Thoughts On The Wurm Economy

[Eltaran 79]

The alliance here indeed also has "Alliance quests" where you can mine x of y or build x support beams and get a tool, weapon or somesuch. It's player created content which is great. I am not sure it's the norm though.

[Wargasm 1,927]

If their rewards are market price exchange, then it's a good thing.  If they want you to dig 10,000 dirt in order to receive a 50 ql tool, for example.... you're getting shafted.

[Darmalus 631]

A few thoughts, it might be good for Wurm to break the direct connection between silver and real life currency.

 

1. Don't sell silver directly for $, the goal is to sever this connection and keep the silver in the pockets of players and out of cash sinks.

 

2. Premium time. Don't sell game time directly for $ or silver. Sell "premium time items" or (potions or vouchers or whatever you want to call them). Like sleep powder, they would be an item you can use yourself immediately, or sell to other players for silver. This means that the silver price of a month of days of Wurm will float based on demand. If you want the game time for yourself, you can use it immediately and it's no different than buying premium now. Or you can buy them and choose to sell them in-game for silver

 

3. Deed upkeep. Change deed upkeep from silver to "deed points" or whatever you want to call it. 10,000 deed points for 1 silver of upkeep would be a direct translation. Like premium time, sell these on the store as an item that can be used immediately or sold to other players. I bring this up because while I participate in the economy, it's one-way. All money I earn goes directly into the deed fund, effectively remove from the player economy.

 

4. Now that those 2 sinks have been removed, the silver that exists should remain in circulation and move from player to player, not player to NPC. Wurm has the advantage that very few things in game have a set payout of in-game currency, which allows money supply to be dynamically managed. Too little silver in circulation, boost the payout slightly. Inflation out of hand, put valuable consumable items on traders to siphon that cash out of the economy.

 

The goal of this would be too keep the Wurm economy healthy (or healthier, it has other structural problems) by keeping silver in circulation between players and real money paying for server upkeep. Does this sound like something that would work?

[Zerocool 139]

I'd like to see the option to voluntarily blow up an item you have used a lot in order to use the result to improve a different item a little in some respect.

[Evilreaper 262]

there is only 2 problems with the economy no matter how you look at it

 

1) selling silver for euros/$   too many ppl are farming silver just to sell it for euros... this is a game, not a job!  remove this stupidity and make wurm a game, not an occupation

 - this silver is bought from players who could've bought it from wurm shop instead but its cheaper to buy from players (im guilty of this) so if this trading was stopped more players would buy it from wurm shop, and this silver that would've been sold would instead be flushed into deed upkeeps or back into the economy.

 

2) selling accounts.... this is 150% obvious, the account selling in this game lets low crafter toons die and the top crafter toons live on almost indefinitally, making top ql items cheaper and med ql worthless....   there is 2 ways to fix this:

2a) prevent players from selling accounts (this will make people who regularly trade accounts rage)

2b) increase the ql cap and skill cap to 200 and make all skills level 2x faster to balance so all 90+ crafters are now mid ql crafters (this will only work for a year or 2 and then it will become unbalanced yet again if the account sales continue)

Edited January 29, 2016 by Evilreaper

[Zerocool 139]

Making money more available doesn't necessarily change the player perception of its value in terms of spending.

 

In a traditional mmo, letting the power creep might be acceptable for a long time. Here, with the type of players wurm has? No chance. Some quit, some grind back to where they were before. Plus, they probably did it faster given the 2x+ boost. The most you accomplish is punishing players who don't specialize by making their skills half as valuable as prior.

 

Also, if you know it is just a bandage on a shotgun wound, why would you think it was a valid solution? We going to have this talk every year or two and someone pulls a lever and ups the cap? No additional profit to the business, no added gameplay, no added value, just lol back on the treadmill kids!

[Hailene 362]

40 minutes ago, Evilreaper said:

2b) increase the ql cap and skill cap to 200 and make all skills level 2x faster to balance so all 90+ crafters are now mid ql crafters (this will only work for a year or 2 and then it will become unbalanced yet again if the account sales continue)

 

This is just about the worst suggestion I've seen so far in the thread.

 

Are you deliberately trying to cause everyone with any skill above 70 to leave the game?

[Wargasm 1,927]

LOL.... Hailene doesn't want to get to 200 blacksmithing   But, I don't disagree.

 

We're sorry we've been playing for years and we have better skills than you as a result.  You can improve your skills if you spend more time skill grinding and less time worrying about silver.  Selling dirt does nothing for your fine carpentry skill, believe me.

[thirtynine 257]

  There is no market in the world that doesn't go through phases.  Wurm is obviously no exception to that rule.  There will always be different periods that will occur based around what events factor into the community.

 

  Up until maybe 6-7 months ago it was a sellers market.  People were paying top dollar for items and accounts as there was much demand.  With little supply as the game was peaking very high in numbers(For Wurm standards).  Not only that but people would feel safe buying accounts or items.  Thus mentally allowing people to free up more loose change for something they plan on investing time into.

