The biggest issue in Elite Dangerous that no one really talks about - The Economy

[Deleted member 115407]

This game needs stock markets. And commodities trading, both physical and derivatives. And they should be tied to the major powers and MFs and markets in the BGS.

On days I didn't feel like flying my spaceship I could just play the futures market. I could have long-term options in my portfolio, watch my fortune rise and fall along with events in the human bubble, and have a greater impetus to get involved with the many minor factions out there.

That would be awesome. I know this is just me dreaming.... but a boy can dream, can't he?

*edit*

Dude, it would be awesome. Whole fortunes would be confiscated overnight when socialist factions overtook systems. Corporations would be fought over on a grand scale - people would yank their money out of sectors that were on the verge of war....

 

[krylite]

Good subject OP. The game has runaway inflation of its credit possibly due to neglect or lack of oversight in letting the exploits persist for too long until the recent nerfs and stringent policy post 2.3

Here's a suggestion: Refactor the credit value so it's worth 0.1 of its current denomination. So one billion becomes 100 million with changes across the whole board including player accounts, ship prices, modules, etc. except for some or most of the commodities pricing as they seem to be the most stable since the beginning with estimates of the credit on the commodities board worth approximately $5 to $7 per credit.

With the anticipated spacelegs, there could be more MMORPG style gameplay as players roam through the commercial sections of stations and cities just like the concept art depicts, so a refactored credit would be helpful before players start setting up kiosks and shops in the commercial area and a drink costs a few credits instead of ten thousand credits for example.

I'd like to see a stock market too. With a refactored credit, it would make more sense to see corporations and their publicly shared value listed for trade and create gameplay for investing or day trading for players.

 

[sniper fish]

Nice post OP, makes a change from the usual endless circular arguments. My own personal preference would be that PMF's can upgrade station facilities with thier actions or by inducing others though trade (and other actions), i.e the commodities market actually reflects supply and demand in the system, so the Cabin could sell our commodities into simmons and the price would fall (with good supply) thus making it a go to place for engineering. In return we or any other pmf, an anarchy system with a controlling pmf would get a boost from illicit goods for instance, making them the go to place for pirates or a extraction system for miners (you get the idea) get a scaled upgrade to our home station- shipyard, outfitting maybe even security upgrades. I dont have a lot of interest in the BGS tbh, but something like that might make me.

 

[h347h]

P2P + solo = no player economy.

 

[Ed02349]

Hi, I'm new, very new and haven't looked deeply into the economy.
As much as I like EVE's economy I don't think ED's was designed to handle something like that.
A more dynamic economy that react to our actions would make the game more immersive.

 

[Olivia Vespera]

Credits in Elite are not currency. They are what in other games would be called Experience Points (XP). Ship outfitting and all of that is really just a space-y version of speccing out your character. That's why the ship tiers are exponentially higher than one another. It's a thinly disguised leveling system. "Buying" and "Selling" of commodities is just a shell game. There are no items in the game that actually *do* anything. There are no consumables to buy apart from fuel and limpets, both of which cost next to nothing and have no gameplay significance. Your money doesn't do anything. It has no meaningful impact on anything other than your own account. There's no inflation because there's no trade. Credits haven't been devalued; they have no value in the first place.

And again inflation doesn't matter or exist, because the prices of all goods are set by the game. Nobody can sell anything to anyone, there is no auction house or exchange of modules or anything else. There's nothing of any use-value in the entire game that another player can give to you. Everybody buys from the company store.

That's an interesting viewpoint.

Yes credits can be seen as experience points, but just because it can be seen as experience points doesn't mean these experience points can't function as currency. Especially with commodity trading.

Now you're right most services in elite cost next to nothing to purchase with CR. What is expensive are the ships and the subsequent modules that you have to buy to outfit your ship... at first.

But what makes a ship expensive or cheap is arbitrary on your personal progression through the game.

See when I say that credit has a certain value. i mean it has a certain value to you. How much do I have to pay you to get you to do something I want.

It is subject to your current player progression and decreases over time as you progress. That means, when you are a newbie, I could probably get you to do missions for my faction a few 100K.
However as you progress and grow richer, it may take 1M to convince you... then 10M, then a 50M.
This is what I mean by hyperinflation. All players go through this. Their time in game becomes worth more and more credits and approaches infinity as one progresses through the game.


