AMIA ARCHIVE • View topic

It came to my attention that the inflation we had on Amia was successfully lowered by introducing a hard cap on NPC shops. But at the same time, I am under impression that the value of epic items plummeted so much, that pretty much any character them afford it within a week of grinding. Weapons that once costed around 4,000,000 gp can now be bought for 100-300 thousands (2-5% of its old value).

Inflation in gold is reduced, but I cannot help the feeling that the items that were setting apart the epic characters once, are now pretty mundane. Meaning that our already overly epic setting is now infused with epic items wielded by everyone. Did we find the middle ground and did we do what was intended, or our system brought us to the polar opposite of the original problem?

Well... seeing as the items don't really disappear from the economy(unless a character retires, like Vilraniel did with a gazillion epics in her bags) the amount of items will just increase. It is a matter of supply and demand, with the demand simply not being able to keep up. With that in mind, I don't see how it is directly related to prices and the price system we have here.(That only affects how much 'value' say 200.000 gold really has)

We have many talented boss hunters here that care for the supply. Point is we're getting "in" way more than we are putting out, therefore cheap prices for items that nobody wants!

There wasn't really a system that caused this. It was one of two almost inevitable outcomes: either the looting and the design of the server simply impements newer and more powerful items to satiate the craving for epic loot, thus creating the secondary problem of a power creep, or the market becomes oversatuated with the luxury items and the value of those items dramatically drops because the playerbase is smaller than it used to be and there aren't a lot of new PCs with new demands, even from the same players. It was why I rushed to sell off a lot of my own epic loots before the prices plummeted. :wink:

The few I had left over I practically had to give away or loan.

Overall, this is an okay position to be in. For characters like your dwarf, Dead, it sucks. The situation remains that there are big fat haves and weedy little have nots and while the gap isn't really going to widen much from here, it isn't going to collapse either.

I feel like this video is actually very relevant to all this. It's a very good watch for those who haven't seen it before.

Extra Credits - MMO Economies

I don't know. Some items, weapons for instance, aren't cheap due to inflation necessarily. They're cheap because once you buy your weapon, you're pretty much not going to have to buy another one. In addition, you can really live without the extra 1d10 extra bludgeoning/piercing/slashing, so some people don't even bother, and the keen and +5 you can put on with mythal. Then you've got the fact that there's such a variance in weapons dropped, and the rates seem to be higher, that people end up walking around with piles of the things and they're willing to sell cheap just to get rid of them.

The scimitar you were trying to sell, for instance, really isn't worth a 1.5m unless you just draw a hard line, set the price there, and wait for someone who really needs one. If you dropped it to 500,000, you'd probably be able to sell it almost right away. But those folks telling you to sell a scimitar for 100,000 are just trying to get one over on you.

But, that's weapons. Other items have becoming wildly expensive. The last two fortification cloaks sold for, what, 17m? 18m? I mean, shit. You could probably get the same or close for arcane defiance cloth, considering the high number of dex builds out there. Tome of Mystra is up there, too. These are items useful to a large number of characters, they're not situational, they provide something you can't really get elsewhere, and their drop rates appear to be lower.

Other items are cheaper because there are better alternatives, and people save up for those rather than something lesser (Dragon Plate versus Arcane Defiance Plate). Or because they're just not as useful as other items you can get for those slots. Charisma items, for instance, don't sell as well. Most of the time, you wouldn't want to waste your cloak slot for the best charisma item because there simply isn't a better way to get 5 deflect AC and +5 extra saves EXCEPT the fortification cloak. So if you need charisma, you make it up another way. If there were +6 charisma gloves or belt, they'd probably sell higher.

I would say some of the epic items are going for less than they were. I just saw a cloak sold for 18 million ....18 million, that's not cheap. It may not be a merchant's market out there, but they can certainly make a hefty profit. My main character practically relies on merchants, and those who "Boss hunt", for much of his gear. Also, with the fact there is such a high turnaround with characters, different items are in demand at different times. Ever notice how some of the job system items are so damn hard to find, then suddenly the market is flooded with them? Supply and demand, it ebbs and flows like the tide, ever changing with the population of different characters.

