The State of MapleLegends Economy

Some relevant wikipedia articles that summarize some of the economic concepts discussed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoarding_(economics)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_manipulation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

Note on OwlRepo: I acknowledge that owlrepo.com may not be 100% accurate all of the time, as some periods of low demand or consolidated supply can and will influence market prices. Yet, over periods of months and longer, I believe that it is the most accurate publicly available data on (common item) prices in MapleLegends. Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Maplestory servers were never intended to have only 500-2000 players online at any given time. In v62 Maplestory, there were often tens of thousands of players online at any given time if not more. This is pure speculation given the lack of data but I think it is fair to assume that v62 maplestory servers often had at least 10x, but probably closer to 100x or more, of the active population of MapleLegends. If one person tried to buy up all of a given item and artificially raise the price, they most likely wouldn’t have the buying power to do so. And even if they did, the amount of active players running bosses, grinding, questing and so on would soon evaporate any attempts at monopolies/oligopolies in the market.

However, given the significantly smaller player count in MapleLegends (500-2000 active accounts at a time), the nature of the server’s economy is quite different from the original v62. Any one person’s actions, especially if they are wealthy, can have a strong effect on the market and drastically influence prices independent of the real values of supply and demand.

Let’s take a look at ‘pieces of time’ (hereafter called PoT(s) for simplicity) for example. They are dropped by 13 different mobs throughout the Temple of Time (ML library). According to owlrepo.com, prices for PoTs were initially around 4-6m in November 2020 as its content was first released. However, within 2-6 months as players played the newly released ToT content, the prices of PoTs dropped drastically to reflect the increase in supply. (around 1-2m by May 2021, six months after the release of the content). Prices dropped even further down to an average of 500k in the middle of 2022, but have risen back up to around 1m (give or take) and have remained around 1m for the past 6 months. I personally have never used PoTs for anything and people can again correct me if I’m wrong, but this seems like a reasonable increase and decrease according to market trends.

That is until a few days ago. Screenshots from an owl of minerva at 12:30am EST on May 12, 2023 show the lowest price for a PoT at 1.8m and topping out at 3m. Before this, the most recently available data on owlrepo.com dated February 26, 2023 for prices of PoTs was at an average of 1.2m, with the minimum price being around 1m and the highest price being 1.4m. This means that within less than 3 months, the average price of this readily available item has jumped more than 50%, while the maximum price has increased by almost 2x.

Again, this is just an anecdotal example of an item that has jumped around in price, but there are other examples as well. Bow for att 30%s, for instance, have also increased in price in just the past couple of months. This is completely irrespective of the fact that the average active player count has not grown enough to reflect a 50% or more jump in price.

As a caveat, the ease of acquiring an item in the first place, and the present demand based on frequency of use/anticipated use must also be considered and that is something that I am willing to contend with. However, I also feel that telling people to go farm or simply buy items that are inflated in price is rather unproductive and disrespectful to my time/use of mesos, particularly when the rarity of the item has been artificially increased in the first place.

Some people may think they are just merching as part of the game and that it is a ‘convenience fee’ to have duplicate items in one store and charge 1.5-3x the average price for an item. And yes, merching is a big part of the game, both in MapleLegends and in GMS and it is part of what makes the game interesting. But there is a line to artificial inflations. For the vast majority of people that do not have enough mesos to corner the price of an entire item, I think it is fair to say that this is creating an uncompetitive and inefficient market. And yes, the market will correct itself given enough time as people realize no one wants to buy items for 1.5-2x or higher of the real price. However, I feel like waiting 2-6 months for the price of my weapon-of-choice 30% scroll to drop in price to a level more reflective of real supply and demand, is personally a complete waste of time at the sole expense of newer/more casual, less wealthy players.

Yes. There are no rules or terms of service in MapleLegends preventing people from pricing items a certain way, whether the pricing was done intentionally or by misclick. And I don’t think people should be punished for pricing an item that they think reflects a market trend. That would have a trickle effect and ruin the entire economy of MapleLegends.

I am posting this in the hopes of starting a discussion around fairness and potential price controls or other mechanisms or suggestions that maplers (more experienced than I am) may have. I don’t play this game to be TicketMaster'ed for trying to buy a decently priced item. I am just one person and I am open to all suggestions and points of view.

 

This update happened over 8 months ago, and the recent 50-100% increase in price for PoTs has only happened since february. From Late October 2022 - February 2023 they remained relatively stable around 1m, yet suddenly they are 1.8m minimum. Are you saying that the impact of the update is still being realized almost a year later in the market?

 

There is someone right now sitting on a stockpile of over 10,000 PoTs selling them for the maximum market price. The argument that there are dwindling stockpiles and decreased supply of PoTs from the February 2023 prices to current prices (May 12, 2023) is simply not true. I can agree that there were even larger stockpiles before from around August 2022- Late October 2022 as the updates came into effect, but the current situation seems to be removed from that. This situation rather seems to be one individual hoarding an item and driving up its price indepedent of real forces of supply and demand.
If one person with the vast majority of the PoTs is selling them for 3m (over 2x the previous max price from February 2023), then why wouldn't someone with just a few PoTs try to make a few extra mesos and sell them for 20-50% more? Especially if they know that despite being more expensive than they were just a week ago, they would still be the cheapest on the market and would sell more quickly. I think many people would jump at that chance and that is what seems to be happening to me.

And yes, as I said in the OwlRepo Note, analyzing the prices of ML items over time is inherently going to be flawed no matter what you try to do or what method you use. There is only so much publicly available data that can be analyzed and drawn from. Even with Owlrepo, we don't know how much of an item is selling and at what price it is selling for. If you have a better way to accurately analyze price indexes over time in ML please feel free to share it.

 

You are joking but whenever I see a new player or even a potential alt who is asking for assistance or monetary aid, I provide it to them. And I don't think that should be a bad thing. In fact, I think it grows the sense of community and makes the game more fun to play for everyone. We have all been there at the start and having a sense of community and comradery is good for the health of the game in the long term.

 

I agree with you, they will be purchased much less often if they are expensive/overpriced. That is one of the problems highlighted in my initial post. By people overpricing items, it creates a freeze on the market for anyone who might actually be interested in buying the item if it were priced according to real market value. This leads to an uncompetitive market that works more slowly and inefficiently at mostly the expense of newer/more casual, less wealthy players. Even the people overpricing the items might make some money off of the rare sale that they get, but that is still only a portion of their stockpile, and the rest continues to sit in an inventory not being utilized by anyone.

I personally can wait as long as I need to for items to adjust in price to what I think is their real market value. I have the patience and I have other hobbies. I am just wondering about the people who might not have the patience and simply move on to other games entirely. I also worry about the sense of community that is being disrupted/lost by this rift in regards to inequality and pricing schemes. I don't think MapleLegends was ever intended to be set up as a hyper-capitalist/anarcho-capitalist simulation game, but that is just me and you are free to argue otherwise if you feel so.

Also regarding Quintus's post, even the most capitalistic market-economies in the world today such as the United States and the U.K have market regulations in place to prevent a complete free-for-all where corporations could charge $200 for a bottle of water if they were able to (which we all know they would- and even do sometimes with regards to 'luxury' water). I know this is not real life and it’s a video game but here we are. I am in favour of introducing market regulations to prevent predatory pricing schemes if the market continues to be uncompetitive and inefficient as I think it is.