Nodiatis economy

[hotshot64]

Consider this how you will, player input and even flaming is welcome. However, if you think it's too long to read, then don't comment.

When I started playing Nodiatis 37 months ago, trophies sold for 30-35 g/k, time cards were 70k gold, and rare items were worth crafting. Over time everything in Nod except TCs have become devalued, and TC prices have skyrocketed. People have bitched from time to time, and a few have attempted to do something. For example, Zanthyr held TC prices steady for a short time, and I dumped millions into trying to raise trophy prices.

Many people will jump on this thread and say "I don't see an issue" and "Quit your bitching, you greedy bastard" but I say look at the economy, particularly as it pertains to crafting. I started passiving weaponcrafting in December of last year, and started actively raising it in January. I rerolled and was on boon from January 1st to mid-May. Between January 1st and early June I spent millions of gold and 6 months of constant passiving (mostly on boon) raising this skill to the point where I had 109 total. 6 months and tons of gold later, I began crafting 99 crushers, as no other weapon was worth crafting (the cost was prohibitive). I crafted 5 crushers, the only weapon in the entire game that was profitable, before legendary weapons were released. Upon release of these weapons, the value of Debrainers instantly dropped, due to a lack of buyers. The cost, meanwhile, skyrocketed. The insane number of t30 resources, which are already incredibly rare, required to make legendary weapons caused the prices on these resources to double in less than a month. It now costs around 5.5-6 million gold to craft a Debrainer. There are currently 2 on the AH for less than that, and as Legendary weapons continue to be crafted, this will continue. Therefore, the months or years and millions of gold that I and others have spent to get insanely high levels of weapon crafting were completely wasted.

So we realize that the only profitable weapons (and armour) to be crafted are the legendary ones. There are currently 2-3 people in the game that have 120 weapon crafting. There are 20-30 people in the game capable of and willing to currently buy those weapons. As t30 resource prices continue to skyrocket, the profit margin on those weapons will continue to shrink, OR prices will increase on the weapons and the market for them will remain stagnant until prices come down. Meanwhile, the people planning on crafting them will continue to hoard t30 resources, making it more impossible to craft other things, like 99 weapons.

Crafting epics, besides certain epic gems, has now become completely pointless. Crafting legendaries, aside from being insanely expensive and insanely difficult to do, will not remain profitable for long. This ends my commentary on how completely worthless the Nodiatis crafting system currently is.

Trophy prices have reached an all time low. Every day I see trophies up for 10 g/k and less, which is, in my opinion, one reason for high TC prices. Most would disagree with me, but I explain my reasoning thusly: as someone who has spent thousands on Nod, I can tell you the biggest reason to buy TCs is to buy trophies. I bought as many TCs as I needed to get a certain skill level, and I bought all the trophies I needed at once. If trophy prices were sitting at 15 g/k, I bought fewer TCs and sold at a higher price than if they were 20 g/k. At higher trophy prices, I bought more TCs and was forced to sell them at a lower price in order to have them all sell quickly. People would then undercut me and TC prices would be lowered for several days. This is evidenced by the fact that I have spent 7 million gold raising trophy prices in recent days, and TC prices have dropped nearly 10k gold on average as trophy prices rose 4-5 g/k on average. Believe my economic theories or don't, but what it comes down to is currently trophies are so worthless, some would rather see them decay than sell at that disgusting price.

Why do I consider it a big deal when I don't even sell trophies anymore? Because it's a symptom of a sickly economy. It isn't just that trophies are worthless, or that epics are worthless, or that crafting is completely pointless and not profitable at all (except certain high-demand items like potions, which have a small, but existent profit margin). It is a combination of those that tells me it becomes easier and easier to become rich in Nodiatis by spending real cash, and harder and harder to become rich through hard work. I could spend $100 3 years ago and make 1.4 million gold, which might have bought me 1/2 to 3/4 of an epic 9 suit, or one piece of a high level suit. Currently, I could spend $100 and come out with 5 million gold, which is enough to buy any epic item in the game, and a number of the legendary ones.

This is great for those who spend lots of money, but for the rest of us we sit back and realize hard work is completely worthless. Crafting is completely worthless. Arena is pointless unless you've got a deep pocket book. Selling trophies is a shameful thing that you only do if you have all your useful skills maxed or you're very hard up for gold.

I have played this game religiously for more than 3 years, I've tried just about every aspect of the game, I've helped recruit, I've attempted to player-moderate civil, I've even attempted to revive the dead areas of the economy, spending millions of gold to do so. Finally, as the game reaches the point where 2-3 people control the entire portion of the crafting market that is still profitable, trophies are completely worthless, and TCs have reached an all-time high,I realize the admins seem to be less involved in Nod than ever, except in the lottery that is the random beast. Perhaps you're working on Dawn, perhaps you've given up on Nod, perhaps it's all in my head. Regardless, I'm tired of rerolling to stay interested. I'm tired of hanging out just because a few of my friends remain. And I'm tired of watching entire aspects of the game become pointless. I don't know if there is a way to help the economy. I don't know if there's a foolproof method to fix crafting so it's remotely profitable. But I do know that many of the suggestions put forth (such as increasing the frequency of t30 pulls on certain hard-to-get resources, like bones), are really good and merit serious consideration.

