Goblin Squad Member
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The failure of the coin economy can be attributed directly to the fact that coin has no intrinsic value until coin drain systems are in the game. Selling anything for coin now is a sucker's game since coin economy is completely inflationary for the time being.
Once coin has an actual use for training or maintenance systems, people will have a better idea of how much coin they need and we'll take steps to acquire it. Until then, it's dead weight.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The failure of the coin economy can be attributed directly to the fact that coin has no intrinsic value until coin drain systems are in the game. Selling anything for coin now is a sucker's game since coin economy is completely inflationary for the time being.
Once coin has an actual use for training or maintenance systems, people will have a better idea of how much coin they need and we'll take steps to acquire it. Until then, it's dead weight.
That's my point. A unit of coal has utility, while a unit of coin has zero utility. It's an idea of a medium of exchange that right now relies on merchants being happy to simply be the people with the most coin.
I am hedging against the possibility that coin drains become significant, but my 'reasonable' price is higher than most people's 'absurd' price.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The failure of the coin economy can be attributed directly to the fact that coin has no intrinsic value until coin drain systems are in the game. Selling anything for coin now is a sucker's game since coin economy is completely inflationary for the time being.
Once coin has an actual use for training or maintenance systems, people will have a better idea of how much coin they need and we'll take steps to acquire it. Until then, it's dead weight.
One can hardly call the coin economy a failure when it's not even fully implemented. In a couple years, when the AH is working better, when contracts are in, and when proper faucets and drains for coin exist, you'll think yourself silly for ever worrying about it.
I'm willing to bet that by the time the general public is playing at Open Enrollment that the market will be functional.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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That's not how money works. It doesn't have value because you might spend it on something. It has value because someone will give you something in exchange for it.
Money is a proxy for barter. Instead of barter which is terribly inefficient and doesn't have a good signalling mechansim, currency means that you can exchange your labor for a unit of account that is flexible, and exchange the unit of accont for whatever it is you want to buy and seller can quickly adjust the terms of the sale based on a clearing price.
The economy did not function in Alpha because there was no persistence and therefore no value in anything.
The economy will function now that there is a real value in people's labor. There are people in Help every day asking where to go and buy stuff. We will get the auction house tuned up and that will help people use it, and once they start to use it it will kick the coin economy into gear.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's not how money works. It doesn't have value because you might spend it on something. It has value because someone will give you something in exchange for it.
Money is a proxy for barter. Instead of barter which is terribly inefficient and doesn't have a good signalling mechansim, currency means that you can exchange your labor for a unit of account that is flexible, and exchange the unit of accont for whatever it is you want to buy and seller can quickly adjust the terms of the sale based on a clearing price.
The economy did not function in Alpha because there was no persistence and therefore no value in anything.
The economy will function now that there is a real value in people's labor. There are people in Help every day asking where to go and buy stuff. We will get the auction house tuned up and that will help people use it, and once they start to use it it will kick the coin economy into gear.
Yay to that, and it will be a joyride first weeks when the goblin farmers spend their cheap cash on stuff. From a modelbuilders POV I wish I could see the that flow and how it moves to an equlibrium. The fees of AH is a anti-inflation mechanism (no longer remember how strong but that don't matter) is there any other in the pipeline? I remember you mention something about it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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That's not how money works. It doesn't have value because you might spend it on something. It has value because someone will give you something in exchange for it.
Money is a proxy for barter. Instead of barter which is terribly inefficient and doesn't have a good signalling mechansim, currency means that you can exchange your labor for a unit of account that is flexible, and exchange the unit of accont for whatever it is you want to buy and seller can quickly adjust the terms of the sale based on a clearing price.
The economy did not function in Alpha because there was no persistence and therefore no value in anything.
The economy will function now that there is a real value in people's labor. There are people in Help every day asking where to go and buy stuff. We will get the auction house tuned up and that will help people use it, and once they start to use it it will kick the coin economy into gear.
