Before you introduce player stalls, please fix the elephant on the road, Intrepid.

With player vendors coming in wave 2, people will now be able to trade resources.

What sounds nice on paper will turn into a nightmare, once you realise that inflation will skyrocket like it's Turkey 2024 - because caravans multiply money. You'll see the big guilds farm for a day or two, then rake in thousands of gold in the first week alone.

Everything will be priced at unreasonable prices, because money will be worth nothing, and only caravans will make sense as a money making activity. Good luck trying to buy some mats to craft your next herbalism sickle or lumberjack axe, when a copper ore will cost 250 gold. No way you can make enough money by farming mobs. You'll have to run caravans, too.

As we then enter the second month, hyperinflation will have taken over, and player stalls will fall out of use, because nobody will want money anymore if you can just create more of it out of thin air semi-afk than you can earn by selling mats, which are now worth more cash every day.

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ShivaFang

The systems for this are currently in the game - but aren't tuned well.
The 'diminishing returns' on the same goods being sold to nodes needs to be far stronger than it currently is (and you can probably half or 1/3 the current base prices)

The devs clearly underestimated;
- How many players will run caravans
- how rarely caravans get attacked (at least until the flood of legendary gear.. which is it's own separate issue)

Andi

Maybe it'd be fun if a caravan that runs unharmed for more than X minutes spawns an ambush by highwaymen. First 1-star, then X min later 2-star, then eventually 3-star mobs, so you need an escort. Caravans are meant to be a group PVP event, not a solo money making activity.

Or make it a solo cash cow, but tone down the money made greatly.

Chicago

definitely agree, maybe a CD on caravans so you can't just run them indefinitely.

ShivaFang

Yeah I agree with that suggestion if the % of caravans being attacked is low. (This would change depending on server and region - maybe some places have more caravan attacks than others.)

CROW3

I also wonder how much of the capital in Phase 1 has been generated via duping, running those goods via caravans, then funneling into gear crafting / acquisition - all meaning, is the elephant more like a really loud cow? Still a problem, but not as big as perceived without the upstream momentum.

Andi

CROW3 wrote: »

I also wonder how much of the capital in Phase 1 has been generated via duping, running those goods via caravans, then funneling into gear crafting / acquisition - all meaning, is the elephant more like a really loud cow? Still a problem, but not as big as perceived without the upstream momentum.

It's definitely an elephant. The dupers turned it temporarily into Godzilla. But it needs to be handled before player trade comes in, so optimally for wave 2.

Highborn

it was very clearly communicated that gold and item sinks are not yet in the game.
Besides, most people don't run and/or cant afford to run caravans all the time

Andi

Highborn wrote: »

it was very clearly communicated that gold and item sinks are not yet in the game.
Besides, most people don't run and/or cant afford to run caravans all the time

Caravans weren't designed to be solo cash faucets, anyway. They were designed to be a mechanic that makes PVP encounters attractive and give PVP meaning.

That being said, ignoring the problem will make player vendors meaningless for all the reasons I stated in the original post.

Darsh13

But wait just a minute.. if the price of 1 copper sky rockets to 250g due to broken economy caused by money making caravans.. what’s to stop me from just selling my copper ores to make money too?

wakkytabbaky

it almost sounds like gold and the economy side wasnt the focus for phase 1 , oh wait.

we have no clue what plans Steven and Intrepid have up their sleeve for Phase 2 especially since its meant to be focusing on economy and crafting etc. they probably already have the numbers adjusted so you get cents on the dollar for all your caravan goods come Phase 2

Andi

wakkytabbaky wrote: »

it almost sounds like gold and the economy side wasnt the focus for phase 1 , oh wait.

we have no clue what plans Steven and Intrepid have up their sleeve for Phase 2 especially since its meant to be focusing on economy and crafting etc. they probably already have the numbers adjusted so you get cents on the dollar for all your caravan goods come Phase 2

It doesn't matter if it's meant to be tested or not. If it's in the game like this next phase, you'll have unplayable inflation going on. We also don't know that they already adjusted the number. They might well have, but there's a non-zero chance they haven't, and this feedback is useful to them.

Andi

Darsh13 wrote: »

But wait just a minute.. if the price of 1 copper sky rockets to 250g due to broken economy caused by money making caravans.. what’s to stop me from just selling my copper ores to make money too?

"But just wait a minute.. if my house is burnt down due to a fire ravaging town.. what's to stop me from just living in the ashes?"

You could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking your thumb, couldn't you.

CROW3

Andi wrote: »

You could fall into a barrel of tits and come out sucking your thumb, couldn't you.

I’m stealing this turn of phrase. Rofl!

