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Etherdrifter

Thoughts On The Wurm Economy

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But does one have as much fun working at McDonald's? I'm actually curious as I have never worked a food industry job.

 

The extent of my work experience with anything retail or service-related was a winter working a boutique in Las Vegas McCarran International (otherwise its mostly tech and industrial). I kind of miss working the late swing hours and closing up the store there. Would see all kinds of strange late night goings on in a Vegas airport, and cutting across the TSA security lines on my way to work was additionally amusing for the looks on people's faces. One fellow even almost became violent until TSA converged on him. :P

 

Granted the initial cost of investment could be lower. Say slashing the price of a merchant. On the other hand, merchants to have a notoriety as ultra storage.

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4 hours ago, Cista said:

- stop the global mail service

- create local auction houses or similar, opening up markets for local crafters

How can you even think of this, living on Xan? :)

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Just one more thought, which I want to add about the new rift feature. That will give another blow to economy. I can't say exactly where it hits and how hard, as there is not much information. But as there will be rewards for finishing those instances(if not, we will see demands to make some.. and I doubt lump of iron will be fine), those will get farmed and market flooded with whatever items/resources there are as reward.

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1 thing that would help sale's is a global market window that reports all vendor's item's and prices with a location of where the vendor is. 

The key point why some don't want this. It hide's and makes it hard for people who sell cheaper to be found. a person can not travel all over every map in Wurm and search every single vendor put up by players to see what they are selling and there price. Not to mention you would have to set down with a pad mark down every single freaking name the item the price then go threw a whole list trying to find the cheapest price and closest distance you are willing to travel. Not to mention it would take months just to sail around and get to every merchant in the game and click trade on them to see what they have.

 

This whole hide and seek merchant system drives people crazy. Yes you all say that's what trade channel is for that's what forums are for. Listen up cause this is your wake up call " Rolf didn't put forum's up for you to make hundred's of post to sell item's thus is why at one point he tried to get people to use a 3rd party sell site not to long ago. Not every one want's to spend every min in there game time shouting out  blah blah blah for sale this is why they bought a dam merchant to begin with and set it down dropped there stuff on it so it could sale the items for them.

 

When I first started playing wurm I went to Freedom market ran around to over 50 merchants there looking for the highest ql item's at the cheapest price it was a freaking nightmare trying to rem where who was selling the item the cheapest with the highest ql. I've never went back and done that again all that dang clicking trade move to the next made me hate wurm in a way and it wasn't a good feeling. Not to mention It bogged me that there where merchant's along roads across all server's that I was not about to go travel for next month or to trying to compare there prices to F that. Wurm has the most outdated selling system ever known as well as the most aggravating system to find and locate item's for sale.

 

Threw my 5 years of online EXP with the system all people selling item's in trade and forums are selling item's way higher than the local joe who just throw's his stuff on the merchant he invested in in the local market near him or some where along a road at his dead. 

Closing statement: all those complaining about sale's who treat this as a stock market of buying and selling good's. Go out put in some application's get a job and you will have a stead money flow and want have to waste time bickering about how your item's want sell. This is a Game to have fun an when a game stops being fun people leave. Every good Idea gets shot down and you wonder why the game spiral's down hill like the stock market with people screaming sell sell sell.

 

Here is a Idea shoot it down too cause it only took me like 20 or so micro seconds for this to come flying out my head with a player I had a conversation with. PVE server can work for pvp. A player want's to become a king so he travel's to his neighbors and ask them if they want to merge up with there starting kingdom. If the player says yes then they merger like a alliance but they have to be within a certain distance. The merge increases there influence allowing for them to stretch out further merging other deed's of willing player.s Everyone within the kingdom has benefit's like "lower deed cost upkeep, special buffs, spirit templar's take a cut in pay, all the % stuff on a regular deed get a boost, Better crop yields, etc.. there are many thing's that can go in this." The kingdom grow's in size as it swallow's up people who want to join. % of the deed upkeep spent to all people in this kingdom goes to pay the kings deed upkeep this is his perk for being king. The king can become CA of this kingdom eventually down the road GM of this kingdom if his rule is great and he makes the people happy. He is then in charge of making his followers happy if he looses to many he looses his perks like GM Ca etc... People can disband from the kingdom if they don't like his rule and are not happy with him. I could go on and on but it took me few small micro brain farts to spew this out.

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6 hours ago, SeeD said:
1 hour ago, zigozag said:

How can you even think of this, living on Xan? :)

 

 

Hehe I can think of these things because we are talking about getting more people activated in an ingame economy.

