I've been thinking about the issue of prices rising lately, and everyone's ideas about the cause. Most people seem to point to natural inflation and farmers as the cause, and to an extent I agree with that. There's really no ignoring either's effect on the economy.
One effect I haven't seen discussed is the effect of overenchanting and exploding equipment on the economy. It's possible I'm just missing the threads on the subject, so forgive me if that's the case.
Specifically I'm referring to when an item explodes after a failure to overenchant. Let's take a look at exactly what just happened to the economy every time a piece of equipment explodes.
The most obvious thing is that there's one less item in the market. Not only that, but there's one more person with demand (ie: you, assuming you can replace the item). The adena that you spent obtaining the weapon in the first place and the adena spent enchanting are safely in the hands of other players. The basic materials used to make the weapon are now gone, essentially they've left the economy since the item they were used in has been vaporized. What you are left with are some crystals grossly below the item value that will either go towards crafting something new or being consumed through SS.
In short, your adena is now a part of the market, your items are not.
Sure it might not seem like a big deal, but think of the overall effect on the economy when that event is occurring somewhere every 10 minutes.
Personally every time I hear someone scream about their weapon exploding, the first thing I think is "I bet they're going to pay a lot for the Varnish they need to replace that."
Now I'm not really sure how to solve this. In fact, the near limitless potential of equipment is one reason that I like L2. But I also feel that the long term effects of such a system deserve to be addressed as well, so any feedback would be appreciated.
(And with that I go to bed, I'll discuss any comments upon my return this afternoon.)
Not really, I craft a lot and crush d/c crystals and buy luxury shop items and OE them. If succesful I sell to other players..if not, just more crystals for the next try.
If I craft a higher weapon its usually with mats that I have earned with some bought (can never seem to have enough of everything). So those mats go to ncsoft's void and I get the weapon.
In both instances, when I buy the weapon, create the weapon or blow up the weapon my adena is not re-entering the market through players hands. It is quite simply gone unless someone buys a weapon I overenchanted and blows it up later.
So, I am basically exporting goods thus keeping inflation down.
oe does cause inflation, but it isn't the major cause as the most weapons being oe are c grade and they are all store bought.
60% recipies are the primary cause of inflation. I'd be willing to bet that 85% of the items being crafted are a/s and if 40% of them explode then about 34% of all mats in game are disapearing from the market.
This causes base mat prices to raise higher and added with oe decreasing # of crafted weapons, we will be looking at a continued inflation until 100% recipies are introduced to the game.
Inflation is when adena prices increase for items bought in the game. It is partly related to a lack of supply of items, but it's mostly related to an overabundance of adena.
Inflation is rampant because there are very few raw adena sinks in the game. In fact, the major sinks for pure adena are Soul/Spirit Ore, Port Fees and Gemstones. Minor sinks include Other Consumables (SOE's), Town Blacksmith Fees, Clan Hall Purchase & Upkeep, and regular store items.
Without taking raw adena out of the game players end up collecting more and more of it, which means they are willing to pay more and more for whatever it is they want.
Most games have some type of money sink that grows with players level, because as players level their potential for making money grows. L2 doesn't really do that, aside from shot costs.
To make it worse, the people who are generating the vast majority of the adena in the game have a tendency to totally avoid all money sinks. Take a look at those 9 man parties in the dungeons, you might notice that they almost never use SS or SPS, which is the number one sink of adena for L2.
To bring it back around, Overenchanting doesn't sink adena out of the game hardly at all, because it doesn't take much adena to craft an item or get enchant scrolls. It does take some mats out of the game, so it could be said the OEing is a factor because it takes way more mats out than it removes raw adena. The truth is though that the OEing is a very small part of the inflation issue.
The number one cause of inflation is that the big adena generators out there avoid almost all of the adena sinks.
ok well...3 agrade crafts have failed for me in the past week...and over 10 for my clan (jewlery)...so that's alot of base mats gone up in smoke, so now...to craft those things again....is going to require alot more mats....so i can see this being a major factor in the market
On those failed crafts, a significant amount of mats were removed from the economy, but almost no adena was removed. In fact, the only adena that was actually taken out was the adena you used to buy the gemstones. (which was actually AA..)
If we remove mats but not adena then we cause inflation.
It's not the failed crafts that cause the inflation per se.. its the fact that no adena was removed along with it.
I don't think overenchanting has anything to do with it, we had huge events last year that increased the amount of overenchanting many folds, yet this price increase didn't happen.
I do think that inflation is actually built into the game itself. The same thing happened on Linage 1 as the game got long of tooth. In fact, it probably needs to happen as the players who are getting up in rank actually use less and less of the sinks.
The other thing that could be a factor, is the problems the farmers have every so often. Like it or not, if they are off line for a day or two because of what ever, it seems all prices jump up and very, very seldom come back down.
I think much of the inflation is caused by the hyper-ebayers. There are, on Lionna, a handful of individuals who have spent thousands of US dollars. Each time they buy and blow up equipment, they go and ebay more adena. Its a cycle. The farmers gather mats and adena. They craft the items, sell the adena. The ebayer buys the adena, uses it to purchase the items. The farmer goes and collects more adena and mats. The ebayer blows up the item and then has to repurchase. And the cycle goes on with the adena in the system going around and around and never disappearing.
I expect if you eliminated the hyper-ebayers, you'd see inflation start to stabilize. You can't ban them, they'll buy new accounts. You have to IP ban them. You have to credit card ban them. But NCSoft won't, so, the hyper-ebayers just keep getting new toons and ebaying away.
I think much of the inflation is caused by the hyper-ebayers. There are, on Lionna, a handful of individuals who have spent thousands of US dollars. Each time they buy and blow up equipment, they go and ebay more adena. Its a cycle. The farmers gather mats and adena. They craft the items, sell the adena. The ebayer buys the adena, uses it to purchase the items. The farmer goes and collects more adena and mats. The ebayer blows up the item and then has to repurchase. And the cycle goes on with the adena in the system going around and around and never disappearing.
I expect if you eliminated the hyper-ebayers, you'd see inflation start to stabilize. You can't ban them, they'll buy new accounts. You have to IP ban them. You have to credit card ban them. But NCSoft won't, so, the hyper-ebayers just keep getting new toons and ebaying away.
Inflation doesn't have much to do with ebayers at all really.
It's because there is a tremendous amount of adena floating around, especially at the high levels, and there is nothing that sinks it out of the game.
Mats on the other hand are taken out of the game at a huge rate. (crafting)
I know I'm not alone when I say that I have quite a large amount of adena most of the time, yet I usually have hardly any mats.
Because of that inequity, people are willing to trade more adena for mats. wah lah - Inflation.
As I stated before, this is made 100 times worse because the major source of both mats and adena is nearly unaffected by the sinks. ie - Look at all of those 9 person parties that farm mats/adena all day long. Typically they are wearing gear that's AT LEAST one grade below their masteries, and they don't use any SS. They can do this because they have nearly unlimited time, so they don't care if their kill speed is lower than optimum.