xenapan
04-19-2010, 03:57 AM
Atlantica Economy 101.
I guess I've become bored enough to spend time and study the economy of Atlantica Online. To those who have a few hundred million under their belt, this should be no news at all. To those of you just starting I shall attempt to expain how and why the economy works as it does.
First of all I will address the standard definitions: supply and demand. Supply is where items are generated and put into the game. Be it from killing stuff (normal gameplay), grinding/farming (intensive gameplay aimed purposefully at one specific item or set of items), special events (giveaways, invasions) and item mall. I will also sometimes catergorize items into purpose within the game. For instance, armors and weapons are improvement drops, as are growth vials, skill books and crystals as they improve your team as you gather them. One distinct characteristic of improvement drops are that once you hit a certian limit, they are worthless for your team, but can always be sold for money. A second catergory would be craft drops, these items are the bulk of the game and are what takes up most of your inventory space. They are used for crafting items as ingredients but otherwise have no impact on your gameplay as you collect them. Craft drops are always stackable items (you can fit 10000 items in a stack).
Demand is where people want items. Generally it is generated through introduction (putting in a new item into the game), practical (where players are required to buy certian items to continue playing. This also includes skill books, growth vials, crystals, jewels, as well as the more general weapons and armor to be able to kill stuff at the level), removal (sources are removed or nerfed - eg box drop rate nerf).
Supply as a general in Atlantica is designed to improve as you level up. The higher level you are, the more value the items that can possibly drop (this is kinda a given unless you want a really dull game) and as you level up, the supply of items on that level drops. The best example of this is boxes: At level 1, you start in forest of spirits, once you start, at worst 1/10 drops are spirit boxes or enchant stones or commodity boxes. All items you would otherwise be in need of to continue your gameplay. Sure the game feeds you alot of trash items: salt, iron sand, maple, clay, copper flakes and the like. But otherwise, there is a fairly substatial amount of improvement drops. This continues until you hit insect nest, and here you find the first place where the items you get are not immediately usable (insect boxes containing assassin/destroyer/savior items are level 35) at level 25, everything still uses enchant stone I but once you hit insect nest, you start gathering insect boxes which contain the first of the rank II items. As such, there tends to be a severe lack of enchant stones though the other improvement drops are quite steady - since sea palace ashen crystals are dropping fairly common and commodity boxes upgrade from I to II fairly un-noticably. Though as most people who play realize, insect equipment is the worst of all equipment sets. It's power is only slightly above angkor wat and prices go from reasonable to unreasonable very quickly. Enchant stones formerly being common drops are now semi rare, and market prices of enchant II stones are through the roof (and will continue to be). When I first started playing enchant IIs were 20k a piece. Now enchant IIs are 60k a piece. On the other hand, insect boxes were roughly 1500 when I started and are roughly 2000-3000 now. So +0 is entirely feasible to use but enchanting is out of the question.
At this point I would like to define some of the game design principles used in this. The first is asymmetrical supply this is caused by two factors. A) Enchant stones IIs are fairly rare compared to insect boxes (I know. its roughly 8 boxes to 6 stones but let me continue)
B) Enchant stones are needed in greater numbers than boxes is the real kicker. Because of the way enchant stones work, the higher the level the item, the greater the disproportion of enchant stones needed to enchant an item. +1 takes 1 stone and 2 items and a +2 takes 2 +1s (so 2 stones +4 items) plus another 2 stones which makes it even. But past that, the number of stones required increases quite rapidly until it is practically double at +10 1024 items vs 2036 stones. Thus enchant stones are the limiting factor (or at least they are in terms of the quality of your equipment). By this I mean that the limiting factor (enchant stone IIs) are what make insect boxes (and all the other rank II boxes) worthless. Because the supply of enchant IIs, insect boxes have very little value in terms of being usable equipment as a) they are not cost effective (with the stones being well over 10000% the cost of a box) b) since they have no fixed price, the market for enchant IIs dries up fairly quickly with no way to recover (at least in the course of normal gameplay by people in the rank II area 30-60s).
This brings me to my second principle which is higher level supply. Basically this means that supply of these items is generally created by people outside the level range of the people that will use it. In our example, enchant IIs are a good example because a player will never get enough enchant IIs at the level when they would use it. However once they pass the level that they use the item, it is turned into a source of income for them. Thus, generally speaking the majority of enchant IIs are not put up for sale in the market by rank IIs but rank IIIs which have passed the use of rank II equipment and are selling it for money.
I generally consider rank II to be where most players quit. Generally speaking players will give up (or end up begging) for money to buy enchant IIs since it is such a chore (and impossiblity) to collect enough for their use. Most players last till 50 and really hit the curve point of the game where the lack of equipment and the increased EXP curve forces them into a corner: they cannot upgrade their equipment and they cannot level up with the equipment they have. This is why most newbie guilds are filled with level 35-50s that have basically lost interest in the game and never sign on anymore.
