To me, one of the most important aspects of a player-driven economy is that crafted gear is versatile, flexible and has great potential if the crafter is willing to spend time and money on it. I'm thinking the very elaborate crafting system in Vanguard and EQ2 as well. Exceptional crafted gear and weapons should be truly valuable and on par with everything but the most high-tier loot and legendary, ancient items. I also like if it's not just gear, weapons or consumables that are crafted, but other items as well. Items that in other games are vendored, why not make them crafted? It would give an incentive to be a crafter, and for players to buy from players.
In short, one of the most important aspects for me in a player driven economy is to make the players partially responsible for items and the like. Make player interaction and player contribution necessary.
My five cents for now :).
Totally.
It's one of the sad facts of life, and i for one believe it to be no different when it comes to gamers, even the gamers that are as eager about Pantheon as we are. Maybe i'm jaded from my time in the swedish migration agency and working with people in difficult situations most of my life. But in order to get people to do things, you have to make it absolutely necessary for them to do it.
Let me name an example. There was a quest in WoW a long time ago which called for a Thorium casing, a crafted item. Sure, there were a few vendors in the world that maybe had a thorium casing every few hours or so, if you were lucky. But mainly, you were dependant on a crafter to make you a thorium casing to get that quest completed. Now imagine if WoW had no auction house. It would've forced people to go around asking if someone could craft them a thorium casing. Thereby, like in some cases, forming player bonds, friendships, alliances and in the end making the game more dependant on players helping one another and being "active."
I have been guilty of saying "Man, this is annoying." at certain times when something requiring player contribution occurrs, and there simply are no players around. Perhaps that was how this whole hell of soloing everything got started, people getting lazy and impatient. I know one thing, and this goes beyond player economy.
By making a game dependant on players interacting with one another, you create a game where achievements actually mean something. Where it's not just "player XY got his legendary sword of awesomeness." Who cares about player XY? Player XY is some random, playing on a random server whom you were tossed into because you went into a random dungeon or a random raidfinder, or the like. But on a game or a server where people know one another, it is/was different. It's all one sort of...thing - one direction for a game to take. The direction that what you want to do is make a game wherein player interaction is not only optional but necessary because you can't achieve much on your own.
In short: Make the economy in exactly the same spirit as the rest of the game. Make achieving anything on your own hard. Make interaction not an option, but a requirement. This means disposing of certain things, it means a large number of people used to the more common aforementioned model will whine. In the end though, you'll make a game catering to...well, the people you want to cater to :).
I think for this to appease both adventurers and crafters, you need to build a system that allows crafters to modify/augment any equipment. Either by augmenting like you could do in Vanguard (crafters create the augments and affix them to equipment) or by reforging a la EQ2. That way you can still balance adventuring and crafting relatively independently but have them both remain dependent on each other.
Mats for crafting/augmenting are obtained by adventuring for the most part. Then crafters create augments to improve adventuring drops or reforge them. There could also be a base set of gear crafted in each level range that is also augmentable by crafting. In a game like Pantheon where upgrades are not supposed to come every level, that set could be highly sought after as a way to break into content, allowing you to defeat the harder encounters and gear up through adventuring. And obviously player housing would be all crafting as well as boats eventually (hopefully).
But to answer the original question, I think scarcity is key and a way to remove items from the economy. In Vanguard you could deconstruct/salvage equipment to get crafting dusts or materials. I loathe item decay, but we need a way to remove items from the economy as well. Deconstruction and salvage could be a way to do that.
In game economy needs to have equalizing measures. Ways to acquire currency, and ways to remove currency. And ways/reasons for currency to move between players.
It would be cool if the program could track the amount of currency being looted in game and slowly create ways to remove some of that from game. Going back to the thread on "keeping the mystery in game" ( http://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2125/question-for-the-devs-keeping-the-mystery-in-pantheon ) , where I dicussed some randomizing of questing steps to keep them from being static and having walkthroughs created, maybe the system starts adding in questing components that require expenditure of currency to help remove currency from game.