No doubt most people who happen onto this thread won't bother doing more than skimming. I hope those who truly care about Nod, those who do more than burn their daily rrt and immediately hit the X, will read thoroughly and comment constructively. Most of all, I hope Glitchless will seriously consider some of the ideas put forth to fix the economy and other broken areas of the game. Because when you've got ME of all people disenchanted with Nod, you have a problem.

[Sexykills]

"tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr" "tl;dr"

whatever that means do i win

[marzus]

"You lost 335 of your trophy items to daily decay."
This was the message I received after reboot, i hardly sustain your thinking, this is not the first time i get this message, the trophs were put to sell at 15g/k, which ,even if it`s half much than 10g/k that others sell, is a modest price for selling. Please don`t get me wrong i`m not complaining about the lose of that trophies, there was like 1200 trophies and lost just a quarter so i should thank the odds. Me along with others tried to raise the prices too, we almost did, few months there was over 20g/k but then again dropped .

[Huggles]

I've given up selling trophies on weekdays daer, not enough buyers. I agree with many of the things you have said here. On weekends I will work with you to try to make retards sell their trophies for normal amounts, not 10 g/k.

[terrorbladestorm]

Ur concern Is valid but how do u.fix economy? The only way I see on how to fix is to set mim price for trophies like did with tc. Then we lose free market

[Thomas Jordan]

The problem with the Nod economy is the continuously shrinking player base.

Completely brand new players (and there are a few) aren't likely to be able to afford 250k game gold TCs any time soon. Supporting yourself with TCs may have been possible as a low level player when TCs were 40k, but highly doubtful that a totally new player can afford to do that at 250k per TC. So unless the player decides to spend $5 occasionally, they don't represent a market for anything you are selling, presuming they even stick with the game (and a few do).

Rerolling players tend to skip buying much of anything until they have their weapon, suiting and petsmanship skill to 95 or higher, making do with whatever junk drops or that they can pick up cheaply for social. Then, they go straight for legendary or at least epic 99 gear (and gators or yetis). So they don't represent a market for anything except the high end stuff.

Many of the lower level characters we see are fairly new alts of capped players. They tend to follow the same general path as rerolling players, and don't tend to represent a large market for much of anything.

So this leaves trophy selling. Many players brag about never having spent a penny on this game, supporting themselves entirely by selling trophies to buy TCs with game gold. That's fine, but I've noticed many of them tend to wait until their face time is about up before they worry about getting another time card. Then panic sets in, and they start dumping trophies to get the gold to buy the TC before they become faceless. And if it isn't trophies, it's whatever else they may have to sell, like epic gear or high level resources. Not all players who support themselves exclusively by selling things wait like this, of course, but many do.

As for the "high" price of TCS, that's caused by the escalating quantity of capped players. A level 20 may have thought selling a TC for 40k four years ago represented a lot of game gold that would buy some nice stuff, and it probably did. As a level 85 who looks at legendary gear, 250k is a trivial sum of game gold towards the purchase cost of what I want to buy. So even at 250k, I have no incentive to sell TCS, and I have many friends who feel the same way. But 250k game gold still represents a small fortune to a lower level player with some real dollars to spend on TCs. Unfortunately, there aren't too many of these types of players.

So as I see it, the basic problem is lack of player population. Too few buyers for most things, and too few people with the incentive to sell TCs for prices you TCs purchasers consider reasonable.

[Master]

you wanna fix the economy... one way will to make every epic drop a tp.... every single one, make the crfters worth something again. "i have 0 in all crafting skills btw" also, let oil be good for something, none of the lg items need oil... however; its the most uncommon of the resources... so whats the point im doing it?

also to fix it.. dont give away such retarded amounts of tcs for "exploits" bringing up the hopi thing here again.
and lastly

let lg wrapons be purchased in stores... do this before its too late Jeff! i paid 125 tcs for mine and ill count my losses but they should be in the store

[NemesisKnight]

The main thing wrong with the resourcing economy is that there is next to zero demand for anything tier 2-29. The only demand for those tiers are for crafters who are making something to get the xp in order to make the things that require multiple t30s and t1s. And that's where the tedium and frustration comes in. I spend more time uptiering or downtiering level 14 or whatever veggies then I do in the gardening mini-game to get them. Add to that the fact that most people just trash tiers below 10 or 15 or so and you have players frustrated because the rrt spent on the minigame produced NOTHING of value whatsoever.

