Allow me to firstly say that I have supreme confidence in the team responsible for the creation of this title. They do this for a living so I would never presume to tell them how I think the game should look. This post is my take on how a player-influenced economy may benefit this game.

The news release article in GI didn't mention anything towards the economy system in the new game, as far as I know. If anyone reading this has ever played Final Fantasy XI, then they know how incredibly fun and helpful it is to influence the market and drive prices in your favor. I'm desperately hoping that the people at Bethesda take a good look at what Square Enix has done in the past with this. FFXI debuted over a decade ago and still has a large fan base. Maybe not as successful as WoW, but I attribute that to 'playability'. The FFXI player-based economy is hands-down the gauge other games monetary systems are judged by. Allow me to give anyone unfamiliar with this idea a synopsis:

A player goes into the world to level his/her character and later returns to town with a backpack full of goodies collected during this trip. In order to make some money off of this stuff, they have to sell to other people who also play the game. This is done via an auction house which serves all the players in the game. You pay a small fee, your product goes up for auction, and someone else has to bid on it in order for you to turn profit. The fee, as well as the price you would pay for transportation serves as an endless hole for money to leave the economy. (Among other things.) A natural curve against inflation, if you will. Someone who has experience with the market will know better what and how to price what they put up for sale, in order to turn a faster or higher profit. Factors like supply and demand will influence how much everything, from 'lesser soul gems' to 'flawless diamonds' sell for.

Say what you will - but you can't deny that this economy system would be amazing in the Elder Scrolls world. With it, would be the necessity for other factors in-game items would require. Such as level requirements for wearing that sweet set of Daedric armor you've been saving for. (svcks, right?) Or class requirements, so that you don't have what looks like a melee player using items a mage could put to better use. Not to mention that with this economy there is no need for the mercantile skill. Your barter skill only goes as high as your IQ.

Would you rather sell everything to NPC's for the standard price? Please weigh in, everyone, let me know what you think.

You pretty much just took the auction house from WoW and slapped it on here. Unless it's been in another game. But regardless, it could go that route. Or it could just be a whole big exchange where you put something up for sale for a certain price (market price, highest and lowest) and whoever has requested to buy that item for a certain amount will buy yours, and you receive the money. Plus there is money you get from quests, or simply just trading a fellow player for however much.

Sure, these concepts might also have been in WoW, I wouldn't know. But all the possible incomes you listed were present in FFXI as well. (I do have to point out that FFXI came first, however.)

Well it's exactly what was in WoW. Every lick of it.

One one the biggest problems with auction houses though is gold farmers.

I used to play FFXI, around when it first came out then took a year or so off then went back, and when I started some items (like a Silk Stack) were worth like 500,000 gil, when I came back, the most expensive was around 90,000. Not to mention FFXI erasedlike a few billion gil, just gone, when they banned several thousand accounts for gold farming/selling.

yoru idea has oen giant flaw, the auction house. it is a stupid idea when you could set up your own place in a market and sell your goods the real way (and you would be more likely to sell something on the street where you can barter than some auction house where everything is a set price, at least, i would be more likely to buy)

Sure, you could put a sign on your head saying "gear for sale!" then go AFK for a day or two. But then the only people you market to are those who pass by. Who spends the time to browse every player-merchant's wares they run past? Especially not if you're looking for something specific. Yeah, selling to an NPC would be faster, but would you make as much? The whole concept behind an auction house is developing an economy which rises and falls. Just like the NYSE. Sell high, buy low - so you can make more money. (This does require a level of patience. I'm sure some players would prefer just dumping everything to an NPC.)

Besides, everything you get in the game world is free anyways.

no information about the economy has been released so it's a moot point to speculate

and yes your system is established in WoW exactly as presented here. nothing new or novel.

If you're looking for an MMO with a good economy check out EVE online.

A lot of people like to instantly go on the aggressive towards Auction house economies, since in any game they occur in they dominate the economy entirely. However games without them tend to suffer other issues that lead to a poor economy, like a lack of a merchant hub where people who wish to buy can go to. Arguably the best system I see if a way for clans (not players) to set up stalls in or around cities that they can put items up for sale (for a rental fee of course which removes excess gold from the world). The reason you want clans doing it instead of players is it gives incentive for merchants to be a part of an organization (which all true merchants usually see the benefit in), it removes excess number of stalls from cities, and it can make it worthwhile to buyers who see a whole clan's worth of merchandise for sale instead of just what one person farmed.

As for gold farmers, this is a tricky issue but it's possible to balance an economy around this, it just takes a lot of fine tuning.


The biggest reason I dislike auction houses is they make professions worthless at all but the highest level as materials are universally sold higher than the price of the items you can produce with them.

I would love to see an economy that is almost totally player driven like in EVE.

It is indeed a moot point to speculate because we don't know how will things work yet. If items will be set and always the same people will only buy the top items for the very best builds. Most low players will not be able to sell anything. Idea of stalls exclusive to guilds is not good either because that disables all the players who do not want to be part of the guild to sell goods. As someone above mentioned- if anyone would be able to sell goods no one would buy because no one wants to check the inventory of every single player out there. If items are going to be randomized a la Diablo, again, people will tell you to buzz off unless you have the best versions possible of only specific items. I know how these things work, I've been playing Diablo 2 for 10 years now and economy practically died, people only look for the most perfect versions of items, and I often, upon finding -what used to be an epic item, leave it on the floor because it has 599 defense instead of 600- because I know it won't be sold or traded. And I'm not saying "it won't be sold well". It won't be sold at all.

Personally I'd like to si simple shops run by NPCs that unlock stuff as you level and solve quests. That way everyone would be able to buy the same stuff and trading would be secondary mean of getting stuff.

Umm what? Why shouldn't a guild be able to set up its own stall? I don't know why it would be exclusive though, they'd just be selling to themselves. NPC vendors is a very boring idea. All of the problems the previous poster mentioned will happen no matter what. People always want the best, but if you don't have a lot of money at the time you might settle for.the slightly inferior item at a lower price. Here's what is funny about this topic and others. People.want this game to be different, supposedly, but in reality they are too scared to really follow through and let the devs try something different.

Worth noting is that it's nearly impossible to fully eradicate gold farmers in a standard MMO environment. Also, MMOs are *very* easily ruined by botting. I'm frankly unfamiliar with a MMO which hasn't been ruined by bots. And there are many examples that once the first dupe bug is discovered it's very much over, and the economy can never be fully restored afterwards.

Regards,
Eno Hlaalu

wow auction house is the best thing they got and should be copied with few improvements

The last comment here I think is highly relevant, should any ZeniOnline folks be reading.

City of Heros runs their economy via the acution house, and after nearly 6 years over there and being in the top 10-15% of liquid 'cash' holders on the Virtue server, I can state without reservation the auction house is the primary source of inflation in the game economy. The real problem in CoX is that everyone uses the same min/max approach to the various archtypes, which means the top tier enhancement sets remain astronomically high. Heck, there is a lvl 35 enhancment set in CoX that makes you as much as the lvl 50 very rare enhancements do, thanks to that set's desirability in terms of min/max. Whereas 95% of enhancement options/recipes in the game are otherwise worthless.

Before you think otherwise, I enjoy playing the market, at least to a limited extent. I'm not a full-timer by any means. But the auction house system is highly vulnerable to inflation, plain and simple.