DDO economy

[pMagic]

What does anyone think about the DDO economy?

1) Do you think there is enough plat sink in the game to balance the new plats created by quest loot? Obviously, it can't be 1 to 1 but it should be a good ratio so players are making plats but not making too much plats.

2) How easy is it to farm for plats? If you were to farm for plats how long would it take you to cap a toon with plats?

3) When does the plat standard not work for you? I mean when do you start trading for like items and not plats?

4) Is the DDO economy broken? If it is what are some ways you think it can be fixed?

I would really love to hear from a few Devs on this topic.

[pMagic]

I will start the discussion.

1) I think that plat input is just about right for people who play the game generally running quests and doing raids.

2) It is too easy to farm for plats if that is your goal. 1 year of regular play to fill my coffer to the max. If I was to farm for plats, I can cap a toon with plats in a few very boring months. ~60 to ~120 hours depending on how lucky I am. I would use a WF caster and farm Tor for blue dragon scale and when I felt lucky I would hit Sands for bloodstone/RSS/firestorm greaves. Anyone of those would cut my time in half.

3) I stopped buying from the AH as soon as I got my 2nd toon capped. By then I had enough items/equipment and just vendor most things. Anything I need or want I trade using /trade or trade with guildies which is much better.

4) For people who just started and have only a few capped toons the plat economy works for them. But as soon as they learn to farm for plats, it breaks down. They have too much plat and inflate prices on the AH. I believe this is the situation now. You would think that as more and more people play the game prices would go down because people more items will be offered and the free market forces would pressure prices to drop. However, this is not the case IMO. I've seen prices rise and kept on rising. Soon prices will be so ridiculous that no new player will be able to buy anything from the AH and all the prices will be too high for anyone except those who farm for plats.

[Asketes]

everyone has too much money


sorry for not going into detail.


that and most are all loot-wh*res.. I tend to give away or sell fairly for what I don't need.


except last night, I traded my Docent of Defiance for 1.4mil pp (tr'ing makes me go broke w/ all haste pots I snort lol)

[Cherry]

The economy is much better than it used to be....that notwithstanding those who post items on the AH with crazy high buyouts will continue to upset the balance. The problem is that there are many out there with tons and tons of plat who don't think twice about paying a ****-tonne of plat for stuff.

Organized plat farmers are no where close to the plat problem as they were in the past.

[jwdaniels]

Why bother farming for plat? As soon as you hit higher levels it's easy to make a fortune just going about your regular business.

[FrancisP.Fancypants]

I think the economy is fine. I don't mind doing without certain items while waiting for AH bargains (and they ARE there to be had, in spite of some price gougers). Frankly, if plat was any easier to get it would make the game too much of a breeze.

[pMagic]

I think the economy is fine. I don't mind doing without certain items while waiting for AH bargains (and they ARE there to be had, in spite of some price gougers). Frankly, if plat was any easier to get it would make the game too much of a breeze.

I think plats are too easy to get especially if you're set on farming for it.

[Goldeneye]

Plat isn't a rare commodity.
There are certain people that have a TON of plat. As a result, they can win any bidding war by just offering a crazy sum. This drives prices of valuable items (bloodstone, epic scrolls... etc) to crazy amounts.

Low-levels, people can't afford the AH prices.
High-levels, there is too much plat.

Without a big plat sink (the biggest plat sinks currently are AH fees, scrolls, pots, and guild?), inflation is going crazy.

The influx of new players gave a small jump-start to the market, however inflation is a problem.

[TheSwamper]

I suppose one good side-effect of excess plat in the game is that it makes it very hard for real money -> plat sellers to do any business at all. I don't think I've seen a single spam on this in months.

[smithtj3]

If you have a problem with the game economy you can do something about it. My approach as been as follows:

1. AH just about every piece of gear I pull (I've TR'd so apart from rare drops, I've got all the gear I need).

2. I use the AH pricing equation of Item's Base Value/10 = Starting Bid. Item's Base Value = Buy Out Price. 99% of the loot sells before the auction is over because it's one one-hundredth the price of the rest of the identical items on the market and since I'm pretty much guaranteed some coin for it's fast effortless PP (it's not like I ran the dungeon for the loot anyway. . . the price I would pay for a few more thousand points of XP. . .).

