Loading... Market Mudflation Overload

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Posted Thu, Nov 19, 2009 by Sardu

Welcome to the 1,212th edition of Loading...

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One of the frequently overlooked though integral aspects of character advancement in MMOGs ties directly into whatever shape the in-game economy ultimately takes. Players obsess over seeing the hordes of currency they’ve amassed throughout the course of gameplay constantly increasing nearly as much as the almighty XP bar. While most developers carefully plot out multiple means of keeping in-game currency gains in check, more often than not MMOGs fall prey to the ugly beast otherwise known as mudflation. We take a look at this aspect of MMOG gameplay and its effects on new players today in Loading… Market Mudflation Overload.

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I’ve seen it time and time again. A new MMOG launches and the in-game market sees an initial flood of low level items, each priced somewhat competitively based on a slight profit over what an NPC vendor is offering for a direct sale. This is the typically the ‘golden age’ for the in-game economy – the singular point in the overall lifespan of a given title when new players can most easily afford to purchase items from other players. But once the critical mass of players begins reaching the level cap a dramatic shift occurs where items are no longer priced based on what a new player can afford, but on what a max level character is willing to pay to obtain items for their alts.

The end result is that new players are essentially forced to ‘play the market’ in order to gain currency at a high enough rate to afford to purchase items that once sold for a fraction of their current cost. Meanwhile, the amount of coin gained from base gameplay remains a constant which in most cases falls far short of anything even remotely resembling a competitive rate of advancement when compared to the base prices established by max level characters. Logic might dictate that lower demand would result in lower prices, but I’ve yet to witness this in a single MMOG.

Over the years developers have tried any number of methods for keeping mudflation in check, but in spite of their best efforts this same cycle keeps repeating itself with each and every new release provided a sizable enough player base renews their subscriptions after the initial free month. Artificial coin sinks are one of the most abused tools in developer’s arsenal of tricks, especially when it comes to taking mass quantities of coin generated by max level characters out of virtual circulation. Be it some form of durability loss for items or linking successful gameplay to a constant need to replenish things like regents, ammo or consumables, each of these methods falls far short of ever achieving their goal.

Even when taken to extremes, coin sinks typically fail miserably at keeping the lower end market in check. For example in World of Warcraft you might think that the 6k gold required to fly epic mounts in Northrend or the 1k cost of dual specs would serve to ease mudflation but that hasn’t been the case at all. Stacks of wool cloth which sell for less than a gold to vendors are priced at over 50 gold on my server’s auction house. This may sound like a pittance to a jaded level 80 that’s been playing for the past 5 years, but I shudder to think how a brand new player could ever manage to afford those prices without being forced to play the market themselves. Don’t even get me started on how nutty it is that dual specs open up at level 40 yet have the 1k cost attached to them. Back when I was taking my first character through the game no one in my guild could even afford the 80 gold for the base riding skill at level 40 let alone 1k. All I know is that if Cataclysm has any hopes of attracting new players to the game then the base coin gain at lower levels is in need of a major facelift.

That’s not to say that over the years developers haven’t placed a lot of emphasis on establishing a solid baseline for currency gains up front. Anyone who was playing Champions Online at launch will recall that the first few major patches swung the economic pendulum to polar extremes where one day your character could barely afford to retcon a single power and the next you had enough excess resources that you could purchase a completely new costume at the tailor every hour if you wanted to. But as Bill Roper pointed out in an interview just prior to CO’s launch, you need to hit those extremes with a large concurrency of players before you can feasibly establish norms that fall somewhere in the middle.

Meanwhile Aion is standing directly at that crossroads where enough players are hitting the higher levels that it’s beginning to have an effect on low level market values, though in general most items still remain affordable for new players. A common complaint in the game ever since launch is that it’s hard to earn any sizable amount of kinah during the base leveling experience, but that is no doubt a very deliberate design decision intended to keep that ‘golden age’ of the economy alive for as long as possible. If history is any indication though, right around the 6 month mark we’ll begin seeing mudflation begin sinking it’s teeth into the market values of low end items forcing yet another new generation of characters to play the market if they want to afford playing at all.

It will be interesting to see how some of the new titles just over the horizon such as Star Trek Online or Star Wars: The Old Republic tackle the issue of mudflation. Will we simply see another exciting round of artificial coin sinks with a side dish of consumables, or do the developers of two of the most hotly anticipated sci-fi MMOGs have some new tricks up their sleeves? Only time will tell, but in the meantime be sure to share your thoughts on how mudflation effects character advancement for new players right here in the Loading… forums!

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our /OOC (Off Topic) forum

Avatar

You're apparently pretty busy playing Dragon Age Origins and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 these days to post much about MMOGs, so I'm once again dipping into our /OOC forum for today's epic thread. We're talking about Avatar. No, not the character you create in an online game, but the upcoming movie. I've got to admit that I'm intrigued by the movie. If you are, too, join our discussion.

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Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"There seem to be a growing number of "Stop Exploiting" movies coming out lately as the planet's ecosphere begins collapsing at a more pronounced rate. It looks pretty interesting artistically but not much more impressive than the Final Fantasy flicks."

- SirRobin
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Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

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