So, to start, i have some background on basic macroeconomy (I studied economy but with a focus on Micro / Finances, i am by NO means a Pro about this or any of what i say have any weight beside what i have observed.) but i have played alot of MMOs and have always analyzed how their particular economy worked, compared to real life. I also want to apologize since im not a native english speaker and i have carpial tunnel syndrome so if I mess up any word that can still be understood i probably wont go back to re-type it.
Also i want to point out that since Tree of Savior is a F2P game, they Will have to add features to be paid for with real money, and as such, i will take that into consideration.
First i want to talk about Inflation. Inflation happens when money is Created. This is usually done by 3 main things.
Quests.
Selling Drops.
Monsters Giving Gold when dying.
There are some minor extra things, like skills that can create money or items, but those are the main 3.
Among this 3, the best way to control inflation is through Selling Drops as a major if not only Gold Income.
The reason behind this is 2-fold.
First, people won’t be able to create new characters in other to do more quests and get more gold. Some games try to make it so the higher the quest level, more gold you get, but that’s not health to ingame economy as i’ll explain later on.
Second, drops can be used, for equip or crafting or quests, so this gives players a Choice, of what they value more. (I believe in all games, choice is an important mechanic to make it fun). Also, different to money, drops have Weight, which is a mechanic often used (or inventory-space, think Diablo 1-2) so there is a point when farming were the player has to choose if they stay and cant pick any more items, but dont waste time going back (for example when trying to level up) or they have to go back to sell so they can keep makiing a profit.
Now on this, Tree of Savior made one excelent choice and one terrible choice. The good one is they reduced the price materials can be sold to NPC (value to Players doesn’t not affect Inflation, which is the main source of economy’s death sentence), But they reduced the amount you get and needed for crafting, while keeping he proportion, this affected how weight impacted farming.
At this point, the only way to make money is selling gear, and here is where TOS failed miserably. First they have really high drops for gear in general, also having increasing selling costs. The second one was making Level requirements tiers. The reason this is bad is, basically, if you get a good weapon, every weapon for that tier will probably be “always worse” (just lower values, no trade-off) so all you can do is sell it for cash. And they give alot of cash.
Now, Devs had an Idea, “lets make an Auction House so players will sell them to other players and not to the NPC, also we take 10% of the market, or whatever the cost of the AH”.
Auction House is equal to perfect information market and that Kills the economy in a MMO.
This also creates 2 different problems.
You can buy the best gear for your tier level and then everytime you listen to the drop sound, instead of the excitement you get when a legendary is dropped on diablo 3 or a card was dropped on Ragnarok Online, you just know it will be worst than what you have or the worst items for next tier, which usually are also worst.
The other reason is that it takes from a player experience, of searching though a market. Kind of like walking through a flea market and getting that excitement of finding a bargain that no one else noticed or didn’t get to it before you. This helps not only as an exciting activity for some players, but it also gives them something to do when they are bored of killing monsters / doing quests / farming for gear, instead of just logging off and playing something else.
Now lets talk about what IMC though to do about controlling the Inflation. These are called Money-sinks. The idea is to add increasing costs to things for you to spend on. This could be done in a good way or in a bad way. IMC chose poorly .
The idea of Moneysinks is Give players something they CAN do to spend their money. But a bad moneysink is something that FORCES you to spend money. What i mean by forces is that, if you don’t you dont stay competitive or are just on a worse condition as another player.
Some examples of MoneySinks in this game are:
- 1% damage attributes. +x damage / amount of skill uses attributes (Gung Oh, Blessing etc…)
- Repairs (This could be used as a mechanic, as in stronger item with lower durability, but here is a plain moneysink/penalty for dying just to control how long you grind, which also doesn’t work that much since gear is not that big of a deal anyways).
- % AuctionHouse from selling items.
- Pet leveling.
(im sure im missing some, but cant remember at the moment)
There are also Convinience MoneySink, which are a choice and are healthy:
- Teleport
- Potions
- Upgrades.
Upgrades on themselves work really well with “permanent” gear, that can get “destroyed”. The problem with TOS is the Potential System and the Item Requierement Level Tier.
Also Upgrades are so expensive its just isnt worth it. Upgrades should be sort of a “end game” - Alt charachter thing, that makes the “replayability” of the game better, but in TOS you just go full until you lose one potential and you stay there, since the upgrade in defense / damage is not worth the insane cost anyways.
