Convent
09-10-2008, 01:01 PM
A Market Guide
A Guide to the Economy
Simple enough, this is a guide to how the economy of Secret of the Solstice works. It was made more or less because some people were getting pretty tired of explaining the situation over and over again to other people who were trying to come up with some idea to get prices to be affordable. In this guide, Kron generation, Kron flow, Kron sinks, and inflation are covered (and maybe more).
Definition of Kron: Kron, in Secret of the Solstice, is the name for the money that circulates throughout the game. It is used to exchange for goods, though not services (which differs from the real world in that sense).
Economy explanation: Throughout games and sites (the simpler economies, there are whole professions about the real world economy and I'm too young to have had enough education to explain it. Doubt you'd like to know every aspect of the real-world economy anyway), economy springs forth when money is created as a use/exchange for goods (and maybe services). Money on these games/sites are usually created through obtaining something of worth at chance, be it money itself or something worth selling. When the money is created, it is added to the economy's "pool", where it gets spent and saved, and it circulates around for a while until it is put into a sink.
The more money that is circulating, the higher the numbers that things would cost (though the actual worth of the item may stay the same). If you think about it, say you have a unit of money that is worth 1, and you have to spend 5 of those to buy milk (milk thereby costing 5). If there are more 1s around, they lose some of their worth, which may make your 1 really worth just .5. Then it takes 10 1s to buy milk because the worth went down of your 1.
That leads to the first point in kron:
Kron Generation:
Kron is generated through many different ways. The following can generate kron and add it into the pool of existing kron to be circulated around or absorbed into a "sink" (something that will remove the kron from circulation):
Monster Drops
Selling items to the store
Quests
Whenever a monster is killed, it could drop equipment, potions, kron, or a rare item. Any of these is worth something, and can be sold back to the General store for kron. Since the General store creates that kron you get, kron is added to the system that way. Also, when you complete a quest and get kron from the quest, it joins the circulation.
Explanation (Continued):
If there were only generators of money and only other people's pockets to spend it on, the amount that everything would cost would just keep going on with more and more money in the system. Even if it's true worth is "X" amount, since all our little "x"s we've got to buy the big "X" keep decreasing in value, we need more and more to buy it.
Kron Sinks:
Thankfully there are some sinks to the economy in Secret of the Solstice. Every time you buy something from any NPC-run store, you're "deleting" the kron you payed, in a sense, and taking it out of the system. The general stores and armour stores are sinks in the economy. A special sink is creating a guild (takes 10 million kron out of the system), or any other part of the game where you pay an NPC rather than another player.
Kron Flow:
As kron is "Created" and "Destroyed", it goes between the two in a process. When kron is created someone might hold on to it, and it'll get stored. It could be spent/traded to another person for their use. Kron flows all over the place, throughout people's pockets and lost on the floor and other things like that. It's a continual process until the kron is "destroyed".
Supply and Demand:
The prices of those items are dependant on two things: the supply and the demand. The supply is the amount that is able to be created or the amount availiable to be bought, and the demand is the amount of people who want to buy it. If the demand is higher than the supply, the price inflates. The demand will eat out the lower prices until only the higher ones are left, and it'll just keep going until the demand is no longer willing to buy the product due to high prices. Deflation, though, happens when there are too many of an item and not enough people who are willing to buy it. People will put the item up in their shops hoping for a sale, but when it doesn't happen they'll lower the price to entice people to come buy. If the supply is big enough, people will go for the cheapest which will always exist since there aren't enough people to buy out the cheapest and make the item more expensive.
(I'm having a bit of trouble trying to explain the supply and demand without giving the wrong explanation, if someone could help reinforce this with a better explanation, I'll quote it, put it here, and give due credit to the poster)
Competition:
When more than one person each gets the same type of one item and they try to sell it, they become competetors of eachother. Each of them wants to get the most out of their sell while still being able to sell, so they put their prices lower than others but higher than the lowest they're willing to sell the item at.
Inflation:
Now here's the biggy. Inflation is what happens when an unsteady item (an item that is only found by special means, not able to be bought from the stores, or otherwise not able to be bought by everyone at any given moment assuming everyone had the enough amount of kron) finds itself with more people wanting and trying to buy it than people who are able to get it. Many drops are subject to inflation (leather, xen stones, etc).
