Coolness on Test

[KyrosKrane]

Apparently another nice change is the ability to right-click on your spell bar to load and save spell sets in one click. That would be really sweet.

[Ndaara]

It's actually 4 foraged pods of water and a bottle, and yes it's been there for at least 3 years. when i was very very poor i used to make my own water flasks from the excess foraged pods.... i have not been poor enough to do all that clicking in a LONG LONG Time, however!

[Grenoble]

Yep, I used to do it before I realized normal water could be bought in West Cabilis. Actually sort of what got me interested in brewing.

I love doing anything where I see skills improve.

[Thicket Tundrabog]

If a 'tradeskill' tag increases component sales in the Bazaar, then this is a good thing IMO.

The simple supply/demand market approach is that if the supply goes up and the demand stays the same, the price of the item goes down.

Putting 'tradeskill' tags on items may cause folks to Bazaar sell instead of selling to a vendor. This will increase tradeskill component supply. A lot of tradeskill components sold to vendors are lost because they fall off the end of the 90 item vendor limit.

The bottom line is that on average, there will be more tradeskill components on the market, and the price should go down.

Thicket

[kiztent]

If a 'tradeskill' tag increases component sales in the Bazaar, then this is a good thing IMO.

The simple supply/demand market approach is that if the supply goes up and the demand stays the same, the price of the item goes down.

Putting 'tradeskill' tags on items may cause folks to Bazaar sell instead of selling to a vendor. This will increase tradeskill component supply. A lot of tradeskill components sold to vendors are lost because they fall off the end of the 90 item vendor limit.

The bottom line is that on average, there will be more tradeskill components on the market, and the price should go down.

Thicket

I submit as my counter example to that...

windstones.

The law of supply and demand assumes you are dealing with rational people (and maybe perfect information, I forget).

I suspect this change will result in another round of increases in raw materials and fewer deals vendor mining.

[Malathos]

After handing in my newbie note there were some dialogue options about tradeskills. Following them I was given some basic tradeskill recipe books. There were a handfull of low-trivial recipes listed the books for all the tradeskills.

Noticed this as well for trolls in Neriak, so I'm assuming this is a general change. The recipes are enough to get you kick started with the first recipe or two for each of the tradeskills - an appetite whetter perhaps ?

[Cendorly]

I'm *far* more excited about the other things I saw on Test over the weekend.

Labels below the names of various vendors stating what type of vendor they are.

Right-click info in your spellbook, explaining what the spell does, what the duration is, etc. (As someone with 8 alts over 50, and 7 of them being spellcasting types of one sort or another, I sometimes have problems remembering which spell is what.)

I started a character on the test server about a week ago to play around with the /testbuff thing.

The first thing I noticed was the right click info in the spellbook and the labels below vendor names. I thought to myself Oh Cool!!!! That's really neat! Then I figured they put the spell info on test server because of the influx of new people starting characters with /testbuff and getting their level 25 spells without learning what they do as they level up. SO I thought this was to make things easier in an attempt to encourage people to stay and play on Test server. I never thought it would go live.

I'm not sure if I like these changes to go live. First, the labels beneath the vendor I DO like and hope it goes live. It would save a LOT of time. Even after playing EQ for 2+ years and knowing the cities well, I still can't remember what merchant sells what, and often times, it gets fustrating, and time consuming looking for stuff.

As for the right click spell info...part of learning to play your class is learning the spell details. How long a buff stays, how much damage a nuke does, how much mana it takes, how many seconds the cast time is, etc. By adding the right click info, it "dumbs down" the learning of classes even more, and makes it even MORE easier for ebayers to learn to play a particular class. On the other hand...I play a 61 mage, a 34 bard, 29 necro and 16 pally. I cannot tell you how many times I've gotten spells confused, forgot what spell does what, and just wished for something like this so I don't have to have Lucy loaded up on the other computer all the time.

