Forums » Suggestions
New Economy
INTRODUCTION
There is an opinion among players that TODAY, making credits adds little to no value to the game. In the past month, I have been trading with a handful of players which have been more interested in exchanging their items for other goods rather than to receive compensation in the form of credits.
But the main points that need to be addressed are as follows:
1. Though limited in recent times, there continues to be an almost infinite supply of cheap money (credits) in Vendetta Online, mostly accumulated by veteran players.
2. There is an infinite supply of goods in the form of station commodity shops, drops of game generated hive and NPC ships and convoys.
3. There is an infinite demand for goods in stations, that despite being able to tank, is not determined by an economic model and also contributes to the infinite supply of money.
4. There is a weak relation between earning credits and generating value to the economy.
All these points continue to debase the value of credits, contributing to an ever increasing cost of items and services.
If I still haven’t convinced you, let me give you a practical example:
In a very short time, I accumulated $3 million credits through a relatively easy task (weapons trading). Only a fraction of that could already cover my initial investment to perform such a risky task (flying a Behemoth XC loaded with weapons in Corvus stations) and also pay for an extensive PvP session assuming I’d lose a significant amount of ships and equipment.
With prices being constant in most stations throughout the universe, a new player would assume they hit the motherlode, but when you consider players have hundreds of millions of credits, suddenly that huge amount of credits becomes nothing.
Just to clear up, my point is not that veterans having too many credits is the issue here. The issue is that those credits have been accumulated due to the lack of sinkholes, which I’ll address further below.
And thus, we get to the point where doing other activities for the sake of credits become inefficient. What’s the point of doing missions that are going to pay you in a range of $10 to $100 thousand credits when plenty of other activities can yield much greater results? Sure, you can take the fun factor into consideration, but there is a satisfaction that a significant amount of players get in accumulating wealth. After all, this is a space MMORPG. If the economy wasn’t supposed to be important, we’d just be a space deathmatch shooter.
Also (and this is a whole other problem), it is reasonably difficult to earn credits right at the first licenses (up to about level 2), but it got easier, until (past about level 4) it became visibly easier. It appears (to me) that a player's ability to "make credits" increases exponentially with his levels. Many other variables in the game are damped or nerfed or log-scaled. Examples include: ship speed is damped; XP levels are log-scaled. I think there is room to rebalance earning credits, if designed currently, but honestly it seems like it was very balanced at the starter license levels.
I don’t want to spend too much time ranting on these issues and how they are harmful to the player economy since in previous posts, Incarnate has already pointed out he is well aware. Especially in this reply: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/36643#418209
What I would like to do is to make suggestions that could potentially help in the on-going development of the new economy, ranging from short-term to long-term solutions (still writing it up, will add in a future reply) that I personally believe could improve the game.
-
THE SHORT TERM - REDUCING THE CREDIT STOCK
In an academic paper by the Boston College Economics Department, the design of a MMORPG’s economy generally follows a pipes model.
Virtual goods and virtual currency flow top down from faucets to players and then eventually to sinks. FAUCETS are defined as “interactions within the game which produce digital goods or currency as a result of player actions.” With that interaction, wealth is brought into the game, only to be then bounced from player to player or directly fall into a SINKHOLE, removing that wealth from the game.
Generally, the primary sinkhole of a MMORPG is COMBAT. Players accumulate wealth with the intention to employ it in fighting, be it to contest territory, objectives, and so on.
In the case of Vendetta Online, PvP (and PvE on a lesser scale) can and should be considered that sinkhole. However, with the current amount of active players, the effectiveness of such a sinkhole dwindles down. I believe the less engagements that take place can be correlated with the increase of wealth.
With that under consideration, while a new economy is still in the works, I suggest that new sinkholes should be implemented not only to help control the ever-increasing growth of money supply, but to also target the money stock of veteran players whose wealth was accumulated through unintended means.
REQUEST FOR COMMENTS AND ADDITIONAL IDEAS
- The control of conquerable stations should rely on financial backing of ruling players or guilds. Much like the rent of additional storage space in stations, the maintenance of turrets and guards should have a cost.
- Increase capship repair, insurance and equipment costs. If players decide to use repair guns to avoid this, at least their presence in space could lead to additional engagements (say, a capship captain is repairing in an empty sector and is found by enemies).
- Stop generating credits through events. Sure, events are great and important for player activity, but it would be healthier to return to the contribution model where players donated credits for the reward pool.
-
THE LONG TERM - AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF MY SUGGESTION
In order to make a realistic suggestion on how VO’s economy should change, there are a number of points that need to be considered.