SmileGurney

Do you want a hot take on this? Gold should not be a thing in the game at all. We should trade in drops from mobs and gatherable resources only.

ShivaFang

Darsh13 wrote: »

But wait just a minute.. if the price of 1 copper sky rockets to 250g due to broken economy caused by money making caravans.. what’s to stop me from just selling my copper ores to make money too?

creates a terrible market for new players who aren't yet on the caravan train and can't get copper because it's all mined up.

Doesn't matter though - the mechanic for this is already in the game, just needs to be tuned. Sell prices of commodities are supposed to go down the more often people sell the same commodity in the same node. The curve just needs to be steeper to incentivize players trying different routes.

Rym

Andi wrote: »

With player vendors coming in wave 2, people will now be able to trade resources.

What sounds nice on paper will turn into a nightmare, once you realise that inflation will skyrocket like it's Turkey 2024 - because caravans multiply money. You'll see the big guilds farm for a day or two, then rake in thousands of gold in the first week alone.

Everything will be priced at unreasonable prices, because money will be worth nothing, and only caravans will make sense as a money making activity. Good luck trying to buy some mats to craft your next herbalism sickle or lumberjack axe, when a copper ore will cost 250 gold. No way you can make enough money by farming mobs. You'll have to run caravans, too.

As we then enter the second month, hyperinflation will have taken over, and player stalls will fall out of use, because nobody will want money anymore if you can just create more of it out of thin air semi-afk than you can earn by selling mats, which are now worth more cash every day.

My man you're overreacting. First of all you need at least an hour with a good farm spot to make enough to fill a caravan run, afterwards a caravan run takes over an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, to produce between 20-35 gold.

And just because some people run caravans doesn't mean that prices will inflate to this degree, especially with how risky caravan runs are.

You are also ignoring something, the caravaners are consumers in this economy, and if you're not a consumer then you're a producer, and gatherers are producers.

Andi

Rym wrote: »

Andi wrote: »

With player vendors coming in wave 2, people will now be able to trade resources.

What sounds nice on paper will turn into a nightmare, once you realise that inflation will skyrocket like it's Turkey 2024 - because caravans multiply money. You'll see the big guilds farm for a day or two, then rake in thousands of gold in the first week alone.

Everything will be priced at unreasonable prices, because money will be worth nothing, and only caravans will make sense as a money making activity. Good luck trying to buy some mats to craft your next herbalism sickle or lumberjack axe, when a copper ore will cost 250 gold. No way you can make enough money by farming mobs. You'll have to run caravans, too.

As we then enter the second month, hyperinflation will have taken over, and player stalls will fall out of use, because nobody will want money anymore if you can just create more of it out of thin air semi-afk than you can earn by selling mats, which are now worth more cash every day.

My man you're overreacting. First of all you need at least an hour with a good farm spot to make enough to fill a caravan run, afterwards a caravan run takes over an hour, sometimes an hour and a half, to produce between 20-35 gold.

And just because some people run caravans doesn't mean that prices will inflate to this degree, especially with how risky caravan runs are.

You are also ignoring something, the caravaners are consumers in this economy, and if you're not a consumer then you're a producer, and gatherers are producers.

Thanks for proving my point, my glib friend.

Caravans need to be fixed.

truelyyy

Amount of gold needs to be tuned down for caravans, 33% tune down would be a good starting place. Also gold cap should be increased at the moment it’s about 200, when a single caravan can make 100 gold, also trade bureaus cost of the commodity item makes them 50% cheaper, should be rebalanced to a 33% or 25% discount , 50% is just too much of a discount and basically mandatory for running caravans.

kadimir

If caravans make gold, sell mats for gold.

If you're a solo player who wants to craft you're going to have no shot at eating the cost of leveling a craft with no gather.

majinash

I'm a bit confused by your conclusions but maybe it's because I don't fully understand the system.

Current Caravans use glint to buy goods, you then transport and generate gold from NPCs.

Hyperinflation would kill caravans, not reward them. Unless the NPC gold generation scales with overall gold in the economy you'll be getting the same gold for the same work you did last week but that gold will be worth far less.

That's completely the opposite of player stalls and selling goods where the mining you did last week that netted you 5g would earn you 50g this week if we had 1000% inflation.

Now personally I hope that my current understanding of caravans are a placeholder because we don't have a functional economy and that on launch caravans will be used to move player gathered goods from places of high supply to places of high demand in order to generate money, thus adding zero extra gold into the system and making them 100% player driver.

I'm just not sure why you think hyperinflation would favor a static gold gain from NPCs like caravans rather than a gold earning method that relies on the inflated player economy.

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