Need a GM Event (Economic Stimulus Package)

[Rygar]

Eventually the woes of a time locked server are going to have disadvantages. As more and more items enter the market place they get devalued as the items that are tradeable just keep trading hands. You see this a lot with crafted gear… a tradeskiller works their skill, makes say some black panther and sells it. Well one day his buyer upgrades to SS or Thurg armor, now the black panther is back on the market competing with the original crafter (driving down the price).

Such is the case with other droppables such as weapons, armor, clickies, etc. Furthermore, the only thing draining actual platinum from the economy are re-charging items, a few handful of quests, and port stones.

I say make a GM event to stimulate the economy! I’m picturing a quest giver and a merchant together, in various zones across Norrath. You can buy various gems at different costs from the merchant, in exchange you can give the gems to the quest giver.

For example, say you want a Crown of King Tranix. Maybe there is a gem that can be bought (‘Gem of Tranix’ let’s say). You buy the gem for 2,000 plat and you hand to the quest giver for a tome for a combine. In the tome maybe you need to gather a few quest items to do leg work, but let’s say there are also some commonly purchased tradeskill items (Maybe a BD Bracelet, +14 MR Rings, etc). You organize the combines so you basically are able to obtain the item for cheaper than the current market price.

Granted this adds more crowns to the market (so maybe a bad example), it actually removes 2,000pp from the server and it removes crafted tradeables (which will increase the demand). You can also pyramid scheme it so you maybe can buy a more expensive tome for 10k that later requires a Crown of King Tranix along with some other items which may result in some more powerful items.

This would be great to remove some cultural smithing, resist gear, and velious tailoring from the market to make those tradeskills more valuable for players. Maybe some of the other items required for the combine may be some odd-ball tradeskill recipes from brewing / baking / pottery / fletching / tinkering to help get some money in the hands of those artisans. Maybe even create some quest lines for ‘rarely crafted’ items such as Holgresh Fur pieces.

The event doesn’t need to be one day, can last for a week or two at a time. Maybe some of the items required for combine will be no-drop unfinished quest line pieces from zones that are more rarely used. Based on how the gem price scales up, can be done by noobs and fat cats alike. Would think it best not to include any NToV / Sleeper / VP loot to keep those end game zones special, although maybe combine 3 NToV items for a better NToV item? Stimulate the DKP economy too!

What do you all think? I’m betting some economists out there would have an opinion

[Cecily]

Not really feeling the item alchemy idea, but I absolutely think you're right to brainstorm ideas about curbing inflation. IMO: Put Sleeper's gear / other legacy items as prizes in a Highkeep casino.

[loramin]

I absolutely think you're right to brainstorm ideas about curbing inflation.

Not to be mean but ... why? Unless OP plans to start his own server, there is a 0% chance of those ideas being implemented, because they aren't classic.

[Spyder73]

Not really feeling the item alchemy idea, but I absolutely think you're right to brainstorm ideas about curbing inflation. IMO: Put Sleeper's gear / other legacy items as prizes in a Highkeep casino.

I would agree except there are probably...50x(?) as many Fungi Tunics and CoFs on the server than there are players and these items go for 45k and 80k? That's probably a low estimate as well.

Players invest hundreds of thousands of plat into gear and then quit P99 literally all the time. Player attrition is real and takes a lot out of the economy. Even if they don't 'quit' there are a lot of people with massive wealth who rarely play

[Cecily]

Exactly. I would like very much to see my 500k increase in value over time.

[Deliverator]

In no way was he describing inflation. Inflation is a general increase in prices. He was talking about combating DEFLATION which is a general DECREASE in prices. The reason he doesn't want deflation is to (1) encourage the player crafters to continue to supply the market because they will actually see reasonable profits if prices stop being depressed and (2) maintain a higher level of prices in general so that the items they are farming/hording continue to have value in the market.

In general items are becoming LESS expensive over time because there are more of them in the market. The pace at which these items become less expensive is only being slowed by the rate at which new platinum is created in the game world. To be honest with how many fungi tunics exist in the game they should cost no more than 15k, but because plat keeps being generated the price doesn't fall very fast and is still around 40-45k as people have greater wealth now than they had 3 years ago.

