I'd like to recap here parts of some of Trollson's posts and some discussion between he and EndorVaeros.
I'm not going to start posting on Trollson's thread as i'll eventually want to discuss and go into detail on all of his points/suggestions, and i think it'll be better to keep track if they are separated at the time of discussion commencement.
The thread i'm about to quote from is here:
http://qelserv.quadronyx.org/forums/index.php?topic=48.0You can skip to the next post if you just want to see my actual questions, the below is 'further reading' i suppose (but worth reading
)
7.2 Economy MattersEL has never got to grips with the problem of the economic system in an MMORPG; although on his blog Entropy feels confident enough to write
articles on the subject.
Value is determined by supply and demand:
(i)
Harvestables are available in unlimited quantities, so in general have zero value.
(ii)
Animal parts are limited by spawn rates, so could hold some value.
(iii)
Exotics (stones, enhanced, modables) are extremely rare, and so have a strong value.
Since EL is a grind-for-experience game, characters are rewarded for actions, harvesting and creating items. This reward deducts from the value of items -- in effect, harvestables and basic goods (no exotics or animal parts) have negative value in the economy.
Get rid of grind-for-experience throughout the game, and have all resources in limited supply, and there may be an economy.
* Experience on fail (discussed in (3)) should reduce items produced through grind, if not the grind itself.
* Separate learning tasks (producing experience) and creation tasks (producing items) would do the same; but I don't like this unless the same rules could be applied to all tasks (training fighting vs bloody combat, etc).
* Giving experience for achieving goals, not for tasks, would be my preference, but requires a lot of work elsewhere to provide characters with measurable goals.
7.3 Cash FlowClosely related to the economic problem is that of cash flow. It seems that every innovation in the game has as a strong driver the desire to add another "gold sink".
This is another sign of a failed economic model.
Most of the "gold sinks" are aimed at high-value/high-level tasks. This affects a small portion of the character population, and can be ignored if you don't want to participate.
In addition, with free unlimited resources and a handy NPC with limitless funds, any gold sink can be countered by the lilac bush.
A more effective gold sink would be a very small but pervasive one, such as charging a few coins for each boat trip. Count up how many boat trips are made each hour in the game, and multiply that by 1-2gc!
But gold sinks are band-aids for the problem; which is that gold is another unlimited resource in the game, via NPCs and their unlimited pockets and unlimited demand.
So if you want a stable currency, limit those NPCs. Model NPCs more after the trader bots or "Merchant NPCs", who have finite resources and demands.
But, it must be kept fair for all players; a high level "truck" shouldn't arrive early and soak up all the NPC's gold for the day, leaving the NPC unresponsive when newbies arrive with their first bag of harvestables.
(i) NPCs obay the rules of supply and demand, and have finite resources (though can go into debt).
(ii) NPCs trade with a "out-of-game" entity, at some background rate.
(iii) The price offered to characters depends on their level and quantity being traded.
(iv) Track how much characters have made from NPCs during the day and factor that in somehow.
Making a stable supply-and-demand economy were prices vary accordingly is not difficult. Making one which is fair to all players is.
curtailed due to time
update 2009-01-06
7.4 Anachronisms- Rectangular hay bails - where are the combine harvesters which produce these?
Closely related to the economic problem is that of cash flow. It seems that every innovation in the game has as a strong driver the desire to add another "gold sink".
My husband and I have talked at some length about this. Gold sinks do not do wonders to fix a broken economy. They usually encourage more gold to come into the game to pay for these items. A much smaller percentage of gold already in the game (compared to the sources coming in to pay for this item) actually goes out.
A much better solution would be to lower the price that NPCs sell for. Making NPCs sell for 10 times (sometimes more) what they bought it for does not encourage the high level people to buy the items. It encourages them to go out and get it for themselves, thus creating a larger profit margin for those people, and more money into the game. If it were possible on some items, just to break even (or possibly loose a small some) I know a lot of people that would sink their money into buying the ingredients simply because this is faster. [sarcasm] But that would increase how fast people level up, and we wouldn't want to do that, now would we? [/sarcasm]
(i) NPCs obay the rules of supply and demand, and have finite resources (though can go into debt).
(ii) NPCs trade with a "out-of-game" entity, at some background rate.
(iii) The price offered to characters depends on their level and quantity being traded.
(iv) Track how much characters have made from NPCs during the day and factor that in somehow.
(i) Though there would have been a time when I would have agreed with you that having NPCs obey the rules of supply and demand would be a great thing, this still leaves a problem. The more people you put into game, the higher you have to increase what the NPC can buy. In some ways this would make a lot of sense, but there are things that wouldn't. Yes, with more people in game, supply and demand are bound to go up, but not as much as people think they would. This is because the common gamer is driven by the urge to make more money. This means buying as little as possible. Though this is corrected slightly here by having classes and not being able to level everything up, this is only going to fix things slightly. A decent number of people will just have second accounts to supply the things for themselves. If you want a good example of this, check out the PK server.
