Topic: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Perpetuum has always had a problem with low market activity. A lack of NIC sinks in the game create a situation where people don’t actually need liquid cash, they just produce the goods for themselves. Despite that there was enough difficulty in obtaining NIC and enough reason to use it so that limited market activity happened and ICE was bought as a way of the lazy buffing their wallet.

The new mission system has changed all that. The amount of NIC this is pumping in to the game is extraordinary.  A solo player in a MK1 heavy can produce a billion NIC in a day with ease. There are a few problems this creates:

1)    Hyper inflation: Epriton as an example has risen from 9 per unit to 40 – 60 in a few weeks
2)    Scarcity: The only reason to sell goods is to gain NIC. As people get NIC rich the market is stripped bare of goods and people are not motivated to sell more
3)    Divergent values: As the value of NIC reduces through inflation the impact on static priced items is huge. Plasma becomes worthless. Terraforming becomes cheap.
4)    ICE sales dry up: ICE no longer becomes a trade item and is only purchased by people looking to get credits for themselves

Normally in this situation NIC will balance itself against goods however the consequences of that cannot be seen. At best it will unbalance the whole mission system as the desired outcomes are skewed. What needs to be addressed is the flow of goods and NIC in to the game.

This really is an economic crash that is happening NOW and not something that is going to happen in the future. The consequences on new players are significant – a dead market leads to a dead game.

Steps need to be taken to encourage the flow of goods on to the market and the flow of NIC in and out of the game.

Right now there are no good options to do this. To balance this requires a lot of thought and probably some significant development. It seems like reducing mission payout would be the way to go but that isn’t the problem – the problem is there is nothing to spend the money on.

I have a couple of ideas as to how this can be addressed but I’ll leave that for a balancing thread but the important thing to note is that your economy is burning and long term levels of imbalance enter the game the longer you take no action.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

why?
isnt it good? you can make most NIC on beta
you can do best production on gamma
and you can sell best at alpha.
you can gather the most valuable material... on beta

it was perfectly thought through by syndic, that new player are driven into beta islands by higher NIC rewards. after hall, his agenda was to advertise whats good for the game, wasn't it?

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Come on Anni, be helpful :-)

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Jita wrote:

Come on Anni, be helpful :-)

its lunchbreak... i can only collect the "facts"

thinking about solutions comes when i have time for it. And i don't like offer solutions in a monologe, as it feels like wasted effort.

*Disclaimer: This post can contain strong sarcasm or cynical remarks. keep that in mind!
Whining - It's amazing how fast your trivial concerns will disappear

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

I can fill the market with cheap robots and equipment only when you stop to buy everything.

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Chemist wrote:

I can fill the market with cheap robots and equipment only when you stop to buy everything.

That's the trouble chemist, as soon as anyone fills the market for anything at a reasonable price there's so much NIC in the game it just gets emptied

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

reduce the remuneration of the mission by 85% after 5 or 10 performed the mission.

Just @ Game

8 (edited by Celebro 2016-01-12 16:54:17)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Producers just need to sell at a higher price on market, if cash is flowing in for players, market will balance it's self as you said. Only issue here is NPC goods do not adjust therefore they become too cheap.

If stuff/ICE is drying up they have been sold too cheaply, new pricing is in order, if everybody is rich as hell.

RIP PERPETUUM

9 (edited by DEV Zoom 2016-01-12 16:58:39)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Jita wrote:

1)    Hyper inflation: Epriton as an example has risen from 9 per unit to 40 – 60 in a few weeks
2)    Scarcity: The only reason to sell goods is to gain NIC. As people get NIC rich the market is stripped bare of goods and people are not motivated to sell more

The fault in your logic is that inflation doesn't affect only Epriton. If there is inflation it affects everything, including the items that you want to buy, because sellers will see that items sell fast and they can increase their asking prices.

It's all the same, just at a higher scale.

edit: Celebro beat me to it.

10 (edited by Khetar 2016-01-12 17:56:32)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:
Jita wrote:

1)    Hyper inflation: Epriton as an example has risen from 9 per unit to 40 – 60 in a few weeks
2)    Scarcity: The only reason to sell goods is to gain NIC. As people get NIC rich the market is stripped bare of goods and people are not motivated to sell more

The fault in your logic is that inflation doesn't affect only Epriton. If there is inflation it affects everything, including the items that you want to buy, because sellers will see that items sell fast and they can increase their asking prices.

It's all the same, just at a higher scale.

edit: Celebro beat me to it.

Issue is that new PVE players will not be able to afford bots/equipment in the early stages as low level missions do not generate money equivalent to the price of items they would need to do higher level missions.

