A formal definition of "prices are too high"

I propose the following simple and unambiguous test as to whether prices are too high:

Is any replaceable item worth more money than a player is allowed to carry at one time?

The reason I qualify that with "replaceable" is that unique items (say, badge-providing stuff that no longer gets created by the game engine) could in theory be outside the normal range. But for an item which can, in general, be obtained through play... The price should not be more than you can carry at once. If it is, the amount of money is too high with respect to the amount of stuff.

I have spent a long time arguing that there's no such thing as a price that is Clearly Too High, but I have realized that I was mistaken. If there are regular items that are part of the intended scope of play and which are saleable, but are worth more than the inf cap, then either the cap is too low or the prices are too high. Or both.

In general, I think the game is suffering from too much inf and not enough inf sinks. (Giant2005 proposed an alternative, which is a mode where inf is turned off and drop rates increased.) I am generally persuaded that the basic idea is correct; you get too much inf just from kicking stuff in the face, and not enough inf gets used up.

But the first thing, I think, is to come up with a measurable criterion for whether the problem is fixed. I think the above is one of the few things that would work, simply because it ties directly in to the question of why the game needs a monetary system at all, the answer being that things can be traded for money.

That seems like a fair criterion. Especially the difference between something selling on-market for 2 billion and off-market for 2 billion and 1 is that one destroys 200,000,000 inf and the other does not.

["worth" == "almost always sells for" in this context, before we get into that side argument.]

There is good and bad news on that front: The good is, the most expensive item in game is selling for only slightly over 2 billion (2.25 is pretty standard these days)- so it's getting close to regular on-market sales. The bad is, more "almost as expensive" items are getting awfully close to 2 billion [I think only three things are over 2 billion regularly- the Glad Armor, Shield Wall, and Panacea specials- but I've been wrong before, often and in public.] There are quite a number of 1.5+Bn PVP items, and purples are getting close to a billion each in many cases.

realistically, due to the number of inf. sinks or lack thereof, purples and pvp ios will likely stay high and increase in price over time. Everything else is cheap and has been mostly stable for a few years.

I disagree with the definition. The current Inf cap is simply due to the size of a signed 32 bit integer on a computer. The Devs could have used an unsigned 32 bit integer, in which case the Inf cap would probably have been 4B. Or they could have used a 64 bit integer, at which point the cap would have been silly high. But that doesn't really have anything to do with the Market or Inf earning rates.

The whole "prices are too high" issue is due to the exponential earning rate as you level, combined with compounded earning rate of farmers. The average Inf earning rate of characters below level 50 is probably 10k-1M/hour, taking into account Inf from defeats and mission completes, Salvage, and Recipes. Level 50s are maybe 5M/hour. Farmers are more like 100M/hour, with 500M/hour being possible. So farmers earn a HUGE amount of Inf compared to non-farmers, and they are willing to pay high prices to get the best stuff. Marketeers can profit off the farmers by flipping, crapping, or whatever, so they can similarly pay high prices to get the best stuff.

"Prices are too high" if you're not a Farmer, and if you aren't profitting from farmers.

That's my point, though! That you can have multiple-times the inf cap, and that it can be useful to have that kind of money, means that the inf cap and the prices of items are badly out of sync.

If you changed NOTHING else in this game, but moved the inf cap to, say, 50B, then I wouldn't argue that prices were "too high". They are too high because the game's monetary mechanics are broken by them. I'm not arguing that things are too expensive. Prices are too high, and so is income. All the numbers are too large, and we can tell because we're encountering a game mechanical limitation that makes no sense.

My first attempt would be:

Move the inf cap WAY out. Like, trillions. Allow bids on the market to be 5-10B, etcetera.

If more things went through the market, that would lead to a LOT more money being skimmed by WW fees. That would help. If buying something that cost 3B took 300M off the market instead of 0M, that would be some sink.

Past that... Lots of need for more inf sinks. I quite like the "1M inf per level to move IOs to other levels" idea that is periodically floated. Buy a level 50, spend 17M, have a level 33. Would help significantly with recipe shortages and funnel millions out of the game.

A graduated fee at the auction house might be a more progressive inf sink. Bigger sales take out a bigger % fee. This avoids hurting the newcomer and the inf-poor, while only slightly inconveniencing the richer player -- and it would occur at the point at which he makes his money, not ding him for having a lot of stored money he's already "earned."

I won't propose exact numbers, but it ought to be possible for a knowledgeable dev to carefully adjust the rate, so that it's not too onerous but at least helps drain some inf out of the system.

Maybe. I see that as an incentive for the most aggressive market users to take those transactions off-market. Whether a significant percentage of them did that depends a lot on the personality demographics of players who dominate the volume of the highest value sales.

TopDoc: I would argue that prices are "too high" when they cause the market to fail to work. If you want an over-2-bn item you have the possibility of getting ripped off, you have to set up an exchange instead of just letting the market do its magic; it's inconvenient and it risks runaway inflation [more items over 2 bn = less inf sunk = greater prices for everything = more items over 2 bn...]

So to me this is a case where prices are too high because it's interfering with the game's ease of use, and with its inf sources and sinks .

"People can't afford stuff" is not, if i understand it right, the argument the original post is making.

A marketeer would say "prices are too high" if they can't bid for stuff on the Market because it sell off-market for over the Inf cap. A powergamer would say "prices are too high" because they don't have enough Inf to buy purples that actually are on the Market. A casual player would say "prices are too high" because they can't buy anything decent on the Market. I would say the later two uses of "prices are too high" are far more common, so it doesn't make sense to restrict that phrase to meaning what the Marketeer thinks.

I'm not approaching this as a marketeer, but as a UI developer.

If the UI doesn't work, Something Is Wrong.

Can I use the trade interface to complete a trade, y/n? If not, something is probably wrong. If I have to break a trade into two parts because the trade interface can't represent the fair market value of an item, then prices are meaningfully "too high". Not in the sense that they're inconvenient to a given player's purposes, but in the sense that the software is unable to perform its designated function.

It's just as fair to say the inf cap is too low. I'd guess that it should be closer to 100b, and that if it were, not only would all us marketeer types be happier, but also all the min-maxers and casual players.