Now what I would REALLY Like to see, is some kind of in-game checklist of spells that each class gets at each spell circle. THAT would be a HUGE timesaver every time I dinged to a new spell level. Maybe something like Magelo has with the spells.

Many people (and even I've said myself) that they're dumbing down EQ. Are they really? Of the entire EQ population, how many players are actual true newbies? Never ever ever played EQ before in their lives, don't know anyone who plays EQ, never saw it before their first day playing it? Maybe 1-5% are true newbies, and could use all this helpful hints and tips. I would say that 90-95% of the EQ population are seasoned players, ranging from 3 years to at least a few months, or first time players with long-time player friends who can help them out. I think what Verant is trying to do is retain the new people that they get. I believe that Verant gets a lot of new players, BUT loses them to the large learning curve when starting EQ.

I remember when I first started playing, right when Velious came out, it took me WEEKS before I understood the game. A /tell? What in the world was that?! You mean there are MORE zones then just Freeport and EC/WC?! And what the HECK did that thin blue line mean that went through my yellow exp bar?! Many, many times I nearly quit EQ out of fustrating at the huge learning curve, too much info to absorb, and the difficulty of learning the basics of the game. Looking back now, if I had all these things when I first started playing EQ, the game would have been much more fun, much less aggravating, and much easier.

Just my 2 cp's worth, and some off topic ramblings.

Cend

[bana-zir]

The simple supply/demand market approach is that if the supply goes up and the demand stays the same, the price of the item goes down.

Supply and Demand is for a real economy. EQ is not one.

Ok there are several points here:

1) In EQ there is no cost to sell.
2) People are only pressured to lower teh price if they reach 80 items.
3) Some people "store" their private stock on mules at insane prices.
4) Other people see these insane price and price at 60 percent "a steal".
5) Over time price for items go way up.

In my market the tailor robes from Plane of Storm sale for 10k pp, but the parts to reliably make one sell for 75k pp. What do you think I do with my parts? I sell them. Why is this happening? Because EQ's economy is not based on supply and demand, it is a broken economy. Adding a "tradeskill" tag will only make more items become available in the bazaar at higher and higher prices.

[andyhre]

I have to say that in my limited experience, the economy is very much based on supply and demand, but the sources for that supply and demand may not always make sense outside of the logic of EQ. Thus, when EQ logic and RL logic diverge, you see weird things.

For example, the components of a given combine can often cost more than the resulting product. That seems crazy, right, why would anyone do that, who would do that in real life? Well, when you realize people are really buying skill-ups, not the final output, it starts to make sense. Ah, the price of going from X->X+1 in whatever-skill is whatever-the-cost-of-the-inputs-are and the resulting product is more or less a waste byproduct that can be junked, sold at a huge loss, whatever. People who fletch at the merchant and sell the arrows back at a loss without even using them are just buying fletching points. [This is a bad example, perhaps because the nPC merchants do not use S&D to set prices. These are prices fixed by the government (or perhaps a near-perfect cartel among all NPC merchants) prevents the prices from dropping to near zero due to infinite supply.]

As a better example, tailors pay foragers for bamboo shoots so they can make dye to make worthless robes, not because they are violating the laws of supply and demand, but because their demand for bamboo shoots is a demand for skill ups. And I, as a forager type, went to Stonebrunt because I figured out I could forage these and sell them. If there were no demand, I would not have done this. In this case, it's a generally under-known demand, and thus there may be less supply than there should be (SB should be crawling with eager foragers, but it tends to be pretty quiet there). Why? Well, in aprt because it is easy to see supply in the bazaar but very difficult to guage demand. If you could set yourself up in buyer mode and list items and your willingness to pay (price and quantity) and go AFK and anyone could walk up to you and hand you an item and your buyer would automatically pay the price, people would learn what items have great demand. The asymmetry creates quirks, where there is demand that is unmet, but only because it is very difficult to disseminate that info. The new flag may help that, but I suspect it will be hard to implement in such a way that everything isn't flagged. Roots make root beer and water pods make water flasks, but it's pretty hard to sell either of those [though I have sold roots for gold piece prices].


