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The problem with DU's economy


Eternal

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DU's in-game economy has been stagnant ever since the beginning of early access and is only continuing to recede as we lose more and more players over time! Why is that the case? You cannot support production without consumption mechanics! In a consumption-driven economy, money (coming from an external source) needs to be injected into the domestic market in which it will end up in the hands of consumers who will spend those money to support the local industries. The economic growth is dependent on consumption! If the consumption remains weak, it does not matter how much money they have in hand (and how much this eased), if they will not spend (because of lack of consumption mechanics in the game), there won't be much trading going on and therefore the lack of activity! The difference between this game and real-life is you don't need much in this game to get through! The game is 100% player-driven, with no progression, with lack of consumption mechanics. This explains why the activity in this game is as such! People have no expectation because there is no goal! The economy has no engine at all! If the game is designed to be minimalistic, there is only one way to play the game and that is to play it as a minimalist. You got too much items in this game that don't break down; you can literally provide for yourself without needing to trade; and there is not even any goal in this game but to continue to acquire more things that you don't need. What happens when you already get to the top of the mountain? You are discontent! So add more content for me to continue to have expectations! And you got to do something about our declining confidence in the economic system such as the exploits, free quantas, the bots, etc.! Not only is the economy stagnant and receding, it is also broken to the point that it already collapsed!  

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And what are you gonna do with so many constructs and private lands (tiles) that were left behind by people who left this game? They have to be adversely possessed by scavengers and squatters! You cannot leave them the way they are! This is a major problem that is turning off current players and will turn off new players! 

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Every time I buy something on the markets, I think about all the mining or time sitting in a cockpit flying missions I had to do for the quanta. And to me that is the number one reason to spend as little as possible.

 

And regarding abandoned constructs/tiles. As long as the stuff left behind is owned by early supporters or someone paying subscriptions, then NQ cannot remove them regardless of if they are currently playing or not.

 

But yes, if the owner is not one of those above. Then after some time threshold it would be a golden opportunity for NQ to reuse the scavenger mechanics and generate some much needed content in the game.

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Bring on the asteroids- bring on the mayhem! BRING ON THE FUN! The only consumption I need is of all of Alioth's ore to build my empire on Madis and among the stars! In the short time i've been defrosted I've seen wars, org theft/upheaval, player made content with racing, player made quests, and now a  casino situated on a novian run/built station in space- all in less than a year of being dethawed from the ark ship.

 

The helios economy hasn't existed long enough to even be alive yet, it's just an infant still. Give it time to grow.

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Only reason to buy stuff is that you cannot make it, so anything that can be made with nanocrafter is excluded, and then its still cheaper to buy a schematic and just build it yourself. Only stuff i buy at the market is at 10 to 20% of the general cost. rest is just a waste of quanta. economy by market is as dead as the builds around and on them. Where ever you go DU is a wasteland since 0.23

 

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I understand this. That is why when I stopped playing I donated all my money, materials, real estate and constructs to someone who intended to keep playing.

When you quit, do your bit for for the future of the game and don't horde binary wealth in a black hole that you will never open again.

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13 hours ago, Eternal said:

DU's in-game economy has been stagnant ever since the beginning of early access and is only continuing to recede as we lose more and more players over time! Why is that the case? You cannot support production without consumption mechanics! In a consumption-driven economy, money (coming from an external source) needs to be injected into the domestic market in which it will end up in the hands of consumers who will spend those money to support the local industries. The economic growth is dependent on consumption! If the consumption remains weak, it does not matter how much money they have in hand (and how much this eased), if they will not spend (because of lack of consumption mechanics in the game), there won't be much trading going on and therefore the lack of activity! The difference between this game and real-life is you don't need much in this game to get through! The game is 100% player-driven, with no progression, with lack of consumption mechanics. This explains why the activity in this game is as such! People have no expectation because there is no goal! The economy has no engine at all! If the game is designed to be minimalistic, there is only one way to play the game and that is to play it as a minimalist. You got too much items in this game that don't break down; you can literally provide for yourself without needing to trade; and there is not even any goal in this game but to continue to acquire more things that you don't need. What happens when you already get to the top of the mountain? You are discontent! So add more content for me to continue to have expectations! And you got to do something about our declining confidence in the economic system such as the exploits, free quantas, the bots, etc.! Not only is the economy stagnant and receding, it is also broken to the point that it already collapsed!  

