Feedback:User/Sir Mephisto/Balancing Ingame Economy and Ecology
Balancing Ingame Economy and Ecology | |
|---|---|
| User | Sir Mephisto |
| Categories | Mechanics |
Guildwars Economy suffers from a lack of Money and Item(Material) Sinks. That means that the Market is flooded with Materials and Money that never vanishes. Most Traders have a full stock and low prices for all Items, Material Prices constantly sink. Farming Methods are developed for high priced items making them cheaper over time. This phenomenon was clearly to see after each new chapter that added new Materials and Items.
To solve this, i suggest to make the enemy population of explorable areas a real ecology. What happens if enemys are overfarmed in an area? They become less frequent, other creatures invade the area (farming obstacles) or they adapt to the threat("build mutatation"). This will force farmable Enemys out of the easy reachable regions. This should be an automatet process, like a ecosystem simulation.
Farming, even solo farming is for many players a part of the game they dont want to miss. this means that those mechanics cant be applied to all potentially farmable areas. but farmable items should have heavy sinks. Therefore, the ingame Economy should have seperated parts that are seeded by different playstyles. Farmable items should be used for consumables, making farmers a welcome support for the other players that dont need to care about where the stuff for the consumables comes from. Armor and Weapons on the other hand should be not farmable and only be obtained by cooperative playing through instances and missions. Guildhalls and GuildInfluence could be part of a third cycle, mainly based on real time (like Guilds having a guarded area with farms and craftsmen wich produce goods over time that can be used for guild features. As the process is mainly based at time, there will be attacks on the guilds area that need attention). Seperating the Economy parts will make them easy to balance.
The different NPC factions should also be part of the economy. War Events may cause one faction to buy some materials or even Armors from the market, raising prices. A Merchant Faction may buy cheap stuff to sell it later at high prices to the players. With those virtual players, the economy does not only depend on player actions, they are only a part of the economy. this makes prices more reasonable. Some NPCs could even seed the market if no players are able to do so.
I think, this is the way the Ingame Economy should work. A economy only made by players can be seen at EVE Online and there is clear to see what it means: PVP everywhere and the destruction of players ingame assets. And i dont think that loosing armor and weapons with every death and playerkilling everywhere is a good thing for GW2.
