The SoD economy

First off, a few basic assumptions that we can all agree on:
1) 65's can farm PP and items much more effectively than non-65s
2) the server is top-heavy with 65's, many of them raid geared making them even more powerful
3) 75% of the server population is saving for a charm upgrade or would be if it were feasible
4) upgrading a charm is progressively expensive

If the amount of PP on the server is basically static, there are 2 possible conclusions that can be drawn:
A) cash drops have been nerfed to hell and back. Since each charm is progressively more expensive, bank accts should be getting larger as more and more PP is banked for each upgrade.
B) we're all just a bunch of lazy fucks that never play except when raiding (which produces very little PP on a per player basis).

But if B is true, how much of it is due to A? If cash drops were at a level that made upgrading charms something that could be reasonably accomplished (certainly not done quickly), would average playtime increase?

If a 65 exp group nets 150pp/hr (rough estimate, and possibly a bit on the high side), then a juggo charm will require about 1,433 hours of farming (215k / 150). That's a helluva long time. Yes, you can farm droppable items to speed this up, but those have diminishing returns as would be expected in a server that is top-heavy (due to price dropping as the market floods and not enough up-and-coming players to soak up the excess).

I bought my juggo on my own, but look at the effort required. Brandar at last check was the #1 mob killer on the server with over 28,000 kills (most of this was done in Cy Gorge) and Garluk has a very respectable 6k+ kills many of them also in Gorge (which does not include mobs killed by his pet). This was all done prior to cash drops there getting reduced. I generated maybe 5-8% of my cash through item sales.
 
Starting in and around October-November I had around 3k in the bank. And I managed to farm about 40k+ in 2-3 months for my 65k charm. I wasn't expecting it to be a walk in the park and tbh I was surprised I got it so quick looking back on it. My luck on rolls in group is horrible too with 800pp being by far about the highest I have ever netted for an item. I did manage to get help from the guild because I think I was the only one actively trying to get my charm on my own at the time.

Since getting my charm, some how i've gathered about 10k+ worth of plat from xping and whatnot. :psyduck:

I thought it was fine... I'll add to this later tho!
 
Ok, a 65 rogue with 271 AA's thinks things are ok. And at that level, I assume things are ok actually.

I am not insinuating they are hard for levelled and strongly AA'ed people. I am talking about the people below that. That has been my message from the time I posted the thread.
 
When exactly do you expect people to have cash to get any charm beyond the entry level ones?

45? 50?
 
I was maybe at 200 aa's when I got my charm, and if you are a solo rogue and have no alt's there is probably no efficient way of grinding for cash outside of xp groups so if a rogue wants to solo he has to have a decent amount of aa's to do so or borrow a friends character (which i did). And I really don't expect a rogue with 50aa's to solo or duo extremely well to farm for a 65k charm.

For the amount of aa's I had to invest in and for being my first character I thought this was the suitable time for a rogue to get his/her charm.

I was pretty much in the same boat with Tryfaen with how much money he had at those levels. I spent about 400pp on a reznolaw fang at around lvl 45 and had no money after that. Paw, a really nice mid level xp spot yields no pp off mobs, just drops that net around a couple gold. The extremely low end gems should be able to net a gold or two at minimum. The gems that sell for only a silver or so just get trashed and hardly sell for anything even with a stack full :(
 
Going along with what iaeolan said, I have to agree wholeheartedly. If I saw 36k+ charms on people in their 50's or low 60's I would think something is inherently wrong. Maybe once in a blue moon it will happen, but amassing a huge amount of plat before 65 won't happen frequently for a variety of reasons including:

a) No reasonable person would farm for a charm at level 50 when they know it's much easier at 65+
b) Earning big plat is a process over time, a long time. Therefore, you will likely be exp'ing as you earn plat.
c) Before level 60, there aren't many spots to earn money like you can after 60. This makes sense, and if it was otherwise, everyone farming coin for a charm would stomp low level exp zones.

With that said, if you want to get a 36k or juggo charm before 65+ then you will have to work for it very hard, just as anyone else will. However, if you believe that these charms should be commonplace or on newbish characters, then I think most people would disagree.
 
iaeolan said:
When exactly do you expect people to have cash to get any charm beyond the entry level ones?

45? 50?
Click to expand...

This is a very good point.

In my opinion, charms above 36k are very very good items, and honestly shouldnt be readily available to your average high level player (average meaning 50-65+100ish aa, minus variables such as master tradeskillers and such, as they put in a tremendous ammout of work also). I had charm of the mind until i was at about 50aas, when I got a hell of a deal on a 36k, and was helped by my guild. From all my time from level 1 to level 65+50aa I had made 12k, never spent a dime except on my 500plat charm of the mind.

