Topic

About Game Economics....

Just some feedback on the economics in the game so far.  In Help, we briefly touched on this, and there are a few different topics related to this in the Forum, but I just wanted to assemble all my thoughts in one place... so feel free to chime in, add to, detract from these.

1. Auctions

a. They are not really auctions, now, are they? :)  They are more 'buy it now' things.  Not sure if the design was ever to include a true auction system, but that would be very cool if it were.  Say, the auction lasts for X time, at the end of which the auction goes to the highest bidder.  This would, however, remove the ability for players to gift/sell things for immediate needs to one another from across great distances... but it would put a little free market into the game, possibly making pricing less exploitative.  To compensate, perhaps add a nice feature to be able to gift/sell long distance - sort of a Western Telegram for goods, which the Auctions act as now.  Or don't -- if people want to trade, perhaps work more teleportation or public transit into the system.

b. Pagination please!  The main Auctions page isn't paginated, the main topics aren't paginated, so I'm guessing that individual items are not paginated either.  This is a problem in a few ways.  First, the auctions are listed newest first.  So, when someone floods a board with gems or music blocks, everything older gets buried - perhaps there's something down there you want and I'm betting most people don't know to go to that item's page in the encyclopedia to click the auction link for just that item.

c. Visibility.  In the last test, I saw a number of people asking for goods that were already on auction, but that had fallen off the first page.  Perhaps links on the item's menu to its auctions from in-game rather than from its info page ['Need more, check out an auction'].  Or maybe have an auction board on every street.. anything to make auctions more visible.  Most people only learn of auctions through Help, I reckon.

d. Pricing.  So, I list X for auction.  There is a 'going price' and a 'suggested price' just under that.  Last test, I just figured out that the 'going price' is exactly what a vendor will give you for that item.  Hmm...much of my incentive to auction anything left me when I discovered that fact.  Why should I wait for someone to purchase my cooked food or whatever when I can get a better price for it from a vendor? 

Seems to me that the pricing could go something like this:
  --- Vendor sells X for 300
  --- Vendor would buy that for 200
  --- Suggested price at auction should be 250, not lower, as it currently is.

That leads me to point number 2...

Economics:
The economy is very odd, as multiple other topics have discussed one way or another. To start, there is infinite supply.  As long as I'm willing to put in so many hours mining or squeezing chickens, there is an endless supply of gems or music blocks.  There may be some scarcity in that you are more likely to get Amber or a 1-type musicblock than a Diamond or 5-type block, but since there is infinite supply, there is no way to set true supply/demand pricing.  Everything is really a planned economy (as shown by the fact that prices are fabricated and dictated by the various vendors). So, there's a nice philosophical debate right there. :)  

This may seem downright cold, but perhaps -- as we have daily quoin limits -- we might have daily limits on many freebies (gems, musicblocks, whatever things get tossed at you in your travels) a given player can get in a day in order to introduce some finite resources.

Perhaps also we could do away with most of the vendors, leaving just a few on the start streets (the ones where you get dumped into the game) so that in the beginning, people can buy things they need (oh, but please do leave Helga, I love her so) and introducing more markets (a general hall as well as shops we can build/own)... so that the economy at least has pricing created by the players - by their efforts in creating the items and their inventory.

Or for those who balk at supply/demand economics, set aside the quoins and we could just barter our wares in the market hall.   I liked the idea of a market hall, because you could just wander by to see what's available in a central location (which is vital if Help is going away).

I guess my point here is to facilitate more social interaction by putting the economy more into the player's hands than the vendors' hands.  If there are only 5000 piggy eggs floating around the game because no one is making them, that might create a more interesting world than just buying infinite supplies of them from a vendor, using all the gems I just mined for the past day.


Also, that might introduce more sensible pricing than making devs figure out what the pricing ought to be given how long it takes to acquire the raw materials to assemble something.  By this I mean that another topic on the Forum showed that it's not as economical to make your own X since it's cheaper to buy it from a vendor when you factor in the cost of raw materials and labor.  Rather do the calculations to price an Earthshaker based on the cost of the raw materials and the energy spent to make them, let the free market handle the pricing by allowing players to set up shop and decide for themselves how many to make or whether to collect the cherries themselves or buy them in bulk.. or what the price of the day is based on available supply and current demand.


And yes, I suppose I'm spewing all kinds of Adam Smith here, but it's a starting point for the conversation the devs suggested we have about economics.  I'm sure others have good or better ideas, so I look forward to hearing them. :)

Posted 20 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Really good sensible post Zeeberk - brain is dead after a long day so will digest and prob respond in the morning if thats ok.
    Posted 20 months ago by Bob Apple Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Uh, Bob, you just did respond... ;)
    Posted 20 months ago by Essie Kitten Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I should have said a useful response ;)
    Posted 20 months ago by Bob Apple Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Could you explain a bit more clearly why it's a good idea to limit how much stuff someone can get for free in a given day?  That makes no sense to me. 

    And why is it necessary to force all players to participate in a barter economy?  I don't see how a market hall is any different from the current auction system, except that I can participate in auctions no matter where I am, and with a fixed market location, I'd incur a great deal of travel cost/time which certainly wouldn't make the game any more fun. 

    And why, in a game, is it more fun to limit resources than to allow them to flow freely? 

    Your system certainly is tilted against new players, since it confines them to certain streets where vendors are located.  Again, where's the fun in that? 