As an example, if 10 people were selling a xen stone for 600k, 20 people were selling for 800k, and 30 people were selling for 1 mil, the 10 xens would go first, and the price would inflate to 800k. If the demand was 10 xens, the price would stop there, and anyone else selling xens would price theirs lower than 800k in competition with the people who priced their xens at 800k. If the demand hit more than 30 (in this example) then the 800k xens would be bought out and the price would be 1 million. Even though the actual, in-game prices are much more specific and they involve many MANY people, it still occurs under the same principle.
Artificial Inflation:
Artificial inflation, or inflation that is caused with intention by someone or a group of people, is when the demand of an item is purposely surged upward to increase the price of an item. Usually this involves a certain amount of people to participate in, where they buy out all the cheapest of an item with no real intention of needing the item. Usually this inflates an item for a few days, but the price goes down quickly simply because the surge in demand can't be upheld for long enough, and other sellers of the item will start selling their items, pricing them lower and lower until they sell, causing the prices to fall again.
Monopoly:
Although this IS a boardgame, the game was based off a term that is coined upon people who buy out the competition to make it so that they are the ONLY supplier of the desired item, and are able to price the item at whatever price they wish to. This, if the monopoly is successful, can be extremely annoying (the only check upon this is if the buyers are unwilling to buy the item any longer, but that usually involves wanted and not needed items).
An example would be books higher than level 1, which can be hard to come by. If someone were to buy out all the level 3 books of all skills, there would be no competition to fight with and lower the price to try to increase sales, so that one person owning all the level 3 books could sell them all for 300k, which is rediculous.
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*
Extra goodie threads for your general knowledge!:
Sinks to balance the economy inflation--Zeltar (
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*)
Is this a Xen Scam???????--ihuang (http://www.outspark.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106713)(This involves the rising xen prices of [around] September, 2008 and prior)
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*
Can't think of much else to put. I'll add something if anything comes up!
Credits:
Raemrazr--Go to post (http://www.outspark.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1122536&postcount=2)
A Guide to the Economy
Simple enough, this is a guide to how the economy of Secret of the Solstice works. It was made more or less because some people were getting pretty tired of explaining the situation over and over again to other people who were trying to come up with some idea to get prices to be affordable. In this guide, Kron generation, Kron flow, Kron sinks, and inflation are covered (and maybe more).
Definition of Kron: Kron, in Secret of the Solstice, is the name for the money that circulates throughout the game. It is used to exchange for goods, though not services (which differs from the real world in that sense).
Economy explanation: Throughout games and sites (the simpler economies, there are whole professions about the real world economy and I'm too young to have had enough education to explain it. Doubt you'd like to know every aspect of the real-world economy anyway), economy springs forth when money is created as a use/exchange for goods (and maybe services). Money on these games/sites are usually created through obtaining something of worth at chance, be it money itself or something worth selling. When the money is created, it is added to the economy's "pool", where it gets spent and saved, and it circulates around for a while until it is put into a sink.
The more money that is circulating, the higher the numbers that things would cost (though the actual worth of the item may stay the same). If you think about it, say you have a unit of money that is worth 1, and you have to spend 5 of those to buy milk (milk thereby costing 5). If there are more 1s around, they lose some of their worth, which may make your 1 really worth just .5. Then it takes 10 1s to buy milk because the worth went down of your 1.
That leads to the first point in kron:
Kron Generation:
Kron is generated through many different ways. The following can generate kron and add it into the pool of existing kron to be circulated around or absorbed into a "sink" (something that will remove the kron from circulation):
Monster Drops
Selling items to the store
Quests
Whenever a monster is killed, it could drop equipment, potions, kron, or a rare item. Any of these is worth something, and can be sold back to the General store for kron. Since the General store creates that kron you get, kron is added to the system that way. Also, when you complete a quest and get kron from the quest, it joins the circulation.
Explanation (Continued):
If there were only generators of money and only other people's pockets to spend it on, the amount that everything would cost would just keep going on with more and more money in the system. Even if it's true worth is "X" amount, since all our little "x"s we've got to buy the big "X" keep decreasing in value, we need more and more to buy it.
