Please add stock markets to the game

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

There are a lot or Corporations out there in Elite, yet no signs of any stock trading.

Addition of stock markets will make things more realistic, generate a ton of gameplay, and will solve some of invesment-profit proportions inconsistencies.

I am not necessarily talking about the introduction of player-owned corporations. Even existing (sadly, by name only) NPC-owned ones would do. This is what Powerplay was supposed to be.

There is way more to it than "spreadsheets in space" gameplay. Google how they work in GTA5.

It won't break no player property rule and will not be affecting those not participating harder than BGS does already. And all of that while adding heavy player-driven economical gameplay many of us want as well as a lot of depth to the bgs and reasons to be engaged in it.

It won't be a simple lottery, stock markets do follow cause and effect rules, so players' actions for or against NPC corporations will affect stock value. Of course it will be abusable, as it is should be, and it totally legitimate thing to abuse. This is happening IRL all the time.

And this have no chance to coming down to simple *go to system a, do stupid activity b* instructions. Stocks are limited. Specifics are different. Everyone would have to think for themselves or their wing.

I belive it won't take a lot of effort to introduce. And it adds up perfectly with the procedurally generated world, as markets are mathematically and logically explainable.

A lot of people want to be able to get more money.
A lot of people, including me, hate when most cost-efficient activity is some skimmer genocide. Or pole banging in Fehu. Or slave processing. Or whatever really. It's hard to force yourself make money in more fun way when you know about more efficient alternatives, and them being stupid just makes things worse.

Stock markets is the best of both worlds. You can make a lot of money, provided that you can think and have some to start with. Its not a passive gameplay, more like playing it passively wont get you much. You can affect things by yourself.

Thing is, not having much of things that should be present in a open-universe game doesnt help it at all.
Imagine GTA not having any side activities? That is what Elite is.
Game would have worked better in terms of immersion if it would be presented as player being part of the military, with all those material trade rates and unavaliability to just buy them, being confined to the ship/srv and limited by military statute which are quite often stupid and go overboard.
But with the supposedly free player, that just doesnt work. It feels like you are a person which was cut in rights for some reason, like an runaway slave or smthn.

If this game looks realisticaly, it should have realistic society and opportunities. Imagine if in FFXV all party would line up in a row and attacked in turns. This wouldnt work with realistic graphics.
I dont care about spreadsheets in space, I do not want Super Mario in space.

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

No to passive credit generation mechanics.
No to spreadsheet-driven 'gameplay'.

Yes to flying a spaceship.

 

[Ghostflux]

Yes to flying a spaceship.

So how would you add depth to "flying a spaceship" as a trader without allowing for some kind of trading gameplay that can potentially be optimized using data analysis?

 

[m0rl0ck]

I thought the stock markets in the x series of games added something to the gameplay, but in elite dangerous, i wonder if player groups might manipulate prices to unfair advantage.

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...could-share-my-style-of-playing-with-everyone

Thing is, not having much of things that should be present in a open-universe game doesnt help it at all.
Imagine GTA not having any side activities? That is what Elite is.
Game would have worked better in terms of immersion if it would be presented as player being part of the military, with all those material trade rates and unavaliability to just buy them, being confined to the ship/srv.
But with the supposedly free player, that just doesnt work. It feels like you are a person which was cut in rights for some reason, like an runaway slave or smthn.

If this game looks realisticaly, it should have realistic society and opportunities. Imagine if in FFXV all party would line up in a row and attacked in turns. This wouldnt work with realistic graphics.
I dont care about spreadsheets in space, I do not want Super Mario in space.

So how would you add depth to "flying a spaceship" as a trader without allowing for some kind of trading gameplay that can potentially be optimized using data analysis?

Thing is, with BGS being present you can not just analyse, but manipulate. By means of flying your spaceship. Which would work better than mission board.
Scale of player manipulation possible is an implementation question. Much like with goverments IRL.

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

miss

 

[[Diplomacy] Carnegie]

So how would you add depth to "flying a spaceship" as a trader without allowing for some kind of trading gameplay that can potentially be optimized using data analysis?

Trading isn't in a bad place these days, especially with the improvements to market price visibility in 3.0.
stock markets aren't specific to traders anyway.

I'd rework black markets to make them sell goods as well as buy them, together with limiting access to them to people with certain 'reputations'. Increased profits should come with higher risks - random searches in High Sec systems, stuff like that.

 

[nexxo]

No to passive credit generation mechanics.
No to spreadsheet-driven 'gameplay'.

Yes to flying a spaceship.

