Economy in Ashes (Solving MMORPG Inflation)

Hello,

it's well known that Inflation is a big thing in MMORPG's.
The Reason is mostly very simple, unending increase of circulating currency from respawnable resources which are changed into gold/silver/copper.
Usually these are combated with small money sinks here and there.
Sinks generally don't have the required impact to combat an ever increasing rate of inflation.

What I'd recommend is to create an massive artificial sink, that either periodically happens or at a certain level of inflation. This massive sink should create a percentual deflation serverwide.

As an example you could implement a sacrifice to the gods, in which the gods care for Gold,silver and copper (for a reason), then proceed to cut x% of all currency and then proceed to give a serverwide buff or event.

This would force deflation and renew markets. Coppers would still have meaning, and new accounts could also have a bigger % of all currency in Game since the basic "kill and sell" would generate relatively more with same numerical value.
You could even go so far to make this a integrated part of the story and a partial reason for why Npc's and the players are coming to Verra.

All this would give more reason for continuous action. Progress appear slower, yet more meaningful (At least on a grand long term scale).
It would also shift focus away from Currency to items, professions, skills, etc. Also it would (kind of) indirectly combat gold trading. (Imagine buying gold from sellers, only to get a 90% cut and the really big items you can't get anyway because no1 sells them.) Essentially Items>Gold, because high end items don't deflate in value.
The importance of of currency then may be viewed as necessity, yet not the goal of actions.
Combine this with the usual money sinks and you can pretty much regulate the whole Economy on a server.

Thanks for developing what is shaping up to be the MMORPG of a generation.
King Fool

Edit: Grammar

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king_fool

The actual complexities are kinda of managable now that I think about it. It heavily depends on designchoices and to which level you want to integrate various aspects of it into the game. You could very easily make complete playerdriven economic movements around it, with difference of nodetypes warehouse sizes, etc..
If this idea is integrated, you could actually, depending on designchoices, elevate the level of long term immersion.

Also if any1 from Intrepid reads this and you want to integrate this idea, you probably have to find a fairly unique person in terms of thinking, because you'd kind of apply reverse economics, at least in terms of usage + be able to predict Playerinteractions since markets are playerdriven in the end. He/she has to look at it as kind of a bubble of infinite resources with variable attributed importance values for different types of items in terms of monetary value, and then build based on this.
People will start to hoard items, so therefor prices for inventory storage on larger scale need to fit kind of perfectly, if overpriced, it would be a very bad situation. Also with this model you need to be careful not to make too many other sinks, since it could become too demanding on players in terms of required gametime to enjoy the game. Balancing this approach is a little bit of a headache, but if done correctly would be awesome.

Noaani

Ashes already has many sinks built in to the game. Sieges are a huge one, with both the attacking and defending side needing to expend massive amounts of resources.

There are, how ever, many others that are already planned for.

Wandering Mist

Noaani wrote: »

Ashes already has many sinks built in to the game. Sieges are a huge one, with both the attacking and defending side needing to expend massive amounts of resources.

There are, how ever, many others that are already planned for.

The golden question though is, is it enough?

Personally I don't think any amount of gold sinks will completely combat inflation, it's just something every mmorpg has to deal with sadly.

Noaani

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Ashes already has many sinks built in to the game. Sieges are a huge one, with both the attacking and defending side needing to expend massive amounts of resources.

There are, how ever, many others that are already planned for.

The golden question though is, is it enough?

Not sure, we won't know until the game is fully implemented it and people are playing it as if there are no more wipes to be had.

Azherae

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Ashes already has many sinks built in to the game. Sieges are a huge one, with both the attacking and defending side needing to expend massive amounts of resources.

There are, how ever, many others that are already planned for.

The golden question though is, is it enough?

Personally I don't think any amount of gold sinks will completely combat inflation, it's just something every mmorpg has to deal with sadly.

It's quite controllable, both FF MMOs and more recently New World have all had periods of controlled, slight deflation and then specifically needed to try to tune it back to even for specific player groups.

The difficulty in Ashes is the disparity in player groups relative to if they are experiencing it or not.

king_fool

Azherae wrote: »

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Noaani wrote: »

Ashes already has many sinks built in to the game. Sieges are a huge one, with both the attacking and defending side needing to expend massive amounts of resources.

There are, how ever, many others that are already planned for.

The golden question though is, is it enough?

