Thoughts On The Wurm Economy

[Zerocool 139]

When considering mechanics, frame it like this: If a given player does not like a restriction placed on them and it doesn't even matter what it is, they now have the option of playing a version of the game where that restriction does not exist. The more significant a negative change to gameplay, the more of a selling point it becomes to WU servers that have modded it out.

 

If you cannot offer changes and improvements that are universally beneficial, you are selling WU. Skill caps, bad. Forced purchases, bad. Mailbox fees and restrictions, bad. Reducing the effectiveness of crafting, enchanting, or any other feature without a equal or greater gain in exchange applying to every player, bad. If someone chooses to lock their skill at a given point forever, and your change negatively impacts their ability to play, your suggested change is bad.

 

The "whip me harder boss" times are over. We can tailor our own experiences now in WU. Force too many people to do so, and you potentially create WU servers that are more popular than WO because nobody wants to play here compared to how they could play in WU. Changes have to make the game more valuable now because no change is mandatory to anyone who opposes it enough. If you diminish the experience for others, they walk away.

 

There are still good ideas to be had to get around this. The instanced invasion content suggestion Warlander put out has most of the necessary parts implemented now and would make for a fantastic place to find new materials with their own tool properties. It immediately adds content to the game and gives a place to add even more.

 

Instead of trying to curtail the existing markets to force players to participate you implement change that causes the same behavior emergently. Toss in new subskills! Everyone starts at 1 and it promises new things to do in the game. I personally like the idea of crafting augmentations that behave as enchantments with drawbacks. Could make several subclasses and have each have its own pros and cons for its own version of the augment. Smithing counterweight adds more weight to a tool than the carpentry one, for example.

 

Add gameplay, don't stretch it.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Zerocool

[Eltaran 79]

If you don't find ways to involve new players in different ways than "make me 10.000 bricks, slave" you'll have a shrinking player base until critical mass is reached and only a few vets playing in their self sufficient bubbles remain. That might be the point when you realize that the years of the hard work that entitled you to have a never changing status quo go down the drain when the servers shut down.

 

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

But surely adding in new subskills becomes a temporary fix since you'd need to keep adding in new content (and balancing it) to keep the "economy" going.

 

I still think the notion of locational based convenience is a stronger and longer term solution (since the market would be location linked to some degree) and it avoids the argument of making others dependant (since it is extending gameplay rather than "stretching" it),

 

We are dependant already on chaos for certain goods remember

[Darmalus 631]

Adding to the "Add Gameplay, not punishment" wagon, if you want things removed from circulation that are currently eternal, then give players a reason to voluntarily remove them.

 

Random idea: Every tool/weapon now has a "tool spirit" that grows as you use it. The tool spirit does abosultely nothing when you use it from it's intended purpose, but gives a powerful, temporary bonus when sacrificed, scaling up with the power of the spirit. The result would be as a tool is used more, the economic advantage of selling (or stealing in pvp land) it for sacrifice grows. The self sufficient player can choose to never sacrifice it, and keep it forever for no disadvantage. Someone else may choose to sell it when the price is right and then go buy a fresh tool from a merchant.

 

I also agree with location specific resources, though implementing them might be tricky with current servers. I remember there was a suggestion of a frozen no-deed map, so that could work. Maybe more intense ones where you can't build at all, or has starvation enabled and no fresh water, so anyone seeking resources has to cycle out to prevent monopoly.

[Zerocool 139]

18 minutes ago, Etherdrifter said:

But surely adding in new subskills becomes a temporary fix since you'd need to keep adding in new content (and balancing it) to keep the "economy" going.

 

 

It is absolutely a temporary fix and frankly you should want it to be. You are paying for a service. You put down a subscription fee in some form every month, be that ingame currency or real money. You should expect the quality of service to remain steady over time and it has not. The longer you play, the greater the chance you end up saying "I will never need to do this again", whatever that may be. That is value lost. It is also natural. New features buff that value back up where it should be. Problem is, we don't get value added back in often enough in the form of gameplay. If the situation doesn't normalize, why should they add new features outside of a whim?

