The reason why PMU's economy is poo

This is a problem many staff members are trying to fix, but they
erroneously tackle it in ways that are utterly annoying and only serve to devalue things even
more.

Now, I know this will probably be very unpopular with many people,
and maybe even cause drama, even though I have some suggestions for minimizing it. Watching the
included videos is reccomended, as I reference things mentioned in them and expand on them.


This is what happened in Germany post-WWI. The money wasn’t
even worth the paper it was printed on.


Yes, too much money in circulation is a bad thing, but how
things are devalued in that way doesn’t lower the price. This way increases the
price because everyone’s able to pay more, and it takes more money to equal the value that it was
before inflation.


Now, this video doesn’t go into detail on it, but when there is
very low demand for something, regardless of scarcity, the items aren’t sold for very much. Low
demand can be caused by the people not thinking that it’s worth the money to buy things. This
is the problem PMU suffers from the most, regarding the player based economy. Money’s growing
scarcer and scarcer, while good items retain their rarity.

The issues staff are tackling are important, but their priorities
are in the wrong places. They should be focusing on making items rarer and removing the
millions ‘in circulation’, although I’d argue that they aren’t really in circulation, as the players with this
money don’t spend it on anything.

Why don’t they spend it on anything? There’s no/a very small supply
of the things they want. And the items staff auction in an attempt to get rid of these items aren’t things that
they’d want to waste money on.

My suggestions to get rid of these millions are simple.
First, create a temple where the boss has a minuscule chance of dropping a Gible egg. Or make news of this
dungeon extremely public and make sure to periodically post updates of said temple. If the latter happens, auction
Gible eggs every week for two months.
Secondly, auction heart slates of legends not in the game yet. And Mystery Hats
While this can and probably will cause drama, this will be the only way to get these legends for a
little while.
Thirdly, auction some darned Sail Fossils. They’re extremely rare, as Holiday Palace is dead. They’ll probably
rake in a good chunk of money.
Fourthly, make all of the ‘good’ TMs and items rarer. This will no doubt result in an outcry, but if
staff truly care about boosting the player economy, they’ll do this.
Fifthly, have a poke-to-ekop conversion NPC. Preferably 5k poke per ekop. Actually, more money sinks
than the current ones. Maybe offer a return to certain HCs for 100k per visit, per visitor?

As someone who has actually done both;

  1. Studied Economics & International Relations
  2. Been PMU Staff

I find it important to give you all the details you need to analyze this properly.

I. PMU’s economy isn’t all that bad. You draw on real life examples, so to debunk your own context - PMU’s money circulation is probably better than a majority of countries. We just hear it too often because people complain a lot. The fact of the matter is, some inflation is actually good (linear, less than 4% ideally) because it symbolizes that actual growth is taking place; this doesn’t foreground said example, but you get the idea. Real policy making ensures that a reasonable amount of the masses have access to basic commodities like healthcare, welfare, education, whatever. In PMU, you can perform spectacularly well while never exceeding a 10k cap. So it’s probably not best to compare PMU with anything real life. Other MMOs? Maybe, depends which ones.

  1. PMU can never function like an actual economy. In real life, money isn’t destroyed, but this is the case in PMU. A rich player leaving the game will mean millions of Poke’ sinked from the system. Co-incidentally, money creation also doesn’t exactly take place in real life, but it does in PMU. Someone could become infinitely rich because dungeons ALLOW for infinite money mining. What I’m trying to get at is: things are very unstable, and after a set limit, controls no longer matter. Unless you contend that we make stuff unreasonably rare (think 0.0001% or less) in which case, probably no one will bother, it’s hard to decide ‘how much’ and ‘how to’. We can’t draw a fine graph showing a correlation between motivation and money. These are normative decisions, where PMU is not really a market place, more so a shop with infinite goods, with arbitrary prices.

tl;dr price elasticity of supply is quantifiably infinite.

  1. Removing ‘millions’ from circulation is actually a solution. Why can’t you pay the ice cream man in leaves? Apart from the fact that he can’t use leaves to buy anything, it’s the fact that he could very well walk to a tree and get the leaves himself, probably much more than you could ever offer. Money is precious because it is rare, by sinking millions, you automatically make money rarer and something worth fighting for. When Poke stops being scare, it can no longer function. I’m not contending this should be Poke’s function, it’s more so a liquid asset converter right now; we can’t decide if 1 miracle chest = 2 life orbs, or 2.5 life orbs (how do you get 0.5 life orb!) so a currency helps give liquidity.

