Ideas for a more stimulating economy?

[itworkss]

I think there should be more 'perishable' objects within the game, to help create a flow of goods in Haven's economy. Right now, the biggest drive is simply the quality race.

This is a slippery slope, though. If it's not done correctly it quickly leads to just another annoying game mechanic, and can cause frustration instead of proving a fulfilling challenge.

We currently have wear on objects like armor, but really it is more of a joke once you get into higher quality gear.
I've had the same set of armor for quite some time, and I hunt relatively often.

I'd like to see some other peoples opinions or solutions. What are some mechanics you've seen work well in other games which are highly economy based?


I understand tipping the scale too much in overall item degradation could make things a lot more difficult for the average hermit.

[overtyped]

The only way i can see, is to scale foragable quality with the worlds age ( monitored by loftar )
Lategame there is no reason to leave your base, i suppose dungeons are a good reason, but for those that don't run dungeons..

[shubla]

Eve online has healthy economy because everything that is made is destroyed

Add wear mechanics to everything.

[ctopolon3]

Add wear mechanics to everything.

high Q armor set takes 100-200k dmg before be broken... it not change anything

[✧]

What's unsatisfying about the current economy?

Maybe more specialization would be nice? It often seems easier to just make things yourself than try to trade for them. I'm still at the early phase of the game though. Still excited about trying out trade. I've seen a shop or two just wandering around and I've found them helpful.

Making it easier to trade labor might be helpful? Just ideas. Like building roads and such things.

[SacreDoom]

What's unsatisfying about the current economy?

Maybe more specialization would be nice? It often seems easier to just make things yourself than try to trade for them. I'm still at the early phase of the game though. Still excited about trying out trade. I've seen a shop or two just wandering around and I've found them helpful.

Making it easier to trade labor might be helpful? Just ideas. Like building roads and such things.

Resulting problem being that people will just make more alts to cope with the forced specialisation, thus, while adding interesting mechanics, ultimately only hampering hermits and inconveniencing villages slightly - villages won't be any more dependent on other villages for products. You need to somehow incentivise trade through use of resources which are scarce by being limited to small, specific regions or through some other mechanic which inconveniences the production or collection thereof to an extent that it becomes preferable to trade it since setting up production of it yourself would be too time consuming and meagre in yield.

I personally would like to see it so that the more "civilised" an area becomes, certain animals and forage will stop spawning there, allowing hermitages and small villages which are far away from others to get more abundant access to some desireable raw goods which can in turn be traded for tools, clothing, etc. with the more industrial villages and kingdoms.

[ricky]

As long as everyone can do everything in house, there is no necessity for a robust economy.

Attempting to differentiate crop growth times regionally was a step in the right direction for industry specialization, but with realm bonuses I don't think the natural variance is enough to be noticable. I'd go even further have have WWW even more regionally limited, maybe even with 3 variety of WWW: root, fibrous, Vine to correspond to different crop types.

Geographically limiting foraging options via more segmented biomes is another good option, as well as somehow scaling foraging quality with industry quality.

Basically the more homogeneous/available every resource is, the less need to trade with your neighbors.

@labor for trade: as long as alts are a thing people would never 'hire' a worker. Having a "quest board" has been mentioned before to formalize a way to pay workers, but I think that would be a lot of work. I don't know if anyone informally hires sprucecaps to do work, (Clear all the stumps outside the North village wall, I'll give you an axe for your trouble) but it would be a good way to engage nabs with game systems without following chasing trees

[MrBunzy]

To have a good economy we need things which new and undeveloped players can obtain that end game players are willing to buy. Stuff like this has existed for quite a while but seems to keep changing with the new game mechanics. At one point this was forageables like cavebulbs and mussels, but demand for these really fell off with the advent of bots and better psy food. As long as no stat cap exists cheese and other high end foods will always be in demand, and are pretty accessible to most players, but i'm pretty opposed to the endless stat grind so I don't particularly like food being so central to the economy.

Stuff like steel and silk are good options in my opinion, as producing them is just annoying enough to be avoided by those who have the means to trade for them, but changing game mechanics really reduced the need for either. High q metal has made silk symbol items obsolete, and the silk curio has long since been outclassed. In legacy the demand for steel was mainly because of its use in expanding village claims, and without that use low q steel is no longer traded much. If more uses for low q silk and steel were added it could give some nice incentives to trade again, tho I'm not sure what the best way to approach this are.

Recently nabs have also been able to contribute to the quality grind by supplying low q cast iron, and to some extent gray clay. Stuff that allows for quality spiraling like wrought iron and potter's clay create an endless demand for raw materials which I feel is a great basis for an economy. More things in this vein would be a nice addition. Hardened leather, for instance, has the potential to be spiraled, and I think if this was expanded upon with some meaningful end game use, it could create another nice trade staple. At the moment the only valid use of high q hard leather is for cutting tools (battleaxes), but I'm sure more could be added pretty easily. An alternative hard leather recipe, perhaps from a new credo like with potters clay, could also expand the potential for spiraling. So that I think is a good direction to expand on.

At the moment trade is mainly based on either quality grind or stat grind, I'm not really sure how other types of meaningful trading could be encouraged. Resources from natural wonders are cool but not really worth trading for, and trying to make certain things scarce in certain parts of the map won't really help with how easy it is to travel the world atm. So i suppose my oppinion is focus on ways to let noobs contribute to the quality grind and we will be good.

[GamingRAM]

I would very much want more regional specialties, ores, rocks, trees, crops, foragables, fish, localized resources, (pretty much everything really) to be far more regionally exclusive.

If you look at the world map, http://odditown.com/haven/map/#x=0&y=0&zoom=4 ,you can see that this already exists to some extent. More green based biomes are towards the center of the map, while more reds and yellows are outwards. Since certain trees and rocks are more likely to spawn in certain biomes, regional specialty exists to SOME degree, but I think it can be cranked up much, much more.

To have a good economy we need things which new and undeveloped players can obtain that end game players are willing to buy. Stuff like this has existed for quite a while but seems to keep changing with the new game mechanics. At one point this was forageables like cavebulbs and mussels, but demand for these really fell off with the advent of bots and better psy food.

Resources from natural wonders are cool but not really worth trading for, and trying to make certain things scarce in certain parts of the map won't really help with how easy it is to travel the world atm.

Botting mainly helps those who bot, and not much else. It's a thorn in any game economy.
Once upon blueberries were something reasonably valuable that noobs could get but then Garden Pots were introduced. Currently boneglue, cast iron, and building materials are the items that nooblets can participate in. Pearls are in high supply and little demand. I wish pearl necklaces (and other LP boosting items) degraded.
Reducing the ease of travel would reduce supply but would also reduce overall trade. It's a tricky business, but I think it's acceptable if there is more emphasis on regional exclusives.

[synaris]

the ability for entire villages to specialize in certain things would help. more buildings designed for such a thing. say some sort large glass manufacturing building that gives a small quality boost to glass and glass products made in it, of course we actually need more glass things in the game for that to be worthwhile....