 

10 minutes ago, Darmalus said:

Random idea: Every tool/weapon now has a "tool spirit" that grows as you use it. The tool spirit does abosultely nothing when you use it from it's intended purpose, but gives a powerful, temporary bonus when sacrificed, scaling up with the power of the spirit. The result would be as a tool is used more, the economic advantage of selling (or stealing in pvp land) it for sacrifice grows. The self sufficient player can choose to never sacrifice it, and keep it forever for no disadvantage. Someone else may choose to sell it when the price is right and then go buy a fresh tool from a merchant.

 

I really like ideas like these that add value in exchange for a voluntary cost. Lots of games to study from for features like it too. FFXIV has a system called spiritbonding that grants an item upon the destruction of your gear. It is generally considered to be an above and beyond practice to do because it is very time consuming, but not difficult. If you have money, you can also purchase the item from other players.

Edited January 30, 2016 by Zerocool

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

1 hour ago, Darmalus said:

Adding to the "Add Gameplay, not punishment" wagon, if you want things removed from circulation that are currently eternal, then give players a reason to voluntarily remove them.

 

Random idea: Every tool/weapon now has a "tool spirit" that grows as you use it. The tool spirit does abosultely nothing when you use it from it's intended purpose, but gives a powerful, temporary bonus when sacrificed, scaling up with the power of the spirit. The result would be as a tool is used more, the economic advantage of selling (or stealing in pvp land) it for sacrifice grows. The self sufficient player can choose to never sacrifice it, and keep it forever for no disadvantage. Someone else may choose to sell it when the price is right and then go buy a fresh tool from a merchant.

 

I also agree with location specific resources, though implementing them might be tricky with current servers. I remember there was a suggestion of a frozen no-deed map, so that could work. Maybe more intense ones where you can't build at all, or has starvation enabled and no fresh water, so anyone seeking resources has to cycle out to prevent monopoly.

 

In a similar vein the ability to "retire" a character in return for something would be nice.  The stronger the character the better the something!

[dadd 123]

Interesting as one of my main grips with Wurm and the  changes , ( good or bad ) seem to be friendly pressure put on the powers to be to make selfish changes cause it effects one or two players in certain situations.

I for one have so many now useless items that have been nerfed due to selfish players with their own agendas. ( i dont think i am alone with this ) 'so i do agree with most who see a lot of changes as selfish win at all costs ones,, and the Devs and gms wonder why most dont trust changers or why they are implemented. Then the icing on the cake is all the hassles and bit,ching that the  changes make .

I do feel pity for those that make changers as its like a dog turd in your lunch box,, never a good thing, outcome that will stink for some.

As an oldish player please dont make changers cause of few of you so called friends beg and plead with you , make them with the betterment of the game in mind not just be liked by a few.

THE GAME IS BIGGER THAN ANY ONE PERSON.

 

Cheers Dadd

[FranktheTank 1,901]

15 minutes ago, dadd said:

Interesting as one of my main grips with Wurm and the  changes , ( good or bad ) seem to be friendly pressure put on the powers to be to make selfish changes cause it effects one or two players in certain situations.

I for one have so many now useless items that have been nerfed due to selfish players with their own agendas. ( i dont think i am alone with this ) 'so i do agree with most who see a lot of changes as selfish win at all costs ones,, and the Devs and gms wonder why most dont trust changers or why they are implemented. Then the icing on the cake is all the hassles and bit,ching that the  changes make .

I do feel pity for those that make changers as its like a dog turd in your lunch box,, never a good thing, outcome that will stink for some.

As an oldish player please dont make changers cause of few of you so called friends beg and plead with you , make them with the betterment of the game in mind not just be liked by a few.

THE GAME IS BIGGER THAN ANY ONE PERSON.

 

Cheers Dadd

Dadd the most economically involved person in Wurm I know has spoken

 

His word is law in this matter.

