The State of ML's Economy and Event

Something to throw into the mix to consider...

There's a concept in economics called Elasticity. The demand for elastic products will increase or decrease depending on the price you put on it. This is the general way we think of Simple Markets of supply and demand. An easy example are bananas. If bananas are marked too high in price, you'll probably buy some other fruit. If bananas are cheap, you'll buy a lot of them.

But then there are Inelastic Products. The demand for inelastic products will remain high no matter how high or low you set the price. For example, insulin. It doesn't matter how high or low the price is set, if you are diabetic then you need the insulin to live so you're going to go and get it no matter the cost.

If there is a problem with the economy in MapleLegends, then it likely has to do with the inelastic products. As long as there are many competitors, the price remains low. If, however, someone is buying up all of the supply to eliminate competition, the supplier can set the price at whatever they wish because players have to have it. The only other way to control for this is to regulate the source of the supply. Skill Books became cheap because competition increased because more people had access to the source of the Skill Books. If you want to do the same thing for White Scrolls and Clean Slate Scrolls, this would be a smart decision - provided the methods are sound.

 

the market has drastically changed since you came back; it's way way different than things are now. It may be purchasable but it definitely is a lot less accessible.

 

Like i said before, I think thats more the result of the server entering its end-game state of the economy. Skillbooks are more accessible now than before.

Majority of 60% attack scrolls are 1m or less.

10 att wgs are super cheap, only ~10m.

The only things I see that are expensive are end game items and INT scrolls. Sure, end game items are certainly less accessible, mostly 30% attack scrolls.

But if you look at the perspective of a new player, things are MORE accessible, but from the perspective of a late/end game player, things are less accessible.

I'm not exactly sure on how to fix the problem for late/end game players, but making the end game items more farmable should help.

 

Wanna stop people from massively hoarding items for resale? Make shops expire. Good luck keeping the dozen shops up with shit nobody is going to buy when it costs something like 10k for 2 weeks of a shop. Sure, it's kind of a pain for most people to have to keep spending vote cash on but I'd enjoy it as a massive middle finger to people who feel like having a giant empire of pixels.

 

That just seems downright vindictive. I'm not sure that necessarily addresses the problem, either. I have ten stores up filled with stuff people sometimes want all at reasonable prices. What you're proposing would make me want to quit the game - and I'm not the person people are upset with...

 

I like the idea too! Here's an issue, however... a lot of regular gachapon items are junk. Getting something good is rare, and getting something like WS or CS is extremely rare. Consider that if a WS goes for 100m, and gachapon tickets are sold for 1m.. do you think it will be possible to get one in 100 tries? More generally, if you spend 100m on gach tickets, will you even come close to getting 100m in stuff you can sell back? Maybe, maybe not. It's a gamble, but some people really like gambling.

Better that they spend their billions on actually generating some items that are useful, rather than just buying up what other players sell.

Yeah but at some point things get ridiculous. I remember before when certain 30% scrolls simply weren't available at all in the market, and it caused some people to quit. There's also other who can't generate so much money at gobis that could also be hunting those scrolls.

That... that's just a terrible idea. That will affect everyone who wants to make a shop. Newbies, old players, rich, or poor.

 

Ideally, I would like the gachapon tickets to be priced such that on average you would expect to lose meso on it, even counting for the jackpot items. I don't want it to make items cheaper persay, but I do want it to make items more accessible.

I think you could get a white scroll in 100 attempts, but I don't think you would on average.

 

I am against making gacha tix purchasable because it will lead to people with funds being able to very quickly and easily get more mesos, it will make an entirely luck-based game mechanic the main way of making money, and it will centralize the economy around gacha even more than it already is if it's a worthwhile trade. Gacha was created by Neckson as pay2win, and IMO, the only way it is acceptable is if it's limited. Having tix farmable rn is OK in my eyes because you have to actually get out there and farm them, it's not something tradable that you can get entirely by playing the market.

Making shops expire would have a devastating effect on an economy of this size because it would encourage people not to make FM shops unless they were selling the most popular, high profit items. If shops expired, anybody who plays an off-meta job or build can say goodbye to their class scrolls, skillbooks, and equips because nobody is going to spend vote cash every 2 weeks to sell 2 hand blunt weapon scrolls (or whatever else.)

 

I support the gachapon store as I believe it is the easiest method in keeping a price ceiling on WS/CS.

