Crafting and Economy. Making Free players benefit the Subscribers. (Long post)

I feel there are some serious issues with the player economy and crafting system and how they're affected by the strict trade restrictions on free players. There's some major suggestions on how to use free players to stimulate the in-game economy and still prevent multi-account farming, but I posted this in discussion because, well, it needs to be discussed. Onto the post!


First off, the crafting system -- It's designed specifically so it is impossible to be self-sufficient. You can't raise more than one skill in each category past 10, if the tooltip is true. I can forage and dye, but I can't use the dye to make cloth. If I'm an enchanter, I can't be a jewelcrafter or dyer. Aargh. That would be fine, if there was a large supply of raw materials for sale, and lots of crafters available.

However, due to the trade restrictions on free players, they cannot participate in the crafting system, period. Using the above example, it is literally impossible for a free player to acquire a consumable recipe for anything that requires cloths above Hammock Spider Silk and the other goods along that tier, since dyeing and clothworking are both artistry skills. More perks for paying to play, but that's a point I wanted to address, and it goes together with the next point.

For crafting to be possible for a Paid player, they need to gather a large number of materials. Even the simplest recipe requires Sinew (Trapping), Cloth and dye (Foraging, Dyeing, Clothworking). The recipes I've seen also required Leathers (Hunting, Brewing, Leatherworking), Wood (Woodcutting and Woodworking), and so on. Not an issue if there's a large supply of raw materials, since a player can focus on developing say, Fletching, and simply buying the necessary components for each item he crafts.

A lot of people had issues with the complexity and number of materials required for crafting when the system was first introduced. The standard reply was "It will get better once there's a large player economy." -- Certainly quite true. However, as with any game with both paid and free accounts, especially one with minimal restrictions on free players like this one, the largest portion of the player base is going to be free accounts. Ideally, those accounts will pay for a subscription at some point, because hey, that's why the game is here. Since there's always going to be a large number of free accounts, however, the ideal situation is that the existence of a large number of free accounts improves the quality of the game for the subscription players.

Currently, the free players are unable to interact with the player economy at all. There's no point in a free player using the crafting system because it's impossible to sell raw materials, and any finished products are likewise stuck on that character. It would be a significant improvement for the player economy if instead of global restrictions on free accounts, there were simply very heavy penalties, so free players could still function in the economy, servicing the crafting and other needs of the paid players, but without flooding the game with gold due to the unlimited number of free accounts allowed per person.

I have several suggestions on restrictions for free players that would allow them to function in the in-game economy without simply flooding the game with gold due to players running large numbers of free accounts specifically to farm. The restrictions would be as follows:

1) No trading of trophies, period. This way, you can't farm experience using free accounts, which would be a big issue.

2) Minimum value on all trades and auctions. You can't auction or trade something for less than the resell value of an item. Resources and crafted items would function differently. Increase the store-purchase value of resources according to the "tier" of the resource, keep the 1 gold resell, but make the trade/auction restriction set to 30% of the purchase value. This also further discourages selling resources to NPC stores. Likewise, free players cannot receive items for free. If someone wants to give my free account a weapon with a 300 resell, I can't accept it unless I give that person 300g.

3) 25% gold tax for free players. Keeps selling prices higher, so paid players won't get undercut when they sell items. If a free player has an item worth 2k resell, he needs to auction it for about 2700g just to break even. A paid player could sell it for 2600 and still make 470g over resell, where the free player would lose money over a vendor resell. Again, this ensures that paid players will have much more economic control, while still allowing free players to participate.

4) 20% overhead fees to purchase any item. Ties in with the minimum value on trades. If someone auctions an item for 1000 gold, and my free account wants to purchase it, I have to spend 1200 gold to buy it. If I don't have that much, too bad.

5) No donations. Free players would not be able to directly trade a player an amount of gold more than the store-purchase value of the items in trade. This means you can't farm gold for your accounts without trading items to the free accounts, which defeats the purpose.

