What do you think about having an investment system similar to that in Skyrim? Economics is not a strength of mine, but I think it's really intriguing to be able to invest in merchants or other businesses in a game. I think this may work even better in an MMO. Basically, you hand over a load of money to an NPC that provides a service (merchant, transportation, etc.). And depending on how often other players use that service, you can either lose that money (if business is slow) or make money (if business is good). Am I the only one that thinks this is a good idea?
I forget which xpac it was... i think it was Gates of Discord... even when you got raid-quality armor molds, you still had to combine it with fairly expensive storebought components to create your armor. I think it was a no-fail combine, but for some reason 10kpp pieces of metal sticks in my mind. Like 1 sheet of metal for bracers, 2 for gloves/helm/armm/boots, 3 for legs, 4 for BP or something like that. Maybe something along those lines where you never get the end result directly from a mob... for spells for example maybe you get an ancient scroll written in an unknown language and you have to turn in the scroll to a certain NPC and some amount of money to get your spell
Bazgrim said:What do you think about having an investment system similar to that in Skyrim? Economics is not a strength of mine, but I think it's really intriguing to be able to invest in merchants or other businesses in a game. I think this may work even better in an MMO. Basically, you hand over a load of money to an NPC that provides a service (merchant, transportation, etc.). And depending on how often other players use that service, you can either lose that money (if business is slow) or make money (if business is good). Am I the only one that thinks this is a good idea?
This sounds pretty sweet, but how would you keep everyone from just investing in say, a shady swashbuckler (or whichever merchant is most convenient for the most people)?
Shucklighter said:Bazgrim said:What do you think about having an investment system similar to that in Skyrim? Economics is not a strength of mine, but I think it's really intriguing to be able to invest in merchants or other businesses in a game. I think this may work even better in an MMO. Basically, you hand over a load of money to an NPC that provides a service (merchant, transportation, etc.). And depending on how often other players use that service, you can either lose that money (if business is slow) or make money (if business is good). Am I the only one that thinks this is a good idea?
This sounds pretty sweet, but how would you keep everyone from just investing in say, a shady swashbuckler (or whichever merchant is most convenient for the most people)?
Well in your example, the shady swashbuckler, is by definition "shady." Therefore, he would either not even be open to investments or he'd just take your investment and give you nothing in return. But I know what you mean. The best answer I can think of now is that hopefully there won't be just one merchant or bank that is most convenient for people. There won't be one central hub for the entire playerbase. So because the population is spread out, there will be a fair amount of decision-making involved. Additionally, I'd like for "general supply merchants" to be relatively uncommon. A wide variety of types of merchants that only deal in specific types of goods would give investors more options. Furthermore, (and this is where my knowledge of economics starts to get blurry), I would imagine that shops that have a lot of investors (like in main cities) would in turn give a smaller % of gains/losses to each of its investors. On the other hand, small shops that are more out of the way and have fewer investors would then have a higher % of returns to its investors. It's basically the financial version of risk vs. reward. I'm sure there's someone on these forums that has a lot of experience with both real-life economics and online games that could flesh out this idea more.
IMO, the problem primarily resides with those that are max level. It is somehwat difficult, but quite possible to balance a players expected income as they level up with the costs that they might incurr. Once a player hits max level, these costs tend to disappear. However, their ability to gain wealth is at it's highest. If a player hits max level and plays a "low expense" style game, they could accumulate effectively unlimited wealth.
Players that are leveling up, tend to have expenses. They also tend to be more focused on gaining exp, than wealth, although some may spend some time farming. This problem resides with those at max level.
If gold sinks are to be the way, I would look for ones that are in high demand, that are repeatable, and are used by those at max level. Try to design them so that they are consumable, and a player will not be able to gain the wealth to purchase them by simply farming for a few hours. In other words, make them expensive, repeatable, and highly desired by max level players. The only problem I have with this is, it starts to almost become an arcade like game if the goal at max level is to purchase these temporary "buffs" or trinkets or whatever. How to make these types of expensive yet repeatable costs desirable and non-game breaking will be a challenge that I think the devs and their advisors may be up to.
