Developers Corner

These days I think many agree that most MMORPG economies are horribly broken and yet they continue to be put together in much the same way.  Lets first outline in general what drives the general MMO economy.

First, there is only one goal supported by actual gameplay in most systems, and that is to level up.  This generally involves combat, and as such simply means dealing more damage to your enemy than can be dealt back to you (or your group).  All items, gold, ingredients, etc. ultimately go toward increasing the ability to accomplish this goal against successively stronger targets.  You kill monsters of a certain level for a while to get the skill points or experience points and money/equipment that will enable you to move on and do the exact same thing elsewhere, the only difference being that you are now rolling more dice and look cooler.

Crafting and other professions never play much of a role unless they are heavily focused on providing the items and buffs and enchantments that ultimately enable the dealing of/avoiding of damage.

To support this single gameplay goal we have seen many arbitrary systems put in place to ensure that each player grinds through the exact same content as everyone else with no short cuts.  Weapons that can only be equipped by characters of the appropriate level, soul-binding of items, areas that can't be entered unless certain leveling criteria are met. 

Because only one goal exists and only one way to accomplish it, we have a very circular system.  I have never been able to figure out whether we are killing the monsters in order to get the weapons, items, gold, loot, etc. or if we are getting those things to enable us to kill monsters.  Either way one leads back to the other and so there is no reason behind it.

So the only action that results is the consumption of this circular content by having your avatar execute certain actions that the system recognizes as moving you on to the next level.  If you could get what you need to kill monsters with out actually doing it, then you wouldn't have to, but then why would you want monster-killing equipment if you weren't going to kill monsters.  Because of this the items that drive the so-called 'economy' have to be acquired and then discarded.  This results in items that are constantly generated out of thin air, and then sold to NPCs that promptly destroy them.  This leads to the most common faucet/drain economic systems which get out of hand very quickly even with the many arbitrary balances that are intended to keep them in check.

One of the more common problems that arises from such a system is gold farming, because if gold 'grows' by being generated out of thin air and can be 'harvested' by investing time in the system that has been set up.  Combine this with the other arbitrary systems that dictate that gold is a universal medium for acquiring things from NPCs and the fact that gold you acquire is nearly 100% secure, and you start to see just one of the ways these economies can break so easily.

So what could be done to prevent all this and at the same time provide some sort of more interesting gameplay?  One method that has been proposed is the use of a closed economy where items came from resources in the world and the amount was more or less finite.  Of course there would be renewable and non-renewable resources.  Luckily the non-renewable resources tend to be the most recyclable.  So why hasn't anyone tried a closed economy?  In fact it was attempted in the early days of UO but had to be modified drastically.  Why?  I suggest it was based on the fact that although a great step in the right direction, even UO suffered from the above mentioned uniformity of goals and means to accomplish them, and in such a system a closed economy can not work.

The system that would support a closed and natural economy would be unlike any that we have yet seen.  First the game would be entirely player driven.  The players would set their own goals and there would be a vast number of ways they might be accomplished, all depending on the situation at hand.  When a situation arose, the real focus of the gameplay would be to try and get things to go according to your goals.  It would not matter how the goal was ultimately accomplished because when it is backed by real reasons, the accomplishment itself is what is desired.   In a looped economy/progression system, no one really wants to or needs to kill that monster they just want the reward, but why?  So they can kill the next monster?  But why? In order to receive the next reward?  And so it goes.

Now a common concern with a closed economy is that eventually many resources would be in the hands of the players and not readily available in the world.  This is true, but you must keep in mind that such a dynamic system has countless ways that the resources can change hands.  Instead of dumping ever multiplying gold into NPC shops who apparently destroy the indestructible substance, players can exchange it among themselves.  They can invest, put up capital for great ventures, they can steal money, or hide it or lose it.  Very little of this is possible in most games where arbitrary systems keep everything so secure.  Once it is realized that the game is not to be played for any particular item, but rather for what can be accomplished with them, it doesn't really matter what items are available or in short supply.  Each situation can be approached based on what is available, and sometimes the very real goal will be to acquire that which is needed or to prevent others from getting it first.

I would like to see what others think about this so lets open it for discussion.

Sounds like a good idea,

But how would that game be different from the super-emulator: RL?

there is one game that has a very closed economy.   that would be WurmOnline you mentioned that money could end up in the hands of a few people.  this has happened,  in the game and I feel that it would be inevitablely happen in any game that has a closed economy.  

The situation in Wurm shows no hope of changing at all.  it's essentially an arguement there's nothing we want to buy at that price  V.  You don't pay enough for our time(and what we can buy with the pay). 

Essentially when playing in a game people want to all be the big profiteers, the big huncho, and money bags.  You don't need to survive in a game so you would never do pickup/lowend work to just survive like you would in real life.  This whole thing essentially ruins all hope you could have for a fixxed economy.  

then there's also hidden things that break a fixed economy.  that would be people quiting with cash on them, if over night your population doubles(there is no sane or fair way to add an inflow of cash to the economy for the intention of keeping prices stable).  then you also have real life factors such as price stickiness(where stuff doesn't go up or down in price after it reaches a new price)(and I've seen this to an extreme in wurm online after the gold reset when enchantments got out, even though they were 100-200% harder to make than they were at the end of the last map, customers would not pay more for them at all).

