[NEW MILLETIANS] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.
If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the
Nexon Forums Code of Conduct. You have to register before you can post, so you can log in or create a forum name above to proceed. Thank you for your visit!
How to Solve Inflation, But Not Really
Comments
There's plenty of things on the market; the issue is that the rare things people want aren't on the market, which makes sense... because it's rare. The common things people may want are also not on the market, because they have no profit incentive. People simply don't pay much for Broken Ring Frames.
The problem here is that people are not taking the time to weigh profit-loss. The dopamine-influenced desire for receiving the reward now rather than later affects their judgment. People want to see the gold bags fill, not take the patient route of grinding for a ruptured black metal which obviously would be a much higher payoff.
This is correct, but that's not because of anything you said above. It is because people do not supply. You suggest it is because they cannot supply. They can; they choose not to.
I agree.
Also agreed.
Yet again, agreed.
To YellowBin:
No such obviously ridiculous outlook on markets would be held by me and I am sure you cannot find a statement nor quote that remotely infers this.
You are conflating some things and misrepresenting the entire point. The point is that there are two forces in a market: Supply and Demand; one force is much more dominant in our current market. To fix this problem, the lesser force must be also inflated, or the stronger force must be culled. That's it. That is all I've been saying this entire time. It doesn't matter if someone is both a supplier and demander. The overall net power of two market forces are imbalanced.
As do I.
... Yes, you are suggesting that the change be manifest as the authority taking control of an item's value and "defining" it. Semantics. Someone has to define the value and you're clearly suggesting that it no longer be the players in favor of having it be the Devs.
Direct quote: "In my opinion Mabinogi has too many undefined value for their items. ... If there was an option to either grind for them or buy them from an npc with gold, or a special currency that is guaranteed for spamming baltanes, then the price of ancient golden crystals would be defined and cannot be affected by inflation."
But, they cannot define whether we find it valuable, regardless of how commonly it drops. You are asking them to define that part and also define the supply. If you assign an item to an NPC store at a set price, you have now defined the value and thus have defined the demand. That is a violation of a sacred pact of markets no matter how you word it. This is why they assign resell value to items (like Infernal Blade Fragments) and not purchase value. The Devs are aware in themselves that what you're requesting is micromanaged, authority-centered marketing. They don't have the ability to do that on basis of not being gods and if they did, still shouldn't on basis of player freedom.
Because a large majority of those enchants and items have long since lost any real value due to even earlier access via Raid drop pool reworks. Notice how they haven't "equalized" access to enchants like "Resistance," "Meteoroid," and "Genius."
And when they did, the values of all of it promptly dropped off of a cliff. No "wealth" was "circulated." An item previously worth 100m isn't going to magically rise back to 100m after you flood the market with the item (if it's not a highly needed consumable like Divine Minerals). The only thing that changed was the loss of interest in the items by previous suppliers who pulled away from selling the items as they lost value. I notice you didn't list Briogh in that post. Briogh is clear example of the opposite of what you're saying as well as many other materials flooded into the game via events. But, the focus clearly is ever only on what people -- including ourselves -- currently value at the highest, such as Kraken Hearts, Misty Red Gems, and Divine Weapon materials.
You're switching back and forth between supply and demand, as if defining a price for an item is the same thing as defining the rate of supply. These are not the same things. The developers set the rate of supply; that does not automatically determine how we should value it. We, the players, negotiate the prices. The prices are not even necessarily scaled according to rarity. They are scaled according to demand. But, you are asking the devs to also cement the price in addition to supply, which means you are asking them to cement demand.
A person can generate a conclusion off of real life events without the variables and constants being 100% accurate. Example? Inflation.
I once presented research (to the Official Discord, before merge of Nao) regarding a government-researched incident involving a rapid increase of population within land of China. To quote from the synopsis: "In a market-oriented economic system, the impact of population size on market demand affects supply and demand and prices." In other words, the exact same situation in China played out here in Mabinogi's Nao server, because human beings still play the game. Fantasy or not has no bearing on the end results, so we would all be wise to learn from reality.
They are not, because players still obtain these items at other prices. Those ancient golden crystals you used to sell have NPC resell values, and yet somehow you managed to sell them for far higher than that NPC-defined value. That's because item prices are not set in stone and resell value does not cement an item's value and never will. NPC-defined purchase values do set item's in stone, which is the entire point I'm making as to why doing so would remove the freedom of marketing from the playerbase. This is the whole point of not trying to force value.