Yeah. Iouns, for instance, used to sell higher. Some rings, too. Ultimately, people would pay 5m and still do, when there's a bidding war. But I've found 3m seems to be the price at which they go mostly quickly. Ultimately, it's up to the players that boss-hunt to set the prices. I've noticed some people out there really try to charge too much, so they constantly have a ton of the same epic shit they're trying to sell, over and over and over again. While, in the mean time, I've sold two of those items just by undercutting them. :-P

I seem to do pretty well in terms of getting rid of the shit quickly, at a price people find acceptable. If I can't sell something at the price I want, I'll generally just wait... or, use the items and a lower price to buy good will or other IC considerations. That's more useful than the gold a lot of the time.

Well the weapons cost less because there's quite a bit of them around, and it seems like for me (or maybe my characters are poor, hah!) that most people have less gold than they used to, also they are useless unenchanted to the max, I'd rather go for a greater magical weapon than unmythalled sureforged. But a mythalled one could prolly sell for 2 mill to the right people

I would personally say the prices finally are as they used to be and fixed themselves. Which is imho good. Back in the days epic loot never went for such crazy prices to begin with. I find this a positive change not a negative one, personally.

I don't see a problem myself. The cheap epic items are usually weapons, because they often just clutter up inventory space, and the most expensive epic items are the things everyone can use. It all makes sense to me.

I would have a heaping shit ton of epic weapons left, if not for people buying them for (what I assume) are larger plots involving NPCs. As it is, any that don't sell their first time out, I just toss in the faction chest for NPCs down the road.

Yossarin wrote:

For characters like your dwarf, Dead, it sucks. The situation remains that there are big fat haves and weedy little have nots and while the gap isn't really going to widen much from here, it isn't going to collapse either.

Nah, I sold off everything I had on him. He's sitting on 50+ millions now. Though if I did the same thing 2 years ago, he'd be sitting on 150 millions.

As for the scimitar, yeah, I pretty much have no rush to sell it. Though I find it curious that people would take a feat that does 4 extra damage, but are unwilling to give some gold that comes and goes for 1d4 more damage on a weapon. Sooner or later, someone might walk by who wants it. Heck I'll rather donate it to an NPC in Tarkuul and boost his gear a lil' bit than sell it for 200k.

It's not a matter of money though, as much as it is a matter of level 15 characters being totally able to afford epic gear. I have a character that bought his first epic item on level 14 or something like that. There is a big influx of epic gear into the server, and it will continue to grow. The price will continue plummeting. Perhaps there is a solution to this? Maybe removing a Flawless or Perfect mythal could increase the value of weapons?

Dead wrote:

Maybe removing a Flawless or Perfect mythal could increase the value of weapons?

If you mean adding +5 Ab/+4Enchantment/+1d8 massive crits to the pre-existing weapons, then yes, not really. It would add value of course, but they would still be cluttering up inventories and remain un-useful for the character who found it (most likely).

Honestly, I think epic items should just be removed from the epic loot bin, and the new mcs could take the slack of making better mythal provide more options for weapons. That way, nobody is disappointed when a weapon drops, and it takes long enough as it is to get a full set of epic gear.

From this topic though, I was thinking the monk gloves need a boost. I still find them to be pretty underpowered.

+5 AB exists on epic items. +4 AB is added with greater, as well as the mass crit. I'd be against total removal of epic items as would be the whole server I'd wage. AFAIK the mythal system is being overhauled.

It's still a matter of stock and demand.
Everybody loves the scimitars and rapiers because they are mechanically awesome and perform best in our lovely "everybody must be epic to RP" server, while I would invite you to sell one of those sureforged clubs in this decade.

That said, I feel that removing the mythal quest would be a necessary evil to put the perfects back to balance.
Mythal system overhaul or not.

Dead wrote:

+5 AB exists on epic items. +4 AB is added with greater, as well as the mass crit. I'd be against total removal of epic items as would be the whole server I'd wage. AFAIK the mythal system is being overhauled.

