Game Economy

Kubrius · October 2017

I think MOST items should be available from the cash shop, including some items that are ONLY available there, but I also believe that there should be certain unique, useful, but not necessarily overpowered, items along the way that you can only get in game. For example, give everyone that logs in on the 18th a really cool pure white robe with 60 formality. Maybe make this one untradeable because of the significance of it, but then on the first anniversary, maybe have a matching tradeable hat with +2 sail handling and 10 dura for everyone that logs in. Maybe a couple mini events through the year at random times with a buff you can't get from the cash shop, like 10X xp for an hour or something, untradeable.

I also think there should be a way to purchase most non-buff related stuff (sails, FS parts, SSIP, etc) from an in game merchant for ducats, at various rates depending on the demand. This would help to keep the economy and market under control, while ensuring availability of these items and discouraging resellers. As an NC/astro buyer, I can assure you that this won't affect their sales. Any money I was planning to spend got spent. The only decision was what to buy.

Kubrius · October 2017

The key is a ducat sink. We need one big enough to soak up all the nanban profits. I've suggested it before, but maybe have a guy in each capitol city that sells temporary buffs to things we can't get in cash shop, maybe dura, armour, cargo, GS percentage, SB 'cook' time, and some others.

evilmedieval · October 2017

i agree bottle are the reason for the economy inflation , or rather the rarity of the bottle ships,for last 2 years most of the mall items have stayed relatively the same price until the few months. First they hooked the buyers on fairly good drop rate for ships then they made ship drops so rare that ppl would spend more on astro , but it eventually backfired and ppl quit buying bottles and those players that pay to win will not be happy without that instant winner feeling they get .

It was problably a hell mary move on ogp's part , as they have lost games like dominoes falling.

And here we are we can cry and complain or try and make the best of it . No these paldry vet rewards dont begin to match what we put in but , hey better then kiss off. And i still belive this is the only fix to the overflow flooded amount of Ducats in the game ,and the Monopoly that a few players hold over the rest of the community.

Like i have said this is not my first start over . I lost my netmarble acct when i couldnt verify the email address because i didnt have acess to it any longer on it was a 7 nation sber / crafter , a trade main ,and a nearly maxed mari red everyone loved to hate :D

So after a few years on WoW-crack i came back to ogp ,started from scratch .did my first 20 nanabn runs in a TLG . grinded handi sew casting and sbing max 7 nation again .My whole reason was to fund my pirate. Sure these tribs sucked but i still had lawless waters to work in :P..........not .....OGP struck again took plunder , added the stupid flags ,even took deck battle........wth, by the time i could afford even a mav modded there wsnt any piracy to be had , even in " LAWLESS"

So here i go for the third time building my sber and trade fleet. Glad to do it if it means my games back . Dont yall miss the adrenaline rush when you dodged that red , or when you robbed that sheep :P I know i miss it , both sides .as trader and as red ...never could be a BH .....

I GOTTA BE ME CAUSE EVERYONE ELSE HAS ALREADY BEEN TAKEN :D

TheRealFaffnir · October 2017

alright say we add all the nc type ships to the uwc shop , what would be considered fair value in getting each different ship

Phoenix1492 · October 2017

It would nice to address the (non pay/pay ship) in-balance, which cause extortionate prices.

E.g.

(pay ship) Celeb High Clipper - Levels 30/15/12 - 6+2 mods

(non pay ship) High Clipper 66/75/27 - 5+0 mods

Personally I thought it would be better switch the mods around - so achieving the high levels you get the extra mods, so better incentive to get higher ranks. The pay ship you are already rewarded for the low levels in order to sail it!

Just a thought I would throw out there.

alecog · October 2017

best money sink would be if ships get sunk in certain amount of times they would be totally destroyed ..

oldrobcat · October 2017

A better economy would result if the NPC buyers /item shop, shipyard/ paid a reasonable price for manufactured goods and ships. Make it worth selling to them and re-sellers won't get in. If item shop bought at 75% of current market value the re-sellers' margin is gone. Also stabilizes prices. Or am I missing something here? World economics isn't my forte.

mooping1978 · October 2017

Maybe just set item/ship from bottle to be untradable. Is this help? :)

shizenhakai · October 2017

I think I just try posting till I get through xD

The problem with the economy was not the cashshop ships, in fact they did not impact it at all.

Inflation happens if too much money in a system, which happened once the ports where developed.
It was a moneysink most people engaged in to some extend.

The inter-player economy did nothing for the economy because it did jsut move money around and not reduce the amount of money in the server.