If you insist on them not being repeatable, I supposed you can just make many, many, many of them so they last for like several years. Enjoy your coding VR. :)
I think the problem can be solved by not having infinite amounts of currency entering the economy for starters. Set a server wide currency cap (that can be adjusted if needed) that if reached shuts off any coins dropped or earned until moneys sinks have restocked the flow.
Introduce a few things to make sure the natural flow of money returns to players who kill mobs or do quests. such as,
The general idea being to minimize inflation using a controllable influx of coins.
Gahh..this topic..again..for the eleventybillionth time.
You won't prevent inflation. In fact, you actually want inflation. Inflation is good. Inflation means a healthy economy. Inflation is not the result of money bring produced out of thin air (i.e. kill orc, orc drops money, player picks up money).
Inflation is not just the rise in costs of things, it is the rise in cost of things because demand outstrips supply. But what is in high demand and short supply? Only 'good' items that drop off NPCs, i.e. 'Loot'. But nobody forces you to buy off other players. If you wanted, you could put in the time and effort and get those items yourself. So what could be causing problems with the economy? NPC vendors.
Deflation is when supply outstrips demand. And where do we see this in the game? Go to a vendor..any vendor and guess what. They have an infinite supply of whatever they are selling. You need batwings? That chick in East Commons will sell you a billion of them. You need metal sheets? That blacksmith in will sell you enough metal sheets to cover the planet. So you buy hundreds..thousands..of these items and the price never changes. Infinite supply at a set price.
So no, you do not need all these fancy and convoluted money sinks to keep an economy in check, you need every entity involved in the economy to act like a real supplier. Prices everywhere must be allowed to organically adjust according to demand and no NPC vendor should have an infinite supply of anything.
I'll add one last though on NPC vendors: They should also keep in their inventory everything players sell to them and make those items available to purchase..at higher NPC prices. You combine these 3 things, fluctuating pricing based upon demand, finite supply and resale and the economy will be very stable.
Vandraad said:Gahh..this topic..again..for the eleventybillionth time.
You won't prevent inflation. In fact, you actually want inflation. Inflation is good. Inflation means a healthy economy. Inflation is not the result of money bring produced out of thin air (i.e. kill orc, orc drops money, player picks up money).
Inflation is not just the rise in costs of things, it is the rise in cost of things because demand outstrips supply. But what is in high demand and short supply? Only 'good' items that drop off NPCs, i.e. 'Loot'. But nobody forces you to buy off other players. If you wanted, you could put in the time and effort and get those items yourself. So what could be causing problems with the economy? NPC vendors.
Deflation is when supply outstrips demand. And where do we see this in the game? Go to a vendor..any vendor and guess what. They have an infinite supply of whatever they are selling. You need batwings? That chick in East Commons will sell you a billion of them. You need metal sheets? That blacksmith in will sell you enough metal sheets to cover the planet. So you buy hundreds..thousands..of these items and the price never changes. Infinite supply at a set price.
So no, you do not need all these fancy and convoluted money sinks to keep an economy in check, you need every entity involved in the economy to act like a real supplier. Prices everywhere must be allowed to organically adjust according to demand and no NPC vendor should have an infinite supply of anything.
I'll add one last though on NPC vendors: They should also keep in their inventory everything players sell to them and make those items available to purchase..at higher NPC prices. You combine these 3 things, fluctuating pricing based upon demand, finite supply and resale and the economy will be very stable.
Makes sense. Do the NPCs only restock when the server restarts, or every day, or what?
Should be easy enough to make it so the NPC merchants know how many copies of an item are for sale in their area and adjust their prices accordingly, I guess.
The other thing that happens due to a bug ..is the ability to dupe things or gold. Hopefully the Devs keep an eye on that. I remember that happening in an early game by Sierra Online "The Realm" heh piles of gold everywhere...and if someone handed it to you ..it would dupe in your inventory too. lol
NPCs can restock, sure, but when they are sold out and restock, the new stock is at a higher price than the old stock. Only when the stock sit around not moving should the cost start to decrease, following demand.
When NPCs restock would need to be worked out. I think we can agree it should not be on a predictable time table otherwise people could monopolize their stock. People of varied playtimes should not always see NPCs out of their stocks.
