All Posts by Talinguard

Originally posted by Denaton

 in my game the players gonna make there own monney... at the start them have to mine minirals and melt it in to forms that them have made. The hole game idea of mine is that players make there own world..

So if them wonna have different currencies then let them have it. =)

 

Sorry for my bad english

This idea is more substantial because the coin has intrinsic value.  Assuming that coin is made of something thought of as valuable withing the game and players spend time (the only commodity a player really has) then the vaule will be partially based on what it's made of and how much time the player puts into it and what that player feels his time is worth.

This is where exchange rates would be interesting.

Originally posted by DaWolf85

What if you didn't even have a currency and it was totally barter-based? Okay, I see some problems with that:

1. Noobs getting ripped off
2. People in general getting ripped off
3. How would you trade with NPCs? Would they have a set amount of something for something else? Would it be random within a certain range?

But, still, if it was done, it would be a pretty cool in-game experience.

Players will NEVER accept barter based economies.  That doesn't mean that some bartering wont exsist, but as a foundation, no way.  Way to frustrating.

Originally posted by Nightbringe1

I would see a scenario like this becoming a barter based economy, that is what happened in Diablo II where the in game currency was valuless.

The reason that Diablo became barter based is that hyper-inflation set in (waaaay to much money, too little stuff) and the amount of coin relitive to the number of items was out of whack. The game had a "Faucet" economy.

Originally posted by Impacatus

I've been thinking about this lately.  In the real world as we know different countries have different currencies.  I wonder what this would do in a game.  Players would have to set their own exchange rate, and be able to set their NPC vendors to accept or refuse currencies and at what rate.  Hopefully the market would adjust for any disparities in the value of different currencies,  What do you think would happen, if there were multiple currencies based on what part of the game world you were located?

Would the playerbase choose one universal currency and abandon the rest?

Would they all be valued the same?

Would the players come up with standard exchange rates?

Would they be accepted at a reduced value outside of their region of origin?

Would a class of professional money-changers arise?

As a further thought experiment, what would happen if all currency was player issued?

I haven't read any of the replies.

The answer to a few of the questions is simple enough.  Currency is only worth what it can buy for you.  If Eskimos trade in a currency, it's value to me is directly related to what I can buy with it.  Even if by Eskimo standards I have a lot of Eskimo money, it's still worthless unless I can exchange it or buy something with it I want.  I live on the east cost and the value of my currency would be offset by how much it would cost me to travel to Alaska to spend it and ship what I bought back, not to mention the cost in time....

Having said that,

Player base would go for a universal currency if in the context of the world it was possible, if not then multiple currencies are possible.

The value of a currency would be based on how much you could earn in a given amount of time and what you could purchase with what you earn.  The most highly valued currency in a world would be the one that can purchase things you want and takes the least amount of time to earn.

To come up with an exchange rate, players would have to have accsess to information about bying power of the differernt currencies within the world, but yes absolutly.

If money can be "played" people will do it.

Establishing a currency would be difficult and may be a bigger game within a game then most players are willing to play. Though I'm not saying it's impossible, just unlikley.

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Originally posted by pinkdaisy

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Increasing the money supply does not cause inflation, inflation occures when the price of goods increase while aggragate income does not. 

 

Epic Fail.

 

No epic fail I am right it does not cause inflation, increasing the money supply could only cause inflation when it is done excessively.  So unless you are planning to suddenly double the money supply or increase the money supply constantly over long periods of time nothing bad will happen. 

 

 

Inflation is when too much money chases too few goods. 

Now I don't think a little inflation or deflation hurts an economy.  I believe that all economies work in cycles and as long as the economy is not allowed to pass a tipping point, that is a point where the economy would no longer be viable and would break down, then the cycles are normal.  Hyper inflation and hyper deflation are the real problems and what I believe you're talking about.

Quantity theory of money P=MV/Q is a formula used to show how the general price level is affected by the amount of currency in the economy as well as the amount of goods being produced.

P= the price level

M= the amount of money in circulation

V= the velocity of money or how quickly money changes hands

Q= the quantity of goods

The best systems imo are those that work opposite the player base.  The harder players work to unbalance the system, and they will, the more the system adapts and counter balances player action, collectively speaking.

Ironore, as usual, writes what I'm thinking, but does it in one tenth the number of words.....

Originally posted by Impacatus

 

Barrikor-  You may have something there.  I considered in the past the idea that money supply should scale with population, but I forgot about that. 

