The SoD economy

Danku

Dalayan Beginner
Ok, I get it. Nerfed alot of plat drops/item drops/ spawn rates on worthwhile kills to avoid mudflation. Also made items sellable to merchants to help stop a constant flood and delfation.

Well now it is the other way around. Plat is much more difficult to get. Prices are dropping sharply. Population base has changed in # and in level to a degree.

Perhaps it is time for a review on the economy. Maybe hire Alan Greenspan to take a quick looksie. And I know this is all perception and not solid numbers. But this is what I hear in chats for the server. Alot of people want an end goal of a really nice charm but with the tighter economy, they have given up.
 
Jun said:
Charms are very good. They are very hard to get. What is the problem?

Ok then ignore the one small point of my post if it bothers you. Read the rest of the post.
 
Money level has not sharply dropped at all, its actually pretty constant. Dropping prices are because of availability of items, not because money is running out.
 
How exactly does the cash flow on the server not decrease when farming spots were nerfed across the board and there was no real significant increase in population or activity?
 
I'm talking about the total # of platinum on the server, which is pretty constant. I don't know if the fact that it hasn't been going down sharply violates some law of physics or something but that's how it is.
 
With all the nerfing of cash drops that has happened, it seems that the stranglehold has been put on the little guy. Perhaps the constant amount of cash is because there are fewer charms being purchased or because the people in the higher eschelons are still able to produce cash.

Those who are leveling, the new blood to the server, are finding it hard to really get money together(from what I have been told, repeatedly). I am not saying scrap it all and start over, I am only asking for a review of the plat making capabilities in level ranges. For instance, 15-40, 41-55, 55-65, then the raid crowd.

If we make life bearable for the new people, they will stay and bring their friends. The new people replace the old ones and keep the server vibrant and fun as well as manufacture and cycle plat. If they have plat, they buy items, which then stimulates the economy, which then puts more plat out of the system through the charms that are purchased. While I am not preaching trickle-down economics, I am talking about strengthening the base which then supports the upper layers of the economy.

Rambled a bit, but I hope I made my intentions clear.
 
It's pretty hard to make money via tradeskills or selling items/gear you farm when no one has the money to buy the stuff from you, or have to work three times as hard as before to farm up the cash to pay for your tradeskilling to get to the point where you can depend on it for your income. My JC is pretty much stuck at 155 forever now. I'll be pretty damned if I try to farm up the money to pay for the plat bars now, and have been selling off all of my gems I've been saving up for a year. That's good news for the people who have JC at 205 or higher. Bad news is after I run out of my money, I'm not going to be farming for 2 or 3 hours for 200 plat to buy just one of their augs, which btw can't really have their prices decreased or you might as well be doing JC for free. Same goes for the rest of the augments out there, not to mention the tradeskill gear.

Give it some time, let a few more charms sell and whatnot to get a bit more money out of the ecnonomy, and this is what will happen across the board and will stay that way until people get over past prices for stuff, and sell their crap for less. All that crap from high keep and plaguefang and First ruins and etc need their prices decreased by the people who can't seem to let go of the past prices because they want their 200k+ charms. Sooner or later you're looking at an economic depression(gasp) and people will just give up and move on from the game.

Far fetched? Surely won't happen, right? Trust that people will do what it takes now to reach their goals? hm. Guess we'll see.
 
Maybe the issue has to do with the fact that the # of money is the same, but since the distribution of players has changed, that money is now spread out between 5 x as many players working towards charms.
 
I agree that the distribution has changed greatly. I’m not saying nerfing old stuff is bad but I think its been done a little in excess. Now that everything has been thoroughly been nerfed I have no problem telling my "secrets". I used to be able to farm 8-10k(max 16k but that was a LONG day) a day with relative easy duel char farming, one a hill giants and other at island giants and pull in nice cash. Now doing the same thing has gone from ~1k/hour to 250-300 an hour. There were multiple factors in this, first plat loot for island giants is now normally 1-13pp per occasionally up to 23ish, and a low chance of drops for gems. These giants used to give 50-65pp each norm with min around 40 i think (granted this was like a year or so ago). Also the gems dropped more often and of higher quality. Also gem cost has dropped significantly. I forget the exact numbers but i used to be able to sell black sapphire for 350 to players(250ish to merchants? vs 66now) and diamonds were 400-425 to players(like 300ish for merchants? vs 80pp now). Don’t particularly want to farm as much any more, have most of what i need, but i think the decrease has been made a little to sever. As i said i have been away from the server and farming for like a year so maybe I’m just not in the right spots anymore but this is what i have noticed so far.

Now with this said i think that’s why items now mostly sell for half the cost (also to many of some out there but that’s a slightly diff issue). However, charms still cost the same. Charms and the assumption some people will inevitably quit as new people join (and to a small extent paying off debt) are the 2 major ways that money is drawn out of the SoD economy. But do to that fact that money is harder to get, money sits stagnant as people save for there charms where as before they were slightly more achievable.
 
Danku said:
Those who are leveling, the new blood to the server, are finding it hard to really get money together(from what I have been told, repeatedly). I am not saying scrap it all and start over, I am only asking for a review of the plat making capabilities in level ranges. For instance, 15-40, 41-55, 55-65, then the raid crowd.

