Need Improved Market System

Suggestions
#1

I am a bit disappointed in the market system. I have been playing for four weeks and have accumulated 250,000 Dram and I can’t find anything interesting to spend it on. And, the things I do want to buy are never for sale or the few that are up for auction are for ridiculously inflated prices – I saw a Luck Potion on sale for 1 million Dram.

I was thinking that the game would be best served with a dynamic market system. There could be a market-place in town that would buy and sell all harvestable and creatable goods. The price for the goods would be based on the number and price of the goods previously bought and sold at the market or at auction and would fluctuate hourly or daily. The vendor would sell the item for 125% of that price and buy the item for 75% of that price.

So, if the current daily market price for Sunfish was 20 Dram, players could sell Sunfish to the market for 15 Dram and other players could buy from the market for 25 Dram. If, one day, more people sold Sunfish than bought Sunfish, the price would drop the next day to 18 or 16, maybe. If lots of people were buying Sunfish, the price for the next day might rise to 24 or 30 Dram.

And, the auction house would typically be for people to sell and buy at rates in between the market prices – hoping to undercut the market vendor. Those sales numbers would be factored into tomorrow’s price as well.

And, the game code could periodically create artificial shortages or gluts of items. This would allow players to speculate and buy up lots of a product and then save it until the price gets high.

Also, there needs to be a way to use up unwanted harvestables for some benefit other than cash. I have 200 Sea Bass that I don’t want to sell for a few Dram each, but I don’t need any of the potions that call for Sea Bass. Perhaps as a potion, players could add one fish and two vegetables to make a Meal. And then Players would be required to eat one Meal a day.

Things like that. I just want to see a market system that is more dynamic and interactive than just an Auction House that seems rarely used.

#2

the luck pot for a million dram is a special shuga luck pot that guarantees a +6 from a shard 15 its got a 100% chance of it dropping from observations and mathematics

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#3

Essay warning: proceed at your own risk :slight_smile:

That would be a change from a free market to a central market. Our current market allows players to sell items at whatever they value them at, and for buyers to buy at a value they like.

The central market is an effective system in that informs everyone of market price, which allows for informed trading. Unfortunately it doesn’t work well in games. All sales that are spent on the central market will not be contributing to the overall economy, let me elaborate.

In a real life situation, the central market would be a contributing member of the economy, buying and selling in an attempt to make a profit, which it would then spend creating more infrastructure and buying more products. These profits would go back into the economy. The central market would also have a limited supply of any one product, which I’ll explain is significant in a moment.

In game, the central market will not be a contributing member to the economy, any profits it may make will not be used and will be removed from the economy completely. The central market will not be actively purchasing goods or services from players because it has an unlimited supply of supply. This unlimited supply will not allow values of products to go up quickly if at all.

In real life the supply is not infinite. This allows for supply and demand.

In our current market for example; say only one person is selling bass at 300 dram a piece. Everyone gets a weekly mission to make ten chameleon potions, those who don’t wish to fish will buy bass on the market. The player selling bass will begin raising the price of bass either, because they also have the mission and predict a raise in demand of bass; or because they observe that more bass than usual are being bought and they are about to running low. The supply is lower than the demand. They will continue raising the price until they find a price the buyers are unwilling to pay, the price will then drop again since the demand is now lower than the supply.

We can also add competition to this market, a second person observing the raise in value on bass begins fishing for them as well. At this point our original seller is selling at 700 dram a piece, our new seller sells at 600. This cause the price to drop since buyers are now buying from the new seller.

This can still happen in an in game central market, but much slower. Once the value is set by the market in game on a certain product it movement will be slow. Players will never set a price higher than the market, the market sets its prices on player auctions and products sold, it won’t raise prices much because the player prices aren’t different enough to need too. It creates a loop.

It doesn’t allow for quick decisions on what may be profitable in future for the central market and the economy as a whole.

The economy will either become stagnant or have very little growth due to a large portion of trading profits being thrown into the void and a central market with no need to participate with its buyers or suppliers.

