Excelsior

This is not meant to be a whine/complain session post. I respectfully ask that if you have something to chime in on, you do so with an eye towards improvement (as I shall try to do as well).

Observations since my time back:
-There are an influx of new players (assuming due to voting and the fact that shard is awesome with superior staff, customs, etc.)
-There seems to be smaller shelf life for these players
-Many Vets are still here, many have also left
-Vendor spots both in TC and Makoto, as well as the world tele are as barren as I've ever seen them
-Items that previously sold, languish now (the only market seems to be for bone crushers, imps, and not much else, even dex gear)
-As a result, we have a TON of worthless items, artis, etc. etc.
-The market forum posts are far fewer than they used to be despite a steady flow of players.

Overall, the economy just seems...well...broken. How do we fix it? A few thoughts:
-Bring back prices on the vendors site (this will likely be highly unpopular, especially with the existing rich player base, but there was incentive to spend less time searching and more time buying and selling prior to the removal). Price controls rarely work and the problem, IMHO, with items being devalued had more to do with supply and demand than listing prices on a website.
-Overhaul artifacts to provide more incentive to collect more than just a small sample from Doom, paragon, etc. etc.
-Wait for Elysium and hope +Nyx fixes it because she is smarter than the vast majority of us.
-Lower the rates on the rent charged in TC, world tele, etc. (If i want to sell MiBs for 500gp, makes no sense to pay 20k in rent minimum per week to do so). Instead charge a fee based on volume or inventory.

These are just off the top of my head in 5 mins. I think there have been many player oriented solutions (Player Loans, Lava Shop, etc.), but these seem to see minimal success (owners please weigh in). So, in YOUR opinion, what's up with the economy and how can it be fixed (if indeed it even needs fixing). I'll add some more thoughts as they come into my head as well, this was just to get the ball rolling.

TL;DR What's up with the economy and how can we fix it?

Just another thought, the divide between the haves and the have nots seems to be increasing, just as it does in real world economics during a downturn. This is because the haves accumulate more at a lower price, but have less incentive to part with their things...Cannon fodder.

Pariah wrote:Bring back prices on the vendors site

i think this was a main factor for the decrease in prices, since it led to ferocious undercutting of players, resulting in a steep decrease in prices. with the influx of new players, these players now assume that the low prices are the standard. the problem is that it is a vicious cycle since players will not be able to sell their items for much gold and thus make it harder to acquire quality items and gear. i think it is slowly getting better.

for example when ointments and goc sold for 7k and 5m, respectively, it was easier to farm gold and acquire items since deeds in the ed room did not change in price; however, a player's purchasing power did decrease with a drop in prices making it harder to acquire the ed necessary to progress.

Good points Alex. I guess I would posit that prices aren't really increasing either. An item is worth what you can get someone to pay for it, and having tried to sell a few mid to higher end items, the problem I have in the main is, no one seems to want them (not even an offer) unless they are ridiculously cheap. As a result, I've sold them at an even more discounted price, or held onto them. This results in me holding on to items, as well as not being able to purchase other items while I wait for mine to sell. So, while I could maybe undercut or sell quickly at a cost previously (with the prices on the vendors site), I'm selling at even MORE of a discount because either traffic has gone way down on both the vendors site and the forums and thus no one knows about it, or the purchasing base has changed (very possible due to the influx of newer players), etc. From what I've seen, outside of a few select items (BCs, etc.), not much is really selling unless heavily discounted (moreso than even when the prices were active on vendors). Again, this is my observation, much of which is anecdotal, so I appreciate you weighing in.

Alex is correct, the downturn started in the extreme once the vendor's site went up with prices listed. From the staff's "overlord view", it was very noticeable that the site had a severe affect on the economy of the shard.

In my opinion there are a lot of factors causing issues with the economy of the shard currently, such as:
- Vendor's site. Even though the prices are no longer listed, the damage has been done and it will likely take 5-10x as long to repair as it did to destroy the economy.

- Vendor's site #2. I personally would wholeheartedly vote for heavy changes to the site listing fees. I personally feel they are oppressively high right now and that is causing less players to bother trying to use it. From a psychology standpoint, I also feel it causes younger players to become discouraged and not make as much effort to sell their items for a good price using traditional methods (world chat ads, forums, etc).