IMO the biggest problem with DUs economy is unlimited production.  Consumption is always going to be limited (unless we put in bot buy orders for everything, which would be worse).  But people can set up as much production as they want just by making more and bigger factories.  It is inevitable that with limited consumption and unlimited production the production rate will grow until it is a bit bigger than the consumption rate, at which point the market will be full of very low priced stacks of things which aren't selling fast enough.  That's about where we were until very recently, when consumption increased and suddenly the markets became a bit more fluid again.  But production will definitely increase as a result of this (people probably turned factories off and will now turn them on again).

Increasing consumption would help, but unless you make consumption unlimited (and bot buy orders are the only way I can think of to do that) production will always grow to outstrip it and we will inevitably end up back where we were recently with massive oversupply of the market.

The only way to make the in-game economy work properly is to limit the amount of production capability that each player can have.  Convince me I'm wrong ...

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14 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

Convince me I'm wrong ...

 

Well you got a point ...

But maybe .... maybe it is too early to say since we are in beta ?

I mean look at the t3 -t4 engines ... Supply is short and prices went up which means lack of ore which means lack of production .

Which is different for t1 and t2 where oversupply is there indeed .

 

Habitant

Habitants Organization

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On 7/13/2021 at 4:00 AM, CptLoRes said:

Every time I buy something on the markets, I think about all the mining or time sitting in a cockpit flying missions I had to do for the quanta. And to me that is the number one reason to spend as little as possible.

 

And regarding abandoned constructs/tiles. As long as the stuff left behind is owned by early supporters or someone paying subscriptions, then NQ cannot remove them regardless of if they are currently playing or not.

 

But yes, if the owner is not one of those above. Then after some time threshold it would be a golden opportunity for NQ to reuse the scavenger mechanics and generate some much needed content in the game.

 

You can ask Boundless how well repossession of leaving players "advancement” went for it.   It did not go well, and the first major update they had ended up sending everything to a phantom inventory for inactivity.

 

Materials in that game was probably a little less grindy as well.   Even had the same concept of being a mining and gathering game.

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22 hours ago, Snipey said:

They spend too much time listening to the PVP orgs and less time actually fixing the garbage floating around the world. They wont even give us a way to salvage it.

 

Builder, not pvp. If they had listened to the pvp people you would have AvA - and salvage - as an option.

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8 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

 

Energy management could do the job. But it is not on the roadmap.

exactly - I really wonder why this has not yet been implemented !

we need an energy contingent per player - anyone still can produce anything - but not at once

 

bigger orgs probably want to focus on high end things and left over some educts to others - making them not just sellers but also customers

and the Server operations probably will benefit as well

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On 7/14/2021 at 10:09 AM, Habitant said:

 

Well you got a point ...

But maybe .... maybe it is too early to say since we are in beta ?

I mean look at the t3 -t4 engines ... Supply is short and prices went up which means lack of ore which means lack of production .

Which is different for t1 and t2 where oversupply is there indeed .

 

Habitant

Habitants Organization


So you think that nobody will ever notice that and set up T3-4 engine lines?  Not even the people buying them at sky-high prices?  And that when they do and make a load of money they won't set up more of those lines?  And that eventually more than one person will do this and then they will saturate the market and drive the prices down?

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On 7/14/2021 at 9:24 AM, Maxim Kammerer said:

 

Energy management could do the job. But it is not on the roadmap.

 

Well, in theory it could, but in practice I think it wouldn't.  I think people would just put up a lot of constructs to get around it.  To actually make it bite you'd have to make it so punishing that anyone who isn't doing the 'go big or go home' thing would end up being able to make hardly anything at all.

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On 7/13/2021 at 6:09 AM, Eternal said:

The game is 100% player-driven, with no progression, with lack of consumption mechanics.

 

Some ppl think "player-driven" is equal to "player-exclusive" 

Its not.

 

A "player-driven" economy can have NPC buy and sell orders, as long as those orders dont represent a serious competition to players. 

 

In my opinion, the route cause of economic problem is the way ore is distributed on planets. 

Currently NQ spawns a planet with all the resources it will ever have (non respawing). This forces that planet to be extremely abundant of resources when it spawns. As time passes, that planet will be less and less abundant. 

 

This makes having NPC orders to buy rare resources impossible. Because players would initially have so much ore to sell that they would become billionaires very quickly. (as it happened at 1st week of beta) 

 

But selling raw ore to NPC orders is a very important mechanic to have a good economy. It forces players go mine in PVP zones. It rewards the winner with a substantial ammount of quanta to compensate for his risks.

