The Economist ~ We’re not there yet

Day 1,031, 17:15 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

I speak to you on the heels of yet another announcement from the admins. A friend of mine told me that this is the seventh major change to the economy module announced since day 970. As an economist, it is enough to make you want to throw your calculator and papers into the fire and quit the damn game.

First of all some good news. The economy is steadily picking up, since the professions were merged. More competition in previously understaffed sectors has meant a more reasonable wage/price difference, though the margins are still a little wide in some cases. Income has reached around 80% of its pre-V2 state, though that is not saying much since we were in the midst of a recession when v2 arrived.

Now the bad news. I predict these changes will be yet another bump on an already bumpy ride. Since V2 arrived, we have seen the admins make mistakes, rectify them, rectify the rectifications and then... well you get the picture. In any case they have finally admitted defeat and are going to burn practically everything new in v2, including large portions of the war module, happiness and time management.

For me, this is a cowardly move. The community was mad because they made mistakes, not because the concepts themselves were bad ones. After sacrificing something in the order of one hundred thousand players to make v2 happen, backtracking is a waste. The admins should have stuck with happiness, time management and so on, but adapted them to make it easier to understand and more demand-led. I would also say that at no point were any of the New World’s senior economic figures consulted, despite us being by definition on the rough end of things.


lol, a cat

So what we have is a series of botched patch jobs followed by a cowardly retreat into the “safe” territory of V1 economics. Let me explain to you the scale of this disaster with two examples. Firstly, imagine I have a house company, Iain’s Housing. It’s Q5 and I work on the basic principle that most people will want the maximum days of usage, ie 100. So my remaining customisation points give 5 wellness and 5 happiness per day. Now V2 finally arrives and...nobody wants my house. Turns out 5 wellness is pretty crappy. So I stop making them. Eventually, they change this...but now my houses are still uncompetitive because now people are making 50 wellness 100 day houses. Oh well. Finally, the admins scrap happiness altogether. This is example 1. The instability of this environment makes operating a company impossible. How can you possibly work out an economic advantage, or an angle on the market when the whole mechanics of the game change every week?

For my second example, I will use a food company. Iain’s Food was a Q3 company in V1, and when Rising came along like most people I customised 2:1 in favour of wellness. This is because happiness was an unknown factor in V1. Once V2 arrives we realise that nearly everyone loses 5+ happiness per day, unless they spend all their time in bed, and my company is rubbish all of a sudden. Somehow I manage to downgrade my company and upgrade to be mostly happiness based. Then what happens! Module changes again, and you can eat multiple food, meaning that the most in demand food is 9 or 6 wellness food (Q3/2) which can be used as a tanking substitute. Once again through no fault of my own the module has dumped on me.

These are two examples to illustrate my next point. It is not bad mechanics which mess up a market, though it helps: it is instability. Instability can be caused by war, region changes, population booms and declines. The worst type however is when the market changes suddenly, and the entire nature of a product changes. In a situation where remigration is not possible to meet new demand, you end up with a square peg and only circular holes. The entire economy starts grinding away, and the lubrication is the hundreds of broken and useless companies and frustrated, quitting citizens.

If the admins had admitted the new module needed some working on, consulted business owners and economists, but made no major changes, we would be well on the path to recovery. It is always tempting to use “God-Mode” to solve problems, but really it only exacerbates them and further delays the reaction of the community to the problem. These changes frustrate and damage the main part of the game: the economy. Those who said the military or political modules were more important have been given an important if unwelcome lesson. As wages droop, national incomes falter, products become worthless and gold supply collapses, our entire game dies. And each change is a kick to the corpse.

Let’s hope that this change is the final one. Admins, show some backbone.