Once upon a time a couple of young graduates were told that no space game would work unless you had 3 lives and a short play time...
Is there information on the economy?
- Thread starter Roybe
- Start date
Once upon a time a couple of young graduates were told that no space game would work unless you had 3 lives and a short play time...
Most of the 400 billions will not be inhabited and hence wont have an economy to be influenced at all. I dont know how many systems will be inhabited, but i would say less than 100 000, at least by humans, something like 250LY around Sol. And FD can always amplify the influence of players if needed.
Another point for a well run economy, and my concern with a lack of economic oversight. (Caveat: I understand this is beta and it was only a test run) I bet if there was an obvious economic outcome to this fight, there would have been more activity surrounding it with a more definitive outcome. I'm not meaning the immediate gains of smuggling alcohol, but if the system itself would have become economically stronger or weaker because of the outcome..people could have been more invested in the outcome of the battle.
The other point, once more, is that the game generated lots of in game coin for players that paid attention to the area. With few sinks for that coin to go into. I'm sure everyone upgraded a ship or two during it, and that they paid an insurance fee or two, however if it was a well balanced gain or loss of income is only known to Frontier. Personally, I was exploring and trading. I've made my way up to the Mark III without even trying. Again, I realize this is beta and they are allowing for this type of advancement for the players.
The turn off with EVE is, like many of these MMO(RPG) games is resource. You have to invest a vast amount of time and/or money into the game to be on a level playing field. They're about building powerful players and the gameplay is entirely geared around grinding.
Oh and EVE there is no direct flight control - which is also boring. So it's boring, with boring and a monthly fee on top.
I'm hoping that the economics in E
will provide a method of making some cash for my character along with other ways that I can engage in as and when I feel like it, with the vast amount of the game being in a ship with my joystick wondering whether I should shoot the ship in front of me so I can get rid of mass-locking.
Oh and EVE there is no direct flight control - which is also boring. So it's boring, with boring and a monthly fee on top.
I'm hoping that the economics in E
will provide a method of making some cash for my character along with other ways that I can engage in as and when I feel like it, with the vast amount of the game being in a ship with my joystick wondering whether I should shoot the ship in front of me so I can get rid of mass-locking.
EvE is a job.
E: D hopefully it will not be.
That said meaningfull economy is a must for a space sim.
The thing to consider is a scale. How much good need to travel between agri world and refining wold each and every day? This is not the scale player in Lakon9 operates.
How much "iron" ore shipyard needs each and every day? Again, that is not the scale player operates, unless he would fly space equivalent of this: (scaled up to orbital operations)
neither players would operate a space factory churning 1000's of military fighters a day. ... or 10000 of replacement sidewinders.
Those would be jobs if FD would try to simulate them. Still they should be present and observable in the universe, precisely because there needs to be scale out there to compare against.
Now player scale economy is another thing: Rare elements. Custom modules. Surveying ice rings and selling the data, so mining corp would know where to park that excavator. Quick reactions to changes in demand. Everything with good weight/value ratio really, the domain here on earth handled by parcel companies, family operated shops, small and microbusinesses. Scale. (with added bonus that you can open up higher layers in future expansions, though never operate on level of state or "multinational corporation" scale .. but there is lots and lots of ground to cover before reaching that level)
That said, trade tools with buy and sell orders and lots and lots of market info (also purchaseable market info) .. that is bare minimum by today's standards in game that at least claims to be multilplayer and claims to have supply-demand based economy.
Also there should be visible difference between market models. Free market vs Social Market Economy vs Corporatism vs centrally planned communism. Whole Eranin conflict should revolve around it (or at least be a visible facet)
So far what I see is ... emptiness and low volumes. The core systems feel empty, and so does economy. Hope that is just Beta thing.
Now I understand that for some trading is a dirty thing. Which is why there are communistic systems out there.
E: D hopefully it will not be.
That said meaningfull economy is a must for a space sim.
The thing to consider is a scale. How much good need to travel between agri world and refining wold each and every day? This is not the scale player in Lakon9 operates.
How much "iron" ore shipyard needs each and every day? Again, that is not the scale player operates, unless he would fly space equivalent of this: (scaled up to orbital operations)
neither players would operate a space factory churning 1000's of military fighters a day. ... or 10000 of replacement sidewinders.
Those would be jobs if FD would try to simulate them. Still they should be present and observable in the universe, precisely because there needs to be scale out there to compare against.
Now player scale economy is another thing: Rare elements. Custom modules. Surveying ice rings and selling the data, so mining corp would know where to park that excavator. Quick reactions to changes in demand. Everything with good weight/value ratio really, the domain here on earth handled by parcel companies, family operated shops, small and microbusinesses. Scale. (with added bonus that you can open up higher layers in future expansions, though never operate on level of state or "multinational corporation" scale .. but there is lots and lots of ground to cover before reaching that level)
That said, trade tools with buy and sell orders and lots and lots of market info (also purchaseable market info) .. that is bare minimum by today's standards in game that at least claims to be multilplayer and claims to have supply-demand based economy.