[Lobus]

IMO: Put Sleeper's gear / other legacy items as prizes in a Highkeep casino.

That's actually pretty genius... Though I wonder if it will just feed the RMT/Plat farming trade? Good luck getting Sea Furies or other high plat / vendorable camp spots.

[Baler]

I demand pre-nerf items! :P

[t3kn34k]

From a macroeconomics standpoint, I'd say leave the economy alone and let supply/demand determine the price for all goods/services in the tunnel.

The Classhole in me says 'not classic' to the tranix crown idea. There are other very large problems to adding additional plat-sink-for-phat-lewts mechanisms like this into the game. Also recharges are currently a decent plat sink for the Norrath Economy, you'd be surprised. My buddy quit with >3M pp, so thats another avenue of plat 'leaving' the server in terms of circulation

I think most people can agree here though, most interest for items will be targeted at the same few categories of items. That is to say, you will have items most people want and items most people wont look twice at.
The items people want can be further categoriezed:
The top 3 or so items for each slot, NO-DROP Best In Slot gear (though this is more pertinent to DKP economies)
The top 3 or so items for each slot, TRADABLE This follows the trend for obvious reasons
Clicky items - Shiny brass idol is a great example has been steadily increasing in value forever and the price history probably most accurately represents the Real inflation rate of platinum on this server.
Utility items- Pre-nerf Circlet of Shadows, Fungi, Haste, Amulet of Necropotence, Bladestopper, Puppet Strings.

The effect I think you are seeing is that most players have access to the top 3 tier TRADABLE items now because of the availability of platinum. The number of items people really 'dont want' is really growing though, but with multiple expansions out, this is expected to be the case as well. So the result is we see a bunch of <100pp items in the tunnel and a bunch of stuff upwards of 20k.

Not gonna summarize all that, but I still cant really understand why you think that the p99 economy needs a 'stimulus package' or why any GM would stimulate an economy in a MMO

[Cecily]

That's actually pretty genius... Though I wonder if it will just feed the RMT/Plat farming trade? Good luck getting Sea Furies or other high plat / vendorable camp spots.

Doesn't have to be plat. Assign an item value (like that lame buff thing when I quit) to droppable stuff and give tokens for trading items to an NPC.

[mickmoranis]

Exactly. I would like very much to see my 500k increase in value over time.

whats truelly amazing is a large percentage of this is from euridite guards.

[MiRo2]

Not really feeling the item alchemy idea, but I absolutely think you're right to brainstorm ideas about curbing inflation. IMO: Put Sleeper's gear / other legacy items as prizes in a Highkeep casino.

King's Court Casino (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=2675)

ERA: Lost Dungeons of Norrath

[Lhancelot]

IMO: Put Sleeper's gear / other legacy items as prizes in a Highkeep casino.

Casino idea is good, I think the rewards would be best to be purely aesthetic/appearance-type items/clickies which give no kind of advantage in the game.

[Thermite]

WTB a merchant that sells me a DE mask :(

[Baler]

WTB a merchant that sells me a DE mask :(

This is probably the worst feeling I ever have when playing p99 blue. I'll never get a DE mask for my Blank.

[Gozuk]

I would agree except there are probably...50x(?) as many Fungi Tunics and CoFs on the server than there are players

Wait, huh? Even if you combine the amount of CoF and Fungi tunics on the server it's nowhere near 50x the amount of players. There is usually upward of 1,000 players on just at one time. No way in hell the server has 50,000+ of these items

[mattydef]

Got beat.

[Danth]

Wait, huh? Even if you combine the amount of CoF and Fungi tunics on the server it's nowhere near 50x the amount of players. There is usually upward of 1,000 players on just at one time. No way in hell the server has 50,000+ of these items

...Particularly since the players logged on at any single time represent only a small fraction of the total active user base.