From this point I spent about a year xping and questing and had accumulated about 50k more (note, I did probably 200aa worth of xp, got lucky with some rolls) when I realized that I was accumulating a nice chunk of change and may as well go for the 212k. I farmed very hard for the next 4 months or so hitting high end xp zones for droppables and low level raid mobs for things to sell. As most of my friends know I was pretty sneaky with group splits and gem drops and such, until I finally was within sight of the 212k. I then had to borrow money from my guildmates to make the last bit, and I was finally able to purchase my new charm.

I guess the point I am trying to make here is that it should not be as easy as sitting in some cygorge type zone killing low level mobs to accumulate enough cash to buy a high end charm, it should require months and months of work, which is how I see it now and why I dont think there is anything wrong.

edit: blockoftext
 
As we can pretty much agree that you shouldn't be getting 36k charms before being 65 w/ a handful of AAs, what's the problem? Is there anyone out there who is in this situation and has been actually working to get a charm w/ some effort and has had a significantly hard time?

I can only think that a warrior would have a hard time, personally. Since the 36ks are pretty worthless for them.

edit: yes, i meant shouldn't
 
iaeolan said:
As we can pretty much agree that you should be getting 36k charms before being 65 w/ a handful of AAs
Click to expand...

I assume you meant shouldn't...right?
 
guyvertoo said:
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that it should not be as easy as sitting in some cygorge type zone killing low level mobs to accumulate enough cash to buy a high end charm, it should require months and months of work, which is how I see it now and why I dont think there is anything wrong.
Click to expand...

Those people who used to farm in cycgorge didn't make 212k in a day, or even a week. At the rate it did drop, you were probably looking at about 6 weeks of full-time farming in the gorge to make that much, and that's if you're geared and AA'd like Brandar (IP geared, hundreds of AAs). Otherwise it would go much more slowly. It was (and is still) actually faster to farm items worth cash, but it is nice to have an alternative to doing so.

There's nothing wrong with choosing to make cash farming your method of choice for making money, any more than it is to make tradeskilling or item farming your method of choice. The slower rate of return/time invested in plat farming vs. item dropping is fair. No server economy can support a population that farms money entirely by pursuing item drops.

Garluk said:
First off, a few basic assumptions that we can all agree on:
1) 65's can farm PP and items much more effectively than non-65s
2) the server is top-heavy with 65's, many of them raid geared making them even more powerful
3) 75% of the server population is saving for a charm upgrade or would be if it were feasible
4) upgrading a charm is progressively expensive

If the amount of PP on the server is basically static, there are 2 possible conclusions that can be drawn:
A) cash drops have been nerfed to hell and back. Since each charm is progressively more expensive, bank accts should be getting larger as more and more PP is banked for each upgrade.
B) we're all just a bunch of lazy fucks that never play except when raiding (which produces very little PP on a per player basis).

But if B is true, how much of it is due to A? If cash drops were at a level that made upgrading charms something that could be reasonably accomplished (certainly not done quickly), would average playtime increase?

If a 65 exp group nets 150pp/hr (rough estimate, and possibly a bit on the high side), then a juggo charm will require about 1,433 hours of farming (215k / 150). That's a helluva long time. Yes, you can farm droppable items to speed this up, but those have diminishing returns as would be expected in a server that is top-heavy (due to price dropping as the market floods and not enough up-and-coming players to soak up the excess).
Click to expand...

QFT.

And it should be noted that Brandar and I both appear to be discussing the same thing: 212k charms for well geared characters 65 w/ 200+ AAs. I wouldn't expect a brand new up and coming character to be able to afford their 36k charm at 65 with a handful of AAs.
 
tradeskilling is a huge money sink and not many people have payed for there tradeskills with the items made from them even at higher levels so lets stop refering to tradeskills as cash source sure it is once you get 250 and outa the debt you made your self upwards of 30k for some of the hard ts's
 
seferon said:
tradeskilling is a huge money sink and not many people have payed for there tradeskills with the items made from them even at higher levels so lets stop refering to tradeskills as cash source sure it is once you get 250 and outa the debt you made your self upwards of 30k for some of the hard ts's
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Tradeskilling can be extremly profitable, ask perkins. Sure it takes a lot of work but so does farming the traditional way.
 
guyvertoo said:
Tradeskilling can be extremly profitable, ask perkins. Sure it takes a lot of work but so does farming the traditional way.
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Perkins put in an absolutely OBSCENE amount of time. Smithing is more time consuming than brewing, tailoring and jewelcraft combined. The reason he has made a profit on it (and he deserves it) is because he was the first to max out. That is generally the only person to make any real profit from a tradeskill.
 