The economy needs to be fluid, have an ebb and flow, and have purpose beyond saving up to buy uber-sword from the caverns of doom from Player_A.
Inflation is inevitible, but it can be controlled.
For me the important aspect is reducing mudflation (exponential item count in game).
People have discussed tribute systems in the past to help eliminate this. By giving your item to a local temple you may be granted buffs or consumable potions or scrolls to grant limited time abilities.
I also think that allowing players to disasemble items back into base components to be reused in crafting. Of course dissasembly runs a risk of losing/breaking compoments based on skill, just like putting things back together. That is an added level reducing compoments/items.
My final recommendation is that when developers release new expansions, don't design the expansions where the equipment is better for for lesser challenges relevent to older content. For example: In the base game a level 30 mob drops +50 HP equipment. In the expansion, level 25 mobs drop +50 HP equipment and level 30 mobs drop + 60 HP equipment. Expansion 2 a level 30 mob drops +70 HP equipment, level 25 +60 and level 20 + 50 and so on.
What that does is artificially force items down the foodchain. What was good to a level 30 is no longer good, it's only good to a level 25 char. After a few expansions what may of once been good for a level 50 char is laughed at by a level 25. This happened in EQ.
I hope crafted items aren't on par with raid drops. If the idea behind the game is multiple players working together for common goals, then making the best items obtained through solo ventures seems counterproductive to that end. My favorite aspect of mmo's was being a member of a guild that accomplished things for one another and gear was how you kept score.
Filzin said:
I hope crafted items aren't on par with raid drops.
They shouldn't be on par with raid drops, but they also should be at a level that people who don't like raiding and just grouping can have decent items if they put the time into crafting or adventuring to be able to buy such items.
I don't raid, have always found it boring in my guilds wasting hours trying to get ready. I like to craft and group, so I should also have access to top level items. Just below raid level epic/legendary item (depends on the game what they call them).
I like asking people for help in crafting items and I like classes that seem to be prone to one type of crafting. When I wanted to make a full set of cultural armor, as a mage following Quellious I realized I had to find a cleric of Quellious that had the spell- and I found one! made friends and were part of the same raid group, too. I also liked asking enchanters for help in imbuing metals for my own jewelry making practice, and as the one mage with highest research skill (I liked making my spells if possible instead of buying them) in a pick up mini-raid at the bottom of the Hole because we wanted to see if we could get those Evil portals working- well, that we assumed would maybe work if we did it right.
Filzin said:
I hope crafted items aren't on par with raid drops. If the idea behind the game is multiple players working together for common goals, then making the best items obtained through solo ventures seems counterproductive to that end. My favorite aspect of mmo's was being a member of a guild that accomplished things for one another and gear was how you kept score.
The crafting vs mob drop item quality is very difficult to balance. It's one of the things EQ did not do a very good job at it.
I always felt the solution to the problem is to allow every item in the game to be crafted, even items dropped by NPCs, as long as you had the base components. Of course this excludes artifacts/epic/quest items.
If a NPC drops an enchanted crystal, or the necklace the crystal is in, and players make or loot it what's the difference? This would basically eliminate the need to balance mob drops vs crafting. You can then combine this method with my earlier suggestion to allow item components to be broken down and re-used, with skill chances, and risk losing components along the way making the item you want.
You could even go as far as having only base components drop in game and no, or very rarely, completed items. I think this would put a lot of pressure on keeping up crafting skills and really build a huge crafting community. I figure if you want to balance the system, just make players responsible for assembling all of the items in the game and take away the need for balance.
A few thoughts and observations.
First off Kilsin just asked about "the economy" and the entire thread gravitated to crafting. No one brought up people taking their high level toons into dungeons and farming valued items for resale. I think this somewhat validates the following.
My thought is that the top 10% of items at any level within the game should be crafted from loot found on the toughest mobs for that level and possibly only created in forges or crafting stations found in remote camps or the darkest (level appropriate) dungeons.
Everything you need to make an item would not necessarily be found nearby. The most exotic items may require components from multiple areas and may require other craftspeople to enchant gems, make leather components, etc...
