Is It Me Or Is This Economy Broken?

[shotchamp]

I was wondering why the economy is broken, got items costing more than 100%-150% of its value in the token shop, like wtf?

[Genesis]

People who can't donate, ask people who can donate to do it for them. Then they sell the item they donated for ingame for a profit. Demand is higher than supply, so the price is higher. They get rich ingame by doing this. Donating for high profit items, donating to the server for them, and then selling them. The economy isn't broken, its behaving like a normal economy would.

[seanchris16]

couldn't explain an economy any better then genesis just did

[shotchamp]

Yeah I perfectly understand and the outrageous price for items are set by the community. Thank you.

[Forum~]

TL;DR: "End-game" for new players is difficult to achieve because high demand and high inflation for tokens. Server needs token outflux.

Long-winded post but here's some insight as I see it. First thing's first. I can readily state that an average player's experience on FRO can be divided into the "early-game" and the "end-game" (I'm going to ignore the "mid-game" since it isn't relevant for my discussion).

This server has come a long way to accommodating new players in the "early-game". You can take my word that it is much easier "early-game" than it was in the past. Equipment is more accessible via quests and voting. Legendary equipment are pretty much 70-80% of "end-game" gear. Something similar existed in the past (elite sets) but the system was clunky. Today's FRO for the new player is very streamline. Cards are a tad bit expensive but they have seen their upswings and downswings over the years.

This is a good thing that the "early-game" is relatively easy because getting a player immersed into FRO is an important thing for the server's health.

The difficult part (what OP is concerned about) is getting what you might consider "end-game" equipment since the prices are admittedly, highly inflated. Like most complicated things, FRO's economics isn't something that can be defined simply. But, from observation, you can deduce that much of it stems from player-instituted pricing that is dependent on supply and demand. This is something that can't easily be manipulated since it is a sort of community-driven standard. There are a few outliers here and there, people who buy for OP because they're desperate, but these people are not the norm.

The administration can influence the item's availability, as seen with emperium auras thus driving up their price, or influence the stats of an item, as seen with gvh dropping their price, but that's pretty much it. Well, I guess someone super rich can hoard a single item and monopolize it too, but I don't think I've seen that happen here, lol.

However, another equally large economical factor is the influx of tokens via donation and the lack of a real token outflux. Now, this is where the administration can do some serious business, something that they've done in the past with bidding on the guild hideout and such. I can't say how much of an effect this is on the server's economics, but I think that things are relatively expensive around here because everyone just has so many tokens and demand for "end-game" gear is high. You can put one and one together to see that if this is the case, it's pretty easy for everyone to just throw their tokens at whatever they're trying to get. Tokens are plentiful.

To answer your question, no, I don't think the economy is necessarily broken at this point in time. However, as I see it, if things remain static and stay just the way it is, the economy and possibly the server's health, may be heading towards bad places since the dichotomy between the "rich" (which include veterans, donators, and both) and the "poor" (new players) become more defined.

Edited March 8, 2014 by Forum~

[adam-]

TL;DR: "End-game" for new players is difficult to achieve because high demand and high inflation for tokens. Server needs token outflux.

Long-winded post but here's some insight as I see it. First thing's first. I can readily state that an average player's experience on FRO can be divided into the "early-game" and the "end-game" (I'm going to ignore the "mid-game" since it isn't relevant for my discussion).

This server has come a long way to accommodating new players in the "early-game". You can take my word that it is much easier "early-game" than it was in the past. Equipment is more accessible via quests and voting. Legendary equipment are pretty much 70-80% of "end-game" gear. Something similar existed in the past (elite sets) but the system was clunky. Today's FRO for the new player is very streamline. Cards are a tad bit expensive but they have seen their upswings and downswings over the years.

This is a good thing that the "early-game" is relatively easy because getting a player immersed into FRO is an important thing for the server's health.

The difficult part (what OP is concerned about) is getting what you might consider "end-game" equipment since the prices are admittedly, highly inflated. Like most complicated things, FRO's economics isn't something that can be defined simply. But, from observation, you can deduce that much of it stems from player-instituted pricing that is dependent on supply and demand. This is something that can't easily be manipulated since it is a sort of community-driven standard. There are a few outliers here and there, people who buy for OP because they're desperate, but these people are not the norm.

The administration can influence the item's availability, as seen with emperium auras thus driving up their price, or influence the stats of an item, as seen with gvh dropping their price, but that's pretty much it. Well, I guess someone super rich can hoard a single item and monopolize it too, but I don't think I've seen that happen here, lol.

However, another equally large economical factor is the influx of tokens via donation and the lack of a real token outflux. Now, this is where the administration can do some serious business, something that they've done in the past with bidding on the guild hideout and such. I can't say how much of an effect this is on the server's economics, but I think that things are relatively expensive around here because everyone just has so many tokens and demand for "end-game" gear is high. You can put one and one together to see that if this is the case, it's pretty easy for everyone to just throw their tokens at whatever they're trying to get. Tokens are plentiful.

To answer your question, no, I don't think the economy is necessarily broken at this point in time. However, as I see it, if things remain static and stay just the way it is, the economy and possibly the server's health, may be heading towards bad places since the dichotomy between the "rich" (which include veterans, donators, and both) and the "poor" (new players) become more defined.

Pretty spot on but I'd like to add a couple of things. In addition to the inflation you mentioned, I would say about 50%, or even more of the market is people trying to play the market. A lot of people are trying to buy low and sell high, not really using the market to get things they need. There is a rare case I would like to mention, the Emperium Auroras. People were buying Green, Orange, and Purple at about 800-900, and Blue at ~1.5k. This was about 6 or 7 months ago that these items were at these prices. Now standard deviation for Green, Orange, and Purple ranges from 2.5~3k. This is somewhat natural due to these Emps not dropping anymore, but a larger portion was people that were hoarding these, spending all their tokens on buying Emps and just holding out until the price rose. I also want to add that I feel like the gap between "poor" and "rich" players has significantly decreased. Players being "fully geared" is now quite common, but I remember when got my first ring I that they were pretty rare, and yes, some of this is due to the quest being posted on the wiki therefor making it common knowledge for most, but also that it seems that there is a token surplus, [AKA inflation] that you mentioned. Their price decreased from around 6k-7k to now about 2-2.5k for most rings. My point being is that the game's economy is in the state it is in due to a combination of inflation, and and a market somewhat full of people trying to make money off of each other. I don't think that people trying to play the market is avoidable and is normal in every server.

I don't really see any items overpriced items in game anymore. I don't mean that people don't sell OP, but rather that I feel like that most of the items are around the price range that they should be. Some argue that the newer dropped Emps are overpriced, but I don't see it at all. With a 0.2-0.6% drop rate it makes them the rarest items in the game. It is also fairly difficult to assemble a guild and obtain a castle during WoE. All in all, I think that the FRO economy has seen worse by far, but at the same time it's not in excellent shape at the moment.

Edited March 8, 2014 by adam-