My point is that adding anything to epic items won't really increase the value. Most characters can only wield one weapon consistently, so that's the real hurdle.

Also, those two-handed/two-bladed weapons lower the overall value of the weapons. I have sold giant crappy epic weapons to shop vendors before just to have the space, so it does seem to be a concern as far as the range and average value of the average epic drop. The weapons already got an improvement if I recall- there were trueforged and surestrike weapons.

In the end, I think weapons most weapons are ultimately low because they've only got one non-mythalable quality on them. 1d10 damage of piercing/bludge is nice, but 1d6 sonic is really almost as good, and you can slap that on there with a greater mythal. +5 and Keen you can also mythal. So, you run the perfect mythal quest, you have your keen. You spend 1m or so on a flawless. And you find a 2 greater mythals, which requires little effort. So, for basically 1-1.5m max, you've made a weapon that's almost as good as the epic.

Even if you buy one of the epics, you're still going to have to slap either a perfect or flawless on it, depending on which you found. And you'll only have 4 more points of damage.

That's the main reason epic weapons are relatively low in price. For characters who aren't using flame weapon scrolls, they can spend far less and make one almost as good. Or just ignore the flawless all together, and go +4 enchant, and it's still almost the same.

Warforged weapons are pretty awesome. The damage bonus and massive crits are both way outside the range of what you can do with any mythal. But there's only three of them that ever get any users. Greatsword, GreatAxe, Quarterstaff. So, you could sell them for more, but you'd have to be patient and dick-ish enough to just set prices high and wait until someone has the dough and really decides they want one.

One way to increase the value of epics in general would be to just give them an extra mythal slot filled with something unique and useful that you can't get from the mythaling system. Problem is, there's really not much useful left to put on weapons that's not going to be considered unbalanced. And there are really no on-hit powers (that are allowed) that are worth losing your +5 AB, your keen, your extra piercing/bludgeoning, or your enhancement damage.

Maybe the easiest way to increase the value and usefulness of the epic weapons is just to give them an extra slot, usable for anything. At the moment, they don't offer much useful that you can't get elsewhere. You get a possibility for 4 more damage, and you can slap a flame weapon scroll or spell on it for that roll. That's worthwhile for power-gamers that have money, but most people really don't seem to bother.

Or maybe with the overhaul to the mythal system, they'll be more useful. Who knows.

making epic items exclusive with high prices and rarity only widens the devide between casters and melee chars, "epic" comes from levels not gear, if you seek uniqueness in your items, request them.

Lower prices is perhaps the best thing that could happen to those that dont think its ic to grind epic bosses over and over again, and I think it supports the leveling up, unlike before where gear that was ment for around level 22 was still used by level 30 because the item prices where hugely inflated, high level gear is part of being level 30.

I dont think, and never have that the grind should be favored, people who does it like it I assume, but it should not be somehting that should be rewarded with ic consequences, othervise we might aswell have raid points you can exhange for gear.

this is a rp server, economics is part of it, you want higher prices, buy everything and inflate the prices yourself, we have no monopoly protection on this server so there is amble oppotunity to abuse the crap out of teh trade forum

Arguing for higher prices!!??? Red's been 30th for just over a couple years, he's been the High Councilor of Barak Runedar for about the same amount of time..... took me over a year to get to 30 with him, just to much RP to get involved in.

I can't afford ANY epic items!!!

What gear Red has, he either got from DM events, gifts from a certain possessive Copperkin, or paid RIDICULOUSLY low prices for it enable to obtain said item. If the dwarf can't barter the price down to affordable levels using every ounce and bit of his influence and smooth talking he just can't afford this wildly expensive crap. I have to agree the absurdly high prices seems to reward OOC grinding and boss hunting IMHO. Red's crossed the 1 million coin barrier ONCE, and hasn't been anywhere close to it again since then. The gear he does buy usually ends up rewarded to a dwarf/citizen, add this to his horribly expensive potions intake and expenses and he remains a broke dwarf.

