DUST Search - Here's an idea RE: the current officer weapon 'situation'...

Byron Triefletcher wrote:

Shaun Iwairo wrote:

So CCP will have to keep updating their buyback price to remain competitive? This is a pretty dangerous path to go down as it adds another force to the market that is guaranteed to move it up. For every person buying officer gear there's a person selling it and generating ISK off it. ISK is already meaningless to enough players, let's not add to that.

Shaun, you're supporting my argument. Market prices for officer gear SHOULD go up. They're currently undervalued due to oversaturation. They WILL go up, due to the recent removal of a supply source. This isn't dangerous - it's both inevitable and good. And as I mentioned in my last post, the price will stabilize at the natural point where the market is unwilling to follow CCP upward in price. Did you read that post?

As for ISK - yes, it's less valuable to the ISK wealthy than to the ISK poor. This is the immutable nature of wealth. A dollar is more valuable to he that has only one than to he that has one million. As a player that's closer to the ISK floor than the ceiling, let me tell you - if officer weapon prices go up, I'll be happy. The drops I get from salvage will sell for more, and I'll be able to maybe start dipping my toes into the proto market, which right now is uncomfortably out of my price range for sustainable use. Any ISK inflation/saturation is unfortunate if not properly sunk (a big part of any sustainable MMO's economics has to do with controlling currency spigots and drains as a necessary ingredient to the artificiality of spontaneous asset generation), but in one sense it's ALREADY BEEN DONE through the proliferation of officer weapon generation, and I'm just speaking about converting from one inflation to the other, which is a desirable goal, and in another sense it's at least a progressive inflation, in that it harms the poor less than it harms the wealthy.