- Freebies. Again, from the staff's see-all-viewpoint, it is clear that the constant giving of freebies to new players is having a negative effect on the economy. "+Nyx, you crazy chick, how can that possibly affect the economy" you say? Let me explain. Giving a new player a maxed mule or 5, some nice LRC gear, and a decent weapon may seem like a super nice thing to do; and it is nice. But it also essentially teaches that newbie that on UO, one doesn't really need to work very hard for the things they need in order to progress through the game. 3 years ago, new players were greeted by a staffer and given some goodies that worked for a set period of time to help them get started. Sometimes a vet would help them out with a single item, but it wasn't the common practice for a new player to be essentially showered with things it would otherwise take them a few weeks to earn. And 3 years ago, the economy was (for the most part) in a better place, new player retention was higher, overall game satisfaction was higher. In the last year or so, older players have begun showering newbies with items until the things they are given by the staff are useless to them. As a result, there has been a drastic change in the attitude of new players. This is largely because they are taught to expect things to be given to them, or to be easy. Ultima Online isn't a graphics-heavy MMO full of leveling and raiding like the Big Boys of Gaming, but it is in many ways a very challenging and complex game that requires commitment and work. Everyone on UOEX has the option to buy the ED for their gear via donating, but you'd be surprised how few people do that in a big way. A handful will donate for a relayer or two, but most don't. The attitude problem is coming from too much being given too soon by fellow players, as well as the general 'why work for it' mentality being bred via chats. There are other factors that go into newbie retention, of course, and those are being worked on (a more friendly and sensical new player starting area, more quests for the low and mid-range players, etc), but largely the older players are sort of shooting themselves in the foot by coddling the new players too much.

- Narrow mindedness. A few years ago, a small handful of about 3 vets made their gear in a very different way than had been common before that point. Over time, a sort of monkey-see monkey-do chain of events happened where more and more players began using that model for their own relayers, until we have now reached the point where almost all players currently working on relayers are striving to duplicate only that set of items; and new players just getting started are instructed by their fellow players to only use this small handful of items as relayers and that the rest are "crap". For places like Touria, the added HP one will get from a bone crusher over a tokuno major arty relayer will likely be useful, but for the vast majority of players it isn't going to make a noticeable difference. On top of that, +V and I plan to implement a sort of relayer trade-in station to allow players to change their relayers without a full loss on the cost of the deeds that went into making it. This will be to encourage players to utilize the new artifacts being released in the facets. But, in the mean time, players are being far too narrow minded, and perpetuating that problem onto others by giving bad advice until we've now hit a point where only 2-3 artifacts are worth their pixels.

- Entitlement. Another major attitude problem going on lately that has surprisingly strong repercussions with the economy is this sense of entitlement. It seems like every single day we're receiving pages of someone who did something neglectful/stupid/thoughtless or otherwise made an "oopsie" and they expect us to refund them. Common sense is failing everywhere in the world, but especially on our shard. The fact that everyone feels like they shouldn't have to pay for, work for, or risk losing anything in the game means that nobody's really willing to spend the appropriate amounts of gold on good items. It's popular to try to guilt us into a freebie, but if we give too may refunds/item replacements/etc, then we're seriously hurting the economy. The player has done something silly, but has had zero loss, so gold/EDs/an item that would normally have been taken out of the economy is still in, less sinking is happening for the right reasons, and players aren't bothering to pay attention to what they're doing (because why bother, if there's no real risk) or part with their gold for decent stuff.

- Resistance to change. So many players are completely resistant or outright psychotically opposed to any sort of change that affects them in a way they don't like. Yes, it's a little scary to think about your precious imps being changed so that they cost more or have losses upon death, but it's not just about 'you'. It's about the entire shard and trying to get the economy as balanced as possible and keep it there. When there are systems that are unbalanced, guess what - it causes far-reaching unbalances for everything from player satisfaction to the economy. It'd be nice if more players saw the bigger picture when changes are made rather than just starting to foam at the mouth and rage at us. Changes need to be made to help the economy but if everyone's trying to bully Colibri into un-changing it again, nothing will EVER improve for our economy or the shard as a whole.

