who have and those who have not. Players mass producing particular items will suffer the greatest, as they rely the most on a fluid trading environment.

There really is not an option to open up the server for new players, as I assume server capacity in terms of number of accounts has been reached already. I guess inactive accounts could be kicked... but in all fairness BB would be shooting themselves in the foot $$ wise doing so.

So my ideas are based on increasing server demand for most resources, and injecting more gold coin into the economy:

Weekly Adventure

On a set day each week, players (26+) will find their settlement has been attacked by a fleet of bandits. A varying number of buildings will be damaged and require repair before their production can start again. Building repairs will cost tools + building materials relevant to the players level.

The attack will trigger the option to run a random adventure suitable to the players level. The adventure will be one of the less desirable adventures, for which players will have to face losing expensive units if they chose to complete it. Completing the adventure will reward the player with normal loot plus a significant gold coin reward (in line with lootspot prices for the adventure).

With an approach like this, demand would increase and hopefully the stock levels on the server drained sufficiently to help find a balanced price on most items. It may also encourage players to start building Expert buildings, as well as providing a little more encouragement to sample all of the content.


I know some will scream PvP is the answer, well that's not here yet so I thought I would offer a possible solution. Thoughts and ideas are all welcome in this thread!

*Edit to add additional ideas from this thread*

- Introduce AI trading (Dnarag1m)
- Speed up the introduction of PvP (Shelob81)
- Game requires new line of progression other than reaching L50 (Qualan)
- Introduce the option to build tempory buildings on adventure maps (StarCaller)
- Introduce decorations as a resource sink, rather than just an adventure reward/gem item (Gromobran)
- Reduce the number of weapons that drop from adventures and remove the high level resources from low level adventure loot tables (Kotugo)

[Kotugo]

It was a bad idea splitting the player base up into separate servers, I've noticed quite a few players in my friends list who I used to trade with no longer play, if you visit their settlement then its a ghost town, no settlers moving, all fields/wells/mines run out, its a bit sad really but its going to be a disaster when the majority of the players end up like this with no new players coming in to replace them.

The alt accounts are also causing economy issues, you have some players who just have large numbers of pine cutters/foresters/coking plants and all they do is transfer coal to their main and sell the rest at a price which makes it worthless for others to sell.

I will probably be in the minority, but I personally am not looking forward to any pvp, competition between players always brings out the worst in people, ill probably end up joining a guild and just help to support players that do enjoy it while increasing the efficiency of my own settlement.

[Tierarzt]

It was a bad idea splitting the player base up into separate servers, I've noticed quite a few players in my friends list who I used to trade with no longer play, if you visit their settlement then its a ghost town, no settlers moving, all fields/wells/mines run out, its a bit sad really but its going to be a disaster when the majority of the players end up like this with no new players coming in to replace them.

You never do see friend's settlers moving, so that is not a sign if they are active or not.

The alt accounts are also causing economy issues, you have some players who just have large numbers of pine cutters/foresters/coking plants and all they do is transfer coal to their main and sell the rest at a price which makes it worthless for others to sell.

Multi-accounting is not allowed by BlueByte, and anyone found with more than one account will be banned. Your observations are misguided.

I will probably be in the minority, but I personally am not looking forward to any pvp, competition between players always brings out the worst in people, ill probably end up joining a guild and just help to support players that do enjoy it while increasing the efficiency of my own settlement.

You are not in the minority with your concerns about PvP.

[dnarag1m]

You underline exactly the things that are profoundly wrong with this game. I have the feeling that nobody working on this game has the faintest idea what an economy is, and how to keep it healthy. Look at EVE-Online ; a game a million times more complex than Settlers economy (and player!) wise, yet it is a very stable and healthy trading/money environment, not unlike real life. Not without flaws, but as an individual player it all works. There are some high level economy people in CCCP, so that explains a lot.

Now in contrast, we have TSO. The economy seems to be deliberately ruined by almost every design implementation, modification, modus operandi.

Like you, I would like to underline the following : (we've got a few doubles, but thats good .

