DDO economy

[Trillea]

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.

Hmmm, where is my stash of SoJ's..

[smithtj3]

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.

The beauty of the True Reincarnated character is that this player will have an endless amount of money but still need to make purchases starting at level one. In other words, level one loot drops have some value but I usually don't bother listing an item unless it has a base value of 1Kpp (thought I also have no problem selling items starting at 200pp base value). Tempest's Spine makes level 10 a huge money maker, plenty of chests and no raid timer equals an abundance of easy game cash. It's around this level that I have to go back to vendoring a chunk of the loot because DDO won't let me post all of it and I'd otherwise run out of inventory space.

A friend of mine just got his first character to level 10 and went from borrowing PP just to afford inscription materials to +100K PP in two weeks.

[quityourjobs]

I've also taken to posting decent items for relatively cheap in order to get gear in people's hands and make a little plat.

The problem as I see it is twofold: the very large AH take (30%) increases the price you need to ask for an item to receive a return, while the low cost to post the item decreases incentive to post for a "reasonable" price. Since the take is high, and the post cost low, you can put an item up over and over for a low amount hoping someone will cave in and buy the item eventually.

Lowering the AH take and increasing the posting cost should have the reverse effect, everyone will lose less money on the AH, meaning more items posted, and thus more price competition. Second, high post costs will mean there is an incentive to price items to sell, instead of shooting for hail mary prices.

If they based the posting cost on the opening bid price (20% of opening bid, refunded if the item sells), a lot fewer items would go up at 1 million plat with a 3 million buyout.

[Goldeneye]

The economy is stuck in an inflation spiral. Too many ways to earn plat, too few ways to spend it. .....The REAL currencies are

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

You have a very good point.
It's happened to me a number of times:

Me: "I'll give you 2mil plat for "X" "
Person2: "...mm... I don't need plat, what kind of scales you got?"

[Aaxeyu]

The biggest problem with the economy is the 30% AH tax. It devaluates plat by reducing monetary trading.

[pMagic]

You have a very good point.
It's happened to me a number of times:

Me: "I'll give you 2mil plat for "X" "
Person2: "...mm... I don't need plat, what kind of scales you got?"

For those who have been playing for some time, the new currency are items. It becomes a barter system.

[Goldeneye]

For those who have been playing for some time, the new currency are items. It becomes a barter system.

In a deal, I always offer plat first. That way I often don't have to trade away something (ex: red dragon scales) that's actually worth something to me :P

[yawumpus]

The existence of a barter economy indicates that the economy is broken, at least at endgame. Best guess is that the only real fix would be to include bigger sinks for plat. Something like +1/+2 tomes for sale at vendors might be a start (they would have to lower the drop rate and keep the prices up to match). The big issue is you need to make it something worth dropping a huge chunk of plat on without breaking the game. Somebody mentioned guild airships as working this way, but since they seem to be available first to mass guilds of lowbies, this probably wasn't a real focus. Also note that any such solution will likely compete with the turbine store (which is why I used tomes as an example). While turbine will never admit that the store is inflationary, it adds a dollar sink that competes with plat sinks.

Below endgame I'd have to say it seems to work fine. Every few weeks there is yet another whinge on the board about how broken the AH is, and some newb wants to know why he just can't buy uber-twink gear straight off of Korthos for list price. My usual answer is to ask him to buy my vendor trash at list price.

I guess the biggest effect on the DDO economy is the ratio of new accounts to new alts being leveled (TR's already have a bank of twink gear and don't need to buy quite as much stuff). While the alts with a few plat mules will always be able to outbid newbs on the twink gear, the question is are they also bidding on that +2 holy greataxe of deception or is that something a newb can expect to buy? - this might be a bad example with the rise of a horde of halforcs.

[Goldeneye]

The current #1 Plat Sink is people quitting the game :P

(If Turbine keeps nerf-batting dark monks, and obsolete-ing every melee race that isn't half-orc, they'll have a perfect plat sink!)

[kernal42]

1) Absolutely not enough plat sinks. The only significant sinks are repair bills and heal scrolls.
2) Farm for plat? Why would you do this? I tend to find myself with more plan than I know what to do with even without farming
3) Plat standard works most of the time. I trade items when I'm poor, though .
4) Not yet, but working its way up. When a single item is worth most (if not all) of the plat cap, you know inflation has hit bad. More plat sinks would help. Higher plat cap would briefly mitigate the situation.

Cheers,
Kernal

[EyeRekon]

The existence of a barter economy indicates that the economy is broken, at least at endgame.