#5

Thanks for the reply, jason. I basically agree with what you wrote, but, to me, there are a couple of problems you’ve overlooked.
You mention the problem of the central market taking cash from the game and not returning anything. I would counter that the game provides way too much cash for free and there needs to be a system of removing cash/goods from the game. I mean, killing any mob gets you a 50-50 chance of getting 30 Dram worth of goods.
You can walk out the front door and participate in the easy “Guard the Gate” public event and get 500 dram for free four times an hour. That’s way too much free cash. I’ve been playing for four weeks and have more than 250,000 dram in my bank.
The only way cash is removed from the game is when players consume potions or lures. But, even then, consuming these items often results in acquiring better and more expensive fish and mob drops – that’s more value. Cash needs to be removed from the game.
As for the fluctuation of the market, I already see a relatively stagnant market. For example, Darius sells Ithecac for 1,000 Dram. I can make Ithecac in my cauldron, but I’d never be able to sell it for more than 1,000. And, it would be pointless to sell it for much less than 990 Dram, since undercutting Darius is pointless since he has an infinite supply and never changes his price. My proposal allows for wider fluctuations in price.
The auction house also seems stagnant. I look over the offers fairly often and I don’t really see stable prices. Some people sell an item for 400 Dram and others offer it for 2,000 Dram. And the Apprentice Smith will buy that same item for only 20 Dram and he will never sell it. Something is deeply wrong with that. This not anywhere close to a correctly functioning supply-and-demand system. My proposal would address that.
My impression is that the free market we have in the game is on life-support and just limping along. I don’t see players using the Auction system very much and I don’t see them competing much to sell their items. There is so much free stuff in the game that veteran players just give away tons of free stuff to newbies.
I am trying to breed dragons to make interesting combos, but, as expected, I often make dragons that are unappealing. I try to put some up for Auction, but I can’t get much for them since the Dragon Seller sells them for 300 Dram and also because once a player has two dragons, they really never need more. The market for ordinary dragons is dead. Perhaps if dragons had a life span of one month, there would be a vibrant market for buying and selling dragons.
All in all, I don’t see a working free market system. More often than not, players just give stuff to anyone that needs or wants it; they don’t care – they’ve got millions of Dram in the bank.

#6

The main thing to use dram on is the bombs found in odds and ends for the luck and exp. The underlying issue is not the market itself but the free dram given out every 5 seconds.

In old game you had to grind mobs to get dram and there was no other way than to sell to the apprentice smith to create dram in the economy. Even then the drops were rarer to happen and thus harder to farm up dram.

Contrasting in reborn almost every activity gives a minimum of 500 dram. Catch like 3 mice and you get 500 dram, kill the easiest enemies: 500 dram per mission, do like 2 pvp battleground: Those missions giving a total of around 10-20k+. The game just simply hands you too much money and inflated the price.

Personally I think totally removing the ability to get dram from missions would help stabilize the economy and money would naturally start being removed (Repair costs + any bombs people buy + taxes on goods)

It was stupid to add missions that give so much dram and are repeatable infinity.

Also the market really does not fluctuate. You have those who don’t know what an item is worth (people selling an item worth 400 at 2000) and then the stable price which is around 400 in this case. The apprentice smith giving such low dram is due to how dram inflation was in old game.

#7

Thank you for pointing out the problems I didn’t address.

I would like to say before I continue, I am using the terms “central market” and “free market” very liberally. Both markets we are talking about are by definition free markets. I will keep using the terms though to avoid confusion.

I agree that dram is an inflated currency. One reason like you say is because there is no loss of value from the economy, except in potions and lures. Which may actually cause more value to enter the economy. I attribute this mostly to poor game design decisions.

Health potions for example have always been a big seller in mmo’s since they can often turn the tide in battle. I was very surprised to see little to no market for them in Orbus. Mostly because they aren’t very useful, or take an absurd amount of time to make and are hoarded instead of traded. Enhancement potions like strength, intelligence, and vitality; are common drops in loot chests and shard chests so there is little to no reason to buy them. There is too much supply. There is too much easy to get stuff.

One basic mission gets you five hundred dram, and a loot box which often contains potions; which would normally take a significant time to make organically. It is not strange for a player to complete ten to fifteen missions in a two hour session. Same for events. With scarcity comes value.

This is why the Orbus economy could be called unhealthy, there is no incentive to grind basic potions, item, or dram. You get so much for so little.

The Ithecac is a quest significant item. Having it rely on fluctuating prices would be an unwise game design choice. Other items sold by npc’s are either dyes or furniture pieces that players cannot make, or are hard to come by.

Switching to a central market will not fix people selling items for much more or less than others. One person values the item at four hundred, the other values it at two thousand. No one is forcing you to buy either. So it doesn’t effect you what one person decides to do with their own property.

Same principle with people giving stuff away. If you have more than you need, why not be generous? It’s not your business whether people are charitable or not.

As for the dragon market, a dragon is an accessory item. People will pay what they value that item at. Switching to a central market will in no way affect dragon prices because people will value the dragons the exact same they value them now.

