Aion's Economy

[[PhiberOpticks]]

Originally Posted by DeIF

I remember to have read somewhere that economy in Aion is auto-balanced (correct me if I'm wrong).
So the most bought items are increased in price at stores (or maybe between player with a tax system, who knows), and vice versa.
Also, the most hunted mobs become stronger.

If an item is considered "junk" and sold to NPCs every second, its price will soon get closer to zero. Nobody will get rich selling junk.
If people get richer and richer, they will use his/her money to buy lots of things, but then, these things will become more expensive as the people buy them. People will have ten times more money, but things also cost ten times more.

If a mob drops a very desirable item, hordes of ebayers will hunt that mob, but then, that mob will get stronger with time, and change its drops. Ebayers will have a hard time seeking for new mobs to hunt.


We'll see if these measures work or not in the game.

That sounds pretty good.

maybe you could have your items "grow" with you as you lvl? ex. your armor is not just some armor you picked up but an expression of you personalility and you soul...so instead of using money to improve your armor you would use you xp.

Then there is no point in purchasing new armor which helps drive the player-based economy.

[Hitokiri_Kenji]

"maybe you could have your items "grow" with you as you lvl?" Thats from Ragnorak Online 2. Not that its a bad thing, but you would eventually ditch your lvled up armor when you see a new piece of armor drop on the ground when you kill a mob, or see it in a shop.

To all of you who are wondering about the exp grind, there will always be exp grinds in MMORPG's. And since this is an NCsoft made game, you can expect the exp grind to be intense, just like Lineage 2. (I too come from Lineage 2). As for the money issue, I have no idea. There are always ways around to making enough money to get the armor you want, but it won't come easy.

[Necrosis]

Originally Posted by Hitokiri_Kenji

To all of you who are wondering about the exp grind, there will always be exp grinds in MMORPG's. And since this is an NCsoft made game, you can expect the exp grind to be intense, just like Lineage 2.

NCSoft already announced it only takes a month to cap your level. Even if it meant ingame time, lets say 720 hours, thats nowhere close to an intense grind

[Haubix]

Originally Posted by Necrosis

NCSoft already announced it only takes a month to cap your level. Even if it meant ingame time, lets say 720 hours, thats nowhere close to an intense grind

Thats a good thing, right?

[Knite]

Originally Posted by Haubix

Thats a good thing, right?

Well, yes and no in my opinion, guys. It is justified in the manner that you start with amnesia so regaining your skills and thoughts would hopefully be easier than re-learning them. It will be a nice change not to have to grind for years, but this puts a lot more pressure on end-game, where unfortunately most MMOs lack content. If they think that abyss PvP and fighting for castles is all you need for end game, they're going to have upset folks. Everything gets old without variety. There needs to be exploration quests, quests in zones that only lvl 50 can access (and rewards for those since xp in by this time irrelevant), and other exclusive, high level, benefits/things to do.

If getting to level 50 takes a month to the hardcore gamer, lets say 3-5 for the truly casual, you've got a lot of game time to fill afterwards. I trust NC with this game. I'm sure they've considered all this.

[Yakuzan]

Aion needs more than one money sink. Lineage2 only had one big money sink called "SoulShots"(Used to increase your attack power by a decent amount) but only dwarves could craft them, Aion needs 4-5 ways of making money and that all classes/races have access to it. I liked the hard-core way of Lineage2 but WoW is too easy, they need to make Aion in between.

Originally Posted by Haubix

Thats a good thing, right?

Well if you don't like killing monsters over and over for unlimited hours then yes. Frankly, I loved Lineage2's way. There were only a few players who reached level 80, I never got near the cap but I felt like each time I got a level was very rewarding. I was casual so it went slow but atleast I didn't bore myself in a month like in WoW.

[RuinPhantom]

I enjoyed knite's early post about SWG and L2 economy/drop systems. I agree fullheartedly. Any mob that is killed should only yield items/parts concievable to be had on that mob. And if a mob is to yield loot, it should be usable: to make food/a potion/weapons/armor. I can see using teeth/ears/claws/genitals to create a necklace that has x effect. Scales/bones/leather/spider's silk/etc to make weapons/armor. And if someone has an idea of iddy-biddy-creatures that may not have any concievable use, then those may be pests and you have some npc give you a quest with a reward comperable to the risk of facing those mobs. We've seen it before "oh my village/farm/family is being ravaged by such-and-such creatures."

and my brain stopped working...

but yah...

Oh I remembered where I was going. And if you kill a rabbit you shouldn't get a stick or coal or a staff of ultimate destruckshun. It should be something to be found on said rabbit, ie rabbit eyes/ears/feet/pelt/bones/innards/meat/symbiotic creatures/viruses/deseases/stds?....you freaky old bastard

[Infinity]

Originally Posted by Midgarsormr

I'd like this game's economy to be a mixture of WoW and FFXI. In WoW, a 10 year old can be insanely rich. This makes the game so easy that you don't feel special for affording something that costs 1000g when just about everyone else can get it like you (hope i'm explaining this right). In FFXI it was -too- hard but when you had money people would dazzle in amazement from your armor lol. I guess it has to be right in the middle.

Somewhere in the middleground of WoW and FFXI would be own, maybe more on the FF side... Like Midgarsormr said, WoW too easy, FFXI too hard. It needs to be hard enough so that there is a benefit to having money, getting a lucky drop, being a avid crafter, farmer etc. So that you can buy the best potions/buffs/armor/weapons etc. However, it needs to be easy in the fact that your not screwed if you don't get lucky and cant' devote all your free time to farming etc. That's how I see it.