The little bit of boss hunting I've done I've gotten exactly TWO epic drops.. the first a trueforged scimitar that was auctioned the very first Coin Festival, the second was Greaves of the Stalwart Defender which were gifted to a faction member.

Hell I stopped renting a private quarters cause I couldn't keep up with that cost alone. So add to sucking at gear and builds, I suck at hoarding coin too! hahahaha :lol:

*steeples his fingers evil-y*

The Gentlemen's Club will help you get all the epic items you want... just sign this contract... in blood...

And, for the record, trying to ICly buy up all the resources and cornering a market - even on a small server like this - is more time consuming and grindy than boss hunting will ever be. If you want some epic items, all you've got to do it spend maybe an hour a day for a week or so, and you'll have a handful of items you can trade or sell to others so you can get the things you want. Seriously, it's not that hard.

I wasn't saying it's not easy to do, I think the purse levels around here testify to that, haha. Just putting up my support for the prices dropping into semi-obtainable levels for folks with a playstyle more akin to my own.

I think most of the prices are pretty good right now. Most hover on either side of 3m. They're attainable through a little bit of monster hunting, spread out over an acceptable amount of time. A few items are still pretty ridiculous, but as most of the people who are really looking for those things actually get them, they'll likely drop a bit.

I had no idea some items were ~15-20 million, that seems a bit... Pricey.

However it's important to note they're not the essential, must-have items, like a true-forged weapon. They're the OMGWTFBBQ powerful items like Tome of Mystra, which is not necessary for any build to work, it's just nice for any build to have.

In regards to not wanting/being able to afford even the cheaper epic items, like a Warforged Greatsword or something, you can just farm some easy places for coin. I won't say any of them on the forums because I don't know if that'd be appropriate, but it's not that hard to get a bit of coin in a relatively short amount of time, when you're epic level.

Lastly, if you want to actually hunt your own epic items, find a group of pretty powerful epics to go with, and stomp through the easiest epic bosses... Snowy, Fire Giants, Maxi, Beholder (if you have a caster), Windy, and the Pirate. Those guys are not that hard for a decent team of epics, in fact every epic character I have can solo the Fire Giant king (even my level 21 epic character), so if you're worried, just bring a couple friends and go Giant-Murdering. You can go through once for each person too! It's not that bad if you just spend like 20-30 minutes doing it. Frugdar's been around for a year now and he only got his ~4 epic items from either DC request (his stupidly powerful sword), or in the last 4-5 months of playing, and even then, it helped to have friends who lowered prices for him.

Maybe you can organize a dwarven Giant Extinction Party (GEP©) and go crush the giants like, twenty times, with an army of Moradin worshipers. You can even bring non-epic characters if you don't care about exp and have enough epic characters to kill the giants on their own.

MisterLich wrote:

I had no idea some items were ~15-20 million, that seems a bit... Pricey.

I know of an item that was sold for 90+ millions.

That was the Necronomicon, wasn't it? Hah, that one escalated quickly.

Nope. A bow.

Aaegus is in the same boat as Reddok.. A poor example of a dwarf who can't hold his coin. Most of it goes to his potion habit, buying metals or donating to the barak rundar funds. I don't think he's ever had a million gold in his pocket. In the three years of playing him he's done his fair share of boss hunting but I have only ever seen two epic loot drops and lost tge dice roll both times. I have no idea how people find the stuff they do with such small drop odds. I am sure it comes down to persistenance.

Aaegus does actually make a fair amount of coin, which he tends to spend, through rp crafting for dc requests. He hasn't needed to go monster hunting for awhile now. There are alternative markets out there for coin and gear. The best for the grindphobic rp'ers is the dc market. If you rp and bank a lot of dcs you can request epic gear which generally is unique and higher tier than anything that drops. So you don't really have to worry about the gold economy as much. If you were a really keen capitalist you could sell your dc item on the market and make that 50 million you dreamed of, if allowed by the DMs.

Pretty sure that you usually can't sell DC items, as they're approved for people based on their character's capabilities and such. But, maybe it happens on rare occasions? Not sure.

You can always sell your Ioun stones to the Temple of Waukeen for 5000gp.