#10

Excellent observations, jason. Perhaps I can clarify some of my points and add to your comments.
Yes, the Ithecac potion is part of a recurring quest, but letting its market price fluctuate would not impede players from moving forward, since it is a potion anyone can brew themselves with easy-to-find reagents. If Darius sold them for 25,000 Dram each, people would just brew it themselves in their House instead of buying them.
You are right about grinding. There is little need to do so, since you get so much for free just by walking around. Money and items literally fall from the sky.
For good or bad, I like puttering around making potions, lures, and fishing. But, that really doesn’t get me very much in this game. As you say, the potions really don’t do enough to bother with. By the time you need a Health potion, you are probably gonna lose the battle anyway. Befriending a Musketeer is ten times as useful as a Health potion.
As for some players offering things at 400 and others at 2,000, the problem would correct itself if the money and items were worth anything. Right now, players can offer up Bass for 2,000 each and, if no one buys it, so what? You don’t really need the money.
The current Auction system is weird anyway. Let’s say I really need some Roto Spores right away for a potion I need for a quest. Those things are hard to find in the wilderness and there is no other way to get them except at auction. But, there are usually only a few available and they can only be gotten by engaging in a 72-hour auction. I’m not happy about spending 3 days waiting to see if I won. I am better off just criss crossing the wilderness for two hours looking for fresh ones.
I even saw one auction where someone was auctioning 10 Sunfish. The starting bid was 14,500 and had 50 hours to go and the buy-it-now price was 15,500. Why on earth would anyone bid on it when they could just buy it now?
And I have no problem with players giving stuff away. It’s good karma.
And you talked about dragons. Yeah, they are an accessory item. But, even the the accessory items in the game seem too easy to come by. With a little time management, everyone can get two free dragons every day. With hundreds of people playing, that’s thousands of unwanted dragons per week filling up the animal shelters. No one should ever pay for one. Heck, my first dragon was given to me on my first day … some guy just came up and said, “Here, have a dragon.”
As we all seem to agree here, there’s just too much free money given out for there to be any kind of robust or realistic economy in this game.

#11

Quick note about that, I sold literally thousands of aged enhanced potions in under 48 hours, netting me millions of dram. Normal potions don’t sell well, but aged enhanced are hot commodities

#12

Yes sorry, I forgot to distinguish between the normal and enhanced potions markets. Enhanced are in much greater demand than normal. It was the normal potions I was referring to.

#13

That’s great Meeeeeeeeeeshka. But, it sounds like you didn’t offer them up for auction (auctions are longer than 48 hours), but rather offered them at a set price. And, just to physically to put up a thousand items in 2 days, you most likely owned a market stall.

Just out of curiosity, what did you spend your millions on?

#14

Could we please return to our original topic. Wether a central market system would be better than our current one?
If you wish to discuss problems that need fixing in our current market system and the game balance in general, I’d gladly move to a new forum with you to discuss them.

#15

I didn’t spend them. I’m holding them for the Orbus Olympics :slight_smile:

1 Like
#16

Fair enough. I still think that a central market system, where all common goods could be bought and sold from venders – at fluctuating prices, would be better for the game. It would certainly be more interesting and engaging.
Rare and powerful goodies would not be for sale and would have to be found or crafted. The auction system would be able to take care of those items rather well.
Random or scheduled events could happen that would affect the game, causing the price of certain items to drop or rise suddenly. Like for an upcoming Festival, a vendor might appear who is willing to pay top Dram for Body Lantern potions for tourists to celebrate with. Not only would that raise the sales price of the potions themselves, but also the ingredients for making the potion, perhaps even leading to shortages of those ingredients. Players would just have to deal with these difficulties. Like in real life.
At first, such a system would see large swings in prices. But, very soon prices would settle to their natural balancing point. No one really needs Sea Bass for anything and they are easy to catch, so the buying and selling price would be low and stay low. Several rare fish become scarce depending on the weather and are used for powerful potions, so that price would be high and might change on a daily basis. Everything would settle at its natural price until outside factors change the balance.
I think it would be an amazing and life-like economy. Trust in capitalism.

#17

Again I would ask we please keep on topic. New features; and facts that apply to both markets do not aid either side in this discussion and only confuse.
Our current market accomplishes everything you stated in your last message.
As I stated in my first message the central market cannot have shortages.

We currently have shortages, you have talked about a couple. These can easily be taken care of by players who want to make dram recognizing these shortages and taking advantage of them. Such as the Rottospore, that is easy to solve without changing the system.
Anyone who currently doesn’t have a Niche in the market and is reading this, please note. That if you want good dram, find a Rottospore route and sell them at whatever price you see fit. Since you will be the only supplier as I am writing this besides the odd auction.
I would like to prepose it’s not the current market that’s the problem. It is the the inflated state of dram, which has now been stated by multiple parties. This is the underlying issue.

