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How to stimulate shop purchases without ingame economy failure.

defcee3defcee3 Posts: 11Member Beginner
General Discussion
Basic fact.. Game runs on the purchase of Astros.

sow the need to increase astros is brought up in discussions of piracy, multibox, server wipe. and almost any topic.

with that in mind here are three of the myriad possible solutions.

One: remove the label nontransferable to items.  Lets face it.  if you are limited in RL cash you can kiss the chance of buying many items that you would love to have, but can not afford nor can you purchase with Duckets because they will not transfer. Nontransferance will, not can, decrease the purchase of store items. A cravat need be put in place that only items from the store would be allowed for sale in the ingame store, not items given as game play rewards.

Two:  Develop a player store where items can be posted for sale or, with duckets in escrow, an offer to buy can be made.  The goods would not include ingame items since there is a way to list the items for sale already, but this too should be amended to include items to be that one wishes to purchase. The Astro item list would mirror the items available in the Astro Shop. Prices would be set on a given ratio of one RL dollar = X duckets.  This would make for a stable economy, and not give advantages to those with superfluous amounts of RL or ingame cash. This would sadly do away with putting items on sale. Also company store change.. Allow search to all, give different rewards to the top companies.

Three: these change would be easier on the player if the amount of cash on the person were increased over the paltry 200Mill now given, and could also be accompanied with an increase in the # of cheques in a stack, and the elimination of the fee to buy checks.  The fee seems to serve little purpose other than punish one for making money, and to eliminate the amount of cash in circulation.  Remember, the more duckets in circulation, the more astros spent.

This would eliminate hours spent shouting out WTB and WTS from the game and allow that time to be spent playing and plowing that money into Astro items. It would also eliminate guessing at a price to offer items up for sale and also eliminate price gouging. (read as.. Eliminate dishonest player opportunities to rip you off)

Simple ideas, easy to implement (says the guy with no programmer experience) , and would not cause shifts in the economy due to price gouging.





WalkerDePlank1

Comments

  • WalkerDePlank1WalkerDePlank1 Posts: 215Member Trainee
    I agree a good curve on inflation is needed. Here is a good video on that subject:

    Regarding the market issue, that is one of the reasons I created http://uwomarket.com, to make it easier for players to sell goods without restrictions on whether they are astro or non-astro items with pictures of the items, specifically ships with the stats/mod screens. Lessens the questions asked about the item. 

    Later I paid a programmer to add the auction feature to mimic the Ebay one, except with Ducats. The site allows anonymous email communication between buyer to seller and vice a versa without disclosing each other's private email. The benefit was that it anyone across time zones can see what is for sale instead of constantly shouting on world chat and not miss a possible customer that does not see the shouts. This is a free service for players from players and monitored for any abuse issues. I did offer to give this system to OGplanet to use.

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  • LerxstLerxst Posts: 111Member Trainee
    I think you're way overthinking and assuming things here.

    First of all, Papaya has their own items and their own shop. What the previous hosts did are not a guarantee and may not be carried over.

    Secondly, nothing is created out of think air in a real economy and when countries pretend it is, that's when inflation occurs in the real world. If a game wants to keep the economy fresh, all they have to do is simply create money sinks that remove money at the same rate that other items create it. This could be via death penalties, item decay or consumables.

    Any premium items players can buy, should be limited to items that do not affect this delicate balance. I don't know precisely how Astros worked in the game, or what benefit and items they provided, but... if it was anything that remained permanently in the game and gave an economic advantage to a player, then I hope Papaya seriously considers how it implements them back in.

    In other words, in a game like this, which is all about economy and trade, premium items should not be introduced, that will disrupt this. So, the items shouldn't be character bound, but they should also be subject to the rest of the game rules as well.
  • TornSkyTornSky Posts: 11Member Beginner
    As a new player,  I started a few weeks ago, Storage and finding items in the company shops and bazaars is a big turnoff. Not being able to search the company stores and manually going through 200 shops not finding what you want and sailing to the next port to still not find anything is a real let down. Then when i do find what I'm looking for i have to throw something away because the storage is so small.

    A centralized Market Listing that was search-able and told you price and location would be a huge improvement. If i could see someone selling an Item in Amsterdam and someone selling it in Seville i could decide whether the price difference was worth the sailing time. This would also help with seeing fair value for items. When i sell something in a bazaar just clear up space  and find out it was worth 10x what I sold it for and when I buy new cannons i finally find for 5x what they should be its really discouraging especially when I see WTS XXX for xxBillion all the time in chat.

    An increase in the amount of storage for characters would also be nice most of my challenge rewards are unclaimed just because I would have to throw them out to make room for things I need now.


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