Kron Sinks:
Thankfully there are some sinks to the economy in Secret of the Solstice. Every time you buy something from any NPC-run store, you're "deleting" the kron you payed, in a sense, and taking it out of the system. The general stores and armour stores are sinks in the economy. A special sink is creating a guild (takes 10 million kron out of the system), or any other part of the game where you pay an NPC rather than another player.
Kron Flow:
As kron is "Created" and "Destroyed", it goes between the two in a process. When kron is created someone might hold on to it, and it'll get stored. It could be spent/traded to another person for their use. Kron flows all over the place, throughout people's pockets and lost on the floor and other things like that. It's a continual process until the kron is "destroyed".
Supply and Demand:
The prices of those items are dependant on two things: the supply and the demand. The supply is the amount that is able to be created or the amount availiable to be bought, and the demand is the amount of people who want to buy it. If the demand is higher than the supply, the price inflates. The demand will eat out the lower prices until only the higher ones are left, and it'll just keep going until the demand is no longer willing to buy the product due to high prices. Deflation, though, happens when there are too many of an item and not enough people who are willing to buy it. People will put the item up in their shops hoping for a sale, but when it doesn't happen they'll lower the price to entice people to come buy. If the supply is big enough, people will go for the cheapest which will always exist since there aren't enough people to buy out the cheapest and make the item more expensive.
(I'm having a bit of trouble trying to explain the supply and demand without giving the wrong explanation, if someone could help reinforce this with a better explanation, I'll quote it, put it here, and give due credit to the poster)
Competition:
When more than one person each gets the same type of one item and they try to sell it, they become competetors of eachother. Each of them wants to get the most out of their sell while still being able to sell, so they put their prices lower than others but higher than the lowest they're willing to sell the item at.
Inflation:
Now here's the biggy. Inflation is what happens when an unsteady item (an item that is only found by special means, not able to be bought from the stores, or otherwise not able to be bought by everyone at any given moment assuming everyone had the enough amount of kron) finds itself with more people wanting and trying to buy it than people who are able to get it. Many drops are subject to inflation (leather, xen stones, etc).
As an example, if 10 people were selling a xen stone for 600k, 20 people were selling for 800k, and 30 people were selling for 1 mil, the 10 xens would go first, and the price would inflate to 800k. If the demand was 10 xens, the price would stop there, and anyone else selling xens would price theirs lower than 800k in competition with the people who priced their xens at 800k. If the demand hit more than 30 (in this example) then the 800k xens would be bought out and the price would be 1 million. Even though the actual, in-game prices are much more specific and they involve many MANY people, it still occurs under the same principle.
Artificial Inflation:
Artificial inflation, or inflation that is caused with intention by someone or a group of people, is when the demand of an item is purposely surged upward to increase the price of an item. Usually this involves a certain amount of people to participate in, where they buy out all the cheapest of an item with no real intention of needing the item. Usually this inflates an item for a few days, but the price goes down quickly simply because the surge in demand can't be upheld for long enough, and other sellers of the item will start selling their items, pricing them lower and lower until they sell, causing the prices to fall again.
Monopoly:
Although this IS a boardgame, the game was based off a term that is coined upon people who buy out the competition to make it so that they are the ONLY supplier of the desired item, and are able to price the item at whatever price they wish to. This, if the monopoly is successful, can be extremely annoying (the only check upon this is if the buyers are unwilling to buy the item any longer, but that usually involves wanted and not needed items).
An example would be books higher than level 1, which can be hard to come by. If someone were to buy out all the level 3 books of all skills, there would be no competition to fight with and lower the price to try to increase sales, so that one person owning all the level 3 books could sell them all for 300k, which is rediculous.
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*
Extra goodie threads for your general knowledge!:
Sinks to balance the economy inflation--Zeltar (
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*)
Is this a Xen Scam???????--ihuang (http://www.outspark.com/forums/showthread.php?t=106713)(This involves the rising xen prices of [around] September, 2008 and prior)
*`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'`'-., ,.-'*
Can't think of much else to put. I'll add something if anything comes up!
Credits:
Raemrazr--Go to post (http://www.outspark.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1122536&postcount=2)