Looking at the economy

[s_saini89]

So I’ve been looking around and I haven’t seen much on how the currency in the game is going to work. I’m afraid of long term inflation, which is common when it comes to these games. To a point in which it becomes a taxing issue when it soon turns into a pay to keep up scenario. If someone can fill me in or just let me know there’s just enough information yet.

[Snivs]

Please, take a look at my take on economy. It tries to prevent players from getting too rich too fast, and money being traded by the mass gets higher taxes. Please, let me know your questions and what you think!

Continuing the discussion from Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server:

Preparing for a Healthy Economy in the International Server

From this previous topic, Noticing how expensive everything was in the Korean Cash shop made me worry about the game economy, not just the quantities of silver in the server, but actually the revenue that the game could generate in terms of real life currencies.

Well, My last haircut was roughly $3, I could have about 10 real life haircuts for the same amount a kTOS haircut costs.

Due to the current exchange rates, I’d have to pay ONE FULL DAY OF WORK for a Token or a ToS Haircut, and I have an salary that is somewhat average for professionals in their 20-30’s here in Mexico, so… The average 10-20’s wouldn’t be purchasing much, and quickly falling behind, not turning into a potential customer once they reach a more productive age.

I have rambled a lot about it… but now, I want to offer a couple suggestions that I believe would help the game be more successful in the west, therefore, I suggest IMC as the sole publisher of iToS:

• Drop the prices about 85% for haircuts, these are just too expensive. Think of sales volume. Some players like to change haircuts every now and then, some of them even do it recurrently given the right price, it’s a long run shot. Edit: Haircuts seem to come in as pieces of gear for a special slot, think wig collection!
• Remove EXP Boosters, these are detrimental for the Western F2P experience and a frustrated F2P player is less likely to ever spend and more likely to leave the game or not take it seriously at all.
• Drop the price of the VIP Token by 66%, I’m talking to about 10 USD, so more people can afford it, the more, the merrier; and the merrier, the more likely to spend more again, think of sales volume and people purchasing over and over.
• Replace the +3 Movement Speed buff from the VIP token in kOBT with an additional simultaneous attribute. The movement speed attribute makes any potential PvP unbalanced beetween Free and Token players, and 3 simultaneous attributes makes the token more attractive.

In the ingame economy, I think silver is pretty worthless and easy to come by, and when everybody can be rich, nobody is really rich, these are my suggestions:

• Make silver drops scale based on level difference, like experience, so, botters can’t just slow-farm silver low level mobs, this doesn’t address bots farming loot.
• Make instanced dungeons reward silver, an incentive to run dungeons in a daily basis.
• Create daily quests that reward silver, an alternative to grinding for money in endgame.
• Make Tax a more complex and iterative formula, like this:
  – Base tax = 0.80% = 0.08
  – Define multiple silver limits, each 10k, 20k, 30k… up to 100k, 200k, 300k… each 100k up to 1m, each 1m, 2m, 3m… up to 10m, each 10m, 20m, 30m … up to 100m, 100m, 200m, 300m … up to 1000m and so on.
  – For each limit that a sale suprasses, add an iteration for the tax to be calculated with it.
  – So your tax formula becomes: (1-BASE_TAX)^(1+ITERATIONS) (This is the iterativity I’m talking about).
  – Your tax is recalculated every time you get raw income (market sales, npc sales, silver from trades), based on the total amount of income you’ve earned from previous sales/trades that day. This makes it so that the more you sell/trade during the same day, the more tax % you actually have to pay, even if you sell bunches of cheap items.
  – Your total income tax is reset periodically, maybe daily, weekly or during maintenances.
  – This system emphasizes on avoiding players from getting extremely rich, while helping players with less who handle less money (mostly during the earlier levels), pay a lot less taxes than rich players.
  Example:
• Your base tax: 0.8% (it does seem low, but it scales up).
• You sell an item for 50k, you have 1 base iteration and suprased 5 limits so far (10k,20k,30k,40k and 50k), so you’re getting 6 iteratinons. Your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(6 iterations) = 1-0.92^6 = 0.0471 = 4.71%
  Your taxes will be 4.71%, so your item will be charged for it:
  50,000 - 4.71% = 50,000 - 2355 = 47,645.
• In this same scenario, you sell another item for 100k, accodring to this system, you have already sold 47,645, so your total income will be 147,645 you have 1 base iteration + 10 iterations (10k-100k, the next iteration not being until 200k), meaning you’re getting 11 iterations, your tax is
  1-(1-0.8%)^(11 iterations) = 1-0.92^11 = 0.0846 = 8.46%
  Your taxes will be 8.46%, so your total income will be charged for it:
  147,645*8.46%=12,491.
  But you’ve already paid 2,355, so only 12,491-2,355 = 10,136 are applicable taxes, meaning you will earn 100,000-10,136=89,864, by making these calculations, you pay the same when you sell a single item for 150k, or several items for 150k in the same period (day/week/maintenance).
• Daily Income should tracked account-wide.
• Any amount of Silvers spent with an NPC should be sustracted from your daily income, so the more silvers you spend with NPCs, the less taxes you have to pay in your future transactions with other players.
• I’ve made an estimation spreadsheet, so you could try fiddling with the base tax, daily income and sales amount.
• Notice that the higher amounts of silver you recieve in a small period of time, the higher the taxes you will be charged, towards 900m, you are charged the following (when base tax is 0.8%: you get charged 30.89% which I consider fair for earning that large sum in such a short time period, while, when base tax is 2%, you get chraged 60.89% for the same quantity, which I consider way too abusive).

Please, let me know what you think about my ideas, Like if you want to let IMC know we want a healthy economy both for the company and the server.

Edit: an amount was wrong in the example calculation.
Edit: Corrected some percentages I wrote wrong.

[Raven]

Everyone is always worried about inflation but no one wants to have silver sinks which is what helps keep inflation at bay. Inflation is caused by too much money being in the game and in order to combat that you have to flush that money back out.

It helps to have good defenses in place against bots and of course trying to curb gold sellers, which are the two things that cause the most money being pushed into the game that ruins the economy.

The reason why they ruin the economy is because they create money (by selling items to npcs or through exploits) instead of trading money (by moving around existing money) at a much higher rate than what is normally created by the players.

Personally I think there’s too much money being created in the game. It was normal for players to have large sums of money so early in the game in icbt2. Apparently they’re starting to cut down on some of that by lowering the prices npcs will give you as well as making huge % cuts into your profits when trading at the market place in the Korean version.

Personally I find this to be a huge mistake. It’d be better to encourage trading for a more healthy economy. When players resort to selling items to npcs instead of trading, it creates money instead of exchanging as you would at the market place and as stated above it is exactly what causes inflation which ruins the economy. Logically it’d make more sense to encourage players to want to trade and make it very undesirable to sell to npcs.

That being said, it’d be best to allow players to trade as much as they want taking only small percentages of the profit (10%), allow for person to person trading, and make all items sell for nothing to npcs. This would limit money creation to just normal killing of enemies (since they do drop silver). This is however not the only way a player can obtain money, as everything else will act as normal except that you’d sell your goods to other players instead of an npc.

Lowering the cost of repair to compensate with the idea that players have less silver because of the above is much better than raising the cost over and over again because of inflation or else it just ends up a constant rise in both cost and money which can lead to problems with players simply being unable to play due to repair costs being too high.

Attributes as a money sink isn’t a very good one as this is not only temporary but just like with repair costs has an assumption that the player will have a large amount of money. But once they are done being bled by attribute costs they will suddenly have a large amount of silver, which isn’t good for the economy

tl;dr
With the way this game likes to create it’s money sinks and discourages trading it ain’t looking too good

[Snivs]

That being said, it’d be best to allow players to trade as much as they want taking only small percentages of the profit (10%), allow for person to person trading, and make all items sell for nothing to npcs. This would limit money creation to just normal killing of enemies (since they do drop silver). This is however not the only way a player can obtain money, as everything else will act as normal except that you’d sell your goods to other players instead of an npc.