Danth

[Deliverator]

Kunark has been out for 6 years. Assuming myconid spore king has a 3% spawn chance on a 27 minute repop timer and has been killed instantly over the last 6 years we're looking at a total of 3500 myconid spore king spawns. If the fungi tunic drops 50% of the time we're looking at 1750 fungi tunics dropped over the last 6 years. So we are no where NEAR one for every player let alone ever character on the server. And considering a good portion of them have been removed due to inactive accounts, banned accounts, or what have you we're looking at probably around 1000 total fungi tunics on the server. Of course this number is constantly increasing as king is generally perma-camped.

[Kydat]

Not to be mean but ... why? Unless OP plans to start his own server, there is a 0% chance of those ideas being implemented, because they aren't classic.
The staff have shown to not have any problems cherry-picking non-classic features. Not that I have a problem with it, but it is true.

[Swish]

If something is done to upset the economy the tunnel fat cats will be on here whining in droves.

[Deliverator]

If this were my server I'd occasionally run around the server finding people who had just recently created an account and made a new character and just dump a pile of money on them. I don't know how their connection monitoring utilities work but I'm sure they'd be able to find people that had most recently logged in for the first time. I think that would be fun to watch this guy completely new to the server go to the tunnel and buy all the cool things they've always wanted for their new character.

Also the best thing they could do for this server would be to reset sleeper so other people could have an opportunity to see sleeper's tomb the way it was before sleeper's slumber was interrupted. And it would allow other people access to some of the best and most rare items in the game.

[loramin]

The staff have shown to not have any problems cherry-picking non-classic features. Not that I have a problem with it, but it is true.

Well if the guy with 5 posts says so it must be true! :rolleyes:

Care to share some of these "cherry-picked non-classic features" that aren't there for an essential reason? By "essential" I'm referring to stuff like levitation on boats (the alternative was people falling off all the time) or the 25 mob AoE limit (the alternative was having places like Chardok or The Overthere dominated by AoErs all the time).

[Deliverator]

Well if the guy with 5 posts says so it must be true! :rolleyes:

Care to share some of these "cherry-picked non-classic features" that aren't there for an essential reason? By "essential" I'm referring to stuff like levitation on boats (the alternative was people falling off all the time) or the 25 mob AoE limit (the alternative was having places like Chardok or The Overthere dominated by AoErs all the time).

AOE groups in chardok and the overthere isn't exactly a bad thing... I don't understand the concern with that. There were also AOE groups in Sebilis back on live...

[Alder]

I never played classic everquest, but from what I've read didn't GMs make up their own events occasionally? so isn't the concept itself "classic" in a way even though it's not an event that was specifically done during that era

[loramin]

AOE groups in chardok and the overthere isn't exactly a bad thing... I don't understand the concern with that. There were also AOE groups in Sebilis back on live...

They weren't just "in" those zones: people were constantly fighting with bards in OT (I'm sure the huge amount of staff time they wasted was a big factor in them making that change) and Chardok was literally controlled by a single (rotating) AoE group 24/7.

[loramin]

I never played classic everquest, but from what I've read didn't GMs make up their own events occasionally? so isn't the concept itself "classic" in a way even though it's not an event that was specifically done during that era

This is true, but "classic" GM events typically involved a GM logging in as some mob you would never otherwise see (eg. the Avatar of Love) and running around giving weird illusion buffs and no rent items. Well that or them just logging in as some hard mob and running around killing lower level characters until enough high level ones showed up to take them on :)

Occasionally a player or two might get rewarded with a guise or something during an event, but they were never anything like the casino system being described here. That did come to live (as has been mentioned), but after the "classic" time period.

[Rygar]

Yea... This is only a GM event idea, not like a permanent thing some folks were mentioning.

Imagine the Bracknar Halloween event but with item hunts for combine and paying for the combine tome is all.

[loramin]

Yea... This is only a GM event idea, not like a permanent thing some folks were mentioning.

Well I'm certainly not against GM events (even if they are different from the ones on live).

Honestly I wish we had events of any type here. I've never seen a single one in P99, but on live even the stupid ones were a big occasion for everybody. When something dynamic happens in a static world it's just inherently fun (even when that something is you getting killed by Cazic Thule when he magically appears in East Commonlands).