 

  Then obviously with the announcement of WU it instantly became a buyers market.  Accounts had taken huge drops in value nearly instantly.  Items eventually followed, especially higher range items falling hard and pushing middle tier items even lower.  People panic'ed and prices just continuously dropped.  Even still a majority of the higher end items went crazy fast during this period.  People took faith that the game would come back in order to get a pay out for this panic.

 

  Right now the market is really at a wait and see.  The game isn't dying. yet the game isn't growing.  It most likely will steady off and peak again during the summer in which prices will rise back to close to where they were before.  How ever until then, unless there is a considerable change in market items.  It most likely won't pick up.  

 

 

  

 

  

[hankrearden 144]

On 1/25/2016 at 3:40 PM, Etherdrifter said:

... You don't see much "middle" economy, things made and sold by players with 40/50 in a skill, there is no demand for it really, at least not any more...

 

... Are there any ideas on how to change this rather lamentable state of affairs?...

 

To address the OP, the only way I can think of improving the middle economy is to make mail costs higher.  If that 90ql pickaxe now costs an extra silver or two just in mail costs, it might make it worth it to just buy a very affordable 70ql pickaxe from a neighbor.  Was going to write a little thing about what economists call the 'superstar effect', but that will have to wait until another day.

[Zerocool 139]

If you nerf the mailbox by upping the postage, people will just up the charge for delivery or pick it up themselves. Even if the goal is to give the delivery people a bump in business, I'm not sure reducing the effectiveness of the mailbox is a good way to do it.

[zigozag 918]

6 hours ago, Evilreaper said:

- this silver is bought from players who could've bought it from wurm shop instead but its cheaper to buy from players (im guilty of this) so if this trading was stopped more players would buy it from wurm shop

Really? Haha. No.

 

1 hour ago, hankrearden said:

If that 90ql pickaxe now costs an extra silver or two just in mail costs, it might make it worth it to just buy a very affordable 70ql pickaxe from a neighbor

Do you really have so many skilled neighbours? There're some crowded locations, of course, but... Have you even seen how desolated some servers are? You would have to spend more time on a horse visiting neighbours for tools than actually doing stuff.

Edited January 29, 2016 by zigozag

[Revelation 288]

I think a lot of people are going to jump on me for this one but I think that the low mailing cost is contributing to killing the mid-ql market.

 

Perhaps an "insurance" for mailing high ql items would improve things? 

Maybe 2c per ql over ql50?

 

it would provide an incentive to visit local markets for high-end gear as well rather than paying the mailing insurance, as well as providing an incentive to maybe choose something a bit lower ql.

 

Now I'm going to hide from the players running a massive mailing warehouse.

[LorraineJ 1,099]

15 hours ago, Pinchaloaf said:

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.

 

This will save me a lot of money because I will immediately quit the game. Maybe not so good for the economy because I tend to buy stuff.

 

[Darmalus 631]

The only way I could see a middle economy working would be if you got a stronger skill bonus for using tools as close to your skill level as possible instead of the best tools possible.

[LorraineJ 1,099]

2 hours ago, hankrearden said:

 

To address the OP, the only way I can think of improving the middle economy is to make mail costs higher.  If that 90ql pickaxe now costs an extra silver or two just in mail costs, it might make it worth it to just buy a very affordable 70ql pickaxe from a neighbor.  Was going to write a little thing about what economists call the 'superstar effect', but that will have to wait until another day.

 

Stop trying to tell me how to play. I don't want to buy a pickaxe from my griefing neighbors. The game is a giant chore. There's a finite amount of people who can put up with it. Don't drive off the people who can bear it by telling them also exactly how they have to play. I don't log into the game to play "market." I don't want to spend hours trying to arrange purchases. Maybe right by you there are lots of people selling nice weapons. Not by me.

[Hailene 362]

7 minutes ago, Darmalus said:

The only way I could see a middle economy working would be if you got a stronger skill bonus for using tools as close to your skill level as possible instead of the best tools possible.

 

Doesn't really help the mid-tier crafter. Someone with 50 bs skill might take an hour and a half or so to get a 50 QL tool.

 

Assuming the tool is already glowing, I'll toss out a 50QL tool in a couple of minutes. There's no way for someone in the mid tier to compete with me. If the price rises I'll just produce more. Chances are the price will remain low and they'd be better off hunting or foraging for a couple of hours.

Edited January 29, 2016 by Hailene

[LorraineJ 1,099]

29 minutes ago, Revelation said:

it would provide an incentive to visit local markets for high-end gear as well rather than paying the mailing insurance, as well as providing an incentive to maybe choose something a bit lower ql.

 

 

 

 

I think "incentive" is the wrong word. "Disappointment" would be more apt. "Settling for less." Just how I want to feel when I log into a game for amusement.

 

[Darmalus 631]

2 minutes ago, Hailene said:

 

Doesn't really help the mid-tier crafter. Someone with 50 bs skill might take an hour and a half or so to get a 50 QL tool.

 

Assuming the tool is hot and I'll toss out a 50QL tool in a couple of minutes. There's no way for someone in the mid tier to compete with me. If the price rises I'll just produce more. Chances are the price will remain low and they'd be better off hunting or foraging for a couple of hours.