JDNight said:... IMO, the problem primarily resides with those that are max level. It is somehwat difficult, but quite possible to balance a players expected income as they level up with the costs that they might incurr. Once a player hits max level, these costs tend to disappear. However, their ability to gain wealth is at it's highest. If a player hits max level and plays a "low expense" style game, they could accumulate effectively unlimited wealth. ...
Pre-PoP/Luclin EQ did several things to counter this... slow levelling, expensive max level spells/items, player-run trading, tough content with limited rewards.
Vandraad said:... So no, you do not need all these fancy and convoluted money sinks to keep an economy in check, you need every entity involved in the economy to act like a real supplier. Prices everywhere must be allowed to organically adjust according to demand and no NPC vendor should have an infinite supply of anything. ...
I would love to see this... it would have a substantial impact on both the economy and the feel of npcs in the game. EQ had some of this, some limited components on timers, the ability to buy things other players sold to the vendor for increased prices. Just needed to take it one step further.
Liav said:
In EQ though it was kind of necessary for them to have infinite amounts of things, otherwise every merchant would be permanently stripped and it'd take 6 real life years to max a crafting profession.
Either change the way you do tradeskills so this isn't a necessity (VG had a somewhat good idea on this with work orders), or be okay with slower levelling for tradeskills. This hurts alts in some respect. What I'd like to see instead is limited vendor supplies and allow the items to come from player farming. My first plat in EQ was earned by selling bone chips to a high level necro.
I am not a fan of gold sinks strictly to try and control the economy. I'd much prefer there be less gold and other reasons for inns/components/etc. That they cost money I don't mind, but not as their primary purpose.
It is not really practical to put a cap on the amount of cash in the system.
1) It will not be easy to determine what that cap should be.
2) New players need access to income streams.
3) It will not prevent players from hoarding all of the limited cash in the system, leaving primarily new players behind.
Vandraad said:Inflation is not just the rise in costs of things, it is the rise in cost of things because demand outstrips supply. But what is in high demand and short supply? Only 'good' items that drop off NPCs, i.e. 'Loot'. But nobody forces you to buy off other players. If you wanted, you could put in the time and effort and get those items yourself. So what could be causing problems with the economy? NPC vendors.
Deflation is when supply outstrips demand. And where do we see this in the game? Go to a vendor..any vendor and guess what. They have an infinite supply of whatever they are selling. You need batwings? That chick in East Commons will sell you a billion of them. You need metal sheets? That blacksmith in will sell you enough metal sheets to cover the planet. So you buy hundreds..thousands..of these items and the price never changes. Infinite supply at a set price.
I have thought long and hard about the supply and demand ramifications of cash in the system. I have even examined the use of non-fiat currency! There will be a ridiculous amount of variables involved as substitute products and such will abound. There is good argument here for your next statement though...
Vandraad said:So no, you do not need all these fancy and convoluted money sinks to keep an economy in check, you need every entity involved in the economy to act like a real supplier. Prices everywhere must be allowed to organically adjust according to demand and no NPC vendor should have an infinite supply of anything.
I'll add one last though on NPC vendors: They should also keep in their inventory everything players sell to them and make those items available to purchase..at higher NPC prices. You combine these 3 things, fluctuating pricing based upon demand, finite supply and resale and the economy will be very stable.
Finite Supply: I can definitelly see using this for one-use items like recipes or items that should be very rare in the first place. The problems with this are very similar to the problems listed for making a cash 'cap' listed above. It will be abused by players who have the means to effectively force other players to work as slaves for them. You can call this capitalism, but I don't really see it that way as there is little room for invention in a game like this. If there are alternate means of gaining the items, then this might work. However, you are asking for a headache where none should exist. I would rather just make vendor sold items more on the expensive end.
Supply, Demand: As far as making all of the vendors work like in a real economy, increasing and decreasing prices and such... Well that would be great. Sounds like a lot of coding though. Also, this will need to be closely monitored. Every product in the game is not required equally. Some materials will be wanted, others for all intense and purposes will be needed. Others will be a bottleneck to so many things. There is no way of prediciting this and the Beta will not bring out all of the permutations that could arise. Again, I feel there will be room here for manipulation, but some manipulation is good. You just dont want 3 players on your server denying all 5,997 of the other players something that is basic to the game. This is not a good business model for VR.
