Quote:
Originally Posted by Darus Grey
Brad, I have a serious question.

Is there anyone on your team who is the equivalent of an economist?
If the answer is no, you really should consider it. If its yes, I don't think they're doing a good job(and I hate being mean saying that, but I consider myself an expert in this field, and theres some simply mind boggling issues.)

Theres been some changes that really make me question your guys issues with crafting vs world drop quality.
It often seems to me whoever is making these changes from a "balance" standpoint is ignoring or at least not factoring highly the economic impacts of these changes.

The way the economy on most servers is heading, world drops keep lowering in price, but the value of rare crafting materials keeps *rising* as more competition levels up competing for the same scarce resource pools.

This was already creating a large disparity in the perceived value of crafted goods.
As a weaponsmith, sure I could until 2 patches ago make "the best" weapons ingame. Often at 10-20x the price to *make* it compared to a world drop/quest its with maybe 5% less overall damage.
Thats one of those things that seems balanced on paper(comparing a heroic crafted weapon to a heroic world one), but in reality the scarcity of resources to make them is driving prices through the roof and significantly lowering thier overall value.

The recent change monday in the T4/T5 upgrade recipes made it even worse, leatherworkers and mineralolgists got particulary , for lack of a better word- screwed.
Adding the requirement of *another* rare secondary component, basically doubled the cost to make many items.

In the case of LW and MIN it raised the minimum costs to make the items by so much that they now have no value on the market, they're simply to expensive for what you get.

Its also having a spiraling effect on those resources, the rare secondaries are now climbing higher in price, and will continue to do so for forseeable future.

This again is continuing to widen the already large gap in the power < - > cost disparity between crafted and world drops, as crafted goods will continue to become even more expensive to make/buy, well world drops can only get cheaper over time as more drop.

I would seriously urge your team to consider the economic impact of many of these changes, from my perspective it seems more like a "throw it in, see what happens" approach, vs anyone putting in thought on the longterm economic effects of some of these changes.

I think it would be great to have a RL economist on staff -- it's just a matter of budget. MMOG economies mirror RL economies in many ways, although not all, and having that insight would be very nice.

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