Economy is flawed.

[stormridersp]

No economy can survive on stamp trading alone and this is what we currently have: a whole lot of useless nonsense stuff, that serves nothing, have no purpose, no raison d´etre, can´t be crafted nor modified in any way and are only meant to be purchased and sold for a higher price. The farther it strays away from reality, the more it´s difficult to regulate this player based economy.

 

The symptons: Rampant inflation. Although the current economy prices are more or less fixed, the inflation is there and it´s felt in other ways. Its so easy to make money just by buying useless stuff and selling it at a far higher price somewhere else, that in the end, money becomes useless in a sense that its not really a matter of concern. And the result is that useful stuff like Silver, Gold and Wood, which usually need to be crafted somewhere and because of this difficulty, are not traded at all, nor shared and it becomes a black hole in a player based economy. You go from port to port and see Buy Contracts of the same stuff over and over: Fine Woods and Silver and nobody trades them because trading is useless, when you can just trade NPG useless stuff and make rivers of "money". This means that in this player based economy, players are not in the loop and don´t interact with the economy.

1- Every product must have a raison d´etre. It can´t just happen to be there like Spanish Gold Coins, Stole Goods. What are they, what are their uses, where did the come from? They are nothing other than a way to deregulate this player based economy. Everything must have a use. Gold and Silver not only for ship crafting, but to be used as real money (topic #3), Spanish Gold Coins, crafted from normal Gold Coins into a born Spanish port, could be used for ship crafting, giving it a spanish "regional trim". Things like that are what makes things have a raison d´etre, and purpose. Link everything with reason.

2- Money must be finite. There must be a way of regulating how much money can any given port give and this money must be linked directly with the player based economy. You can´t just let players sell infinite amount of useless stuff to a port and receive infinite amount of money for it.

Also, the easiest way to make money something real, something of a challenge, is to actually make it something really real by making it something other than a virtual number. What I mean is that money should be real goods, like good coins and silver coins, something that has an economic value and you must carry around, in a ship´s hold and can be crafted or created somehow. Virtual money only works on a virtually infinite population, like a globalized world economy and even then, as we all know, it happens to crash sometimes. Here, we´re talking about an active population of what, 100 in PVP2?

3- The economy must be based on production. Right now, the economy is based on trading useless stuff and selling to NPG ports who have infinite money supplies. And production must vary with the population growth. I´d even go to far to say that all goods should be produced by real players, starting from only a few basic goods that can be crafted into many depths of "industrialization", but all coming from the very same few very basic resources.

4- No goods should be created via drops, like these stupid fine woods. Its just plain stupid and its even aggravated by the fact that it either drops compass wood OR fine wood. It´s just stupid! Whose was this idea? Fire him straight away. It´s unbelievable! And if this is carried over to the next patch, I´ll definitely push for a refund.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 22, 2016 by stormridersp

[Angus McGregor]

Well, you were making a valid point and then got insulting and 'silly'. A refund? After playing for at least a month? Steam's cutoff is 2 hrs and you probably passed that the first day. Beat your head against that wall if you want to but ask the people who bought No Man's Sky how that went. I admit I bought it and play it from time to time. But it isn't on my Favorites list and I wouldn't recommend it if it costs more than $4.99.

Getting back to your actual argument about how unbalanced the economy is... I agree. The problem is that it requires serious attention to the economic systems to get it right. Should the NA economy be zero-sum? Activities that produce gold perfectly balanced by those which devour it? Not really because some accumulation of wealth is necessary, otherwise no one can advance on to bigger and better ships. So how the game economy holds back from hyperinflation is the kicker. I assume that a competitive victory for one nationality (map domination) is the planned eventuality with a subsequent server reset. But if the economy gets too unbalanced (the 1% factor), the players will 'feel' it and get frustrated and leave. The slide towards a perceived inequitable wealth condition needs to be at least delayed sufficiently to allow for an enjoyable competitive endgame to occur.

A practical application? I think the devs are taking a misstep with their approach to making the 1st rate ships more rare through this scarce materials approach. It isn't a gold-sink as much as a fun-sink. A drudge factor that everyone but diehard PvE merchant types hate. Realistically the primary path to owning a SOL should be wealth, but it cannot be through sheer volume or cost of building materials. IMO that's 'false value'. It isn't realistic. They aren't made of spun gold and it doesn't take 1000x the materials to make a 1st rate as compared to a 2nd rate. More materials yes of course, but keep it believable. It could be done by boosting the Grade Notes required, or through very expensive one-use blueprints sold and used only in National Capitals. Either of which represent the costs involved for commissioning a shipyard and the experienced shipwrights capable of building such a behemoth. Valid justification? - check. Gold sink to consume wealth? - check.

Only for the wealthy? I'm reminded of the scene from Jurassic Park, where they were concerned about the perception that only the wealthy could afford to go there - a major PR problem. So they joked about having coupon-day, or awarding school field trips. It is important to provide at least one alternate path to overcome the negative 'only for the wealthy' perception.  Blueprint awards from competitions like the PvP tournaments are a definite possibility. A 'promotion' from the Admiralty for outstanding performance in the line of duty. It works as long as the tournaments themselves are seen as individually fair and equitable and not inherently slanted towards the wealthy.

 

Nuff said (for now)

[Yar Matey]

Firstly, asking the developers to fire whoever came up with the idea of fine woods pretty brash, and it is not your place to have any say on the matter.  Please try and be more civil with your suggestion and the developers will respond more favorably to your criticism. 

 

Secondly, I agree, that relying on RNG to get wood drops sucks, and I believe it needs to be changed.  But what I do like about the new economy is the forced trading for specific resources you need.  For example, I harvest mahogany and Oak, and I need to trade for other fine woods I want such as teak, and fir.  We also have people opening up silver mines again because we have a desperate need for silver.  These are good changes. 

 

Also, I like your idea of using Spanish gold coins to get a specific regional bonus.  This could be applied to all regional trims and where you craft the ship wont matter, but the resources you use will matter.  If you want northern carpenters bonus, you need Swedish gold or silver coins.  If you want British refit, you need British coins ect..  But these coins can only be crafted in a region specific area and the port must either by owned by your nation or an ally nation.