 

So whats the solution? 

Easy.... Just remove this madness of "static" resources and make ore respawn randomly around the planet. 

And with this, also decrease the ammount of ore to a factor of 100.

 

It would also be nice if caves away from constructs would get smaller and smaller with time and eventualy close up. (this would also remove allot of of load from clients and servers, as terrain changes would revert) 

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Imagine if the world is the way Dual Universe is: we wouldn't have developed and advanced to exactly where we are right now and continue to seek growth, instead we would be a minimalist society. My point is, you cannot strive for development without the incentive for development; you cannot work on solving a problem without the problem! So, for a civilization-building game to work, you need a game-loop (in the form of content), not just leaving it all to the players! This is the reason why the economy doesn't work at all! There is no demand! Why do you need a sword with +126 attack fully enhanced and endowed with wind element or something like that? It is to train a character, to farm for drops, and to PVP for stake (reward), hence the item actually has use (we call this the "intrinsic value" of the item). In Dual Universe, you have market value with no demand, and then the intrinsic value of these items are lacking (because of the lack of game-loop)! Now how do you evaluate these items as a buyer? In real-life, you look at the intrinsic value! If the market price offered is lower than the intrinsic value, it is a good deal, because in the end, that is all that matters! Keeping useless items in this game is like keeping gold as a security! People in this game are hoarding and they are hoarding things that lack intrinsic value! You are hoarding garbage! We need a game-loop, otherwise these items have no use! This completely player-driven design is not working! It's never gonna replicate real-life and we are never gonna get to that! In real-life, we actually have a loop (in the form of demands) that incentivizes us to continue to produce and develop.

 

This is why we don't have an economy!: Why bother when there is no demand? There is no demand as this is 100% a player-driven game! 

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Have you played that MMO ArcheAge? That and Ashes of Creation--which took it's inspiration from ArcheAge--are hybrid sandbox MMOs (not 100% a sandbox). A 100% sandbox MMO is yet to work! It doesn't work! Do you think we can manage with that? Instead of ending up with a civilization that upholds both cooperation and equity, you threw us into an anarchy! We are 100% incharge, so what do we get? A free-for-all society that is ofcourse vulnerable to exploitation! Do you think we players are capable of fixing these social problems on our own? They want to make this game as less limited as possible, but at the same time, what you want to happen is not feasible! It is ofcourse possible, but not feasible, hence it is too ambitious! This is what I don't like about 100% sandbox: not only that there is no demand for production and development (hence you don't have an economy), it's also a social anarchy because it's a free-for-all! Now how about my equity? You don't want to play an MMO that is in such a disorder! That is why you gonna intervene and f*cking limit the game! Make it a hybrid sandbox and make the building fundamentals of this game (this includes Lua) also limited to make building in this game user-friendly! You want this game to be a designer's game yet building in this game is very difficult! Again, another feature that is too ambitious! The building aspect of the game offers very extensive possibilities yet it is so difficult to build! 

 

You got to limit the game! I'm not in favor of limiting it to the degree that you have less than what traditional MMOs offer, but you got to limit it to the degree that the game practically works! The design--as it is right now--is too ambitious!

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21 hours ago, Maxim Kammerer said:

There will always be players who circumvent such restrictions or exploit loopholes. But it would still be better than nothing.

No, if it creates a massive inconvenience for loads of players while not actually solving the problems then it's not better than nothing.  Was the 0.23 patch better than nothing?

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14 hours ago, Eternal said:

Imagine if the world is the way Dual Universe is: we wouldn't have developed and advanced to exactly where we are right now and continue to seek growth, instead we would be a minimalist society. My point is, you cannot strive for development without the incentive for development; you cannot work on solving a problem without the problem! So, for a civilization-building game to work, you need a game-loop (in the form of content), not just leaving it all to the players! This is the reason why the economy doesn't work at all! There is no demand! Why do you need a sword with +126 attack fully enhanced and endowed with wind element or something like that? It is to train a character, to farm for drops, and to PVP for stake (reward), hence the item actually has use (we call this the "intrinsic value" of the item). In Dual Universe, you have market value with no demand, and then the intrinsic value of these items are lacking (because of the lack of game-loop)! Now how do you evaluate these items as a buyer? In real-life, you look at the intrinsic value! If the market price offered is lower than the intrinsic value, it is a good deal, because in the end, that is all that matters! Keeping useless items in this game is like keeping gold as a security! People in this game are hoarding and they are hoarding things that lack intrinsic value! You are hoarding garbage! We need a game-loop, otherwise these items have no use! This completely player-driven design is not working! It's never gonna replicate real-life and we are never gonna get to that! In real-life, we actually have a loop (in the form of demands) that incentivizes us to continue to produce and develop.