- TC/MZ pricing. These chairs probably need a tweak to pricing to encourage more younger players to utilize them. Alternately, I'd also vote in favor of making TC/MZ vendor fees a certain amount for accounts over x age and a much smaller amount for accounts under x age. Once an account utilizing the cheap price aged past the allowed point, the player would have an option to move to the higher pricing within 10 days, and if no option is selected the vendor would be closed.

- Vendor fees. IMO the vendor fees need to have some sort of sliding scale now that things on our shard have changed so much. There should be a way for a player to list an expensive/desirable item without paying excessive amounts in daily vendor fees. Coli's still mulling this one over, and this isn't the place to discuss it, but that's one of my thoughts.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Rest assured, the staff are painfully aware of these issues and are working on repairing them as best we can. Unfortunately for us, a lot of it rests on the players' shoulders and aren't things we can change. I'd love to see everyone work together to help us improve the economy of the shard, as well as player satisfaction, but one can only hope for so many miracles

i agree with +nyx - but i must add [exex factor - some items are half now the prices before the system ...

Ah, yes I'd forgotten to add [exex. Coli had planned awhile back to make it so that you couldn't list items for a specific percentage above or below the current going price to help prevent this wicked under/over pricing that happens on there, but he hasn't had a chance to implement that yet.

I know what I have as suggestions may not be looked at in quite a positive light but here we go....

Some of the things that I see that may help the economy in general.

1. Limit the amount of ed that are able to be purchased in a given month. I understand that the shard runs on donations and understand that to the fullest extent. But the fact that as of right now you have virtually an unlimited supply of ed available if you're willing to donate the money that its way too easy to just make money for some... (yes I know that not everyone can donate) ...

Perhaps setting a cap. The shard only needs X amount of Donation Dollars per month to keep it running... Set a limit... Both for max amount that can be donated as a whole and a limit on the amount an individual can donate. This may be rebuffed by some but it s a way to impose some physical limitations... This would force people to buy More ed's in game rather than just donating for more.

2. Make it against shard rules to sell anything for Real money... I know several people that would dislike this but it just makes since to do it. If you donate money you are doing it out of the kindness of your own heart ... You should not be donating for the expectation that you are making an investment that you can get a return on or claim back at a later time. I understand that enforcing such a rule would be difficult and that just because you have a rule on it doesn't mean that it will not still happen but it will make people think twice before doing it....

3. Restructure the pricing on many of the deco items. Some items are just way overpriced in the deco rooms .. both of them .. the new and the older stuff ... I understand some of the wanting to limit it but putting such a hefty price on some things just doesn't make since ... putting the price of things a bit more in line would make many of the things more desirable for those of us who like to deco A lot.
Also adding more deco ... like the older stuff could help ... More stealables or adding things to the loot tables to encourage more killing of monsters to get thins and spread the types across the entire shard to promote going to specific areas to try to get specific things ...

4. Take down the vendor site all together ... the vendor site has done way more damage than any good .. forcing people to actually look around to get items promotes a much better economy when it comes to pricing things out ... this would also give a bit of life back to the vendor shop areas as a vendor hub and to the people who host vendor malls .. it would encourage more people to look for things ...

5. Make it to where you can break a relayer back down to the deeds used to make it along with the original item .. at a cost ... and have a system put into place to return the original relayered item in a diminished fission .. i.e. a level 100 item when broken would be returned to you as a level 80 item can cannot be leveled back up further ... but you would get back the relayer deed and the bless deed and maybe a portion of any luck deeds spent ... (i.e. you lose like 25% of the luck value ) ... and make relayers themselves account bound .. so they cannot be traded or sold ... thus making a 0 market for them ... if you want to upgrade ... then break an item and then make a new item from the left over's so to speak ...

6. for the Exex market ... put bottom line prices items can be sold for in there as well as bottom line prices people can buy them for ... i.e. you cannot buy a shovel for less than 1 gp as an example ... ( not as an price ) .. but it makes a bottom line ...