Originally posted by CactusmanX

Your biggest enemy here is lack of reasons to spend money, money curculation is needed for better distribution of income,  when there is not enough reasons to spend money high levels will accumulate most of it, in a closed economy this means creation of a upper and lower class.

 

That I can definately agree with.  Too often, the range of desirable goods and services is extremely small.  People want "end game" content, but why not "high-wealth" content?

These replies bring up another two questions:

1.  What happens to a player's money when they quit?

and

2.  How do you remove money from the economy when you need to?

The answers I have come up with (which of course only lead to new questions,) are that insted of trying to control wealth on the back end, control the supply relitive to the number of players (similar to my last post). 

The problem is that almost all games seek to remove wealth once it has been created (the back end).  The creation of new money is only limited to player desire to trade their time to make more.  My solution is to control creation of wealth.  In this way the system can add wealth when needed and loose money through attrition when needed (decay, failed crafting, salvage, use ect).

So the answer is when a player quits there money is removed and reintroduced to the economy (if necessary) using whatever method the designer has chosen.  Again the important thing here is that as the dev/designer you control the introduction of money.

A silly example might be that in the world it rains fairy dust.  That dust is collected  and players use it to make the most desired items in the game.  Fairy dust would in effect be money.  It rains when more is needed and when the economy needs to shed some money then fairy dust would be lost though decay, use, failed crafting ect.  There would still be coin, but I'm not going into how that would work right now.

Before you jump on me and tell me how stupid that sounded, I need you to think a little. I need you to read between the lines and figure out what I'm actually trying to demonstrate. The games fiction would have to be a bit more compelling and players would obviously have to feel like that have a bit more control. I was trying to keep it simple. The point is there are ways that devs can control the introduction of wealth in the economy. Before you say that players will never accept it, I would use the concept of attuning or binding items as an example that players are willing to accept anything if it framed in the right context.
The answer to number 2. There are several ways to remove money. Decay and obsolescence are one, but decay and obsolescence have limits. If you needed to remove more money then those two methods could provide, then the dev's may offer one time sales of items that have little "real" use but offer players a way to be unique. A special dye for their armor, a new "blueprint" for a crafter that makes a new type of sword (a saber instead of a plain long sword). Virtual property. None of these things tip the balance of adversarial combat, but they can all be used as temporary drains if decay is not enough to "shed" excess money assuming the economy is out of balance.

My solution adds another element, because as the dev I control the creation of money I can leverage the buying power of money relative to the products that money can buy with a rudimentary banking system. All of this would of course be based in a world much more complex than I can spell out here. It would also rely on a dam good fiction to explain to the players.

Originally posted by Barrikor

A "Pure" closed economy isn't very practical:

Ex:

1 Player total ----------- 1000 Gold total
2 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
3 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
4 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
5 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
6 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
...
999 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
1000 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
1001 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total
1002 Players total ----------- 1000 Gold total

- This would cause gold inflation [EDIT: actually a gold shortage / monetary deflation] because the gold per person drops, making gold's value rise.

------------------------------------------------------
I think THIS is the most practical (IMHO):

1 player total ----------- 30 Gold total
2 players total ----------- 60 Gold total
3 players total ----------- 90 Gold total
4 players total ----------- 120 Gold total
5 players total ----------- 150 Gold total
6 players total ----------- 180 Gold total
7 players total ----------- 210 Gold total

This would keep the gold per person at a constant rate, the value of money stays constant even while new people join bringing 30 new gold coins into the game (assuming that all players are active and don't quit the game ever, that is,)(if rich players quit, the game need to restore the right amount of gold back into the playerbase, otherwise you'll have deflation [EDIT: monetary deflation again same as on top, but if a broke player quits and the extra gold isn't removed from circulation then there's monetary inflation / gold surplus])

The total gold per player ratio DOES need to go up a tiny bit as time goes by though, otherwise you end up with stagflation.
[EDIT: not stagflation, but it still lowers the player's incentives, I guess stagflation in an MMO would probably only come from a glitch... or a player run federal reserve...]

CactusmanX, thanks for pointing my mistakes out, otherwise I might have kept saying it backwards forever!

Inflation is when there is too much money chasing too little product.  Deflation is when there is too much product  and not enough money to purchase it.  Of course money and product are relative....

Impactus is aware of my solution and it's along the lines of what your talking about.  That is, each person in the game brings with them a certain amount of wealth into the economy (thats not to say it's in their pocket on day one, but the economy as a whole has more money that can be earned).  For this to work you need to modify the concept slightly, or your right back to the example you gave.  For example:

If there were 1000 level one players (I use the word "level" conceptually) and each player brings 30 gold into the economy, then there would be 30,000 gold in the economy.  If there were 1000 level 50 players and there were still only 30,000 gold there would be problems, assuming that prices for items rise for higher level players, this of course would lead right back to the deflation you spoke of.  My solution was to say that there would be a certain amount of gold for each level of player within the game. 

