Economy Problems?!

So what's all this crap about a wrecked economy in Wynncraft?

I possess a BA in Economics thus, it would be best if you actually put some thought and logic into your explanation rather than depend on subjective emotional explanations.

-DavicusPrime

 

It's being said mostly because prices for items increased tenfold for most items following the gavel update due to a large amount of money entering the economy and the addition of mythics, which pretty much split the playerbase into two parts: those rich enough for a mythic and those who aren't

 

Well most arguments as to why this economy is "broken" is that there is a shit ton of emeralds circulating This causes prices of mythics to be extremely high so half of the community is super rich and the other aren't.

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This

 

As others have previously mentioned, there is an enormous disparity between the rich and poor, and it all boils down to luck with items and mythics. But, I also want to touch up on the topic of inflation in Wynncraft. It's undeniable that quests have caused the total amount of emeralds in the server to rise, leading to higher prices. This makes it much more difficult for newer players to purchase items, since the quests at their level do not provide sufficient enough funds. On the other hand, more experienced players with multiple classes would be able to acquire these items easily. There is also no major money sink in Wynn, which further accelerates inflation and imbalance.

Now, if we were to compare the Wynn economy to reality, the quest rewards could be interpreted as wage rates. But the rewards have gone down instead of rising, partly due to the le being considered too much and leveling becoming easier. In my opinion, this was a mistake. Unless players strike gold with a mythic or exceptional item, the casual player will not be able to afford any coveted mythics or maxed items, even at level 100 due to the limited le they can naturally acquire.

Before Gavel, builds were much more accessible to everyone since there was only 1 endgame. ID's didn't differentiate the price as much, as item prices were practically set in stone. Collectibles were worth stacks, but they didn't serve any physical function other than aesthetics. Nowadays, mythics, powders, and maxed out legendary ID's can dramatically change builds and play styles, along with costing a hefty amount. Due to this, Wynn has certainly has grown into a more standard rpg with a 1% elite. The economy hasn't gone down the drain, it's just changed drastically for the 99%, from a more level demographic to a staircase one.

 

Yay I gave you your 1000 like

 

From what I've gathered, what concerns most people about the economy is hyperinflation (Before Gavel, having a Stack meant you were very rich, now, having a stack is pretty average). There's also the massive gap between low and high-class players (As @Blizzardgale said). Another factor most people point fingers at are Mythics and how much they can affect the economy whether it be good or bad in such short frequent swoops, Mythics also have a big part in the aforementioned rich and poor gap. Personally, I think people are a little bit overactive over the economy's health at times, the trade market in general can be a pretty chaotic part of the community. I think that's all I got concerning the economy.

 

Just as @Blizzardgale, @Slimeonatree57 and @Cruuk-huud said there is a gap between rich and poor and its incredibly hard t0 get past that gap.
There are only two money "removers" in the game that is good (greedy) enough to make a difference: The horse merchant and the Identifier. The possibility to Re-Id items is a good way to remove some of the money that is in the game, but it didn't work too well when ppl with +10 stacks went and did some Re-ID:ing.

However, the problem might not be that there are ppl with lots of money, and those with none. Instead the problem is that they players with a lot of money can spent that money and somehow they get it back at an incredible rate (several stacks in a matter of days and/or weeks). This makes it so that the people with a lot of money can buy a really expensive mythic like Stratiformis, Thrundacrack, Spring or Weathered and still be able to buy another mythic in a very short time.
That makes it so that there are not just people that are poor and have little money, it also makes it so that getting money is very hard for them, and when they spend it, its gone and it will take forever to get back up to that same amount.

I think that this server is getting further away from its goal (to have fun and explored be social) and more towards a complex economy that in theory should not be able to exist on a Minecraft server.

How would you feel if you found this amazing new server called Wynncraft and you try it out and one of the first things that happens is that you think, Ooo nice legendary spear I want to buy 1. And the answer you get from the seller is "your too poor NOOB". Is that a fun welcome to the community? NO! Its not!

Im not the server owner, Im not a part of the staff and I don't really have any power at all to change it, but Im tired of how everything can seem so "cold" and everything is about money. You no longer make a new class because you want to have fun and explore, but you make it so you can get more money. Is that how Wynncraft should be? A server full of greed and scammers that most of all want your money so they can buy ultra rare mythics that they think is so OP but actually only is one of many status symbols (Just like white horses).

I know this turned in to a rant but Im so angry at how the server is turning out. And I know, "If you don't like it, then leave it since your not the one who decides how its going to be" well yes, but that is also the worst excuse someone can ever say since the only reason they say it is to protect their own self-intrests. No, Im not giving up on this server, because after all I love Wynncraft and Im not going to let it become the most money hungry fake economy in history that easy ;)

 

So this is what I'm hearing...

My Analysis...

Any change in cash supply will set off a chain reaction of corrections in pricing (cash supply goes up = inflation, cash supply goes down = deflation). That's Econ 101 - Supply and Demand stuff. Nothing surprising there.

Folks who invest more time playing the game tend to amass more wealth (either in terms of Emeralds, rarer items and/or both) than casual players like me. Nothing surprising there either.

The above points to a healthy capitalist economy created and maintained by the natural interaction of the players.

Changes in the overall quantity in liquid assets = prices adjusting accordingly.