The phrase I boldened would totally not make sense, but I see your intention.

On point, Limiting money creation so much seems like a barbaric control approach to me. We can have taxes, we can scale up taxes with income like I proposed. But honestly, very few people have taken time into reviewing the formula and its implications… I just hope it’s been handed to IMC as to review.

[s_saini89]

TBH I think bartering would probably make things easier on the economy. But then we would need to make a system so others could look at standardized values for said item(Idono drop rates, rarity, and rolls would make this difficult to set). Which might make silver useless in a farming point and only useful to npcs.

[elfochka]

They need to add silver sinks for swordsmen and maybe clerics since wizards and archers already waste a LOT of silver on blue and red pots.

Swordsmen and clerics (despite having to buy reagents for buffs) literally don’t have to spend anything when leveling - the can easily save up silver for new weapons, attributes etc.

[Raven]

They already have sinks for them. They spend more in repair costs because they’re melee. Swordsman maybe not so much since they kill so fast but some clerics take more time to kill mobs and the longer it takes to kill things in melee range while getting hit the more you’ll damage your equipment even though you can heal yourself. So yeah repairs for them is the issue. When they raised repair costs in icb2, me and a friend could not even play as clerics, because the cost of repairs plus reagents was way too much. Archers and wizards can sit and use the bonfire instead of chugging potions while grinding, which is either little to no cost to do and of course repair a lot less since they don’t get hit (well you’re not supposed to anyways).

[shyangyuan]

Frankly speaking…
I’m an ex-ro player. Me and my gang went Baphomet farming for a month and how much zeny do i get from the MvP Boss?
Answer: Zero

Monsters dun use human moneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

1. Monster dun drop money and equipment nor recipes except demi-humans.
2. Monsters drop loots and materials
3. Reduce potion prices
4. Take out enhancing price
5. Up anvil price
6. Lower equipment price
7. Up selling equipment/item to NPC from 10% - 50%
8. Reduce repair price up equipment durability
9. Kill taxes
10. Kill bots

[Raven]

RO never had a problem due to inflation? Also your proposal has little to no silver sink. Anvils are not only optional but temporary to the players once they get their perfect equipment. Zero taxes? really? Bots are always going to exist and so will players that can exploit. If you think item duplication won’t be a thing then idk what to tell you. Having silver come from npcs instead of monsters makes it easier for those that use item duplication to create money. They could produce a massive amount of silver very fast if all they have to do is sell a bunch of junk to npcs. If they have no choice but to sell duplicated items to other players then at least it doesn’t create a bunch of new money into the economy and only exchanges it. Silver created strictly from killing mobs forces there to be at least some work involved (even if it is done by bots). Bots are also MUCH easier to spot by anyone than item duplication which usually goes unnoticed for a long time.

[Pooka]

Well, there’re already a few (if not many) RMTers in every kToS server.
With one buck you can get around 30k silvers?
They’re coming~

[shyangyuan]

Even if sell at 1% of buying price, if someone took advantage on item duplication bugs, it will still create zillions of new money. So item duplication isn’t gonna be accounted on economic control.
At current rate, with item duplication, you could just buy max number of potions you could with your money, duplicate 20x then sell back to NPC and double you silvers or duplicate 20x or more of your bots loots.

The biggest source of silvers in the game are monsters. You stop monsters dropping money you could control the inflation in a better condition. Then you step in to kill bots. Games with monsters dropping money have the worst inflation rates.
RO is an exception. Original RO was a P2P game. They want people to spent money on the game buying monthly card every month. Thus bots went uncontrolled. Byalan, pyramid, sphinx are filled with bots in every servers in any language except PKServers. On the other hand, common material such as steel and iron as well as equipments and cards are way cheaper than PKServers where players could freely PK bots.
p.s. 5 normal RO server + 1 PKServers
5 server have 3000++ players and PKServer with 600++ max on WoE night.
15000 botters:players 600 <- RO population

Once you stop monsters from dropping cash, you’re already halfway from killing money vendor.
Current state, they dun even need to perform duplication glitches to earn money. Just on programs and sleep.