So if each level of player brings 30 gold and you are level 10, then over time you bring 300 gold into the economy.  Now the numbers can vary and the amount per level might not be the same, that is 1 gold for a level 1 player and an additional 5 gold into the economy when the player hits level 2....ect.

Now the problem of where wealth comes from is, imo, the largest single problem in the genre.  in the past players have killed mobs and recived one of three basic types of wealth; Raw material, coin, and/or a finished item.  This will not work in a closed economy.

This means that the real problem in a closed economy is distribution of wealth (and later on the redistribution of wealth) and as you mentioned how to remove wealth if the player base falls.  Another issue is that in a typical closed economy over time powerful players or groups of players will control most of the money and the game will be a lot less fun for the majority of players.  The trick is to figure out how to redistribute wealth AND keep the game fun.  This is a problem I have solved, but it took me 40 pages and several years to work out.  Something I cannot go into here.

The solution has something to do with linking a universally demanded commodity with the creation of money.  Money becomes, in effect, simply a representation of the items that it can buy.  The trick is to figure out how to keep the system in balance, especially given the fact that players work so hard and are so good at trying to unbalance the systems we create.

Nik,

I'm looking at your proposal from a higher level.  I know it's frustrating when you have a good idea and people cannot see the innovation.  I'm looking at your proposal at it relates to how I feel MMO's should be implemented as a whole.  Which is why I stipulated that your proposal was an improvement, but I felt there were improvements that could be made.

The reason I started asking you questions in regards to your economy is that I believe, given what you have said, your putting the cart before the horse.  Your designing systems that will bring wealth into the economy, but I don't think you understand how the economy will actually work. 

It's like designing the front end of a car, before you know the dimensions of the engine.

Look, please don't interpret what I'm writing as negative, believe me, my ideas are waaaay out of the box and because people can't see the breadth and with of my ideas they often respond negatively, so I understand.

I think your idea has merit and if you want me to judge your concept in a vacuum than I think it's a good idea.

Having said that, I need to cause more trouble and address some of your statements...

And to also be a fan of player driven content I would like to take into account the actions of players and allow them to shape the world but I also realize that player driven content would not be enough to have a game. Over and over players can interact with another through various situations and events that they have created but what happens to the player that doesn't want to get involved with other players? You cannot simply say 'if he doesn't want to play with other people he shouldn't be playing a mmo', this is silly and only a fool would believe this. How bout the one time when you just got fed up with everybody and needed to play the game alone for a little bit? I'm sure everybody has gone through this multiple times. Player driven content is a nice step towards creating dynamic ever-changing virtual world but it is simply not enough to  satisfy the various player gaming types that will play the game.

Player driven content is just another cog in the wheel of stuff to do in a mmo, nothing more and nothing less. It just provides content that is less stale and repetitive than other forms.  

Player driven content is not enough?  If you speaking only of player content as it relates to quests I agree.  If you're talking about player content on a broader level, I disagree.  I believe it's the system that defines the framework and it's the players that operate within that framework.   Failure to define a system that allows for sustained player to player interaction, will in the end fail do to lack of interest, but having said that i believe it is possible to define a system with mostly player driven content and conflict that will work.

My concepts involve a few very basic low level ideas.

First:  Players must be between what you have and what you want.  Not NPC's.  That does not mean that NPC's are not part of player accomplishment, it simply means that NPC's are not the source of virtually all wealth in the game.

Second, games like WoW, Everquest and its ilk have no sustainable endgame.  We want to believe that expansions are about new content and improvements, but hidden in there is the resetting of the economy, redefining wealth in the world via obsolescence.  I’m not suggesting that that Mode of play isen’t successful or fun.  I am suggesting that it’s overdone and any indy that wants to make a name for themselves better be willing to think outside the box.

The economy is the foundation of the MMORPG and most MMORPG’s are based in conflict.  If love of money is the root of all evil, then the desire for money is the source of all conflict in an MMORPG.  Where money comes from, how it is exchanged, what it can buy and how it is lost will define your game long before you make decisions about the types of weapons and skills and how magic will work.

Too often people try to create a world, and then cram an economic system of exchange in it.  I think that form follows function, that is, the economy of an MMORPG, is more important than how many races there are, how big the world is, or whether there will be dragons.  <