DUST Search - AUR Items and The New Eden Economy

Garrett Blacknova wrote:

The only problem with AUR items is that at present, some are directly superior to any ISK version of the same item.

Until that imbalance is fixed, there will always be problems with AUR items.

When it's fixed, there will be no problems.

You need to grind to earn ISK, and you need to grind to earn SP that you apply to your skills so you can use the ISK items. If you don't want to grind, and have real money to spare, you can spend some of that real money to get items without needing to grind as much for ISK and/or SP. The items shouldn't have better fitting stats, or better stats for anything else.

At the moment, there's a valid argument that a lower-tier player using high-tier AUR gear won't have the fitting skills trained to allow them to create those top-tier fits unless you lower the PG/CPU costs on AUR items, but even that could be circumvented by making fitting skills not apply to AUR items. Then the AUR items can have their fitting stats lined up with maxed fitting skills on the ISK variant, but they don't get better when you train up into those fitting skills, which in turn means they aren't a pay-to-win way to free up more PG/CPU than any ISK-only build can ever manage.

And no, saying "they won't be pay-to-win if you can buy for ISK" doesn't work, because if they give a real advantage over "proper" ISK-based purchases, then the in-game economy will revolve around those P2W items instead of manufacturing.


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Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 477	Posted - 2013.04.21 09:20:00 - [1] - Quote Rusticuls wrote: Rubico is right on the mark. Once people can create AUR items and sell them for ISK the market should regulate itself fairly well. I think having an AUR market helps with regulation and preventing EVE corps from getting a crazy stranglehold on the Dust market and crippling the game. There's no way for players to create AUR items. I don't understand what you mean by AUR market though. Do you mean selling the AUR items on the market for ISK? The demand for AUR items is going to be substantially less than ISK items so they really won't pose a threat to manufacturing. That is assuming these new AUR items aren't going to remain in the game. However If they do remain they could become more desirable than the ISK items and that would be a very, very bad thing.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 477	Posted - 2013.04.21 12:43:00 - [2] - Quote ***I USE THE TERM "GEAR" BECAUSE A LOT OF PLAYERS ARE UNFAMILIAR WITH BLUEPRINTS* Garrett Blacknova wrote:** The only problem with AUR items is that at present, some are directly superior to any ISK version of the same item. Until that imbalance is fixed, there will always be problems with AUR items. When it's fixed, there will be no problems. You need to grind to earn ISK, and you need to grind to earn SP that you apply to your skills so you can use the ISK items. If you don't want to grind, and have real money to spare, you can spend some of that real money to get items without needing to grind as much for ISK and/or SP. The items shouldn't have better fitting stats, or better stats for anything else. At the moment, there's a valid argument that a lower-tier player using high-tier AUR gear won't have the fitting skills trained to allow them to create those top-tier fits unless you lower the PG/CPU costs on AUR items, but even that could be circumvented by making fitting skills not apply to AUR items. Then the AUR items can have their fitting stats lined up with maxed fitting skills on the ISK variant, but they don't get better when you train up into those fitting skills, which in turn means they aren't a pay-to-win way to free up more PG/CPU than any ISK-only build can ever manage. And no, saying "they won't be pay-to-win if you can buy for ISK" doesn't work, because if they give a real advantage over "proper" ISK-based purchases, then the in-game economy will revolve around those P2W items instead of manufacturing. Exactly. I don't want to start another P2W argument here but it this does relate to my overall point I'm trying to make. Yes I think these unbalanced AUR mods need to go but not for the reason as most players. The advantage they offer is not nearly as big as everyone seems to think it is. That little bit of extra damage is not the only reason you died. People have been crying about the damage mods not having a penalty endlessly. Now we find out they were never even broken so what's the excuse for getting killed? I'm just getting tired of hearing the words Pay to Win I guess because none of this stuff is exactly what I would call a "WIn Button". You get a small, but noticeable, advantage. That's it. Everyone needs to stop throwing around these words that aren't really accurate and blaming every death on everything else in the game except themselves. And that is exactly the problem. The AUR items are going to be more expensive than the ISK items obviously. So once a player trains the skills needed for the ISK item they will have no reason to buy the AUR items any more. In addition to the extra cost of the AUR gear by training the skill a player