infamy/influence cap
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2009-08-25 02:59 in The Global Training Room Test Server
I'm interested in seeing some examples of hyperinflation at work. Very interested.
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Yes, this is the point. The game is not a necessity, and is thus more susceptible to minor fluctuations in satisfaction than the necessities of life are. If players feel that the luxury of playing this computer game causes them more grief than fun, they will leave.|
Originally Posted by Nihilii
This isn't real life, and people don't need to spend inf for needs such as food, homes, health care, education ; you know, life. In game, most priced things you can buy in the market are luxury - doubly so, because not only not you nor your character needs IOs to live, but SOs can also be bought at stores for a fixed price and are all you need to get through all the content in this game.
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It's not at all clear what percentage of players think that SOs are all they'll ever need, and what percentage think that IO sets are needed. That's why I couch statements in the form "If the majority believes..." -- I don't know what the majority believes, and I'm not sure anyone but the devs does because we don't have access to stats about who's got what on their characters.
But we should all be interested in having an economy that seems to be within the grasp of the average player. This can't be enforced rigorously by artificial means, it should happen organically by correctly designed supply and demand.
I think the devs are taking appropriate steps to stem inflation. The AE changes should remove some of the exploitative influence coming into the game, and encourage players to run regular missions which will increase the supply of salvage and purple recipes.
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In the game: A few months ago you could buy most uncommon salvage immediately for much less than 1000 inf. These days many of these go for 100,000. (Yeah, I know, only idiots pay that much for uncommon salvage.)|
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
I'm interested in seeing some examples of hyperinflation at work. Very interested.
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In the real world: In Weimar Germany hyperinflation made the German Mark totally worthless. People had to bring wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread. The government issued two-trillion Mark bank notes and 50-billion Mark postage stamps. Check out Hyperinflation on Wikipedia for more simultaneously hilarious and depressing examples.
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That's not caused by hyperinflation. That's caused by a significant drop in the supply of common salvage. A large portion of player time is no longer pent engaging in activities that generate common salvage hence the prices have increased dramatically.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
In the game: A few months ago you could buy most uncommon salvage immediately for much less than 1000 inf. These days many of these go for 100,000. (Yeah, I know, only idiots pay that much for uncommon salvage.)
In the real world: In Weimar Germany hyperinflation made the German Mark totally worthless. People had to bring wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread. The government issued two-trillion Mark bank notes and 50-billion Mark postage stamps. Check out Hyperinflation on Wikipedia for more simultaneously hilarious and depressing examples. |
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Thanks for the info on hyperinflation, but I'm still not seeing it happening in-game. I see a decrease in salvage supply what with all the people PLing in the MA...but my inf. is still just as valuable as it used to be.
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Originally Posted by Rodion
In the game: A few months ago you could buy most uncommon salvage immediately for much less than 1000 inf. These days many of these go for 100,000. (Yeah, I know, only idiots pay that much for uncommon salvage.)
In the real world: In Weimar Germany hyperinflation made the German Mark totally worthless. People had to bring wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread. The government issued two-trillion Mark bank notes and 50-billion Mark postage stamps. Check out Hyperinflation on Wikipedia for more simultaneously hilarious and depressing examples. |
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The 10% market fee should quench all of your fears.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
Something needs to be done to keep inflation in check. Right now the game is in hyperinflation mode. When this happens in real life (Germany during the 30s, Turkey and several other countries in the 90s) serious economic dislocations occur.
The cap is artificial and isn't a "solution" to hyperinflation. But raising it is the wrong answer -- inflation will continue to skyrocket unabated. If people have the time and inclination the price of purples will continue to rise to 5, 10 or 20 billion. The only thing that will stop it is the number of hours in the day that people have to farm influence. And if enough people are willing to buy influence from the spammers even that won't stop the inflation. The devs are making changes in I16 to stop AE missions from giving exorbitant experience and infamy. In essence, they're forcing arc writers to structure the enemy groups in AE missions along the same lines as dev-created enemy groups: to get the same xp as dev mobs, you have to create mobs with the same rules that dev mobs are created. Hyperinflation in the market is a bad thing. Like in real life, it can lead to a total economic collapse. For example, if the price of common salvage and uncommon recipes were to continue to soar into the tens of millions, and only dedicated farmers could afford to buy anything on the market, it could cause a major collapse of the subscriber base. If the majority of the player base believes they are completely locked out of the things they want, they'll leave the game. And that won't be good for farmers because a drastic collapse in subscriber numbers will mean no more improvements and new content, and the eventual death of the game. Finally, increasing the cap would result in a lot of bugs. Remember how long it took to get numeric separators into all the places where influence/infamy was displayed? Using numbers greater than 2 billion may require using a special numeric type that's not directly supported in the programming language the game is written in. The bug would most likely manifest itself by some odd influence transaction that lopped off the top part of your influence. For example, if you had 23 billion influence and bought 10 billion from a spammer, a likely bug would result in you having only 1 billion after the transaction instead of 33 billion. Considering what you were doing, you'd be unlikely to report this bug and you'd just be out 32 billion. |
The game isn't in hyperinflation mode. Players can still play the game, find stuff, sell it and then buy other stuff.
Purples can't rise to 2 billion. Players can't afford to pay a market fee of 200 million per purple. One or two items at this price can be sustained. All the purples... no.