Ryan, with all due respect, you are many things but you are not an economist. Fiat moneys cannot spring into being ex nihilo; the modern value of a dollar can be traced back as deriving from the inherent worth of a silver 1-ounce coin called the "Joachim's Thaler". Silver has inherent value which allowed it to become a trade currency, and even though the modern dollar is no longer pegged to silver or gold, it at least has a cultural history from which its current value evolved. (The fact that the dollar is currently worth only 6% of an ounce of silver says something about which direction that evolution trends.)
PFO Coin, unlike real silver, has no inherent value, and unlike the dollar it has no cultural history of inherent value which would allow us to collectively imagine it still does. Until you put systems in game- specifically, important and mandatory systems like settlement maintenance costs- coin is going to be worthless, and thus useless as a medium of trade.
And even if all of that were not the case, even if you could somehow wave a magic wand and have everyone agree coin should be trusted to have a certain amount of value... tomorrow the supply of coin will be a significant percentage higher than it is today, and the day after that even higher, which means inflation will destroy whatever value you managed to give it.
We need coin drains and the coin economy will not take off until we have them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No magic wand is needed to give value to in-game coin.
Coins already have value we just don't have a scale by which to measure value. I think identifying what that scale should be was the objective of this thread. The relationship between the value of a coin and what it can buy hasn't been established but it will evolve, and it hasn't much to do with the agency of the developer except insofar as resource availability, drop rates, and possible rates of manufacture dictate. There is a difference between what is called economics in the real world and what will be the economics in the game world.
That coin has value is actual, whatever it turns out to be, because it is something that exists in the game. It will likely be tied to the value of xp training time once that becomes auctionable.
There are significant differences between artificial economics and real economics.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Ryan, with all due respect, you are many things but you are not an economist. Fiat moneys cannot spring into being ex nihilo; the modern value of a dollar can be traced back as deriving from the inherent worth of a silver 1-ounce coin called the "Joachim's Thaler". Silver has inherent value which allowed it to become a trade currency, and even though the modern dollar is no longer pegged to silver or gold, it at least has a cultural history from which its current value evolved. (The fact that the dollar is currently worth only 6% of an ounce of silver says something about which direction that evolution trends.)
PFO Coin, unlike real silver, has no inherent value, and unlike the dollar it has no cultural history of inherent value which would allow us to collectively imagine it still does. Until you put systems in game- specifically, important and mandatory systems like settlement maintenance costs- coin is going to be worthless, and thus useless as a medium of trade.
And even if all of that were...
The best solution would be to let settlements create their own currency, with in game materials, but without the possibility to counterfeit it. They could control the flow of said currency, and everybody would probably use the best ones. The difficulty would be that AH and such would need an option to choose which currency to use.
For example, I would put Steelplate X on the market, and I would accept it to go for 90 TEOPC543, 79 GLGPS983 or 92 ARAPC472 (using tags here because it would be necessary to have unique names).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Being,
I agree with the above, but I believe these thread Value of time in PFO and Trade Notice: Goods available in Rathglen are more appropriate for this discussion.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Coins already have value we just don't have a scale by which to measure value. I think identifying what that scale should be was the objective of this thread. The relationship between the value of a coin and what it can buy hasn't been established but it will evolve, and it hasn't much to do with the agency of the developer except insofar as resource availability, drop rates, and possible rates of manufacture dictate. ...
That coin has value is actual, whatever it turns out to be, because it is something that exists in the game. It will likely be tied to the value of xp training time once that becomes auctionable.
I think that's right. Having weightless, global tokens (banked coin) to serve as units of exchange is very useful.
I think part of the problem is that there is a very human desire to not make a bad deal. Making a barter trade of something you have excess of for something you need sort of ensures that you're better off at the end of the trade. Trading something you have excess of for coin... well, that's a bad deal if you can't buy what you need with the coin.