Once again, to drive this point home:
"You're switching back and forth between supply and value (demand), as if defining the rate of supply for an item is the same thing as defining the value from demand. These are not the same things. The developers set the rate of supply; that does not automatically determine how we should value it."
Supply alone does not augment value. If anyone's presenting a false dilemma at this point, I'd have to say it's you in continuously asserting that (authority-defined) supply alone affects item value as you make your case in favor of authority-centered marketing.
I will say that I'm not AS familar with the Erg consumable market, as I'm just returning from a 2 year break, so I will admit that I have a lot of ignorance here.
Correct. But that's not the issue here.
That's the issue I'm speaking of. People don't pay much for them, because they're useless. Now, if you could make Erg consumables or something else, *then* you'd be in business. The thing is that most items in the game are useless, though the campfire event and Erg seems to be a recognition of this problem.
This is, imo where you go wrong on a fundamental level (while being correct in a strict sense)
Markets don't care *why* people aren't doing something. They just care that they aren't. Would it be more rational to farm for Ruptured Black Metal (12m each on Nao) than to do Shadow Wiz Elite? Possibly. In that case, why aren't they doing so? You opted into a value judgement about laziness, but that's a lot of lazy players if so. It's more accurate to wonder why hundreds/thousands of players are making the same choice.
The thing about productivity is that in real economies, its not so much driven by diligence, but by "laziness". A labor-saving device, whether it's a rock, a fire, a pickaxe, a crane, or a washing machine, is designed by its very nature to get more for less. Basically, you work less in order to get more. The big difference is that you still had to produce things without those devices, because if you didn't you'd starve to death. In Mabi, that doesn't happen, so one can choose to expend less effort if the payoff isn't, or doesn't seem, worth it.
So as such, I would add another suggestion: rework dungeon design to be more similar to other missions in terms of time/engagement.
Specifically, knowing why people are choosing not to supply, which would be due to many factors commonly pointing towards unfavorable RNG or lack of motivation to go through the slog.
I proposed a number of things, including laziness, with laziness being the common factor. Even when the ruptured metals (as well as divine weapon materials, erg mats, and soluna mats) were literally shoved into Shadow Mission chests that took no longer than 1 minute to clear (Conflict HM, with decently prepped party), many people still didn't grind for them. This was during the Golden Tomb event back in April 2020. I'd say that's probably a good indication of laziness.
Anecdotally, I'm also getting stories (that correlate with my own personal stories as well as the current market's objective state) from players I've trained and taught in the ways of this market that when they team with players, the other players mostly mess around and waste ample amounts of time doing unrelated things and holding social calls when the objective is supposed to be gathering together to form a party to run a dungeon or quest. In addition to that, they choose to use talents and skills that are woefully inefficient at clearing the mission, like using a Perseus Knuckle to fight in dungeons when you would obviously speed things up by using AoE like Chain blade attacks, Giant's Full Swing, Final Hit w/ 2H swords, Kunai Storm, and Crash Shot. At some point, yes, it's the players' fault. But, there are changes the developers can make to alleviate the hassle for more dedicated players.
That's called "efficiency." I'm a strong advocate for efficient play. There's no difference between reality and fantasy scenarios, because real human beings act the exact same way regardless of situation or location. Most of us want to gain more for doing less, but the problem is that many people are choosing not to take the more efficient roads out of spite or personal preference. We can't do much about that, but we can suggest to the developers -- which we are -- that they consider incentivizing us to take the journey and reduce the weight of the obstacles.
And this is exactly where we all fall into the same perspective. You, the developers, and I all agree that this is the way to go, because the developers actually released an official statement declaring their intentions to go down a new path in developing dungeons, such as by allowing the max amount of chests to always appear and allowing players -- regardless of party count -- to open all the chests. This is evident in their latest content preview in Taiwan, where this system is implemented. They said that they plan to take this idea and apply it to other dungeons as well.
You can read up for yourself in this post made by Onfao on the Subreddit, regarding chests.
Here's the more general information regarding planned changes to the game in this year.
So sellers won't be shy about posting a price a bit higher if buyers are willing to pay more.