As long as people don’t start trading items for items, and still use money as quantity currency, it is fully fulfilling the needs of a virtual, MMO-game currrency.

the “problems” in the economy seem to be at the very least, the core of a few things:

  1. it is very easy to gain money. DD, SF, etc are all extremely resourceful nowadays with the introduction of relics and the fair ease it is to obtain them. if someone is fully committed, money can be easily obtained through hard ingame grinding and not necessarily merchanting with other players (which is usually more traditional with other MMOs and directly ‘healthy’ in response), because there comes an extreme amount of poke from endgame boxes. while “nerfed”(it’s still kinda ridiculous still), it’s been a problem for a multitude of years that introduced an excess of money spreading in the economy.

  2. with the new money in response, what do we do with it? users of the higher echelon of the richest board pretty much have like 30mil or so lol. with TC’s release, there have been a lot of items that have been introduced that may have supported a healthy economy because there were way too many in demand. with newer releases, we get more money through relics, sure, but not necessarily any new items in response. sail fossil and heart slates. that’s… pretty much it.

the first thing that would be a “suggestion” would be to cut the roots. relics in general might wanna be limited to only super rare places(where there’s 1 endbox or in a perilous stretch.). because people can grind their own money it’s harder to encourage trading. in effect, maybe introduce more items that benefit by player to player trading(e.g super limited initial access like the routes of TC) and promote that kind of behavior- (TU “clans” are kinda good behavior, but generally not optimal to do all the time.) more fossils? increase rarity?

similarly, the increased rate of items (cuz for some reason it’s a healthy trend to stuff otherwise rare TMs in newer dungeons) are also a killer too. remember when tbolt was 40k? easily 5 now. of course, HCs weren’t really good practices for obtaining such items anyway- but it just goes to show if the item is easily accessible then certainly it won’t sell for too much.

the second obvious suggestion would be to add more sinks. rest houses just don’t really cut it. there’s no incentive to spend 30 million if you don’t get anything out of it. but nobody wants an auction every week(and isn’t a surefire way anyway). pay2dungeon has been suggested before.

it all really depends what is created to move the economy anyway. i believe it’s too far long gone now- people are already too rich cuz relics, lack of rare, yet unsustainable items to move it into a direct player interaction(which is where most MMOs come for anyway.). there’s no items that people seem to crave. obviously PMU could go into the PokeMMO effect and introduce something completely new- trading pokemon w/ EVs and IVs xddd. but in reality it’s really hard to debunk an economy that’s already so inflated.

it’s just direction-based anyway. is PMU going to benefit from MMO-esque details such as a reliant economy or will it succeed as a system where you can grind for the items/money you want? surely there’s arguments to both sides. but it really depends what the staff team(and community! please make more threads like these and hopefully they will be seen!) takes with it.

something more to consider is that people grind money cuz there’s nothing else to do in PMU when you reach level 100, so maybe that’s just a part of the overall grind. but as money isn’t really needed to survive it doesn’t have to be something to base gameplay on. but who knows. food for thought.

tl;dr
if there’s a lack of items that are rare, nobody will crave them and buy them from other people.
if you can grind ingame currency in a quicker and more efficient(exp, time, DD only takes like 30 minutes cmon) why would you want to sell to other people?
what defines the economy? do people want to completely change the current approach?

you could always wipe it lol and start from scratch, but nobody wants that.

also, the topic is fine. there is nothing wrong with constructive discussion.

The gameplay suggestions in original post sound quite powerful! Hope it doesn’t look silly if we imagine some of them implemented. Auctions has been going on though and I hear both good and bad about it.

But imo, frustrating for sake of economy, maybe not worth the economical benefits hoped for. If a new idea feels wrong somehow, like lots of frustration, like one-chance thing, ridiculously rare etc, maybe not good then for game experience?

hm, is this thread going to die? hope not. perhaps there are larger priorities to fill but surely there can be more discussion, maybe from a staff member even?

@Ikia, if you’re reading this, do you mind bumping the thread and offering commentary on the posts under?