7. Change the crafting system and item drop system to make it where some of the best items are player crafted rather than looted items to promote more player crafting / making of items not just to fill bods. (an overall improvement to the bod system and the rewards it offers may also be encouraging as well ) .

8. Putting account age limits on some items ... IE GOC and or relayers ... so people have something to work up to ... rather than just having people give them a bunch of things or buy up / pony up a bunch of cash to be instantly leet ... rather discouraging to see someone who has been on the shard for a few weeks walking around with a few relayers / goc just because they had some friends give 'em some gear and or they donated x amount of euro to have enough ed to buy it all ...

9. Impose a stricter account dormancy policy.... opens up more opportunities for people to place housing and such ... some of what discourages some people is the inability to place houses because there are so many houses placed from people that just don't play on a regular basis or haven't been on in 3 or 4 or more months and the house just takes up unnecessary space ...

10... update the yard wand ... Add more of the house tile / wall deco options from the housing customization tool to the yard wand and impose a 5 percent refund tax to all yarrdwand item refunds rather than a 100% refund .. to be more in line with the fee that is imposed to those that re-customize a house several times.

I understand that some of these ideas would take a good amount of coding to do...
But I hope that maybe some of these ideas may be looked at as possibilities to help improve the overall economy and community on the shard.

Lestat A. Zero

I agree with 100% of what nyx brought up in this post

I agree double with the section on narrow minded behavior

there is no reason one has to pine over a 100% bonecrusher set, there are sops that do the fc +1 without spending points, items with high resists, high hci/dci a relayer set can be made in numerous ways and they are all cool.. nothing wrong with being a little unique..

yes, x weapon is 'the best' but that doesn't prevent other weapons from being 'interesting' or 'fun'

etc etc etc

"hope +Nyx fixes it because she is smarter than the vast majority of us."

Clearly I was right in the first post! +Nyx, I appreciate your thoughtful insight from the overworld view. It was right on point in so many ways and it's amazing to see staff that are so finely attuned to the nuances of the various issues. The thought put into your post shows just how perceptive you are as well as how passionate you are about Excelsior. Thank you. Lestat, I do like some of those ideas. While many are touchy subjects (house/account decay, donations, etc_, I think many of them were insightful. I do think the economy could benefit from some of the existing dormant items reentering the economy a la houses collapsing, etc. Right now, it's very tough to know when or if this is going to happen so those items are usually lost altogether I believe. I could be wrong about this though.

This might be a slight tangent but please bear with me.

I've been on and off active on Excelsior for the last few years and one of the aspects I miss from when I first started was seeing the variety of weapons that players leveled. Now players are only willing to spend their time and gold on weapons that will fit a very hive-minded mold.

In relation to the economy, would it be possible to edit other weapons so they are more desirable to level, thus potentially increasing market activity?
For example, removing the double cost point system on other not so popular Doom artifacts, or having the aspect "Hit Dispel" actually be useful?

While this isn't a large economy fix, it could encourage players to branch out a bit and try different things, hopefully increasing demand on items that were previously undesired.

Here is most of the things wrong with the economy and potential ways to fix them.

Vendors.uoex.net Is one of the biggest killers as with all the vendors there are, it is very easy for any player to simply search who is selling the items they want to, and very quickly undercut the competition.

Removing that site instead of playing Sheriff of Nottingham and adding a tax for anyone not in TC or MZ (who already pay a 200k gp + 20k per extra week tax) is not the answer but more of a way to make others want to undercut even more to sell faster.


GoC Quest Prices have fallen due to players being able to go to one area and literally save up the next year worth of items in a few hrs.

Fix for that would be to make all the quest items decay after 7 days (minus the completion gems of course). So you are going to actually do the quest when you are doing the quest and not just turning in the pieces u got a year ago to get more GoC to sell.


Artifacts from Doom Gauntlet is a problem imho because there are 2 gauntlets. Remove one and the arti drop rate is decreased already enough for less items out there.

