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Etherdrifter

Thoughts On The Wurm Economy

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Everything in Wurm is Extremely Over Priced, that's whats wrong with the economy...just my 2cents

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If you listen to the tinfoil hat brigade you'd see that the economy is being assaulted by macro made items flooding the market.

 

Too bad you can't make pitchforks in game. An angry crowd with nothing but torches is just a nazi rally.

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15 minutes ago, Pinchaloaf said:

If you listen to the tinfoil hat brigade you'd see that the economy is being assaulted by macro made items flooding the market.

 

Too bad you can't make pitchforks in game. An angry crowd with nothing but torches is just a nazi rally.

 

You appear to have a very large chip on your shoulder indicating that you have a personal investment in rallying public support against rules and bans over Macro'ing.

 

Your style of insults is also remarkably similar to KeenoBamBeano's.

 

I'm going to call it early and say, you're a sockpuppet of Keeno's.

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Wurm's economy is a sellers on balance market. No likely good investment opportunities.

 

A lack of consumers means a lack of profit making ability.

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3 minutes ago, Dairuka said:

 

You appear to have a very large chip on your shoulder indicating that you have a personal investment in rallying public support against rules and bans over Macro'ing.

 

Your style of insults is also remarkably similar to KeenoBamBeano's.

 

I'm going to call it early and say, you're a sockpuppet of Keeno's.

 

Been around a long time in this game. I'm nobody's puppet. Most people don't dig my brand. Not my issue. Read it or don't, it makes no difference to me.

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5 hours ago, enoofu said:

Don't believe that traders helped the economy, just was a massive oversight by Rolf which generated game inflation

 

Problem with the economy is that everyone is a craftsmen and can be somewhat self efficient, and the economy will only swing up with new servers and new players 

 

 

They did help.. think about it this way.. What money are people more willing to spend? The money, which they make in game.. or the money, which they buy for real money.

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8 hours ago, Dairuka said:

 

A barter economy is the very definition of a broken economy in a video game. I actually go into definition why in a far older thread. The trader aspect is out of date now, but the consequences of lowering the benefit of the King's Coffers from traders in general are starting to show in lower purchasing power across the board. (The trickle of silver from Foraging and Hunting isn't enough to sustain anything except low priced volume sales.)

 

The economy isn't the end-all, be-all of a video game. Video games can obviously survive a broken economy. However, please stop pretending that Wurm's economy is fine. It's sickly.

 

Since you are more experienced and have given this much more thought than I, how do you think a better automated bulk delivery system would effect the economy? If I could, for instance, pay the Kings Postal Workers to deliver by 10,000 stone bricks to someone on another server in a manner similar to the mail system (Your cargo will be delivered in about an hour, CoD)?

 

Or do you feel the problems are more due to money supply, rather than the mechanisms that create/move goods? You touched on both in the older thread.

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2 hours ago, Darmalus said:

Since you are more experienced and have given this much more thought than I, how do you think a better automated bulk delivery system would effect the economy? If I could, for instance, pay the Kings Postal Workers to deliver by 10,000 stone bricks to someone on another server in a manner similar to the mail system (Your cargo will be delivered in about an hour, CoD)?

 

Or do you feel the problems are more due to money supply, rather than the mechanisms that create/move goods? You touched on both in the older thread.

 

I honestly feel as if the bulk market has been opened up thanks to the new travel system we have in place right now. I for one, would not object to an automated bulk delivery system - it would save the sellers a great deal of downtime having to ship it around. There is a downside to it, in that bulk goods would become more common as more people will enter into the market without the current issue of travel time, and the price would be subject to the same level of deflation as everything else in Wurm. So far, due to travel time associated with deliveries as well as the constant demand for bulk goods, the price on bulk goods has remained relatively the same over the years.

 

For the most part, Wurm's problems stem from the overvaluation of silver in game. People see it as far too valuable to spend, thus they're more likely to save it, and spend it on monthly subscriptions (Or sell it in the forums) rather than buy anything in game with it.

 

Edited by Dairuka
I had a suggestion in this post, but I decided to remove it with the intention of avoiding an argument.
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44 minutes ago, Dairuka said:

... (Or sell it in the forums) rather than buy anything in game with it.

 

 

That is actually why selling silver is good, the buyer, who buys it, buys it to spend it on something.. and it is highly unlikely they purchase premium for the silver they buy, as premium from Code Club store is still cheaper than you can get 10s from someone. Basically allowing selling silver is giving motivation/reason for the top players to "spend" money.. yes, they don't get in game goods for it, but still, the money changes hands, which is better, than all the money would accumulate in the hands of small group of people.

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I personally think that the prices going lower is a good thing meaning one can get the stuff they cannot produce themselves for cheaper. As i am 90% on the buyer side i really don´t see problem with the market atm. Yes, if i would be selling i would be worried, but then again i have never understood that side of the game. Most of the time i am using atm is making my characters stronger and more skilled so the amount of items i have to purchase will be less and less so my steady cashflow on Wurm decreases as i do not need to buy imps, gear and so on. So i am not worried about the economics, but then again i am not playing the "make money" side of Wurm and not dependent on it.