I have talked to several producer newbies who were amazed by how much money they can charge for simple items like T2. I have talked to several PvE players who were outraged by how expensive T3 and T4 modules were compared to how little money they made with their low level missions.

Inflation is not a problem for vets, but for newbies, which are the most valuable resource to this game as it will inevitably die if you don't keep them ingame. Is that so hard to understand?

Do we vetplayers have to create funds to keep new players ingame now, instead of letting the game handle it in a proper way?

Edit: Before you say "Eve can handle it, too"; think about something else: Eve is so famous among sandbox fans due to massive community content, newbie corps (EVE UNI, Pandemic Horde, Karmafleet, you name it) and tons of videos with cool space videos on youtube, that people just bite through.

Perpetuum on the other hand lacks on the graphic front, there is no equivalent to videos like 'Clarion Call' or 'This is Eve' and has a populationbase that basically can not afford the loss of newbies due such stupidities like inflation.

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:
Jita wrote:

1)    Hyper inflation: Epriton as an example has risen from 9 per unit to 40 – 60 in a few weeks
2)    Scarcity: The only reason to sell goods is to gain NIC. As people get NIC rich the market is stripped bare of goods and people are not motivated to sell more

The fault in your logic is that inflation doesn't affect only Epriton. If there is inflation it affects everything, including the items that you want to buy, because sellers will see that items sell fast and they can increase their asking prices.

It's all the same, just at a higher scale.

edit: Celebro beat me to it.

Your not understanding the problem. Inflation is fine if there is something to spend money on. Previous to the mission change it was harder to make NIC than it was to make goods. This meant people sold goods to make NIC. The balance to that were NIC sinks like teleports, storage fees, construction costs and the various things ypu buy from the NPCs. Now that there is hyper inflation there is no balance,its so easy to make the NIC needed to cover the sinks you never have to sell a thing.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Tl,dr the NIC sinks need to be comparable to the NIC faucets. They were not before but missions make the problem 100X worse.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

It's more simple than that. The market is based on supply and demand. If people don't buy your stuff, your prices are too high. If people empty the market, your prices are too low.

It's not the veterans who dry up the T2 market, why would they need those if they fit T4? And yeah, T4 might be too expensive for a newbie, but that's how it's supposed to be. Once they reach the mission levels where the rewards are higher, they will be able to afford them. I really don't see the issue.

edit: Our main NIC sink is and was losing modules in combat. And that scales with inflation. Sure, we can take a look at the other NIC sinks, but those are not significant. (Which may or may not be an issue in itself, but that's another topic.)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Jita has a good point though and it's this. Producers who can build everything due to 100% research have very little need for NIC other than a few npc items which can be covered by doing mission.

Why go into the trouble of building stuff for the market in exchange for NIC you don't really need?

Bare in mind there are corps inviting new players, with enough research to cover for new players to produce.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Celebro: yeah and that's why it's a bad idea to allow the players build everything, an idea that surfaces from time to time here.

And yes, I'm sure there are players for whom NIC might not be really needed anymore, but this would only be an issue if _every single player_ in Perpetuum would be fully committed to mine and produce everything on their own.

16 (edited by Celebro 2016-01-12 18:35:52)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:

Celebro: yeah and that's why it's a bad idea to allow the players build everything, an idea that surfaces from time to time here.

And yes, I'm sure there are players for whom NIC might not be really needed anymore, but this would only be an issue if _every single player_ in Perpetuum would be fully committed to mine and produce everything on their own.

Yes you are right. There is still a need for NIC sinks in the upper levels of the end game for wealthy players to have a reason to spend it or gain it. Otherwise close the NIC tap, but that can turn to hoarding and won't 'drain' the NIC floating around.

It's nice that any player can build most for the stuff if they want to put in the effort due to research becoming too easy , there still needs to be some exclusivity in the mix though not sure how, but it all starts with research. A good idea will be raising NIC sinks by production costs perhaps.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:

Celebro: yeah and that's why it's a bad idea to allow the players build everything, an idea that surfaces from time to time here.

And yes, I'm sure there are players for whom NIC might not be really needed anymore, but this would only be an issue if _every single player_ in Perpetuum would be fully committed to mine and produce everything on their own.

But the issue is that the people who can produce everything on their own have no motivation to sell as the NIC needed to do that is so easily gained. That leaves the people who cannot produce unable to buy.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

18 (edited by Chemist 2016-01-12 18:42:27)

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

I think the noobs too little digging ... The demand is much higher than supply. Prices are rising, but the newcomers to dig still do not want to. Hence the lack of equipment and robots. smile I have a lot of money, but I have nothing to spend them. And yes ... I will not even buy a T4 for 5 million or MK2 robot for 100 million.

And the main problem: the absence of active warfare and the monopoly held by beta and gamma islands. Take beta-2 corporations that are only interested in PVE content and protect them. They will fill the market.