Closed Server Environment
This is the biggest killer of the game, both economically and industrially. Because of a lack of low level players, the demand for 70% of the resources and buildings is gone. The market is becoming a place where people only sell off their excess good at whatever price they can get. Hardly anyone is really producing things in quantity, being a specialist is deadly in this game since a month or so. I cannot understand someone at Bluebyte could not predict that by closing the server to new people, they would limit the lifespan of the game to a few months at the most. This is extremely obvious, even for casual gamers.

Adventures - The second killer of the economy
Right now the only way to progress in this game is to do Adventures. Like in any game, certain quests/adventures are more popular than others because their profitability is a lot higher, or they are quicker/easier to do. In this game currently there are a limited few adventures that are worth doing once you're past L42. Raging Bull, Nords, Black Knights. That about sums it up - the rest is a waste of time and money. This decreases the price of adventures themselves at a rapid pace, same with lootspots. Worse however, is that the excess of certain adventures and the ease at which they can be done produce a massive overcapacity of goods. We'll talk about this in the next block of text.

Adventures loot - making most higher-end buildings obselete
The excessive adventure loot has a number of consequences that are of great impact to the entire game - to such an extent they make the game no longer worthwhile to play for a large number of people. Firstly, the combined loot droppings of all players are so great that there is more offer than demand. This has result in a torrent of inflation of most goods, including a number of high-end items such as Crossbows, Cannons, Damascene swords. The prices are currently so low, that production of these goods using the Expert-Buildings is futile ; the production price at best is 200-400% higher than market prices. This is excluding the insane investment cost of EWP/Gold/Granite. The same goes for the population of settlers that are below L36 still ; their Longbow and Iron Sword economy is just as ruined.

Guides and lack of loss of high end weapons
Another factor in the ever lowering price of high end weapons is that they do not get lost. Partially because of guides just like the ones I myself make, people know exactly what kind of setup to send to only lose low-end weapons such as bowmen, militia and recruits. Except for the occasional bad luck (losing crossbows, cav or damascene by accident) there is hardly any buying power coming from the higher level players for these goods once a minimum amount is reached (250 xbow for example). Loot tables must be altered significantly, maps constantly modified to counter the newest strategies of people to skip camps, block camps, avoid using a lot of resources for maps with good droppings.

And the Marketing & Support guys make it all worse
As if the killing inflation is not bad enough because of all the previously stated reasons, it gets worse. For example, a while back we had a noon of downtime. We were compensated with two or three +250 omniseeds, rabbit tails and some other things. Just one little rabbit buff would have been enough for the inconvenience..anyways, that by itself pumped an extreme amount of goods into the economy, driving down prices in the week that followed. This seems to happen regularly - to keep players interested and happy they make up events giving away goods with relative easy; same goes for compensation in adventure loss. Oh sorry that you had to wait, here, another extra 1500 SS! Great, but everyone I know gets tons of SS in compensation. We dont want extra, we just want the bugs fixed! SS prices are bad enough as it is.

The gemshop - speaking of a broken economy
Although its not 100% relevant to the discussion of this topic, I do think that to underline the complete failure of the developers to understand closed game economics, we can look at the Gemshop. There is no sane reason why for example copper or marble refills cost nearly the same as a gold refill (golden parrot). I call this scamming - only newbies would every buy 95% of the goods in the gemstore, because they have no idea what the value of items is. Abusing clients this way is not only morally questionable, it's also just plain poor game design. It showcases that nobody at Bluebyte/Ubisoft really understands the current economy and the relative value of goods. The market needs constant adjusting (And hence the gemstore too) to be relevant, to keep a healthy trading environment. As an added note, I think that especially with a game that is rated PEGI-7 the extremely questionable gem-prices for many goods are ethically very edgy.

