Role of Economics in "The West"

[DeletedUser]

I'm sort of curious what anybody thinks the role of traders will become with the introduction of players buying and selling stuff to each other. Who is going to be the first "millionaire" in the game, and what will other players think of such incredibly wealthy players?

Once player to player trades happen in the first place, it is interesting to see what kinds of activities start to happen and how some players get real busy with trades in general. Wandering merchants and trading guilds are something that I think will start to happen soon enough.

Here are some other questions that would be of interest..... what items are going to be real hot for trades, and what items are going to be duds? I presume that some items like a rusty razor are going to be essentially worthless, but some things like flags or a walking stick are going to be highly sought after. How high are the prices on some of these things going to get?

Also... is anybody going to be in the game of acting as an external market lister to keep track of who is offering what for sale?

 

[DeletedUser25487]

One of the things I liked about the West was the fact that towns still maintained a very individualist mentality. Even if you were to join a faceless mob or hide behind the curtain of an already-bloated roster, you were still responsible for your own character. You had to work or quest for good items, you had to earn the money to buy necessary gear. I'm a little concerned that player-based trading will be used exhaustively by alliances to build up or "powerlevel" their members, and only rarely will it be used for that idealized supply/demand purchase between two hard-working players. Hopefully there will be some checks and balances to keep that from happening, but I haven't seen much evidence of those checks and balances being applied in other conspicuous areas of the game.

I can see a few workers or adventurers devoting themselves to the art of trading, but given how many alliances own multiple towns I imagine the only real bidding will be for high-value low-percentage items or weapons. This will be a great relief to the folks who can't seem to get what they're after despite days or weeks of trying, but will also likely encourage players not to bother with time-consuming quests or jobs when they can take a short-cut later. I doubt trading will replace "Push" Fort Battles... likely just make it more profitable to get in on them.

 

[DeletedUser]

but some things like flags or a walking stick are going to be highly sought after. How high are the prices on some of these things going to get?

You can't sell flags. Actually you can't sell products that can be bought by nuggets unless they're part of an item set. But if you could, I bet barb wire would be the the best product to offer at the market till all forts are maxed.

Also... is anybody going to be in the game of acting as an external market lister to keep track of who is offering what for sale?

Good idea, but I think trade subforums for each world would be better to have here.

 

[DeletedUser]

Im already putting myself in the order list for the piece of a note part 1.

 

[DeletedUser]

Trade subforums is a consideration, will chat with the team about that.

It's important to understand that the economics inclusion of trade has no impact on the overall wealth of the world, because Character to Character trade is merely transferring wealth between players. The leaks in game economics comes from the games' mechanics. In this game it's: item drops and job income. The drains in this game are: selling items to the merchant (at half its stated value), constructing towns, and paying for fort wars. Character to Character trade is outside of the games' economics, and instead has to do with wealth redistribution, an entirely different issue.

 

[DeletedUser]

Trade subforums is a consideration, will chat with the team about that.

It's important to understand that the economics inclusion of trade has no impact on the overall wealth of the world, because Character to Character trade is merely transferring wealth between players. The leaks in game economics comes from the games' mechanics. In this game it's: item drops and job income. The drains in this game are: selling items to the merchant (at half its stated value), constructing towns, and paying for fort wars. Character to Character trade is outside of the games' economics, and instead has to do with wealth redistribution, an entirely different issue.

I admit that when you are talking about economic drivers within a game, you tend to think of sinks and sources. However I disagree that character to character trades are outside of the sphere of the design economics, and in fact it forces those aspects to be much more finely tuned and much more attention needs to be paid upon game changes as even subtle changes can have a huge impact upon trades.

What this does do is institute a whole new dimension into game play, where players can be working to maximize earning potential. It also introduces a whole new kind of player into the mix which is the merchant. These are folks who buy low, sell high, and are more interested in cash flow rather than perhaps even playing other aspects of the game. Indeed it is the trading itself that becomes the game.

I promise that there are going to be some players who are going to be very good at this, to the point that there are going to be complaints about merchants "scalping" the market and accusations of scams even if there is no rule breaking or even intent to defraud.

I'll have to look more at how the trading system works to really find out what weaknesses are involved here. While some concerns will certainly be "bugs", there is game balance and other issues that will come up that will need at least a forum to discuss these issues. I hope that such discussions are not forbidden.

 

[DeletedUser]

Not excited about being redundant, but no... that's wealth redistribution. Characters trading between each other merely results in cash moving around in the game (from one character to another). It does not increase, nor decrease, the amount of cash in the game, and thus has no impact on game economics.

 

[DeletedUser]

Hells, not quite... Since there is a market fee.

 

[DeletedUser1121]

that is marginal imho.

And it does manages for cash to stay in the game longer.
When i buy something in a shop, the cash is gone.
But if i buy it from another member, the cash stays in the game.

 

[DeletedUser]

Again Desi, not quite - if you bank the cash and pay a fee.
It does look marginal, but a lil' bit here, a lil' bit there, we're talking about a decent money percentage of the world total.

 

[DeletedUser]

Not excited about being redundant, but no... that's wealth redistribution. Characters trading between each other merely results in cash moving around in the game (from one character to another). It does not increase, nor decrease, the amount of cash in the game, and thus has no impact on game economics.

Hellstromm, I think you and I are talking past each other. I do realize that shifting money between players doesn't impact the overall amount of cash for the game as a whole very much, but it can and will impact how much an individual player has. This is introducing a new dimension in terms of how players are obtaining many items, and on that it is going to have a huge game impact.

For the most part, "shopping trips" are now going to be mostly a thing of the past. If there is something you really want to get, you will buy it in the markets where some enterprising players are going to be perhaps even buying stuff out of their own "general stores" and selling those items at their marketplaces. You can now buy stuff pretty close to the price for town members, certainly not 4x the price like was previously the case for "foreigners" to your town. If that doesn't have an economic impact, I don't know how else to describe the situation.

The game has changed, and "game economics" have become much more complex. No, it isn't necessarily siphoning money out, but other things are happening too that are making an impact that is different. Not necessarily worse off but different.

Also, rather than selling items back to a general store at a huge discount, you can put them on the market and try to get "full price" for the items. It is possible that you are also going to be unable to sell the items even at the buy-back price. So far, I haven't been able to offer an item for less than that value, but that does seem to be where a large number of items are headed at the moment which are "noob" items. Being a greenhorn right now has never been cheaper and it is very easy to get some starting items that all of the veteran players are discarding at the moment.

If you are going to act as though nothing has changed here, you won't be really playing this game and certainly won't be playing your character in the most efficient manner possible.

My only real gripe so far is mainly one of scarcity. Almost everything in the game is plentiful with perhaps a few exceptions. The "rare" items are going to be extremely valuable, but there is going to be a whole bunch of trash on the market too. Market hunting is going to be real fun for awhile because the markets are right now very inefficient. An inefficient market is one where enterprising souls can make a difference and also make some money (in-game) to take advantage of those shortages. It would be nice perhaps if more items were rare.