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you probably do want to limit gold generation more than has been done in the past.  but there are some very good ways to avoid inflation.  NPC's just plain old dropping cash would be a bad idea you should atleast have to bring items in to sell them(and even if you were to sell them to merchants it should still be debatable if you should really be selling them to humans)

the easiest thing would likely be auctioning off various things for your cash drain.  for instance having a limited amount of land that you auction off to people(though the target being guilds) for about 3 months.  if for some reason gold generation goes through the roof so will the auction prices.

and finally you can look at runescape.   they generate money over there faster than McDonalds makes burgers.  there's actually considerable deflation in most markets that are kept almost completely in check by supply and demand.  what they've done to get around it is to have extremely rare items be the real target of profit minded individuals  rather than the lowend market.  so the only place where you actually see inflation would in the new-release item market, extremely rare and the limited edition market.  it's actually kinda amazing how it worked out for jagex especially considering it was accidental  for a while.

Now, paulscott, you say that in WurmOnline the wealth has ended up in the hands of a very few people.  My questions are these:  What arbitrary systems in the game that prevent the poor majority from taking this wealth away from the others?  What poorly designed interaction lead to there being nothing of enough value that the other actual players can provide that those with the wealth would hold onto all that useless cash?

There has to be some fatal flaw in the perception of wealth in such a game.  If the wealth these players have is of no value to the majority of other players, then who told them the item they have was even worth getting?  Was it the developers that said gold had value or was it just assumed?

Also you mentioned another problem completely based on a common arbitrary system, namely of players quitting over night.  In a truly closed economy what problem could this cause?  Do not assume that the goods this player has would disappear with them.  The very nature of a closed economy suggest that all items exist in the world and can be obtained by some means or another at all times.  This can't be based on the common:  log in and you are there, log out and you disappear, at least not as far as items are concerned.

It must be understood that in a closed economy the value of items is dependent only on what can be accomplished with those items.

As for whether this leans more toward a boring simulation or a completely interactive world remains to be seen.  It will really depend on the way the interactions are set up.  Of course not every aspect of reality should be used, but incorporating just the right amount has the potential to create meaningful and fulfilling goals.

in Wurm all money aquired eventually ends up in a deed for maintance of gaurds.  a majority of the community either wants a deed or has a vested interest in maintaining the one they are a part of.  so coinage holds a lot of value besides being extremely light when the next most value item(refined high QL ore) is 10 times heavier per item, per value is 20-30 times heavier, and the price doesn't have to hold stable if.

however there are huge problems with the closed economy.  One you have people quiting the game with the limited resources on their accounts.  it will eventually add up eventually.   Two you have a growing population so even if you want a closed economy you are going to have to open it more.

Your better off have a flow in flow out type economy.  but rather than have fixed out flows you should have players competing for the outflows so you essentially achieve a stable economy. 

If players find a new and very effective way to grind cash and it stays up for a few weeks.  the price for the various outflows will be higher.  if the money supply decreases too much for some reason the price for the outflows decreases with the supply.  you also get an accurate picture of the market actually is money supply wise.

Ok, so first of all I now understand that the value of coinage in Wurm is set by the fact that there is an arbitrary system of deeds that lets you maintain guards.  If the game were designed for the maintenance of a power base to be built on something a little less arbitrary and with a little more variety this could easily be avoided.

Now on people quitting the game, I don't think you are understanding what I am saying about my definition of a closed economy.  When people quit their stuff all still exists.  It can simply be picked up and taken by other players.  If they had it all buried somewhere, it can be found, if it is in a locked warehouse and they never appear again, someone will eventually go in there and take it.  If they abandon their house and all its contents, they are up for grabs.  All of this of course is true even when their account is active.

As for a growing population this simply means that there are more people to focus on the tasks of extracting resources at a higher rate.  So more people extracting/producing more resources that are being used by the same proportion of a growing population.

A truly dynamic economy has nothing to do with the money/gold/cash/coinage and how much of it there is.  Unless the players value those things for what they can actually purchase, then they are irrelevant.  You can't build a castle with gold or maintain a guard with gold or make a very effective weapon out of gold.  You can however build a castle with stone and wood and iron tools used by laborers that need food.  The same goes for guards, they are not maintained by gold, they are equipped with iron weapons and leather armor, sustained with rations.  If it so happens that the amount of gold or anything else in circulation is accepted as a medium of exchange at some rate naturally determined by the supply then perhaps it can be used to accomplish these concrete actions, otherwise it is worthless.  Either way it is up to the players to decide and is not arbitrarily built into the system.

You may already see the multiple and varied interactions that begin to apply.  Now these few players that want to own the world can't just grind for meaningless cash that grows on trees and is the arbitrary unit that will buy them items that NPCs create out of thin air and maintain guards who apparently eat the stuff.  Instead these few players will have to develop the skills to mine more useful metals, and the skills to make them into weapons, all the while controlling ALL known locations where these metals can be obtained.  On top of that they will need to focus their efforts heavily on agricultural skills and control all the land that can produce crops. Simultaneously they might need to control all the stone quarries so that no one can build fortifications that can stand against them.  Depending on the way the system is built, this should be unlikely to happen.

Instead of investing their time to obtain an item of predefined value, they must interact with the world and other players in order to get diverse inputs from a widely varied system in order to support the systems they want to maintain.  Hopefully such a system is designed with enough complexity to keep anyone from being able to control everything, but with enough simplicity to be fun on various levels and for various types of people.  I happen to believe it can be done.  Imagine, for once instead of balancing arbitrary classes we try and balance the natural inputs and outputs of a true economy that makes sense in the terms of the game world and can be manipulated to achieve various goals through the interactions of massive numbers of unique minds.

do you expect players to accept the mechanics of having a no coin system.  it's terriably inconvient for people to trade and will hurt the economy more than it would help.