Part 2: Social Economics
| The Entropia Universe Economy and You |
Entropia Universe can be a very social game because there are thousands of people playing from all around the world. We all interact with each other in the cities and out in the wilderness, at parties and while hunting there are always people around.
There is a function of the game called Societies which is an official group of people and friends that have decided to band together for social or economical reasons. Societies in EU are much like guilds in other games. I would recommend that anyone playing find a good society that they fit in well with and enjoy hanging out with the other members. In addition to people in their own Societies most people have lots of friends and acquaintances, people that they hang out with, hunt with, party with, or just see often enough that they recognize them.
Your Society, friends and acquaintances really make up the lowercase society that you live in. Within this lowercase society there are lots of opportunities for symbiotic relationships. The hunters and miners can feed the crafters who in turn supply them with weapons and tools, the hunters can even supply weapons and armor to the other hunters who are at a higher or lower level than themselves.
We are human and we are greedy, we want to always get the most for ourselves out of any situation. Another part of being human though is the joy we get from helping others, especially people that we know and like. A good symbiotic relationship within your lowercase society caters to both of these desires and allows you to bring more for yourself while also helping those you like.
In Part 1 we discussed how selling your items to someone who can use them would be more profitable than selling on auction.
Lets look at two examples of how this would work.
Example 1
While hunting you loot a weapon worth 50ped which has an average markup of 150%
- 50 x 150% = 75ped that someone would pay to buy this off of auction.
- 75ped + 12.5ped(transport fee) = 87.50ped someone would pay if they bought it on auction from a different planet.
- 75ped - 1.75ped(approximate auction fees) = 73.25ped you would get for your item after auction fees.
Suppose you know someone who uses that weapon. You could sell it to them for 74ped which would be 1ped cheaper than they could get it from auction AND you would profit 75pec more than if you had put it in auction AND you don't have to wait for the auction to end or wonder if it will sell or not.
Example 2
You craft a piece of armor that has a tt value of 5ped and a markup of tt+5
- 5ped TT + 5ped markup = 10ped someone would pay to purchase it from auction.
- 10ped + 2.15(transport fee) = 12.15ped someone would pay if they bought it off auction from a different planet.
- 10ped - 0.75(auction fee) = 9.25ped you would get after auction fees if it sells.
You could sell this armor piece to a friend that needed it for 9.50ped and you would both profit from the trade.
The better you do, and the better your friends do economically in this game, the more fun you will have. The previous examples are simple easy things that anyone can do, but there are a multitude of ways that both upper and lowercase societies can do to benefit their own populations.
One of the hardest parts of this game is playing with a low budget. The more ped you have to cycle the larger you can make your individual stacks which means in turn that you can sell them for a higher markup than you could otherwise. For most things you need a stack of 50ped or more to be worth placing in auction but what if you only have several stacks of 20 or 25ped each. One option would be to sell them to a trader, but you know that they will give you less ped than if you could sell a large stack on auction, or to someone that needed it. You could trade small stacks with your friends enabling each of you to have a larger stack worth auctioning.
Lets look at 2 very simple examples. (for the example sake lets assume that markup on the stacks is the same, though in reality you would likely need to compensate some if the stack markups were uneven)
Example 1
As a hunter you have 3 stacks of 20ped each. Muscle oil, Wool & Fine hides
You have two friends that you know hunt the same things as you do, you might even team hunt with them a lot which would mean you have the exact same loots.
The three of you each trade your stacks with each other and when you are done each of you has a stack worth 60ped which would be enough to auction, thus maximizing all of your profits even though you are all playing on a low budget.
Example 2
You are trying to get your crafting skills up by crafting basic filters.
You end up with 30ped of metal residue and 30ped of enmatter residue.
You have been comparing notes and techniques with the guy next to you at the crafting terminal and found that he is also skilling on basic filters and also has finished his run with 30ped of each residue.
The two of you trade and each of you ends up with a 60ped stack of residue that you could then auction or sell to a higher level crafter for more than if you only had the two 30ped stacks.
There are times when you can help out someone with something you have which doesn't really bring you profit. I believe that helping in these times will actually still serve your "selfish needs" in the long run. Suppose you loot a gun with almost no markup say its 102% for a 100ped gun. You could profit 1.5ped if you sold it in auction but you would be waiting a week with no guarantees. You can sell it to your friend for TT which helps him as well as gets ped back on your card to cycle. He will likely return the favor when he loots the gun or armor piece that you need someday.
The more people you help at no cost to yourself the better your lower- and/or uppercase society will be and this in turns makes for a more enjoyable playing experience for you. This is a game and we are here to have fun so I think it is a good idea to maximize that fun whenever possible.
--Narfi 23:24, 23 September 2010 (BST)