by Karen Hertzberg on Apr 30, 2007
By Changul
Ok, you have just been made
Emperor/Empress of Vanguard, and with your uber powers, can now
fix the economy. What would you do? What do you see as the most
pressing problem? I think most of us have wished we could have god-mod
powers for occasions like this, but here's the thing: Can you do it
without causing imbalances in other ways?
Some say duping is the main problem, while others believe crafting
prices are killing the game. Crafters say the cost of rare resources
force them to jack the prices up. Harvestors throw up their hands in
despair, knowing it takes hours to spawn the much coveted rares. Some
harvestors have never even *seen* an ultra-rare resource ( Yours truly
included in that rant). Adventurer's bemoan the fact that the rewards
they get for adventuring are not lucrative enough to pay for crafted
items!
Dupes are both a problem and an exploit. We all know that, and deplore
the use. Developers usually fix these as soon as they possibly can, and
most dupes are easily trackable. And related to dupes is the problem of
gold-farmers. Gold sellers are an anathema to the gaming experience,
making it far too easy to unbalance the economy.
Crafted goods in vanguard are usually better than what the average
adventurer can loot, and therefore highly desirable. However, now that
craftable gear is BOE, those goods cannot be
re-sold and are soon outdated and a dead loss to the adventurer. But
many of these items require not just one rare resource, but as many as
6, or more. For example, a mature firegrass/silkbloom reaper's pouch
takes 5 bales of mature firegrass/silkbloom AND another rare crafter's
resource to make, thus driving the price for that bag to about 12 gold.
Adventurer's quests at about level 25 can gross approximately 4 silver
per quest, while the cost of their armor repair can pretty much cancel
out the reward. In addition, many of the quest rewards are soulbound,
and cannot be re-sold for any profit other than a few coppers to an NPC
vendor. Diplomacy quests are not a huge money-making deal either.
So, how would you fix the economy without causing harm to any of the
spheres?