 

This is why we don't have an economy!: Why bother when there is no demand? There is no demand as this is 100% a player-driven game! 

But there *is* at least some demand.  And if demand were to suddenly skyrocket, things would look good for a little while but inevitably the demand would tail off again at a higher level (because you can't keep increasing demand forever).  At that point production would inevitably catch up again because we have unlimited production capability and the period of growth would incentivise more production to be developed.  Inevitably the economy would end up back where it is now with bargain-price stacks lingering on the market and nobody who didn't 'go big' able to compete with the ultra-low prices.

 

And at that point there would be people on here saying 'what we need in order to solve this problem is more consumption'.

 

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players and humans are in nature lazy. any form of economy that has a time factor in it to get to markets or selling points with travel times over 15 minutes will fail, humans are the I want it and i want it now species and Only stuff that a human cannot make or get easy themselves will follow the "i can wait for it" route. Ingame this is the same. I dont feel like presenting a solution as whatever we say in the fora is never taken into account. transport, instant

 

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2 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

No, if it creates a massive inconvenience for loads of players while not actually solving the problems then it's not better than nothing.  Was the 0.23 patch better than nothing?

 

Energy management is one of the most requested features. Nobody asked for schematics.

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agree on this. Schematics were introduced to destroy a blooming industry to keep the economy alive. Result, indystry is semi destroyed, economy is still fucked up and DU is crippled and on the verge of death. Mission failed, but still schematics stay in. probably because if they are removed now the failure is complete and egos destroyed

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10 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

But there *is* at least some demand.  And if demand were to suddenly skyrocket, things would look good for a little while but inevitably the demand would tail off again at a higher level (because you can't keep increasing demand forever).  At that point production would inevitably catch up again because we have unlimited production capability and the period of growth would incentivise more production to be developed.  Inevitably the economy would end up back where it is now with bargain-price stacks lingering on the market and nobody who didn't 'go big' able to compete with the ultra-low prices.

 

And at that point there would be people on here saying 'what we need in order to solve this problem is more consumption'.

Before this year ends, they plan to add the auto-mining, so this means more raw resources (since that is passive) and therefore more products. I was here since the beginning of EA so I'm aware how much over-production this game has. You are correct: it is unlimited that it drove the prices of products down to ridiculous level! People here have continued to dedicate to growing their factory, increasing their yield exponentially, as they continue to buy more and more industrial machines, transfer units, and containers. It's out of control!

 

This is how other MMOs work:

You will farm leathers at low drop-rate and you will craft clean work gloves (5 available upgrades). You will farm 10% and 60% attack scrolls for gloves which rarely drops and you will use them to try to upgrade your gloves. You will use the 10% success +3 attack scrolls first and try to land them on the gloves, and you will destroy many clean gloves in the process due to failure. You will do it again on the successful gloves and try to get +6 attack with 3 available upgrades left, then you will upgrade these gloves with the 60% success +2 attack scrolls which you only need to land 2 successful attempts in a row to end up with a +10 attack work gloves. It's not that easy to produce a +10 attack work gloves, and this is only a training gloves, not an end-game gloves (end-game gloves is the stormcaster gloves or brown work gloves upgraded for more attack). If you can earn 250 million mesos, you will just buy that +10 attack gloves in the free market which you need in order to train and advance your character. What we don't have is the massive production of these gloves as the drop-rates of materials are low and the success-rate of upgrading successfully in a row is low, destroying the item when you fail (and during this time, there is no protection mechanics). Producing upgraded gears is not easy and certain, and with the process, it destroys the materials upon failure (so even if there are a lot of materials supposedly, the game has a mechanic to take them out as the whole point of the game is the gears). 

 

Yeah, we need to slow down the production in this game which is out of control! How we are gonna do that, I don't know, you guys propose. The more they slow this down, the more work you gonna do. Leave this work to the industrial people (the crafters) and let's buy the products from them.

 

I played many MMOs. I'm not a fan of modern MMORPGs because the free market concept is limited. Traditional MMORPGs from the past have good economy and this game failed big in replicating those success. I have my nostalgia, this game do not come close to the economic success of those games that I played in the past.

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