Key to a succesful economy

The quantity doesn't matter at all, as long as any and all material sinks account for said quantity. Crafting recipes could take 5 items, when you could only gather 1 item per resource instance, or those recipes could use 200 items if you collected 40 per instance.

It's not about how much you gather, it's about how the devs balance that amount against all the things that are related to it. And it's obvious as fuck that NW's devs had no clue what they were doing, even before all the exploits and abuses of their systems.

NiKr wrote: »

The quantity doesn't matter at all, as long as any and all material sinks account for said quantity. Crafting recipes could take 5 items, when you could only gather 1 item per resource instance, or those recipes could use 200 items if you collected 40 per instance.

It's not about how much you gather, it's about how the devs balance that amount against all the things that are related to it. And it's obvious as fuck that NW's devs had no clue what they were doing, even before all the exploits and abuses of their systems.

I hate when I've studied something so hard that it's become axiomatic and I've forgotten how to explain the proof .

It leads to the sort of dumb situation we're about to be in.

This isn't true.

Unfortunately I forgot how to prove it and would have to re-derive it from first principles. Ugh.

Stack flux valuations in marketplaces! That was it! Or rather, the beginning of it.

Eh, it doesn't matter anyway, I will just count on whoever Intrepid hires knowing it. It's not as if me writing it out on the forum was going to save them any time anyway even if I could remember it all.

Game economy design is very specific, which is why you don't just 'hire a real-world economist to do it'. Plus, I'm just 'really confident', not 'sure'. If I was 'sure', I'd remember the proof, and even then it'd be a waste of time to try giving it, I bet.

So I'll only mention the following and if this doesn't 'jiggle' your mind, so be it @NiKr .

"The more of something there is, the lower its cost is relative to currency, and the more likely the value is to stay static because of the loss of gradients in price control of singles/small stacks."

I'm counting on you, future Senior Economy Designer!

We have not received permission from novercalis to share the quoted post.

Heh not exactly, let's just say I got a few years head start on various educations.

Azherae wrote: »

"The more of something there is, the lower its cost is relative to currency, and the more likely the value is to stay static because of the loss of gradients in price control of singles/small stacks."

If I understood it right, it's just the fact that you can't really sell stuff properly when a single piece of that stuff is almost unpriceable, because it goes below the lowest value of currency. Is that roughly correct?

If it is, then yeah, I get what you're saying. Even if every single use of those mats utilized dozens of them at a time, the trading market would be shit because you'd have to counterweigh those "dozens" with some type of sub-currency that was only used in trading of mats, while everything else costed "normal currency". At which point you're starting to have issues with currency inflows relative to mat drop values and it all goes out of whack.

If that is somewhat correct, then yeah, I was wrong about mat quantities not impacting the economy at its bigger scale. If that's wrong, then I guess there wasn't enough jiggle in my mind

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

"The more of something there is, the lower its cost is relative to currency, and the more likely the value is to stay static because of the loss of gradients in price control of singles/small stacks."

If I understood it right, it's just the fact that you can't really sell stuff properly when a single piece of that stuff is almost unpriceable, because it goes below the lowest value of currency. Is that roughly correct?

If it is, then yeah, I get what you're saying. Even if every single use of those mats utilized dozens of them at a time, the trading market would be shit because you'd have to counterweigh those "dozens" with some type of sub-currency that was only used in trading of mats, while everything else costed "normal currency". At which point you're starting to have issues with currency inflows relative to mat drop values and it all goes out of whack.

If that is somewhat correct, then yeah, I was wrong about mat quantities not impacting the economy at its bigger scale. If that's wrong, then I guess there wasn't enough jiggle in my mind

You got it. There's ways to solve it, but game designers PROBABLY should never solve it in those ways because...

Well, by now I've repeated it enough times that you know where it ends up.

Azherae wrote: »

Well, by now I've repeated it enough times that you know where it ends up.

I wish I had stayed with BDO for at least a few years back during its release. I even had a life sub to the ru servers back then. But it just didn't grab me strongly enough to pull away from L2. If I had played it for a few years, I'd at least have a broader understanding of different game designs, rather than just L2's.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Well, by now I've repeated it enough times that you know where it ends up.

I wish I had stayed with BDO for at least a few years back during its release. I even had a life sub to the ru servers back then. But it just didn't grab me strongly enough to pull away from L2. If I had played it for a few years, I'd at least have a broader understanding of different game designs, rather than just L2's.

It really would not have been even slightly worth it. BDO is useful ONLY as a sign of what not to do, and the tragedy of watching a few sapient devs/designers trying their ABSOLUTE HARDEST to fight the encroaching simplicity of Corporate and losing inch by inch.

Every other new update is a new heartbreak point for the sort of people who like L2/hang around here. Never put yourself through it, sometimes they break it faster than people can even understand .