Irrational Markets and Flight Rising
Sep. 1st, 2013 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rowynLike all game economies, Flight Rising's is quirky. Some of Flight Rising's quirks make sense to me but are intriguing nonetheless.
For example, most MMO economies experience inflation, often rampant inflation, as more and more treasure chases the most desirable goods. But most of Flight Rising's player-based markets have been either fairly stable or deflationary over the month or so I have been informally watching. Silver ore has a low of around 1k and a high of around 3k*, gold ore has a low of 8k and a high of 15k, basic dragons of plentiful breeds have highs and lows from 3k to 10k depending on how hard-fought dominance is. Gened dragons and rarer breeds have become cheaper. When I first looked at imperials, the cheapest was 700k. Now, the cheapest is 350k. Cheapest pearlcatcher a few weeks ago was around 80k; now it's 40k. There's a few other miscellaneous goods that I watch that have stable price ranges.
(* Price ranges are based on "cheapest available at the time I looked". Players set the price for their goods when they offer them for sale to other players, so often there will be similar or identical goods for sale at several times the price of the cheapest.)
Dragons are a product of the passage of real-time: plentiful-breed dragons can breed once every 15 days and clutches take 5 days to hatch. Treasure is mostly a product of time spent playing the minigames, with a cap of 75k per day. There are some treasure-sinks: gene scrolls and other goods from the NPC marketplace, expanding your lair, adding nests, etc. Apparently, the treasure sinks are actually keeping up with treasure production to a degree. Demand for dragons also drops over time as lairs fill up and people have the kinds of dragons they want for their collection. Dragons consume food ( = money) and the only thing they produce is more dragons -- and that only if you've got nest space for them. So a lair stuffed with dragons is likely to cost more than it brings in. Now, many players (myself included!) are not playing to maximize revenue and want more little pictures of dragons populating our lairs regardless of monetary advantage or lack thereof. But the deflationary impact is still clear. Dragons don't die; you can choose to exalt them (which takes them out of play, contributes to the dominance struggle for your flight, and gets you a small amount of treasure) but that's the only way they leave.
Which is interesting but not inexplicable.
No, what perplexes me is the irrational pricing on swap goods.
The game doesn't have crafting as such (yet). But there's "Swipp's Swap Stand". Every two hours, Swipp offers a new site-wide trade, generally of a format "lots of X gets you one of Y". Here's a list of all his swaps..
Let's look at one of these: 200 Nightwing Bats (a food item) for 1 Runic Bat (a familiar). I think Swipp's is the only place you can get Runic Bats, and the only thing you can do with Nightwing Bats is eat them or trade them to Swipp's.
Cheapest Runic Bat on the player market right now is 28,000. Most expensive is 42,000.
So I'd expect Nightwing Bats to sell for no more than 1/200th of what you can buy a Runic Bat for, or 140-210 each. There might be some upwards pressure -- people who have 190 bats might be tempted to pay more to get the last 10 when the swap is available -- but also some downwards pressure, because it's annoying to visit Swipp's every two hours to see if he's got the right swap yet.
Actual price range for Nightwing Bats? 500-1000 each.
So the right economic ploy if I want a Runic Bat is to sell Nightwings to players and then buy a Runic from a player. (In fact, I just bought that 28k Runic Bat, even though I don't particularly want one, just so that I will never be tempted to save up Nightwings to do the swap.) And it's not that these are fictitious sell prices (ie, players hoping to get this much but there are no buyers) -- I have sold dozens of Nightwings for 450-750 each.
There's another chain that I play around with:
20 copper ore + 20 iron ore = 1 silver ore
5 silver ore = 1 gold
5 gold + 3 rusted chests = 1 gilded chest.
