Developers Corner

the best game for Economy that i played is the Mirs Mir 2 and Mir 3 there work realy well imo well saying that i say Mir 2 has the best Economy ever

shittest Economy imo is WoW gold means nothing imo

I also would be interested in hearing about this economy. What makes it good? What drives the economy? Is it other players? An item or group of items that can be bought from stores? What would happen to this economy if a group of players found a way to dupe? How would the economy react?

The current game i am playing has the best economy ever. Basically everyone has his own way of making money, yet everyone spending money like crazy, which makes noone is actually rich enough. The economy is stable, player driven with no inflation. If have 3000gold, i'll spend them all, if I have 15000gold, i'll spend them all. Yet most are quite willing to spend all his money.

"Easy come easy go" can be used to describe the situation.

---

Originally posted by Hawkins

The current game i am playing has the best economy ever. Basically everyone has his own way of making money, yet everyone spending money like crazy, which makes noone is actually rich enough. The economy is stable, player driven with no inflation. If have 3000gold, i'll spend them all, if I have 15000gold, i'll spend them all. Yet most are quite willing to spend all his money.

"Easy come easy go" can be used to describe the situation.

---

hrmhrm ... what it is an "economy" for you?- just "spending all your money"?- What makes up this economy that you find it the best ever?- Without any other statements about it besides "yet most are quite willing to spend all their money" this post is quite ... useless.

Ragosch

It's abit complicated and difficult to explain. The economy design is closely related to the grind treadmill design and class/archetype balance.

First thing first, as common problem of today's mainstream mmos, gold, uber items, exp/level are all coming from grinding. The more time you have, the harder your grinding is, the richer and more uber you are and thus the more 'skillful' you will be in game.  In such a grind treadmill design, a well balanced and healthy economy is difficult to implement, especially in applying a player driven economy model.

It doesn't mean that the level-based treadmill with item hook should be given up, you wont expect the level grind treadmill to phase out, will you, hehehe...

A tweak based on a level-based treadmill model is needed, such as the one in my current game, which is a hybrid of a level-based and a skill-based model. It's complicated, as the treadmill, the classes, and the so co-related to each other.

Well, in the game basically gold doesnt come from mobs. If you are a soloer used to grind mobs 12hrs aday, please accept the fact that you'll be poor in the game. Actually, everyone's not rich below level40, as the game requires us to climb the treadmill. We have to spend more time on killing mobs, yet unlike in other games, there's virtually no rinse and repeat mob killing.

The game starts with killing rats, just like any other level-based games, yet the feeling is very different. First, you realise very quickly, even from level 1, the importance and efficiency of grouping. Second, you realise that there's something more important than leveling up, which is the skill grinding.

By killing a rat, you get 1exp and 60skillpoints, by killing a group of rats, you get 1exp but 120skillpoints. Since skillpoints are more important, everyone's grouping with each to get more skillpoints. While rats give 1exp and 60skillpoints, wolves give 4exp and 40skillpoints, everyone's killing rats instead of wolves. Leveling is suppressed by prefering to skill gains. That's basically the design, you prefer to gaining your skills over gaining levels, especially below level 33.

The skill desire is a bit tricky, say, as a smith (actually almost all classes), i need the haste1 and haste2 such that I can avoid the aggros more efficiently when going to mine and to go cross kingdom to buy raw materials. At level9, I am supposed to acquire the haste1 while at level12 the haste2. With haste2 I bear a decent chance to survive the way to a central city to purchase coal and black sands, raw materials required to train up my crafting skills. In order to get haste1, I need to complete any 5 skill books, which means, I have 5 skill books to complete at level 9. Moreover, I (almost every classes) need to train up the common weapontry skills in order to get the smith specific fighting skills, say, I need dagger1 in order to get smithfighting1, dagger2 to get smithfighting2..etc. Without the smithfighting skills, I cant be a good tank in a group, classes which requiring a tank's protection expect me equiping those tank skills. So if I level too fast to level15 without any tank skills, the healer will most likely say, "Please train up your tank skills, or else we cant fight with the mobs of our level" (subsequently the "mobs of our level" give maximized/optimized exp and skill points).

Meanwhile I need to train up the crafting skills to an extent where certain money making skills are acquired such that I'll be able to earn money from selling my crafted items to npc shops. This is a stable income, to do skill grinding by producing, say, 100 short swords, sell them to npc shops to earn 1gold each. With 100gold i can purchase a set of decent armor required by a tank at level 15 - level25. However, crafting starts with a painful period of "knife mass production", at this stage, I need to mine irons (needs the haste skill), ask a knight friend (that's what friends are for) to give/sell me the woods, till my crafting skills advance to be able to produce the "short sword".

In order to craft the money-making shortswords, I need to run to a central city (haste skill needed or die) to purchase the coal and blacksand. Actually, I can purchase them from shops if skill grinding is what I want and am willing to lose money on shortsword crafting.