There's also a bit of pig-in-poke here. We don't know how much coin we'll need down the road. It could be a little, it could be a lot. I think either as humans or gamers we're been trained to husband resources. Just because coin doesn't have a use today doesn't mean it won't be critical tomorrow - and like Guurzak, I worry about future coin drains.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you could very quickly jump start the value of coins by letting them be used as a common component. Perhaps stop handing out copper coins and start handing out iron coins (converting the existing ones along the way) that work at 100 or 50 or 20 to 1 unit of iron, and slightly reduce the iron across the board. Put copper back at a higher level, if you need it. Maybe 1 copper is 5 iron coins, or 50, or whatever. It allows us to immediately decide what a coin is worth in terms of harvesting time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Recipe: Smelt Coin (Illegal/Black Market) Copper
100cp > 10 Copper Ore EquivalentOr something like that. Note that in almost all currency fed systems and governments destroying coin or money is a punishable offense.
I like this, but perhaps also keyed to the Rogue path, so our favourite orphan get some right to exist!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isk originally had inherent value in that it could be used to purchase items and blueprints seeded on the market by CCP. The prices of those seeded items provided the initial value assignment which PFO is missing.
This is a point in fact that is often overlooked by many on these boards. The real economy in EvE is not founded on starter gear. Starter gear is liberally seeded and almost never crafted, with the exception of T1 ammunition, Frigates and T1 PvP Fittings. Of those, only the Ammo and Frigates are manufactured for resale. In many cases it is all manufactured for personal consumption, in building throw away T1 PvP Frigates.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's just going to take a while for a coin based economy to kick off.
IMO, PFO is starting with a much larger game world than it should have, and it's a little late to downsize now that people have 'their' settlements. People are too spread out to facilitate good trade. Not many people are looking to log into a game that requires about a hour of travel every time you want to gear up, so groups like TEO, T7V and PAX, that can craft everything, are quite attractive right now.
Also encumbrance is an issue, we're not going to see a flourishing economy until we have the PFO equivalent of EVE's industrial haulers. And a better auction system with global browsing would help.
I really don't see a good economy starting until after the cataclysm, when we have access to full(isn) settlements, and are more limited in what we can do (hopefully, I don't think that 3 settlements should be able to work together to cover all the bases, should be more like 10)
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Goblin Squad Member
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We haven't even finished week 2 of EE - and we all started with a club and some peasant clothes.
Anyone expecting there is a working economy by now is daydreaming. The larger settlements might have a working economy by now - but at the moment there is a lot of need for a lot of items.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We will get the auction house tuned up and that will help people use it, and once they start to use it it will kick the coin economy into gear.
Could you give us a very general idea when the tuning process might begin (on the order of Q2 vs Q3, rather than April vs May), and maybe talk a little about fixes that seem to be good candidates for the first pass, and others that might need to wait for the next iteration?
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Goblin Squad Member
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#2 - Social Aspects, like Company/Settlement Chat
I'd vote for only 1 thing right now, improved chat. I played for a few days without using a third party website or program just to see if it could work. It didn't work at all.
The help channel devolves into a de facto general chat until someone (I've only seen Bonny) tries to reshape it into a 'help' channel. Of course, when Ryan or another dev gets on and wants to chat whatever whenever they're allowed to use 'help' as a general chat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think the economy for Tier 2 items will be significantly more interesting than that of Tier 1 items.
Any T1 raw material that I need, I can run across the map and gather with no exp spent on gathering skills.
If a T1 smelter needs raw material, it is easier for them to gather it themselves than buy it from an auction house.
T2 gathering skills take an investment of experience that means only a relatively few people out of the total playerbase will have the ability to gather a specific material.
If a T2 smelter needs a handful of T2 essence to finish his smelting, he can't just invest a hour's worth of exp in dowser and go get it, he'll have to buy it from someone.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If a T2 smelter needs a handful of T2 essence to finish his smelting, he can't just invest a hour's worth of exp in dowser and go get it, he'll have to buy it from someone.
And reaching T3 level of gathering requires such daunting expenditure of XP and time that I would reasonable guess only a handful of truly dedicated players would reach those high levels of commitment...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Frankly by the time we get to T3 I hope gathering will be more PoI based.
Bulk resources for maintaining your settlement buildings will be PoI based.
Metals for player crafted weapons and armors will always come from people running out into the wilderness and hitting nodes, with a few extra wrinkles when gushers are implemented.
