Well, unlimited supply is not really the main issue. I use it to help make it clear, but for another example, most games with good in-game economies don't run out of the resources that people use to drive that economy. You take EVE Online for that example, there is like 10 core minerals people gather to build most of the items and ships in-game. Some of those core minerals are extremely rare where some are extremely common. None of these minerals are in limited supply forever. They've never ran out of a mineral for example where it's gone forever. Therefore, the game mechanics says it's unlimited. The catch is: some minerals are harder to find and gather than others. Thus, the value is higher because the risk is greater.Starstarfish wrote:Hmm, one difficulty is that there is an unlimited supply for a lot of things on grid via the NPC shops. So besides the things that only show up on occasion tied to metrics/plots etc or you need to QP for, there is never really true "scarcity" to items. Silver, arguably, but not items. So a lot of the normal behaviors in a market that would allow a flow of supply/demand don't happen. It's hard to do things like stockpile when most items are always available.Thus, limiting this and putting into a system where you do not have an unlimited supply makes that demand grow in terms of both sides needing ways to make an income, which feeds to a healthier game system around the in-game economy.
Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate and understand why that's the case, to prevent things stagnating and allow folks to play/operate outside of needing to rely on others, however, that's a big aspect of economic currently. Now, granted, maybe when the ability to get items through assets goes through, that can introduce some interesting potential rare items unique to some folks in a way that goes beyond the OOC ability to string. I think that might be a really interesting thing to consider - some rare assets for things that currently can only be gotten through the metrics and/or QP that would add some rarities to acquire from other players.
Whether or not the items are unlimited or not isn't the issue. There are bigger issues to address like say, why is there no item destruction happening that forces the demand for that unlimited item among other things you mentioned? In EVE Online, it's PvP. People die, items are lost, and the consumer is back on the market buying the item again for the 1000548805085 time. Here, someone likely buys the item only once their entire life and can pay for it with unlimited silver. Huge difference.