True story: just ask Amarice.

Kenneth wrote:

And, for the record, trying to ICly buy up all the resources and cornering a market - even on a small server like this - is more time consuming and grindy than boss hunting will ever be. If you want some epic items, all you've got to do it spend maybe an hour a day for a week or so, and you'll have a handful of items you can trade or sell to others so you can get the things you want. Seriously, it's not that hard.

It dosnt matter if its hard or not, some of us feel our time is better spent rp'ing than running up the epic circle 20 times for one drop, its not only incredibly ooc to do (and yes I dont see any reason that you can justify killing the pirate 10 times a day), its a waste of time when there is grumbling and dorf rp to be done!

as for us doing the giants, yes we do that, but we dont grind it to the floor, because, it makes not sense icly to hammer the giants over and over again.

I dont care if people grind, its fine with me, but it favors non-rp behavior, I wish it was a 100% droprate, so us who dont favor a pve grind dont have to be punished for rping and not grinding.

Down with the prices, even further if possible, this is a rp server, not a pve server

Last edited by Kenneth on Tue, Dec 23 2014, 9:10 AM, edited 1 time in total.

I feel your pain. But, at most, you're doing any boss 3 times a day. You can't do the pirate 10 times. Any more than 3, and you're running in groups, which is wildly inefficient and time consuming currently, or you're cheating.

Sometimes I don't even log on for a week. When I get a chance and there's nothing exciting happening, I go hit about 5 bosses. Maybe 35 minutes doing so, unless I get stuck behind people. I still get plenty of stuff to sell.

I really don't think the prices are going any lower, unless they implement the 1 drop per person in a group thing. If that happens, they'll probably drop considerably.

I make 100-300K just going TO the bosses and killing what I must to get there. So, 3m for something really doesn't seem that big of a deal.

Then again, I've also just flat out given away about 1/5th of my loot to people who gravitate in my IC sphere.

Join the Gentleman's Club? We need some more dorfs.

No selling dc items. They're personal. I don't recall any being sold, a few have been passed on though but that takes a request.

The really high value are things such as tomes as Mystra which are no doubt very handy (Not that I ever had one) but you don't need them at all.
It could be that the Djinni merchant is undercutting the epic market a little as those goods are pretty decent (Though not quite as good as epics) for a lower price so people have an alternative for epic items which lowers demand.

What if DMs occasionally oversee just some heavy RP based dungeon run and upped the loot at the end based on the RP they see? This could give those wanting to RP and not boss grind a real opportunity at getting Epics the way they want.

Kenneth wrote:

I feel your pain. But, at most, you're doing any boss 3 times a day. You can't do the pirate 10 times. Any more than 3, and you're running in groups, which is wildly inefficient and time consuming currently, or you're cheating.

Sometimes I don't even log on for a week. When I get a chance and there's nothing exciting happening, I go hit about 5 bosses. Maybe 35 minutes doing so, unless I get stuck behind people. I still get plenty of stuff to sell.

I really don't think the prices are going any lower, unless they implement the 1 drop per person in a group thing. If that happens, they'll probably drop considerably.

I make 100-300K just going TO the bosses and killing what I must to get there. So, 3m for something really doesn't seem that big of a deal.

Then again, I've also just flat out given away about 1/5th of my loot to people who gravitate in my IC sphere.

Join the Gentleman's Club? We need some more dorfs.

dorfs work in packs allways, thats alot of runs if we wanted too, which we dont because its still hugely ooc.

and no, we wont join your club
most of you are our direct enemies, yea...we would not set out foot in your club unless we come hammers first and demolish it

lilmarcat wrote:

What if DMs occasionally oversee just some heavy RP based dungeon run and upped the loot at the end based on the RP they see? This could give those wanting to RP and not boss grind a real opportunity at getting Epics the way they want.

we live high on the mercy of amarice in the dorf community and she has been awesome in offsetting the grind vs rp mentality in our favor, cudos to amarice!