What made ELITE so revolutionary is that it was ALL the things: flying space ships, trading, mining, pirating, bounty hunting. It's about being a hardcore space hustler. Playing the stock market has a natural place in that.

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

Trading isn't in a bad place these days, especially with the improvements to market price visibility in 3.0.
stock markets aren't specific to traders anyway.

I'd rework black markets to make them sell goods as well as buy them, together with limiting access to them to people with certain 'reputations'. Increased profits should come with higher risks - random searches in High Sec systems, stuff like that.

It have a lot to do with *lategame* gameplay.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

There are so many things you could add to the game, that would increase immersion and gameplay options. A galactic stock market may be one of them. If it's the most urgent/required/missing one is a completely different question. I think there are quite a few bigger fish to fry, that have more to do with the core dynamic of the game.

Plus, I'm also very sceptical towards passive CR income sources.

I'd be much more in favour of things like being offered stakes in a minor faction (e.g. after helping them expanding into a new system), and attaching certain benefits to it. Like storing ships, modules and commodities at their home starport (though that would mean you'd have to remove the current free storage options), or maybe even the option to acquire land on a planet in the faction's home system, and build a planetary home base there.

You could say this would only lead to yet another grind cycle. But it would give you the chance to really make yourself at home somewhere.

 

[Joe deCharlotte]

If done right a stock market could provide the needed money drain to balance the money source. Real stock markets do not provide additional money, but unly zero sum games plus a small continous drain caused by the trading fees.

ATM noone knows how to shrink the accounts of all the exploiters out there and a stock market could be the honey pot to catch them all. Therefore i support that proposal!

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

If done right a stock market could provide the needed money drain to balance the money source. Real stock markets do not provide additional money, but unly zero sum games plus a small continous drain caused by the trading fees.

ATM no-one knows how to shrink the accounts of all the exploiters out there and a stock market could be the honey pot to catch them all. Therefore i support that proposal!

Well, I don't think that like 40% of player base could and should be punished.
The fact that this game has progression is undeniable, so it's not their fault for choosing the most cost-efficient activity.
And them being boring and unnatural, such as slave processing, Fehu pole banging and skimmer genocide, only adds insult to injury.

I'd like to have intelligent or skill-intensive hardcore ways to progress. Rather than being forced to search for any misstep of developers.
As well as actually start to use credits as a merit of activity, rather than an amount of crap such as iron or broken conductors collected.

Sadly, the only vector of difficulty they choose is time involved. And CQC failure reassures them in that direction. But the reason for that was is that competitive /= hardcore. I'd never played a space sim for its competitive value.


I might have a soft-wipe scenario, which would cause the lowest backlash possible, but I don't think that such action is needed yet.
If they will use GOIDS for a hard-wipe, I'll actually loose faith in them. And I'm already afraid of such possibility.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

I agree with the notion of stock markets being zero sum games. This´d be far to difficult to simulate and you´d allways find some whiner who after going broke blames the game devs.
I´d be happy if the economy as a whole´d somehow function a bit more. You don´t have any effect as far as i could see on what commodities you sell on any given market. I heavily oversupplied a moon base with my T7 and prices won´t budge. They simply reset each time you visit the base. Even the day after there was no effect. In such an enviroemnt you´d reasonably buy and sell only commodities with a large absolute differences hence the slave trade....

Way before stock markets i´d like to see mining having an effect on the reffinery you just supplied. Or some minerals shortage in the bubble. The economy as a whole is not plausible in ED right now, why open another building site?

 

[BrownSeaPoster]

Can I hire a stock broker to manage my accounts ?

 

[CMDR EDGEL0RD]

Can I hire a stock broker to manage my accounts ?

Actualy yeah, were just thinking about something like that. Some dude to keep your accounts at +- zero change for when you go out.

Btw where does notion of stock markets being zero-sum games comes from? Especially in the expanding bubble? Economics aren't my speciality but still...

 

[RamirezKurita]

I agree with the notion of stock markets being zero sum games. This´d be far to difficult to simulate and you´d allways find some whiner who after going broke blames the game devs.
I´d be happy if the economy as a whole´d somehow function a bit more. You don´t have any effect as far as i could see on what commodities you sell on any given market. I heavily oversupplied a moon base with my T7 and prices won´t budge. They simply reset each time you visit the base. Even the day after there was no effect. In such an enviroemnt you´d reasonably buy and sell only commodities with a large absolute differences hence the slave trade....