#18

Could I also thank whoever fixed my messages. I am forever in your debt

#19

That was me, it was the spacing you were using that was causing that. It was bugging me also I couldn’t read it on my phone haha.

3 Likes
#20

Ah I’ll make sure not to use that then lol, thanks again

#21

You can also farm items at low level and they are worth the same as farming high level drops because everything is turned to shards and untradeable / no innate value beyond 30 dram. There’s no incentive beyond the grinder, world bosses / holiday mobs, quickly pop in for world events, or running through a zone for ingredients or a t-map to venture outside low level areas and just do dailies / world events. No unique regional loot (except for island grinder loot), and while leveling gear is scaled from chests. So again, no reason to farm the next zone to improve your gear or profit. Dungeons/shards also scale to you. Dungeons could not scale, and require level 30 for all party members be able to enter dungeons w/ shards & gear would be locked to your class & level at the start (which would nerf gear-trading, yes). Queue’d dungeons could maybe still scale but just not drop loot, only reward XP and some kind of queue related loot. Maybe instead of getting 5 free daily tokens a day, you get reward daily quest tokens from doing activites like a daily dungeon run.

The economy used to be worse. More valuable tradables have been added but mostly in the multi-hundred of thousands. I’m not personally interested in like a skateboard mount for example, but I’d have a chance at selling if I got one. I’d consider buying like a wand transmog, but we’ve yet to see something like that. Or seasonally farmed tradeable items, candy cane wands? :stuck_out_tongue: Average ingredients/consumables have always been and continue to be in a poor spot. Lots of useless ingredients & potions. Preborn was even worse, basically an economic famine because no A.H, except the case of dyes, but that was because it was one of the few items anyone could sell easily & dram wasn’t inflated. Even light potions had value for the desert temple, ithecac wasn’t sold by darius (why is it still there?) and was used for elongata and some missions, but mule pots still sucked etc.

Instead of bracers something like food or food+an hour long HP regen pot would have been a good addition. More aged potions (like luck, even if just duration), and more desirable potions (exploding pots? aoe frost pots? aoe debuff pots %dmg increase?). One of the problems with alchemy is the bottleneck of fishing & clearly superior potions that use ingredients you wouldn’t waste on a bad potion.

I’d be content with the addition of such consumables and the alteration of existing bracers.

Potions of forgetfulness are also handed out like crazy, and sold by a vendor. Would(still could be) have been a very good staple potion for crafting.

Mage reagents too… no use for them in crafting yet. Mages also can’t teleport to any pillar anymore, which contributes. The addition of in-town portals to most dungeons is another factor, people don’t TP to dungeons anymore except the mines or temple. Maybe if these used a mage reagent it would be a little better, idk. I prefer the more RPG-like teleporting around, even if pillars were right in front of dungeons. But a handful of players like the more silver spoon town portals. In preborn this could be an issue without a mage to TP you around, but reborn fixed that with the ability to just TP using a pillar.

As for HP pots. There’s a big reason why they are low in demand. You insta die or you don’t, 99% of the time. Stressful amounts of constant raid damage is not common. There’s also the unbending affix (an ability I’ve always been against lol). That goes for PvP or PvE. Tanks carry them typically and that is it. They also use sunfish, a bottleneck, rotospore a rarer ingredient bottleneck (and queens ear nbd really). The other reason is that OrbusVR has no resources like mana and heals are often AoE. There’s no reason you’d use an HP pot because healers have infinite resources & can easily top off the whole party. We would need to see difficult to dodge mechanics where chugging a potion would be the price you pay to try and make up for your mistake. For example, getting hit by orbs on pot-tank. Culturally speaking, people don’t carry them and they probably should for fights like pot-tank. They also weigh 1lb each which is a PITA.

#22

Yes. Everything you mention seems to be a problem due to the overall economy being out of balance. As I say above, I feel that the whole economy could fix itself by having vendors with sales and purchase prices that flow with the supply and demand for each item.

And, it’s not too late to add this to the game. Maybe we could start with the Dye Vendor in the basement. Instead of selling just a few dyes at set prices, he sells and buys all uncommon dyes at fluctuating prices. If tons of players sell tons of dye and no one buys any, the price drops to next-to-nothing. If certain colors are in high demand, the price goes up.

Then, new NPCs can be added to buy and sell fish or reagents or other items.

The Auction House would remain and be used for mainly hard-to-find items (rare dyes, rare fish, blueprints, enhanced armor, pets, etc.) and for bulk sales.

#23

Apologies for not coming to this sooner. I was unaware this topic was reopened until a friend pointed it out to me.
william_I, could you please elaborate on why and how every problem with the current game balance, which was pointed out by Delceri. Has a direct link to the market being out of balance. I would very much enjoy to read you hypothesis.