The first swap I don't bother with -- copper sells for 180-1000 each, which puts it far out of the range to justify making silver. Silver I will buy cheap and swap for gold, and then sell the gold. If I can get 15k for the gold (and I have several times), that makes the swap for a gilded chest about 83k (around 3k each for rusted chests). Gilded chests have been selling for 50k-80k lately, so not really worth it. Opening gilded chests seems even less worth it -- it's been something like 'one familiar, one clothing item, 6k-25k treasure, and a few random pieces of junk' for me, although perhaps there's a lottery effect where you might get something much more valuable from them.
You can also use 3 gold ore to make a platinum ore. Platinum ore sells for less than gold. I don't know if anyone ever does this swap; maybe people dig up the platinum that sells on the market instead. I really hope so.
Anyway, in other MMOs where raw materials sold for more than crafted goods, I understood that people were "skilling up" and didn't care about making money on the intervening steps -- perhaps didn't care about making money at all, even long term, just liked seeing the number rise. But the swaps are not a skill -- anyone can do them and you don't improve a stat by doing them. So it's interesting to me to see people still pursue them even when there's a monetary cost to making the swap over selling materials to players and buying the final good from players.
For example, most MMO economies experience inflation, often rampant inflation, as more and more treasure chases the most desirable goods. But most of Flight Rising's player-based markets have been either fairly stable or deflationary over the month or so I have been informally watching. Silver ore has a low of around 1k and a high of around 3k*, gold ore has a low of 8k and a high of 15k, basic dragons of plentiful breeds have highs and lows from 3k to 10k depending on how hard-fought dominance is. Gened dragons and rarer breeds have become cheaper. When I first looked at imperials, the cheapest was 700k. Now, the cheapest is 350k. Cheapest pearlcatcher a few weeks ago was around 80k; now it's 40k. There's a few other miscellaneous goods that I watch that have stable price ranges.
(* Price ranges are based on "cheapest available at the time I looked". Players set the price for their goods when they offer them for sale to other players, so often there will be similar or identical goods for sale at several times the price of the cheapest.)
Dragons are a product of the passage of real-time: plentiful-breed dragons can breed once every 15 days and clutches take 5 days to hatch. Treasure is mostly a product of time spent playing the minigames, with a cap of 75k per day. There are some treasure-sinks: gene scrolls and other goods from the NPC marketplace, expanding your lair, adding nests, etc. Apparently, the treasure sinks are actually keeping up with treasure production to a degree. Demand for dragons also drops over time as lairs fill up and people have the kinds of dragons they want for their collection. Dragons consume food ( = money) and the only thing they produce is more dragons -- and that only if you've got nest space for them. So a lair stuffed with dragons is likely to cost more than it brings in. Now, many players (myself included!) are not playing to maximize revenue and want more little pictures of dragons populating our lairs regardless of monetary advantage or lack thereof. But the deflationary impact is still clear. Dragons don't die; you can choose to exalt them (which takes them out of play, contributes to the dominance struggle for your flight, and gets you a small amount of treasure) but that's the only way they leave.
Which is interesting but not inexplicable.
No, what perplexes me is the irrational pricing on swap goods.
The game doesn't have crafting as such (yet). But there's "Swipp's Swap Stand". Every two hours, Swipp offers a new site-wide trade, generally of a format "lots of X gets you one of Y". Here's a list of all his swaps..
Let's look at one of these: 200 Nightwing Bats (a food item) for 1 Runic Bat (a familiar). I think Swipp's is the only place you can get Runic Bats, and the only thing you can do with Nightwing Bats is eat them or trade them to Swipp's.
Cheapest Runic Bat on the player market right now is 28,000. Most expensive is 42,000.
So I'd expect Nightwing Bats to sell for no more than 1/200th of what you can buy a Runic Bat for, or 140-210 each. There might be some upwards pressure -- people who have 190 bats might be tempted to pay more to get the last 10 when the swap is available -- but also some downwards pressure, because it's annoying to visit Swipp's every two hours to see if he's got the right swap yet.
Actual price range for Nightwing Bats? 500-1000 each.