Below level 20, with the basic tank skills and the ability to craft shortswords, life of smith is good. However, problem comes at around lvl25. First, shortsword crafting gives less and less skill points as my crafting skills advance. I need to make katana in order to get the optimized skillpoints to further grind up my tradeskills. The problem is, katana making loses money, you cant simple mass crafting the katanas and sell to npc to make money, you'll lose money on this. The cost for producing 1katana is 31gold, npc price is 30gold, i will lose 1 gold on each katana. More is that, I cant do *mass* crafting, as 31gold cost means I need 3100gold (so much for a level25) for 100katana.

The tactics becomes, I craft 300 shortsword to get 300gold, use the 100gold to purchase coal and sands, then craft 10katanas and with 10gold loss, craft shortsword to earn back the loss, purchase coal and sands, craft katanas, rinse and repeat. Well the good point is that occationally, by chance and luck, for every 20kantans, usually I will be able to have 1 with high quality (high attack power). And I'll be able to sell the high quality katana to players in 50-60gold. It's time to start the player business. Actually every classes will meet similar situation which drives your next stage tradeskill training to be co-related to the player driven economy.

Mobs wont give much gold, low level items (ie. shortsword) makes stable money but no enough skillpoints. Higher level crafting involves high costs and player sales. It takes time to cycle throught raw material acquiring till the final product is crafted (craft, run a long way to buy raw material then craft again). Player trading becomes more and more important as level advances, as npc sell becomes less and less efficient in both money making and tradeskill training, more is that excitement comes from that by chance you can have quality items to sell to the players. More importantly, you cant mass produce high level items (such as the katana example), as the base cost is getting higher and highter. For example, the material for a platemail is 155gold, if your tactics is too produce 100platemail to get the 1-3 high quality ones, you need 155x100 = 15,500gold as running cash, too much even for a level50 char. With this mechanic, the market wont be flooded with uber items.

Even when you have 15,500gold, and it's relatively easy to buy common raw materials such coal and sands, you may not be able to get the less common materials such as the "delux threads" in the case of platemail crafting. Delux threads are made by the monk class, and as a common scenario, component making can hardly be profit making. So you need to wait for a monk (most likely he made the threads for skill training instead of profit making) to sell the threads, unless you have a monk friend to stably supply you with the required threads.

Virtually, mobs give not much gold and no uber items. High level items are exclusively crafted by players, they are quality items, ie. a sword with high attack power or a platemail with high AC, but these quality items can hardly be regarded as uber items, there are two more process to go through in order to obtain a truly uber item. The quality items can be called potential uber items.

The first process is to put gems to enhance an item's attributes. If by chance I crafted a quality platemail with AC86 (more like a rare in the game), the next step is to try my luck on adding gems to the platemail to enhance it with attribute bonus, such as add +15str, or +15int, or +15dex.....depending on which marketing sector you are going to aim for. Warlord type knighs need int, charisma, hp and endurance, dual-wielders need str and dex, tank knights need endurance and hp and charisma.....etc.

For selling in the open market, you need to estimate the needs of player at the specific period to decide for which attributes to enhance.  For selling to friends, you ask what they want and most likely they will provide you with the required gems.

Normally, you can add 2 gems to the platemail, if you are lucky enough, you may add 3. It works like this, when the platemail is first crafted it bears a random slot value of 0/15, 2/15... or 5/15 etc. When you add the first gem, it adds randomly 6 to 14 to this value. Say your platemail has a slot value of 1/15, you add one gem but you are unlucky that the roll dice adds 14 to the value and make it 15/15, which make it unable to add another gem. On the other hand, if you are extremely luck, it adds 6 then 6 and the slot value becomes 13/15 which leaves room for a third gem.

Another factor is the gem value, ranging from +4 to +6, +4 gems are quite common, +5 gems are expensive, while +6 gems are extremely expensive in the player market. As a common tactics, the first 2 gems added are usually +4 gems. +4 means the default value added will be +4, if you are lucky enough you have +6str instead of +4str using a +4gem of str. On the other hand, if you are unlucky, you may add -ve values such as -2str to your platemail using the same +4gem.

I ever crafted a good platemail with AC72, with slot value of 0/15, after adding one +4gem, it was marked as +5str 6/15, the second +4gem and made it +11str 14/15, then I add a 3rd expensive +6gem and made it +18str 15/15. I was the king of the day that day, and this is the joy of crafting.

The +18str platemail is not uber enough, as there is a second process to go. Gem adding must be done by the original item crafter. Other smiths cant add gems to a platemail crafted by me. While gems are dropped by mobs. As a smith, I always have the desire of hunting the various gems.

The second process is the stone adding process, any player can add stones to any platemails crafted by any players. As you can see, the crafted items are divided into 3 layers, 1) crafter made, 2) crafter customization, and 3) end user customization.

