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The real problem of PokeMMO's economy.


Please, complete this little poll.  

77 members have voted

  1. 1. Who is responsible of lowering item's prices in PokeMMO?

    • People that lower prices.
      60
    • People who sell stacks of 99.
      17


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1 minute ago, razimove said:

They did that already, didnt fix the money flow still, just nerf it to 0$ to force them to interact player:player, not player:npc.

Looking at the GTL currently, it helped a lot. Nerfing it straight to 0$ is a needless extreme in my opinion, as the goal isn't to have 0 yen generation, there actually needs to be some yen generated to balance the constant influx of assets such as the gift shop tradeables or regular items generated from pickup and such, otherwise the market is just going to go straight into a deflation. Maybe nuking berries to 0$ is what ultimately needs to happen to reach the equilibrium, but I would rather get there progressively, decreasing it little by little and then looking at empiric data for further adjustment if needed, instead of going all in and then hope that it wasn't overdone.

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15 minutes ago, Dazuzi said:

Looking at the GTL currently, it helped a lot. Nerfing it straight to 0$ is a needless extreme in my opinion, as the goal isn't to have 0 yen generation, there actually needs to be some yen generated to balance the constant influx of assets such as the gift shop tradeables or regular items generated from pickup and such, otherwise the market is just going to go straight into a deflation. Maybe nuking berries to 0$ is what ultimately needs to happen to reach the equilibrium, but I would rather get there progressively, decreasing it little by little and then looking at empiric data for further adjustment if needed, instead of going all in and then hope that it wasn't overdone.

I think the argument is that if there wasn't an NPC present that would buy your berries, it would be left up to the free market and supply and demand as a whole would determine how much yen you get for selling your berries to the GTL. Right now planting berries is pretty much just straight up yen generation.

 

Is there a lot of people on alts farming berries? Then supply goes up, dictating that prices will go down. 

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I can't be assed to read this entire thread but looking at the poll, imo, isn't the issue just over-saturation? Too many people farming the same thing = prices fall on that thing.

I would say just farm a different market but I feel like the amount of options and content we have hasn't grown parallel to the growth of the community population. Pretty much every market is saturated now because they've been farmed into the ground, nothing new to be doing (aside from holiday events but those are few and far between) so people turn to static money making methods (selling berries to NPCs, rematching gyms etc.) where they don't have to worry about market prices or if things will sell or not. It's guaranteed money. And it can be done on alts for even more profit. I don't fault people who do it, it's probably the smarter thing to be doing right now. But if doing THAT is better than actually participating in the economy then there's a problem with that economy. For sure.  

Oh well, just buy a limited vanity and wait a year, you'll be rich, it's fine. lol 

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22 minutes ago, Staggiie said:

I can't be assed to read this entire thread but looking at the poll, imo, isn't the issue just over-saturation? Too many people farming the same thing = prices fall on that thing.

I would say just farm a different market but I feel like the amount of options and content we have hasn't grown parallel to the growth of the community population. Pretty much every market is saturated now because they've been farmed into the ground, nothing new to be doing (aside from holiday events but those are few and far between) so people turn to static money making methods (selling berries to NPCs, rematching gyms etc.) where they don't have to worry about market prices or if things will sell or not. It's guaranteed money. And it can be done on alts for even more profit. I don't fault people who do it, it's probably the smarter thing to be doing right now. But if doing THAT is better than actually participating in the economy then there's a problem with that economy. For sure.  

Oh well, just buy a limited vanity and wait a year, you'll be rich, it's fine. lol 

I don't think the complaint here is the forces of supply and demand bringing down prices, but rather that people will have 99 items, and instead of making a stack for 99 items at 5000, people will progressively list 1 at 4999, 4998, 4997... and so on. I don't think this is an economy problem but rather a GTS abuse problem.

 

I think this could be more accurately put as "hogging" slots.

Edited by Raichu4u
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I actually find this really interesting being at the end of a macro economics class this semester and learning about supply and demand from a non basic stand point. From the date of 2/6/19 to 3/16/19 I made a spreadsheet in excel to track market price fluctuations every Saturday and found some really good data cause it was in the time of the lunar New Years event and the boar limited items. I don't know how to link a spreadsheet in this reply but when the boar costume was released, the market became more expensive in all items listed. This would be because of RP "prices" (players wanting to spend in game currency rather than real $ for RP) making a demand for itself for people to buy the new items. Because of the RP "prices" going up, this caused all items, regarding RP, to go up as well. I don't know the exact time period but at one point, a 7 day donator pass was 300k, compared to, the Saturday of the week of boar release, at 1.2m. The weeks after all prices have steadily gone down. The best solution to an economy is to do nothing cause everything will be paid for the prices it's valued at based on supply of the item and the demand for who wants it. 

 

An example of a damper on this MMO economy would be re releasing an old limited vanity. If the kyu hat (which I've been trying to get for years) was release at 1000RP or in the mystery boxes again, a huge inflation would take place because the kyu hat would basically be worthless compared to its current value and wouldn't move millions of yen elsewhere. 

 

Im no master at economics, or would be able to make any huge decision to change an economy, but I believe that money needs to be taken out of the game if you want to see the stabilization at whatever you're looking for. A small solution would be to get rid of alternative accounts who berry farm and flood the economy with money, this could be seen as like counterfeit money destabilizing an economy. I don't know how it would be done if someone has more than one device that can play the game and get around a one account per device system. 