[Odynn 2,248]

 

57 minutes ago, dadd said:

As an oldish player please dont make changers cause of few of you so called friends beg and plead with you , make them with the betterment of the game in mind not just be liked by a few.

THE GAME IS BIGGER THAN ANY ONE PERSON.

 

This is it now, the game and population is bigger than a few trying to make money out of it. Wherever these players are serverwise. The game is suffering a lot and the market is reflecting it. Forcing people to do anything they don't want to do will only means one thing : more of them will leave toward greener pastures.

 

The economy is dying, too many end crafters, not enough new buyers. Advertising is more than ever needed and the game cost need to be put in relation with our direct concurrent WU, that if we want some fresh blood in the game to make it more lively and reinforce players interactions, trading, buying, whatever.

 

I believe that a way to reduce the cost of the game (upkeep wise at least) would be a good thing, big deeds used to have traders for that, now they are worthless. And i don't think the frees coins dropping from the sky helped in any ways the market, see traders as stock options, tie them to the deed upkeep and let anyone place them on their deed (with a removal of the distance). Investing in Wurm would then be rewarding on the long term by spending less on upkeep and spending more on items that might please you.

 

Do we also want to see an economy more and more turned toward slave labor, bulks are selling, agreed, but the amount of time involved in it is insane and there is no way for a new player to enjoy the game with it right now. Foraging for 2 hours will get them more cash than making bricks, cash they might keep to buy premium and never use for the economy.

 

Rares items still sell, unique ones still sells, weird/strange items still sell. Maybe it's a way to explore, rework how the rarity work, rework alchemy, give options to make unique items / heirlooms with special names and properties, tweak decays on enchants (while removing the hard-coded shattering risk) to rebalance a custom market VS bulk ones and so on..

 

Maybe the game need to evolve toward a F2P model. With some items (or materials) that can only be obtained via micro-transaction, tradeable premium gems, the ability to mail anything (including sleep powders) and improving players customization / unique design (i won't elaborate here).

 

The RMT trade aspect of the game was always something important here. But so many changes (or truth) rendered some items(self destroying fountain containers - flood of spyglasses), characters (windows of opportunity), skills (SD anyone) worthless. This raise one question, do we want to play a market that is crashing at full speed OR a game where trading is a valuable mechanism for players and the game funding itself.

[Eltaran 79]

So the solution to get an economy going is "we need more new players that buy our vet wares"? Guess how long those players will stay if there is no low- or mid-tier economy (what this thread was about before entitled vets started to throw Tantrums about emo-rage-quitting if they have to leave their deed). No one wants to pump real life money into a game just because the vets expect him to play for a year or two before they can become a part of the exclusive club able to take part and pay their premium with silver (because hint, hint, hint: no new player can unless he turns Wurm into a second job. So stuff the "you are just greedy" sham argument).

 

And yes, this is driving me up the walls - people just posting "me me me" and accusing others of being greedy and just pursuing their own agendas. Naaaaaarrrr.... oh, a pony! Excuse me, I have to go and take my pills.

 

Edit: I'll throw in Einstein for you

 

The purest form of insanity is to leave everything as it is and at the same time to hope that things will change.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Edited January 31, 2016 by Eltaran

[Dairuka 888]

19 hours ago, LorraineJ said:

 

I'm not assuming greed, I'm stunned at the assumption of entitlement. People want to play a particular way, relying on actions of other people, and if that level of interaction isn't naturally adequate to what they want, they feel the game should FORCE more of the interaction, with no concern about how the other people may want to expend their time or resources. First, they want the game super grindy because that makes them feel good. So there's no influx of new players to buy their wares. Well then, force the players who've stuck around to have to buy stuff over and over and over, and on top of that, buy it from whom they think the items should be bought from. That is NOT a sandbox. That's work. There has to be some compromise. I'll never forget the rabid reaction to the proposal of a GPS system for directions. NO! We can't have that! It has to be hard to find where we are! How about just not using the system if you want to navigate a different way? Maybe if we got the system, 10% more people would have stuck around to play the game longer, and then there would have been that many more people to sell mid-level wares to -?