A partial solution - AI buyers
A solution that does not have to be reinvented is the usage of AI buyers. Many MMO games around the world (since a decade and more) use AI buying entities to set a lower price on certain goods. This means you can artificially suck up tons of volume of "overcapacity" from adventures. Set the price low enough so it's not interesting to produce your self for just AI needs ; but set it high enough that people are tempted to ditch their overstock items from loot quickly and efficiently. This in turn creates a demand on the market, which in turn means people will start producing on industrial levels again to serve the market. Again, nothing new...the most basic of basic commodities in closed trading environments like ours. Yet we dont have them.


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So, to sum it all up. There is an oversupply of nearly all goods except bronze swords, bread, beer, gold coin (and it's source materials), granite, map fragments and a few specific adventures. Thats only 5-7% of all existing goods that are actually useful and can be sold on the market at any volume reliably.

We are locked on a closed, dying server without fresh blood ; we are unable to progress further except in experience, since the construction of expert buildings (except Exotic Wood Sawmill) is utterly pointless. We have nothing new to undertake, no growth to achieve. With nothing interesting and new to do, living in a dying and small economy these people are bound to leave this game within a few months, myself included.

We are left with a devteam that seems to be focussed on implementing candy-events to keep us "happy", forgetting about the mess this game really is at the moment. Easter event, the Football event - really nice, but I would rather see that manpower spent on fixing inherently broken parts of the game, and some of the nastier bugs (why cant I see the online status of guild mates since a few patches ago? why is the parrot-bug still not fixed with the highest priority?).

Right now I only see a "Free" game that provides very little entertainment past Level42 (2-3 months of playtime). Past that stage, it becomes boring, and all the flaws frustrating. This coupled with the constant attempts to ask absurd amounts of real life money for ingame items in an incomplete, partially broken game really alienate the potentially loyal and smart user-base of powerplayers. Asking 5000 gems for a Veteran general that could be purchased for a lot less gold in Eggs just a few weeks earlier. Asking insane amounts of gems for something as simple as an extra building slot. Asking gems for everything you should be able to do with in-game gold (we need goldsinks, or that comodity will become subject to inflation just as badly as goods are right now).

No, my confidence in this game is dropping rock hard, as a stone. And all around me I hear the same voices - that of concern, that of boredom.

Devs, better make some massive steps in the right direction soon, or you'll end up with a game that will end up stillborn. No game company will invest money in a product that is already mostly dead in it's beta stage, all excitement and growth opportunities gone.

My $0.02.

[hatseflats]

I support this notion. This game needs a lot of fixing to remain interesting once you've played it for a few months...

[DaveyDent]

dnarag1m,

mate excellent read, BB you really need to take note because atm this game does not have a great shelf life!!

[Shelob81]

I do agree with most of what is said in the nice read from dnarag1m, but I do want to add something.

The development of a PVP system (which will take a while, I know) will increase the demand for high end products like crossbows, steel swords etc, because playing against other people will be unpredictable and large losses should be expected. With most people wanting to participate, a large demand for these products will be a logical consequence, and the need to have your own production line will be atractive...

I will, however, depend on the time needed to implement a PVP system and the setup if this will help

[Hoggbert]

I have half a voice and my brain must be heard

[Qualan]

the game doesnt have much of a shelf life past the mid 40's due to lack of goals/progression. PvP could solve a lot- but that is quite a way down the line. No matter what happens now to tweak economy will just shift the problem to the next bottleneck as all will be influenced by the final bottleneck- only current goal in game is level to 50

No tweak will solve that one except some fundamental changes- which seem to be in the works but not ready yet. So i rather see the clunky system now with minor tweaks and effort to speed up the special purpose adventures/PVP than trying to fix an economy which will only push the bottleneck to the next item

Dirty fixes like creating new raw material sinks are kind of on par as opening up the calls that the game was nerfed to get more gem sales- which probably woul dbe the end result of additional sinks

basically the game needs some other line of progression/action than leveling to 50 on a rinse and repeat adventure basis and daily quests arent it really )

[Qualan]

anyway regarding closed servers. We have been there before- When NFL was getting full it was locked and NI opened. Same now for SC. Once there is a healthy population on SC, the old servers will be opened again - which makes sense

And as to closed, as i saw in chats people were talking that you could still get on server through friend invites making it more a qualified closure