Lets Just leave it that the whole potential / trading / item level requirement tiers is terrible for the game overall, takes from the excitement of drops, the repleyability of the game with alts, the Ability to help a friend get into the game, the interest of upgrading etc.
Moneysink have to be Optional - Impactful - Fun - Convenient - Exciting - Everyone should be able to participate on them.
Teleport is a good example
Potions
A lottery is something i never see on MMOs and i have no idea why. All you need is to have people participate Either once a day or once a week, then a % of the total amount is taken and the rest is given to the player/players who win.
You can do this with almost anything, Just some RNG game,
Could be buying Booster-like Recipe Books, with a random Recipe inside.
Could be Dead Branch Like Items.
Could be X time duratin Costumes, you name it.
Another example is, Requiem Online. They had a “Attribute / Mastery / Talent” System were you could have up to 5 of them. It would take about 10 hours of gameplay to even get 5 of them, and you could arrange them as you wished, BUT, you would have top pay 2^x gold, were X was the amount of them you ended up with, from 1 to 5. So, it could be 2 - 20 - 200 - 2.000 or 20.000 gold. This was a great system because you could try all of them out by a mere 2 gold each, but chosing a build costed 200 or more. And any Endgame Player had to pay 20.000 every time they changed. Every “talent” would roughly increase the “power” of a skill by 20-30%, from Damage, to Cost, Cooldown, Amout of targets to seconday effects.
Another good example was also in Requiem. You could pay to Reroll your gear’s Stats, In requiem, all gear had a fix “amount” of stat they gave, beside the usual Defense or Attack. For example, the “miner boots” would give a fixed 2 defense and a total of 10 “stats” that could be whatever combination from [10 Dex], to [1 Str, 3 Con, 6 Int] no more than 3 Stats could be given in a single piece of Gear, and as few as 1.
Rerolling had a fixed amout, acording to the gear “level” but it’s cost increased by 10% of last attempt to reroll. So, most players would just try to get at least 70% of useful stats (or at least 50% offensive useful stats), and stop there. Now im not saying for TOS to do this, since it would go against my “tier requiered item level stuff” but im trying to make a Money sink point.
Now i’ll change the topic to Player-Player Economy.
The main thing here is not having higher level players earn more money than lower level players. You want economy to be as stable as possible, along all levels of players. This is because higher level players will make more money than lower level players just because of their level. Be it because they have played for more time or because they can kill 100 monsters in the time a lower level kills one, and so they generate more income. This only works if you keep costs somewhat even along the way.
The reason you don’t want higher income at higher levels is because, you don’t want your players saying “I could farm for this X gear or this Y material, I’ll just power level and then buy it from lower level players”.
I would like to refer to The game that shall not be named, Ragnarok Online Gasp
Because it had a Solid Economic Fundation. Now.
BEFORE EVERYONE COMES KILLING ME FOR SAYING THAT.
i Know ragnarok had inflation issues BUT, It was just 1 problem that generated that:
Drops / Price.
The problem was that, to control via weight, the amout of “miscellaneous” drop was really high, which isnt really a problem, BUT, the price you could sell them was also quite high, some went even close to 450z.
The other problem was Unslotted gear drop. You could farm mobs that had a 1% chance of dropping some unslotted Stilleto or something and sell that for 10k-40k NPC.
Also, the way gear could be destroyed and how Upgrades worked, made it so that ALOT of money was spent that way, also on Flywings and Pots (Convenience). It had a way for lower level players to get excited for drop that could be sold to higher level players for alot of money etc…
To conclude and as a TLDR, IMC needs to change the way economy works if they want this game to last for years to come. Their current MoneySink Forced on Players wont last long, their Gear Tier Obsolette item will also collapse the economy because it is just not worth upgrading something that won’t be used after a few levels. The Auction House has to die, its either Auction House or Economy.
ABOUT real money economy. First they need the game to feel like it has a future, or nobody will spend on it. Also, the idea is that People don’t feel like they Have to pay to stay relevant. I Do consider the autorevive as a good mechanic, kind of like Candy Crush, but if Gems are gonna be dropped, then it feels unfair to people who cant pay. Just make it as a convenience thing. Also, think League of Legends. Cosmetics.
I for one, have never bought a Steam Game i wasn’t gonna play and never with less than a 55% Discount. And yet, every year i Spend 50 Dollars on League of Legends to Buy skins that make Absolutely no Difference. And i have never regretted it.
I know IMC are not that good with english and this is a really extensive post, but i hope they take the time to consider what i have “said”.