1. VO is first and foremost a PvP-focused game and a majority of players want to engage in combat (as opposed to trading, mining or manufacturing).
2. With Point 1 in mind, any changes/improvements/rebalancing must be sufficiently easy on the bottom end of player incomes, such that players with little interest in earning money, are still able to go and fight, die, rearm, reload, repair many standard fighter ships (Centurion, Vulture, Warthog) per login session. See http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16812 (“Dying should be cheap, but not costly”).
3. However, the supply of high-end fighter ships such as Prometheus and Valkyries should be limited and costly. You shouldn't just fly out there with expensive vessels and high license level equipment only to repeatedly get PK'd, spawn in the same top-end kit 30 times in an hour, and think nothing of it, without earning some serious money.
4. A new underlying economic model must recognise that, for each Nation and Faction, there is (i) an effectively LIMITED amount of credits available for it to issue. ("Demand" for real goods), just as there is (ii) an effectively LIMITED amount of resources and goods available, both trade goods and ships/weapons. ("Supply" for real goods).
5. Supply and Demand, Prices and the Money Supply, are all interrelated and are all influenced by in-game actions, both by player actions and standard NPC actions (which may act as a balancing factor).
6. The works of the Economy should be only available for Guild Software. Vendetta Online is not a resource management game. Players whose primary interest is Trading may come to understand the aspects of Supply and Demand, the imbalances in Prices, and profit from them, but they need not see the full functioning of said model.
7. The economic model should not be unnecessarily complex to code and implement. It should be simple where possible, and scalable.
8. The Economy must appear to control the Money Supply in such a way as to protect the value of money over time. As more player characters get created and interact with faucets, more credits are made available to the community. At minimum, Guild Software should be monitoring the game’s Money Supply on a weekly basis, and if needed, act upon it with dynamic sinkholes.
9. Players should be able to earn credits (and thereby increase the Money Supply) by performing services or actions that genuinely create VALUE*, such as: (i) missions interacting with factions (PvE) and (ii) players interacting between themselves (trading, manufacturing, combat-related services, etc.).
* The meaning of “creating VALUE” here goes for doing something that was in some form helpful, useful to others, brought them happiness, avoided them loss, or is sought after by the player community. A mixture of effort and skill is required to create real Value. Credits should reward value created (at present neither skill nor effort is required to create significant credits).
10. A dynamic economy should consider expanding on the transformation and/or manufacturing of goods. For further references, this post by Incarnate had some great ideas: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406
11. For the sake of simplicity, VO’s currency should continue to only be represented in credits. Recent games have started experimenting with adding multiple currencies, each representing a specific faction (see Prosperous Universe), but there is no reason for that to be applied here.
12. A dynamic economy model should represent the entire universe in a closed economy, composed of four open economies: (i) Itani Nation, (ii) Serco Dominion, (iii) Union of Independent Territories and (iv) Greyspace (either centralized in Corvus Prime or decentralized, split between autarkic factions like Corvus Prime, Tunguska, Ineubis and Aeolus).
13. Within these four economies, which would operate around waging warfare (Serco and Itani) or profiting off it (UIT and Greyspace), each faction would also be modeled with their own economy, with each station fulfilling their intended purposes (mining, manufacturing, commercial) and interacting amongst themselves (making convoys carry goods gathered by stations and delivering them with actual impact to the economy).
I will be posting my long term economy change suggestion in a future reply. I think this is enough for now to spark a constructive discussion in the forum.
There is an opinion among players that TODAY, making credits adds little to no value to the game. In the past month, I have been trading with a handful of players which have been more interested in exchanging their items for other goods rather than to receive compensation in the form of credits.
But the main points that need to be addressed are as follows:
1. Though limited in recent times, there continues to be an almost infinite supply of cheap money (credits) in Vendetta Online, mostly accumulated by veteran players.
2. There is an infinite supply of goods in the form of station commodity shops, drops of game generated hive and NPC ships and convoys.
3. There is an infinite demand for goods in stations, that despite being able to tank, is not determined by an economic model and also contributes to the infinite supply of money.
4. There is a weak relation between earning credits and generating value to the economy.
All these points continue to debase the value of credits, contributing to an ever increasing cost of items and services.
If I still haven’t convinced you, let me give you a practical example:
In a very short time, I accumulated $3 million credits through a relatively easy task (weapons trading). Only a fraction of that could already cover my initial investment to perform such a risky task (flying a Behemoth XC loaded with weapons in Corvus stations) and also pay for an extensive PvP session assuming I’d lose a significant amount of ships and equipment.