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51 minutes ago, Wulfgarr said:

I personally think that the prices going lower is a good thing meaning one can get the stuff they cannot produce themselves for cheaper. As i am 90% on the buyer side i really don´t see problem with the market atm. Yes, if i would be selling i would be worried, but then again i have never understood that side of the game. Most of the time i am using atm is making my characters stronger and more skilled so the amount of items i have to purchase will be less and less so my steady cashflow on Wurm decreases as i do not need to buy imps, gear and so on. So i am not worried about the economics, but then again i am not playing the "make money" side of Wurm and not dependent on it.

If you've played for any decent amount of time you'll notice that the economy has declined significantly over the years and is abysmal currently.

Edited by Slickshot

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I have seen the price drop by alot, but that does not worry me as i rarely sell stuff..

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For most items, such as bulk, time is king. Ever since I got here, everyone valued time at 10i per action, sometimes more if the demand was there. For everyone else with honed skills, I've seen a significant decline in prices as a buyer. Things that I once considered vital (60+QL tools) are basically 20c to the 1s now. Not literally, but the change over the years from when I started is pretty dramatic. While I think this is a good thing for buyers, it's bad for sellers. For them to turn a profit anymore it almost becomes necessary to saturate the market in whatever you're selling, besides bulk goods.

Myself being not much a grinder, it's easy to justify buying high ql items. You'll probably get more than a years use of them at a quality rate-able to what you bought it for. Turn this with the fact that statistically high ql items last longer, which means less purchases go up outside of new players, and not everyone can/wants to buy silver to get starter tools, but that's what it seems to boil down to most of the time it looks like to me.

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2 hours ago, Dairuka said:

For the most part, Wurm's problems stem from the overvaluation of silver in game.

 

This is just a side effect of joining the in-game currency to real life currencies, thereby heightening its value to those who seek to use it in place of real life currency, which they then seek to find ways to increase its value further. Then this creates conflicts between the sellers and purchasers of in-game items in that the sellers advocate ways to raise prices and the consumers seek ways to avoid paying for these items by being more self sufficient.

 

Base an online game on making a real life profit from playing it as Wurm Online does and there will be no way of avoiding this conflict of interest. The only real solution is to completely separate the in-game currency from real life currencies, which most online games do; however this will never happen with WO, so there will always be those who see the "economy" in this game only in terms of what they can make from playing the game by selling items they create or obtain within it. Then they either use these coins to pay for their game expenses in various ways or sell it for real life currencies.

 

A sad state of affairs to turn an enjoyable and creative game such as this into a profit making opportunity which makes many turn their game time in that direction. Such is Wurm life but to deny that this is how the game functions and influences those who participate within this type of "economy" to advocate for higher prices to their benefit is just ignoring the fact of the dirt pile under the rug. Should be a good market for brooms then, if they ever introduce them into the game.

 

Happy Trails

=Ayes=

Edited by Ayes
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The only thing that would drive an economy in the state this one is in right now, is to re-introduce skill decay, and at an accelerated. Forcing people to either choose to maintain all their skills at an extreme level, or pick and choose to specialize in some skills over others.

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38 minutes ago, Pinchaloaf said:

The only thing that would drive an economy in the state this one is in right now, is to re-introduce skill decay, and at an accelerated. Forcing people to either choose to maintain all their skills at an extreme level, or pick and choose to specialize in some skills over others.

Good way to drive off the player base immediately.  No players, no economy.

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An in game economy needs buyers. Currently there isn't enough new players coming in to the game to support all the high end accounts that have the market flooded with high end product and no buyers. Want an economy? Then you have to give up something in return at this point...or find a large amount of new players that can become the consumers that are needed to support the vast amount of extremely high skilled players.

 

If you specialize in a few core crafting skills, instead of being a jack of all trades, then you increase your market share of those particular skills. This will also allow you to become a part of the whole economy instead of being on one side always complaining about the sellers on balance market situation. You will then have to participate in buying as well as selling. At this point the discussion just looks like a bunch of people trying to figure out why no one is buying their stuff in game and not realizing it's because there is no one to sell to from the start.

 

Use a scaling metric to introduce skill decay. Find a fixed period of time, and a certain progression during that time period, to gauge professional aptitude in a skill. Ex: Between 50 and 70 skill and under a skill point increase within a week's time, receives skill decay of a full point. Between 70 and 90 skill and under .5 point increase in a week's time, receives skill decay of .5 point, etc. Allow players to choose a handful of skills to assign a professional tag to prevent skill decay on those certain skills, with the option to move tags on a certain cooldown period. Use this for crafting skills only, not for the resource gathering/production and action based skills like animal husbandry, meditation, farming, coalmaking, metallurgy, etc.

