Goblin Squad Member
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So I'm looking at the crafting recipes and I'm thinking "how do we have any frame of reference for how much any of this stuff should cost?"
In Eve, the NPC-produced goods give industrialists a frame of reference. If this gun costs X by default, then if I make that gun I need to charge less than X. If I need Y minerals to make the gun, then I need to pay less than X/Y for my minerals. And so on.
Are there similar reference points in the PFO economy, or are the first several months of EE going to see prices oscillating wildly as we try to figure out how much a unit of ore is really worth relative to the coin income rate from monster hunting?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, it is. That discovery process can be easier or harder, depending on how many clues the discoverers have to work with.
If the only objective pricing cue we are given is the rate at which coin drops, discovery of natural pricing levels will take much longer than it will we have more points of reference.
Market pricing is not discovered in a vacuum. Without some sort of pricing cue, 1 coin and 1 billion coins are equally reasonable.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Market pricing is not discovered in a vacuum. Without some sort of pricing cue, 1 coin and 1 billion coins are equally reasonable.
In Alpha so far, it doesn't appear that there even is a Coin Faucet. We get Copper Coins, but they show up in the Raw Crafting section of your inventory, so I expect their useful as a substitute for some gathered resource and not actually the Coin that Ryan has mentioned before. As I recall, Coin is supposed to be weightless and not be part of our inventory at all. Currently, in Alpha, it's a pure Barter Economy.
I wish I could be more helpful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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What would the typical mob drop upon being slain? 1 coin, 1 salvage material? Do you get anything additional upon an achievement kill? maybe an extra coin or salvage?
is there a range from which a RNG determines what drops, or is this already pre-determined at the spawn time of the mob?
This salvage material, does it have a monetary value? 1 piece is 1 coin.
How many pieces are required to craft something? (I am looking for a range from what people might know so far, i.e., 1 - dagger, 2 - sword, 3 - 2handed axe, 4 - halberd)
I think this would be interesting to know if you want to start creating a market for an item or items.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am actually glad that there will be none of these points of reference because they would end up being set at some arbitrary rate by the game designers.
As someone who is passionate about studying economics, I am very excited about the prospect of prices being set strictly by producers of goods. I imagine prices will fluctuate a bit when the game first launches, but these market prices will most likely stabilize over time.
It will be interesting to watch and see how this economy evolves. Hopefully we will get more specifics in the near future on how drains and faucets for coinage are going to work. The Goblinworks blog seemed to indicate that the total amount of coin would be slowly ever increasing so expect market prices to be ever inflationary. And if the monetary supply does always increase, will players begin to hoard mass quantities of widely traded goods as a way to preserve their wealth from such inflation?
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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What would the typical mob drop upon being slain? 1 coin, 1 salvage material?
Indeterminate; the loot tables are one of the pieces of tech recently fixed, and so the balance is not yet determined.
Do you get anything additional upon an achievement kill? maybe an extra coin or salvage?
Not as far as anyone has determined. Why would that make sense?
is there a range from which a RNG determines what drops, or is this already pre-determined at the spawn time of the mob?
There is no way to differentiate between the two; it is expected that knowledge skills will effect drops, but the details are uncertain at the moment.
This salvage material, does it have a monetary value? 1 piece is 1 coin.
I don't expect that it can be transmuted into coin, but it should be sellable on the market.
How many pieces are required to craft something? (I am looking for a range from what people might know so far, i.e., 1 - dagger, 2 - sword, 3 - 2handed axe, 4 - halberd)
Check the recipe list. A salvage item substitutes for an iron ore, 10-16 of which must be combined with other items (some of which might also be substituted with salvaged items), to make a stack (10? I think) of steel ingots, which must be combined with other refined materials (which have their own, often different, raw materials requirements) to create a finished product.
With the production sizes and ratios, I guess that a given sword will use about 4-12 raw material worth of refined components, plus an indeterminate amount of the rare and precious resource time.
I speculate that in the mid-game, many characters will have trained refining and/or crafting skills for the ability score increase, and will refine or produce the things possible at low levels of training (because doing so has low opportunity cost to them once they train the skills). I also speculate that those characters will have a negligible overall economic impact, because highly-trained crafters working at high-quality facilities will do the cheap stuff in a tiny fraction of the time.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I am actually glad that there will be none of these points of reference because they would end up being set at some arbitrary rate by the game designers.
As someone who is passionate about studying economics, I am very excited about the prospect of prices being set strictly by producers of goods. I imagine prices will fluctuate a bit when the game first launches, but these market prices will most likely stabilize over time.