What happens if there is no global mailing and we have local auction houses? It means people will buy items on their own server, ordering stuff from many more crafters on each server. These crafters will all get silver in their pocket which they can then use to buy other mid-level items of other types or buy dirt or bricks from noobs.

Some crafters would tour the servers, setting their things for sale in different places.

Other people will see an opportunity in trading cross server by buying items from crafters they have a deal with or at the local auction house, and then transport it to other servers for resale. 

 

I basically just described EVE online (again).

But I also said these things will never happen in Wurm, because we HAVE global mailing, and it will of course not be removed now. Wurm trade activities will just continue to drag along through the bottleneck of the 6-7 top crafters on the forums. We have ended up with an economy where the only people selling are those that work to make RL money out of it, an economy that is enjoyable for noone else.

Edited by Cista

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1 hour ago, Cista said:

 

 

Hehe I can think of these things because we are talking about getting more people activated in an ingame economy.

What happens if there is no global mailing and we have local auction houses? It means people will buy items on their own server, ordering stuff from many more crafters on each server. These crafters will all get silver in their pocket which they can then use to buy other mid-level items of other types or buy dirt or bricks from noobs.

Some crafters would tour the servers, setting their things for sale in different places.

Other people will see an opportunity in trading cross server by buying items from crafters they have a deal with or at the local auction house, and then transport it to other servers for resale.

This would be the way I would love to see it. Would change many things for the better i.m.o.

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The economy is Pay-To-Win by nature. The whole ability to buy coins and sell characters just makes this game undesirable imo.

Edited by Ramaraunt
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Rolf needs to just send out a survey to everyone that makes a account and then stops playing to find out what people hate about his game. I've never got a survey in the mail when I stopped subing so how will he ever know why? 

I'm voiceful on the forums so no email needed for me but everyone else who isn't might want to give you some input but with out something as simple as a survey to those who stopped playing you will never know why people are turned off.

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Cista, i think it could work very well with thousands online, but first we need to get to that point imo.

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4 hours ago, Cista said:

 

 

 

. Wurm trade activities will just continue to drag along through the bottleneck of the 6-7 top crafters on the forums. We have ended up with an economy where the only people selling are those that work to make RL money out of it, an economy that is enjoyable for noone else.

truth ...and so sad also

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6 hours ago, Arkonick said:

 

 

Threw my 5 years of online EXP with the system all people selling item's in trade and forums are selling item's way higher than the local joe

o0 my .. i agree with this

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I have pointed some features that would give the game a more lively economy, but features which will never be there because the time has passed for them (such as localised trading).

 

But there are many simple little things that CC can introduce to make players interact more. But they seem to purposely avoid introducing features that would allow players to trade with interesting items.

 

Just as an example, they have just introduced alchemy. Such a fantastic and mysterious feature in many MMOs, right? Eagerly I read the description of what is needed to perform alchemical reactions.

Is it the skin of an anaconda?

The penis of the blue whale?

Is it the venom of hell scorpious, the tooth of the mythical sea serpent, the ground horn of a unicorn?

 

No, it is of course charcoal, lead and f***ing iron. And nothing from any animal.

 

Way to blow an opportunity to make something interesting in this game, again. Wurm has such a fantastic bestiary of rare creatures. Imagine the adventures players would go on to get the skin of anaconda and the **** of a blue whale. Imagine the trade activity when people return home with precious loot.

 

 Instead CC do what they always do: the ingredients are the most boring things that anyone could come up with, they are what every player has on their own deed already, and it is the skill which the veterans have already that determine who can perform the reactions (if I am not mistaken). 

Edited by Cista

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"they have just introduced alchemy. "

 

Alchemy and natural substances have beenskills for a long time, and while it does require metals (as alechmy often did) It also requires fruit juices, which were underused in the past, and can be collected by new players as well.

 

Don't forget this is needed in huge amounts to make large transformations, but it is not reliant on "the elite few"

 

While I am interested in hearing ideas to improve the economy (a few merchant ones here are interesting) Let's keep it constructive.

 

 

P.s. as for whale penis, I sincerely hope that is never a thing, not unless they introduce eye bleach

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52 minutes ago, Retrograde said:

P.s. as for whale penis, I sincerely hope that is never a thing, not unless they introduce eye bleach

 

Does the one of a celebrity killer whale count?