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Wurm has an economy?

someone should have told me 10 years ago... i might have set up a shop for something

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If everyone can basically do everything after a while you don't have an economy, that's right.

 

Talking to vet when I moved into an area went like this for me:

 

Vet: Hey welcome to the area. We are also close to opening a market!

Me: Cool, what do you need for your village? Anything I can make you'd buy?

Vet: We are sort of self sufficient and don't look to buy stuff.

Me: How can I buy from your market if there's nothing I can sell to make money?

 

Just can't work in my book unless you expect new players to buy their way into the game with real cash subsidizing the free play of vets?

 

 

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Skill decay is less viable than it was back the first time it was attempted. We can just host our own servers and even dupe over our stats now. You cannot punish the consumer for using your product and expect repeat business, especially if you don't hold a monopoly on it.

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Don't think anyone wants skill decay on the current skills, would be different if they released new skills that are limited or decay though

 

New skills would also create new demand on goods for the legacy accounts

 

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On 1/26/2016 at 5:23 PM, MaurizioAM said:

I havnt wanted to say anything since im a fanboy... But all i see is a dieing economy. There is hardly any middle of the road trades like the OP talks about. There is pretty much nothing on the lower end and the high end stuff is just bought by the smaller population of hard cores.

 

I don't know, I don't think this is true.

Now, more than ever, people are becoming used to the idea of 'microtransactions' and 'in-app purchases'....WAY more so than when Wurm was released.

Couple that with the theory that convincing someone to spend money is harder than convincing someone who is already spending money to spend more, there really isn't anyone who is going to buy 50ql items.

 

If you're going to spend 30 cents on a 50ql item, that same person would likely spend 80 cents on the same item but at 80/90ql.

Also, a 50ql item isn't going to give you much benefit over your starter items or that which you can craft yourself after just a few hours.

 

What Wurm needs is more 'limited supply' items, where demand will remain higher than supply.

Whether that is through sources like Ada/Glimmer, unique monster drops, rare items etc...these items will (almost) always retain some sort of value, providing what you can make with them is useful. Much for the same reason that bulk goods generally remain unaffected by price changes elsewhere...supply is somewhat limited. Not many people can/will pump out 20k bricks, however the entire supply of 90ql blacksmithing tools in Wurm could be provided by 1-2 players right now.

 

I would like to see more limited supply items, like source liquid where you can only 'farm' so much of it per month. Adding other magical/rare items or placing restrictions on other items where you can only gather a certain amount per day would give Wurm a sense of scarcity, one of the most important factors in economics.

 

1 hour ago, Eltaran said:

Me: How can I buy from your market if there's nothing I can sell to make money?

 

Adding something limited, that even newbies can help gather would provide them with something that vets would desire and be willing to trade for.

It would most likely have to be something consumable, like karma and imbue potions, where they do not stay in the economy 'forever' like drake/scale/rares, so as to maintain the demand.

Edited by Cheshire
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It was like I said in the macro thread, the one advantage the economy does have is localization of resources and local markets.

 

Since a lot of things cannot be mailed it goes back to a local area for pickup, drop off, and transport of good ranging from swords to horse, to bricks.

 

However if we find cases where (and I have been playing wurm for 7 years now I know this stuff) villages and sometimes even individuals are completely self sufficient to the point where any outside help is not even wanted.

 

Wurm has an issue where there are too many chiefs and not enough indians but in this case it is too many sellers not enough buyers.

 

If you want to create an economy I would recommend trying to model it off EVE Onlines wonderful economy where certain players do certain things, aka a new player mines veldspar makes some cash, some guys buys it and refines it, sells it to a vet for processes into a ship or cannon.

 

This type of economy is healthy, and wurms localized situation as above actually mimics EVE's regional markets.

 

But the main issue there is literally zero incentive to buy anything, if a bunch of veterans make a village, produce a crap load of stuff and make a regional market (excellent for trading logistics to create regional markets to serve and area) for selling their own goods why the hell would anyone buy anything if they know they cannot sell something back or open their own market?!

 

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9 minutes ago, FranktheTank said:

if a bunch of veterans make a village, produce a crap load of stuff and make a regional market (excellent for trading logistics to create regional markets to serve and area) for selling their own goods why the hell would anyone buy anything if they know they cannot sell something back or open their own market?!

 

Because it is faster than doing the labor yourself.

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3 hours ago, Eltaran said:

Just can't work in my book unless you expect new players to buy their way into the game with real cash subsidizing the free play of vets?

 

 

As I said earlier in the post, your solution is bartering.  I do it all the time for new players.   If new players were all expected to shell out silver for the 60+ tools, wagon, their first boat, crates, etc to start their own in-game business, then of course people are going to quit and not want to play.  Instead, I give them a task in exchange for things they NEED that can be accomplished with a first week account.

Edited by Wargasm

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