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Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 244	Posted - 2015.10.21 22:14:00 - [1] - Quote If CCP offered more ISK as a buyer than the current market does, the market would adjust to remain competitive. The best idea I've heard for officer weapon/suit removal came from Jadek yesterday: https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=219237&find=unread Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 246	Posted - 2015.10.21 22:48:00 - [2] - Quote So CCP will have to keep updating their buyback price to remain competitive? This is a pretty dangerous path to go down as it adds another force to the market that is guaranteed to move it up. For every person buying officer gear there's a person selling it and generating ISK off it. ISK is already meaningless to enough players, let's not add to that. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 247	Posted - 2015.10.21 23:21:00 - [3] - Quote Byron Triefletcher wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: So CCP will have to keep updating their buyback price to remain competitive? This is a pretty dangerous path to go down as it adds another force to the market that is guaranteed to move it up. For every person buying officer gear there's a person selling it and generating ISK off it. ISK is already meaningless to enough players, let's not add to that. Shaun, you're supporting my argument. Market prices for officer gear SHOULD go up. They're currently undervalued due to oversaturation. They WILL go up, due to the recent removal of a supply source. This isn't dangerous - it's both inevitable and good. And as I mentioned in my last post, the price will stabilize at the natural point where the market is unwilling to follow CCP upward in price. Did you read that post? As for ISK - yes, it's less valuable to the ISK wealthy than to the ISK poor. This is the immutable nature of wealth. A dollar is more valuable to he that has only one than to he that has one million. As a player that's closer to the ISK floor than the ceiling, let me tell you - if officer weapon prices go up, I'll be happy. The drops I get from salvage will sell for more, and I'll be able to maybe start dipping my toes into the proto market, which right now is uncomfortably out of my price range for sustainable use. Any ISK inflation/saturation is unfortunate if not properly sunk (a big part of any sustainable MMO's economics has to do with controlling currency spigots and drains as a necessary ingredient to the artificiality of spontaneous asset generation), but in one sense it's ALREADY BEEN DONE through the proliferation of officer weapon generation, and I'm just speaking about converting from one inflation to the other, which is a desirable goal, and in another sense it's at least a progressive inflation, in that it harms the poor less than it harms the wealthy. Gosh darn it I thought this was going to be a good discussion. We've already devolved to 'hurr durr can you even read?' Yes. I read that you want the prices to go up. I don't think this is good for 2 reasons: 1. ISK is no longer an effective limiting factor. Too many people have gotten too rich off of too many broken mechanics. At the moment we don't have anything that really tests how much these people are willing to spend to get an advantage. Supply of officer weapons is far out-pacing demand and they're still selling at 200/300/500k a pop. So, 2. because we don't know how far the buyers are willing to go, there is a very real risk that this will just add yet another broken mechanic that puts far too much ISK into the hands of more established of players. And this is not just ISK changing hands either, it's coming direct from CCP so it's another ISK faucet. ISK faucets should *NEVER* be pegged to the player market. I agree that having CCP buy the weapons back would technically pull them out of circulation, but the knock on effects of CCP having to compete with the player market would be disastrous. This is why Jadeks idea is so good, it pulls them out of circulation but it does it responsibly. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 247	Posted - 2015.10.21 23:34:00 - [4] - Quote Summa Militum wrote: maybe deadcatz wrote: What if newbros have a higher drop rate of gear till they reach certain skill point levels and loyalty ranks then it drops sharply. Then they could get isk off of it. OR. make it so selling officer gear to CCP for new bros simply worth more and for vets less. Bam isk for newbs. Or CCP could just increase ISK payouts for playing matches and introduce an ISK payout for FW matches on top of the LP payout. Yep, you and I have said it before but with pub payouts sitting at ~250K there's really no way for new players to progress to consistently running proto. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 254	Posted - 2015.10.22 01:30:00 - [5] - Quote Come on, it's not really a good discussion until some mud's been slung, right? Don't worry, it washes off. OK OK you're kinda right on that one. We have a couple of pretty big sticking points that I'll never agree with. - In my opinion you're underestimating the power of hats. When you offer exclusive visual customization that lets players show off how elite they are they usually become some of the most popular items in the game. - The officer item market is demonstrably over-supplied, so much so that CCP have literally just taken steps to pull it back. This means we haven't come close to testing the upper limits of what players are willing to pay, we've only seen what they can get away with paying in an over-supplied market. Think of it like the crude oil market. When supply is high prices can be pretty low, it doesn't mean there's no competition from buyers it just means there's plenty of people to sell the buyers what they want. But when supplies are short we see exactly how much people are willing to pay. We havn't had an officer item crisis in Dust yet, but it's coming. How high the prices go is anyones guess. - You've got an understanding of an ISK faucet but I don't think you've realized the implications of adding another one that could so