[thebloodyaugust]

• Remove EXP Boosters, these are detrimental for the Western F2P experience and a frustrated F2P player is less likely to ever spend and more likely to leave the game or not take it seriously at all.

While there are people that think this i guarantee you they are a minority, most people accept boosters as they are income for F2P games that don’t effect competitive end game content.

[Snivs]

Frankly speaking…I’m an ex-ro player. Me and my gang went Baphomet farming for a month and how much zeny do i get from the MvP Boss?Answer: Zero

Monsters dun use human moneyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Monster dun drop money and equipment nor recipes except demi-humans.
Monsters drop loots and materials
Reduce potion prices
Take out enhancing price
Up anvil price
Lower equipment price
Up selling equipment/item to NPC from 10% - 50%
Reduce repair price up equipment durability
Kill taxes
Kill bots

“Kill bots” hahaha, good one, man! That one in particular is the reason why all the former wouldn’t work. It’s the main one wounding the economy of almost every MMO (if not all of them) that has one.

While there are people that think this i guarantee you they are a minority, most people accept boosters as they are income for F2P games that don’t effect competitive end game content.

Could be, yeah. I’ve come to peace with these boosters, somehow. But they are too expensive for what they offer, I won’t spend at all in these. Maybe only the token, and that’s all. Make the boosts last for 12 hrs (that don’t run when you’re offline), and that’d be all good.

[Raven]

I’m saying sell stuff at 0% buying price. Items should not be sold to npcs for anything, so if dupe bug ever crops up then no problem on that front.

If you can regulate the amount of money by how much things sell for, you can also regulate money for how much monsters drop. The only difference is that there is always work involved with monsters dropping silver and also cuts away from people buying stuff at the market place and selling to npcs to make a profit.

Games that are f2p are always going to suffer more at the expense of bots and hackers whereas p2p and b2p have a pay wall to stop throw-away accounts from cropping up all over the place.

[Snivs]

Tbh, I think B2P would be fine for ToS… just as a wall, like you said. Initial purchase coming with a hearty starter pack including some nice untradeable goodies, like a token and a skill/stat reset.

Since we’re getting a release through steam, i guess IMC could get VAC protection as a layer of security, most steams players wouldn’t risk a VAC ban on their steam account. Identified third party programs could just be sent to Steam’s VAC team, so hackers/botters are more prone to get a VAC ban.

[shyangyuan]

“Kill bots” hahaha, good one, man! That one in particular is the reason why all the former wouldn’t work. It’s the main one wounding the economy of almost every MMO (if not all of them) that has one.

Actually…its the players that wounded the economy. Seller open a price, if nobody buying the price will come down eventually.

I’m saying sell stuff at 0% buying price.

Nice try but it just doesn’t make sense and it will promote even more money vendors & bots.

[isaacvithurston]

But in RO you get drops on kill that may as well be money anyways. Although I do like RO/L2 system of mobs dropping stuff that makes sense xD

[shyangyuan]

The different with item drop vs money is that item does not have a fixed price and there are no guarantee what you will get or how much it will worth per kill.

IMO, Money on monsters are supposed to be quest or bounties.
Let say…
kill the Leprechaun - Drop pot of gold - make sense
kill the Dragon Lord - Drop box of gold - make sense
kill the Orc - Drop gold coins - make sense
kill the Evil Lord - Drop cash cheque - totally doesn’t make sense

[greenfoxy21]

add elunium… as drop required to use anvil.

And i would love it~

[greenfoxy21]

…but evil lords need to pay the minions and stuff…

Think about washing they’re cloaks and stuff too.

Or when they need to file a complaint about an hero … ?