I'd like to see craftspeople become an element of raids. It shouldn't be enough to kill the dragon, but you should have to protect your craftspeople who are working on the dragon's forge to make the cool items, or even just making subcomponents that will have final assembly in some other dungeon or city.
Make it such that you plan your trip into the dungeon so that you're collecting some key crafting resources for your guild craftsfolk, working your way to the big encounter(s), defeating key mobs, looting major crafting components needed to make the uberest of gear, then protecting your craftspeople while they work as no doubt the death of the boss mobs is going to bring waves of minions coming to avenge the death of their lord/master.
To me this makes crafting an integral part of Pantheon. I always felt that EQ crafting was an after thought and was extremely disappointed in the quality of goods created given the effort that went into leveling your crafting skills. There were very few trade skills which actually had value to the game past the first expansion. In early EQ it was a big deal to get a full set of crafted armor. By the time you were ready to equip fine steel armor, it wasn't worth the iron it was smelted from.
So coming back full circle to Kilsin's question, I think for the economy to be healthy we need a few things:
1. Meaningful integration of crafting from low levels to end game/raid content.
2. A component sink where existing crafted items can be torn apart, studied and rebuilt to advance trade skills, learn new recipes, etc...
3. Limit the number of no-drop or bind-on-equip items so that lots of items are eligible for resale, but severely limit how overpowered twinks can become strictly by loading them up with uber gear.
4. Encourage a gear upgrade system where skilled crafts people can enhance or repair the gear of other players. This will encourage interaction and cooperation between players.
5. Adopt the attitude that anything you find in game can be improved on in the hands of a skilled trade person. This will encourage people to make friends with crafters and for guilds to seek out the best of the best in fine trade craft.
Let's say you purchase a simple backpack from a vendor. If you take that backpack, along with some enchanted griffon feathers to a skilled tailor and they can make the pack and it's contents feel lighter in your adventures. The higher level the griffon, the greater the arcane arts of the enchanter and the skill of the tailor, the greater the weight reducing properties of the pack. No need to get rid of your pack, just upgrade it as time goes on. Take this approach with many items. Upgrade/recycle when it makes sense.
Getting to max skill in any trade should be extremely difficult. It should be so difficult that it will need the help of your friends/guild if you really want to reach the pinnacle of your skills. Conversely, having skilled trades people in your guild or gorup of friends should be so valuable that you all work together to see them advance. Reaching your full potential is partly about building skill, getting the best tools and having the finest materials to work with.
Whether it's raid content that only 1% of players will ever see or more frequently visited zones that groups go to level regularly, the idea the best gear is a combination of drops and crafting can be scaled and made an integral part of dungeon design, game mechanics and the core social fabric of Pantheon.
It would just be cool to have guilds bragging that they not only have the top warrior/cleric/etc... but that they have the most advanced smith/tailor in all of Terminus or to see guilds advertising not just for members, but for specific types of crafts people.
For me the answer to: "what is the most important aspect of a player-driven economy in an MMORPG like Pantheon"
is as simple as NO world encompassing auction house. Bring back EC tunnel style player selling and also install many local small aution houses or player run shops around the world.
A close second aspect to me would be to place a limit on the amount of same named loot a player can have at any one time to combat a single player from over farming a named mob for loot to sell.
Also to add on to the crafting discussion that the folks have been talking about, crafting receipes.
Only the basic crafting receipes should be sold by crafting trainers/vendors. intermediate receipes are drops only. Expert receipes are drop only as well, but the kicker is most of those receipes when found are not complete receipes(need to combine 2 or 3 pieces to make a usable receipe). Master tier receipes are from completing a major crafting style quest to obtain as opposed to only dropping from say a raid boss. This would allow non raiding players in small guilds to still be able to expand their crafting to max level.
Here are a couple key points that stick out for me that I'd like to share. This is written assuming Pantheon's model of social interaction and interdependancy is not limited to adventuring only.