Anyhow, this ends the first of many such posts.
I guess I've become bored enough to spend time and study the economy of Atlantica Online. To those who have a few hundred million under their belt, this should be no news at all. To those of you just starting I shall attempt to expain how and why the economy works as it does.
First of all I will address the standard definitions: supply and demand. Supply is where items are generated and put into the game. Be it from killing stuff (normal gameplay), grinding/farming (intensive gameplay aimed purposefully at one specific item or set of items), special events (giveaways, invasions) and item mall. I will also sometimes catergorize items into purpose within the game. For instance, armors and weapons are improvement drops, as are growth vials, skill books and crystals as they improve your team as you gather them. One distinct characteristic of improvement drops are that once you hit a certian limit, they are worthless for your team, but can always be sold for money. A second catergory would be craft drops, these items are the bulk of the game and are what takes up most of your inventory space. They are used for crafting items as ingredients but otherwise have no impact on your gameplay as you collect them. Craft drops are always stackable items (you can fit 10000 items in a stack).
Demand is where people want items. Generally it is generated through introduction (putting in a new item into the game), practical (where players are required to buy certian items to continue playing. This also includes skill books, growth vials, crystals, jewels, as well as the more general weapons and armor to be able to kill stuff at the level), removal (sources are removed or nerfed - eg box drop rate nerf).
Supply as a general in Atlantica is designed to improve as you level up. The higher level you are, the more value the items that can possibly drop (this is kinda a given unless you want a really dull game) and as you level up, the supply of items on that level drops. The best example of this is boxes: At level 1, you start in forest of spirits, once you start, at worst 1/10 drops are spirit boxes or enchant stones or commodity boxes. All items you would otherwise be in need of to continue your gameplay. Sure the game feeds you alot of trash items: salt, iron sand, maple, clay, copper flakes and the like. But otherwise, there is a fairly substatial amount of improvement drops. This continues until you hit insect nest, and here you find the first place where the items you get are not immediately usable (insect boxes containing assassin/destroyer/savior items are level 35) at level 25, everything still uses enchant stone I but once you hit insect nest, you start gathering insect boxes which contain the first of the rank II items. As such, there tends to be a severe lack of enchant stones though the other improvement drops are quite steady - since sea palace ashen crystals are dropping fairly common and commodity boxes upgrade from I to II fairly un-noticably. Though as most people who play realize, insect equipment is the worst of all equipment sets. It's power is only slightly above angkor wat and prices go from reasonable to unreasonable very quickly. Enchant stones formerly being common drops are now semi rare, and market prices of enchant II stones are through the roof (and will continue to be). When I first started playing enchant IIs were 20k a piece. Now enchant IIs are 60k a piece. On the other hand, insect boxes were roughly 1500 when I started and are roughly 2000-3000 now. So +0 is entirely feasible to use but enchanting is out of the question.
At this point I would like to define some of the game design principles used in this. The first is asymmetrical supply this is caused by two factors. A) Enchant stones IIs are fairly rare compared to insect boxes (I know. its roughly 8 boxes to 6 stones but let me continue)
B) Enchant stones are needed in greater numbers than boxes is the real kicker. Because of the way enchant stones work, the higher the level the item, the greater the disproportion of enchant stones needed to enchant an item. +1 takes 1 stone and 2 items and a +2 takes 2 +1s (so 2 stones +4 items) plus another 2 stones which makes it even. But past that, the number of stones required increases quite rapidly until it is practically double at +10 1024 items vs 2036 stones. Thus enchant stones are the limiting factor (or at least they are in terms of the quality of your equipment). By this I mean that the limiting factor (enchant stone IIs) are what make insect boxes (and all the other rank II boxes) worthless. Because the supply of enchant IIs, insect boxes have very little value in terms of being usable equipment as a) they are not cost effective (with the stones being well over 10000% the cost of a box) b) since they have no fixed price, the market for enchant IIs dries up fairly quickly with no way to recover (at least in the course of normal gameplay by people in the rank II area 30-60s).
This brings me to my second principle which is higher level supply. Basically this means that supply of these items is generally created by people outside the level range of the people that will use it. In our example, enchant IIs are a good example because a player will never get enough enchant IIs at the level when they would use it. However once they pass the level that they use the item, it is turned into a source of income for them. Thus, generally speaking the majority of enchant IIs are not put up for sale in the market by rank IIs but rank IIIs which have passed the use of rank II equipment and are selling it for money.
I generally consider rank II to be where most players quit. Generally speaking players will give up (or end up begging) for money to buy enchant IIs since it is such a chore (and impossiblity) to collect enough for their use. Most players last till 50 and really hit the curve point of the game where the lack of equipment and the increased EXP curve forces them into a corner: they cannot upgrade their equipment and they cannot level up with the equipment they have. This is why most newbie guilds are filled with level 35-50s that have basically lost interest in the game and never sign on anymore.
Anyhow, this ends the first of many such posts.