Question for everyone: What is better: 1) VR provides an unlimited amount of a trade resource and later decides to limit it 2) VR provides way to little of the resource, and later decides it must provide more?
I think the 1st one is a better option, as it will piss off less players. Particularly new players just getting interested in the game. The only issue with either of these is that the economy needs to be watched. Not just a few parts of it, all of it. When the game is released there will be mistakes, many of them. The key is to search them out and fix them. I doubt the Beta will remedy all of the 'economy' related issues.
Now, if we could run like EVE... lol, but that requires destructible equipment, and I don't think there is enough desire for that.
JDNight said:It is not really practical to put a cap on the amount of cash in the system.
1) It will not be easy to determine what that cap should be.
2) New players need access to income streams.
3) It will not prevent players from hoarding all of the limited cash in the system, leaving primarily new players behind.
Finite Supply: I can definitelly see using this for one-use items like recipes or items that should be very rare in the first place. The problems with this are very similar to the problems listed for making a cash 'cap' listed above. It will be abused by players who have the means to effectively force other players to work as slaves for them. You can call this capitalism, but I don't really see it that way as there is little room for invention in a game like this. If there are alternate means of gaining the items, then this might work. However, you are asking for a headache where none should exist. I would rather just make vendor sold items more on the expensive end.
Supply, Demand: As far as making all of the vendors work like in a real economy, increasing and decreasing prices and such... Well that would be great. Sounds like a lot of coding though. Also, this will need to be closely monitored. Every product in the game is not required equally. Some materials will be wanted, others for all intense and purposes will be needed. Others will be a bottleneck to so many things. There is no way of prediciting this and the Beta will not bring out all of the permutations that could arise. Again, I feel there will be room here for manipulation, but some manipulation is good. You just dont want 3 players on your server denying all 5,997 of the other players something that is basic to the game. This is not a good business model for VR.
Question for everyone: What is better: 1) VR provides an unlimited amount of a trade resource and later decides to limit it 2) VR provides way to little of the resource, and later decides it must provide more?
I think the 1st one is a better option, as it will piss off less players. Particularly new players just getting interested in the game. The only issue with either of these is that the economy needs to be watched. Not just a few parts of it, all of it. When the game is released there will be mistakes, many of them. The key is to search them out and fix them. I doubt the Beta will remedy all of the 'economy' related issues.
Now, if we could run like EVE... lol, but that requires destructible equipment, and I don't think there is enough desire for that.
Option 1 is clearly the worse option, its giving the yes and then giving a no, that never goes well. if you have ever managed people then you would know that telling someone no first, and then later changing it to yes is Far more acceptable.
For example, you have an employee who wants a vacation, if you tell him yes first and then later say no hes probably going to be much angrier than if you gave a no first, and you can always change it to yes and have him become excited. In your example of new players, they don't count because they haven't experienced the before state, all the know is what is current so that leaves nothing to compare.
1) It will not be easy to determine what that cap should be.
I disagree entirely, they know how many players will be on the server, they know what they “expect” the average player to poses on average in terms of money, and likely have stats on low mid and high income averages
2) New players need access to income streams.
Yes they do, but they doesn't me we cant have an economy that’s “less” unrealistic
3) It will not prevent players from hoarding all of the limited cash in the system, leaving primarily new players behind.
If you read my suggestions, you would see I suggested taxing players incomes to make it difficult to hoard gold, and limit the carry amount by giving coins weights so banks could charge for storage. I’m sure there are many other way to accomplish the same thing, but hoarding can be prevented.
HemlockReaper said:Option 1 is clearly the worse option, its giving the yes and then giving a no, that never goes well. if you have ever managed people then you would know that telling someone no first, and then later changing it to yes is Far more acceptable.
For example, you have an employee who wants a vacation, if you tell him yes first and then later say no hes probably going to be much angrier than if you gave a no first, and you can always change it to yes and have him become excited. In your example of new players, they don't count because they haven't experienced the before state, all the know is what is current so that leaves nothing to compare.
3) It will not prevent players from hoarding all of the limited cash in the system, leaving primarily new players behind.
If you read my suggestions, you would see I suggested taxing players incomes to make it difficult to hoard gold, and limit the carry amount by giving coins weights so banks could charge for storage. I’m sure there are many other way to accomplish the same thing, but hoarding can be prevented.