Personally I don't think any amount of gold sinks will completely combat inflation, it's just something every mmorpg has to deal with sadly.

It's quite controllable, both FF MMOs and more recently New World have all had periods of controlled, slight deflation and then specifically needed to try to tune it back to even for specific player groups.

The difficulty in Ashes is the disparity in player groups relative to if they are experiencing it or not.

Even if you have a lot of sinks you have to make the gain via farming greater than the sink in any case since you would create a very negative experience if it weren't so.
Imagine having to constantly scrunch by with meager gains which you are forced to pour into all kind of sinks to keep playing, that would be really bad.
So creating a massive controlled and forced deflation would theoretically be a solution..
Since each server is essentially like a country with no import/export, completely isolated, it wouldn't technically matter to a citizen if he could buy 1 Million bread or only 10k since you cant eat that much anyway and the stuff you want inflates in price so that your 1mil. bread cant even buy an apartment somewhere.

In-Game you have the Situation where income is on the rise, yet the NPC-bread-price stays the same.
Solution: Reduce the value of all already earned income.
Consequence: Saving would be bad over long periods of time and you'd invest what you have into all kinds of stuff. Houses and Node citizenship are completely fought over, creating tension left right and center, more drama ensues the whole experience has more emotional volatility. Also leads to higher level of emotional investment into your inventory.
Idk if im overthinking, but it seems kinda good.

Im curious if the deflation in FF and New World was controlled or rather playerdriven? It makes a big difference.

Arya_Yeshe

deflation is terrible in games

king_fool

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

deflation is terrible in games

In what way?, please elaborate. I'm trying to think this idea through and wonder if I have a logic error somewhere.

Azherae

king_fool wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

deflation is terrible in games

In what way?, please elaborate. I'm trying to think this idea through and wonder if I have a logic error somewhere.

It depends on the game, in any case there's not much I can contribute to the discussion at the moment either because I'm still waiting on a roundabout answer to something.

Until I know what type of game Ashes actually is, discussing inflation is unfortunately all too speculative, even if I can agree with the basic principle that 'big inflation in closed system MMORPGs is bad'.

Dezemi

I find it somewhat baffling that we have a vocal side of the community voicing their concerns and frustrations with the backwards progression in forms of exp debt, material loss on debt and material loss during lost siege wars.

Then suddenly a post like this pops up, suggestions the game cuts away the one secure resource there is: gold, in intervals.

Honestly, for me personally, the exp debt, material loss etc is not a game breaker... But if the game starts eating away at the other resources as well (such as gold) "just because", then I very much feel like this game will be way too much of a hassle. It'll just feel like a survival game where you more or less start over and over, and that is not for me.

king_fool

Dezmerizing wrote: »

I find it somewhat baffling that we have a vocal side of the community voicing their concerns and frustrations with the backwards progression in forms of exp debt, material loss on debt and material loss during lost siege wars.

Then suddenly a post like this pops up, suggestions the game cuts away the one secure resource there is: gold, in intervals.

Honestly, for me personally, the exp debt, material loss etc is not a game breaker... But if the game starts eating away at the other resources as well (such as gold) "just because", then I very much feel like this game will be way too much of a hassle. It'll just feel like a survival game where you more or less start over and over, and that is not for me.

I totally understand this sentiment.
But factor in how prices would change accordingly.

Consider this: The Price of The Fighter armor is 100gold. You have 150gold.
50% cut Event occurs.
You have 75gold left.
Seller decides to keep selling for 100gold. No one buys.
Seller reduces by 50%, Price is now 50 Gold.
You can buy now.

Someone farms a mob and gains 1/100th of a 1gold.
How many mobs do you need to buy that armor.
The buyer profits essentially in a big roundabout way.
Also there would be an increase in demand, since items are easier to get, which then fuels the motivation of crafters to do more, at least in theory. Item relevance is hard to consider here.

Of course numerically it looks kind of weird. But the reduction is kind of irrelevant if you still own the same % of total economy.
Also I agree that you can't overdo it.

Edit:
The reason why doing all of this is simply inflation over long periods. Imagine a Server with a runtime of 3 years. The inflation is bound to be strong. It can't be otherwise without reducing some form of experience. It's merely a way to not have this problem at all. Killing mobs for loot becomes meaningless as inflation rises. You often see in games, that people don't even bother looting stuff anymore since its not worth it.

Arya_Yeshe

king_fool wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

deflation is terrible in games

In what way?, please elaborate. I'm trying to think this idea through and wonder if I have a logic error somewhere.