Bartering is just an efficiency improvement that avoids moving through an unnecessary exchange medium. In this case plat isn't desired by either party and its just an obstacle to convert to and from it before and after trading.

[NadgersFishtoaster]

As a long-time pen & paper role-player, since 1977, the low-level economy seems fine to me.

The tutorial gives you useful starting kit and you gradually gain items and money although armour is not immediately available for sale. There are classic 3.5 item issues in that many low-level items are simply not all that useful for characters but I see this as accurate modelling. Selling via the vendor, what little can be sold, make enough.

I think people are prone to a culture shock once they reach the Auction House and people might dream of instantly acquiring thousands of platinums rather than looking for unfashionable (but cheap and useful) items.

So the question for low-level, first time players is can a character progress reasonably and buy the odd supplemental things? For this the answer is *currently* a resounding yes.

As for the question "does the high-level grind make sense?" - the answer must surely be that this is close to D&D 3.5 that most experienced gamers know to break down at high levels. People might want to find a MMO designed from the bottom up to find a more rewarding experience for this kind of relentless grind.

[Astraghal]

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.

This.

[testing1234]

DDO economy failed long long ago and gave raise to a barter system still in use, it has gotten lot better with AH and shroud ingredients but still its very very hard to use plat for buying items.
its been my experience lot of players use trade item for item system and its almost impossible the specific item your after for the specific item you have.

AH works if your after low to medium quality items and works if your looking for 1 large ingredient if your looking to buy 24 larges your not going to use the AH

[sirgog]

What does anyone think about the DDO economy?
Comments in yellow.

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.

Not nearly enough of a plat sink, hence every veteran player and many new players has at least 2-3 million platinum in 'liquid assets' (plat, scales, etc) most of the time. I've had no trouble amassing around 11 million platinum to buy red scales recently.

Plat is basically worthless as there's nothing in game to spend it on.

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?

If you know what you are doing (run Shroud and Epic VON6 every timer, sell all the scales you get) not long at all. If you do it the naive way - run random quests, vendor everything - it'll take a ridiculous amount of time.

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

Currency of small trades - plat and mana potions. Currency of medium-size trades - Large Shrapnel/Stone. Currency of large trades - Large Devil Scales and Flawless Red Dragonscales.

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

The economy reminds me of studying Germany in the hyperinflation days of the 20s. It's broken, and will remain broken until there are more things that:

1. Cost a LOT of plat
and 2. Appeal to level 20 characters.

That could mean selling some DDO store items at extremely high platinum costs (Lesser/Greater Hearts of Wood spring to mind), adding some vanity items that are purchased with platinum, adding a Shroud ingredient 'exchange' service that charges a lot of plat to turn Bones into Scales, or selling Epic Augment Crystals for platinum.

[Aaxeyu]

Plat is basically worthless as there's nothing in game to spend it on.

There doesn't have to be plat sinks that gives plat some inherent value (although plat sinks can make the price levels rise slower, which ofcourse is good). See it as fiat money.
The problem is that monetary trade is so highly discouraged by the AH tax, so people will simply use items to trade with instead. So there is basicly commodity money, fiat money aswell as a high level of barteting all as the same time.

[stille_nacht]

i think the main problem is that any person lv 17+ can get a good 10k plat worth of trash loot from a shroud run. accordingly, as you go up in level, the prices skyrocket. However, the problem here is that the people who were already lv 20 come back and make another toon, and are willing to pay more money than new players have ever seen for stuff that really isnt that good (hat with +2 wis for example, was 15k buyout when i checked). This creates problems for new players, and i can only assume that the AH will remain a place only higher end player buy from, and lower end players post things in hopes of seeing lots of money.

[pMagic]

What does anyone think about the DDO economy?
Comments in yellow.


That could mean selling some DDO store items at extremely high platinum costs (Lesser/Greater Hearts of Wood spring to mind), adding some vanity items that are purchased with platinum, adding a Shroud ingredient 'exchange' service that charges a lot of plat to turn Bones into Scales, or selling Epic Augment Crystals for platinum.

I like this idea a lot. This would give veteran players a place to sink their plats.

I agree that long time players have nothing to do with their plats so if they see something they want in the AH they just outright buy it. This inflates the AH and makes it harder for new players to compete in the AH.

[Goldeneye]

Being able to purchase DDO Store Items for insane prices could be a fabulous plat sink!

[Ratnix]

Being able to purchase DDO Store Items for insane prices could be a fabulous plat sink!

The only problem with that is they would lose money.

Most people would just stop buying stuff by buying points and instead would farm Plat and/or points to purchase everything.


While it would be a great plat sink, it would kill the bottom line.