[exex has a lot of uses....But also has a TON of flaws. It takes 3 clicks to instantly undercut or even deceive another trying to make lower sales with pricing. This actually has easy fixes.....You cannot undercut someone unless you use 10 percent up or down pending the state of buy or sell orders (you could but would not show as first to sell/buy without the 10 percent until that player sold). Remove a person from being able to Have a sell order or even SELL something they have a buy order for (same for the opposite). Remove a person from being allowed to have say for ingots 5 orders in at 5 different prices to intentionally lower/raise the value of what they are obtaining/selling (deception to save gold/hurt another from selling).



The reason weapons are different now in ways of re-layer etc is due to the fact that players were sick of using items that lose their value to the player after a few more re-layers are added. Fixes can be a few things of having a DMG cap from Str (not a great idea but could ease the tension of BC ONLY, but then again BC to staff is 200 more ed per so probably doesn't bother them). Fixing the luck system could make other items with luck be more attractive for re-layer. Also players should realize you don't HAVE to use Bone Crushers, Luxe and I just decided a while back that why not have the DMG higher and get the most out of our re-layers/ED and most followed. But really anything re-layered will do.

And for weapons players think they can just get the best right away and use junk until they obtain them. Just level a weapon that isn't end game, there are tons of weapons a lot do not use because they get in a guild or the mindset that you have to have the best or nothing. Waste more time getting bored having 23423432 re-layers and that end game weapon if you ask me. Why do you think you have 20 Donators sitting in towns that haven't done half of what you can do in this game.


Those are a few things that could instantly fix the economy of items. You may not like them, but they are the source of most of the economy dumping going on.

lestatzero wrote:2. Make it against shard rules to sell anything for Real money... I know several people that would dislike this but it just makes since to do it. If you donate money you are doing it out of the kindness of your own heart ... You should not be donating for the expectation that you are making an investment that you can get a return on or claim back at a later time. I understand that enforcing such a rule would be difficult and that just because you have a rule on it doesn't mean that it will not still happen but it will make people think twice before doing it....

This has been going on for years now and hasn't really had any noticeable effect on the economy. There are some changes to relayers coming that will already provide a certain level of 'sinking' for selling them.

lestatzero wrote: 3. Restructure the pricing on many of the deco items. Some items are just way overpriced in the deco rooms .. both of them .. the new and the older stuff ... I understand some of the wanting to limit it but putting such a hefty price on some things just doesn't make since ... putting the price of things a bit more in line would make many of the things more desirable for those of us who like to deco A lot.
Also adding more deco ... like the older stuff could help ... More stealables or adding things to the loot tables to encourage more killing of monsters to get thins and spread the types across the entire shard to promote going to specific areas to try to get specific things ...

This idea seems relatively off-topic. Keeping a set price for items retains their value and gives people something to work toward. Making them cheaper is just promoting yet more of those self-serving attitudes and lack of desire to work for anything that I mentioned in my previous post. Regarding additions of stealables and loot, obviously there are 2 facets coming and those have already been announced as part of our additions.

lestatzero wrote:5. Make it to where you can break a relayer back down to the deeds used to make it along with the original item .. at a cost ... and have a system put into place to return the original relayered item in a diminished fission .. i.e. a level 100 item when broken would be returned to you as a level 80 item can cannot be leveled back up further ... but you would get back the relayer deed and the bless deed and maybe a portion of any luck deeds spent ... (i.e. you lose like 25% of the luck value ) ... and make relayers themselves account bound .. so they cannot be traded or sold ... thus making a 0 market for them ... if you want to upgrade ... then break an item and then make a new item from the left over's so to speak ...

These are things the staff have already said will be happening. Let's try to keep the thread from becoming confusing. +1 ideas you like, or contribute new ones, but everyone please refrain from reposting previously stated ideas as your own.

lestatzero wrote:6. for the Exex market ... put bottom line prices items can be sold for in there as well as bottom line prices people can buy them for ... i.e. you cannot buy a shovel for less than 1 gp as an example ... ( not as an price ) .. but it makes a bottom line ...

Again, in my previous post, I had already said this would be implemented.

lestatzero wrote:7. Change the crafting system and item drop system to make it where some of the best items are player crafted rather than looted items to promote more player crafting / making of items not just to fill bods. (an overall improvement to the bod system and the rewards it offers may also be encouraging as well ) .