Also there should be visible difference between market models. Free market vs Social Market Economy vs Corporatism vs centrally planned communism. Whole Eranin conflict should revolve around it (or at least be a visible facet)
So far what I see is ... emptiness and low volumes. The core systems feel empty, and so does economy. Hope that is just Beta thing.
Now I understand that for some trading is a dirty thing. Which is why there are communistic systems out there.
The turn off with EVE is, like many of these MMO(RPG) games is resource. You have to invest a vast amount of time and/or money into the game to be on a level playing field. They're about building powerful players and the gameplay is entirely geared around grinding.
Oh and EVE there is no direct flight control - which is also boring. So it's boring, with boring and a monthly fee on top.
I'm hoping that the economics in E
I agree with all of this apart from the eve is boring line. You put in hours of grind and work to earn the credits to buy the ships the modules and then find yourself in PvP managing modules, ammo, range it's quite frantic and an immense adrenaline rush.
But yeah eve is a second job and those thousand player battles people rave about can become ridiculously time sapping affairs.
That is true for free market economies. Still many in game economies by description are centrally planned ones, and yet there is no observable difference in what they trad, and no sign of actual gluts, shortages and other imbalances
Markets are miniscule and shallow. and the devs are worried about "player hoarding" . That do sound familiar, sadly.
Not to mention that most of goods do offer such terrible profit/ton that no sane player would touch them (unless there is 100k+ BBmission generated). Do npc's gobble them up and transport on loss? I do noticed gluts of materials (food cartridges mostly, in millions of tons) - which should register as problem if background sim is worth anything. Yet it seems that while players do not have inventory space to hire, space stations have them plenty. Local variety and specialization? not really.
It's kind of hard to call that galactic civilization when general daily trade volume seems to be less than maersk3e can get on board.
Again. My question wasn't about gameplay as much as it was about health and in game coin. Here's an article on how economists think and plan the health of online games.
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/bus...irtual-economies-eve-world-of-warcraft-64593/
For those with business and gaming interests search for virtual economies and give it some thought. My concern in a game like this is that currency becomes deflated do to ease of production. Without a way to limit the amounts in players hands the game will die out since there is no true long term trading goal, this type of discontent can be heard even now, with those players wanting to know what happens after the vertical progression stops (I have the biggest ship fully kitted...now what?)...everyone will have infinite amounts of gold, eventually. For a case study in this look at Diablo 2. Gold became worthless within the game and people started trading in a particular piece of jewelry. Since there is no interplayer trading within this universe this 'workaround' cannot be applied. So the problem becomes how is Fontier going to keep the value of in game coin steady over time?
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/bus...irtual-economies-eve-world-of-warcraft-64593/
For those with business and gaming interests search for virtual economies and give it some thought. My concern in a game like this is that currency becomes deflated do to ease of production. Without a way to limit the amounts in players hands the game will die out since there is no true long term trading goal, this type of discontent can be heard even now, with those players wanting to know what happens after the vertical progression stops (I have the biggest ship fully kitted...now what?)...everyone will have infinite amounts of gold, eventually. For a case study in this look at Diablo 2. Gold became worthless within the game and people started trading in a particular piece of jewelry. Since there is no interplayer trading within this universe this 'workaround' cannot be applied. So the problem becomes how is Fontier going to keep the value of in game coin steady over time?
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ED has no economy really.
There's no need which drives commanders to make different decisions when it comes to trading - the only goal is to maximize the profit which is easy to do with packing up the most expensive commodities into the biggest cargo hold possible.
There's no food chain in ED which requires elements to be persistent - you can be trader, bounty hunter, pirate, miner but it won't affect any aspect of the prices or the supply or demand. There's no real supply or demand as well as there are no player created contents.
Yet, the only game element differences (namely: what ship you fly with which setup) is based on money and the most effective way to acquire it is trading.
So we have a trading game with no economy
1.3 will put some new elements into the game and helps to put another game board on the same table with powerplay. So we can play Risk in space too.
There's no need which drives commanders to make different decisions when it comes to trading - the only goal is to maximize the profit which is easy to do with packing up the most expensive commodities into the biggest cargo hold possible.
There's no food chain in ED which requires elements to be persistent - you can be trader, bounty hunter, pirate, miner but it won't affect any aspect of the prices or the supply or demand. There's no real supply or demand as well as there are no player created contents.
Yet, the only game element differences (namely: what ship you fly with which setup) is based on money and the most effective way to acquire it is trading.
So we have a trading game with no economy
1.3 will put some new elements into the game and helps to put another game board on the same table with powerplay. So we can play Risk in space too.