How the Economy Actually Works

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

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Seeders wrote:

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

Pretty much how it is.

Everyone wants to be on top, but that's not how a "perfectly functioning and healthy economy" works.

Because that's defined as a consumerist/capitalist economy for whatever reason. And in that kind of economy, everyone has a little bit except for the chosen few who have a loooot. People like Krip. People who know how to manipulate the system to put themselves on top of it all.

That's just how it is.

The key isn't to give the general population "more". It's to make them *feel* like they have more. Making their dollar last longer basically.

Without resorting to scamming, rmt, other shady business it is impossible to obtain a greater amount of wealth than a person who also does not engage in such business who spends more time playing the game.

why is this unfair or problematic? This is the heart of arpgs: grind to win. RMT and d2jsp are both fairly hard to stop and will likely always be a large driving force of the economy.

Also, your standard of wealth and viability is likely far different from someone elses', just took a look at the guy with 600 pure exalts and 3000 exalts equivalent of gear.

great thread scrotie, learned some things/perspectives reading this whole thing.

im not really big on suggestions...i just know what i like and hate, and i dont hate the current state of the economy. not much help but was neat to see a "birdseye" view of the PoE economy in this way.

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TremorAcePV wrote:

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Seeders wrote:

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

Pretty much how it is.

Everyone wants to be on top, but that's not how a "perfectly functioning and healthy economy" works.

Because that's defined as a consumerist/capitalist economy for whatever reason. And in that kind of economy, everyone has a little bit except for the chosen few who have a loooot. People like Krip. People who know how to manipulate the system to put themselves on top of it all.

That's just how it is.

The key isn't to give the general population "more". It's to make them *feel* like they have more. Making their dollar last longer basically.

I don't think you guys have any idea what constitutes a healthy economy. Yes, some people should have more and some people less, but keeping the haves as close as possible to the have-nots is what keeps an economy healthy. When the top-end has hundreds or thousands or millions of times more buying power than the low-end, the economy is unstable and prone to rapid inflation (as it is now). In Onslaught, for example, I've literally seen the price of Exalts double in a 12 hour period. This kind of fluctuation makes it difficult to participate in the economy due to never really knowing what anything is worth.

Economies are healthiest when the most people participate and when the most transactions and changing of hands occurs, and you always get the most participation when the difference between top-end and low-end is minimal. Call it by any name you want, but that's how it works.

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Seeders wrote:

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

God damn you're ignorant. If its perfectly functioning, why are anarchy and SC DOUBLE hc rates?

Ill answer that for you. BOTS.

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emtwo wrote:

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TremorAcePV wrote:

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Seeders wrote:

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

Pretty much how it is.

Everyone wants to be on top, but that's not how a "perfectly functioning and healthy economy" works.

Because that's defined as a consumerist/capitalist economy for whatever reason. And in that kind of economy, everyone has a little bit except for the chosen few who have a loooot. People like Krip. People who know how to manipulate the system to put themselves on top of it all.

That's just how it is.

The key isn't to give the general population "more". It's to make them *feel* like they have more. Making their dollar last longer basically.

I don't think you guys have any idea what constitutes a healthy economy. Yes, some people should have more and some people less, but keeping the haves as close as possible to the have-nots is what keeps an economy healthy. When the top-end has hundreds or thousands or millions of times more buying power than the low-end, the economy is unstable and prone to rapid inflation (as it is now). In Onslaught, for example, I've literally seen the price of Exalts double in a 12 hour period. This kind of fluctuation makes it difficult to participate in the economy due to never really knowing what anything is worth.

Economies are healthiest when the most people participate and when the most transactions and changing of hands occurs, and you always get the most participation when the difference between top-end and low-end is minimal. Call it by any name you want, but that's how it works.

emtwo, I think you might be forgetting that this is a game, and that game design and normal product design have polar opposite intents.

Let's say I'm designing a lamp for real life. If it's cheap, it has an obvious switch on it, and if it's expensive perhaps it turns itself on when it detects motion.

A game lamp, on the other hand, should not have an obvious switch; perhaps it's hidden under a panel in a place you wouldn't ordinarily look, or requires some special key to activate and you now need to follow hints to find that key. With a big ebough budget you might install a motion detector which disables the lamp temporarily when triggered.

In short, real-life design is about making things as easy as possible while still giving the user control over operation, while game design is about making them harder while still giving the user control over operation.

That said, a number of your premises are wrong. Is a game economy healthier when the most changing of hands goes on? Actually no; Diablo 3 had a great setup for ensuring that the maximum amount of your items were sellable (although likely only for a pittance), and the results were disastrous. Keeping the haves and the have-nots close? The primary thing currently separating the haves from the have-nots is time spent farming (and also farming efficiency, which is a combination of skill and loot, the loot part of which is based on prior time spent farming and farming efficiency, et cetera). The more you devalue time spent farming, the more you make trading the best choice, then everyone trades and you're pretty much at Diablo 3 again.

Diablo 3's key conceptual failure was designing a game economy using real-world design principles. To some extent this is inevitable; for example, poexplorer.com and other third-party shop indexers. However, in general, game economy design should follow the same principle as the game lamp: you want players to be able to control the outcome somewhat, but it definitely shouldn't be easy.

Actually, D3 had much less trading going on which was the problem. There were significantly less items in D3 that were worth trading, even given the fact that you didn't have to make a cost-benefit analysis with regards to time spent trying to trade an item like in PoE. It may appear that more trading was going on due to how many items are on the AH, but that wasn't the case in my experience. Most AH items sat unpurchased until they expired.

Time spent trading in PoE already is the best choice unless you are the top 1%, just like in D3. The probelm is that you have to trade to get to the point where you can farm. If you allow players to purchase the non-drop orbs from vendors, then they can actually farm to get to the point where they can farm for better stuff, which will allow them to farm for better stuff etc. That should be the goal.

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emtwo wrote:

Actually, D3 had much less trading going on which was the problem. There were significantly less items in D3 that were worth trading, even given the fact that you didn't have to make a cost-benefit analysis with regards to time spent trying to trade an item like in PoE. It may appear that more trading was going on due to how many items are on the AH, but that wasn't the case in my experience. Most AH items sat unpurchased until they expired.

You were doing it wrong. I was the guy making your items not sell, because I was underbidding you. Both of us were hocking crap (or attempting to) that never should have been tradeable in any decent ARPG, or became untradeable in D3 due to the rampant inflation.

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SuperiorFirePower wrote:

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Seeders wrote:

In this thread: LOTS of bad ideas to "fix" a perfectly functioning and healthy economy.

God damn you're ignorant. If its perfectly functioning, why are anarchy and SC DOUBLE hc rates?

Ill answer that for you. BOTS.

Better answer: player count.