will probably get a bonus to the gear's effectiveness. This means the demand for ISK gear will always be much, much higher than AUR gear which will protect the manufacturers. T he AUR gear is going to be bought almost exclusively by new players which means prices will have to low enough they can afford it. This way players that buy AUR items to resell won't be making gamebreaking amounts of profit from them. The EVE market isn't like a markets you've seen in other games. You don't sell to a bunch of NPC vendors. You don't get any money until another player buys it from you so the price will always be low enough that new players will be willing to buy them since older, more wealthy players will have no interest in purchasing them. However this is where this I start to get worried. This gear with better performance than any ISK gear has the potential to really undermine the games internal economics. I'm going to refer to it as "AUR grade" gear because the advantage you get isn't even close to "P2W" territory. Plus "P2W" has been used incorrectly so much I don't many people even understand what it really means and just use it because everyone else does. So even though the actual advantage of the AUR grade gear is much less then everyone thinks it is you still have the problem that everyone thinks it's amazing and gives you a huge advantage. So now older, wealthier players will feel they have to use the AUR grade gear because everyone else has it. Now the demand shifts to the AUR items that will have to be seeded by the game and can't be manufactured by players. The buyer demographic moves from new players with little money to older players that can afford much higher prices. There's a chance this would lead to huge, unbalanced profits for those players that could afford to spend real money. AUR prices are not dynamic and can't adjust to changing market conditions so massive exploitation and manipulation would inevitably follow. Manufacturing would suffer greatly which would further hurt players unable to pay real money and cause the economy to destabilize even more. I know all this sound like doomsday pessimism but for those of you unfamiliar with New Eden let me promise you that if something can broken or abused it will be exploited by as many people as possible as quickly as possible to the greatest extent possible. Tears are like water to EVE players. Just google "Hulkageddon". Keep in mind there were like 5 of those things over the course of several years and it only fell apart because the player that ran it acted a fool on the forums and got banned. Which was during a massive "protest" in which a large chunk of the players spent days shooting the NPC stations trying to actually blow up EVE Online. That's my real concern about this new direction CCP may or may not be heading. I hope it has all been a mistake though. What do you guys think?
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 481	Posted - 2013.04.21 20:41:00 - [3] - Quote The price of AUR items will be constant so I don't see how manufacturing them can work. What if the cost of materials gets too high for anyone to want to mess with it? Not to mention you can't sell anything for AUR so how do you get paid? Iron Wolf Saber wrote: PC will allow AUR items to drop provided they're not blueprints. DId you mean so long as they are not BPO's? Or are you talking about something else?
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 483	Posted - 2013.04.21 22:02:00 - [4] - Quote And if AUR items are produced by players what if there isn't enough supply to meet demand? Would that mean players paying real money can't buy the gear? Or what about if demand outpaces supply? Do you pay the manufacturer before the sale or after? If it's before that just becomes a free money fountain.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 484	Posted - 2013.04.22 12:51:00 - [5] - Quote Rusticuls wrote: Maken Tosch wrote: But by being paid by an NPC corp for the minerals, ISK is consequently pumped into the economy and that can cause problems. If you have too much ISK in the economy, the value of the currency lowers and items become more expensive. If you have too little ISK in the economy, the value of the currency increases while the selling price of the items decreases. You have to find a perfect balance between the two. This is where player-to-player transactions help out by keeping the currency circulating as long as possible before it is destroyed while also mitigating new ISK from being generated out of nowhere. But If CCP has a market of items that they sell for ISK (without mining) aren't they just destroying that ISK? It's not like CCP is buying up gear and hoarding it. CCP can help regulate market forces by selling gear themselves and keep ISK quantities at sustainable levels preventing inflation, right? The Corp production market can then complete with CCP by producing goods (hopefully similar gear but varied in color/design/etc) and trying to sell them for lower than what CCP offers. The Secondary Market can be used for players getting some value out of gear they dont want or need and helps prevent Corps/CCP from selling crummy gear at inflated prices. You can't do this either. Then when EVE players buy the DUST gear from CCP that ISK will be destroyed and it would screw up EVE. It's a free market so "the State" can't be buying and selling goods and setting prices. CCP doesn't manufacture these items so they don't consume any resources and then the whole thing falls apart. The balance between the value of goods and the value of currency becomes impossible to control. I understand that EVE doesn't have true scarcity in that the amount of minerals is infinite but the rate at which they can be gathered is finite so it works.