You have created a giant catch 22. In order to try and keep the price of tcs down, you have huge goldsinks in the form of the LGs or the resin cost of 99 epic tps/LG weapon-crafting. But that also creates a desire for large sums of gold that has a majority of players trying to sell resources or trophies to cover it.

[Todd]

Also, as time goes by, I would be interested to know what the ratio is of serious players who no longer play is versus those who have stayed, and who are serious and fairly new. What I mean is maybe the player base's skills have surpassed our variety of resources for crafting etc. maybe new resources, tiers, requirements...

[LadyGaGya]

Well, I sell cheap trophies, sorry. I kind of feel like it is donating to the Nod economy as I can't afford many UGC's. I spent a lot to get where i am, though. I have not played alot of other MMO-RPG's. But, with Big Game Trophies and Plunderfiend, and the sale of half my trophies for 12-15 g/k, I am able to maintain Premium for myself and an alt, donate trophies to my alt, and continue to build my main. And, i am able to pretty much play at will thru burning in-game purchased tc's. I don't know about the Nod economy, but as-is Nod is pretty good for my personal economy as I am pretty poor.

I think the main problem with the Nod economy is the player-base. It's very hard for new players to attain a level and kill speed where they can make a profit. I think those of us who have attained such a proficiency should make an active effort to help new players. A lot of us do. Maybe instead of spending millions to "fix" the trophy market, we should spend that money on helping new players. Putting up trophies at a price that new players may be able to afford is on way of doing that.

I think Glitchless could help by possibly instituting a lottery for low-level players, or maybe starting them off with a little gold, But, Glitchless is a business. It is really not in the best interest of Glitchless to make it easy to make gold in this game. There is the benefit of a larger player-base that may make more money for Glitchless. But, ultimately, I think it is up to those of us who are already established and enjoy the game to build the base.

[Sanluciferr]

I am a little confused here, some people are saying that the problem in the economy is for cap players and others are saying for new players, i dont think there is a problem in the economy for cap players at all.

The only problem maybe is for new players, but they dont really need that much of a help since cap players are lowering their prices on trophies which i find it perfectly balanced, however i would like to suggest low lvl legendaries or epics that actually you cant craft or you cant find very often so that way they there is something of value at low lvls so those who find it can sell it and those low lvls can save gold to buy it. Also added to that a better or more rewarding quest system just adding more gold into it would help.

This is something that we need asap too, level requirements for trophies, it is important and needed, cap players cant be the only one selling trophies, a low level should be able to sell trophies as well, not as easy as a cap lvl for sure but at least to give him a chance to buy more things in a hard but possible way.

Imo, adding a requirement of: a lvl 50 and below cant buy trophies that are lvl 50 or higher could help (something like that, is the idea).

Idk... easy things to change.

[NoRemorse]

this is exactly what oneangel said by dyes and hence my suggestion to make each tp from master from diff matts , also some people are just buying and hoarding t30 resources and daer gemcrafting is not worth it. I spend a couple of 100 of millions of gold to make masters in the last 5 months and i can not even charge players for a fee , i ask for a tip yes but with this insane prices I am just trying to help the community with gems made at mattprices + discounts I get ... All gold will be returned to teh players that is left over from the original price i ask , yes I charge high so I do not have to ask for more gold in the end , I rather stick within budget an give gold back. So I let orders wait until I can get some decent prices on matts .. very very very annoying and frustrating, for both the costumer and me

[Relic]

Originally Posted by Master

you wanna fix the economy... one way will to make every epic drop a tp.... every single one, make the crfters worth something again.

So that getting an epic drop becomes a full on punishment for the person who gets it, getting an epic would cost you money (to make it a real item) instead of getting you some money, and be a blessing for the crafters. There are so many better ways around such things, I'll post when I get time.

[Master]

relic, that would also make lower tier resources needed

[Valarian]

Get rid of tp's altogether make them just from dismantling items.

[flipynifty]

unbeknowst to many the nodiatis econoy is sammich based


omg i wanna sammich nao!

[Degladius]

I agree with most of what Daer says.

When I leveled up, every epic's cost was about the double of the purchase price, making it worthwhile to sell to shop and rebuy to put it up in AH.

Nowadays, most epics sell for almost social price, if you are not forced to sell them to the shop.

I have a 89 epic crusher in the AH for 400 K and it does not sell - it will probably be best to dismantle and sell the dusts and resins, that sell faster and maybe for a better price.

In fact, something is wrong when only T30 materials are worth something, and only 99 epics and legendarys hold any interest.

I think that something new should come up to keep interest in lower levels, and end boon that is a way to speed up through the levels with a little powerlevel help...