1. "LORE" and "NO-DROP" items are a must. Not all times need be tagged as such, but valuable item drops from named mobs should be at minimum "LORE" to prevent over-farming, which would flood the ecomony with such items. In turn, this prevents one group or individual from locking down a target indefinitely for financial gain while preventing anyone else from gaining access to that item. Raid gear and certain high value items should be NO-DROP.
2. Crafted gear should be valuable, but not on par with adventured gear. This is where everyone brings out their pitchforks and starts rioting. I really truly love crafting uber gear, but this quickly turns into a slippery slope and here is why. RMT, sanctioned or unsactioned. While crafted gear is not the cause or culprit, it does serve as a conduit, especially if LORE and NO-DROP tags are included on the more valuable adventured items. Fastest way to gear up and reach end-game? RMT for some crafted gear. We've all seen this cancer over and over again, and while curbing crafting is not going to eliminate this, it will encourge players to actually play the game as intended. I wont speak for everyone, but many players play MMO's like water runs down a hill; they take the path of lease resistance to reach their goal, which is in most cases, "end-game raiding". Im not going to attempt to change that mindset, to each his or her own. However, from the developers perspective, I would want to take steps to prevent any major shortcuts or have one path that is clearly easier than another. Players will feel "obligated" to RMT for gear to stay competitive. The path of least resistance model is absolutely vaid here, and buying in-game currency to aquire a set of crafted gear from a bazaar/auction house is clearly easier than adventuring for every piece.
3. I suggest an alternative crafting solution. Crafting as a service. This as been suggested before, but let me explain. Weapons, armor, trinkets, and other wearables are absolutely the cornerstone of what we call "gear" in MMO's, and I suspect Pantheon will be no different. But rather than make the full wearable item which can then be sold, I propose a crafting system where the action of crafting is a salable service. We all remember back in EQ when we needed to hire a crafter to make a specific component for a quest or craft we were working on. This would be similar, with a twist. For example, one of the components to a new chestpiece I'm working on drops from a boss at the end of a dungeon... and its a NO DROP item. I would need to have the crafting skill neccessary to combine the various components to complete the craft, or hire a crafter to do it for me. The key part here, is the NO DROP component, meaning I had to farm it myself and the completed item would be mine only. As mentioned in a post before mine, this also thwarts "solocraft". This approach to crafting makes more difficult the "RMT-to-win" avenue and at the same encourages player interaction and interdependancy, a cornerstone of Pantheon.
On top of crafting as a service, the ability to craft complete, although less critical items, should be permitted. Food, drink, potions, various other consumables are not only sought after in many different MMO's, but they're usually very profitable, and always in demand. Crafting salable components needed for a greater combination could also be permitted, if implemented with care to prevent crafters from operating in isolation, interacting only with an auction house.
4. Dont force me into crafting. I understand this is a fun gameplay aspect for some, but for me it's not. I'm a product of EQ, and as such would rather spend my available game time grouping with friends old and new through some tough content. Please don't force me to take on a crafting skill and level it up as an artificial gate to content or as a mechanism that somehow effects my adventuring prowess.
5. Mudflation. This is a very important topic for me, and I'm glad others have brought it up. The lack of mudflation was something I absolutely loved about early EQ (cant speak for post-Omens). The flowing black silk sash was a viable and sought after item across many expansion packs. Fungi tunic, Lamentation, Wyrmslayer, Short Sword of Ykesha, Centi longswords... these are iconic items that stood the test of time. How gear is aquired, how often, and in what quantity and quality is the controlling factor here. Please please take care here. You can't go back once a misstep has been made or the player base will punish you. Upgrades in EQ always felt substantial to me. Usually because the rate in which you aquired new gear was infinitely longer than by todays MMO standards. The same goes for the amount of effort required. And on occasion, a truly unique item would arise that would become iconic. A staple. A must-have. Was it an end-game raid item? Nope. It was an FBSS found on a lvl 42 named goblin from multiple expansions ago. Or a Shrunken Goblin Skull Earring from a lvl 31 named goblin that happened to have an awesome clicky effect. Point being, there are ways to have items retain value long after their time, but it will take planning and ensuring the in-flow of items to players doesnt get out of control. In fact, dial it back from a trickle to a slow and inconsistant drip. Then, balance your content around that. Easier said than done, I'm sure.