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 485	Posted - 2013.04.23 10:16:00 - [6] - Quote The Robot Devil wrote: What about a simple crafting system. A NPC corp wants to sell an aur item, let's say a complex damage mod, to produce an aur mod the corp would have to buy a player made complex mod and a CPU upgrade mod using monies from taxes. These two items would be bought at the going rate combined and then you have an aur mod. There would be minerals needed from miners, production from manufacturing, tax money spent, player made items destroyed and aur items created. The RL money would pay for the production of the product and everything else would be in game. This could also add micro transactions to the game. Get the modules needed to make an aur item, pay 50 aur and the aur item is yours. ISk could be used to do the "upgrade" and then it would not be p2w. I would like to see a type of crafting/upgrade system for lower tier gear on the PSVITA. Spend some SP on a crafting skill and then buy the gear you want to upgrade. The VITA could have some mini games that upgrades an item if you meet the criteria and destroys them if you fail. Example: I want to upgrade a standard AR to an advanced AR. At level one gunsmithing I would get one advanced AR from a run of 10 if I completed the task. Level three would produce three advanced and level five would produce 5. Failure would destroy all 10. The NPC corp can't buy the materials. There is no way that can work because the prices fluctuate constantly. In the space of an hour prices can plummet are skyrocket. An NPC corp can't adjust their prices so it just won't work.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 486	Posted - 2013.04.23 17:18:00 - [7] - Quote The Robot Devil wrote: Go the other route and have just have the merc supply the items and then pay aur to upgrade them. The price of materials will still fluctuate. You can't have a dynamic price for materials and a static price for the final product.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 488	Posted - 2013.04.23 19:02:00 - [8] - Quote The Robot Devil wrote: The static price would only be in aur. The merc buys the damage mod and CPU upgrade and then pays an aur fee to produce the final product. The prices of the modules could change and the aur service charge per item produced would stay the same. The merc then owns the module and can sell it if they want to for ISK. Still won't work. Because the cost of the basic materials will change along with the ISK value of the created AUR item but the AUR cost remains the same then you could have some 30 AUR items that sell for 100,000 ISK and some 30 AUR items that sell for 500,000 ISK. Or 70 AUR items that sell for 2,000 ISK. You'd constantly have massive surpluses and shortages.
Altina McAlterson Not Guilty EoN. 488	Posted - 2013.04.23 19:42:00 - [9] - Quote Maken Tosch wrote: Altina McAlterson wrote: The Robot Devil wrote: The static price would only be in aur. The merc buys the damage mod and CPU upgrade and then pays an aur fee to produce the final product. The prices of the modules could change and the aur service charge per item produced would stay the same. The merc then owns the module and can sell it if they want to for ISK. Still won't work. Because the cost of the basic materials will change along with the ISK value of the created AUR item but the AUR cost remains the same then you could have some 30 AUR items that sell for 100,000 ISK and some 30 AUR items that sell for 500,000 ISK. Or 70 AUR items that sell for 2,000 ISK. You'd constantly have massive surpluses and shortages. Eve Online's PLEX is already like that. You pay $15 for a PLEX that you can buy directly from CCP and sell it for ISK on the market. The ISK price will depend on the available supply of PLEX in the secondary player market. AUR is after all representing real-world currency. So far, the PLEX system has been successful. You can even buy Fanfest tickets with it, donate it for causes, or pay your subscription with it. This way, players will be given two options that in no way undercut the miners or manufacturers. This means the core of the market is safe and benefits everyone including CCP. Buying it for a fixed amount of real money and selling for a variable amount of ISK isn't the issue. The problem is when you buy it for a set amount of AUR plus a variable amount of ISK and then try to sell it. Whereas PLEX's value is based solely on the demand for PLEX in this new scenario the cost in ISK of the AUR item will be based not on the demand for that item but on the cost of the materials. This could lead to a high demand item becoming too expensive because the price of the materials goes up.