If we have players that start up in Pantheon and are unable to do tradeskills, purchase spells, or buy armor because not enough was provided... I can only imagine the reviews we will get from the game sites. "Pantheon is so hard you can't even play it, not even the simple stuff" It has to be possible for people to play the game. If you are putting hard limits on basic, common stuff and cash, aspects of the game will be unplayable to many. And thats even if there aren't some who manipulate the economy, which there will be.
And as far as limiting gold storage, my guess is this will be even more unpopular than taking away peoples' vacation days. Although I agree, cash should have a weight to it. I actually thought about banks charging interest on cash stored a few months ago, but then I decided that would tick off many a player. Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt it. What if I make a wad of cash, am forced to leave the game for 3 months, and then come back and find it all went toward paying off my interest charges?!? The problem is, in real life we are always in real life, but in the game, we are in it sometimes. In real life I would have found another way to protect my cash. But since I am not in game, I lose it. Nobody wants to be robbed for the sake of the economy.
EVE handles their economy very, very well. But they have destructible equipment... (maybe if I say it enough someone will like it)
JDNight said:HemlockReaper said:Option 1 is clearly the worse option, its giving the yes and then giving a no, that never goes well. if you have ever managed people then you would know that telling someone no first, and then later changing it to yes is Far more acceptable.
For example, you have an employee who wants a vacation, if you tell him yes first and then later say no hes probably going to be much angrier than if you gave a no first, and you can always change it to yes and have him become excited. In your example of new players, they don't count because they haven't experienced the before state, all the know is what is current so that leaves nothing to compare.
3) It will not prevent players from hoarding all of the limited cash in the system, leaving primarily new players behind.
If you read my suggestions, you would see I suggested taxing players incomes to make it difficult to hoard gold, and limit the carry amount by giving coins weights so banks could charge for storage. I’m sure there are many other way to accomplish the same thing, but hoarding can be prevented.If we have players that start up in Pantheon and are unable to do tradeskills, purchase spells, or buy armor because not enough was provided... I can only imagine the reviews we will get from the game sites. "Pantheon is so hard you can't even play it, not even the simple stuff" It has to be possible for people to play the game. If you are putting hard limits on basic, common stuff and cash, aspects of the game will be unplayable to many. And thats even if there aren't some who manipulate the economy, which there will be.
And as far as limiting gold storage, my guess is this will be even more unpopular than taking away peoples' vacation days. Although I agree, cash should have a weight to it. I actually thought about banks charging interest on cash stored a few months ago, but then I decided that would tick off many a player. Maybe I am wrong, but I doubt it. What if I make a wad of cash, am forced to leave the game for 3 months, and then come back and find it all went toward paying off my interest charges?!? The problem is, in real life we are always in real life, but in the game, we are in it sometimes. In real life I would have found another way to protect my cash. But since I am not in game, I lose it. Nobody wants to be robbed for the sake of the economy.
EVE handles their economy very, very well. But they have destructible equipment... (maybe if I say it enough someone will like it)
Id like to see a more realistic economy, and should the devs choose to have a finite economy I Believe they would be quite capable of monitoring it to prevent any such failures as new players not having funds to acquire.
And if you mean my items could break permanently, id have to vote no. I cant imagine spending countless hours acquiring high end raid gear only to have it break and make your entire journey worthless. Temporary degradation where I have to “repair” ok fine, but not breakage.
Vandraad said:Gahh..this topic..again..for the eleventybillionth time.
You won't prevent inflation. In fact, you actually want inflation. Inflation is good. Inflation means a healthy economy. Inflation is not the result of money bring produced out of thin air (i.e. kill orc, orc drops money, player picks up money).
Inflation is not just the rise in costs of things, it is the rise in cost of things because demand outstrips supply. But what is in high demand and short supply? Only 'good' items that drop off NPCs, i.e. 'Loot'. But nobody forces you to buy off other players. If you wanted, you could put in the time and effort and get those items yourself. So what could be causing problems with the economy? NPC vendors.
Deflation is when supply outstrips demand. And where do we see this in the game? Go to a vendor..any vendor and guess what. They have an infinite supply of whatever they are selling. You need batwings? That chick in East Commons will sell you a billion of them. You need metal sheets? That blacksmith in will sell you enough metal sheets to cover the planet. So you buy hundreds..thousands..of these items and the price never changes. Infinite supply at a set price.