True, it's the downside of purely linear "progress to best" scaling. The game grows more top-heavy with time and the bottom end drops in value until it reaches zero. There are ways to avoid this, but it'd be such a big rebuild it would be a whole new game by the end.

[Eltaran 79]

7 hours ago, Wargasm said:

LOL.... Hailene doesn't want to get to 200 blacksmithing   But, I don't disagree.

 

We're sorry we've been playing for years and we have better skills than you as a result.  You can improve your skills if you spend more time skill grinding and less time worrying about silver.  Selling dirt does nothing for your fine carpentry skill, believe me.

 

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.

Edited January 29, 2016 by Eltaran

[Gavin 971]

Threads like this confuse me.

 

I don't really understand the notion that everyone needs to be able to make silver in the game, why do people need it? I understand deed upkeep is a factor, but it's so ridiculously cheap now a reasonable sized deed can be upkept simply by selling the sleep powder you naturally accumulate. If you want items, there are many merchants suchas myself (shameless plug) who will happily trade various items (ie bricks, mortar, sleep powder, gems, veggies) for high quality enchanted tools/armour with zero silver involved.

 

Furthermore as some ppl say due to lack of demand the prices for items have dropped through the floor, so there is no shortage of merchants willing to sell things that used to cost 4s now sell for 2s.

 

Something I would also suggest to players who don't have priests but have the ability to improve items decently, is to reach out to merchants who DO have priests and offer your services - I sell a reasonable amount of items from my merchant and the vast majority of it I all improve myself but I work lots of hours IRL so due to lack of time to improve the items myself often I will go around to various merchants at Glasshollow or Freedom Market and clean out the merchants selling blank tools/armour/weapons and enchant them and sell them for a small profit margin, I've probably dumped 1.5G at Glasshollow and ~1G at Freedom Market over the past 2 months and none of those people needed priests to make some money.

 

 

If you want my suggestions on how to kickstart the economy without unfairly advantaging / disadvantaging anyone, I would recommend the following:

 

Take advantage of the people who bought Wurm Unlimited, encourage them to join Wurm Online

I can't believe this hasn't already been done. Wurm Unlimited was great for a quick cash grab because 15,000 people or so purchased the game but that's it, they won't pay anything ongoing for Wurm Unlimited.

I can't help but notice there has been ZERO attempts made to encourage them to move over to Wurm Online, and let's be serious they probably won't by themselves as they already spent a large amount of money on the game.

 

Firstly send everyone who purchased Wurm Unlimited an email (or notification, whatever Steam allows)

 

1: Give everyone who purchased Wurm Unlimited a code they can use on the live servers to get one months worth of free premium and 5 silver coins (or so)

2: Create a way for players to teleport between the PvE servers (only allow noob tools to carry over) so it encourages them to explore the game and hopefully find some inspiring things

 

Give all new characters some introductory silver when they first go premium, perhaps 2-3s just enough so they can buy a decent item

 

Allow sleep powder to be mailed

Everyone currently gets the sleep powder, it seems like all veteran players eat it and all newer players sell it. Personally, it's not worth my time to travel around to pick up sleep powder unless the person has alot of it which indicates perhaps they have numerous characters so are experienced players already, I'd love to be able to buy sleep powder 1 at a time from people on other servers knowing I'm helping someone to get their first deed together or something.

 

 

 

Edited January 29, 2016 by Gavin

[Eobersig 1,005]

1 hour ago, Gavin said:

... Give all new characters some introductory silver when they first go premium, perhaps 2-3s just enough so they can buy a decent item

 

...

 

 

 

You seem to be new around here, but this is in-game since years.

[Belfesar 155]

The only people to blame for the state of the economy in wurm is the Dev's, With the introduction of WU and the constant ninja updates or changes to things that do not need it and the resulting bugs from it which interrupt gameplay just frustrates the playerbase. Which in turn makes newer players leave, The majority of us that have played for a few years stay because we have seen it all before and are somewhat used too it. Been playing wurm off and on since 08 and this is the one thing that never changes.

 

If you want the economy to change it is simple, The Dev's need to get their act together and test everything and document all changes and advertise wurm to encourage people to try the game, Could even give them an incentive to try the game, Make the first purchase of premium via the shop half price. Hard to have a market at the moment when the playerbase is so low.

Edited January 29, 2016 by Belfesar

[griper 537]

I see a lot of Mercantilist suggestions in this thread.

Shouldn't it be moved to the "Suggestions" subforum?

(to be buried and forgotten together with everything else in there.. *evil laughter*)

 

Edited January 29, 2016 by griper

[Mordraug 2,542]

 

4 hours ago, Revelation said:

I think a lot of people are going to jump on me for this one but I think that the low mailing cost is contributing to killing the mid-ql market. *bit of snipping*

 

Delivering stuff (mostly bulk but not always) WAS a great way to make money... like East Release to West Inde.. people wanted server border teleports .... doubt you'd see many people willing to travel around for what customers will now want to pay way cheaper.