With prices being constant in most stations throughout the universe, a new player would assume they hit the motherlode, but when you consider players have hundreds of millions of credits, suddenly that huge amount of credits becomes nothing.
Just to clear up, my point is not that veterans having too many credits is the issue here. The issue is that those credits have been accumulated due to the lack of sinkholes, which I’ll address further below.
And thus, we get to the point where doing other activities for the sake of credits become inefficient. What’s the point of doing missions that are going to pay you in a range of $10 to $100 thousand credits when plenty of other activities can yield much greater results? Sure, you can take the fun factor into consideration, but there is a satisfaction that a significant amount of players get in accumulating wealth. After all, this is a space MMORPG. If the economy wasn’t supposed to be important, we’d just be a space deathmatch shooter.
Also (and this is a whole other problem), it is reasonably difficult to earn credits right at the first licenses (up to about level 2), but it got easier, until (past about level 4) it became visibly easier. It appears (to me) that a player's ability to "make credits" increases exponentially with his levels. Many other variables in the game are damped or nerfed or log-scaled. Examples include: ship speed is damped; XP levels are log-scaled. I think there is room to rebalance earning credits, if designed currently, but honestly it seems like it was very balanced at the starter license levels.
I don’t want to spend too much time ranting on these issues and how they are harmful to the player economy since in previous posts, Incarnate has already pointed out he is well aware. Especially in this reply: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/36643#418209
What I would like to do is to make suggestions that could potentially help in the on-going development of the new economy, ranging from short-term to long-term solutions (still writing it up, will add in a future reply) that I personally believe could improve the game.
-
THE SHORT TERM - REDUCING THE CREDIT STOCK
In an academic paper by the Boston College Economics Department, the design of a MMORPG’s economy generally follows a pipes model.
Virtual goods and virtual currency flow top down from faucets to players and then eventually to sinks. FAUCETS are defined as “interactions within the game which produce digital goods or currency as a result of player actions.” With that interaction, wealth is brought into the game, only to be then bounced from player to player or directly fall into a SINKHOLE, removing that wealth from the game.
Generally, the primary sinkhole of a MMORPG is COMBAT. Players accumulate wealth with the intention to employ it in fighting, be it to contest territory, objectives, and so on.
In the case of Vendetta Online, PvP (and PvE on a lesser scale) can and should be considered that sinkhole. However, with the current amount of active players, the effectiveness of such a sinkhole dwindles down. I believe the less engagements that take place can be correlated with the increase of wealth.
With that under consideration, while a new economy is still in the works, I suggest that new sinkholes should be implemented not only to help control the ever-increasing growth of money supply, but to also target the money stock of veteran players whose wealth was accumulated through unintended means.
REQUEST FOR COMMENTS AND ADDITIONAL IDEAS
- The control of conquerable stations should rely on financial backing of ruling players or guilds. Much like the rent of additional storage space in stations, the maintenance of turrets and guards should have a cost.
- Increase capship repair, insurance and equipment costs. If players decide to use repair guns to avoid this, at least their presence in space could lead to additional engagements (say, a capship captain is repairing in an empty sector and is found by enemies).
- Stop generating credits through events. Sure, events are great and important for player activity, but it would be healthier to return to the contribution model where players donated credits for the reward pool.
-
THE LONG TERM - AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF MY SUGGESTION
In order to make a realistic suggestion on how VO’s economy should change, there are a number of points that need to be considered.
1. VO is first and foremost a PvP-focused game and a majority of players want to engage in combat (as opposed to trading, mining or manufacturing).
2. With Point 1 in mind, any changes/improvements/rebalancing must be sufficiently easy on the bottom end of player incomes, such that players with little interest in earning money, are still able to go and fight, die, rearm, reload, repair many standard fighter ships (Centurion, Vulture, Warthog) per login session. See http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/16812 (“Dying should be cheap, but not costly”).
3. However, the supply of high-end fighter ships such as Prometheus and Valkyries should be limited and costly. You shouldn't just fly out there with expensive vessels and high license level equipment only to repeatedly get PK'd, spawn in the same top-end kit 30 times in an hour, and think nothing of it, without earning some serious money.
4. A new underlying economic model must recognise that, for each Nation and Faction, there is (i) an effectively LIMITED amount of credits available for it to issue. ("Demand" for real goods), just as there is (ii) an effectively LIMITED amount of resources and goods available, both trade goods and ships/weapons. ("Supply" for real goods).
