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Topic created : 26 November 2011, 19:22

Last time edited : 26 November 2011, 19:26

Moira

Moira World

I am fairly new to this game, but read a lot of resources and informations, and I think I understand the workings of it decently. I like Virtonomics because its a very unique game, but I have some observations, which I would like to share with you, because either I am the one who is missing something, or they are huge flaws in the game design/mechanic.

I didnt pay for the game so I dont have any paid industies - farm, villa, sawmill, etc. - but still noticed, that they are commanding huge prices, so they are seriously in short supply. And because of diminishing returns, the more ppl invest in them, the less return they got - so the current design protects the current highfliers, because even if a new player spends the same amount of money as a top players spent, one wont get the same return, so wont be able to catch up.

I noticed that as your Production Q grow, each of your employee produce slightly more. This is adds even more edge towards the established ppl.

Whats the point of it?

I also noticed that everything is in short supply. Let me explain it.

I did some research and found out that with one employee - if you choose carefully and produce a highly profitable gadget - you are able to make 8-10K worth of production - for prices I took the world average, I know that in special places you can achieve 5-10x more price for the same unit, and high Q units command higher prices, but now let just talk about regular stuff.

With the same Commerce Q as your Production Q you can employ about 11 times more ppl in production than in commerce. This means that in average one of your employee in the field of commerce have to be able to sell about 88-110K worth of goods - in world average prices -, in order to fully sell off your produced goods.
But I observed that one employee easily sells 500-1000K worth of goods, which means I can only produce a fraction of my retail needs.

Obviously retail prices are significantly higher than wholesale prices, which mean simply there is no point for selling anything at wholesale level - I mean for any outsider. Because you can easily sell what you produce in your shops and you can also sell a lot more imported stuffs.

But if you view it globally, then nobody has any incentive to sell at wholesale level, only at retail level. Which means the goods available at wholesale level for outsiders are only from those ppl, who either dont understand this mechanics, or their goal in NOT to maximize their profit. If everybody would go for profit, there would be no goods at wholesale level. Why is the game designed this way?

Either seriously boost production capabilities, or reduce commerce volume per employee.

Right now there is competition at only retail level. But close to zero at the production level.

And even more so for the Livestock Q, and worst is the paid stuff Qs

The different field of activities are grossly imbalanced, and you cant choose which one you specialise in, because there are huge supply gluts in everything, and if you want the slightest chance for big money, you have to retail.

if you specialise in wholesale, farming, livestock, etc. except retail, then you are lucky to get 3-5% of the profit of the retailing ppl.

Why is that so, whats the point of it?

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27 November 2011, 00:38

Last time edited : 27 November 2011, 00:41

VLLord

Golden Empire

if you specialise in wholesale, farming, livestock, etc. except retail, then you are lucky to get 3-5% of the profit of the retailing ppl.

I'd disagree with this number.

A price at wholesale market is determined by the prime cost, amount of $$ producers willing to earn and amount of $$ consumers willing to pay. If there is a lack of supply, then "amount of $$ producers willing to earn" becomes the most determinative factor.

#
Prime cost of my car is $30k, selling price to retailer is $80k and retailer's price is $110k (in average)
My profit (producer's) $30k vs. Retailer's profit $15k

I'm getting (as a producer) 67% of total profit.

P.S. Why don't you participate in Miss Virtonomics contest? I'd vote for you Well

27 November 2011, 03:26

Moira

Moira World

I think I put it the wrong way, the problem is not the lack of competition, but rather the lack of supply/demand balance - serious lack of supply -, and production/commerce imbalance.

Yes, for any given product you can get most of the profit as a producer, if you price it approprietly.
But there is simply no motivation to sell it at wholesale level, because you always have way more retail capacity than producing capacity. Why dont you just sell it in your shops at whole price?

If you fully utilize your producting resourses for example at Producing Quailification Q20, you can have about 50K employee. That means you can produce at best - considering average Q and world average price - about 500M worth of gadgets - at retail price. If you are lucky/smart you can sell it about 70-80% price at wholesale level. Thats about 350-400M revenue. And this is if you choose carefully and produce the right gadget. If you dont, you can have only 50-100-150M revenue with Production Q20

If you have Commerce Q20 you can have about 4500 retailer. With them you can easily have 10 big 100K space store with 450 ppl each with decent marketing, or 5 huge 100K shop with 900 ppl each with excessive marketing. In a big city with 100K shop with one line of item you can easily have 20-30M revenue, but if you know what you are doing, you can have 50-100-200M per line of item. You can have 6-8 line of item in a given store, which is at least 150M per store, but it can easily be increased to 500M or more per store.