So the demand is not driven only by the usefulness of the, say, greyhopper hide armor, but of the ability to go from 88 to 89 in tailoring. Why someone wants that may be related to what he/she can when tailoring gets to 250, and 88->89 is a step in that process.


The most important element I've seen in EQ pricing for things that tradeskillers use is the cost of time of the player. A newbie values his gaming time less than an experienced player. A newbie will spend more time to earn 10pp than an experience player. So a newbie will farm spiderling silk and be thrilled to get, say, 3pp per. An experience player COULD farm spiderling silk and LQ wolf pelts and make his/her own leather padding (LP), but that experienced player wants to work on smithing, so he/she pays more than the cost of inputs for LP and then maybe sells the resulting plate for less than the costs of the inputs. It lets someone in the middle buy up spiderling silk and pelts and profit from the difference in time values. But this is ALL supply and demand. People farm (supply) silk (once the spiderlings are green) b/c there is demand for it. People sew up (supply) LP because there is demand for it. People make plate, not necassarily to sell it (because there is, I think, low or no demand) but because it is a necessary input (i.e., part of the process of supply) in getting high smithing to make things for which there is demand.

(or maybe because there is status to get a trophy, in which case it is basically a luxury good)

The instant the real driver of demand goes away, the price will drop down to nothing. If LP stopped being necessary for making armor that smiths use to skill up on, I suspect the price would drop to something very low, as would the components that go into LP, unless they retain another use. take away Ohabah Truffles and the value of a mushroom (or whatever you use) drops down to that of an iron ration. Keep the ability to skill up or sell Ohabah truffles and demand for (and thus price of) musrooms or whatever you use goes up.

[edit: had Habanero Peppers, brainlock]
In the final analysis, in EQ people aren't forced to buy anything. Therefore, they only buy when they value the good more than the platinum it costs. The value of that platinum goes down as the player ages, bith because of general inflation and because that player can personally acquire platinum more easily, BUT the core proposition, that the player will only trade platinum for an item if he/she values the items more than the platinum (or what that same platinum could buy of something else) remains. And thus there is demand. it may be for a good for its intrinsic value ( buy this sword b/c it is good for what a sword does, kill) or indirect value (I buy this bamboo b/c I want to skill up in tailoring), but it is demand.

Supply is a little different, without cost of holding inventory, as you say, but if supply is scarce and there is demand, prices go up. As supply of an items grows, given fixed demand, the price drops. Inflation may counter this trend, but that too is supply and demand (inflation just means the supply of platinum is outpacing the supply of all goods and services). In the end if supply increases prces drop and if it decreases, prices go up.

The law still works, the facts (drivers of demand/supply) just are different.

Oay this is way to long, but I hope I made some headway in showing my point.

Andy

[Quesci]

Now what I would REALLY Like to see, is some kind of in-game checklist of spells that each class gets at each spell circle. THAT would be a HUGE timesaver every time I dinged to a new spell level. Maybe something like Magelo has with the spells

Easily done with the Story window. I have every spell for every class at my fingertips.

[bana-zir]

For example, the components of a given combine can often cost more than the resulting product. That seems crazy, right, why would anyone do that, who would do that in real life? Well, when you realize people are really buying skill-ups...
Andy

I wasn't referring to skill up items. I meant things like Hurricane robes (tailoring) and Hurricane Plate (smithing) where I can sell the parts needed to make one robe/breastplate for approximately 75,000 plat or sell the robe/bp for 15,000 plat. I will sell the parts. I don't understand why the parts sell (slowly, but they do sell) when I get laughed out of the room when I ask for more than 15k for the finished product.

