I've been seeing a lot of people go on about how terrible the economy is in it's current state. So I wanted to open up a discussion about it. Please keep this discussion civil and don't bash anyone for their opinion. That however does not mean you can't criticize them for it.
We will be talking about the following subjects:- Item prices
- Moneymaking
- Sinks
- The no item staking change
- The death timer change
My opinionFirst off, my opinion may be somewhat biased due to the way I play the game. I'm by no means saying my opinion is absolute, it's just what I think of it. My opinion is mostly based on my experience with things and things I've commonly come across.
Item pricesI've heard quite a few people complain about the prices. Some say it makes it really difficult to make money from bossing, others say it makes it so there are no large things to work towards. While I see where those people are coming from, I find it difficult to agree with them.
I can understand it makes PvM quite a lot less satisfying if the factor of being able to get absolute bank from a single drop every time you get a kill, however in my experience that's really not where the bulk of the money from PvM comes from. I may not be too big on bossing, but the majority of money I've made from bossing came from the non-rare drops. Which would suffice to make me believe killing that boss was worth it.
As for there being no large goals to work towards, I fully disagree with that statement. While pretty much all items have gotten cheaper over time, you still don't attain a full tab of max gear by killing goblins for a few minutes. Buyable skills also still aren't all that cheap. There are things to work towards, the lower prices just put less of a focus on gear.
MoneymakingSo many people seem to not be willing to do anything more complex than begging or picking up snowballs for money, it's somewhat sad. I've had quite a few people ask me how to make money, and usually the first response I get from them is either "I don't have the levels" or "I don't have the gear". In my opinion there are more than enough ways of making money, however it wouldn't be that bad to have something to get these kind people to do stuff.
It might be nice to have something people can do daily/weekly/monthly for a quick sum of cash. Just to get them a very basic amount of gear and put them in a place where they can take on the low-medium levels of PvM. It might also be a good idea to add more basic gear to shops.
Moneymaking methods for lower levels in skilling might also be a decent idea, though I currently don't have any good ideas for this and there are currently some methods ingame already.
SinksI don't really have to state why we need sinks, I think I've done that enough times. It's just rather difficult to think up and implement a good one. So I'm just gonna talk about a single idea I've had for this part.
We've never really had something the community could collectively work and contribute towards ingame. What I thought of was sinking items for a double exp weekend. There would be an object or npc we could donate items and maybe cash to. Everything donated would add a bit of progress towards the goal of a double exp weekend. There would be no time limit to this goal.
To prevent people from just donating junk, there should be a whitelist of things that you're able to donate. If specific items need to be sinked, they can be given a bonus multiplier towards progress if those specific items are donated. There might need to be a limit to the amount of dxp weekends we can have monthly to not end up in the situation we were in with dxp weekends before. Alternatively, double ticket weekends could be part of this as well.
There should be a list of people that contributed towards it so that people can have fun bragging about it. It might also be something for clans to work on and contribute to.
The no item staking changeIn my opinion this was a necessary change. Stakers buying out items would cause items to skyrocket and plummet in price every now and then, I'm quite glad that that's no longer much of an issue. It improves the flow of items in the economy by a lot, it's a great change.
The death timer changeI'm not sure what my stance is on it. On one hand, players are actually losing their items to death, which is good because dying is supposed to be somewhat of a punishment. On the other hand, it's extremely frustrating for people that they physically can't return in time to certain locations to pick their stuff back up whereas they could've before. Other people also have an easier time getting your items after you die, which kind of defeats the purpose of the change. This change shouldn't be final, that's all I really have to say about it.
That's all I have to say for now. Feel free to post your own thoughts on the topic.