Economy PollFollow

A penny saved is a penny earned, so if you feel that the amount of mob drops is fine but the cost of training/mail/AH fee/etc should be adjusted, assume that lower fees = more money entering and vice versa.

Edited, May 7th 2007 9:56am by Jophiel

I'll see if this makes sense as its spilling from my mind far to quickly.

There should be a script in play that would adapt the drop of money from mobs based of the average cost of things on the AH. This would help with a couple common problems usually found with MMO's.

1) grinding - Some people grind there way through mobs so they can have the top gear for whichever level their coming up too.

2) Gold Sellers - Exploting the AH by selling some top gear for an outragous amount so they can supply people money through RMT.

By using an adaptive script, the money drop from a mob would flux depending on the average cost based on the AH. This would negate the gold sellers from there cash as everyone would be around average or just below to get this gear. If they sold for a higher cost, the script would assist with droping slightly more money from a mob.

That said, this script would also need to affect the NPC trainers and merchants by modifying their costs to keep with a realistic feel.

The end effect would be that although players would recieve more cash, the balance would be level for cost playing.

For now, I say it's fine the way it is. When a game is new, or when an expansion comes out eveything, especially the things people really want to buy are always overpriced because they're scarce. (Not just thanks to gold sellers.) We need to wait until more people have hit higher levels and things settle down to decide if the economy needs work.

If the money dropped by MoB's fluctuated according to AH prices, the money and those prices would go nowhere but up. You would end up feeding the auction house frenzy in a vicious circle. In order to stop inflation you have to reduce money supply.

I'd like to see a more realistic economic behaviour of the NPCS ; why can I repair my armor at a grocer ? Why can I sell crappy drops to a weaponsmith ?

Make the NPCs have a more specific task.

Don't let them buy all items ; e.g. a weaponsmith buys dropped weapons, an armoursmith buys the dropped armour. Dropped fur -> tailoring trainers or provisioners.

That way ppl don't just map-home to Bree and run to that known NPC that buys all stuff you have and performs repairs while he has no business to do that :)

A dynamic economy would be nice too ; let the server calculate each day (or week whatever) which items are on demand ; why buy leather sheaths dropped by (all) orcs for 1-2s each when TONS of these items come in ? Make them worthless -> no more goldmine for grinding players. When players sell rare drops, don't offer them 50copper for that but give them a decent price, like 70% of the avg price for the item on the AH. I know this involves a lot of calculations but hey it isn't rocketscience. It's way harder to let the 3D engine do it's work at a decent pace on the thousands of different setups.

In any static system there will be loopholes and those will be found and 'exploited' by players resulting in an unbalanced world.