"Demand is an economic principle referring to a consumer's desire to purchase goods and services and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service."
I found your post interesting enough to leave a like, because you basically made my same argument and yet simply did not realize that you did. It was a bit comical, but I'm not insulting your intelligence. You are definitely aware of the situation we currently face.
You're right.
To somewhat reiterate some things you've already said (mainly to show that I understood what you said): We both agree that the issue is a matter of Supply vs. Demand, in that some supply is less convenient and thus demand for convenient access to inconveniently obtained items adjusts the price. People who simply convert gacha/RMT into gold don't want to spend time grinding the item; they instead opt for the convenience in just buying what they want and need, creating a competitive demand market for those who wish to follow the same route and yet do not wish to buy gacha or RMT. Thus, you get more inflation due to the supply side catering to the demands of those with the most buy power, pushing those without such buy power to either raise their own stakes and meet the challenges of competitive environment or be left out.
But, do trust that you have essentially cemented the point that this is indeed a supply-demand problem.
This isn't really inflation though. This is more, as you say, convenience. The guy who puts that one extra training potion or holy water for a slightly higher price knowing somebody might be mass buying isn't really affecting the long-term price for it. He's more like the convenience store at a resort charging you $5 for a dozen eggs.
Right, I don't think we've ever disagreed on that. We, once again, disagree on you presenting the problem as if abundant gold is the only reason why inflation is happening. It's not. You'd be attacking a symptom and not the disease. The gold doesn't matter if the items it would be used to purchase are also made proportionately abundant. You're still faulting the currency as if it determines value when the inverse is what's actually true.
To Pectyl:
Before I begin, I'd like to point out that it seems like you inserted quite a lot of emotion where none needs to exist. This isn't and shouldn't be personal and my posts aren't specifically about you or anyone you know. It's about the general idea of markets and marketing and the ideas surrounding it all. I'm not here to engage with you on a scale of who's more morally superior or what's offensive to whom or who should play in what way. I'm here to talk about inflation, not your feelings about it or population. So, keep it impersonal, rational, and on topic, thanks.
Now, I don't know why you personally took offense to this and I don't really care.
All I said was that it reminded me of a typical argument.
No, but your conclusion mistakenly assumes this, which was my point. You're assuming certain variables will not affect your conclusion. And again, you make the same assumption. First of all, define "alive." Because my definition and your definition will not seem to coincide.
Are you referring to market activity (which is how I gauge it and has been proven to be accurate)?
Are you referring to how many people are standing around at Tir/Dunbarton?
Are you referring to how many people are active around a certain type of content (Shadow Missions, for example)?
What's your rubric?
Hypocrisy aside, I don't really care to discuss population outside of its relation to the market in this thread.
Alright.
1. It wasn't inevitable, because a decision had to be made for or against.
2. Yes, I've stated that it's been discussed prior to occurrence.
Where's your point, here? What does this have to do with the market? I'm growing more convinced that you're using this as an opportunity to complain about population, rather than discuss market inflation: my original prediction.
I still don't understand why this is offending you so much or why you're spreading my claims around to apply to people I'm not even thinking about nor mentioning. Are you one of them or something?
I've been criticizing Nexon's lack of insight on advertising the game for a long while, but you're choosing to latch on to the distasteful part that seemingly applies to you. The fact is that it doesn't matter how many people are around if people don't do anything. Get offended all you like. But, until more people start grinding materials and playing through content, prices are forever going to stay inflated due to lack of supply.
In fact, I've seen the case occur after server merge how the population died right off because nobody actually did anything. People complained about hosting party ads for minutes to hours on end, waiting for people to show up to run Phantasm or Sidhe Finnachaid and no one would come. Some people I'm training right now also complain of the exact same problems and it's caused them to consider leaving the game before, because nobody runs content with them. And because nobody runs content with them, access to materials is closed off and thus the materials rise in value as they and others resort to buying them. You don't have to address it, I don't care. Regardless if you do or don't: present, yet content-inactive players are a factor and are no different than absent players.
The point was, "People don't play the game enough to farm resources, thus prices of resources inflate." Speedrunning the game is still playing the game and generates resources. Logging in, throwing cash at RMT or gacha, chatting for a bit, buying up a bunch of stuff you need, and then logging out does not generate resource. It inflates value and thus inflates prices. They're not putting anything back into the economy, except gold. That's why there's an imbalance.