Way before stock markets i´d like to see mining having an effect on the reffinery you just supplied. Or some minerals shortage in the bubble. The economy as a whole is not plausible in ED right now, why open another building site?

Agreed on that, before worrying about making a working stock market, they should be worrying about getting a somewhat functional commodity economy working.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

All economic transactions are at their core zero sum games? ballance sheet me +1: ballance sheet you -1 sum zero
The reson you buy and sell is aquire intangible assets like the taste of truffels. The rarer a commodity the pricier and ultimately that´s where ED struggles. To my knowledge there is no movement of commodities and no effect of supplying goods to stations. It´s hidden a bit behind the huge demand/supply numbers but even if you trade with moon bases prices do not change, they simply reset. Applied on your stock market idea this´d mean buy and sell large absolute priced stocks. Yes i´m kind of a nerd after patrician II with an extremely palusible economy (workers, consumption, production, ect.). This game is i don´t know what 20 years old? And it demonstrates how a economy functions.
I understand how the server overhead for the bubble economy`d break Frontiers capabilities but as i have stated elsewhere my suggestion is to let the client handle most of the calculations. Of course i don´t expect to have a complete balance sheet but at least the impression of moving prices on small markets or selling mined commodities....

 

[rockwater]

Economies are not zero sum: when a bank extends credit (a loan) to a business for amounts beyond the funds/assets the bank has, then money is being created out of thin air. This is a core feature of how finance works.

However, we're talking about a computer game: commodities are created out of thin air (or pure vacuum) as a matter of course. There is no ore in that asteroid before you start firing with your mining lasers. The food you buy at the station wasn't farmed somewhere, and the fuel you scoop off a star doesn't come from a fixed supply that is tracked.

The economy of ED is a loose fiction at best, driven by simple algorithms to make you feel like your actions in the universe are doing something.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

Economies are not zero sum: when a bank extends credit (a loan) to a business for amounts beyond the funds/assets the bank has, then money is being created out of thin air. This is a core feature of how finance works.
However, we're talking about a computer game: commodities are created out of thin air (or pure vacuum) as a matter of course. There is no ore in that asteroid before you start firing with your mining lasers. The food you buy at the station wasn't farmed somewhere, and the fuel you scoop off a star doesn't come from a fixed supply that is tracked.
The economy of ED is a loose fiction at best, driven by simple algorithms to make you feel like your actions in the universe are doing something.

OMG. Frontier has to run it´s servers on something.... -.-
Sarcasm aside there is no movement of comodities. Prices don´t fluctuate, not even a few percent. The economy model is a simple reset. That´s where many of ze "billionaires" in the ED universe meet their natural boundary. I believe FD will not be able to satisfy them with player missions only. You need some sort of real dynamics. The other available space game centers around a player driven market ... with all it´s shortfalls, maily feeder accounts (that is one player has to maintain several accounts to feed his main account in order to make progressin the game). Of course the company will deny that but in the real world that´s how it pans out.
I see how Frontier is trying to avoid this but you have to make a play at some point. That´s why many people vent their anger via "the grinding issue".
In the end you cannot direct everything from one narrator´s perpective?
It´s not "NPCs" moveing goods around. It´s a simple reset. Even if NPCs´d moved goods around you´d see price fluctuations but you don´t. There are no shortages of anything because it´s a simple reset. Prices are influenced by system states yes but that´s all. You don´t see a depleted bubble with huge shortages of basic commodities in rim sectors. There is no reason to buy anthing other than platinum or imperial slaves once you´re rich enough to afford them because there is no consumption or production. And the 24 hours ship traffic makes this clear: you cannot possibly ship away or in the amount of goods needed, not NPCs not players. Of course you can try to sell this as your talking point but at the end of the day it´s the same with the toupee models´talking points: they´re empty and everyone knows it.
I realy love the game but it needs to grow beyond a single narrator´s perspective.

 

[IohannisTyrannis]

I do not want to become "100% scientifically accurate" in this game. I the real world you´d be able to populate a Dyson swarm Sol with 1 trillion people living in O´Neil cylinders.
I want to have a semi plausible FTL game economy. After 1000 years of mineral extraction you should see depletion tendencies in easily accesible mineral deposits hence shortages or higher prices inside the bubble. So it´d make sense to import let´s say Titanium from XYZ system. That´s all i want a plausible economy, right now it´s not even remotely plausible.
I have suggested to load the client with some of the extra burden. Many of us use multiple core CPUs and the engine seems to be able to shift the loads accordingly. Is this a too difficult to code task? I realy don´t know. "Hello world" was the pinalce of my coding skills.