Plan the Economy first

[Banditkills]

Things to take into account:

Monetary:
The amount of gold coins a player has and his assets in game (such as equipment). It determines what a character can afford to buy as well as what a character can afford to replace.

Social:
Is how many contacts & enemies the user has, their reputation amongst organizations, and their game rep. It measures what sorts of interaction might be available.

Experience:
Is used to increase power and extend the narrative and to further advancement the player. Think about how to balance this with monetary, as the two can often be opposed. As in EL, the more items you make in the game. The more experience you gain, however from a monetary stand point, the more items that are in the game, over demand for them. The cheaper those items become.

Risk:
Incurring risk means that a player's chances of dying and what that means. Possible that they lose equipment. What rewards for which risk and do you make that dynamic? For example, new player fighting Red Dragon takes a bigger risk than Uber Fighter. Should they receive the same reward?

Depreciation:
Each item will have might have a finite 'lifespan', in which its usefulness will 'degrade'. This also applies to 'time' intensive tasks. Such as digging a hole. This also covers the concept of depreciation. For example, buying a new car and you lose value almost straight away.

Buying & selling:
Do you open this to NPC's? Free market?

Looting:
PCs may attempt to 'loot' bodies. Think about drops in terms of XP, GC and equipment.

Possible solutions:
Each PC is required to hire a 'home'. You could have a range of homes for 'rent' or 'buying'. From hovel to mansion. Each with there own cost versus how useful they are.

I could go into more detail and willing to help in this area. If you accept the premise.
 

[kavvie]

Alot to take in, the economy at this time isn't in big affect.. as we are only in alpha testing stage. although you bring alot of good points to the table, korrode/fallen will have already a great outlook for the economy. one of korrode's suggestions i really like was a sword for each level of training, making them used throughout the training process. we still need some more mixers to mingle w/fallen and give him ideas. more will be discussed most likely when ranging demo is here. that being said we have a promising outlook for the future alot of people interested in QEL. but yes afaik last i talked with fallen he could use some help with coding and/or someone with experience in this line of work.
SenZon/MrGray/Kidberg produced some stunning maps(i r fail at map making  ), and the future looks very bright.

[Banditkills]

Well I have a little C++ coding experience. Mostly within console, so I am not sure what I can bring to the table in that area. I use Blender on a regular basis for 3d modeling and can do textures as well. So I can help in that area.

EL economic problems stem from them not planning it from the start. Radu/Ent even mentioned that in his article about EL development. Hence my idea and willingness to get involved at this stage. To at least try and lay down some ground work for the economic plan. As it becomes harder and harder to fix the more the game is played. Hence the serious problems with EL economy, continuing and the fixes always some form of gold sink.

[Banditkills]

Not knowing which direction you wanting to go in. I will start with a little premise work.

Character costs:
Each character costs should be based upon various factors. What class they are, will effect the costs incurred by that character. (As you seem to be heading in a more character class direction.)

Also the introduction of a set of housing, for rent will incur a sort of upkeep. This recommend a 10 - 30% of income range. This also depends upon, how you want to approach the storage issue.

Some basic ideas:

Hovel (For newly joined players)
5% income, storage max 50 separate items. (No rare storage access.)

Inn (Skill lvl 10 -20)
10% income, storage max 75 separate items. (No rare storage access.)

And so on. The more lavish the location, the more income must be spent in order to keep it. You could include things like: A mansion with stables for your own horses. Or even a castle. Depending upon which direction you wish to take the game.

Income:
Not knowing, how or even if you want any rare items in the game. Or even how your going to handle them. Please let me know. 

You could have different scales of rarity, for example. Thus there worth in the game, is based upon how rare that resource is.

For example:

Abundant: An almost in endless supply, such as flowers.
Plenty: A lot of this resource, such as rabbits.
Typical: The average resource, such as iron ore.
Scarce: Hard to find resources, such as silver or gold ore.
Rare: Very hard to find resources, such as hydro ore.
Unique: Extremely hard to find resources, such as binding stones.

You have the option, now how to approach the rarity issue. You wish to follow the EL model? Combination of: long walks, PK areas and luck?

Or a supply regulated approach? What do I mean by that?!

Well for example, one approach might be:

Abundant:
Any player can harvest this resource at any time.

Plenty:
A limit amount within the game. Say 10,000 of this item can be harvested per game day. (This could be per map or area or each location for that resource.)

[This allows options for breding in the creature area, each creature can bred at a certain level for example.]

Typical:
A limited amount as above. Or in relation to say ore's in caves. There could be a NPC outside, who takes voluntary donations on the 'upkeep' of the mine. If the players choose to make regular donations, then the mine will suffer less wall collapses and therefore players take less damage.

If players do not choose to make regular donations. Then there will be more wall collapses and more damage for players. With a possible end result that the mine just caves in. There the players can not use that resource any more. Perhaps, unless they spend 'X' amount of time, digging all the rock out and repairing the damage inside the mine. (Wooden struts and so on.)