[Master]

ive sold all epics to store that i ever get.... and i dismantle almost all tps... but thats because im lazy and cant be assed with messing with ah

[Mattidor]

As far as I can tell, the biggest issue seems to be that there is just a shortage of new players.

The biggest reason for this in my eyes is one that was brought up before, which is the near-impossibility of a new player being able to support face-time without spending $$$. Though having a strong motivating force for players to spend $$$ on the game for TC's is not necessarily bad, after all the game can't run completely for free, it really isn't a great thing if that dependance starts from day 1 when you start your very first toon. Though you get extra time, you are fairly quickly greeted by a lack of rt, very slow starting speed to get going (even with the little help that many players are willing to give). Though it is a good lesson in patience (which apparently is a virtue, just as glitch), it also demotivates alot of new players from continuing to give it a shot. This is where nod differs from pretty much every other f2p mmo (in a bad way) I've ever seen. Most games make the beginning stretch (first 10-20 levels or so) very quick, easy, and gets you used to the mechanics through quests (not just the garbage we have here for "quests" :P).

Its all designed to get you into it and addicted, so you actually start enjoying it, then hits you with the more difficult, time intensive "grind" style gameplay where spending $$$ gives you distinct advantages that you have hopefully (at least in developers eyes) become willing to spend due to your fast growing addiction. In the case of nod however, there is no real "easy" smooth sailing start, its feels more like a seemingly hopeless uphill climb. Though it would require alot of work, I think a big overhaul of the beginning portion of the game could really help in the long run, as long as new players can be brought in to try the game at all.

Even if not a big overhaul, perhaps free face time or something else to that effect for all new toons, or even a larger collaborative effort on the part of the more affluent and knowledgable nod citizens out there to donate TC's and time for more comprehensive tutoring/guide-writing, since the current introductory tutorial is hardly that helpful, and forums/wiki are not really helpful for any new player. Don't know if anyone is really willing to do that, but I think at least something could/should be done to improve the beginning stages of life for new nod chars, so that they don't become too frustrated and ragequit before it becomes more enjoyable.

It does seem that more and more people are willing to help make the community grow, so just wanted to put my ideas out there that I've been thinking about, just too lazy to post :P

[hotshot64]

Originally Posted by Mattidor

As far as I can tell, the biggest issue seems to be that there is just a shortage of new players.

The biggest reason for this in my eyes is one that was brought up before, which is the near-impossibility of a new player being able to support face-time without spending $$$. Though having a strong motivating force for players to spend $$$ on the game for TC's is not necessarily bad, after all the game can't run completely for free, it really isn't a great thing if that dependance starts from day 1 when you start your very first toon. Though you get extra time, you are fairly quickly greeted by a lack of rt, very slow starting speed to get going (even with the little help that many players are willing to give). Though it is a good lesson in patience (which apparently is a virtue, just as glitch), it also demotivates alot of new players from continuing to give it a shot. This is where nod differs from pretty much every other f2p mmo (in a bad way) I've ever seen. Most games make the beginning stretch (first 10-20 levels or so) very quick, easy, and gets you used to the mechanics through quests (not just the garbage we have here for "quests" :P).

Its all designed to get you into it and addicted, so you actually start enjoying it, then hits you with the more difficult, time intensive "grind" style gameplay where spending $$$ gives you distinct advantages that you have hopefully (at least in developers eyes) become willing to spend due to your fast growing addiction. In the case of nod however, there is no real "easy" smooth sailing start, its feels more like a seemingly hopeless uphill climb. Though it would require alot of work, I think a big overhaul of the beginning portion of the game could really help in the long run, as long as new players can be brought in to try the game at all.

Even if not a big overhaul, perhaps free face time or something else to that effect for all new toons, or even a larger collaborative effort on the part of the more affluent and knowledgable nod citizens out there to donate TC's and time for more comprehensive tutoring/guide-writing, since the current introductory tutorial is hardly that helpful, and forums/wiki are not really helpful for any new player. Don't know if anyone is really willing to do that, but I think at least something could/should be done to improve the beginning stages of life for new nod chars, so that they don't become too frustrated and ragequit before it becomes more enjoyable.

It does seem that more and more people are willing to help make the community grow, so just wanted to put my ideas out there that I've been thinking about, just too lazy to post :P

I agree with all of this. When I started Nod my first thought was "this game sucks" my second thought was "there's no damned reward for your work in this game" and, luckily, my third thought was "wow the community here is awesome." Sadly the people I liked have mostly quit, so if I were to start as a new player today, I wouldn't stay. The game is great, but new players don't want to stay. There are so many ways to encourage new players staying. A "noob channel" or mentor program has been suggested many times. I like Matt's idea of making the beginning slightly easier. Starting items are another great suggestion. Changing quests would make a big difference too, as the current quests are completely pointless and ridiculously repetitive.