So the right economic ploy if I want a Runic Bat is to sell Nightwings to players and then buy a Runic from a player. (In fact, I just bought that 28k Runic Bat, even though I don't particularly want one, just so that I will never be tempted to save up Nightwings to do the swap.) And it's not that these are fictitious sell prices (ie, players hoping to get this much but there are no buyers) -- I have sold dozens of Nightwings for 450-750 each.
There's another chain that I play around with:
20 copper ore + 20 iron ore = 1 silver ore
5 silver ore = 1 gold
5 gold + 3 rusted chests = 1 gilded chest.
The first swap I don't bother with -- copper sells for 180-1000 each, which puts it far out of the range to justify making silver. Silver I will buy cheap and swap for gold, and then sell the gold. If I can get 15k for the gold (and I have several times), that makes the swap for a gilded chest about 83k (around 3k each for rusted chests). Gilded chests have been selling for 50k-80k lately, so not really worth it. Opening gilded chests seems even less worth it -- it's been something like 'one familiar, one clothing item, 6k-25k treasure, and a few random pieces of junk' for me, although perhaps there's a lottery effect where you might get something much more valuable from them.
You can also use 3 gold ore to make a platinum ore. Platinum ore sells for less than gold. I don't know if anyone ever does this swap; maybe people dig up the platinum that sells on the market instead. I really hope so.
Anyway, in other MMOs where raw materials sold for more than crafted goods, I understood that people were "skilling up" and didn't care about making money on the intervening steps -- perhaps didn't care about making money at all, even long term, just liked seeing the number rise. But the swaps are not a skill -- anyone can do them and you don't improve a stat by doing them. So it's interesting to me to see people still pursue them even when there's a monetary cost to making the swap over selling materials to players and buying the final good from players.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 05:46 pm (UTC)There is a lot of complaining about the economy, and about there being way too many dragons, and that the game needs more sinks to get dragons and/or money out of the system. I don't see a problem with things costing less and less, except that the marketplace items will take longer to buy. *shrug* I'd rather have more dragons than make more money! The only reason to have money is to buy dragons!
It's weird, because usually I like making money as part of a game mechanic. While it's satisfying in FR, I find I far more enjoying breeding just to see what comes out of the random generator. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 05:54 pm (UTC)And in economic sense, if I'm going to keep breeding my progenitor I ought to gene her, but I've previewed every primary gene option on her and ... I don't like any of them as well as basic. I may do her wings with shimmer or something someday, but unless I turn her into a skydancer and like the primary genes better on that or something, she's staying basic.
I like the deflationary pressure way better than inflationary. n_n
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 05:56 pm (UTC)I think the starters are often very pretty! And wish people loved them as much as they loved the fancier ones (I don't understand the Wildclaw phenomenon, for instance; I think they're neat, but I don't find them any neater than the Guardians). I like that they've got dragons for every taste. And I like that the deflationary pressure makes people more prone to generosity: I see a lot of free giveaways, raffles, etc.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:07 pm (UTC)I think my favorites by looks goes like this:
Guardian (female)
Fae (either)
Imperial (male)
Tundra (male)
Skydancer (male)
Mirror (either)
Pearlcatcher (either)
Wildclaw (either)
Ridgeback (female)
Spiral (female)
Snapper (either)
I will probably get the last three eventually and a Skydancer ... soonish. But I've been buying genes for my current dragons instead, even though economically it makes more sense to buy new dragons than scrolls. But I like my dragons! They have history! They are from my clutches, or my friends' (for the most part) and I want them to be shiny. So what if it costs several times as much this way? :D
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:09 pm (UTC)I think what I like about the Wildclaws is that they "dress up" nicely. The other dragons feel less anthropomorphic, so clothing them can be strange. The Wildclaws look like people, sort of; when people dress them up they always look really snappy/cool. :)
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:18 pm (UTC)And now I want to dress up my wildclaw! Hee.