Either way you can retail with 4500ppl at least a few Billion with enough gadgets to retail.

That is the problem.

Virtonomics is practically a minmax-ing game. If you grow at top speed and have more or less same Q level in each field, then you use all your Livestocking stuff in your Production facilities and a lot more, because you cant make enough animal stuffs. You sell all your production in your stores, and constantly looking for even more gadgets, which you would sell in your stores. And there is nothing left for other ppl, because you can retail everything and a lot more.
There is simply way too few gadgets at the wholesale market, because as far as I can see, ppl have no incentive to sell at wholesale level.

Right know everybody have to produce - and raise livestock - as much as one can, because everything is in short supply, so steady goods in volume at decent price is hard to come by, so you have to be self reliant as much as possible.

Imo, it would be much better if at any give Q level you can produce and retail approximately the same volume of goods.

Right now you cant really specialize in anything, rather simply give up some aspect of the game. There is no known advantage to do solely retail/producing/livestocking etc., but in this case you make considerably less money.

And it would do wonder if ppl can specialize, because few ppl wants to do all the aspect of the game, for example retailing is require a lot of micromanagement and RL time, while produceing is relatively easy and fast.

One possible solution would be if your individual Q levels would grow proportionally to the SUM of your all Q level. ie. if you have Q20 in livestock, commerce and production, then your Q would grow the same speed as if you have Q60 in only one field.

This way specializing would be greatly rewarded, and everybody would be able to choose the field most suitable for them.

p.s. I dont like to give away myself on the net, I have bad experiences. But I appreciate it.

27 November 2011, 03:54

Tee_Bickle

Bickle International

I think you made some interesting observations. Imho, there are good reasons why the retail capacity is higher than de production capacity. If players would produce more products than they can sell, prices would drop dramatically and this would favor the guys who started the game two years ago even more than in the current game. So I think the designers made the right decision. And I think there is a big incentive for selling not all your goods in your own shops:commerce is very time consuming.

If getting the highest profits of all players is your only goal, you can better quit in the game. My goal is to grow as fast as I can. If that means I can never catch up with the big guys who started playing two years ago, so be it.

BTW, there is a lot of wholesale competition in manufactured products, agricultural products and materials/semi-products.

28 November 2011, 15:25

JustNash

Premium Brands

interesting topic. I have always found it strange that you can focus as much on every different qualification as you like. That in other words, there is no specialisation bonus.

This results in a situation where I can be a master in raising pigs AND producing computers AND retailing cheese. All within one company.

Wouldn't it make more sense if Top3 didn't depend on the qualification in the specified skill, but rather your overall qualification? That way, you can choose for yourself where you employ your staff: shops, factories, farms, ...
In practice, this might be achieved by abolishing Top3 limitations for every type of subdivision other than offices.

That means you can have X people working in offices as a maximum. If you want to use those to support a lot of factories and less shops, you can. If you want to focus on science more, you can.

What this would also do, imo is automatically keep the equilibrium between produced volumes and retailed volumes. If there is too much production, prices drop, profitability drops, and you will automatically see people shift there employees (human resources) more towards retail. And, of course, vice versa.

28 November 2011, 23:25

giekas

i.G33K

Veridian Dynamics

What incentives would then people have to throw away highly profitable car business (as an example) where they've made loads of investments, and take up level one cotton based industry at the moment of its appearance?
Or fishing industry, where up-front investment is even more substantial and long term?

Would it be viable to do research as business? Well, maybe several top players could allow such luxury, but the rest of us would have to pay for it with our last virtopennies.

Do you see a way to transition from current state of affairs into something (anything) else? How is administration supposed to make new players more competitive at the cost of long time paying players, and at the same time justify investment of paying players?

3 December 2011, 04:33

HollowRF

HollowRF Industries

the two suggestions of making a total employee cap based on management skill, and rebalancing the retail profits are sensible, however the profitability of production should balance out with retail, if people would charge enough after the production. The other thing that needs sorting out is the amount of money flowing in the system. There seems to be an unlimited amount of money in the system - where does the money come from? Someone ought to compare the cash coming into the system and the cash going out.

3 December 2011, 20:55

Fanatyk

Fanatyk Extremely Limited

HollowRF, if we want to give new players any chance, there is no way of balancing cash in with cash out. Anyway the money is flowing in through the retail, where you simply "steal" a share of local market from local suppliers. Therefore if we take into account everything (both players and local suppliers), it is approximately equal. Players are simply getting bigger and bigger part of it.

Plus a lot of money is flowing out through independent supppliers as well.