    I can see balancing the vendor prices to make them closer to the actual player cost to make them in-game.  But why force all players into a scarcity-model of commerce? 
    Posted 20 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My feelings on the topic are: we have yet to see how the economics of the market are designed to function. At one point, every street had a vendor but as the world got bigger those started to thin down. Right now we're also struggling against a huge supply/demand/skills/# players problem. Very few people have the advanced skills to makes some of the market stuff happen. There's only a few people who can create advanced meals, and I don't think anyone has gotten to tool creation. We also don't have the lower level player base contributing raw materials to the market as we're generally moving through skills as a herd.

    More often I find when people are asking for things that are on auction, they've either never looked at the auctions or got tired of looking because demand far outstrips supply right now. The others are having trouble finding a vendor, or the nearest vendor is so far away they don't feel like walking. I spend a few off-peak hours running a wonderful little fruit stand and was able to outstrip demand on oranges, plums, and tomatoes (sold at 3/4 vendor costs) until more people started to wake up.

    I think placing limitations or adjustments on economic items would be rash at this point, and placing a limit on the # of rewards renders half the skills moot. We've got a long summer of testing ahead of us in a hugely expanded world and player base. The new learning times are going to leave people with more 'down' time. More people will start to gather / convert / sell out of lack of other things to do, and then we will have enough information to see how the economy actually works.

    100% Agreed though, it's not really an Auction, it's a Marketplace.
    Posted 20 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • My brain is fried from reading endless posts in the new wardrobe thread, so I might have missed something important, but these are my initial thoughts upon first read:

    Overall: I agree an actual auction would be good (and possibly what is intended at some point), perhaps with a minimum price and time limit set by the one auctioning the item (which would still allow for selling items to specific friends). Once mailboxes are introduced, however, the problem of getting items to specific friends may be largely eliminated.

    1) I don't want to see a limit on special freebie items (like music-blocks): if you have spent the time learning higher level skills, this is one of the major benefits of that, and a limit would make learning the higher skills less valuable. Really... you should be donating most of those anyway so you can gain even higher level skills, I would think. Infinite supply never stopped people from making money on the FS marketplace, so I don't think it will be a problem here: some people just don't want to put any effort into things.

    2) The devs already announced somewhere that they plan to do away with the street vendors altogether, and only have stores (like the very few we have available now).

    I've always had a bit of a problem with the "worth" that is applied to items in the encyclopedia: if this is tied to the price a vendor will pay for it (or that it costs to buy from a vendor), then at least it's based off of something real (but I don't think it is?)... perhaps a better indicator would be the average price that item goes for at auction (which would naturally change with time).
    Posted 20 months ago by Shepherdmoon Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Windborn, just to clarify, I only suggested bartering/marketplace as an extra option to buying/selling from each other/vendors, not as a forced thing. ;-)  The marketplace, when it was around, was cool, but not enough players in the game at that time to use it (and, everyone was using the vendors then).

    As for this holding back new players... I only think it will be an issue when the final game is launched (and perhaps an argument can be made to have the beta testers not fully reset so that they can supply the goods).  But regardless, once the final game opens, it really would be a month at most before players are able to supply all the things the vendors sell in game -- and this is a long haul game.

    One issue with the infinite resources is how quickly one goes through everything that is available.  In the last test prior to the reset, it was just weeks before most players had every skill and could create anything and collect every trophy.  That's not viable for a long term game.  Meditation and quoin collection was once unlimited and those are limited now... and I think it made for a much stronger game in which you relied more on strategy to stay afloat than you could before that change.  Think about it - we're now just a few weeks into the new test since the reset and the recent musicblock trading party and high XP scores pretty well show how quickly one can advance through all the goodies.  While I'm sure there are more things to do in the future, the one thing I'd like is an advanced world in which it doesn't take a week to do pretty much everything.  World of Goo is an awesome example - I loved that game and then after a week, I had done it all.  Even Angry Birds is the same stuff, different background scenery by now.  No harm in it taking a while to do everything (as seen by the new, longer times on acquiring skills). ;-)


    Trav: yes, it is early and we have yet to see how things pan out with more players.  But I offer these thoughts up as one of the devs suggested we discuss game economics on the forum during the test last week. Hence, my thoughts.  And any others that people care to add. :)
    Posted 20 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh totally understand what you're trying to accomplish here, and respect the effort. It *is* the right time to start talking about these things so long as you've got the right frame of mind on it :)
    Posted 20 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Since there is a limit on the total energy you can spend in a game day, that acts as an indirect limit on the number of items that you can collect.
    Posted 20 months ago by Nill Subscriber! | Permalink
  • How is there a limit on total energy you can spend in a day?  If you mean you go through so much energy before you die, well, you can replenish energy by consuming food or using no-no.  Or am I missing something?
    Posted 20 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • there is a limit on how much you can eat, but i was wondering that as well.
    Posted 20 months ago by katlazam Subscriber! | Permalink
  • umn .. there is not infinite supply in glitch.

    unless you are suggesting that we all have infinite time.

    by that logic you'd never be able to set a market price on lumber, because trees replace themselves as you chop them down.

    the entire "Economics" section of the top post is incredibly flawed.

    music blocks aren't "freebies". they require time and energy to find. that time and energy clearly has value.
    Posted 20 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • and the whole "let the free market decide" thing isn't that relevant inside a virtual economy.

    even if the market is free, the world and its physics are centrally planned. the world and its physics are also the primary determining factor when it comes to pricing.

    the devs will always be toying with pricing based on how they alter the game, and picking and choosing which things will be more valuable [based on in game utility] and which ones won't.
    Posted 20 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Mostly tl;dr. 

    But I will say that nothing is "free" in this game—it may not cost any currants, but it costs time and energy, which both carry an opportunity cost of what you could have done with that time and energy.

    That's why limiting "freebies" doesn't make sense: there are no freebies.
    Posted 20 months ago by Herp Derp Subscriber! | Permalink