It is true that the economy is getting a bit out of hand. Poke is no where near as circulated like it used to be. It can be easily made inside certain dungeons such as Dragon’s Den and Mt. Moon where large amounts of Poke can be picked up along with the higher value items found both inside and in the end boxes. Also, lets not forget Gems and Globes that sell. They are of few items that still sell high and they don’t even require Poke to get. This leads to a major profit for those with lots of Event Tokens. We are at a point where if items aren’t made rare like they used to be, money circulation will continue getting worse.

We do have auctions more but as things currently stand, only those who have “hogged” large amount of poke will be getting the new and good items/Pokemon sold. Something really does need to get done such as increased rarity or the problem will continue getting worse. The only problem is that too many players will complain when items become “too rare”.

I really do miss the days when money was harder to get and keep. I personally remember always struggling to get certain items i wanted and ended up paying for convenience to have said items. And back then not too many players complained either. Training and item hunting too a lot of time, effort, and patience. This resulted in higher prices and a need to spam dungeons for money. You know, when money in dungeons came in smaller amounts. Whether item hunting or money farming, a lot of time and effort was needed and it resulted in an even and reasonable currency distributing.

Maybe one day things can change so that good items are rare again and money can be re-balanced…maybe

I also feel it’s worth telling you all: PMU’s ‘community’ progresses on a level more similar than we credit. What do I mean by this? As a staff, I’d release X dungeon thinking ‘Oh, I’ve released a dungeon for all times to come, for all new players, and it’ll always be in regular use’. No. This was untrue. PMU’s community is small and regulated, it progresses together. Some dungeons and some places become genuinely obsolete. Yes, new players join, but at a very slow rate, almost negligible. So understand, PMU’s at a point where a lot of people have level 100’s, a lot of people have been playing the game together, they’ve ‘grown’ as the game has grown. It, and it’s relatively same/consistent community have aged together. Poke is just a remnant of such aging. It applies to everything. That’s why you don’t see ‘Help me get Bagon!’ too often. So it’s kind of natural for them to have amassed more wealth.

I’m not saying this is okay. I’m not saying this is a defense for PMU’s economy. I’m simply saying, we often forget this.

Keep this thread alive! It can shape a lot of new narratives, give ideas, help PMU!

Oh man, I’m sorry for not replying at all. I haven’t opened up the forums for a few days, but thank you! All of you for adding your opinions and showing support to this thread.~

Maybe some further work on balancing item lists in dungeons could help? The relics for example. I’m surprised they are findable in some of the mid and mid-high level dungeons.
Sunrise Temple, Boggy wastes…Tanren Undergound dungeons…a bit of nerfing in rates of them coming from chests+adding another item or two to boxes (TM, dust…) might help.
Nerfing the poke earned from selling them could also help. And nerfing the amount of poke found in dungeons in general.

Got to note, I think the auctions are a good idea for money sinking. Also, the rest points. The guild and house systems too.

Erladino made great points on the community. How it grows together…
Eventually most players will have what they desire.
(We should do some more word of mouth spreading to get new players in! )

Luckily we’ve got the new gen somewhere on the horizon. There are oppertunities with that. Like a new region in the game for example. Perhaps the way to get there would be by boarding a ship in Archford. You would have to buy a ticket to reach it. for example. <- could be a money sink. Also, new items to add and balance the game with.

I’m not very knowledgable on currency in games in general. And for each game different things work. Interesting to talk about this. I hope people will learn from this topic and that PMU’s devs might find some inspiration.

I feel like only the average player is getting poorer everytime relics and other stuff gets nerfed but “AH ~10% of the players have over 10 mil, that must mean everyone have 10+ mil so we must have more money sinks and more money nerfs”. This is like the vocal minority and silent majority thing.

Also i dont see how lowering relic prices is even that effective,all it means is more grinding (like there’s anything else on pmu) this results in deflation for every item (remember when miracle chest was 200k+? Signs of a good economy right?)

Don’t know how to quote on this forum but @RichardG How many people even bought a item for 1 mil+ at auctions? The most i’ve seen is like 600k which is something but not really significant.

And can someone remind why does being rich affect game play at all? all it means is that they can afford to be lazy like whens the last time you’ve seen someone rich abusing the money they have?

The most recent auction had a couple items go for quite a bit, notably the Coveted Keys (Dratini egg, basically) and the “mystery” Pokemon egg that turned out to be Bergmite. If my memory isn’t failing me all of those went for 1m+; in the case of that new Pokemon, 5m. Just going to point this out.