 

I wasn't aware that asking for the application of Keynesian principles was considered entitled or greedy. (They're generally considered the opposite.)

 

All my proposed ideas would do, is contribute to the reduction of excessive saving (Having 11s per month, instead of 10s per month in the bank means you're more willing to spend 1s on in game stuff.), and the reduction of our current overabundance of supply. I'm not looking to drive prices up, nor am I looking to force people to play in a certain way. I'm merely hoping to address the overvaluation of the currency without the application of any methods that would punish players. The likeliest outcome of a one-time injection of currency into Wurm Online would be marginally increased competition as more merchants attempt to fill short term supply gaps with more consumers looking to spend their extra wealth. (We know this would happen, because it's already happened twice in the past.) A long term stimulus would lead to short-term shortages of supplies as the small amount of active merchants struggles to keep up with demand - which would inevitably result in more merchants entering the market over all. Both situations would revive the economy to varying degrees. Both situations would benefit everyone.

 

The main issue with this problem is that in any situation - injecting money into Wurm Online's economy hurts CodeClub AB's bottom line. The more money you find in game to spend on premium, means less premium bought in the cash shop.

 

That's why one of my favorite ideas regarding the long-term stimulus "injections", would be a short-term cash shop sale of silver. Doing so would incentivize a lot more people to buy silver from the cash shop, both increasing the amount of silver in game, while at the same time helping CodeClub AB's bottom line. There is a downside to this idea as well, being that the exchange rate of Silver to Euros sold on the forums would be directly effected. (I would argue this downside is a good thing, since RMT sales of silver on the forums contribute to excessive short-term saving in game. The effects in the long-term however, might be negative due to more money being saved, and then forgotten in accounts rather than sold on the forums, which is another ongoing problem. However, the new money coming in during said sales, might outweigh that being lost in dead accounts.) Unfortunately, I can't see any effective method to fixing the economy without a very large downside. It all depends on what CodeClub AB decides is more important going forward.

 

This is why I suggest we wait on making any changes at all. The population has only just recently bottomed out from Wurm Unlimited's exodus. Any changes would be a gamble at best, and any changes would have a very large likelihood of angering some players, driving them to quit. Wurm Online has other, larger, more important problems on it's plate that would have a much broader appeal to the player-base. The economy should be a work in progress to be dealt with later.

 

Perhaps you're talking about someone else?

 

Edited January 31, 2016 by Dairuka

[Odynn 2,248]

36 minutes ago, Dairuka said:

That's why one of my favorite ideas regarding the long-term stimulus "injections", would be a short-term cash shop sale of silver. Doing so would incentivize a lot more people to buy silver from the cash shop, both increasing the amount of silver in game, while at the same time helping CodeClub AB's bottom line. There is a downside to this idea as well, being that the exchange rate of Silver to Euros sold on the forums would be directly effected. (I would argue this downside is a good thing, since RMT sales of silver on the forums contribute to excessive short-term saving in game. The effects in the long-term however, might be negative due to more money being saved, and then forgotten in accounts rather than sold on the forums, which is another ongoing problem. However, the new money coming in during said sales, might outweigh that being lost in dead accounts.) Unfortunately, I can't see any effective method to fixing the economy without a very large downside. It all depends on what CodeClub AB decides is more important going forward.

 

Many F2P games are going that way, with happy hours sales with cheaper ingame items, cash, premium time. As said above, fixing the economy / game model / game funding might need some serious changes.

[Mith 318]

One of the wurm aspects is a trading game. According to Rolf only very few people should expect to be able to make a small profit from that part of the game. I think thats about it. So you cant expect just because you have 95 in a skill, to be able to make a profit, there are 100 other people who have 95 in that skill, that does not make you entitled to make money enough to pay for your deed. Make a town, share the expenses, If you expect that you as a single person, can run and pay for a town and what ever, with one persons efford, I think you will be disapointed. everyone is just like you.