You realize that if there is a profitable spot for a 1-64 character to farm, it will be even more profitable for a level 65, and will be raped by higher level people.

[01:30] <Awardis> the whole point of being low level
[01:30] <Awardis> is to get high level
[01:30] <Awardis> TO MAKE DA PLATZ
 
leveling in SoD and how much plat I made:

1-45 200+75+100(easy to recall because these were major purchases)
45-65 1k more
65-65AAs 2k more
total=~3375pp

My gear up untill 55 consisted of wyvernfang armor, reznolaw fang, and a dirk of defense. afterwards i began to replace it with stormforged.
All you youngins have it way easier now.


The purpose of charms is not to force you to farm plat to spend on them but to remove plat that you have from the game. so basicly if you are farming for a charm then you are doing it the way it was intended and thats why you are feeling the "zomg not enough money" feelings.


edit: when i became leet i made a bazillion plat so moral of the story is if you want a bazillion plat you need to be leet
 
I think charms are a moot point in this discussion. It is more about creating a stable economy that allows you to gear up to some degree.

Thank you Tryfaen, that was a very nice bit of insight through the plat accumulation as a person levels. I think that we should remember that every character was once a lowbie and every future raider will be a lowbie at some point. I am not suggesting we make it a cake-walk but if some kind of middle ground could be found it would be awesome. Also, I should point out that there will always be 65's who strip an area for easy plat. There will always be those who are looking for easy money and there is no avoiding it. But we cannot ignore the little guys just to avoid the biggers ones taking advantage.

I don't think anyone should be able to farm 8-10k in a day at any level, but i do think that a persons needs should be measured against availability of coin at their level.

In all of this I do have a suggest that I have come too. Perhaps the coin drops from each mob in an area could be linked to an equation where the mob level, zone difficulty and if named or not could be taken into consideration. For instance, if someone is leveling in an area with a 25% xp bonus, then it would also drop 25% more coin. If it was a named, maybe go 2x-3x the coin based on difficulty.


This has been a great discussion. I want to thank everyone who has given constructive input and the staffers for taking time to consider the problem at hand.
 
I really don't think its that hard to make money at the low end.

My monk was my first character, and I had absolutely no clue what or where anything was when I first started, but I had made 1k by probably level 30 and had made a few more k by 40. By the time I hit 57 with no AAs I had 75% imp hide and the weapons I'm using now. As of now, I've got 70 some odd AAs (still at level 57), have 10k in the bank, practically the best droppable equip I can find (manacle of affliction is still eluding me...) and I'm gearing up a 65 druid that was recently given to me.

Its all about spending the time to find areas that are profitable. If you race through the levels, you're probbaly not going to make squat. If you group a lot... again, probably not going to make anything, because coin while grouping is gimped. But through slowly leveling up and learning many different areas I was able to make a ton of money on my first character here.

It really all comes down to how you play.

As for coin at the high end... no idea, really. I farmed giants in my early 50s and that wasn't that fast at all (and that was before their coin was nerfed into oblivion). I can't imagine saving up hundreds of thousands (let alone a 1.25million) of plat in order to buy a charm by killing giants. I'd hope there was something that provided more income. Selling equipment is really hit-or-miss, and you can only sell a couple pieces before the market is saturated.

EDIT:
I do think something should be done about the pathetic amount of coin that can be gained from grouping. Something like the way XP is made so that each person gets the same amount of xp regardless of how many enter the group. In that case, a duo won't make any more money than they normally would, but yet, a group of 6 will actually get a decent amount of coin instead of practically nothing.
 
The fact that coin must be split by a group and the amount is not scaled to group size is meant to be offset by the fact that a group can kill more mobs in less time thus yielding more coin in a given time period.
 
I would say grouping is by far the most efficient way to gain money at lower levels. Money in the bank plus more xp towards being able to gain money faster.
 
dank's got a point in that the gem drop nerf screwed lowbies way more than it did high end people. until they can reliably hit mielb, lowbies dont really have any way to farm items that anyone cares about; moreover, they probably dont have the best knowledge of the server, and dont usually know where da monies at. gem camps were (to my knowledge) far and away the preferable way to make money from like 30-60, be they yaralith or giants or whatever.

guyvertoo said:
You realize that if there is a profitable spot for a 1-64 character to farm, it will be even more profitable for a level 65, and will be raped by higher level people.

[01:30] <Awardis> the whole point of being low level
[01:30] <Awardis> is to get high level
[01:30] <Awardis> TO MAKE DA PLATZ

which is why giants in osm are always camped by level 65s? dont be silly
 
Thinkmeats said:
dank's got a point in that the gem drop nerf screwed lowbies way more than it did high end people. until they can reliably hit mielb, lowbies dont really have any way to farm items that anyone cares about; moreover, they probably dont have the best knowledge of the server, and dont usually know where da monies at. gem camps were (to my knowledge) far and away the preferable way to make money from like 30-60, be they yaralith or giants or whatever.

weren't gem prices halved and droprates doubled? or are you talking about a different 'nerf'
 
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