Being the only one at max skill gives you a huge advantage. You can push your prices to the max that the market will handle and you don't have to worry about the other guys selling at or below cost just to subsidize their skillups. Once you have competition in a market, your profit margin will invariably go down.

By being the first to really jump on the alchemy bandwagon when it was opened up to all classes I was just about able to break even despite dumping most of my products back on the npc vendors at a huge loss (stuff that I made for easy skillups that had almost zero player appeal). And if the resist potion had been implemented in a timely fashion, I could have made a fortune.
 
hooden said:
c) Before level 60, there aren't many spots to earn money like you can after 60. This makes sense, and if it was otherwise, everyone farming coin for a charm would stomp low level exp zones.
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This is the one bit that is relevant to the intent of this thread.

This is not about charms. This is about having reasonable availability to get appropiate level items and buy spells etc before you burst onto the 100+ AA scene. To be honest, I use the + 15 cha charm on my mage and I am in no hurry to upgrade it. Now, on my little tank, I did spend a few K and get him a guardian charm. Beyond that one instance, I am not worried about charms.

This is about the multiple changes that have cumulated in, what I think, is probably a much larger than intended effect.

Tell me someone actually understands what I am saying in all this.
 
I think your thread was effectively derailed from your original intent: "SoD cash drops pre 100 AAs" and rerailed to your original title: "The SoD economy." Which includes charms and plat farming and item farming and tradeskilling and bind on equip and (etc etc etc). The "Bind on Equip" thread in the Balancing Discussion forum probably feeds this thread as well.

But Brandar is right: if you up plat/gem drops pre-60 without doing anything to post-60 spots, then all you get is higher level people farming those spots too, since they can do it even MORE efficiently. Hence the reason Cycgorge was always filled with 65 chars and not lower.

To be fair, you can't really address one issue effectively without addressing the others.
 
JoeMeyer said:
Not true.

Others can make a profit as well. He just has an 'advantage'.
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An advantage faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar above anyone doing tradeskills now. I honestly probably will never bother with them simply because there is so much competition on the market at the moment (so many people max) that making money off of them is pretty dubious. Especially since pretty much no one is buying, or is going to buy in the near future, not only because of the oversaturation (as people selling even shadowsilk sleeves for 1kish aren't seeing very many sales either) but also due largely I would think in part to this particular issue. Think of it this way since the server is raider topheavy. Would you rather pay 1.5-3k for a single piece of gear which you will upgrade raiding eventually, and chances are have to hand off to someone anyways once you do get an upgrade, or be 1-5% closer to your charm? It's pretty simple, and without a doubt I would say why the amount of plat on the server has not changed. Because no one is buying things faster than plat is made and dumped into sinks.

Also as for the cycgorge making too much money....bullshit. Put it back the way it was for a week, and you farm it. Getting a 200k charm WILL take you many many many weeks. Probably 2 months of 8 hour days. Also I'd like to point out that that's the way things used to be. Also that was with selling just about everything there was in that zone - eyes and toes to a player for more profit, and when the necks were very common and I could sell them 150-300 apiece. Nowadays? Far far far far longer. I'd also like to find out exactly how taking down 7+ dark blues in a zone+ keeping the whole zone free of roaming mobs etc, for 8+/day is not hard work? Maybe not if you're a wow chinese gold farmer, but it sounds pretty hard to me.

One thing also that I had been thinking of is the whole charm/moneysink thing. Tbh it only works if people are actually going to go for the charms. I really doubt 99% of the server, even the people who used to be going for one, will even bother going past the 36 or 60ish k ones depending on class. It just probably isn't going to happen.