 

The undercuts don't do anything to the economy because the potential moves in a flat line but the real market goes up and down slightly anyways or items return to their "true value" after an inflation or recession period. For the admins to fix another 300k 7 day donator situation, all they'd have to do is release something that people want in the store (limited or not) and it would fix the "price" of RP and the donator or any item similar would go up. It seems contradictive to say "do nothing" and then proceed to say this but at times, it's alright to give the economy a little nudge if you want it "fixed" faster. In short term, in a recession (not enough money), you need to put money in, and in an inflation (too much money) period, take it out. In the U.S. government, this is by buying and selling bonds (a promise for money at a certain time) most of the time, or sometimes a change in taxes, depending on the policy you're using. I don't know how to correlate this to MMO unless NPC become more important in buying/selling items, and even that isn't a promise for money like a bond. Listing prices would be made higher or lower depending on the market situation too.

 

If anyone wants to see the spreadsheet, tell me how to make a link to an excel spreadsheet and I'll reply to this with it. A photo would make the graph too small cause the amount of items that I tracked.

 

Edit: Images of spreadsheet (not wide enough to stretch to 3/16/19)

In order from First to Last (Top of page to Bottom)

https://imgur.com/OzZXW2Y

https://imgur.com/phpNOm9

https://imgur.com/aa2k9IQ

 

Edited by AustinCider
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@AustinCider I just want to say that's an awesome write up as someone who has taken up an interest in economics after studying it for some required classes back in college. I will say though that the PokeMMO economy is a bit different due to the fact that there is no credit system and no bonds, and the fact that the economy is always technically at 100% employment since in a way, anyone who does anything in PokeMMO to create BP, items, Pokemon, yen, is technically self employed. I would say any patterns in the economy in terms of prices are very strictly influenced by supply and demand, and it is impossible for any typical economic cycles to happen in this game (recession, growth, etc).

 

I will say though that it does seem bizzare that there is an NPC that straight up buys your berries and pretty much acts as a money printer as you said though. It devalues 'busy work' a whole lot like gym battling, item hunting, etc. If I were on the dev team and making changes to make a healthier economy, I would eliminate the ability to sell berries as a whole and just let supply and demand take over the berry market on the GTL. I could bet money on it that alting for berry farms would go down overnight and we wouldn't have to be having conversations of what should be the next big money sink to deal with the 'berry problem'.

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On 5/2/2019 at 9:57 PM, EssDeeCee said:

I think the real problem is some have money and some don't.

 

We need to just institute socialism and everyone can have a bit of everything for free whenever they want it, because they deserve it.

Some people really need to travel to VENEZUELA  and stay there 3 MONTHS with minimun salary, progresist are gonna love it ;)

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First "problem" is inflation of pokéyen and items.

The second problem is that we can put a sell order, but we cannot put up a buy order on GTL. This way mods don't have to put up a restricted price, but the market will create it's own "bottom".

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9 minutes ago, Lavalu said:

First "problem" is inflation of pokéyen and items.

This isn't meant as a jab, but you're likely correct, I'm not sure why problem is in quotes.

 

On 5/4/2019 at 4:47 PM, AustinCider said:

I actually find this really interesting being at the end of a macro economics class this semester and learning about supply and demand from a non basic stand point. From the date of 2/6/19 to 3/16/19 I made a spreadsheet in excel to track market price fluctuations every Saturday and found some really good data cause it was in the time of the lunar New Im no master at economics, or would be able to make any huge decision to change an economy, but I believe that money needs to be taken out of the game if you want to see the stabilization at whatever you're looking for. A small solution would be to get rid of alternative accounts who berry farm and flood the economy with money, this could be seen as like counterfeit money destabilizing an economy. I don't know how it would be done if someone has more than one device that can play the game and get around a one account per device system. 

I thought I'd quote this part of your post to make a general statement.

But we're certainly aware this is an issue, and [in my opinion] it's very likely due to a disparity with both amounts of items and yen coming in and going out.

We plan on developing ways to analyze these numbers further and come up with solutions based on our findings.

I'd love to speak more on the issue but I wouldn't want to put a definitive on it beforehand.

 

In regards to the point brought up in the OP - the mechanics behind stacks in the GTL are not very friendly to the average player looking to sell their loot, and might be something we focus our attention on improving.

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56 minutes ago, Darkshade said:

But we're certainly aware this is an issue, and [in my opinion] it's very likely due to a disparity with both amounts of items and yen coming in and going out.

We plan on developing ways to analyze these numbers further and come up with solutions based on our findings.

I'd love to speak more on the issue but I wouldn't want to put a definitive on it beforehand.

Is item creation looked at as a problem by the part of the dev team that concerns the economy? I will say if there is anything that seems relatively healthy in the economy right now, it's probably the price of consumables in terms of how much supply is put on the market to bring them down to pretty player friendly prices (everstones, shards, heart scales, etc). I'm just another nerdling on the forums here pitching in my opinion, but I think it seems like you guys definitely have a significant yen creation problem on that side of things though.

 

I will say that if you guys plan to do any economic corrections in the future, I at least hope you slightly buff busywork up slightly (gym battles, pickup, theifing) because it seems like a better investment of one's time to play the berry game right now.

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