[zigozag 918]

5 hours ago, Mith said:

So you cant expect just because you have 95 in a skill, to be able to make a profit, there are 100 other people who have 95 in that skill, that does not make you entitled to make money enough to pay for your deed.

I've made about 15s in a couple of months so far from selling sprouts off a little tree farm spending 7 minutes a day wih just 40 forestry. They're not a high demand goods, but it would be enough for a deed if i had one. Dunno what's all this is about. You can't force serious changes to 'fix' economy making things worse for majority of playerbase, it only needs a big flow of new players to be fixed.

[Klaa 4,872]

Isnt there already a bonus to buying silver from the shop? It comes with sleep powder... nom nom powder.

Edited January 31, 2016 by Klaa

[Audrel 2,223]

23 hours ago, Zerocool said:

When considering mechanics, frame it like this: If a given player does not like a restriction placed on them and it doesn't even matter what it is, they now have the option of playing a version of the game where that restriction does not exist. The more significant a negative change to gameplay, the more of a selling point it becomes to WU servers that have modded it out.

 

If you cannot offer changes and improvements that are universally beneficial, you are selling WU. Skill caps, bad. Forced purchases, bad. Mailbox fees and restrictions, bad. Reducing the effectiveness of crafting, enchanting, or any other feature without a equal or greater gain in exchange applying to every player, bad. If someone chooses to lock their skill at a given point forever, and your change negatively impacts their ability to play, your suggested change is bad.

 

The "whip me harder boss" times are over. We can tailor our own experiences now in WU. Force too many people to do so, and you potentially create WU servers that are more popular than WO because nobody wants to play here compared to how they could play in WU. Changes have to make the game more valuable now because no change is mandatory to anyone who opposes it enough. If you diminish the experience for others, they walk away.

 

There are still good ideas to be had to get around this. The instanced invasion content suggestion Warlander put out has most of the necessary parts implemented now and would make for a fantastic place to find new materials with their own tool properties. It immediately adds content to the game and gives a place to add even more.

 

Instead of trying to curtail the existing markets to force players to participate you implement change that causes the same behavior emergently. Toss in new subskills! Everyone starts at 1 and it promises new things to do in the game. I personally like the idea of crafting augmentations that behave as enchantments with drawbacks. Could make several subclasses and have each have its own pros and cons for its own version of the augment. Smithing counterweight adds more weight to a tool than the carpentry one, for example.

 

Add gameplay, don't stretch it.

 

Not to mention that adding any caps at all on anything locks the high end players at high and creates a barrier that the lower players will struggle to even get close to. It's already top heavy. Any caps will insure that the top stays heavy and the bottom licks their toes.

[Wargasm 1,926]

On 1/29/2016 at 3:52 AM, Eltaran said:

 

This sounds like a "sod new players I earned this" approach. Valid but you'll be very lonely at some point. If you feel that you cannot compete in any field in a reasonable time (and the timeframe "years" is not reasonable) you are bound to give up unless you are very hardcore (and few are). The real problem is that vets can just do everything at some point - interdependency is then solely depending on people's laziness and not driven by needs. No demand, no economy. But it's general design flaw and way too late to fix that (or you probably loose the majority of vets) - maybe a skillpoint limit like in LiF is not such a bad idea after all.

 

New servers (like with WU) or raising the skill limit work for a while then but at some point the same problem arises again. And if you raise the skill limit it gets even worse every time as new players have an even harder time to compete in any given field.

 

You seem to forget that you don't need 90 skills to make silver.  You really don't.  Sell bulk and make what you need to pay for your premium and upkeep, then spend your spare time after that skill grinding whatever you like doing (shipbuilding, smithing, making a priest... whatever).  When you get a decent skill set under your belt, you can start selling higher end items like 70 and 80 ql tools, armor sets, weapons, etc.   The economy is not broken because you are unable to match the income of a 99 channeling vyn priest the day you start the game.