6) No item-for-item trades. Items for gold only, to prevent trading low value items from a paid account for high value items on a free account. If you both want to trade items, make two trades, and eat the taxes. Just another reason to subscribe.

All these restrictions would allow free players to participate in the in-game economy and crafting, supply paid players with resources and other items, and I'm confident they would prevent multiple accounts farming for the benefit of a single person. With the above restrictions in place, a free player could auction and trade items, but would not be allowed to give or receive gold without other items of value being involved. You can't give items from your free to paid account without spending gold from your paid account, and you can't give gold from free to paid without trading items off your paid account.

In short, your paid accounts can't profit from farming on multiple free accouts, but the economy benefits, because more trade happens.

(As a side suggestion, perhaps a benefit of premium membership would be to allow all Resourcefulness/Crafting/Artistry skills to go past 10. If your Premium time runs out, your highest skill in each category stays active, and the other ones retain their XP, but function as if they were level 10 and can't gain XP. Just another benefit to tack onto Premium . )

that was a long post, kinda tired too.

would a free account be able to sell lets say an elderberry for 500g? and if so then a 1 free account could then funnel all monies from their other accounts by selling 1 item for whatever amount of gold the one account has and collect all gold onto one account. Unless it was changed so free accounts could only sell items and not buy em also have it blocked so free accounts can't trade with each other just only subscription accounts. that way its locks the gold they got to their account and can only use it to purchase from the shops.

No, I think i mentioned that you wouldn't be able to sell an item for more than its NPC-purchase value. So if an item is 1000 (300) gold, you can't buy or sell it for more than 1000 or less than 300. That way you can never give anyone an unfair amount of money for anything.


Edit: Here's an example of the restrictions in place. Say Item A costs 1000 gold, and has a 300 resell value.

A free player puts Item A up for auction. He can't set the price above 1000 or below 300 gold. He sets it at 500. It sells, and he gets 375g -- more than he'd get for a resell.
Another free player buys Item A from the auction page. It costs 500g, but he has to spend 600g to buy it, because of the 20% overhead. If he only has 550g, he can't buy it.

A paid account trades Item A to a free account. The free account has to offer between 300 and 1000 gold in the trade, or it isn't allowed. He gives the minimum of 300, since this is a 'gift'. The free account loses 360 gold, because of the 20% overhead. The Paid account receives 300 gold, minus his player tax based on his bartering skill (say it's zero, and he gets 285 gold).

A free player trades item A to a paid player. He also wants to give it as a gift. Since the trade involves a free player, the paid player can't offer any less than 300, or more than 1000 gold. He offers 300. The trade goes through, and the free player receives 225 gold, because of the 25% tax on free trades.

I can't think of any way, with the above restrictions, that it's possible for a single paid account (or a single free account) to benefit from mass farming with free accounts.

ok, i missed that.

that might be a lot of hard work on Jeffs part to to make that happen.

but it might work.

The biggest benefit, for the tl;dr folks out there, is that more *stuff* gets moved around, so people can get what they want. If you need elderberries, there's a much better chance of getting them if free players can sell them, too. More people buying and selling more stuff makes it better for everyone, but the paid players are the ones who benefit most, since they have none of the above restrictions.

Aside from the buying and selling price restrictions to prevent farming and gifting items/gold with free accounts, the big point is the tax and overhead on free trades. It makes it so everyone can buy and sell items, but Paid players will spend less, and will never have a problem selling items, because they can always undercut the free players. It puts control of the economy in the hands of the Paid players, and that just makes it another perk for subscribing.

Making the free players work for the subscribers is a big part of making a game with both types of players successful. That way, the free game doesn't feel like a 'demo' of the real game, but still gives players a serious incentive to subscribe. Free players could get a taste of the crafting and economy, but then "Oh, if I subscribe, I make money so much faster, and spend way less on everything I buy."