It will be interesting to watch and see how this economy evolves. Hopefully we will get more specifics in the near future on how drains and faucets for coinage are going to work. The Goblinworks blog seemed to indicate that the total amount of coin would be slowly ever increasing so expect market prices to be ever inflationary. And if the monetary supply does always increase, will players begin to hoard mass quantities of widely traded goods as a way to preserve their wealth from such inflation?
The population of characters will also increase; if average wealth decreases as population increases as well as coin supply, do you predict that prices will increase or decrease?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The population of characters will also increase; if average wealth decreases as population increases as well as coin supply, do you predict that prices will increase or decrease?
If the monetary supply stayed constant while population increased then prices would almost certainly fall. Not because of increased population, but due to the (presumably) increased productive capacity of the entire economy. The more goods available while keeping the supply of currency stable leads to falling prices.
Most people fear deflationary markets, however it tends to reward those who choose to save their capital for future investments or purchases. Inflating the monetary supply has the exact opposite effect. It robs the value of the Coin and makes saving ones capital an unwise investment, thus creating a consumers market.
Granted, the developers will have vastly more transparency as to the movement of Coin through the economy than their real life central banking counterparts. Central management of the money supply is always attempted in order to grow the supply of the currency at the same rate of production. This seems to be what the folks at Goblinworks are aiming for.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Speaking of loot drops, what I noticed from the streaming videos is that you automatically loot what you kill. Also, that there did not seem to be any indication of when you did get loot. You the player would just check their inventory and see more items in there. The other problem was that there did not appear to be any kind of sorting other than alphabetical or perhaps grouping by type.
Issues I have with it:
1. Looting should be active, not automatic.
2. Auto looting should be an option, but one you may find is not as popular as you would think.
Once you start getting tight on your inventory space or your encumbrance limit, you will wish you had been more selective in what you looted in the first place. In the long run the time you save from auto looting, you lose in inventory management later on.
3. If #1 then you don't need this but, loot should be placed in inventory in the order of most recent picked up. It should be color coded as new.
4. The inventory mechanic should have a sorting bottom that can have customized filters (tier, category, type, and * needed)
5. If there is a particular loot item that is needed, it can be tagged with a color code that you set. This way when you view it in a corpse or it auto drops in your inventory, you can spot it right away.
An auto loot setting could also be set to pick up those items first.
Addressing the OP. Item value is also modified by the needs of the individual, company or settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Do you get anything additional upon an achievement kill? maybe an extra coin or salvage?Not as far as anyone has determined. Why would that make sense?
I've been developing a sneaking suspicion that achievements, especially new role-levels, are intended to be as much a non-event as possible. They're turning around the levelling paradigm--"buy new abilities until *ding* you're a new level", not "get a new level before you can do anything new"--so it makes sense to have the actual level be nothing other than bookkeeping and a link to the tabletop history of Pathfinder.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found this post which suggests that there will be NPC markets at least for low level items.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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The population of characters will also increase; if average wealth decreases as population increases as well as coin supply, do you predict that prices will increase or decrease?If the monetary supply stayed constant while population increased then prices would almost certainly fall. Not because of increased population, but due to the (presumably) increased productive capacity of the entire economy. The more goods available while keeping the supply of currency stable leads to falling prices.
Most people fear deflationary markets, however it tends to reward those who choose to save their capital for future investments or purchases. Inflating the monetary supply has the exact opposite effect. It robs the value of the Coin and makes saving ones capital an unwise investment, thus creating a consumers market.
Granted, the developers will have vastly more transparency as to the movement of Coin through the economy than their real life central banking counterparts. Central management of the money supply is always attempted in order to grow the supply of the currency at the same rate of production. This seems to be what the folks at Goblinworks are aiming for.
Did you account for the characteristic that coin has some intrinsic value (it is the only thing which can be used to feed the coin drains), but no fiat value?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Decius, I think you misunderstand the distinction. The intrinsic value of a gold coin is the practical utility of that amount of gold metal, as distinct from its value as money per se. PFO coin has no intrinsic value if it cannot be rendered into wire or jewelry. The fiat value of money is its worth as a form of payment, specifically to the government. I think GW programmers dictating the size of our coin sinks makes a fair analog for "the government" in this conversation, so the value of coin for feeding the drains is fiat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found this post which suggests that there will be NPC markets at least for low level items.
My sense is that they've changed that design to having starter gear drop from low-level mobs near the starter towns. Chatting with Ryan the other day, he was very excited about the beginning of Early Enrollment when everyone will start the game with 0 XP, no Role-based Feats, and a Club.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found this post which suggests that there will be NPC markets at least for low level items.My sense is that they've changed that design to having starter gear drop from low-level mobs near the starter towns. Chatting with Ryan the other day, he was very excited about the beginning of Early Enrollment when everyone will start the game with 0 XP, no Role-based Feats, and a Club.