Alright, here’s the deal: people are working hard, farming and building up stuff, putting in loads of time in this, and then the prices will simply drop, making all their effort pointless. It messes up their whole way of making a living in the game.

In AoC, deflation would be way worse because it’s not a full loot game, so most people never lose gear. You really don’t want deflation in AoC.

Plus, a lot of farmers running RMT schemes would push the market down since they’re trying to grab as much gold as they can, as fast as they can. If you create an environment where deflation has to happen, the market would always be flattened at the bottom.

In another game, I do market stuff and it is only worth my time because the prices spike up.

king_fool

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

king_fool wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

deflation is terrible in games

In what way?, please elaborate. I'm trying to think this idea through and wonder if I have a logic error somewhere.

Alright, here’s the deal: people are working hard, farming and building up stuff, putting in loads of time in this, and then the prices will simply drop, making all their effort pointless. It messes up their whole way of making a living in the game.

In AoC, deflation would be way worse because it’s not a full loot game, so most people never lose gear. You really don’t want deflation in AoC.

Plus, a lot of farmers running RMT schemes would push the market down since they’re trying to grab as much gold as they can, as fast as they can. If you create an environment where deflation has to happen, the market would always be flattened at the bottom.

In another game, I do market stuff and it is only worth my time because the prices spike up.

Price Volatility still exists. 1 hour of farming would be worth more if there is serverwide insta cut on all existing currency.
Also don't forget that the goal is to increase the value of currency.
Its kind of the comparison of 1980 dollar vs 2020 dollar. If you have the option to work for 10dollar an hour in 1980 or 2020 you`d choose 1980 since 10 dollar has higher buying power. What this essentially does is setting the financial market from 2020 to 1980 standard. The only difference is you can't really devalue like this IRL.

As for RMT, consider this:
You know the gold you'd buy would be cut by (for sake of argument) 50%. You have now a risk of getting banned AND you need to get stuff for the money on a limited timeframe due to top to bottom economic shifts.
Balance it in a way so that the moneysinks are relative% to income measured by the amount of time you play ingame and you have a decent long-term economy. And not having to worry about some guy appearing with 10 Trillion gold. Ever.

Also don't forget this forced "deflation" is a bit unlike the common deflation. It's a total cut of all existing currency which only has the effect of deflation.
Without such function all moneysinks with static pricing become too cheap at some point sooner or later.

EDIT: It's essentially a question of if you want to allow lower level type stuff to matter or not. If "goldfarming" is something only high level can do then what purpose is there to gather low level stuff outside of becoming higher level in that particular farming activity. It's just that people are already used to that kinda stuff where lower level stuff really doesn't matter (since it has no impact at all).

SmileGurney

Gear should be fixable only x amount of time before it permanently breaks. Mounts should have maximum number of deaths, before they permanently die. Gatherable resource rates should be adjusted upwards to compensate. There is no MMORPG inflation problem anymore.

Azherae

king_fool wrote: »

Also don't forget this forced "deflation" is a bit unlike the common deflation. It's a total cut of all existing currency which only has the effect of deflation.
Without such function all moneysinks with static pricing become too cheap at some point sooner or later.

EDIT: It's essentially a question of if you want to allow lower level type stuff to matter or not. If "goldfarming" is something only high level can do then what purpose is there to gather low level stuff outside of becoming higher level in that particular farming activity. It's just that people are already used to that kinda stuff where lower level stuff really doesn't matter (since it has no impact at all).

Overall, again, this isn't true.

It only happens because games basically go 'you need money to progress, that money can be transferred between players and also increases indefinitely, so we will have mobs drop money'.

Games that fix this:
Option 1) Don't have most mobs drop money and have it enter from a different faucet (FF11, old FF14 sorta, etc)
Option 2) Make the money that drops from mobs and is used for progression the type you can't transfer (Onigiri, Throne and Liberty, maybe Neverwinter but I forget rn)
Option 3) Carefully set their item price floors and have higher money sinks, as well as separate currencies for progression (New World, Throne and Liberty, FF14 moreso)

Or all of the above.

Now, if one wants a game where the average mob drops Gold, then you might need to solve Deflation, but Ashes of Creation is already not like this. Glint can easily be tuned to be a relatively weak currency faucet.