To reduce the amount of money I think they should some high-prize items that can not be crafted and only bought. Another thing that would be nice (but most prob. can only be done by koei) would be some sort of land.
Similiar to the houses but larger and *much* more expensive.
Maybe also add some taxes for high-prize playertrades. We need more things in the game to reduce the money in the system!

oldrobcat · October 2017

Company leaders could control in-game inflation a bit, given a small code tweak. I'm not talking cash shop here, lower level stuff. BTW ignore my previous post - pure rubbish about item shop prices making any difference.

A good company, working as a team, needs a high-level SB, armourer, handicrafter, sewer, right? But these also need supplies of FS parts, +1 items and raw materials. So my idea is to recruit newbies and lower level players for this. So you need incentives for handicraft, sewing, cooking, fishing and casting grinders. The company leaders need some control here, knowing what their top producers need, what they will pay, what the input goods are worth, etc.

I suggest one way to do this -

(1) make all the company shop slots (3 per member now) allocatable. Give lots to your top-skill members, lots to low-level input providers, none to mid-level people who are too busy grinding XP and ducats instead of production skills.

(2) each shop slot can be switched between internal (member purchase only) and external (free trade). Leaders advise the producer on the two suitable prices and estimated internal consumption for each item. You sell your expected surplus.

(3) reward good producers with high-level goodies. Fancy dress? cannons? an SB-made Big Trading Carrack maybe.

You no longer need company shared storage, do this by internal trading at 1 ducat per item.

Keep all pricing visible to HQ visitors. That'll result in company competition. Rival comps will know how much you pay your lumber producers internally, how much your newbies pay for their vigor foods, what SSB ships members can get, etc. It'll keep the free-trader bazaars reasonable too.

There will be discipline issues with this, new members joining just to raid the 'fridge and run. You older hands can work something out I'm sure. Forum black-list? Minimum membership time? Take a deposit? idk.

ZimXero · October 2017

Its OK to have hard to get game-obtainable items in the cash shop as long as they are not for direct sale, or common drops. As long as they are rare enough to not destroy a market, or become obtainable by spending a $1000... what would the issue be. The game reward would still be special, valuable, and probably the fastest way of obtaining the item.

testbed1311 · October 2017

ok the economy is doomed either way

testbed1311 · October 2017

ok the economy is doomed either way

HuseyinGazi · October 2017

It all started with sailor bottle that most cash items went skyrocket... I don't even remember when I managed to buy NPC for nanban or finding an SSIP seller. Let alone storage permits nearly hitted 1b ducats which was insane...

The cause is that the bottle was too addictive that players ignored the cash shop and played the gamble instead so for me there are two possible solutions I see:

1) Scrap the sailor bottle, put cash ship on a fixiated value on cash shop. No more gamble or depression required, you get the ship you want in a wimp. Problem though is that the company may not know these value and may overprice them so there is a drawback on it.

2) Keep the sailor bottle, but it becomes only playable once you've purchased items from cash shop till you hit an certain value of it that allows you to spin in the bottle still. Benefit on this is you still can get the prices from bottle, but also items from cash shops are valued for spenders as they have to spend on them before playing a bottle. Ofcourse an good ratio should be made on this, but at least cash items won't get inflated.

I hope PP will look into this.

Kind Regards,

Roiber · October 2017

Wonder if they will ever let us post..... lots of pissed off people have not been able to post since the announcement

Roiber · October 2017

If they dont soon there will be hell to pay later; this is making us all more ticked off, not less....

alcharzor · October 2017

This is simple UWO economic system has to much ducats that flow in:
1. Trade goods(including naban, dungeons)
2. Payoff for discoveries, treasures etc.
3. Cheques for real money

and not enough money sinks. While ther's not much we can do about cash flowing in without killing
mechanics of the game, but we can fix the money sinks. Our main money sinks in the game are:

1. Ship building - the problem : the grind is insane, most of the people don't want to spend 6 month of
    their life siting near some city. the fix : add button that will allow you to get you ship immediately, but
you will have to pay X3-4 normal price of the ship. why is it good? many ship builders means many
    people removed ducats from their wallets to level ship building, many ship builders means many
    people can upgrade/fuse ships meaning sink still working even after level grind ends. down side:
    emergency shipbuilding item in the store becomes useless, but if we will take under consideration
    that no one has used it any way its not a problem. how hard to implement? easy. we already have
   emergency ship building just put the button on the UI and connect the function of emergency ship
   building to the button.
2. PVE cannon fighting - the problem : no reason to do it heavily. Pve cannon battles can be a greate
   ducats sink. just in a day or 2 of fighting you can go through 10X 16mcarro 5sails 3-4 armor, but   most
   of the people don't see a reason to do it. the fix : add interesting drops to NPC fleets like cosmetics
   or plus items. Make low level fleets drop simple items and higher you get better items you get. Add
   some very rare items to the drops that will have low chance to drop. how hard to implement? not
   hard. we all seen the event from OGP in which Viking ship where dropping stuff.

b15h09 · October 2017

Without the lottery, everyone will just buy the best thing offered, and there will be a lot of homogeneity. It also means the only way to entice future purchases is by offering power creep. It's not the way to go. Not saying the lottery is the way to go, just that it's removal would be worse if they're still selling power.