One doesn't need an auction house or the exhange of modules for hyperinflation and devaluation of currency to occur. Hell Hyper inflation can occur within a single player experience because the central tenant is that the currency in question is continuously and infinitely being created.

I hope that helps explain what I mean.

Another thing to consider is, considering FD's track record with things like this, how can anyone expect them to implement anything like OP suggests without it being full of exploitable holes?

Beyond the fear of "keeping things the same, don't change things because you might introduce bugs" which I think is counter productive to having some vibrant player driven gameplay. (take horizons. without it, distant worlds expeditions would have had all those basecamps fun, no matter what bugs we did find)

What is being asked is simply thus: create a currency that is valuable again that can be used in a player drive economy to support player driven initiatives like mercenaries, escorts, PMF freedom fightering, contest/competition prize handouts.

Even if they implement it flawlessly, the flaw is in the system. You can't really tell who's a player, so most, if not all "player driven" economies have ended up as bot driven economies anyway.
Unless you write code or actually create content (a la second life), you're just a buttonmasher collecting pixels for recipes, which is ultimately better done by bots. They are less prone to carpal tunnel syndrome. ;p

With commodity exchange. You have to actually meet the player in question to carry out the transaction.

The current commodity of choice when exchanging for Modular terminals, bromelite, or painite is Palladium. I can't remember the exchange rate but for the moment the most used currency that players currently do use is in fact

Palladium.

It's valued around 1 ton : 13000 CR. It's a good exchange rate... except honestly CR isn't worth that much. If we could find a commodity that's worth 1 ton : 1,300,000 CR for commodity exchange it would probably replace palladium.

Player driven economies... are kinda already here but they're stunted by not having a valuable commodity of exchange.

Mind you a valuable commodity of exchange doesn't need to be tied to the value of credit.

For instance it could be a required item to do G5 engineering that can only be exchanged in person. Credit wise it could be worthless in the station commodity market.

I could then trade this commodity for services that a CMDR could provide like helping me improve my PMF.

Do you think a bot could carry out the actions of doing a mission and then conducting the commodity exchange in game in local space? It's not so simple as you think.

Hi, I'm new, very new and haven't looked deeply into the economy.
As much as I like EVE's economy I don't think ED's was designed to handle something like that.
A more dynamic economy that react to our actions would make the game more immersive.

Hi there welcome. This isn't what my Original post was about.

It wasn't about replacing the exisiting BGS economy. It's about overlaying a PDE over it between players to exchange currency for services by supporting the introduction (or reintroduction) of a valuable currency that can be used for such exchanges.

The currency in previous versions of the game I thought had good potential were Engineer Commodities. They served that purpose for a while. If we have engineer commodity storage, I'd like to see a return of them.

Have a reread and potentially watch the videos in the OP and let me know what you think. Thanks!

 

[Lobstris]

1. Ships get exponentially more expensive to purchase and outfit. The natural player progression up the ship ladder, reduces the value of the credit to players.
2. Quince and others like it. Systems where it's possible to generate large amounts of credits quickly lower the value of credits. If you are able to generate credits quickly,

I'd go along with these as two of my personal bugbears with the game.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Hi, I'm new, very new and haven't looked deeply into the economy.
As much as I like EVE's economy I don't think ED's was designed to handle something like that.
A more dynamic economy that react to our actions would make the game more immersive.

You're correct - from what I've observed, there is no "economy" in the game. Each station with a commodities market is an island unto itself.

I would really like to see a robust, interconnect economy in this game, with whole sectors booming and others going into depression and recession, markets in areas with constant wars should seize up, while those in stable areas should flourish. Etc. More dreams I guess.

There is so much unrealized gameplay potential in the bubble

 

[AndiBcool]

Like A8 thrusters being more expensive than the ship they're attached to?

Thats the price for em, but you dont have to buy em.

Makes the game's numbers look better and gives the gankers something productive to do.

Well i think bots destroy games, i played some MMOs and Lineage2 was one of em. That Game is infested with bots so badly that you cant even farm or EXP player characters because the bots are that many that the bots fight each other to kill the mobs. With that in mid the only option is to use a bot yourself, play legally without cheats and fall back more and more or just quit.
I did fight bots in that game but you get penaltys when killing "player" characters and they are also observed if u kill bots the owner will log a way higher lvl char and kill you. If you have penaltys you might also loose equip and not only Exp.
Grievers want to grieve players not bots.