The real question is whether or not the game is actually going to be mostly 'player controlled' economically or 'dev controlled' economically, not will we have inflation or deflation, so, for now, we're still going to have people who express both opinions about which thing should happen.

eyawn

king_fool wrote: »

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

deflation is terrible in games

In what way?, please elaborate. I'm trying to think this idea through and wonder if I have a logic error somewhere.

sorry to say, deflation is what kills markets/games.

top teir gear selling for silver because there isn't enough gold to keep the prices up.

so when the market becomes soft, with lack of demand, and continuous supply, prices will drop, making it useless to even sell anything. I mean, ya make more selling it to the npc town vendor.

when that happens, then no one stays in the game.

I get people think, "ooo I need to be the only one with a lot of gold". when realistically, you want everyone to have gold so that they can buy and bid up prices.

would you want your legendary anything selling for copper? it is important for everyone to get gold, not just top guilds.

but a lot of people in ashes don't get this.

inflation is great, when you get that item everyone wants and it sells for a lot of gold.

deflation sucks, when you get that same item and you sell it to the npc for more silver.

this is why I never got high level players going after low level caravans. it does a lot of damage to the game.

this happens to any player market driven economy. a lot of games just give you a log in bonus, that has some coin. ashes has a system, but it is being abused which in turn will really hurt the game as very little coin is flowing around verra, and only flowing into the top guilds. new world market all over again. Just wait until they start to connect all the markets stalls because there's no buyers with enough gold. that's usually the 1st step in the domino falling.

Yoanna

I dont understand why item sinks don't get more attention. There are plenty of gold and material sinks in the game already which is quite good from a design perspective and if they ever hire an economy lead it will be a system that can be tuned to the needs of each individual server really well.

But there also needs to be item sinks. I fear that the artisan system will face massive inflation if there is no item degradation or real item loss. The absence of character bound items will inevitably lead to a saturated market for crafted goods. Corruption only drops items without destroying them.
I know they talked about item degradation at some point and the need to repair stuff which probably will only have material cost attached. I think we need some system that physically removes items from the game and I would like to learn more about what Intrepid has planned in that regard.

Glir

Don't forget that our game also has an enchantment system. Which will burn a huge amount of gold and resources. In addition to all this, there will be hardcore item repair with a large amount of gold spent on that.

king_fool

SmileGurney wrote: »

Gear should be fixable only x amount of time before it permanently breaks. Mounts should have maximum number of deaths, before they permanently die. Gatherable resource rates should be adjusted upwards to compensate. There is no MMORPG inflation problem anymore.

And deny players the feeling of having THE Armor in the later stages?

king_fool

Azherae wrote: »

king_fool wrote: »

Also don't forget this forced "deflation" is a bit unlike the common deflation. It's a total cut of all existing currency which only has the effect of deflation.
Without such function all moneysinks with static pricing become too cheap at some point sooner or later.

EDIT: It's essentially a question of if you want to allow lower level type stuff to matter or not. If "goldfarming" is something only high level can do then what purpose is there to gather low level stuff outside of becoming higher level in that particular farming activity. It's just that people are already used to that kinda stuff where lower level stuff really doesn't matter (since it has no impact at all).

Overall, again, this isn't true.

It only happens because games basically go 'you need money to progress, that money can be transferred between players and also increases indefinitely, so we will have mobs drop money'.

Games that fix this:
Option 1) Don't have most mobs drop money and have it enter from a different faucet (FF11, old FF14 sorta, etc)
Option 2) Make the money that drops from mobs and is used for progression the type you can't transfer (Onigiri, Throne and Liberty, maybe Neverwinter but I forget rn)
Option 3) Carefully set their item price floors and have higher money sinks, as well as separate currencies for progression (New World, Throne and Liberty, FF14 moreso)

Or all of the above.

Now, if one wants a game where the average mob drops Gold, then you might need to solve Deflation, but Ashes of Creation is already not like this. Glint can easily be tuned to be a relatively weak currency faucet.

The real question is whether or not the game is actually going to be mostly 'player controlled' economically or 'dev controlled' economically, not will we have inflation or deflation, so, for now, we're still going to have people who express both opinions about which thing should happen.

To this I cant answer fully due to the references to other games which I don't play.
But from what I read here, essentially you either create some alternative from of currency in endgame or make other sinks. The idea here is, that you generally design how you would love it to be from a gameplay perspective and let the economy autocorrect itself by inducing a cut rather than some convoluted sinks or other weird stuff.

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