6. In-game currency. In MMO's past, we've seen a shift to add various forms of virtual currency on top of the standard "coin". WoW was a huge offender here, adding all different kinds of currency for different expansions and tiers within expansions that could needed be earned and turned into vendors for even more "candy". SUGAR! ....Ahem. Please don't do this, but if you must, please keep it minimal and tasteful and don't use it to gate content. "You joining us on the raid tonight?" No sorry, I cant. I havent spent enough time grinding trivial content in order to aquire enough "justice points" to buy the gear I need from the candy vendor so I have a "GearScore" high enough to join you guys. I would much much rather grind faction (which is permanent and not expendable) in order to gain access to certain items, quests, etc.
That said, I would be perfectly fine with one form of in-game currency.
I find it vital that most items in a game be tradeable. There is nothing more anti-social than Bind on Equip and Bind on Pick-up and No Trade. Trading, selling and gifting of old gear was something fun to do in the original EQ before the dreaded appearance of "Bind on....", "No Trade" equipment. For the love of Pete, please stick with one currency. Having to deal with no trade tokens for no trade gear is such a huge smack in the face of social gaming.
I also agree with the above post about forcing crafting on non-crafters, whether it's for required gear to adventure or the dreaded must craft to do your epic quest. If you are going to do something like that for epic gear, then make it tradeable so you can hire the services of a crafter to do it for you.
I would also respond to his #5 issue: Raid gear was responsible for mudflation and the devaluation of platinum. It was also responsible for how all content was designed post Planes of Power. Group and smaller content was designed with players being raid geared. It was the number one reason I left the game when Gates of Discord came out and why I left again after trying Omens of War.
The most important asspect of a player driven economy?
I think it is for players to need to trade. The reasons can be varied, loot for quests or just a gear transaction for something you can't get elsewhere. That in essence is the creation of scacity. It is one of the most important things, for example the crushbone belts quest in EQ1. There was always a pretty lively economy for them but if they had dropped more commonly than they did no one would have paid for them.
I also posted some of my other thoughts on the economy in general and things I though were interesting on this post.
Dekaden said:4. Dont force me into crafting. I understand this is a fun gameplay aspect for some, but for me it's not. I'm a product of EQ, and as such would rather spend my available game time grouping with friends old and new through some tough content. Please don't force me to take on a crafting skill and level it up as an artificial gate to content or as a mechanism that somehow effects my adventuring prowess.
6. In-game currency. In MMO's past, we've seen a shift to add various forms of virtual currency on top of the standard "coin". WoW was a huge offender here, adding all different kinds of currency for different expansions and tiers within expansions that could needed be earned and turned into vendors for even more "candy". SUGAR! ....Ahem. Please don't do this, but if you must, please keep it minimal and tasteful and don't use it to gate content. "You joining us on the raid tonight?" No sorry, I cant. I havent spent enough time grinding trivial content in order to aquire enough "justice points" to buy the gear I need from the candy vendor so I have a "GearScore" high enough to join you guys. I would much much rather grind faction (which is permanent and not expendable) in order to gain access to certain items, quests, etc.That said, I would be perfectly fine with one form of in-game currency.
To 4: A good question is, what do you think about quests like the Thurgadin Shawl quest line in EQ? It was an awesome questline but it very much forced you into crafting. IMO it went overboard with the requirements.
As to your point 6: I 100% agree.
For me personally, I don't want to be forced to take part in the economy. In many games starting out everythings great, you can sell and buy for reasonable prices. But very short time later, the "market" takes over and everything suddenly costs way more than you can gain by simply playing the game, so you have to "play the market" in order to raise funds, or grind for long times, or be left out.
So, if I can acquire everything I need just by playing the game, I will be happy. Having to rely on the market for regular stuff (especially food or potions etc) is just annoying, in which case I'd rather take up the craft myself. If I'm then limited to "only one craft" its again frustrating.