 

As I have seen Keiko's when the whale was in Oregon. I (high school age at the time) and a whole crowd of onlookers, including young children asking their parents, "Whats that?". Here I had thought the trip was going to be dull when I tagged along initially...

 

Apparently either one of the parents didn't know and asked or the tour guide overhead as the guide eventually stated, "Yes, Ladies and Gentleman, Keiko is a fully healthy MALE whale."

 

The following was just...

 

Best aquarium visit ever. :D

 

Free Willy Indeed :P

 

EDIT: I know a nice way of describing it for those interested... :ph34r:

Edited by Klaa

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1 hour ago, Retrograde said:

It also requires fruit juices, which were underused in the past, and can be collected by new players as well.

 

Yes fruit juices, how extravagant, dramatic and adventurous.

 

Sorry if you don't find my post constructive. Instead of just shrugging it off, could you tell us what is not constructive about asking for more interesting ingredients in alchemy?

My point is the same as your own, you are catering to some imagined new players sitting on their new deeds and not wanting to experience the full world of Wurm. In your view they should be able to make alchemy reactions without ever consult or trade with other players.

 

I think that is a wrong strategy. It is not as if the unique hunts are unpopular, in fact it is the single content that drives the interest in the game for many people, as they want to build their dragon armour or just collect blood or whatever. I have met many new players who were very aware of the existence of uniques and have it as a goal to participate. 

And the loot from unique hunts are certainly good trade items, which is the subject of this thread.  

 

CC should not be afraid to diversify loot tables of different mobs in the game and make actual use of the terrific bestairy they have built over the years IMO. And it doesn't have to be all sea serpents and hard mobs. Make cave bug cochineal* an alchemy ingredient, and suddenly noobs will have an entry to the Wurm economy, because where is a cave bug when you need one? 

*I am aware that containers erase the identity of items like cochineal, this problem would have to be overcome. One solution is: don't put it in a container.

 

Anyway, my little rant here is just to exemplify that CC is systematically heading in the wrong direction with many steps they take. They introduce new systems that they feel must be available to noobs, forgetting that every new system is gated for noobs anyway because of *skill*. 

Instead of making the new systems and features bland and generic, doable by every solo player on their deed, and gated by skill like everything else, they could - as in my example with alchemy ingredients - launch the same systems but make need of exploration, adventure, and interaction with other players, to the benefit of the economy.

Edited by Cista

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15 minutes ago, Cista said:

*I am aware that containers erase the identity of items like cochineal, this problem would have to be overcome. One solution is: don't put it in a container.

 

I was with you till this part. There are better ways to overcome this issue than "lolnobsbs". Creating a new generic item for every item in which the creation source needs to be relevant works. Storing the creation source in the bsb'ed item data is also a good compromise. New generics is probably the more easily implemented solution though, I think.

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10 minutes ago, Zerocool said:

 

I was with you till this part. There are better ways to overcome this issue than "lolnobsbs". Creating a new generic item for every item in which the creation source needs to be relevant works. Storing the creation source in the bsb'ed item data is also a good compromise. New generics is probably the more easily implemented solution though, I think.

 

Right, make spleen, pancreas, brain, blood, bone, marrow, chitin, antennae, bristles etc etc, new alchemy ingredients, and let each type drop from only two different mobs, one easy mob and one hard mob. 

Boom, that's a lot of new trade objects that can not easily be farmed on each deed.

Edited by Cista

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What is the reason to add those alchemy items in the first place? Is it needed to create those tiles? It only creates a situation, where people will make all the resource tiles (yes, you only need one of each) at their place and they have never reason to leave their deed.. Instead creating situation like that, travel should be encouraged.

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The problem isn't with propagating new ingredients. That part is easy. The problem is coming up with new and desirable things to do with them. Best chance of forcing more mechanics is probably to make highly popular WU mods and prove they fit the balance of the game, but at that point you might as well be making your own game and seeing if you can't get paid real cash for it.

 

For whatever reason, the new tile types were designed as a resource sink. Usually resource sinks are an effort to catch up with an overabundance of something, but people store everything so there is arguably an overabundance of everything. The only exception in that theory is the juices which were not really worth the effort before.

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The symptoms and the causes for a rather non-existant economy have been identified in this thread. The official stance seems to be "everything is working as intended" though. Adding short term fixes to the symptoms rather than addressing the causes apparently is the way forward as redoing game basics would piss off too many people who ARE happy to never leave their deed or would threaten silver sales.

 

And that is that.

