Player Economy

I wanted to talk about FFXIV's and player economics in general to see what people thought.


Is it something you are excited about, like logging in and searching the AH for the current pricing to underprice someone? To then possible underbid you? Or say in WoW where you sit at the AH and try to last minute bid someone else.


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I feel that we could solve a lot of problems by creating an NPC broker of player actions.

Unless people actually find gaming entertainment from the AH. I know RMT and AH resellers would hate this idea, which makes me like it more.

Basically all items are priced by algorithm through an NPC, when you sell the item to the npc the item will be placed into the market system where it will be sold (by an algorithim again, which will ensure the NPC has a profit (money sink)). So you could never buy and resell an item from the market for profit (like players do now and keep secret from others because they don't want people to know which items you can do this for - I myself know of a few).

This would obviously make the market a great place to sell found items but reselling items would incur this kind of used item ideology (since you paid X and the sell price will be less then X, you will have incurred a minor loss).

However you would never have a weird market going into random recessions because of crazy underbidding or player scares. You would also have a market that refuses to inflate because more players have been around longer and have more money - so new players would never be punished by late game entry. The algorithm would have to include item level, rarity, and how difficult it was to obtain - this way higher level high content items will be reasonably priced (for buy and sell).


You can tell I think the market is no fun - I like playing the game and not caring about whether or not some bot underbid my items by 70% (not the only reason why I dont like the market - I dont really consider any part of the market "fun" just a way to make money and find items).

People will pay whatever amount they value the item, not what the game values the item. Since everyone values items differently, the price cannot be constant* or people will stop buying (if algorithm prices it too high) or selling (if algorithm prices it too low). From there, everyone will move to manual trading and the whole AH system would die.
(*even if the price could vary over time, people would wait until the price is right.)

There is a game which had implemented this; all items have a price (which even extended to trades as well) and they change everyday slightly depending on how many have been sold. This went on for a while and people found workarounds, eventually they removed the system and allowed free trading again.

tldr
It won't work

Which game was this? I want to see their implementation.

I feel player markets are horribly inefficient and easily manipulated. An NPC market would not be.

And I highly doubt people would stop using. Though you may be right that they may not like it. Specially those who like to abuse the market.

Imagine that you had this melded piece of gear that is worth 10m on the market right now.
Suddenly, the wards uses an algorithm and prices it at 1m.
Would you sell it on AH? Or shout in town?

Now extend this situation to all items and any price difference that people are not happy with. (Eg. it prices it at 9m. A small proportion still feel cheated and shout in town selling at 10m. Or it prices it at 9.5m and a smaller proportion try to shout in town , etc)

Also, extend it to buying items from the AH. (Imagine it priced the double meld at 20m or 11m or 10.5m , people start to shout in town buying...etc)

None of these situations would be abuse. The greater the difference between what players value and what the algorithm values, the more people that will stop using the AH. There is no single price that all players can agree to as there are different factors that determine the price (imagine selling water in a city , and in the desert. Or you selling karakul fleece and RMTs selling karakul fleece). The price must be variable, and the result is the free market that we have now.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

So you could never buy and resell an item from the market for profit (like players do now and keep secret from others because they don't want people to know which items you can do this for - I myself know of a few).

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Convenience stores in real life do this.


The system you are thinking of exists/existed in real life where the government controls the prices of goods. You might want to google that.


If you still want to know about the game that implemented it, I can tell you about it (since it was removed long ago).

So basically you want to implement an elaborate system so someone can't undersell you? As mentioned people WILL find workarounds. What you have here is telling people they can't eat steak because a baby can't chew it.

The deal breaker here is the game/NPC's enforcing a price on items, that will never fly. I would like to see retainers replaced by item specific NPC's though. Kind of like taking the FF11 AH and splitting the NPC's up into weapons, light armor, heavy armor, crafting material, etc. you keep the ward feeling and the efficiency of a AH without just copy/pasting FF11's system. Saieno, Errn and I (Neiloch) actually talked about this a bit in our podcast on lodestoneradio.com

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

Imagine that you had this melded piece of gear that is worth 10m on the market right now.
Suddenly, the wards uses an algorithm and prices it at 1m.
Would you sell it on AH? Or shout in town?

Now extend this situation to all items and any price difference that people are not happy with. (Eg. it prices it at 9m. A small proportion still feel cheated and shout in town selling at 10m. Or it prices it at 9.5m and a smaller proportion try to shout in town , etc)

Also, extend it to buying items from the AH. (Imagine it priced the double meld at 20m or 11m or 10.5m , people start to shout in town buying...etc)

None of these situations would be abuse. The greater the difference between what players value and what the algorithm values, the more people that will stop using the AH. There is no single price that all players can agree to as there are different factors that determine the price (imagine selling water in a city , and in the desert. Or you selling karakul fleece and RMTs selling karakul fleece). The price must be variable, and the result is the free market that we have now.


Convenience stores in real life do this.


The system you are thinking of exists/existed in real life where the government controls the prices of goods. You might want to google that.


If you still want to know about the game that implemented it, I can tell you about it (since it was removed long ago).

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The price on melded items would obviously need consideration differently then non-melded items. Assuming a poor system was implemented was not apart of my post.

And I know anti-resell is apart of real life, it doesnt change why I said it. I dont need to google it.



Of course I want to know about the game - I want to see what they did do, and didnt do.

I have no doubt the system would take great care and even constant dev attention - but I find the player market to be a nuisance. I constantly hear people talking about managing their market but they never say it with excitement*.

* That is of course unless you've found places to abuse the market, like buying and reselling (from players or npcs). Or price flooring/ceiling (which is possible to do in this - I've changed the price of a few items for a few months by setting a floor just as an experiment (I'm sure I pissed off a lot of people but I wanted to test how weak the market system is to influence)).