I have done a great deal of experimentation with the economy of eq and you can quite easily influence the selling price of items. You can drive the price up by have multiple characters put items up for sale for higher prices. You will influence the other people who bring those items to market. It is not as easy to drive the price down, but the only successful way is to buy up all the supply (even if it is an insane price) to clear the way to more appropriate prices. This encourages the people selling the item for a very high price and he very well may believe you considered this a fair price.

[andyhre]

I don't know enough about the specifics of that particular robe (I'm pretty much a newbie, level 26 ranger, but to my credit I have accumulated 30K while equipping myself in nice stuff simply by studying key aspects of the bazaar economy).

As for your other points, this is the meat and potatoes of the economics of asymmetric/imperfect information

You can drive the price up by have multiple characters put items up for sale for higher prices. You will influence the other people who bring those items to market. It is not as easy to drive the price down, but the only successful way is to buy up all the supply (even if it is an insane price) to clear the way to more appropriate prices. This encourages the people selling the item for a very high price and he very well may believe you considered this a fair price.

Only a few people will have a deep knowledge of the true cost of acquiring items, the true long-term market conditions, the true "it will sell eventually" maximum price, etc. So they come to the bazaar with imperfect information, and in many cases, asymmetric information, where you as buyer may know better the use to which you can put the item or you as seller may know the relative ease/difficulty of selling them item. As a simply example, you might have 3 of very rare robe. You can make it seem scarcer by only offering up one at a time on autotrader. That doesn't mean supply and demand are working, it just means the EQ economy is less transparent than, say, the New York Stock Exchange or the Cushing, OK spot market for crude oil.

To an uninformed person, the prices being offered as of their entry into the bazaar are the only source of price cues. That seller is likely to price within those bounds, at the bottom if seeking a quick sale, toward the top if seeking to maximize the price received on that item, eventually. To a more informed person, any items selling below his/her idea of the "will sell no prob" price is an opportunity to make "bazaar profit" by simply buying the item and reoffering it for sale at the higher price. To a very informed and skilled trader, the ability to pull down the price by setting up an alt at a lower price and then asking the true seller "hey, so-and-so (your own alt) is offering for xx, will you beat that price?" is a way to use asymmetric information (you know the alt price isn't a market price, the other trader does not). to your advantage.

So all of this imperfection and asymmetry creates arbitrage opportunities, to make money simply by influencing the perception of supply and demand, to buy underpriced items and re-sell, etc. But it is still Supply & Demand at work, albeit in this world of very imperfect information.

And yes, I am an economist, so this is both somewhat dogma to me, but as I said, I've watched the bazaar enough in the few months I've played (got the Luclin add-on in April) to see it generally works. I'll have to think about your robe example, but one thought springs to mind: are any of the key components very rare? I could see it that one guy has all but one component, he's then willing to pay a lot for the last one. Then someone else has all but a different component, etc. If different characters have different ease of acquiring the "last" item each needs (and that last item differs among them), someone who can get them all could profit by selling each rare item to the person who wants it, efectively selling one robe's worth of value to each would-be wearer, rather than making a robe and then only selling it once.

The other thought would be if there are alternate uses for the items in question. Some runes are used for robes and for spells, so that might influence it, but you probably know so much more than I on this that you would have mentioned that, so this is likely just hot air.

[kiztent]

I'll have to think about your robe example, but one thought springs to mind: are any of the key components very rare? I could see it that one guy has all but one component, he's then willing to pay a lot for the last one.

That's probably the case, where someone is trying to find a last >x< and so the net profit from selling the parts to make a BP is larger than selling the BP itself.

The only remotely difficult part to get is the drops of pure rain (for the BP). You need 6 to attempt a BP. Given the price I've (rarely) seen for them of 2500pp, you can see that with 100 percent success and zero price for all other parts, you can break even making BPs.

[Morani]

Andyhre, very eloquently worded. Thank you. It takes more than an understanding of a subject to communicate it well. I've learned my "something" for the day.

[Silnyil]

Some how double post happen so is deleted.