As mentioned by everyone, the maple economy is a free market. This means that all transactions are purely determined by demand and supply, with zero "government intervention". However, it could be about time to consider having this intervention.

By setting a fixed price on gachapon tickets and rates, it'll deincentivise players from buying overpriced WS/CS. "WS for 170m?" I much rather spend that amount on 170 gach tickets purchasable from a custom store. This will prevent these scroll prices from going overboard. Not only that, gach provide a chance of other gach only scrolls such as the 30% ones (which can be sold), further decreasing the cost of WS from gach.

Of course, with this system comes several cons as mentioned.

1. Too easy to reach late game (perfected equipment and all)
2. Too custom

IMO, it is impossible to reach fully perfected gears on every single equip. By increasing WS supply, people will just aim for a higher late game (perfected weap > perfected BWG > strong PGC > perfected armor). There is always something higher to strive for.

Also, there is no way of restricting people from selling WS at any price they want without implementing a boycott/blacklisting/witch hunt and even then it may not work. (I am not supporting this btw). Government intervention is the cleanest way of forcefully adjusting the market. Not only can prices of gach be tuned, there are also other factors such as the number of gach purchasable per day and the rates of good drops from gach can be adjusted.


Implementing hunting gach and bossing gach may help to alleviate the problem slightly but ultimately, merchants are just going to buy up the extra supply and newcomers will just start selling WS/CS at those rates in fear of getting underpaid. People who actually need the WS are still forced to buy it at those prices and once some WS/CS starts selling, prices go up again.

Unfortunately, I think that the best way to get the economy under control is to set up a custom store. While it is not Kimmy's ideal nostalgia maplestory, I don't see much other ways of stabilizing the economy.

 

I'm not so sure I would say that the market is "bad". Maybe more like the economy is weak in some places and stronger in others on account of a trade off. Dark scrolls did not originally come out until around Mushroom shrine? So they were always pretty scarce in the old days. The best scrolls may be really uncommon and pricey but then again its sort of supposed to be hard to get anything close to perfect gear before Big bang.

The key I think is that players do not NEED flawless equipment, its just a bonus challenge for the extra dedicated or gamble addicted. I mean, in exchange the market has very affordable class 60% scrolls and sometimes great deals on pre-scrolled gears. Getting end game godly stuff is still difficult just like always but for a newbie, the market is heavily in their favor. (well in my opinion)

I would not fault the merchants either. If someone takes the risk of stockpiling an item in the hopes of selling them later then the prices for all of that would be determined by the Free market conditions. Just as they could make a profit they could also lose big if the items never sell for whatever reason. If goods get sold and the seller makes some mesos then that is a legitimate merch. "Don't hate the players, hate the game."

 

If I know the probabilities of getting a Chaos Scroll or a White Scroll, I could do a quick algorithm to see what the prices of a CS, WS, and a Gachapon Ticket should be to make it possible for all three of these items to be sold by an NPC at fair rates.

But keep in mind that a meso-sink shouldn't be used to eliminate inflation or cause a deflation; only to combat rampant inflation. A healthy economy has a slow and gradual inflation. The fact that NPCs in the towns sell level 40- gear helps keep new players from being victims of inflation. Nevertheless, I would stress that a meso-sink too large could lead to deflation - and that means players would stop buying everything for the prospect that the prices may get lower and lower - which would grind the economy to a halt.

 

This is actually false propaganda. A healthy economy actually has neither inflation nor deflation. But in real life, deflation will be much more desirable right now. After all, it's always a good thing for the money printers if they stand to make money by creating money, rather than losing it. (ie, the cost to produce a coin being more than the value of the coin itself).

Meso sinks are good because they actually help give mesos a real value. Now sure, people can buy potions from NPCs with their mesos... There's some pig mounts, a handful of quests, some monster cards, and like summoning/magic rocks... but that's about it. And NLC pots are vastly economical. Eventually it gets to the point where mesos become far too abundant, and the small expenditure on potions only fuels a greater gain of mesos as monsters are killed in droves.

This is why there is inflation. Mesos are constantly being generated, perhaps far too easily by high level players at the end game, but there's little to nothing that these high level players would ever want to buy from NPCs. They spend most of their money buying items from other players in the free market, and those mesos are not taken out of the game; they are simply transferred from one player to another, slowly building up. The same could be said of lower level players to a lesser extent.