Already happens.

Makes me wonder what kind of player would buy credits from gold farmers ? Only stupid or lasy players or cheaters ( witch the other two will become after purchasing).
They also dont get what Elite is about.

Already happens with engineer grind.


Sure there is - reduction of grind.

What grind ? I do things in this game and get rewarded doin them. If you dont PvP you also have no real reason to be in a hurry.

 

[Darkfyre99]

You're correct - from what I've observed, there is no "economy" in the game. Each station with a commodities market is an island unto itself.

I would really like to see a robust, interconnect economy in this game, with whole sectors booming and others going into depression and recession, markets in areas with constant wars should seize up, while those in stable areas should flourish. Etc. More dreams I guess.

There is so much unrealized gameplay potential in the bubble

Version one of the economic sim actually had the potential for that kind of thing. It was much more realistic, and a lot more sensitive to player actions. It turned out that:

players not wanting to haul low profit goods
+ economies requiring low profit goods to be supplied in order to produce high-profit goods
+ best profit calculator apps and websites
= no high-profit goods to be found.

So Frontier nerfed the economic sim to keep players happy. Today, we have a fairly static economic sim, where it takes a Community Goal to actually cause a system to be out of stock on its exports.

 

[Deleted member 115407]

Version one of the economic sim actually had the potential for that kind of thing. It was much more realistic, and a lot more sensitive to player actions. It turned out that:

players not wanting to haul low profit goods
+ economies requiring low profit goods to be supplied in order to produce high-profit goods
+ best profit calculator apps and websites
= no high-profit goods to be found.

So Frontier nerfed the economic sim to keep players happy. Today, we have a fairly static economic sim, where it takes a Community Goal to actually cause a system to be out of stock on its exports.

Really? I did not know that. That's a shame, I wish they would go back to the old model. The model we have now is vapid.

 

[Kaocraft]

That's an interesting viewpoint.
That's an interesting viewpoint.

Yes credits can be seen as experience points, but just because it can be seen as experience points doesn't mean these experience points can't function as currency. Especially with commodity trading.

Now you're right most services in elite cost next to nothing to purchase with CR. What is expensive are the ships and the subsequent modules that you have to buy to outfit your ship... at first.

But what makes a ship expensive or cheap is arbitrary on your personal progression through the game.

See when I say that credit has a certain value. i mean it has a certain value to you. How much do I have to pay you to get you to do something I want.

It is subject to your current player progression and decreases over time as you progress. That means, when you are a newbie, I could probably get you to do missions for my faction a few 100K.
However as you progress and grow richer, it may take 1M to convince you... then 10M, then a 50M.
This is what I mean by hyperinflation. All players go through this. Their time in game becomes worth more and more credits and approaches infinity as one progresses through the game.


One doesn't need an auction house or the exhange of modules for hyperinflation and devaluation of currency to occur. Hell Hyper inflation can occur within a single player experience because the central tenant is that the currency in question is continuously and infinitely being created.

I hope that helps explain what I mean.

I guess the part where I get lost is: what could you possibly want to pay someone else to do, and how would you ever know if they did it or not in the first place? There's nothing anyone can "do" for you that will have a tangible effect on your game that you can actually keep track of.

And nobody's value for time in the game approaches infinity, ever. The highest it can possibly go is exactly to the highest credit/hour activity that they are capable of doing, offset by the cost of doing it (both in terms of time, upfront investment, boredom/excitement, and the potential cost in the form of risk). There's a hard upper limit to this, as determined by the payouts you get for various missions and activities, as set by the devs. Far from trending towards infinity; as you work your way up through the ships, the cost of outfitting and the risk of rebuys starts to produce diminishing returns. When you fly your A-rated Cutter around, the money you *risk*, offset against the rate that you make money, actually becomes *less* attractive than at previous tiers.

If you have the cash to do so, it should be easier to bribe a Cutter pilot vs an FDL pilot - They need the money more, and they don't have anywhere else to go to make it. All you have to do is offer more money than they can make in the equivalent amount of time, plus something to cover the risk of a rebuy, plus enough of a bonus to compensate for the time and hassle of transferring hundreds of tons of Palladium over to them. But there's another bonus - a cutter can hold 700 tons of Palladium, which means you can pay around 9 million in one go without having to make a bunch of trips. Even if you use exploits like Quince as the point of reference (which you probably shouldn't?), you're looking at 40 million/hour as the absolute upper limit.