So no, you do not need all these fancy and convoluted money sinks to keep an economy in check, you need every entity involved in the economy to act like a real supplier. Prices everywhere must be allowed to organically adjust according to demand and no NPC vendor should have an infinite supply of anything.
I'll add one last though on NPC vendors: They should also keep in their inventory everything players sell to them and make those items available to purchase..at higher NPC prices. You combine these 3 things, fluctuating pricing based upon demand, finite supply and resale and the economy will be very stable.
That is fascinating the more I think of it. However, from the perspective of the change in value of in game currency, it does come "out of thin air" -- same as dropped gear. Specifically, neither even exists in the economy until either an orc is killed and looted, or a monster drops a piece of desirable loot. And while you could argue (and be correct) that demand for something that doesn't exist, can exist, the real contstraint on the game economy is time. In theory, given enough time, everyone on the server would have max level armor and hundreds or thousands of platinum. So in my opinion, there do need to be sinks to remove in game currency relative to the time, population, and likely relative age of the game /server.
I was thinking about the idea of vendors/merchants that would sell a certain amount of a material, and then raise their prices to reflect demand and such in the way Vandraad desribed above. It would take a lot of coding IMO to set up each merchants and put limits on each of their merchandise and then to set levels for which it would raise costs and lower and so on, although i could be wrong. We could add these types of merchants in later though, after the initial game is set up, and when the devs have some more time. Maybe use this type of merchant for more advanced items, like what a max level player would need.
EDIT: But these would be items that were somewhat rare anyway.
What about tithing?
Let's say your deity can grant boons of the nature of long-term buffs, random chance bonuses, etc. in return for being a faithful follower who tithes regularly?
Maybe even knowledge of certain game elements; i.e. exclusive hints at when a boss will next be up, etc.
Perhaps that you are such a devoted follower might even evidence itself graphically through your title or glowing, sparkles, etc. around you.
Just thinking outside the box.
The more I think about this the more I feel a better system would be something akin to a float valve, where there isn't a specific number cap ( to avoid a complete dry up of coins), but rather an adjustable by the devs. low and high to determine the percentage of tax/price increase or decrease on goods or services.
For example, say the low for the server was 100,000 platinum server wide and the high was 1,000,000 platinum server wide, if the server reach or exceeded the server high then prices on goods would be at their highest to pull more coins out, but as the server wide total platinum lowered the prices would lower. To add to that, the level on items could also reflect a different percentage increases to target higher levels more than lower levels, meaning a level 1 might see a 2 percent increase in item cost while a level 60 would see 20 percent during the same market fluctuation.
Now I don't expect something like this would be very practical done in real time, but a weekly or even monthly evaluation of the server stats would be just fine to keep a real market feel to the game, while preventing a total runaway of wealthy players.
Just food for thought.
Liav said:My suggested alternative is to lower the purchasing power of currency like Platinum. There's a couple reasons for that:
1. Money alone shouldn't really have that huge of an influence on gameplay outside of tradeskilling and other very basic necessities like repairs, maybe buying a horse, etc.
2. Decreasing the purchasing power of Platinum in the game lowers the demand for RMT.
Thoughts?
I think lower the purchasing power would actually increase the demand for RMT, making my coin worth less means i need more of it to acheive the same result, and than means more farming for me, which increases the grind that in the end causing many to seek a place to buy the coin.
I'll throw in another vote for realistic merchants. Again referencing Skyrim, I thought it was really interesting how you could see how much money the merchant had in their possession, and when you bought something from them, they would of course have more money and when you sold something to them, they would have less. And in some cases, a merchant literally would not have enough money to give you full price for a really rare item you were trying to sell. So you either had to take less money for it or go find a more wealthy merchant. (Maybe you shouldn't even be able to see how much money a merchant has?)
Anyway, I think it'd be pretty feasible and well worth it to have merchants be a part of the living economy. I don't agree with there being a point where mobs stop dropping coin. It may help keep the economy balanced, but other than that, it makes 0 zero sense to me and personally I'd rather have an imbalanced economy. Other than that, I will just second what Vandraad said about merchant stock.