Any info on the economy?

kumoblade

Greetings.

First of all,  I want to wish the dev team behind this game the best of wishes as it does look incredibly appealing as a Sandbox game.  

However, in my digging around on this game, I haven't really seen anything on the topic of economy.  Whether it's player driven/rng driven, shop or open market.

The videos and content in this game stirs up a lot of fond memories of my favorite sandbox mmo, Shadowbane.  (yes, it was a failure, however it had some incredible features that haven't been implemented since.)

What I was incredibly fond of in shadowbane, besides building and beseiging cities were creating and assigning vendors, ranking up their skills and setting them loose to craft and sell merchandise and equipment of varying degrees so long as they're provided the resources.   

It was a great experience visiting a neighboring nation, visiting their shops, looking at what their town specialized in, finding some great items you could use, or sometimes, even better, buy at a discounted rate, and resell it somewhere else at a mark up.

Auction houses always just seemed so lazy to me.  It took away that sense or desire to go out and see what the world and the other players have to offer you, instead, opting to just click through a few filters and press buy, instant gratification.

EVE online has a hybrid of the Auction House system/market where you'd still have to brave the dangers of space to go make your pick up for your items.  

That's the kind of experience I'm looking for.  That sense of adventure with every action made.  Who knows, maybe a simple paroose through the Invulnerable City of Granden could lead to cascading series of (fortunate and unfortunate) events where you're embroiled unknowingly in an assassination plot on one of the ruler's chambermaids who's hair you complimented the day before.   Who knows!  But it's fun to think about.

..... I think I lost my train of thought, but I'm pretty sure my twisted logic somehow remains through the entirety of this post.   I hope there's a player driven economy that isn't Auction House based.   I'd like to see vendors and stalls and different character's wears, go window shopping instead of ebay shopping.

Has there been any information provided on how the economy is going to be handled in The Repopulation?

CreepProphet

It looks like at this point a lot of economy work hasn't been nailed down yet as there are just a lot of other features that are taking the dev's time, like housing etc.

So far word is that there will be an auction house, but no word yet as to how it will be implimented.

Since the most useful items in the game will be player crafted the economy is going to be more player driven. 

More information about the economy will probably start coming out as the game gets further developed.

ReaperUk

You know even though I'm waiting on this game, it was only when I read the OP in this thread that I realised how little I know about the plans for the economy. I know there is going to be interdependence between players but nothing about the planned mechanics of how they will trade with each other. I just did a search on the official forums using the word "economy" and it didn't really show up anything useful.

There was recently a poll, now closed, where people could vote on what they wanted more information about and the economy/banking only came joint 5th/6th in the list. I didn't vote for that option myself  although maybe I should have, as it was running my one stop shop in SWG that kept me playing for eighteen months after spending the first three levelling a combat character.

CreepProphet

The good news is though that it's on the list so the devs know that economy is something that players want to know more about. The downside is that the info will probably have to wait until they get to that part of the list.

JC-Smith

We've remained pretty mum publicly about the mechanics here as they are not set in stone. Only briefly mentioned some plans in a thread on the forum when it was asked a while back. We do plan on player owned shops though, with some type of an auction system though the specifics for it are still up in the air.

Our plan is to have a reverse auction system for crafters where the end users would be able to request the items that they need and to specify what they are willing to pay. Then for crafters to be able to fill those orders in an automated fashion. That's the basic idea behind it, but it is not yet functional and is viewed as one of those features we can squeeze during beta testing rather than before. Until we have the specifics finalized we probably won't have any greater detail.

Kraylor

I just hope they find a balance between their AH and player run vendors/shops.  I much much prefer traveling around and buying goods from player shops and running my own more than just sitting parked in a NPC city buying everything I could ever need.

I thought I read somewhere that a developer was thinking about having the AH charge a fee for selling goods to help maintain a balance between player run shops and AH.  I liked the SWG bazaar style of just having a cost limit on what can be sold on the NPC city bazaar.

Thorkune

Originally posted by JC-Smith

 

Our plan is to have a reverse auction system for crafters where the end users would be able to request the items that they need and to specify what they are willing to pay. Then for crafters to be able to fill those orders in an automated fashion.

That sounds really good.