But all of this is moot, in my opinion, because I can't think of anything that anyone else can do for you that is worth paying for, and I also don't understand how you would ever hold them accountable for services rendered.

 

[CMDR GTR2014]

I think FD have bigger fish to fry. The economy is already screwed with all the money making exploits that have been around (hell, even non-exploits, take passenger missions for example). There is no going back. Anyone who was interested in getting tons of cash already has it. People who come later would be adversely affected by how things already are.

The time to plan a proper player based economy is before a game is even launched, not 2 years in. FD might as well move forward and just leave credits as a means to an end, not any sort of functional use. Plenty of other areas they could focus on and gain good results.

Also, while the idea of a player economy is a nice one for a MMO, there is a large part of the playerbase who are not interested in ED as a MMO and wouldn't care for such changes. I'm in the middle, i enjoy the multiplayer aspect of ED, but i really don't want it to start taking too many ideas from MMOs so that the MMO side becomes the focus. I want more content for all, not just a portion of the community.

I find it funny that you ALWAYS says that Fd have bigger fish to fry... But in the end they almost never actually do... hey lets re use some stuff from the aliens and make a whole upgrade of it because we cant be bother to actually do something right now! DONE. lets make some vague about 3.0 ... DONE...


So what is REALLY this important to FD do in your ideas Is what drives my curiosity right now... I know you'd say anything to justify any move from the devs , but really you have work better to try to fool me.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

I find it funny that you ALWAYS says that Fd have bigger fish to fry... But in the end they almost never actually do... hey lets re use some stuff from the aliens and make a whole upgrade of it because we cant be bother to actually do something right now! DONE. lets make some vague about 3.0 ... DONE...


So what is REALLY this important to FD do in your ideas Is what drives my curiosity right now... I know you'd say anything to justify any move from the devs , but really you have work better to try to fool me.

Well, let's perhaps start with my asking you to be less personal in your comments towards me. You've been like this for months now, and it would be super if whatever bugs you about me, you could leave out of your comments and stick to actually making the point.

Ok, so, you don't want to comment on my point about whether the ship has already sailed on making credits worthwhile. Fair enough. What would I like FD to work on instead? Well, there is lots of stuff in the DDF that would be nice plus probably some stuff i could dream up myself as well.

Bearing in mind its the first coffee of the day time:

Landing on atmosphere worlds
Space legs and associated gameplay
Bringing some aspects of third part tools in-game (EDSM for example type stuff, some of the eddb.io info - info you have already collected for example. Not trade route calculation though, that should be left up to players).
Life on planets (that would be a massive amount of work of course)
Ability to pledge to minor factions and better group mechanics (but with factions being the lead, don't like full MMO style where you have player leaders) so you can coordinate better with your groups and friend in-game, rather than having to rely on third parties.
Ship hanger so you can see all your ships at once in dock.
Ability to bring CQC ships into the main game as your SLFs (might get more people playing CQC).
Improved C&P system and Karma system. (Don't believe it will be a cure for all, but would at least help somewhat).
Bots for CQC and ability to set up your own matches.
More SRVs
More stuff for explorers to find plus more involved mechanics
Planetary mining
Improved mission system and make it so when you dock at a station there are always a few missions for every faction (hate it when i dock and there are no missions for a faction, neessitating a relog), not to mention better scaling of missions
Coop missions

Ok, that's enough for now.

 

[Belthize]

Ok, that's enough for now.

Spoiler

[video=youtube;rjQtzV9IZ0Q]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjQtzV9IZ0Q[/video]

I also agree with your earlier point that the whole economy ship has sailed, hit a reef, and sank. The time to implement such a thing was long ago.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjQtzV9IZ0Q

I also agree with your earlier point that the whole economy ship has sailed, hit a reef, and sank. The time to implement such a thing was long ago.

There is rather a good document on the internet about how when creating one of the Ultima games they sat down and worked out the whole economy in detail, looking at all the possible problems etc, before they made the game. That realsitically speaking is the only time to do it.

If you want to do it later, most likely the only way to make it fair is to do a server wipe..... and that would make a lot of people unhappy.

