All REAL economies are based on items that WEAR OUT

[Drexxell]

I began going down this path a while back, but realized that this one topic, more than anything else, is where I feel tradeskillers (especially casual ones) get the most burnt.

Aside from fishing poles (replacable with a few silver pieces), nothing in this game breaks or wears out. Nothing. I have a few wonderful tradeskill items that I've used for years and years now. And I acquired them within a few weeks of the recipes going live. That's when MOST of us acquired them. The demand for really great items is huge when they first come out. If I were to guess (just guess, mind you), I'd say that 80% of all such items in the game are sold within the first 6 months of the item going live. The other 20% from folks who've come along, realizing they wanted one much later on.

Because things never wear out, I have no reason to re-visit a tradeskiller and ask for another item. And, reversing this problem, I have very little reason to try to MAKE one, as I don't see the demand being there (unless I can be first on the block to sell them). Sure, I can blow platinum until I'm good enough to make the item, and then thousands of plat later, try to undercut the market just to pray I can sell the items, but I'd not make a profit.

Because NOTHING WORTHWHILE BREAKS.

In a real-world economy, first to the market has two issues (one pro, one con):
1) Pro: You get the largest market share and continue to hold it for a long time even after others come along
2) Con: You've probably got a bug-laden product that will be replaced by something better in 6 months by another company.

But no matter what, your product WILL wear out eventually. But so will your competitors. You drive one another to make better products, and sell them cheaply to keep market share.

These two issues are what drive competition and drive the prices down, and also keep businesses IN business. The EQ economy has none of this. The first to market NEVER has a buggy system...their items are what they are. And since the items never wear out, the first-to-market seller grabs, and never let's go, of a huge share of the market. The 100s of items they sell in the first few weeks of making them will help them return a reward. The rest of us will sell maybe a dozen items and never see the profit back.

When items don't wear out, the advantage lies solely on the first to the market. For this reason, more than anything else, I find that tradeskilling no longer holds a lot of appeal to me. I am a casual player. I can't compete with 7-day-a-week farmers, and million-plat tradeskillers.

In the end, because I can't compete, I only see the need to make occasional items (rather than pay exorbinant prices) as a reason to tradeskill. But being in a guild, all that's really needed is a few people, covering a few skills, and we can cheaply help one another, and never have to go buying from other players. Have you seen the prices people are putting on anything and everything marked "can be used in tradeskills"? Greed has overwhelmed the game, and without items breaking, the idea that anything can sell for 100k+ plat is hard to even get my head around. If you knew, for example, that the super great sword someone looted from a dragon's hoard had a slim chance to SNAP right in the middle of combat, you'd think twice about throwing 100k plat at someone to buy it. Same goes for a tradeskilled item. Nobody cares about paying a few sp for a breakable fishing pole. They'd think twice about the price if that DoN armor you're selling had a chance to fall apart.

Sorry for the ultra long rant. Just realizing how much time and money I've blown in the game, with not much to show for it. I could have just been doing the fun thing I used to do and love a lot: hunting monsters and looting treasure.

Drexxell

[Eggborn]

That is why I made money making arrows and selling them in the LOIO to fund my smithing years ago.

Food, drink, spell comonents are consumable. Food and drink are other good ways to keep, low, but steady income in tradeskills.

Armor doesn't wear out, but it does need upgraded. By making some Attuneable and no trade, it is taken out of the ecomony, so that is similar to wearing out. In RL my old cell phone might work just fine, but I want a better one in a few years. I drove the same car for 13 years too.

The books to make DoN cultural symbols wear out.

I think the no drop thing and the need to upgrade is what replaces this.

[Phantron]

In an economy where supply is effectively infinite, the prices will converge toward a price that most benefits the buyers and minimally benefits the seller. However everyone is subject to this dilemma as a seller. The MMORPG economy necessarily favors those who can sell exotic things, and there is basically no such thing as making a living with an equivalent of selling McDonalds burger job.

Now, you can make a living with an equivalent job of flipping burgers (say, make CEs and sell them) because you're selling time, which isn't infinite, as opposed to the product (CE, which does have an infinite supply).

[Silverfish]

Fallacy of Economics

Your post has a fairly major flaw in its basis, and it steals a lot of the thunder out of your argument. Your error is in assuming that "wear out" must always equate to "break" or "fail" or "vanish" and doesn't allow for two major contributors to changes in value in Everquest. Firstly, most stuff doesn't break, but it does indeed wear out, by the mechanism of obsolescence. The simple fact is that as people gain in levels, they need to upgrade stuff. Sure, you can do loot upgrades and never bother a tradeskiller at all, but there are a lot of really good upgrades in the game that are player-made. For example, virtually every ranger you meet is using a tradeskill-made bow. There are lots of good dropped bows, but there are also lots of good fletched bows, so they look for what's good to have. On the other end, there's stuff that used to be great, but now nobody wants it. Remember when people would line up to get you to build banded armor? Remember when you could sell a platinum bastard sword, or player made jewelry?

Secondly, changes in value due to changes in the game can have a huge effect on values. The recent tailoring nerf was a perfect example of how a change in the game made it a LOT cheaper to get to 252 in tailoring, at the expense of making it a LOT tougher to get from 253 to 300. The addition of tribute gave new life to a huge number of combines that people simply ignored before, and contributed directly to a lot of tradeskilled stuff getting removed from the game, and a lot more built to be removed. Back before tribute, everyone needed one star ruby stein, and no more. After, people would buy them buy the dozen for tribute points.

Lastly, you have to keep firmly in mind that this is a game. Too many people forget this, and if you spent a lot of time tradeskilling and regret not going out and hunting monsters for loot instead, then take a hint from yourself and do what's more fun. I'm the last person to try to tell anyone to move away from tradeskills, but if it's not fun any more then you're missing the point of Everquest.

Silverfish

[Neebat]

Yep. It all comes down to what's fun for you. If tradeskilling isn't fun any more, then by all means, go kill something (in game, plz)

The values drop fast as the market gets flooded. You'll also note that the value of killing Emporer Crush goes down after you've done it a while (because you level up.) That's actually a GOOD thing for the fun in the game. You are encouraged to seek out new challenges and discouraged from fighting the same battle over and over again. One person chooses to fight ugly creatures. Another chooses to wrestle velium bars. Both get dull and it's best to move on.

Sony does make concessions to provide some items extended life in the market. They do this even when it breaks the lore of the game and makes no sense. The LORE tag is a great example. Over time, LORE items retain their value in the bazaar much more effectively than non-LORE items. ATTUNABLE is another example which is specificly targeted at using up items.

On the flip side, most game systems with real item decay rapidly lose the "fun" factor on account of the tedium involved in replacing/maintaining equipment. Sony would love to have a platinum-sink like item maintainence to avoid mudflation. They've talked about it, but never implemented it for one reason. Past experience in other game systems has shown that item decay tends to substantially intrude on game play, reducing the FUN of the game.

Yes, item decay is more realistic. Yes, it would let you make more money off tradeskills. But alas, the current trends suggest the game would be less fun if we had item decay.