Originally Posted by Camli

Suggestions

This is an exelent post. Jeff, hire this man.

Originally Posted by Camli

Making the free players work for the subscribers is a big part of making a game with both types of players successful. That way, the free game doesn't feel like a 'demo' of the real game, but still gives players a serious incentive to subscribe. This way, free players can get a taste of the crafting and economy, but then "Oh, if I subscribe, I make money so much faster, and spend way less on everything I buy."

Awesome

[Glitchless]

It's temping given that the game is so young and the economy so underdeveloped for you to want to have the market flooded with cheap resources farmed by poor asian children in the basements of china. Keep in mind that this would not benefit anyone in the future when prices were crap. Nodiatis is going to have a very strong economy because of these trade restrictions.

That being said, RESTED TIME to the rescue! You can now gather resources 24/7 if you really want to. You don't get as much experience as you would if you had rested time but it's a great way to build up resources for a crafting surge. Plus im going to be moving some crafting tools to easier towns so people can craft earlier in the game.

Well, it is a bit hard to judge given that the game is less than two days into release, but my point wasn't about the current economics, but the future of the crafting system and economy, and how much improved it would be with more players participating, while still keeping major advantages and profits for the paid players.

I still stand by that the restrictions I suggested above are impossible to exploit for personal gain by farming on multiple free accounts.

I agree, though, that the game needs to age a bit before we can see what sort of economy emerges. I hope you'll keep the idea in mind, however, if it appears to be slower than you expect or desire.

(P.S. I love that you actually read and reply to our suggestions and posts, Jeff. Not many game developers will take the time to interact with their players like that.)

Yeah being able to gather without rested AT will be a huge help. With this update trading is just now a nice incentive for people to get a subscription account, but it's not necessary in the least. Also, when I played in the beta people didn't even use auction until much later into it and we all survived! And that was with those low chest amount, no gold rushes and no random drops!

[Flashus]

i pointed out earlier that free accounts were limited to what class the could play due to the trade/auction restrictions.

but the tax on the free account still doesn't make it worth their while.#

i agree the basic economy is very young now but in a few weeks your resource gathering will depend on what others are selling. especially if you want to start crafting actual armour/weapon pieces, and not just making the next stage of an items.

i did a lot of work in crafting before the release, and it takes a lot of resources to make the basics for equipment. and even then you need a few of each items.

i was running 6 chars in beta doing the crafting and gathering the reources.

you can get all skills up to 10 and 1 over that. at 20+ you can get a second over 10 but only the same as the skill allowing you to do so. (can't remember name)

[doctor-warlord]

i like this idea it would be a great help i think to both free and paying accounts as there then would be more on sale and price would be much more reasonable

anyway i can get some cliffs?

Originally Posted by Glitchless

It's temping given that the game is so young and the economy so underdeveloped for you to want to have the market flooded with cheap resources farmed by poor asian children in the basements of china. Keep in mind that this would not benefit anyone in the future when prices were crap. Nodiatis is going to have a very strong economy because of these trade restrictions.

That being said, RESTED TIME to the rescue! You can now gather resources 24/7 if you really want to. You don't get as much experience as you would if you had rested time but it's a great way to build up resources for a crafting surge. Plus im going to be moving some crafting tools to easier towns so people can craft earlier in the game.

I believe Nodiatis will have a very strong economy... after a VERY long time. Only a small % of all players actually have the ability to function and contribute to the market. This makes the economy is very exclusive to those who participate- but much like how exports/imports work, there will be NO economy stimulus from the majority of players, which are non-paying accounts, and a LOT of the game economy going OUT to the non-paying accounts on the other hand. Lose-Lose situation there.

I think Camlis' idea makes a whole lot of sense in creating a FULLY functional market, contrary to the very stagnant, closed-off one currently in game, while keeping correct securities against economic corruption via gold/item farmers (Eww) and allowing members with full access to continue to have the major influence, or the biggest potential to affect the economy.