3. I only buy items off the AH priced in a similar fashion as my pricing method because I don't want to support the sellers with ridiculous asking prices.

The end result is that I am helping to keep the market competitive, I'm still making a profit, and I'm not making the rich any richer. It seems the regular asking price for a single Giant Relic is 10K plat! Why pay that much when I can walk 30 yards into GH, kill the rare spawn giant and have one for what roughly equates to 3 copper pieces of labor? Chipmunk Funk? You might as well sell an organ for a piece of that if you use the AH. I got half a dozen pieces in less than an hour in a half with a PUG.

Rage against the machine!

[Nahual]

Economy wise its ok.

AH prices have gone way up since the change to plat though.

[Goldeneye]

A couple good plat-sinks in end-game would do the economy some good.
I know to many people that have toons sitting at plat-cap (including me :P)

Items like Yugoloth/Amrath pots and paying a bunch of plat for guild ship benefits does the economy good, and keeps an edge on inflation.

[Dulcimerist]

I blame the Gnomes of Zurich!

[LordMond63]

To chime in:

1) No, there are not enough meaningful plat sinks in the game. A real crafting system would go a long ways towards fixing that particular problem but I doubt that there is sufficient interest by the player base to support the introduction of crafting.

2) I cannot speak about capping a toon's plat. Now, that said, it becomes absurdly easy to make money for anyone, regardless of their luck, around level 10-12. The loot you can pull, even selling to vendors or barkeeps, increases markedly in value from that of just a couple levels earlier. If you aren;t terribly interested in farming materials for particular equipment or to access certain quests, you can sell those materials for loads of money on the AH to people who are just too impatient to do it themselves or have done it for various alternatives so often that they don't want to go through it again (I can sympathize).

3) Never, in my experience.

4) The DDO economy, while it has its faults, is probably the most sounds of any game I've played. Once a game has been live for a certain amount of time (or a server within a game has been up for a certain amount of time), that game becomes what I call "mature" in that there is a HUGE amount of currency in circulation and probably an even huger amount being hoarded. It just cannot be helped pretty much regardless of what devs do. Some games, like Dark Age of Camelot, had a very intricate crafting system that removed huge amounts of money from the game. I never saw that in EQ, although that game did have a (comparatively rudimentary) crafting system (at least earlier on when I played). I think the EQ folks tried to control the economy by making many things "bind to character"- non-tradeable. Since they could not be sold regardless of potential value, I think that made artificially inflating the economy a bit more difficult.

DDO seems to be following the EQ model in that many new items are either "bind to character" or at least "bind to account". I'm thinking the new set items in Red Fens and Lordsmarch Plaza here. About the only true money sink that DDO has is the AH fees, and they are generating more than a few complaints. You could toss in repairs to equipment but even that is comparatively minor. Aside from that, any sinks, really, are optional; you can farm for dragon scales and invest time or you can buy them and invest moeny. But either way does work.

[Xaxx]

Sorry to say but you cant say *DDO ECONOMY*, you can say gals econonmy, or caniths, or etc.... there is no ddo economy in general...

I say this because playing on galanda, the economy has been very stable, no huge ups and downs really over the past 2-3 years i've been on gal *lazarian before the server merge...yes froobs there was a server merge*. I've seen a few posts from diff servers about the economy goin nuts or this or that, but over on gal its been pretty steady. Yet ddo is still a free market system, and in a free market system prices fluctuate. Every game has this, theres not really any way around it, put in all the plat sinks you want, there will still be the people who have plat and the people who dont.

As for the change from gold to plat standard being the reasons some server economys are fluctuating, sorry guys keep looking. Even when gold was the *standard*, any time a value was attached to an item, say 600k, it wasnt gold, it was plat. You didnt ask someone how much a bloodstone was, and expect them to say 6 mil, you expected to hear 600k.