Cheers,
Adam

4 December 2011, 23:40

Moira

Moira World

Yeah, cash inflow is a problem as well.

Practically there is no outflow of the system. Those kind of costs which are not goes to other ppl, hardly exist. Shop renting, electricity, wage etc. but they are mostly negligable. Most ppl dont even notice them that they exist. Customs are the main outflow.

There are of course the state enterprise auctions, but they are exclusively the toy of the developed player, and shows in reality how high is the inflation ingame. Stable or dvindling supply and exponentially growing money, then you have spiralling inflation.

The main problem is that as a developed player you constantly rake in a lot of money, but there is nothing to spend it on. You just sit on a huge pile, until you have enough to bid for a state enterprize, but because of sky high inflation, those enterprizes are insanely overprized, and it takes literally RL Years to get your investment back, which makes them crappy investment, but there is noting else, so ppl goes for it.

Of course there are the tech/licence prices, but those mostly goes to the top players, who have the top tech. And they can research all the ingame tech simultaneously with their high science efficiency, so you have no chance to catch up. They have higher science Q, so they research faster, so get even more lead.

If I sum all of it up, then the real issue is that its way too easy to get a lot of money, and there is absolutly nothing to spend it on. Which of course results in hyperinflation. Exactly like in almost all of the other virtual worlds.

5 December 2011, 16:46

AleenaT

AleenaT Limited

AlTCorporation

The money probably grows on trees and every fish may have a gold coin in their mouth. But yes, soon enough you'll find that money is the most worthless thing in this (business???)game.
But there is another thing I've been wondering about. It's the market volume. Couldn't find any info how it really should work. Just that from the wiki:

This is a grade, which indicates situation in city market. AAA – market is overglutted. Supply exceeds demand more than three times; AA – market is overglutted. Supply exceeds demand more than two times; A – market is overglutted; B – market is glutted; C – market is starting to glut; D – market is not glutted; E – market is not glutted, segment of local suppliers is more than 50%.

But my guess is it should have something to do with the city population. And that's one thing you can't grow on trees or fish out. And I've been experimenting for a while now to see if or how it changes. If I have 100% of the market I only sell as much the market volume allows..no more no less. And if someone else manages to sell something it just takes a piece from my pie but the market volume doesn't change.
But there is this amazing phenomenon that makes market volume ( and that must mean also a city population) to expand it sometimes 50 or more % and just for one day. And the prices are in the sky and the market development thingie says "AAA" and everything sells. Now...how's that possible?
It never expands for my favor no matter what I try lol.

6 December 2011, 00:16

Tee_Bickle

Bickle International

I agree the cash inflow is a universal problem in almost every multiplayer world. I think it will be difficult to solve this problem because higher customs or other taxes affect the new players the most. Except a rich people tax, but that is a cheap solution for a simulation game. There must be something to spend excess of money on. I think the introduction of yachts was meant to take some of the excess cash out of the game. But yachts are simply too cheap. I can buy 100 yachts every turn if I like.

I suggest the game makers study the real world. How do the richest people of this planet spend their money? On charity! Preferably on an organisation with their name tag on it. Public recognition. The BIll and Melinda Gates foundation! The Donald J. Trump foundation!
So why not introduce a philanthropist top 100 in this game. With nice goals to spend lots of money on. I like to build a hospital in Mali. And a big statue of Tee Bickle in Adana, next to my headquarters. And I am sure some other guy will spend his money to build an even bigger statue, next to mine.

And to make AleenaT happy, spending money in third world countries should help their local economies so that the markets will expand finally ;o)

6 December 2011, 04:25

HollowRF

HollowRF Industries

I didn't say that money in had to equal money out, but the comparison would show that the money in to players far exceeds the money out, so that money is worthless. There are only two limits to the size of the business empire and those are the number of workers you can employ (skill level) and resources that can only be produced from point based resources (wood, high quality agricultural products, high quality metals etc)

1) there should be a market in retail space. If there are many shops in an area then rent should increase (and keep increasing). Similarly wages should change by more than they currently do.

2) there should be some link between the market size and the wages in a city or country. (the money people have to spend on something principally comes from the wages.)

3) sure, find some money sink for peoples cash statues, villas, yachts, philanthropic activities, sports sponsorship, whatever.

Create an economy that has real fluctuations - that would give some risk to the big boys, and some opportunities to the smaller players.

Have some level of tech that provides new products, or new ways to produce existing ones

16 February 2012, 16:51. Subject: Wow, that's an interesting discussion

mrsthursday

hi
thanks for the interesting discussion. I can't say i understood everything said but what i did was very enlightning.

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