There are only 2 fixed slots for stones, so one can only add up to 2 stones to a platemail. Stones are exclusively made by the bard class. Stones give better attributes over gems, yet because gems and stones are involved in 2 totally independent process, there's no impact there. The negative part of stones is that when a stone is crafted, it bears a chance of creating unwanted negative values randomly. Say, you aim for making a +str stone, the stone may turn out to be a +15str yet -2dex stone. +15 is a very rare value while the -2dex becomes annoying. So if you are able to make a +15str stone without the negative penalty, first, you are extremely lucky, second, it makes you alot of money buy selling the stone in player market.

Now my dual-wielder friend knows that I got a +18str platemail, he needs to further enhance the str attribute so he gives 2 +15str stones and requests me to add the stones to the platemail. He doesn't add the stone by himself just because the luck factor depends more or less on the charisma of which a dual-wielder lacks. So I add in the stones for him, the first +15str stone turns out adding +14 to the attribute and makes the platemail with a +32str. That's lucky enough for a +15 stones to generate a +14 output value. The second +15 stone delivers a +17value which makes the final product a +49str platemail, again I am extremely lucky in this case and a +49str platemail sells over 10,000gold in the open market.

Now I start to be able to earn money, a business with high cost, needs luck, needs friends for raw material supply and needs a high level bard friend for stone supply. Normally, I hand 1000gold to my trust worthy bard friend to craft a certain type of stones, say, the str stones, he honestly gives me back the crafted stones, good or bad. Normally, with 1000gold, i'll be able to get a +15 to +17 stones with only slide negative penalties, together with some +9 to +14 stones. It's much better to get the stones this way then to buy the stones from open market, since shopping is time consuming, plus that the highend (+15up) stones are not that common in the market and they sell very expensively.

I use the earned money to re-stock teh raw materials and gems and stones for the next lot production. There comes another headache, my warehouse is always full, which forces me sometimes to reduce the price of my items for a quick sales to free up warehouse spaces. Every class has the same issue which drives the less uber items often sell in a reasonable price. The warehouse design acts as an inflation stopper this way.

Everyone has 2 warehouses, a 50slot warehouse can be used to store any items (both stacakable and non-stackable. The 2nd warehouse is dedicated to storing stackable items, such as the raw materials. The 2nd warehouse is expandable, when the game starts, this 2nd warehouse has 20 slots, during the week of your birthday and you are smart enough to talk with warehouse keeper within the week, 10 more slots will be given to you. Another way of player controllable method of expanding the slots is to group hunting the instanced, time-limiting, randomly assigned trial dungeons. If you are able complete the dungeon quests (or part of the quests) on time, you'll be granted with some special copper coins according to your team's performance. When your copper coins are accumulated to 100, 10 warehouse slots will be given. It's like a grind treadmill, the next 10 slot will be give not by another 100 copper coins but 500 copper coins instead.

With 2 weeks of intensive fighting, including siege participation, my dual-wielder friend who owning the +49platemail tells me that the platemail breaks with its duration value dropping down to 0, he thus sold the useless +49platemail to npc shops for 130gold. At high levels, all items are consumed like crazy, that's how money is sunk.  An interesting smithfighting skill is to reduce/damage the armor's duration value directly, which is commonly used in siege to discourage, mostly the knights, from bringing uber gears to the battlefield. :P

Well, as a professional warsmith, I need to following gear sets, for fighting and for crafting,

Dex and charisma gear,

+30dex helmet, +30dex chainmail, +30dex backpack (crafted by monk),  +30dex sword, +30dex ring (by mage), +30dex jewelry (by monk again)

this is for crafting as alot of dex is required to increase the chance of producing a potential uber one. replacing the ring and jewelry with +30cha ring and jewelry. this is for gem adding, as chances are depending on dex and cha.

Dex-blood gear,

+200hp+20dex helmet, chainmail, backpack.........

this set of gear is for dungeon hunting, dex is for dodging, especially when grouping with a bard. I can effectively dodge, which not only reduces blood loss, more importantly, it saves money as hitting reduces my armor's duration value.

Endurance-blood gear,

+200hp+20end helmet, chainmail, backpack.....

this is for highend dungeon boss hunting, where dodging wont work effectively.

Perhaps I need like 1000000000000 gold for the sets of gears to be a perfect warsmith, while currently I have only around 5000gold in my pocket. And the dropping of the duration value of items is always hurting. With 5000gold and as a smith, I am one of richest amongst my friends. Still I feel poor.

At last, a secret of this game is that, except for the dual-wielders, players who desire for a uber set of gear is for covering up their weaknesses, rather than to further enhance their strong attributes. So think twice before you show off your uber gear, others might guess, well, I know where your weakness is.

The hint is, a level 40 tank knightA can be very different from another level40 tank knightB, in their in-born attributes. This is another good aspect of the game. As a result, some tank knights lack dex to dodges, some others lack charisma to cast hate, while some some others lack int to buf (yes knights can be good bufers), some some some others lack str as they want to be a semi DD and a tank at the same time. So instead of enhancing endurance as a tank is supposed to do, they demand gears for int, dex, charisma, and str instead. :P Moreover importantly, nothing for them to