Hawthorne · October 2017

Don't forget the perfumes you can buy that temporarily boost it. With that, you should be able to invest in ports that carry stat boost jewelry, which also considerably boost Formality. Riga carries alcohol trading jewels, so I'll try for those first. Also, pick up Sociability as soon as you can.

b15h09 · October 2017

Main problem with the economy was that the existing gold sinks were mostly fillable. Infinite shipbuilding sounded like a solid move to fix that problem.

Phoenix1492 · October 2017

All

http://gvo.gamedb.info/wiki/?Peerage

I use chrome - right click translate.

camperman6595 · October 2017

IMO player built ships should be the best ships. Get rid of the bottles and sell more shipbuilding items to add mods etc.

ZimXero · October 2017

Welcome, Roiber! Their system is lame. You're in now.

Nick1969 · October 2017

Just my opinion ;) the game economy was for me a bit random anyway, 1 astro was 5 mil ducats when everything worked. but we humans are greedy by nature, stick to the code!

lefox271 · October 2017

A lot of games only sell cash items which do not have an impact on play. Like clothing. Pets. Skins. Stuff which people use to differentiate themselves and build identities - which feeds the social side of a game but which doesn't bring any benefit to actual play.

Using instanced housing is a good example of this. There's lots of things you can sell to people if they have houses. You could do a similar thing with instanced ships - same as going into your quarters, you enter a ship which you kit out. But it's all purely for vanity - no practical effect.

In a game like UWO where crafting is central to the game, you just impose a cash tax on any item you make/buy and want to bring into your 'instance'. So the 'instance' is acting like a barrier between the cash economy and the in-game economy.

It stops real money having an impact on the game. Games like that don't need a ducat/ cash exchange rate.

Everything else - all the actual game mechanics - are then separated from the publisher's financial model for the game.

The in-game economy will find its own balance. It's certainly easier for the publisher to make in-game balancing adjustments when they don't impact their financial model.

The logic of this (in my opinion) is it's not stuff like dungeon-runs and Nanban which unbalance the economy; it's permitting the players to take shortcuts and pay-to-win. And you can see how that's gonna create an inflationary bubble because the publisher has to keep making stuff more powerful than the last stuff, and players have to buy it to keep up.

So my suggestion is Pay-to-be different; PLAY-to-win.

But in the end it's all about Papaya's financial model and nothing to do with how the game feels to us.

crazyhunter2003 · October 2017

if cash items all have no game play impact,then I do not need them because i can do just as well as play x ,player y & player z without spending a dime

no impact,no sale,game over.server closed

lefox271 · October 2017

@crazyhunter - I take your point. But even so when every player's armed with the new cash shop MkII RPG and wearing the new 90% dodge, DPC battle dress - well then you are all the same.

Some games have a pay-to-enhance-experience model. The winner in a PvP contest is the one with more keyboard skill, not the one with the open cheque book. Elder Scrolls Online for example. I guess people just spend for different reasons - maybe the game is supported primarily by a different section of the players.

I'd spend more that way.

Roiber · October 2017

Well so much for that thought..... still says 'subject to approval'. Guess this one will show up in a week or so as well.

Laziali · October 2017

I think the issue is complex with multiple contributors and I don't think it's just as simple as getting rid of NC ships in sailors bottle or getting rid of sailors bottle altogether. Back in the NM days they did the treasure box which, if i recall correctly, was very similar to sailor's bottle, and I don't remember there being insane prices on things back then. (That of course was also pre dungeons and nanban which is why I said there are multiple contributors.)

A big part of the problem is there are so many NC ships out there that are vastly superior to anything you can get in the game so you encourage the inflation in price because they are so rare and valuable. Instead of that, release NC ships that are slightly improved versions of ships accessible in game. Maybe lower levels to sail, slightly modified etc. Maybe even release a ship in SB a few months before accessible in game. This would still encourage people to buy SB which is clearly what makes money for the host but at the same time wouldn't make it a complete pay2win situation, more of a pay2progress.

b15h09 · October 2017

Best F2P microtransaction model I've seen comes from Path of Exile. You can pay for cosmetic effects and storage space (and t-shirts/keychains), everything else is in game.

Game Economy

Comments