As I understand it, the plan never calls for a passive PoI like a mine that provides the materials you need to make player equipment.
Gear to make a individual character better comes from individual gatherers.
Gear to make an entire settlement better comes from points of interest.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are having some lengthy conversations this morning about helping to get the economy bootstrapped in the NPC Settlements.... :)
I know you have what's best for the game in mind, but some of us would prefer that the NPC settlements whither, rather than thrive.
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are having some lengthy conversations this morning about helping to get the economy bootstrapped in the NPC Settlements.... :)
Thinking aloud...
Could there be T1 resource markets in the NPC starter towns that worked by some rule set like:
- Resources from the surrounding hexes would be sold for coin, but such sales would directly pull resources from the hexes counters. So starter towns become accelerated resource faucet and a coin sink.
- Town would value the resources based on counter levels.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The NPCs Settlements need to have a functioning economy for starter gear (at least).
Create NPC crafters.
Let the Armorsmith trainer in the NPC settlements exchange 15 Iron and 15 Coal for a set of +0 Pot Steel Plate, or whatever the correct ratio is.
You could even make it slightly less efficient to use the NPC crafter than to make it yourself.
You can always go out and gather naked, and it would functionally the same as a PC crafter with the pot steel plate recipe standing in the town square crafting for newbies.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The NPCs Settlements need to have a functioning economy for starter gear (at least). If new players hit the game, try to play, can't make progress, and quit from frustration, they'll never migrate to PC Settlements.
Many of us would support that if there were fewer starter settlements. (i.e. no more than two, plus, perhaps, a basic low rep settlement in the middle of the board.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The NPCs Settlements need to have a functioning economy for starter gear (at least).Create NPC crafters.
Let the Armorsmith trainer in the NPC settlements exchange 15 Iron and 15 Coal for a set of +0 Pot Steel Plate, or whatever the correct ratio is.
You could even make it slightly less efficient to use the NPC crafter than to make it yourself.You can always go out and gather naked, and it would functionally the same as a PC crafter with the pot steel plate recipe standing in the town square crafting for newbies.
I'd think it should be at least 20% inefficient, maybe up to 50%. But I like the general idea, a resource sink/item faucet.
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CEO, Goblinworks
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Based on the anticipated workload that I see for the team over the rest of Q1 it is unlikely that we'd invest time in building tech for what should be a feature that gets removed relatively quickly. I would rather attack this problem with GM commands and GM actions than have the team work on code or graphics or mechanics for what should be a very short-term problem.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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We are having some lengthy conversations this morning about helping to get the economy bootstrapped in the NPC Settlements.... :)
NPC buy and sell orders, putting bounds on the value of coin.
Allow the buy and sell orders to float; if people are buying them, the price goes up (without bound).
I don't know how much programming would be required for that, or how to make it fair to PC settlements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Suggestions:
Potentially seed the currently "free" recipes that require no training on the starter AH (in large enough numbers they do not run out before reset) for just a few coppers and remove them from craft windows.
Offer a once only service for NPC porters to move a new players entire vault from a starter town to the player settlement of choice for a reasonable fee (100 coppers?).
As well as selling some starter gear - once buy orders are implemented introduce NPC buy orders in starter towns to purchase any of the basic starter gear at a nominal price (at say 50% of the NPC sell price).
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Goblin Squad Member
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We are having some lengthy conversations this morning about helping to get the economy bootstrapped in the NPC Settlements.... :)
There are too many NPC settlements.
The initial rush is over, we don't need that big of a buffer. Before an NPC-city economy is attempted Fort Inevitable should be finished, it and Thornkeep should be the two starter towns, and the player should choose which one to start with. I'm pretty sure the groups around these two cities are there because they though that's where the new players would be coming from, and/or most of the lower-tier activities would be taking place.
Existing organizations also can't be expected to have characters sitting in each starting settlement looking for new players to help/recruit. If we only had to be in two places, you would probably see more help from us.
I don't think the NPC zones will see much use until all those white triangles on the map are patrolled by something equivalent to EVE's CONCORD. And the players that want to play 'safe' stick around there.