[Eltaran 79]

After talking to people in alliance I come to the conclusion that you really seem to need a certain mindset to become a vet at all (if this sounds negative it isn't meant to be). You must think that grinding is OK to survive into that stage. Which in turn means I probably don't have a bright future in Wurm.

 

 

[Wargasm 1,926]

What do you like to do Eltaran?  When you log into Wurm, what's the first thing you think about doing?

[Eltaran 79]

Too many things probably:

 

I want to build walls to finish the keep, I want to mine out a room in the mine I want to turn into a storage, I want to check the nearby abandoned deeds if the walls have finally collapsed in the hopes of some good leftovers, I want to groom the animals to be able to breed horses at some point, I want to build a bigger boat to go exploring faster, I want to make the road to the deed of my buddy look better. I want to improve leatherworking to make rugs. I want to improve tailoring to make tapestries. I want to improve fine carpentry for furniture. Priorities are changing. I would skip some of the points and would buy furniture and stuff if that wouldn't inevitably mean shelling out Euros or creating thousands of bricks.

[Wargasm 1,926]

Tailoring, LW, Fine carpentry, mining.... yeah that's a pretty broad spectrum of talents.  But try to make money by raising those skills.  As an example, about a week ago I sold 1,000 70ql string to someone for 3 silver.  No, I do not have 90 or even 70 cloth tailoring, only 30.  But having a chance to make high QL string, I put it in QL sorted BSB's and sell it that way.

 

I made money, I gained cloth tailoring skill.  Win.  Try to sell things that would raise skills you want. 

[Eltaran 79]

Maybe it's up to finding niches which requires some work and "skill" - the thought of which I do like again

 

[Arkonick 557]

Let's Look at the real problem that I have pointed out many times with the wurm economy. 

1.Why do you play Wurm Online?

2.Why do you play a game in general?

3.What got you hooked on games in the first place?

4.How many games did you play in your life time before Wurm Online was born?

5.Out of all the games you played how many have been based on RWMT? an how many based on a in game fictional economy system where RWMT was against the rules and a Ban act.

6.If you don't like RWMT system then why are you playing Wurm Online?

 

Now let's look at these Questions here for a bit.  For everyone's next post before you add your input answer these questions first. Only then will you understand.

 

I will start by answering my own think tank questions.

1.It is the best sandbox on the market with the most complete features. And I love real sandboxes with massive deep features yet WO don't have a deep set of features but it has more than any other sandbox.

 

2.I play games in general to have fun an ease every day stress from job's and stressful people.

 

3.I found them fun and educational and a way to have my mind think faster even at a young age of 6 starting way back before the atari system ever came out.

 

4.Thousands from the age of 6 to my age of 41 today.

 

5.Wurm Online is the first RWMT game I ever played. All the rest where non RWMT games.

 

6.This goes back to answer number 1 An I endured The system till I could find a game to replace it giving me the same enjoyment. This is what Wurm Unlimited did for me. If you like something and enjoy it you are willing to suffer things at times in your life to have that which you enjoy an willing to pay what it take's to have that.

 

Now answer these questions I'm eager to read your response. I could only hope others who have left the game and no longer play still read these forums and respond to post.

[hankrearden 144]

Another possible solution to breathe life back into the mid level economy would be to eliminate the mechanic that lets a high ql craftsman create mid QL items extremely fast.  If it took a master crafter the same time to imp from 0-20 QL as it does for 65-85 QL, then there would be a demand for new players making mid tier goods for cheap.  Money would trickle down from the 1% that make enough to income to sell coins on the forums, engaging a larger player base and helping population growth.

 

To those of you arguing 'omg your FORCING me' - every mechanic in the game is forcing us - the question is 'what is the best way for us to be forced?' with the goal of created a more vibrant game experience.

[KaiH 1,126]

master and apprentice style - each improvable item improves best in the players ql "range".

that's a quite nice idea hankrearden