2 Zoom: Maybe it makes sense to do a beta-2 inaccessible for IZ from alpha-1 or 2?

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Jita wrote:

But the issue is that the people who can produce everything on their own have no motivation to sell as the NIC needed to do that is so easily gained. That leaves the people who cannot produce unable to buy.

Yes that's what I meant too. The people who can produce everything basically separate themselves from the market. But that still leaves plenty of others who can't or don't want to produce everything and need NIC to buy from the market.

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:

edit: Our main NIC sink is and was losing modules in combat. And that scales with inflation. Sure, we can take a look at the other NIC sinks, but those are not significant. (Which may or may not be an issue in itself, but that's another topic.)

No Dev Zoom this is not a NIC sink. The production of player made modules involves almost no required NIC at all. Only ressources like ores, CTs, kernels and so on. The NIC player A spends for buying a module goes directly to the seller player B - and stays there if player A loses his stuff. No NIC sink here. The exception comes in form of NPC sell orders for T1 modules and bots. The only noteworthy NIC sink ingame are colony structures and maybe plasma bombs if you're on a holy mission to liberate an entire island from nasty rampant plant life.
The new assignment rewards are the problem ... in quantity and quality.
As for mining/harvesting assignents: The previous assignment rewards were on top of your mined/harvested ressource. It was basically standard mining + a nice bonus of NIC and token. Now it's NIC only because the gathered ressources get taken away. Therefor the new assignment rewards are now in direct competition to the gathering professions/activities. Lack of ressources and oversupply of NIC is the consequence.
Furthermore the current rewards consist to ~98% of NIC and to 2% of (worthless) token.
We need less NIC and much more value for token (Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop).

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Jita wrote:
DEV Zoom wrote:

Celebro: yeah and that's why it's a bad idea to allow the players build everything, an idea that surfaces from time to time here.

And yes, I'm sure there are players for whom NIC might not be really needed anymore, but this would only be an issue if _every single player_ in Perpetuum would be fully committed to mine and produce everything on their own.

But the issue is that the people who can produce everything on their own have no motivation to sell as the NIC needed to do that is so easily gained. That leaves the people who cannot produce unable to buy.

Jita: So they restrict players from producing everything then, how can that work?

Issue is market is too small and needs time to adjust, and real value of goods does not reflect on market. Do all producers mine everything? Would be easier if you start building a market buy offering to buy ore for good prices for new players? Oh mission are still better? Then offer even more for ores then.

RIP PERPETUUM

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Error wrote:

We need less NIC and much more value for token (Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop, Syndicate shop).

Y, Zoom! Where is our pink Ictuses?

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

DEV Zoom wrote:
Jita wrote:

But the issue is that the people who can produce everything on their own have no motivation to sell as the NIC needed to do that is so easily gained. That leaves the people who cannot produce unable to buy.

Yes that's what I meant too. The people who can produce everything basically separate themselves from the market. But that still leaves plenty of others who can't or don't want to produce everything and need NIC to buy from the market.

The barriers to end gane production are so low that these partial constructors don't really exist. There is nothing to spend money on right now. You need to increase the amount of NPC based nic sinks and if possible find a way to motivate the selling of minerals.

What bit comes down to is inflation is a product of poor balancing. If ypu think that the prices will balance out by going much higher then you should have pitched the payouts at that level in the first place because right now your breaking everything from insurance payouts to low level missions.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Celebro wrote:
Jita wrote:
DEV Zoom wrote:

Celebro: yeah and that's why it's a bad idea to allow the players build everything, an idea that surfaces from time to time here.

And yes, I'm sure there are players for whom NIC might not be really needed anymore, but this would only be an issue if _every single player_ in Perpetuum would be fully committed to mine and produce everything on their own.

But the issue is that the people who can produce everything on their own have no motivation to sell as the NIC needed to do that is so easily gained. That leaves the people who cannot produce unable to buy.

Jita: So they restrict players from producing everything then, how can that work?

Issue is market is too small and needs time to adjust, and real value of goods does not reflect on market. Do all producers mine everything? Would be easier if you start building a market buy offering to buy ore for good prices for new players? Oh mission are still better? Then offer even more for ores then.

People would love to buy minerals but nobody is selling them. Its so easy to produce (corp research) that there is no motivation to sell so you can buy goods that are not even on the market.

Perhaps you could balance gathering missions and make each mission put the minerals on the market.

Proverbs 23:20-21 warns us, “Do not join those who drink too much wine or gorge themselves on meat, for drunkards and gluttons become poor, and drowsiness clothes them in rags."

Re: The great Perpetuum economic crash

Give us new big ans expensive robots... for nics balance... smile