5. Supply and Demand, Prices and the Money Supply, are all interrelated and are all influenced by in-game actions, both by player actions and standard NPC actions (which may act as a balancing factor).
6. The works of the Economy should be only available for Guild Software. Vendetta Online is not a resource management game. Players whose primary interest is Trading may come to understand the aspects of Supply and Demand, the imbalances in Prices, and profit from them, but they need not see the full functioning of said model.
7. The economic model should not be unnecessarily complex to code and implement. It should be simple where possible, and scalable.
8. The Economy must appear to control the Money Supply in such a way as to protect the value of money over time. As more player characters get created and interact with faucets, more credits are made available to the community. At minimum, Guild Software should be monitoring the game’s Money Supply on a weekly basis, and if needed, act upon it with dynamic sinkholes.
9. Players should be able to earn credits (and thereby increase the Money Supply) by performing services or actions that genuinely create VALUE*, such as: (i) missions interacting with factions (PvE) and (ii) players interacting between themselves (trading, manufacturing, combat-related services, etc.).
* The meaning of “creating VALUE” here goes for doing something that was in some form helpful, useful to others, brought them happiness, avoided them loss, or is sought after by the player community. A mixture of effort and skill is required to create real Value. Credits should reward value created (at present neither skill nor effort is required to create significant credits).
10. A dynamic economy should consider expanding on the transformation and/or manufacturing of goods. For further references, this post by Incarnate had some great ideas: https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11406
11. For the sake of simplicity, VO’s currency should continue to only be represented in credits. Recent games have started experimenting with adding multiple currencies, each representing a specific faction (see Prosperous Universe), but there is no reason for that to be applied here.
12. A dynamic economy model should represent the entire universe in a closed economy, composed of four open economies: (i) Itani Nation, (ii) Serco Dominion, (iii) Union of Independent Territories and (iv) Greyspace (either centralized in Corvus Prime or decentralized, split between autarkic factions like Corvus Prime, Tunguska, Ineubis and Aeolus).
13. Within these four economies, which would operate around waging warfare (Serco and Itani) or profiting off it (UIT and Greyspace), each faction would also be modeled with their own economy, with each station fulfilling their intended purposes (mining, manufacturing, commercial) and interacting amongst themselves (making convoys carry goods gathered by stations and delivering them with actual impact to the economy).
I will be posting my long term economy change suggestion in a future reply. I think this is enough for now to spark a constructive discussion in the forum.
-1 to anything that's a major rework of any already functional system.
Lets focus on meaningful incremental additions
Lets focus on meaningful incremental additions
I think your post in itself mentions why it's irrelevant. If credits are easy to get from the environment, their value reduces. People start trading in other items, such as SSS or noodles. The players have already come up with a solution, in alternative currencies. If this goes all the way then credits become a medium only between the player and the environment, not between players. And I don't see anything wrong with that.
If and when a dynamic economy as described by you, numerous others and most importantly Incarnate comes into place, it would possibly require a reset of the credit banks of all players and guilds back to zero, so as to put everyone not on a level but on a less uneven playing field. Till then though, these massive credit banks are rapidly losing relevance precisely by virtue of their mass. Becoming a non-issue.
If and when a dynamic economy as described by you, numerous others and most importantly Incarnate comes into place, it would possibly require a reset of the credit banks of all players and guilds back to zero, so as to put everyone not on a level but on a less uneven playing field. Till then though, these massive credit banks are rapidly losing relevance precisely by virtue of their mass. Becoming a non-issue.
-1
first: This is a VERY well written out suggestion, even if I don't agree with some of the premises.
now...
I'm going to single something out, because its probably the only item here that really, truly, impacts me as player, guide, and event host:
OP states:
- Stop generating credits through events. Sure, events are great and important for player activity, but it would be healthier to return to the contribution model where players donated credits for the reward pool.
Oh **** No.
As much as it would be cool if people came to events because they were fun, that doesn't happen with the majority of players. Events are distractions from general gameplay that often involve unusual mechanics and aren't guaranteed profitable. I do have a personally imposed limit on how many credits i'll "print" as rewards (its a significant number, to be sure, but that amount gets spread out among many potential people), and anything further I expect to generate myself, because the events need to be worthwhile for attendees, especially for my long-running ones - Events need to be rewarding, because events in and of themselves ARE credit sinks.
Donations are
1) Too limited in supply, and
2) Not able to cover what I consider the expected cost that most pilots will accrue.
...