How do I know this is what's happening? Because it reflects in the market. It even happens in reality. If there are more people buying the fruit than farming the fruit, then the fruit gains value. This is common sense. Stating that people aren't playing the game on basis of pointing to price inflation isn't a far shot in the dark, dude; it's a general rule of supply and demand. And if you bring in more people who do the exact same thing (for varying reasons I really don't care about), it'll inflate the prices even more and it has done this in the past.
I'm simply looking at a problem and pointing out the solution on basis of what caused the problem. If you don't like the solution, tough. It's reality. Resources don't just fall out of the sky; people have to generate them or they dry up and inflate.
It's almost like you literally ignored every point I made leading up to this and you did it for the sake of emoting your offense.
Yes, they have this level of control... because nobody runs content to farm materials and thus compete with their prices. Yes, because competition drives down prices, but people are expecting other people to do it instead of doing it themselves. And if you bring in more players (like we did in 2019) who don't run content (which they didn't), nothing will change for the better. We've already tried your idea. It doesn't work and won't work later on just by repeating it over and over in expectation of different results. Something needs to change and this time it should be focused on the current playerbase we have, such as incentive and effort-reward efficiency.
You know, I think I'll grant you that, maybe I was thinking it was the only cause. As for the rest of what you said, ("it is a symptom" or "gold doesn't matter") no because it's just trying to say that money supply is not a cause or even a contributing cause at all when it is. I guess we're just gonna disagree on that.
No, I'm not saying that at all.
I'm saying what I've said before: currency doesn't matter if the item you want to buy has no/low value -- literally what I said in the last response and in our previous discussion.
Nobody cares about inflation when it is relative to holy water or an arat crystal.
That's because there's a bunch of those around and they're easy to obtain and low on demand. Since that is the case, the obvious analogy would apply to rarer items if you raise level of access and thus increase supply to meet demand.
No part of this idea involves manipulating gold, therefore the gold is negligible in the formula.
I don't know how to make it more clear as to what I'm saying, Helsa.
100% and that would logically also apply to in-game currency.
So, when they merged the servers the inflation that occurred might be considered a paradox in that although the number of demanders went up so did the number of suppliers. Yet, the invisible hand did not settle on a price in line with a weighted average of the three markets. Perhaps the discrepancy could be explained as follows?
Does that make sense?
It's literally what I've been saying: "The changes to supply and demand were not proportional; one rose way more so than the other."
People weren't farming materials to begin with, therefore the changes in supply were still minimal even after the merge, because the proportion of supply to demand was already skewed across all spectrums. Merging the servers made it way more obvious and undeniable that this was the cause and that's why I'm hammering so hard on it. It's right in our faces; just look at it.
The previous statements do show proportional and inverse proportional relationships though, but not on a sufficiently fine enough scale. Mathematically speaking then the relationships are discrete rather than continuous, but follow the continuous function as far the discrete nature of the relationship will allow. In other words the graphs would be stepped rather than smooth, if you zoom in far enough. The discrete character of the graph would be due to folks perceiving supply in numerical ranges as this would flatten out sections of it.
Have I gotten that right?
How far does it have to go before it's sufficient, Helsa? It's not going to be 100% accurate every single time.
As you just said in many words, the trend is what matters and the trend is what dictates market flow and public perception of value -- another point I've made plenty of times regarding how demand works. It's literally happening in the stock market if you just go and observe for one day how supply and demand affects contract and share value. The problem of inflation stems from the trend; not an absolute value.
The outliers are irrelevant to situation; that's why we call them "outliers." In the market, they are represented simply as "Highs and Lows" and they are used to determine "Averages" which tend to follow the trend, save for a few points of deviation. The High and Lows are the jagged edges you see when analyzing economic graphs at any period in time.
Sure, of course but it is safe to say that on a coarse enough level where the discrete portion of the relationship is insignificant that equilibrium price is directly proportional to demand and inversely proportional to supply; I'm pretty sure that's what Adam Smith said.
Isn't that right?
You are assuming that my comment was a personal attack on you which it wasn't, I very, very rarely ever write anything personal against anybody on the internet as I don't enjoy nor want to be part of any drama, and I apologize for making it seem so.