Honestly, I miss those days when people actually bought things
because they had the money to be lazy. But now? It’s almost impossible to earn money if you play like me and either log on just occasionally to maybe run through a dungeon, or just do an average of two runs a day if you do log on daily…

But thank you for replying to this. We finally get the input of
someone in the top 10 for poke… So maybe staff will actually understand just how badly they’re making this for everyone…

Few things.
I think I did an analysis on my own a long while ago, most of our points agree.

People who have been here before know, but I’m staff on a different MMO and we had MASSIVE PROBLEMS with inflation. It shouldn’t have been as bad as PMU’s, but unnoticed bugs made the supply higher than the game could handle at more than one point.

We fixed this by adding a lot of convenience, for a price. We have a train/boat station where one trip is some slightly-noticeable-but-definitely-worth-it pocket change. Because the convenience of the train station/boat station is always convenient, it is always viable. As Erl says, not all content is used forever and this will just compound as few new players come by here.

Make it easier to get around, make people pay a little per trip. For comparison, the average person on our game had 1mil so each trip is something like 5-7k. The monthly pass was a few 100k for very hardcore players, and gave them a month of unlimited transport.

Such a system won’t completely solve the problems here, but it will definitely chip away at them and help keep them in check. I promise you I’d buy into this on PMU, because some of the regions are sprawlingly massive and easy to get lost in. Some of the dungeons are far away from the fly point.

The rest, as the intial post says, would be to make a high-tier money sink.

As Erl said, this community tends to progress as a swarm to the newest thing. Make that newest thing a sink and regulate it. If you’re worried about releasing things that later just devalue because people already have it/lost interest, make it limited time and swap things out sometimes. Any new item or highly desired Pokemon would indeed work. Keep the dungeon (mostly) the same, change the interesting prize once a month/weekend/whatever. Cycle old but highly sought holiday-only pokemon and unreleased Pokemon, make the cycle repeat once a year so that there’s always renewed interest.

From there, the influx of money and issues of low demand items needs to happen. In our game, we artificially created a “newbie to old player” de-gapper through the battle tower. Our battle tower required effort that, old or new, you couldn’t pay your way through (required a different currency you could only earn a little at a time of per day). For a while, this created a scenario where people were paying newer players 1mil+ to just do it for them, creating a more healthy circulation.

I will say, very adamantly, that the PMU economy was “playable” from a player perspective but it definitely was not idea and will not fix itself any time soon. This might require going through old content and redesigning how spawns, items, money, etc is dropped and that is not a fun thing to do. I had to touch base with spawns because we just had completely dead areas in our game - places very, very obviously outclassing several other areas. Now most places see specific use or at least mention/acknowledgement, even with a small group of people on.

As a sidenote: The fact that Dungeons can be used + dumped by the community and don’t see use again shows huge design problems with PMU’s overall structure. The regions are unorganized and make no sense from an incoming player’s perspective, who often get lost and go point-to-point by whatever the players in chat say to do. The rest get ignored. Last I checked, documentation/resources for making your own goals are absolutely horrible. (Where do I find Bagon? Is Honedge in the game? Where should I train? Where do I get chests? How do most people know where to look for this stuff?) If PMU had a more linear guidance system [another topic I made forever ago], having dungeons see continual use as new players come in would be less of an issue. New players would also stick around instead of just being overwhelmed and giving up.

Also a problem: each dungeon having things put into it with little respect to what other dungeons are offering. Some newer dungeons just straight up outclass older dungeons despite becoming available at similar times compared to player progress.

I will also say that I haven’t played PMU in a while (the grind got too much for me and now I can’t reinstall for whatever reason), so if any of these have been thoroughly implemented already I apologize.

If we’re going for money sinks as a way to "fix the economy (I’m not exactly sure how it is right now), then having more auctions would definitely help in regards to that. The one that BinaryBob pointed out pretty much gave out several Dratini eggs and a Bergmite.

Just gonna put this here but considering someone spent 12 million, a good portion of their money, on a torchic egg
I’d say the auctions do wonders xD

Hi! While im happy you added something to the suggestion, please dont necro threads! If they’re over two months dead you’re better off making a new thread on the subject and reviving it!