High priced commons wouldn't create the scenario you suggest. Players can still play the game and find commons with ease. You neglect to think that sellers get money too.
good thing I dont need inf to have fun.
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...| Check out Hyperinflation on Wikipedia for more simultaneously hilarious and depressing examples. |
I'm getting the strong vibe that you're one of these people who believe reading one article on Wikipedia makes them an expert on the topic, especially as anyone informed about hyperinflation would choose today's Zimbabwe as an example rather than Germany in the "30s" (<= cough cough).
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| I don't know what the majority believes, and I'm not sure anyone but the devs does because we don't have access to stats about who's got what on their characters. |
Allow me to link this.
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You are confusing Currency Inflation for Supply and Demand.|
Originally Posted by Rodion
In the game: A few months ago you could buy most uncommon salvage immediately for much less than 1000 inf. These days many of these go for 100,000. (Yeah, I know, only idiots pay that much for uncommon salvage.)
In the real world: In Weimar Germany hyperinflation made the German Mark totally worthless. People had to bring wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread. The government issued two-trillion Mark bank notes and 50-billion Mark postage stamps. Check out Hyperinflation on Wikipedia for more simultaneously hilarious and depressing examples. |
The reason salvage has gone up is because while the supply has gone down, the demand has (depending on the piece) remained steady or gone up.
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Only problem i fear more, is with this, that the merit reward recipies will become much more expensive with people less farming the AE. I'd much prefer every other recipe be cheaper and have to work for the purples which are sole end game content.
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Originally Posted by Lothic
The 2 billion cap on INF was probably a value that was considered more than adequate 5+ years ago when the game first started long before we even had a market. The fact that data of that size could be stored in a single 32-bit signed integer is a programming convenience, but I would not call the use of something like that a "technical limitation". Data structures can be created to store numbers much larger than that even in 32-bit environments. Software is not "keeping" this value set at 2 billion.
But having said that I actually think keeping this value at 2 billion would be the best thing for this game. First of all it's an easy choice because nothing is modified and no additional risk of bugs is introduced. Second it provides a practical hard cap on how much things can cost in this game. Nothing can ever be bought or sold that would ever cost more than 2 billion INF. Frankly I don't think any one single thing should ever cost anywhere near that much regardless. Finally it prevents people from hording more than 2 billion which would motivate the few people who get that much INF to spend/sink it into the game's economy in constructive ways. The -only- thing that allowing people to have more than 2 billion INF would do is encourage price inflation to grow. Finally as Demobot mentioned I suspect the supply of purples is going to increase after I16 anyway. The sidekicking/difficulty changes should lead to more farming of missions that would drop purples. More supply equals cheaper prices...  |
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This is funny actually, everybody talking about raising the cap and blah blah blah... hmmm. lets see. We have a vault for salvage... in a bank of sorts.... Can't it just be coded in to be able to use this vault to store inf as well?
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Yes, I have been wondering this aswell.|
Originally Posted by GibberingLunatic
This is funny actually, everybody talking about raising the cap and blah blah blah... hmmm. lets see. We have a vault for salvage... in a bank of sorts.... Can't it just be coded in to be able to use this vault to store inf as well?
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Either increase the cap (why 1 billion, when you can have 2) or create an ATM system (or alternatively a giant piggy bank for bases.)
A way to transfer inf without using 2nd player/account would be a nige gesture aswell.
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Prices have not gone down. Put a 100 percent (of resale value) cap on items for sale. Then 2 billion cap would be more than enough.
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Originally Posted by Demobot
Purple prices will go down after I16 is released. Trust me.
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Well, yes, in that there would be nothing for sale at all, because it wouldn't be worth the effort of listing it.|
Originally Posted by baddad11
Prices have not gone down. Put a 100 percent (of resale value) cap on items for sale. Then 2 billion cap would be more than enough.
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Anyway, prices just got hugely improved by converters.
Insert obligatory thread necromancy image here.
But on-topic, take a quick look at L25 LotG 7.5% recharge enhancements - a few months ago, I could sell these for a cool 200 million. What is the price today?
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Originally Posted by baddad11
Prices have not gone down. Put a 100 percent (of resale value) cap on items for sale. Then 2 billion cap would be more than enough.
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This isn't real life, and people don't need to spend inf for needs such as food, homes, health care, education ; you know, life. In game, most priced things you can buy in the market are luxury - doubly so, because not only not you nor your character needs IOs to live, but SOs can also be bought at stores for a fixed price and are all you need to get through all the content in this game.
Common salvage can't get to the tens of millions, because it's simply too common. Unlike real life where specific goods must be obtained in specific places, here anyone can attack any mob and have a chance to get any kind of drop. Notable exceptions to this rule are purples IOs (level 47 mobs and above, if I recall correctly) and PVP IOs (drop only from players in PVP) ; and indeed, we can see the prices on these things is significantly higher than everything else, although the reasons above aren't the only cause of that.
No major collapse of the subscriber base will occur because of a (real or perceived) problem with the economy. A significant part of the playerbase (arguably the majority) doesn't partake in any way in the market or even the invention system beyond common IOs. Most players who really want to get the best stuff start adapting their playstyle to get it, either by farming or playing the market. The only folks who lose here are the few powergamers in denial, who will claim against any evidence they're casual gamers, and will not take any steps to get to their goals.