Infinity

[chaosdruid]

Originally Posted by Aseenus

id say WoW has a pretty good idea of economy, to neutralize ebaying and such they bough out daily quests which earn u more then enough money, u wont need to ebay

World of Warcraft had no economy. You quested at max level to pay for your epic mount, then sold vendor trash to cover repairs. There was no truly player-based economy.

Originally Posted by Midgarsormr

I'd like this game's economy to be a mixture of WoW and FFXI. In WoW, a 10 year old can be insanely rich. This makes the game so easy that you don't feel special for affording something that costs 1000g when just about everyone else can get it like you.

I know exactly what you mean. Having insanely expensive gear in FFXI really meant something, whereas in WoW, I didn't feel awesome in awesome gear.

Originally Posted by knite16

There should not be an NPC who buys crap. Nor should they buy it by the ton with unlimited funds. If you have the luxury of creating your world and the items in it, make every item useful. There should never be an item in the game whose only purpose is to be sold to a junk NPC. It would be like a player grinding the same critters who drop the same crap loot for 3 hours, then taking a jar of 300 eyeballs to an NPC and them saying, "Wow, that's really great. I'll take them all!"

I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, there should never have been "grey" (aka. 100% useless) items. Every single solitary item should serve a definite purpose. And NPCs should not clamor over stupid items that serve no purpose, if NCsoft is foolish enough to implement them at all.

Now onto my suggestion for end-game, player-based economy. . .

Crafting should be the key to everything. Like there aren't high level item drops, there are high level material drops. You gather up a few materials from various monsters and then take them to another player who can forge them into awesomeness (not entrusting the player with it, of course, but kind of like WoW's little enhancing system). Then these awesomenesses who not be sellable.

This would make it harder to become awesome because instead of banking on one lucky drop you need a few. Also it makes crafting clutch to the end-game, it gives crafts like blacksmithing, and carpentry, and tailoring real use in the end. Because, in most MMOs, then crafts that specialize in consumables are the only viable cash crafts in the economy. I'd just like to see a system that requires far more cooperation in a guild then just the battle, you would need to have a solid mix of craftsmen to get the epix.

[Kap]

if you lvl cap in a month then you should have plenty of time to farm away in the abyss and make some coin. problem will be with how to get top items.
i prefer if it could be done through crafting and drops but the problem with that is farmers who camp the bosses and areas where you get the drops. >>L2<<
if they control the farmers then player run economy will work fine . its a natural progression to charge more for higher demand items.

i dont want this game to be easy i am already concerned with the ease at which you get to top lvl..

i hope they will make it VERY hard to get top gear, if i break my *** in a race to top lvl i want to get something for it.

[Infinity]

Originally Posted by Kap

.
i dont want this game to be easy i am already concerned with the ease at which you get to top lvl..

i hope they will make it VERY hard to get top gear, if i break my *** in a race to top lvl i want to get something for it.

Same here, I'm a little concerned about the release that they made it easier to max level. Although I'm not quite sure how hard it was to begin with... I just hope there is plenty of content and time getting to max... and not just an easy grind to max and then only endgame stuffs.

Infinity

[aznkenshin]

You won't feel the need to grind for endgame purposes.

As soon as you're level 50, the storyline will most likely still be going on. Players should (and will) finish that PvE part, and then they would most likely continue their Aion experience by Roleplaying, or what I predict to be the most popular, PvPing for Abyss points.

Don't know what Abyss points are? Use our Wiki. I've began a small article about Abyss. Feel free to add on to it.

[Szaman]

I fear only one thing: broken realtion between lvl progression and "wealth" progression (meant here as a combination of money AND equipment*). Can you balance gaining levels with finding/buying/crafting equipment of an appropriate quality? Or do you have to make "leap progression", gaining few levels then being forced to take a break in order to catch up with money to buy equipment/to farm materials?

*as everyone know not every time money = possibility to buy top equpiment, hence the distincion

[datboi448]

When I used to play guild wars I liked how the prices for buying/selling runes and dyes was dynamic with NPCs. Only problem was you had to go to the dye NPC to get the current price. All other NPCs would only buy a dye like black (from the last time I played cost 1 plat. 500g) for 1g. I think it would be fair for this to work with all NPCs and all items. However, I am not sure if I would like all the NPCs to offer the same price or have each NPC have a different price depending on how many people use that NPC and what they sell to it. Not only would it provide a fair price for selling items that nobody wants but can discourage farming for items that drop 99% of the time and selling them for a fairly large amount of money.

The only problem is that it would be very tough to keep the prices up to date. I know that counter strike source added dynamic pricing to its weapons menu. However it was only updated weekly since it would record every weapon purchase by every player(minimum of 24,000+ purchases every 2 minutes).

[orgun]

Originally Posted by Night_Stalker

Yeah FFXI was very similar to Lineage 2 in that regard. Everybody was a that was rich bought their money online. I never did so, and as a result I had to farm for about 5-6 hours every 5-8 levels to afford my next new set of equipment.

I don't mind farming for an hour or two every now and then, but I shouldn't have to spend my entire day hoping I get lucky with drops so that I can afford some armor that will become obsolete in a few levels.

Just thinking about farming silk and beehive chips in FFXI makes me sick

lol i remember this but also not every one who played ffxi was ebuyer i put lot of time in to my account 100+3 goldmsithing with good endgame link shell and craft u was in money or a luckey Kclub x2 and sell one :P 150mil just put the work in and you will have money .There will walways be people who buy for the shaire fact they can just going to have to deal with it the problem is Gold sellers uping prices this became very bad in ffxi at one stage