Scare:
A limited amount as above. With the NPC always charging a fixed amount for entrance. Perhaps in the case of silver and gold mines. There owned by the local Baron or King and the player has to bribe the guards, in order to gain entry.

Rare:
As above. On a PK map or high level monsters wandering around. Etc...

Unique:
Rather than luck, you could use a math system. Say for example a 1,000 to 1. So 1,000 Abundant items to create 1 Plenty item. Then 1,000 Plenty items to create 1 Typical item. I know this will not apply to most of the goods or items currently set up in EL terms. But it gives you an alternative to the lucky based system. You could say 1,000 rare items to create a unique item, this is just an example. Of course.

Basic Item worth:
Using the basic system above, with a proposal of a basic unit cost. You can calculate a base cost for all base resources.

Base upon: 1emu = 1gc (for example)

A: 1  P:2  T:4  S:8  R:16  U:32
(Dependant upon the scaling system you wish to use, if any.)

Thus, if you already know the basic costs of all base resources. Then it is much easier to balance costs and creature/monster drops in accordance to the 'target' demands. Hence depended upon hours played in the game, you can for see income versus costs.

[Banditkills]

Trade:

Option within. EL having a class-less system, has an open market place. One of the issue is because any player can learn and make any item, it does limit trade to a certain degree.

One option to you, is limit each PC to two or three skill groups. One example might be, that you limit players too two groups. Lets say your first choice is magic, spell casting etc... Your second choice could either be fighter or alc-er. Making with the first choice a battle mage, the second could be a scholar mage.

Anyway the point is, if one player choice is to become a potion master, they might have to trade with a alc-er for those items and fighters might have to trade with potion masters for healing and spirit potions. If you have a select grouping, as long as one class has to trade for needed items from another class. This increases trade between groups within the game.

[SenZon]

sounds pr0 , all i do is make maps and PK ppl so i cant contribute with suggestions on the econoics area

[Banditkills]

Thanks. Well at the moment I am only putting out some ideas on what you can base the premise of the economy. Depending upon what kind of game play, trade, interaction you might want in the game.

Degrade:

EL has a percentage chance for breaks. This affects unlucky players and doesn't take into account how much any item is 'used'. Imagine bashing armor plate with a sword over and over again for a year?

The sword might break after awhile and the armor would have more than a few dents in it.

One way of approaching this is give all items a quality value.

An example:

Lets say a iron sword has a quality value of 60. You could say can hit at full quality value for 60 hits, then it's value goes down to 59. Then 59 hits and so on. At each change of level you could do a stress test to see if it breaks. A percentage chance per level, rather than per hit as in EL.

You might also want to say, if a low quality weapon it has a higher chance of breaking. Say Steel armor has quality of 80. Then there is a 20 quality difference between the two. So you could say a one off chance (first hit) iron sword breaks 20% of the time, or a 2% chance per hit. For example.

Armor is meant to deflect the blow of any strike. So depending on how you want to do combat. This factor is up for discussion. However, you might want to rate armor differently in your game. A deflection rating. Deflect % hits away, no damage. Absorbs damage: armor takes damage of blow instead of Character. Damage of weapon is taken from quality of armor rating. Piercing damage, any weapon piecing the armor, armor might take half weapon damage and character half. As armor has slowed weapon.

[RipBigMan]

I like this idea but instead of successful hits how about it degradesa when its gets blocked because it just makes more since i mean if you hit someone to do damage then its hurting them it shouldn't be damaged but when its blocked then no damage is done but to the sword its self and or the shield i mean its just me two cents

[Gerbil]

Perfect Economy = A non existant one.

Benefits:
No large market channel issues, no confusion upon buying and selling ( you know where to go to buy and sell item A-Z). No time zone penalties/advantages.
Easy to implement. Players happy.

Code: (Simple Model)

NPC_AA in map_1 Sells low noobie armours.
NPC_AB in map_1 Sells low noobie weapons.
NPC_AC in map_1 Sells low noobie books/clothes/spells/(basically not armour & weps).
#NOTE: All the NPC's selling these items buy them back @ half(quarter?) price.

NPC_BA in map_2 Sells medium noobie armours.
NPC_BB in map_2 Sells medium noobie weapons.
NPC_BC in map_2 Sells medium noobie books/clothes/spells(basically not armour & weps).
#NOTE: All the NPC's selling these items buy them back @ half(quarter?) price.

and so on..till higher level maps with higher level items/armours/etc.

Optional: Rare drops - any mob can drop them (but less chance if your levels are higher than the mob {to prevent higher lvl's farming low end mobs} you are fighting) - every player has a fair chance to find them. With ingame demand and supply setting their prices. Nothing overpowered.

Now i feel less guilty for that economics test I should be studying for.