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Originally Posted by Shougun

The price on melded items would obviously need consideration differently then non-melded items. Assuming a poor system was implemented was not apart of my post.

And I know anti-resell is apart of real life, it doesnt change why I said it. I dont need to google it.

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Was just an example. It applies to ANY item.
It also assumes a good system was implemented and the magical formula gave a good price (but people will not agree with it).

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

Was just an example. It applies to ANY item.
It also assumes a good system was implemented where that price is the actual average (but people will not agree with it).

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Of course some people would go outside the system, but in general with a good system I would assume most people would not.

Those who go out so be it, I dont even think its worth trying to prevent that.

It is however important to create a "kelly blue book" of deals if you will.

You could force the system in all manors so that you cant get around it, but I think the shout market for selling items is acceptable as the majority would still likely use the npc system - so long as the npc system is smart enough to nail the average price.

And if you would, please respond to the first part of my first post. I want to know if people like managing the market as a part of the game.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

Of course some people would go outside the system, but in general with a good system I would assume most people would not.

Those who go out so be it, I dont even think its worth trying to prevent that.

It is however important to create a "kelly blue book" of deals if you will.

You could force the system in all manors so that you cant get around it, but I think the shout market for selling items is acceptable as the majority would still likely use the npc system - so long as the npc system is smart enough to nail the average price.

And if you would, please respond to the first part of my first post. I want to know if people like managing the market as a part of the game.

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The game I talked about forced it down to trades and even PVP drops (when you died you lost your items to the opponent - a form of trading). You could not buy or sell the item for a different value other than what the system said. People found workarounds, people complained as it affected other parts of the game.

As for the first part of your question, it depends. I will usually sell at a constant price but will reduce/not sell at all if there are many identical items selling. If I am selling a few and they are selling many then yes, I will undercut. It's not exciting, but necessary.

I think that most people will agree that undercutting is necessary if we want to sell an item quickly, and that there is nothing fun about it.

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Originally Posted by Sylkis

The game I talked about forced it down to trades and even PVP drops (when you died you lost your items to the opponent - a form of trading). You could not buy or sell the item for a different value other than what the system said. People found workarounds, people complained as it affected other parts of the game.

As for the first part of your question, it depends. I will usually sell at a constant price but will reduce/not sell at all if there are many identical items selling. If I am selling a few and they are selling many then yes, I will undercut. It's not exciting, but necessary.

I think that most people will agree that undercutting is necessary if we want to sell an item quickly, and that there is nothing fun about it.

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I think they forced the system too excessively. So long as you can get the majority to willingly use the system I think the market battle has been won.

Those who want to doctor up their own style will have to do so without a structure to support continuous sells (offline selling through market), also assuming you actually ban spamming in inappropriate channels (spam bots).

you also have to remember the way the items are priced through the npc now. they already say what they think some items are worth and people are way below that in the wards. go check the prices the npc's are selling items and then go check the vast majority against the going rate in the wards now. 95% of the time the prices in the wards are only a fraction of the cost you would be getting it from the npc.

just go to one of the guilds(like the blacksmith guild) and check out the prices on its nuggets/ingots. after you get done with that go to the wards and check the prices there. now consider every item in the game increasing by the same percentage because the npc's had control of the pricing of every item in the game. the way the wards are setup now is a much better system than the one you are proposing.

that's not saying i like the wards. i don't like the physical retainers as they just make things more of a headache and a higher server load than needed. i'd be more of a they should be in stasis unless you are actually putting items in or taking items out of them. more of like chest in your inn room that has your items, but it is only there when you are there and not rendered otherwise. i'd personally like that much better with the wards being just a buy from a place like they have the item search setup in the merchant areas. you put your items into your retainers, but the selling is done through the search menu's at the merchant counter and not physically from a retainer.

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

you also have to remember the way the items are priced through the npc now. they already say what they think some items are worth and people are way below that in the wards. go check the prices the npc's are selling items and then go check the vast majority against the going rate in the wards now. 95% of the time the prices in the wards are only a fraction of the cost you would be getting it from the npc.

just go to one of the guilds(like the blacksmith guild) and check out the prices on its nuggets/ingots. after you get done with that go to the wards and check the prices there. now consider every item in the game increasing by the same percentage because the npc's had control of the pricing of every item in the game. the way the wards are setup now is a much better system than the one you are proposing.

that's not saying i like the wards. i don't like the physical retainers as they just make things more of a headache and a higher server load than needed. i'd be more of a they should be in stasis unless you are actually putting items in or taking items out of them. more of like chest in your inn room that has your items, but it is only there when you are there and not rendered otherwise. i'd personally like that much better with the wards being just a buy from a place like they have the item search setup in the merchant areas. you put your items into your retainers, but the selling is done through the search menu's at the merchant counter and not physically from a retainer.

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Yeah but the items priced by npcs are not in any consideration priced by how hard they are to obtain or by consideration of the market. Because besides some very very very entry items all of it is retardely priced.

And the entry items are actually extremely competitively priced.



One of the ways WoW gets away from price gouging is by making every item a true Auction, but unfortunately that introduces last minute bids. (Buyouts stop this but of course they are usually 500% more then what you want lol). Still have resell in this system though.

Again if anyone actually likes playing market tell me - I havent met anyone, but that doesnt mean I've met everyone lol

I never tried to apply economics to MMO's. Money is constantly being generated through leves, sidequests, and npc vendoring faster than its being lost. All people can do is put huge price tags on anything remotely rare, because it is easy to gain money just by playing for an extended period.

As Sylkis said: It wont work.