(ii) Having the NPCs trade with an "out-of-game" entity would be good, but again, if you are trying to go with supply and demand, this "out-of-game" entity would have to follow the same rules. After all, why would someone want to buy the same item every day?
(iii) This is a great idea, for some harvestables. And it would do a wonderful job of curbing the amount of money that suppliers/Artisans can get. But what about the fighter type classes? Ya know, the people who would stab out their eye if they tried to use a pick. If we have relatively common drops, such as bones and raw meat, the higher level mobs, as well as the lower level mobs would drop these items. (How does it make sense that a rabbit drops a piece of raw meat, but a dragon has none to speak of?) How do you balance this? This is not the best idea to implement until you can find a way to make it fair across all classes, and not just single one or two out.
(iv) If you are trying to make it have some semblance of sense, this would not make sense. If an NPC needs it, they are not going to start paying you less for the items they need, while paying the person standing next to you more. This encourages the use of multiple accounts, and not a more player-to-player driven economy. Some of the things that could be done to fix it would take a lot more coding than most developers are willing to do. This is because it usually just postpones the inevitable breaking of the economy, keeps it from happening.
[Side note] It would be great if people stop trying to clog threads with posts that do nothing to further the thread. Saying that it is a good idea isn't nesicarily a bad thing as it helps encourage more people to post ideas, but saying something completely unrelated gets very old. This is usually an attempt to up post count, or because someone feels the need to make themselves sound more important. It would be great if it stopped. But that is a discussion for another thread, please do not clog up this one with responces to this side note. [/Side note]
Gold sinks ... usually encourage more gold to come into the game to pay for these items. ... A much better solution would be to lower the price that NPCs sell for...
EL's NPCs, with fixed prices and infinite pockets, should not be considered as participants in the game economy, but as limits on it; they cap the price ranges in the game economy. When NPC prices become too realistic, the player economy is backed into a corner and can suffer.
For example: Medallions were a major source of income for our Merchant. To help support crafters, the NPC buy price was raised to something more "realistic" - more than we were selling for! Therefore our prices had to rise to match, but at that price point sales dried up.
(i) ... The more people you put into game, the higher you have to increase what the NPC can buy. ...
(ii) ... if you are trying to go with supply and demand, this "out-of-game" entity would have to follow the same rules. ...
(iii) This is a great idea, for some harvestables ... But what about the fighter type classes? ...
(iv) ... this would not make sense ...
Making a dynamic, self-balancing economy from the EL game model is not an easy task.
(i) As the game grows, this is represented by the NPC's business booming. Therefore the NPC's resources increase, and prices are adjusted.
Clarification: I would expect the system to self-adjust, so these changes would be automatic within the system. I don't envisage any manual mucking around with buy-sell prices etc.(ii) Assume that the game is set within a relatively small part of a much larger world, then we have an "intra-game" economy, which we are discussing, and a much larger "extra-game" economy. The latter is large enough not to be affected by changes in the former. So, when I talk of an "out-of-game" entity, I am implying trade with the "rest of the world". This can also provide a stabilising force in the game economy, though less rigid than the fixed NPC prices (and of course the transport costs make relying on it less economical).
(iii) This was a "fudge-factor" suggestion. If it is modelling anything realistic, it would be social standing or rank related. If harvestables are a "spawned" resource, like creature drops, then its less relevant - though spawning has plenty of fair-use problems itself.
(iv) No, it doesn't. Again its a fudge factor, and there should be better ways to share NPC's finite-resources around.
So problems we have:(a) There is no economy unless resources are finite
(a sweeping statement to make a point!).
(b) Finite resources need to be shared fairly between characters of different capabilities.
Part of this is that character progression is only measured by levels, from experience, from consuming resources and/or producing items. ie, the grind. This is more a feature of CRPG than RPG - on the tabletop we had many other ways to advance our characters other than level gain.
Can we:(a) Get rid of the grind? Drive progress through achieving goals rather than repeating arbitrary actions?
(b) Provide other achievements for characters, beyond level gains, which are meaningful in-game?
I have plans for
(a), but there is a lot more work involved.
For
(b), consider:
(i) Ranks within groups - guilds, cities, institutions. These need to be earned (not bought), and could grant access to "things".
(ii) Positions within groups; unlike Ranks they are a limited resource, you cannot have two Captains of the Town Watch for instance. So there is a game in holding, maintaining, and acquiring positions.
Both ranks and positions can be lost if neglected, and holding some may prevent access to others (cf. EL's churches). But acquiring them should be (mostly) independent of levels, so they are not another by-product of the grind.
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