No one is regulating the prices being asked/offered. It's entirely driven by individual negotiation. This makes free market types like me get all warm and fuzzy.

There is a natural disparity in wealth depending on how much effort (in this case, time) a player has or is able to devote to gathering it. That's a feature, not a defect, of capitalism and a free market. More effort = more personal gain.

Reality: The new player is not going to have as much wealth as someone who's played for months or years. Does anyone expect a teenager newly entering the economy to have the same buying power of their parents who have had a couple decades more time to get to where they are? The teen might think they should, but that's fantasy. Wynncraft is a fantasy world, but the economy is a hell of a lot more realistic than the hypothetical teenager above.

It is unfair for casual gamers (including myself) to demand to have the same amount of wealth as those who have put in the hours to create a higher standard for themselves. Any attempt to clamp down on this will actually drive these more dedicated players and all their acquired wealth right out of Wynncraft (deleted/inactive accounts don't redistribute the value they contained).

If there is no increased reward for increased activity, you will actively discourage activity. This is why any talk of the 1% vs the 99% tends to piss off folks in an open economy. Luck and inheritance exist, but most folks in a free, capitalist economy got where they are by taking risks with their assets and working their asses off over time. They make their own "luck" as they like to say.

In Wynncraft terms, the more loot chests, quest rewards and mob drops you participate in, the more luck at finding the nicer toys you will have and the more emeralds you will inevitably collect.

My Experience...

In my case, the market has had little bearing... I've bought a couple bows after my habit of accidental hopper feeding. But trying to set up trade meets is time consuming and when I've only got an hour or two on a good day to play, that makes the opportunity cost to even participate in the market too high for me.
With such a highly restricted amount of storage space and limited time, everything I don't see an immediate need for is getting sold to an item buyer ASAP or tossed on the ground to make room for something better and actively destroying the discarded item's value once it despawns. I suspect that's pretty common for us casual types. This makes me suspect that the precieved "economic" problems are less influencial to the player base than us forum dwellers think they are.

-DavicusPrime

 

I think you make some very good points, and I also think you've made the perfect reason on why I think people are a little overactive with the economy's health as I've already mentioned.

When the economy is structured like this, it's inevitable that there's going to be a "1%" where the very dedicated and lucky players thrive while more casual players will have no choice but to take the high road. I could see them attempting to improve the economy by introducing powerful dungeon items in the upcoming corrupted dungeon being comparable to Mythics, so players that don't have the latter but do have the former will be able to compete with the high ground, even casual gamers will be able to buy these dungeon items, though at a slower pace. But at it's core, Wynncraft will still have a 1% no matter what.

 

At its core the wynncraft economy is just fine: a free market economy driven by players aside from balance changes and item restrictions. However, the recent duping incedents can, if not checked, lead to an extreme devaluation of wynncraft's most expensive items (mythics, horses, legendaries, etc depending on the scope of items affected) or even on currency itself if it is possible to dupe le. While nobody can get away with selling 64 mythics at once, the fact remains that duped mythics will be quietly sold and traded in much higher volume than before. Unless the wynn team has a way of tracking and controlling the duped items, the value of said items and the wealth of those currently holding legitimate copies will decrease significantly. If it turns out that the dupe works on le too, then the wynn economy is going to face rapid hyperinflation until the cheat is brought under control or a new master currency (i.e. virtual, server tracked money) is put into place. Depending on how powerful the duping bug is, it has the potential to completely redistribute the wealth from those rich in le and valuable items. Of course, a better but not ideal solution would be to rollback the server to a state before mass duping started after a fix is found, if there is indeed no way to track duped items. No matter what, it's a tough situation and has the potential to be a whole lot worse.

As DacicusPrime observed, though, casual players who treat the game more as a rpg than a mmo or who just aren't able to posess high end items in the first place won't be effected much. These players just don't participate in the market enough for changes in player valuation of endgame items and money to make much of a difference in their own gameplay.

 

Additional thoughts and stealth bump...

The cost of mythics has come up often and has been a big part of the whole "duping" scandal of last week...

If folks are pricing these things so high... Who is buying them? If I find a very nice mythic "Super Mega Ectoplasmic Gobsmacker Hyper Dagger" (or SMEG-HD) announce that I'll sell it for a dozen stacks of LE, and no one out there is willing and/or able to pay that price, then it might as well be worth nothing.

These prices wouldn't exist if there wasn't someone out there willing and able to pay it. However, there is always a risk in keeping your prices too high. There is always a chance someone else will find another SMEG-HD who just wants to cash-out now and under cuts Mr/Mrs Dozen Stacks by selling it for just 3 stacks of LE.

Regarding the duping epidemic: dumping more supply and cash into the system would cause another cascade of corrections. But what's worse, scrambles the incentive structure of the game.

I hope the cure is not more painful than the disease. A massive revision of the code to implement unique serial #'s to all items as they generate sounds like a fairly large undertaking. How that may effect game play and existing players' inventories may yet be unknown.

-DavicusPrime

 

Or you save up for two months and sell every tradable item you have until you can afford one. Then you're broke again.

 

So much like real life! Bask in the glow of this new wisdom. Now, imagine doing all that and they release an even better item the next day for the same price you just paid on the now obsolete doorstop in your hand. This is why more and more folks are getting diagnosed with mental disorders, just like me!

WOOOOOO!!!!!! YEAH!

-DavicusPrime