 

It's literally 2 individuals thats ruining the market, that's the problem. They are both 2 far beyond to "fix" it. They dont care lol. Anything they find "cheap", they'll buy out of your shop and then raise it in their shops. But then they'll say " if people dont buy then the prices reduce". It'll reduce but they have CONTROL OF THE MARKET and can decide if they want to reduce it or not. The issue isnt just WS/CS, its the market overall. As long as they 2 players continue playing, the market will never be fixed because they've taken control.

 

Talk about false propaganda...

I don't know where you got the idea that deflation is ever a good thing, but I can assure you deflation is always bad. While you are correct that it would be ideal for the inflation rate to be at 0%, the reason you don't aim for that is because it is way too easy to fall into deflation - which DESTROYS economies. Never in the history of the world have I ever come across a case where deflation ended up being a good thing - with the exception of Switzerland this year, but this is a very "Perfect Storm" and nuanced situation. This would only happen if the overall supply is higher than the overall demand - which is NOT what we are currently experiencing. In addition, the Swiss Franc was being purchased with Euros from their neighbors in order to stave off the effects of the Euro losing its value - again, not something we are experiencing here.
Nations do not print money to make money. Nations print money to help increase their economy and/or make their debt cheaper. While I agree it appears stupid to mint coins that cost more than the value of the coin, it nevertheless has a net neutral effect on inflation. The amount of money in the economy remains the same, it is only the government that issues out the money that actually loses money in the transaction - but, again, the amount of money in the system remains the same and therefore has a no effect on inflation (because the inflation rate is dependent on the amount of money created).

Meso sinks are good insofar as they help reduce inflation. I agree with you that the number of places where meso sinks are found are not numerous or effective enough. My proposal that we have an NPC sell WS and CS is that if the price is high enough it could cause a meso sink so high that it would cause deflation in the economy - again, not something we ever want. Kimberly would need to run a query on the amount of mesos produced on a daily or weekly basis and how much the meso sink is over that same time frame and that would give us an idea of the inflation rate. If she did this over months or years, it would garner an even better picture of our inflation rate.

This brings us to the crux of the solution we'd want to choose. If selling Gachapon Tickets, WS, or CS for mesos would cause a massive meso sink that is greater than the mesos being generated by slaying mobs, then this CANNOT be the solution to take. This brings us back to an ability to expand access to the source of White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls. If there were more ways to obtain these scrolls, the value of them would naturally decrease and the market would be that much more difficult to corner.

So the way I see, so far, to solving this issue is to either make NPCs able to sell these items, or increase the odds of getting them in Gach. I would love to entertain other ideas.

 

Why are we trying to relate MS economy to the real economy? LOL

MS economy is simple enough such that price inflation/deflation of scrolls will eventually translate into leech prices and prices of scrolled goods. In the short run, wages should be pretty sticky so deflation at steady state will result in lowered output (In maple terms, less leech buyers and sellers) relative to an inflationary scenario.

As for meso sinks, a flat 4-5%* tax on all transactions no matter the size should solve everything.

*subject to change

 

Relating the ML economy to the real economy is because the rules for economies don't stray from the standard rules. As for less leech buyers and sellers, that doesn't compute. The value of a meso is based on how many mesos are in the game. The more mesos there are, the less value each one has. The less mesos there are, the more value each one has. This means that if a deflation occurs, then the price for leeching would go down - but so would the prices for everything non-NPC based in the game. So this would affect leeching or any other good or service offered in game. As far as the 4-5%, that would depend greatly on the data Kimberly could look at with regards to meso production to meso depletion. So unless you are privvy to that information, I'm not sure you can claim such a rate (even if it is subject to change) would "solve everything." Besides, the main topic of this string is about solving the problem of the market being cornered for high level goods - and an increased tax rate wouldn't solve this at all.

 

Actually, increased tax rates may cause merching to be less profitable. Then again, it could be possible that people will just start selling at an even higher price to cover the tax rate, might go in either directions tbh

 

If wages are sticky downwards, wages don't adjust to market prices in the short run, resulting in lost output.

That's kinda the case if you chain your currency to something like gold. The value of mesos can probably be better determined if you look at the demographics of the playerbase (by level instead of age).

That only applied to meso sinks, not the monopolization of the market X).

 

It'll do the first at the beginning and the second not too long after.

I agree, but this is very short-term and is missing the larger point.

 

can someone say something more click baity and less long and thought provoking ty