A club? Well they are already treating new characters better than RUST.
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Goblin Squad Member
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A club? Well they are already treating new characters better than RUST.
Ryan has repeatedly made reference to the fact that RUST opened his eyes to how readily players would accept a truly minimal experience.
It was actually quite infectious chatting with him and sensing his enthusiasm for the game. I had to force myself to stop monopolizing him, but I was glad he got the opportunity to chat a bit with Kemedo and I think he even helped him through a problem or two.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Speaking of loot drops, what I noticed from the streaming videos is that you automatically loot what you kill. [...]
Issues I have with it:
1. Looting should be active, not automatic.
2. Auto looting should be an option, but one you may find is not as popular as you would think.
I believe, it was said this is just a temporary thing, while encumberance is also not yet implemented. Later on, looting will be manual
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found this post which suggests that there will be NPC markets at least for low level items.My sense is that they've changed that design to having starter gear drop from low-level mobs near the starter towns. Chatting with Ryan the other day, he was very excited about the beginning of Early Enrollment when everyone will start the game with 0 XP, no Role-based Feats, and a Club.
That does sound like a lot of fun!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ryan has repeatedly made reference to the fact that RUST opened his eyes to how readily players would accept a truly minimal experience.
Rust is a Survival Horror MMO, so starting with a rock and little or no clothes, plus it being brutally violent and such is more atmospheric than it is minimal. I would imagine players won't start out much different when the game launches.
I haven't played Rust in a few months, but I'll take a look at it again today. I left off sleeping on the floor in someone's shack, naked and armed with a hand ax. Wonder how i will wake up?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Found this post which suggests that there will be NPC markets at least for low level items.My sense is that they've changed that design to having starter gear drop from low-level mobs near the starter towns. Chatting with Ryan the other day, he was very excited about the beginning of Early Enrollment when everyone will start the game with 0 XP, no Role-based Feats, and a Club.
I am excited about this as well. I cannot wait to see the community grow organically.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am excited about this as well. I cannot wait to see the community grow organically.
I don't know if I'm looking forward to killing things with a club... At least the starter Cantrips are pretty cheap xp-wise. Arcane Weapon Proficiency 1 (49 XP) unlocks the level 1 Cantrips, which are only 40 each. So, I'll be a Wizard within an hour, and I'll even be able to kill Skeletons! (I have a really bad habit of forgetting that Skeletons are immune to Cold)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Chatting with Ryan the other day, he was very excited about the beginning of Early Enrollment when everyone will start the game with 0 XP, no Role-based Feats, and a Club.
I hope he is not forgetting this:
$10 - Class Pack
When characters arrive in the River Kingdoms in Pathfinder Online, they do so with little wealth or equipment to their name. A Class Pack will provide the character with a selection of items appropriate to a lower level character
of the class selected when the class pack is used. Each pack will include a weapon, a suit of armor (torso, legs, and helmet if applicable), and three or four other items of such as thieves tools, shields, boots, gloves, belts, hats,
etc. One Class Pack is required per character. You may purchase this Add-On multiple times.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Based on the current spreadsheets you can get Simple Weapon Proficiency and Basic Attacks for 0 xp. Edit: there's also some free racial proficiencies (listed on the skills tab) which allow you to skip the normal proficiencies required for some weapon types. First hints of mechanical effects based on race.
Also, not sure that skeletons in game have cold immunity. It could be high cold resistance. May require specific testing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, not sure that skeletons in game have cold immunity.Every time I was paying attention, I did no damage to them with Cold spells. There are quite a few single-skeleton spawns around the world, so I'll kite one for a bit the next time I'm on and try to see if I get any hits.
Could be that their cold resistance is higher than 45-47. For a new character (whose base damage is 45 for attacks with their access to a single keyword, or 47 in the case of expendables) that is effectively immunity.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Could be that their cold resistance is higher than 45-47. For a new character (whose base damage is 45 for attacks with their access to a single keyword, or 47 in the case of expendables) that is effectively immunity.
I'll do it on Nihimon. He's Wizard 6 and has something like a 16 in Arcane Attack Bonus. That should be enough to be determinative, shouldn't it?
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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In Alpha so far, it doesn't appear that there even is a Coin Faucet. We get Copper Coins, but they show up in the Raw Crafting section of your inventory, so I expect their useful as a substitute for some gathered resource and not actually the Coin that Ryan has mentioned before. As I recall, Coin is supposed to be weightless and not be part of our inventory at all. Currently, in Alpha, it's a pure Barter Economy.