I won't get into the economy much; that's not my area of expertise. I make cool plugins, I use some of those plugins to host cool events, and when i'm up for it i'll even engage in general PvP. I don't enjoy hauling/trade, i'm hopeful for mining but probably won't ever even part-time it. I desire easy credits, because it is beneficial for how I play Vendetta Online - casually. So, I understand your all views are probably a bit different than mine are. Funny how we're almost playing entirely different games.
I'll end with this. When I was new, I heard somewhere, something along the following:
Credits are supposed to be easy to get. this lets pilots new and old experiment and try all sorts of cool new things, without getting slogged down in the weeds of grinding. In Vendetta Online, the size of your purse doesn't matter, its your skill as a pilot that will ultimately be put to the test, and that's why you'll want to stick around.
I hope to see you at VaultRaid 2.0
now...
I'm going to single something out, because its probably the only item here that really, truly, impacts me as player, guide, and event host:
OP states:
- Stop generating credits through events. Sure, events are great and important for player activity, but it would be healthier to return to the contribution model where players donated credits for the reward pool.
Oh **** No.
As much as it would be cool if people came to events because they were fun, that doesn't happen with the majority of players. Events are distractions from general gameplay that often involve unusual mechanics and aren't guaranteed profitable. I do have a personally imposed limit on how many credits i'll "print" as rewards (its a significant number, to be sure, but that amount gets spread out among many potential people), and anything further I expect to generate myself, because the events need to be worthwhile for attendees, especially for my long-running ones - Events need to be rewarding, because events in and of themselves ARE credit sinks.
Donations are
1) Too limited in supply, and
2) Not able to cover what I consider the expected cost that most pilots will accrue.
...
I won't get into the economy much; that's not my area of expertise. I make cool plugins, I use some of those plugins to host cool events, and when i'm up for it i'll even engage in general PvP. I don't enjoy hauling/trade, i'm hopeful for mining but probably won't ever even part-time it. I desire easy credits, because it is beneficial for how I play Vendetta Online - casually. So, I understand your all views are probably a bit different than mine are. Funny how we're almost playing entirely different games.
I'll end with this. When I was new, I heard somewhere, something along the following:
Credits are supposed to be easy to get. this lets pilots new and old experiment and try all sorts of cool new things, without getting slogged down in the weeds of grinding. In Vendetta Online, the size of your purse doesn't matter, its your skill as a pilot that will ultimately be put to the test, and that's why you'll want to stick around.
I hope to see you at VaultRaid 2.0
I agree with the premise. My main has always been intended as a trader. I'm not sure I agree with the entirety of the argument or all of its solutions. Knowing that Incarnate is already working towards a more dynamic economy, I'm not really willing to become engaged in this topic. That said,
1) I don't think that there is anything wrong with players accumulating vast wealth and resources. Many of those players have been around for years, and to a greater or lesser degree are trying to position themselves for the future of the game. I see nothing wrong with this. New players are new. They need time to accumulate those same resources that people who have been dedicated to the game for years have on hand.
2) For a quick fix, I'd like to see two things. First, scarcity of all items sold. Second, better value trades the more wormholes you have to travel to make the sale. Same system trades shouldn't give more than a minimum of profit IMO. Along with the second point, reduce the profit drop off rate on those items so that it's worth running an XC or a trident since hopefully the risk will also be increasing.
1) I don't think that there is anything wrong with players accumulating vast wealth and resources. Many of those players have been around for years, and to a greater or lesser degree are trying to position themselves for the future of the game. I see nothing wrong with this. New players are new. They need time to accumulate those same resources that people who have been dedicated to the game for years have on hand.
2) For a quick fix, I'd like to see two things. First, scarcity of all items sold. Second, better value trades the more wormholes you have to travel to make the sale. Same system trades shouldn't give more than a minimum of profit IMO. Along with the second point, reduce the profit drop off rate on those items so that it's worth running an XC or a trident since hopefully the risk will also be increasing.
So basically if you're mainly interested in pvp and you're average good, you need to take a daily job in vo to make credits.
Where's the fun in that?
if your concern is about rich poor pvper coming back repeateadly to fight back in top tier gear, just put a timer and a counter on how many ships you can buy back per day simulating the chain of supply. "This station has no more scp, please wait until resupply in xxx days/hours or try another station"
Where's the fun in that?
if your concern is about rich poor pvper coming back repeateadly to fight back in top tier gear, just put a timer and a counter on how many ships you can buy back per day simulating the chain of supply. "This station has no more scp, please wait until resupply in xxx days/hours or try another station"
Luxen gets the cookie jar. I have same opinions. +4 to luxen