8. Putting account age limits on some items ... IE GOC and or relayers ... so people have something to work up to ... rather than just having people give them a bunch of things or buy up / pony up a bunch of cash to be instantly leet ... rather discouraging to see someone who has been on the shard for a few weeks walking around with a few relayers / goc just because they had some friends give 'em some gear and or they donated x amount of euro to have enough ed to buy it all ...

These have been discussed a few times amongst the staff. +V and I have mentioned numerous times that revamps to crafting are coming after the facets are finished. For limiting items, Colibri hasn't wanted to do that previously.

lestatzero wrote:9. Impose a stricter account dormancy policy.... opens up more opportunities for people to place housing and such ... some of what discourages some people is the inability to place houses because there are so many houses placed from people that just don't play on a regular basis or haven't been on in 3 or 4 or more months and the house just takes up unnecessary space ...

10... update the yard wand ... Add more of the house tile / wall deco options from the housing customization tool to the yard wand and impose a 5 percent refund tax to all yarrdwand item refunds rather than a 100% refund .. to be more in line with the fee that is imposed to those that re-customize a house several times.

Coli and I have mentioned that another facet will open specifically for housing sometime this spring. As for the yard wand, that might see an update but again that doesn't have any affect on the economy of the shard unless we make items nonrefundable or only partially refundable after 24 hours past the time they were placed, which I am strongly in favor of.

Pariah wrote:"hope +Nyx fixes it because she is smarter than the vast majority of us."

Clearly I was right in the first post! +Nyx, I appreciate your thoughtful insight from the overworld view. It was right on point in so many ways and it's amazing to see staff that are so finely attuned to the nuances of the various issues. The thought put into your post shows just how perceptive you are as well as how passionate you are about Excelsior. Thank you. Lestat, I do like some of those ideas. While many are touchy subjects (house/account decay, donations, etc_, I think many of them were insightful. I do think the economy could benefit from some of the existing dormant items reentering the economy a la houses collapsing, etc. Right now, it's very tough to know when or if this is going to happen so those items are usually lost altogether I believe. I could be wrong about this though.

hehe, thanks

Re: dormant items, it's actually a lot better for the economy if they decay with the account/house they're in.

danimon wrote:In relation to the economy, would it be possible to edit other weapons so they are more desirable to level, thus potentially increasing market activity?
For example, removing the double cost point system on other not so popular Doom artifacts, or having the aspect "Hit Dispel" actually be useful?

Possible, yes, but it's unlikely to happen. We try to retain as much of the "original" game as possible. Going back through and modifying all the OSI style weapons would not only be a huge undertaking, it would change the game more than we're willing to. Some folks do come here to play UO as old-school as they can, avoiding relayers and whatnot, so we wouldn't want to alienate those folks by changing everything. What I could see happening, though, is some way to make them useful to older players via collection, questing, or item enhancement.

Dramoor wrote:GoC Quest Prices have fallen due to players being able to go to one area and literally save up the next year worth of items in a few hrs.

Fix for that would be to make all the quest items decay after 7 days (minus the completion gems of course). So you are going to actually do the quest when you are doing the quest and not just turning in the pieces u got a year ago to get more GoC to sell.

Artifacts from Doom Gauntlet is a problem imho because there are 2 gauntlets. Remove one and the arti drop rate is decreased already enough for less items out there.

I actually 100% agree with both of these. I have long pushed for the GoC items to have a decay rate, but the gem itself to be permanent. I am also in favor of making GoC gear (after using the gem) account bind on equip. The gauntlet, I would also agree that the 2nd one isn't necessary nowadays, particularly since we finally seem to have squashed that mentality of players keeping to a small group like it was 2 years ago.

danimon, I really like the idea of perhaps removing the arti tag of other doom rares so as to make them more useful. My hope is that on the arti front, the new facets and artis we have will assist in moving from the hive mentality. Thanks for the thoughts. Dramoor, I will be honest, I only ever understand about a third of what you say. I think you operate on a wholly different level than most of us in terms of in game knowledge and experience. However, I will say you brought up some good points about GOC decay, Exex, and the vendors site. I also agree that the mentality of the players must change to make anything stick. Thanks for chiming in. I need to re-read your post a few times and I will likely have some other questions for you...