The copper coins you're getting now are the intended frequency (whether that's the RIGHT frequency is one we'll have to discover during testing). I didn't have the correct item category available so they're sorted as raw materials for the time being. They aren't used for crafting. We're currently working under the assumption that you'll have to get looted coins home and "tag base" with them to convert them into weightless, unstealable, non-inventory currency. This is in order to keep them part of the PvP economy for a reasonable amount of time (i.e., the time between when you get them and when you get home with them).
Speaking of loot drops, what I noticed from the streaming videos is that you automatically loot what you kill. Also, that there did not seem to be any indication of when you did get loot. You the player would just check their inventory and see more items in there. The other problem was that there did not appear to be any kind of sorting other than alphabetical or perhaps grouping by type.
We're working on getting a notification when you pick up something automatically. Automatic is only for PvE loot; you'll have to click to loot PvP targets. The distinction came as part of a huge design discussion, where the long story short was that PvE functioning differently from PvP looting and being automatic was the best solution to several needs.
Also, not sure that skeletons in game have cold immunity. It could be high cold resistance. May require specific testing.
They're functionally immune. I currently have "Immune" creatures getting 200 resistance to the energy type, which should cover them against anything by a pretty significant margin.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The copper coins you're getting now are the intended frequency (whether that's the RIGHT frequency is one we'll have to discover during testing). I didn't have the correct item category available so they're sorted as raw materials for the time being.
Okay, I tried to notice if they decreased when I bought Feats on Nihimon, but a general lack of focus as I was taking in the new game combined with the persistence bug made it difficult to verify.
Can you let us know if purchasing Feats in Alpha should consume Copper Coins?
We're currently working under the assumption that you'll have to get looted coins home and "tag base" with them to convert them into weightless, unstealable, non-inventory currency. This is in order to keep them part of the PvP economy for a reasonable amount of time (i.e., the time between when you get them and when you get home with them).
That sounds awesome!
They're functionally immune.
Ah, one less item on my testing agenda :)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Could be that their cold resistance is higher than 45-47. For a new character (whose base damage is 45 for attacks with their access to a single keyword, or 47 in the case of expendables) that is effectively immunity.I'll do it on Nihimon. He's Wizard 6 and has something like a 16 in Arcane Attack Bonus. That should be enough to be determinative, shouldn't it?
Attack bonus won't increase your max damage. It increases your average damage, but not the max. Think of damage as some distribution with a max of f*(b-r) and a min of 0 (or close to 0). f is damage factor, b is base damage (45 for newbies), r is target's resistance. Note that if r>b, you can never do damage.
Every time you attack you're getting some number from that distribution. Adding attack bonus will simply skew the probabilities towards the upper end of that distribution, but doesn't affect what the maximum in that distribution is. Defense bonuses (reflex/fort/will) do the opposite for incoming damage. Ultimately it's the difference between attack bonus and relevant defense bonus (and weapon tier due to how they roll) that matters.
To increase your max damage you need access to more keywords. To get that you need higher levels of attacks (which read more keywords) and weapons with those keywords on them. Attack bonus feats and weapon proficiencies are prerequisites for training those higher level attacks.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Decius, I think you misunderstand the distinction. The intrinsic value of a gold coin is the practical utility of that amount of gold metal, as distinct from its value as money per se. PFO coin has no intrinsic value if it cannot be rendered into wire or jewelry. The fiat value of money is its worth as a form of payment, specifically to the government. I think GW programmers dictating the size of our coin sinks makes a fair analog for "the government" in this conversation, so the value of coin for feeding the drains is fiat.
Yeah, I took Econ 101 a long time ago and lost a lot of what I used to know. I'm not even positive how much the demand for thing that are coin drains will vary with the amount of coin available. I could see it being interesting either if demand far outstrips the faucet or if the faucet outstrips the sinks by less than population growth.
As long as the system allows coin to be removed from it entirely, there should be ways to slow inflation down. If coin can only enter the system but never actually leave it, then inflation will climb at some rate.
The other option is to carefully control the money supply so that the amount out there is finite and just being circulated between players as they do business and trade accumulated resources (which are spontaneously created in the system and spontaneously removed from the system via destruction). It's just a quantified barter system at that point, which is what fiat currency is.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Figuring out faucets, drains, and how to manage settlement expenses versus income is going to keep a lot of player economists busy for a long time.
I would think GW might start off a little generous with the faucets to get the economy off the ground. Having too much coin in circulation us a much better problem to have than too little. (On the other hand, if there are no major drains to worry about at the start, that might be all the generosity we need)