AO Economy is toally broken, dued to either bugss on mail system and also to peoples speculating on items price.
I see a simple solution:
Mail system and gmi are full of bugs that you will never fix, so put things how was before or just leave instanced cities with old regular cties with their shops
The economy is broken cause you could dupe items and credits a couple of years ago. A lot of those items and credits are still in the game.
I’m in favor of these changes, not because I think either will have any effect on the in-game economy, but because outdoor cities and player shops were really awesome and they didn’t need to be replaced by the GMI, which is perhaps too convenient… having items mailed to you instantly is nice but is it really necessary? I don’t think its worth the loss of player owned shops and outdoor cities.
player shops in cities also gave extra value to orgs who could maintain their city.
edit: if you really wanted to “fix” the economy, in my opinion, one would raise the credit limit and let froobs use the GMI, or better yet, make the entire game f2p. the main issue (aside from dupes and sploits) is a general lack of liquidity in the marketplace. Credits are virtually worthless compared to choice items. This in addition to the 1b credit limit is causing players to barter. So there is almost no demand for credits among max level players. Another measure could be to make more uses for large amounts of credits similar to city upkeeps.
even though it might seem counterintuitive: more liquidity would drive the price of items down by raising the value of the currency. So basically if the gmi had more people using it and trading more items, the prices of everything would go down.
Duping exploits are still in game and has never been fixed, rather just patched and worked around later until the AO devs quit.
The inflation will always be in AO as long as there is a demand for GRACEs. Rollback, reset or other changes probably wont fix the issue - we saw it on RK19.
I personally don’t see a problem with the GMI as I never experienced any issues with it other than being little slow through the mail system. However, the player cities were cool and brings back good nostalgia.
History shows that all ecomonic models are always broken as long as money in there.
I’d like to see cities back just cause I liked them. and also they helped you get back quicker with the whompahs… but… with the beacons thats really less a problem now.
I still like the cities, We don’t need to bring the shops back though imo.
It would’nt fix the economy but one way to help with the high number of credits needed for player transactions and dealing with the hassle of 1b cap and the sheer number of zeros behind a lot of transactions would be a reverse split… value of 1 credit goes up 100 fold.
if you have 1000 credits, you now have 10 credits, however items also cost less… an items that cost 5000 credits now cost 500. everything in game would need adjusted… im not sure if there is a multiplier that could be set i think terminals for example use those… but im not sure if there is like a universal multiplier in game.
I don’t think there is any fixing the games economy just make it easier to deal with large sums.
According to my understanding AO’s economy cannot be fixed ever.
Duping items that generate creds then use those to buy graces from players and get the creds back by selling loot rights.
I am not saying that all players selling LR are responsible but are part of the cycle.
As I am as most likely you are if you ever bought a grace or LR for an item
RK19 Could work as the ironman challenges do to some extent but well let’s face some facts its 2022 and the market of games is expanded and nowdays the options are too many.
I love ao i always return since 2005 for various reasons I always leave and sometimes where because i felt the game was P2W.
Some people in fc still do care but even if tencent out of luck would say “hey lets fix this game” or “hey lets make a new game based on this ip” It will be a slow but steady bleeding out
My suggestion to fc about the economy is this in this order : fix the bag/dupe exploits by removing bags all together and/or container info from prefs ( this is the hardest to do ) , then make the raids/dungeons instanced and the loot can only be looted from the players participating, third and last slowly remove grace.
But even if all of these things happen it will take years for the hundred billions ( trillions perhaps by now) in ao market to burn and in this process some multi account holders might never resub again and ofc removal of the grace is a hit by it self to FC, so call me mr doubt.
I play when i want and the way i want, I doubt the game will be fixed but I love FC Games and I dislike how they turn out at the end so I cant wait for the dune survival for my pc
I love the economy as it is. Tbh things are better now than it has ever been. Having played this game for about 17 years or so i have grown extremely tired of doing any kind of pvm to get items. Being able to buy graces makes it possible to just skip it all and buy lootrights for the stuff i need. Also limits the time farming for creds to absolutely zero.
I only play this game for the pvp and it is extremely satisfying that i can spend a majority of my time ingame just doing that. As a dueler, the amount of extra items one needs just never seems to end and if i had to farm for all of these items, i would probably end up doing pvm for over half the time i am ingame.
This grace business also makes creating alts far more attractive. With little effort and buying 4-5 graces you can make a toon from 0-220/30/80 with a full endgame base setup in less than a month.
This is coming from a guy where it took 8 years before a second pvp toon was rolled and 8 more years before a third toon was rolled. Making it a total of 3 toons being played right now. Not everyone enjoys doing pvm in this game.
Though im not quite sure i understand the issue? If you need creds you can do instances like subway and sell lootrights for mark of the bloodless or subway belt for a grace. Or sell lootrights from poh. With the current grace prices, even splitting the creds in a full team you would still end up with 6-7 billion creds each. As stuff in the market is worthless, you could get filthy rich in little time with little effort and get all the items you need for your toons. I dont quite see how this is negative?
so long and thanks for all the fish
ABSOLUTELY NOT. Because this will EXCLUDE any player not in a org, and also members without playershops. This is a HORRIBLE idea. I remember back in time where I was LUCKY to have ONE shop for my other toons, and always had to trade my muletoon every time to transfer and sell things. Don’t put AO back to this crappy way to trade. We are in 2022 ffs and every modern game have a market and mail system. Just look at woiw, easy and simple trading. Everyone ain’t social and prefer to play alone as well and NEED acess to market as any other paying customer. How this will help is beyond me. Only way to fix the economy will be to force all credits out from the game and let the economy start fresh. Of course this would maybe kill the game as half of the playerbase would leave in anger unless FC/Tencent offer something good in return like a few free instant 220 f(ully geared) boost items or something. So NO, This can’t be fixed easy as it would kill the game to not recover and be profitable to still keep online.