As for item and spell upgrades, yeah I can only imagine what it's like working up now and trying to get all your spells. Let's see what I would have spent on aisling for mine

Air/water pet 3k thx brandar :D (they were 2kish)
Earthpet 700 (it blows)
Firepet 1k (has like 12 hps)
Aegis of magic/Monster summoning IV or w/e 2k (for completions sake)
Disposement 1k (found out it was pretty worthless later on prolly would go into completions sake nowadays)
Storm of steel 1k (best magenuke b4 relic)
Earthsplit 150ish
Searfire 500ish
Bauble of battle 300ish
BoP/Sop 2k

So just with the essentials thats 7kish. Granted, today prices have dropped quite a bit. I'd expect paying 4k total for completing the pets if that. But keep in mind mage spells are also pretty cheap to begin with nowadays because of various reasons. I shudder to think what a cleric shaman or druid would be paying for spells, you're looking at 1-3k alone for 1 heal (2.5-3k blissful light, 1.5-2k revitalize, 1-1.5k mend wounds), let alone the rare spells like vessel of althuna.

Lets not forget gear. Gear has dropped in price abyssmally in alot of cases, though I would think that would be a combination of factors. Rec levels, low influx of players (though there are a few new people, these people also generally from what I've seen are not snatching up tons of sold gear mostly I would figure due to the difficulty of farming with shitty gear low aa's and a general lack from what I've seen of alot of pickup groups to do alot of the places that would actually drop decent $), far lower amount of pickup groups than previously (I would also think this was in part due to the higher proportion of guild/established community groups going on), saturation of the market (less prevalent from what I've seen on many items than what I think most believe, gogo fomelo addiction, though it is getting faaaaar more prevalent now that plat drops have been nerfed, as should be expected), and with the amount of guilds raiding/starting to raid, if one was new, and plat was hard to get, why not just wait for raidgear and not buy things while saving up for a charm, the only thing you cannot replace with raidgear. It makes sense, and people figure this out fast.

Also have to agree on the pre-60 without upping post 60. To use a pretty ridiculous example if bb starts dropping 3+pp a mob, you can bet everyone that has em loads up some pbaoe's and farms the hell out of it. Sure there are some people who will leave once an xp group gets there, but you can bet on that person just being replaced by someone who will not care one whit. Let's say one even puts in specific zones where after a certain level one can't enter that drop a decent amount of plat as I've seen suggested somewhere (think it was in a thread way back, can't remember). Twink's for the win in that scenario, though there are quite a few reasons why it would be a pretty awful idea.


But yeah I have to reiterate my agreement that if it is the same, something is seriously very very very wrong. It simply should not be. I would actually expect to see a few months of steady increase (as people go for a higher charm, the plat circulating from item and spell sales also coming into play) then having a steady drop as those people reach a charm. Especially in light of a large portion of the server being 65 with 50+ aa's who generally depending on class can farm pretty effectively. Consider how many classes are actually good at farming:

Ranger
Necro
Druid
Bard
Shaman
Enchanter
Mage
Wiz

So pretty much over half the classes in the game (don't think I'm skipping any class, and Idk if bl's can farm well or not due to my having 0 experience with the class). Generally I would also expect to see a higher proportion of these classes on the server than the other classes (various reasons, tanks=> more difficult to level due to 0ish soloing ability, monks same kind of problems, rogues also difficult to solo etc etc etc). Being that all of these classes above can farm pretty effectively, some more so than others (and clerics can at least farm competently, I'm not sure about how effectively, but I would see it being pretty difficult for them to be taken down by anything if well prepared, they just don't kill all that fast) it's odd on par with tabloid news that the amount of plat on the server hasn't increased.
 
Allielyn said:
But Brandar is right: if you up plat/gem drops pre-60 without doing anything to post-60 spots, then all you get is higher level people farming those spots too, since they can do it even MORE efficiently. Hence the reason Cycgorge was always filled with 65 chars and not lower.
Click to expand...


Ok, so the answer is to stop the 65's from overfarming stuff intended for lowbies is to strangle the lowbies? I would rather see level restrictions placed on all loot drops (plat, items, TS drops, everything) than make it such a bitch to be new to the server. Fix it so the 65's have to leave the areas and remove any temptation from them.

How many newbies have gotten frustrated and just left? New blood is a vital need for SoD, let's try to do something that encourages it.
 
I would think the better solution to be making the higher level areas more attractive to "farm" than the lower level areas. If nerfing Cyc Gorge of its cash drops(which was the right thing to do - it was far too easy to farm the zone for plat compared to other zones) means that more challenging places can then be made more meaningful to farm, then we're on the right track here. As was said, the higher tier charms are very nice items, so I think a bit of effort aside from mindless farming should be more of a benefit than not.

This also brings to mind the fact that dungeons should be, overall, more rewarding in time spent farming them than outdoor areas such as Cyc Gorge.

But I will say, vendor fodder is just as imporant as droppable named loot, because there definitely needs to be an influx of plat to buy those droppable items to begin with.
 
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