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Chill, man. I didn't mean to direct the discussion. Talk about whale penises and whatsnot all you like for all I care. Just giving my impression on the official stance, which is "what can you do if it's decided to just sit things out".

 

Edit: P.S.: In other words *I* have given up hope to see anything but short term band-aids.

 

Edited by Eltaran
P.S. added

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Apparently I have misinterpreted your fatigue for aggression, so I have edited out my post.

 

Small, "band-aid" fixes can still be good. Sure, doing something like adding a new tool type needed for imping would be pretty toxic, especially if it didn't require any lesser used skills. But stuff like adding new skills and meaningful items made from those skills are still good short term fixes because they add value to the game overall. Any time an addition gives more of something to do than the game had beforehand, it is good for the economy because it keeps players engaged longer.

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Im not sure Rolf quite understands that a very strong economy will mean more people will be trading in his game, which essencially means more people will be buying silver to buy goods.

 

With the release of WU, not only did he lose a large amount of people paying 8e a month (on just 1 char and im sure most have 2 or more), but silver for a deed, along with silver to purchase items on the market. All that in trade for a 25 euro 1 time payment, of which im sure he only saw a fraction of the price.

 

I wonder how much turn over his company will lose this year considering he lost ~20,000 in turn over last year compared to the last even with the huge influx of money he got from WU.

Edited by Redd

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A long and interesting thread.

 

I'm much in the same camp as LorraineJ and others. I trade very little. I buy premium and pay for my deed via the wurm shop and only a couple of times have actually purchased from merchants (initial purchase of armour being one).

 

Lots of moaning in here about 'we need new players' and not enough 'buyers' compared to the number of sellers and high-skilled craftsmen. But I think it's not really the 'buyers' that are needed.. 

 

Skills persist and only increase over time. No one liked skill decay. They won't like it in the future. Trading of accounts further worsens this as high-skilled characters remain in the game world far longer than they should.

 

No one likes random shattering or random item loss. There is already a long and vocal thread against the 1% shatter chance being unfair and ridiculous.

 

Most people don't like to have additional mechanics forced upon them. What benefits your gameplay style will hinder others. Localised resources for instance hurts all those 'hermit-style' and self-sufficiency players as lots of resources are simply nowhere to be found nearby. Other 'depedencies' however are much more optional. For example you depend upon a priest to cast courrier on your mailbox.. but if you don't trade, you dont need one.

 

New items, new skills, new materials don't fix anything. They just provide a temporary boost because it becomes something new that everyone wants. However, once they have one, they don't need another. Take for instance Dioptras. When bridges came out, everyone needed a dioptra, market surge in that area. But after you've got one? do you need another? Not only that but once you've built all the bridges you wanted to build, you have no more use for it, and maybe either resell or give it away.

 

You had an awesome set of Plate, now you've upgraded it to the newer tiers. What do you do with the plate set? Sell it on? Give it to an alt? Give it away to a village member? (these are options detracting from the market). There's only so much you actually need to buy - in terms of gear and equipment. Bricks, mortar, planks - these are always used up in constructions that often end up decaying away. Cordage rope, dirt, farm products also quickly used up.

 

A new player can quite easily (while roaming around looking for a spot to settle) find enough decent gear and tools from abandoned deeds. Not top-end, granted.. but certainly good enough that they need not make purchases. If these items were all bound to the previous player, they would be useless. They new player would still have a need to purchase.

 

To me, it's not so much the new players need to increase, but the existing items needs to be decreased. Maybe locked chests should not spill their contents when they decay away. Maybe all the items and gear inside should also be destroyed.

 

The amount of gear that currently gets removed from the game is minimal. Not that much rots away without some other player rescuing and repairing it.

 

Other games have used 'disenchanting', 'bind-on-equip' and 'NPC merchants' to remove items from the game world and retain a market need.

 

Perhaps also there is room to expand the missions - with a whole load of new ones geared towards removing items from the world. "Bring me 10 50ql+ pickaxes" (so long as they are not so stupidly farfetched as some existing missions)

 

Maybe make one god particularly like the sacrificing of weapons, tools and armour?

 

The new permissions system I believe should have improved things somewhat for the likes of boats and carts. They can't simply be 'claimed' by other players instead of purchased or self-made.

 

The smelting pot - perhaps add a chance (depending on QL of the item being smelted) to gain rare iron or a rare coin? Encourage smelting.. also why not allow enchanted items to be smelted? Get the old items out of the game world..

 

With so much 'free stuff' easily available, it's no wonder demand in various markets has declined.

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