Kraniumbrud wrote:

Kenneth wrote:

I feel your pain. But, at most, you're doing any boss 3 times a day. You can't do the pirate 10 times. Any more than 3, and you're running in groups, which is wildly inefficient and time consuming currently, or you're cheating.

Sometimes I don't even log on for a week. When I get a chance and there's nothing exciting happening, I go hit about 5 bosses. Maybe 35 minutes doing so, unless I get stuck behind people. I still get plenty of stuff to sell.

I really don't think the prices are going any lower, unless they implement the 1 drop per person in a group thing. If that happens, they'll probably drop considerably.

I make 100-300K just going TO the bosses and killing what I must to get there. So, 3m for something really doesn't seem that big of a deal.

Then again, I've also just flat out given away about 1/5th of my loot to people who gravitate in my IC sphere.

Join the Gentleman's Club? We need some more dorfs.

dorfs work in packs allways, thats alot of runs if we wanted too, which we dont because its still hugely ooc.

and no, we wont join your club
most of you are our direct enemies, yea...we would not set out foot in your club unless we come hammers first and demolish it

Why everyone hate us?! We not hate you!

Kraniumbrud wrote:

and no, we wont join your club
most of you are our direct enemies, yea...we would not set out foot in your club unless we come hammers first and demolish it

I got that feeling when my character was kicked out of that festival for no apparent reason. He won't be drinking with many dwarves in the future.

It was probably because your PCs have a tendency to look unbelievably suss :lol:

serbiris wrote:

It was probably because your PCs have a tendency to look unbelievably suss :lol:

Welp, when a quarter of the roomful of friends immediately swarms Red at his appearance and implore that your person is a Sharran, you were asked to leave. You may not like the reason, but there was one. Play on. :twisted:

fairdady wrote:

Welp, when a quarter of the roomful of friends immediately swarms Red at his appearance and implore that your person is a Sharran, you were asked to leave. You may not like the reason, but there was one. Play on. :twisted:

I guess I have to get used to others thinking all my characters are Sharran. :roll:

Not really the point of the discussion, can we keep it to being about economics on our server?

The economy of Amia is what it is, and I don't really think there are any real problems with it.

Well that's your opinion. I still think that unless something is done, the prices of epic items will continue plummeting. The only truly valuable items at the moment are Epic Gloves of Discipline, +5 fort cloak and the Greater Tome of Mystra, mainly because people who get it won't be selling it, unless they get it again which is kind of rare.

And please for the love of gods, stop turning every thread in GD into "JOIN MY FACTION" thread. It's lame.

There isn't anything I can think of that can be "done" that wouldn't create other problems. The price dropping on those epic items is preferable to the scenario of gold becoming even less valuable and people having to trade some other form of invented currency just to compensate...like other epic items. Which already started a long time ago, and worried me somewhat, but it never got too ridiculous.

However, you did inspire me to consider an espect of epic loot in a system I am in the middle of drafting that might help with the market saturation a little. Time will tell.

Dead wrote:

Well that's your opinion. I still think that unless something is done, the prices of epic items will continue plummeting. The only truly valuable items at the moment are Epic Gloves of Discipline, +5 fort cloak and the Greater Tome of Mystra, mainly because people who get it won't be selling it, unless they get it again which is kind of rare.

And please for the love of gods, stop turning every thread in GD into "JOIN MY FACTION" thread. It's lame.

As I said, withholding epic level gear, through high costs og massive ooc grinds, futher weakens non-casters, the power epic level casters get without gear needs to be offset by atleast level appropiate gear, which is currently in and only in the epic loot bin

I also think any change would most likely cause more problems. If there are any suggestions as to a new system, I'd love to hear them. So far, all I have heard from other discussions is people complaining because others have it better because somehow the economy works in the favor of everyone else.....or something like that.

Dead wrote:

And please for the love of gods, stop turning every thread in GD into "JOIN MY FACTION" thread. It's lame.

I did get off topic, but I don't think I did this. Sorry for getting off topic there.

I think he was referring to Kenny. :wink:

Yeah, he was referring to me. Jeez, sorry. Didn't mean to get your panties in a twist. It was totally meant as a joke, not as recruitment.

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