easily get out of control. When someone gets an officer weapon and sells it to another player, the ISK that the buyer gave them had to come from somewhere. ISK is not being generated in the player trading market, it's only being passed around. This is a very important distinction. What you're proposing is an ISK faucet from CCP that is pegged to the player market. Yes they can control how much above the market they pay, but they have NO CONTROL WHATSOEVER over the base price. They will influence the base price in an upward fashion, which is bad enough in the first place, but they will also never be able to control how high it goes. Thus they will never be in control of how much ISK they add into the economy. - It is absolutely relevant whether you give someone an item or a chunk of ISK when that chunk of ISK is coming from thin air. Although the item is coming from thin air as well, it doesn't add anything to the pool of ISK that is available to the players. There is a reason that all NPC buy orders for useful items are fixed and always end up being lower than the player market. I think the crux of it is that we've both identified inflation as a problem caused by this system, but we don't agree on how severe that inflation will get. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 264	Posted - 2015.10.22 03:11:00 - [6] - Quote Byron Triefletcher wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: I think the crux of it is that we've both identified inflation as a problem caused by this system, but we don't agree on how severe that inflation will get. Nail on the head with your last statement. How bad will ISKflation be? We can't peg it with a monetary value yet (because we don't know the ISK<->weapon value relationship as it stabilizes in context of the recent supply change), but we CAN supply it with a DEFINITE and CONTROLLABLE value: it is the percentage that CCP offers over market. 5% over market? For every sale, you've created 5% inflation (relative to that purchase price, not the market as a whole!). I can't go on because this is getting tedious. There is a HUGE difference between CCP paying for something with ISK created from thin air and a player paying for something with ISK that already existed. Imagine the whole economy existed of 2 people. Person 1 has a weapon and 0 ISK, person 2 has 100 ISK and no weapon. Person 1 sells the weapon to person 2 for 100 ISK. Although the weapon has changed hands, there is still only 100 ISK in the economy. Person 2 can go out and get that weapon blown up or whatever, still only 100 ISK in the economy. Now add a third person, CCP. Person 1 still has a weapon, person 2 still has 100 ISK. Person 1 wants to sell the weapon to person 2, but CCP steps in and says 'I'll buy it off you for 105 ISK with this money that never existed in the economy before.' The weapon is gone, but that is inconsequential because there is now 205 ISK in the economy where there used to only be 100. It is not as simple as 'If CCP pays 5% extra that converts to 5% inflation' BECAUSE THEY'RE PAYING FOR IT WITH ISK THAT NEVER EXISTED Can someone PLEASE help me out here? Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 265	Posted - 2015.10.22 03:20:00 - [7] - Quote Adding items to the game is not the same as adding currency Every 'buyback' of anything ever was paid for with currency that already existed It's fine for CCP to add currency into the economy through match earnings and NPC buy orders because they have a very carefully balanced system of taking that currency back out through NPC sell orders 100 units of currency + a weapon that is valued at 100 units of currency does not equal 200 units of currency. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 265	Posted - 2015.10.22 03:38:00 - [8] - Quote Byron Triefletcher wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: Adding items to the game is not the same as adding currency Here you're just plain wrong and that's where it where our discussion must end. If there's a liquid market between items and ISK, then the two are fungible and the format is irrelevant; value is value. If you can't understand this we can't proceed. From wikipedia: Fungibility refers only to the equivalence of each unit of a commodity with other units of the same commodity. Fungibility does not relate to the exchange of one commodity for another *different* commodity. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 265	Posted - 2015.10.22 03:54:00 - [9] - Quote it doesn't even matter bryon. ccp will never add that much isk into dusts economy. you know they hire an actual economist in eve to keep a handle on the sources and sinks of isk? they're not going to listen to some random on the forums who think's its a good idea to add in a source of isk that they won't even be in control of. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 267	Posted - 2015.10.22 04:35:00 - [10] - Quote OK fair enough. Can we just try to hash out one last thing? CCP having control over the price vs not having control. We'll assume they're paying player market + 5% Day 1: The asking price for a Bons is 100K isk, CCP are required to offer 105K. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain. Day 2: I see that the asking price for a Bons is 105K, but I really want some. So I offer 106K and buy a few Day 3: Market price for a Bons is now 106K, so CCP are required to offer 111.3K ISK. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain. Day 4: I really want some more Bons, so I offer 120K ISK and buy a few. Day 5: Market price for a Bons is now 120K ISK. CCP are required to offer 126K ISK. They buy a few, but a bunch still remain. Day 5 (CCP night time): Market traders have worked out that the price is never going to go down, so a price war breaks out overnight as people scramble to buy as many as possible. By the morning, market price has reached 1M ISK. None have been removed from circulation because it's been traders buying them all up. Day 6: CCP must now offer 1.05M ISK. Did CCP, at any point, have control over how much they were offering outside of the small % on top of the market price? Something is killing new player retention.

Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 267	Posted - 2015.10.22 05:19:00 - [11] - Quote OK cool cool, you mention equilibrium but that relies on a point existing at which profits are no longer possible, but your system guarantees that CCP will ALWAYS be willing to pay 5% extra than anyone else. Because of this, anyone that owned one the day before is guaranteed profits on the next day. A savvy trader will know that if they just let their stocks trickle out day after day for the guaranteed increasingly higher price they'll have an almost infinite source of ISK. The higher the price gets the slower they can release them because CCP's new ISK will just keep on increasing. Between the forces of traders looking for a profit, and CCP guaranteeing that profit, what would stop the price rising? Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 270	Posted - 2015.10.22 06:11:00 - [12] - Quote Eh OK, I mean you say that CCP can change their % offer to add downward pressure if they need, but you don't address that for the system to work CCP always needs to offer a positive percentage above player-market price, so in turn it'll always be profitable for the players. I'm not sure guaranteed profits work so well for creating downward pressure? I mean the prices might rise less but they're still going to rise. Better to trade in something that has a guaranteed profit than something that's unknown. Also, don't you see a problem in CCP having to balance 'how much do we want these items gone?' with 'how much inflation do we want to create?' How much they want the items gone isn't a variable thing, they either want them gone or they don't. What about when the inflation gets too much? Do they just say 'oh well we tried but we're close to destroying Dusts economy so we'd better just leave the broken items in the game' Finally, never underestimate New Edens ability to manipulate a market. It happens all the time in Eve. We have no regulatory authority that prevents us from participating in unethical practices, so if there's profits to be had and the players have the capital to get it going, it's game on. The difference is that the market manipulators are usually hoping that people will be willing to pay the price that they set. I shudder to think what would happen if the knew they would be able to sell at the price they set. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 272	Posted - 2015.10.22 06:48:00 - [13] - Quote KGB Sleep wrote: All of this is WAY too much work for CCP. Whenever you want to bring a proposal to them you have to think of it in terms of work and how much you can squeeze out if it. It seems like a lot of work, CCP monitoring an arms market and injecting ISK into an already overflowing bathtub. Keep CCP focused on developing and have the buyers battle each other. Literally. Vendor Officer gear for CP and let the raiding nightmare begin. Create an incentive in the DK market that will inspire the PC community to grow and operate more frequently. The benefits: Weapons and Gear directly removed from the game via NPC trade in exchange for CP. Isk redistribution / corp participation - Corp buys arms from community to boost CP. Corp members can vendor their stuff for CP Contributions. People will do this with stuff they don't want. More action possible in Molden Heath with boosted CP gains power struggles more intense, more frequent. Not sure how to change PC in a way this could happen and be fun for ppl but they are not busy enough apparently if they are in pubs all the time. Increased frequency of PC events destroys more ISK / Officer gear in battles. Keeps people in PC and hopefully too busy to be risking nice stuff in pubs. Can be justified lorewise as a weapons procurement for retaliation vs Drifters or whatever and if they do that then they can shut the CP faucet on or off at any time. Drawbacks: Not sure if this would increase P2W scenario but i doubt ppl will spam AUR purchased keys for Officer weapons just for CP. PC situation is awful with lag and ppl don't love to do it because it is a stressful environment sometimes so idea might not take off. So idk, but it was said that we needed more angles to approach the problem. The one that has the best chance for success will require the least amount of work. +1 for something like this. The only way CCP will be able to encourage a buyback that doesn't act as an ISK faucet is through a currency more valuable than ISK. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 272	Posted - 2015.10.22 07:44:00 - [14] - Quote KGB Sleep wrote: steve0809 wrote: How about trading officer weapons for rank increase ? Or trading Officer weapons for LP (for the applicable faction of course) Good idea man. Much simpler. Destiny has a similar thing going on with faction rep. Yep and Destiny used it in a way that we also need to - getting items that were no longer appropriate/needed out of circulation! I'm a big fan of Faction items, too. Less +power and more +specialization. Something is killing new player retention.
Shaun Iwairo DUST University Ivy League 274	Posted - 2015.10.22 10:36:00 - [15] - Quote KGB Sleep wrote: Shaun Iwairo wrote: KGB Sleep wrote: steve0809 wrote: How about trading officer weapons for rank increase ? Or trading Officer weapons for LP (for the applicable faction of course) Good idea man. Much simpler. Destiny has a similar thing going on with faction rep. Yep and Destiny used it in a way that we also need to - getting items that were no longer appropriate/needed out of circulation! I'm a big fan of Faction items, too. Less +power and more +specialization. Rattati might have a problem with it though. He has said that players will not be able to trade LP faction skins because such things should be earned and I agree. If LP could be acquired from selling officer weapons then someone could potentially get those skins without ever having fought for the faction. I don't think they'll go for it Fair call. You know who doesn't care about loyalty and would totally like getting some OP weapons? PIRATES! Something is killing new player retention.