[Mytral]

Well if the guy with 5 posts says so it must be true! :rolleyes:

Care to share some of these "cherry-picked non-classic features"

Binding @ firepots

[loramin]

Binding @ firepots

Ouch, you picked a pretty terrible example :). Both being able to bind in the firepots room and not being able to bind there are classic.

APRIL 28, 2000
Due to a feature within the zone, players can no longer bind within Timorous Deep. This functionality was intended in the zone prior to launch, as binding presents a possible balance issue. Players who are already bound in this zone will retain their binding location until they bind someplace else.

So before April 28, 2000 (or the equivalent time here on P99) being able to bind was classic, and after that not being able to was classic.

[StephenD]

For those who favor it, how about the B Sanders approach to the economy? If you have it, give it to someone who wants it but doesn't want to earn it.

[Mytral]

Ouch, you picked a pretty terrible example :)

Silly me. What was I thinking responding to someone with so many posts. I yield to your greatness omnipotent one.

[loramin]

Silly me. What was I thinking responding to someone with so many posts. I yield to your greatness omnipotent one.

I didn't mean it like that, and I apologize if it came across that way (the smiley was my attempt to keep it from sounding like that). It's just that it was funny to me that you picked an example which was classic either way.

The point I'm trying to make though is that Rogean et. all don't talk in the forums all that often, but when they have they've made it very clear what they're trying to accomplish with Project 1999: they want to re-create classic EverQuest as faithfully as possible. It's almost like Blue and Red are just testing grounds for them to use while they write all of the "re-create classic" code, and we're just lucky enough to get to play in their test area.

So it's fine to dream about all sorts of non-classic things, but I get a little prickly when people suggest that team doesn't care abut keeping it classic, because they've made it very clear that that's pretty much all they care about. And there's nothing at all wrong with non-classic stuff either (I miss many of the post-Velious expansions myself), but you have to remember that it's their world, we just play in it.

[Topgunben]

Any idea how much pp is coming into the economy each year as a percentage?

What's the average farming wage? 500pp an hour?

How much pp is taken out of the economy from players getting banned or quitting? I.e. Nordenwatch.

Suprisingly inflation doesn't seem that bad imo. I'm not worried about my 5kpp becoming worthless over night because items are becoming more plentiful.

[Lhancelot]

I.e. Nordenwatch.


Wonder what happened to him, he came back, even created a "HEY GUYS IM BACK" post too... Seen him ingame a short bit, then poof he was gone again. :(

[Halius]

This is true, but "classic" GM events typically involved a GM logging in as some mob you would never otherwise see (eg. the Avatar of Love) and running around giving weird illusion buffs and no rent items. Well that or them just logging in as some hard mob and running around killing lower level characters until enough high level ones showed up to take them on :)

Occasionally a player or two might get rewarded with a guise or something during an event, but they were never anything like the casino system being described here. That did come to live (as has been mentioned), but after the "classic" time period.

I do remember an event in WC, I think it was for Halloween one time on Bristlebane. They had werewolves spawning all over the zone. Only reason I remember is because I was a 35 pally at the time and was barely able to kill one but got a nice no drop ring that was an upgrade at the time for myself and was super excited. Those events were awesome.

[Topgunben]

Wonder what happened to him, he came back, even created a "HEY GUYS IM BACK" post too... Seen him ingame a short bit, then poof he was gone again. :(

I talked to him in game a couple months back. Seemed to be just checking out things. It was probably hard for him to think of building an empire all over again. He was literally playing 16 hours a day 7 days a week back in his hay day. He needs some moderation

[Tupakk]

Well I'm certainly not against GM events (even if they are different from the ones on live).

Honestly I wish we had events of any type here. I've never seen a single one in P99, but on live even the stupid ones were a big occasion for everybody. When something dynamic happens in a static world it's just inherently fun (even when that something is you getting killed by Cazic Thule when he magically appears in East Commonlands).

Um DEPT OF FUN. We do stuff all the time as much as we can.

As far as GM events you get one maybe 2 a year. It's volunteer work what do you expect.