We had this on our game server. We saw how borked the ecomomy was. We had lots of good ideas how to fix it. But the only way we could do it in a way that was fair would have been to remove all items off all players... and that would have killed our playerbase. A vast majority would have just quit.

 

[Olivia Vespera]

Bearing in mind its the first coffee of the day time:

Landing on atmosphere worlds
Space legs and associated gameplay
Bringing some aspects of third part tools in-game (EDSM for example type stuff, some of the eddb.io info - info you have already collected for example. Not trade route calculation though, that should be left up to players).
Life on planets (that would be a massive amount of work of course)
Ability to pledge to minor factions and better group mechanics (but with factions being the lead, don't like full MMO style where you have player leaders) so you can coordinate better with your groups and friend in-game, rather than having to rely on third parties.
Ship hanger so you can see all your ships at once in dock.
Ability to bring CQC ships into the main game as your SLFs (might get more people playing CQC).
Improved C&P system and Karma system. (Don't believe it will be a cure for all, but would at least help somewhat).
Bots for CQC and ability to set up your own matches.
More SRVs
More stuff for explorers to find plus more involved mechanics
Planetary mining
Improved mission system and make it so when you dock at a station there are always a few missions for every faction (hate it when i dock and there are no missions for a faction, neessitating a relog), not to mention better scaling of missions
Coop missions

Ok, that's enough for now.

a few of these ideas could be credit sinks. the ship hanger, planetary mining, space legs and assoicated gameplay, More SRVs, whatever and however it's implemented, there could be a cost associated with them.

What i'm mostly worried about is this:
Currently we have a lot of disparate features that don't really interact with each other.
Multicrew, SLFs, engineers, planetary landing, powerplay, the bgs. each of these are largely independent. well except that engineers require planetary landing and what you find on planets.
still, barring that, changing one of these features doesn't affect the other.
I don't want to see another independent feature that doesn't add on to already existing game features or connects them to each other in usuable ways.

planetary mining sound like a good way.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

a few of these ideas could be credit sinks. the ship hanger, planetary mining, space legs and assoicated gameplay, More SRVs, whatever and however it's implemented, there could be a cost associated with them.

What i'm mostly worried about is this:
Currently we have a lot of disparate features that don't really interact with each other.
Multicrew, SLFs, engineers, planetary landing, powerplay, the bgs. each of these are largely independent. well except that engineers require planetary landing and what you find on planets.
still, barring that, changing one of these features doesn't affect the other.
I don't want to see another independent feature that doesn't add on to already existing game features or connects them to each other in usuable ways.

planetary mining sound like a good way.

Yeah, they can be credit sinks as well some of them. Or credit generators. More ways to get credits (without being over the top payments) aren't a bad thing.

As for disparate featutes, its not all bad. At least then if there is a problem in one area it doesn't impact on the other. Currently the only thing that binds a lot of activities together is the BGS, as most actions have an impact on it. Not sayingt this is good or bad, just how it is.

 

[Bosie]

It looks like the OP is sore that he lost a way of getting other players to make him rich by being the middle man.

 

[Boomer Kay]

Mind you a valuable commodity of exchange doesn't need to be tied to the value of credit.

For instance it could be a required item to do G5 engineering that can only be exchanged in person. Credit wise it could be worthless in the station commodity market.

The only valuable commodity in games is time. Everything else is a downtrade. Glass pearls for life time.
I'm still disappointed that the wing and multicrew features are so basic and don't even allow you to share time outside of combat.
You can mine or explore 'together' (which is actually more "side by side"), but you don't really "share the experience" for lack of synergies and just meeting a random stranger to exchange goods is not that much of a community activity.
If you just help me to bypass parts of the game I don't like, you're not a "person", you're just a "tool".

And yea, things like PowerPlay could be much better tools at actual player-interaction encouraging and community building, but it's so disjointed of an experience, it probably does nothing but frustrate those people trying to organize something within the framework.

And yea, I do remember the "good old days" of 2nd generation MMOGs, where "bind on aquire" items were rare, you'd spend hundreds of hours aquiring single items to perfect your build - or the equivalent time to scrouge up enough currency -one orc pawn a time- to aquire said item from some lucky shmuck who got it but didn't need it. Lasted as long as people 'played the game' and didn't start selling in-game junk for real money on ebay. As soon as that was started, the economy went out the window, since you competed with those guys that spent hundreds of hours making a living instead of playing the game.