[dragonmane]

I have been playing for about a year and the most I got on 1 toon, my main, is 165k plat. I only have one capped toon, again, my main, so I only play about 6 to 10 hours a week. If I really wanted to make plat I would do what everyone else has suggested. I dont think plat is that important in the game other than to get pots and maybe some gear that you would have to farm for months that you might not ever get. I am happy with gear that isnt superiour to everyone else. I still get in Shroud groups and I am working on my Greensteel items. On my main toon I still havent done all the quests so I am still pretty happy with the game and the people I have met.

[Trillea]

I blame the Gnomes of Zurich!

The Cult of Cthulu attacks to neutralize your last arm, declares a privileged attack, is successful, and wins.

[pMagic]

If you have a problem with the game economy you can do something about it. My approach as been as follows:
*SNIP*
2. I use the AH pricing equation of Item's Base Value/10 = Starting Bid. Item's Base Value = Buy Out Price. 99% of the loot sells before the auction is over because it's one one-hundredth the price of the rest of the identical items on the market and since I'm pretty much guaranteed some coin for it's fast effortless PP (it's not like I ran the dungeon for the loot anyway. . . the price I would pay for a few more thousand points of XP. . .).

3. I only buy items off the AH priced in a similar fashion as my pricing method because I don't want to support the sellers with ridiculous asking prices.
*SNIP*
Rage against the machine!

I like your strategy. When I do sell stuff in the AH, I use the search option now and post my item 10% less then the lowest buy it price. I set my starting bid at half that or 1/3 of that. But I will change to your strategy.

I get some plats for my work and if someone is willing to wait (probably someone new to the game) they can get something for real cheap. Veterans will just buy anything they want which is fine with me.

I have stopped buying stuff from the AH when inflation took hold.

[pMagic]

Sorry to say but you cant say *DDO ECONOMY*, you can say gals econonmy, or caniths, or etc.... there is no ddo economy in general...

I say this because playing on galanda, the economy has been very stable, no huge ups and downs really over the past 2-3 years i've been on gal *lazarian before the server merge...yes froobs there was a server merge*. I've seen a few posts from diff servers about the economy goin nuts or this or that, but over on gal its been pretty steady. Yet ddo is still a free market system, and in a free market system prices fluctuate. Every game has this, theres not really any way around it, put in all the plat sinks you want, there will still be the people who have plat and the people who dont.

As for the change from gold to plat standard being the reasons some server economys are fluctuating, sorry guys keep looking. Even when gold was the *standard*, any time a value was attached to an item, say 600k, it wasnt gold, it was plat. You didnt ask someone how much a bloodstone was, and expect them to say 6 mil, you expected to hear 600k.

Why would the economy on Galanda stay stable but not on other server? Is it because it has been up longer then other servers?

[EyeRekon]

The economy is stuck in an inflation spiral. Too many ways to earn plat, too few ways to spend it. Buying resources such as spell comps, pots, and scrolls are insignificant costs. The only major drain are AH fees which can be avoided via /trade, /guild, or DDO Forum exchanges.

Guild Ship stuff that can be bought with platinum is a new way to help drain plat.

As more and more people have so much plat at their disposal, AH prices soar for useful stuff because they can charge maximum price and it will still sell without much delay. What's 2M plat when you have many toons with 4M? You'll recoup that 2M before you even find something else you want to buy. I really don't think the change from gold to plat standard did very much (I did see some price jumps, but still not major)

Less established players, however, will be unable to afford the useful items with plat and will have to barter. That tends to work out nicely because often times established players aren't looking for plat anymore and won't put stuff on AH.

So plat really isn't the currency to use for acquiring nice items. Use it for lowbie twink items, resources, and for the occasional nice item that actually goes to AH where the seller actually wants plat (if so you could cut a better deal with them by bypassing AH entirely)

The REAL currencies are

• Large Shroud Ingredients
• Boot Ingredients (ToD)
• Dragon Scales
• Bloodstones
• Spectral Gloves
• Firestorm Greaves
• Docent of Defiance
• Epic Scrolls

You can pretty much always find someone who will take these things for whatever nice thing you want. So don't farm plat, farm items.