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Date: 2013-09-01 07:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 05:59 pm (UTC)I did get a Fallout Streak from Swipp yesterday- happened to have the bloodscale shoulders and the feathers, and am not yet to the Harpy's Roost where the Fallout Streaks drop. I should check prices on the Bloodscale shoulders against the price of the Fallout Streak, but for me Swipp is more about the fun of being patient and that "Yay!" feeling I get when I have the materials available for a swap.
As for golden chests, I do swap for them because there's a familiar I'm looking for that I've never seen in the marketplace or in the auction house. I'm hoping it comes from the chests.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:34 pm (UTC)Good luck. :)
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Date: 2013-09-01 06:37 pm (UTC)And yeah, after having four white ferrets, I'm really attached to white weaselbeasts. :D
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Date: 2013-09-15 10:03 am (UTC)Greedy Crim asking for items users cannot obtain ;P
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Date: 2013-09-01 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 06:25 pm (UTC)I'd expect Runic Bats drop in the Coliseum - they show up as opponents in the Forgotten Cave. I'm getting the impression you don't play the Coliseum much? It's where most of my money comes from, and you didn't mention it.
I like dragons costing less and less. I hope I can snag an Imperial in my colour range before the game opens to new players again, because I expect dragon prices to rise again once that happens.
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Date: 2013-09-01 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:57 pm (UTC)I haven't done much selling of the drops I've gotten; it'd be interesting to track how much money comes from it. I was doing more than usual this week to get extra sparks. And then forgot to spend my last 25 sparks before the festival ended. XD
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Date: 2013-09-01 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 05:16 am (UTC)One of the chests I know I got at Bamboo Falls from a group including Tengu, another I don't remember where, but I do remember being a bit surprised because there were no humanoids in that group.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 07:29 pm (UTC)I haven't kept track exactly, and it may well be that the Fairground is quicker to earn money, but I like getting random drops, seeing the food pile up, and besides I find that battle system relaxing. :)
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Date: 2013-09-01 08:04 pm (UTC)It would be interesting to track how much loot a 30-minute run gets and how much it sells for, though, just for the sake of data. But it makes more sense to do the things you think are fun rather than whatever's most efficient, regardless! :)
no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 06:00 pm (UTC)spreadsheet with items
(2 level 23 dragons with strength 98 - they one-shot most things in the Woodland Path with Scratch, and the few they don't, they one-shot with Eliminate.)
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Date: 2013-09-02 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 06:32 pm (UTC)Usually I switch it up more frequently, 5 minutes here, 15 minutes there.
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Date: 2013-09-01 07:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-01 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 09:58 am (UTC)Neverwinter sort of does it, although sorting in general is broken so you can't see it now. 9.9
I made some money speculating on battle item gems that were selling for more on the market than from the treasure store, and from selling some food and most of my new hatchlings, and then spent it all. x.x Stupid sexy fire skins.
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Date: 2013-09-01 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 02:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 05:02 pm (UTC)Of course it's a false dichotomy; as you observe, they could have simply sold off all their nightwings and purchased the runic bat directly.
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Date: 2013-09-02 06:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-02 06:15 pm (UTC)I assume people get some satisfaction from doing the trade themselves, yes.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 04:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 03:46 pm (UTC)However, there is no limit to item hoarding, which is why items generally hoarded as assets are where inflation can be witnessed. Booleans were 10k gems around July 2013. They're now around 350k gems. Treasure-side that makes then even more, as the stated money exchange ratio (which is somewhat higher than the true buying power of gems) was about 1:90 then and about 1:340 now.
It's true that swapped goods often tend to be more expensive than the thing they're swapped for -- I believe this is due to opportunity cost: someone with most of the items on hand needs just a few to catch the Swipp's Swap before it goes away, so they shell out. You also see this during festivals: holiday currency sells for more than any given holiday item after conversion! I believe this last phenomenon is at least partly owing to people not *checking* the auction house for those holiday items. Alternatively, it is because those people find cheaper sources to buy holiday currency from (as you can witness in the Item Sales section of the forum).