Currency Serpent Isle Style -- (Dev) Replied

GM Banker , can't wait till that skill is implemented.

 

WoW currency is not brilliant, it is a barrier. It is a literal and figurative impediment designed in part to prevent people who play the game constantly from outdistancing casual players and simultaneously prevent players from completing all the content (that is, getting all of the end-game equipment) in a very short period. Currency caps are only logically different from raid lockouts, they are there for and accomplish the same goals in the same ways, people only think they are different because they have marginally different mechanics. You do not "trade" with any of the WoW "currencies" listed, they are values almost or actually identical to experience or reputation or achievements that exist entirely to insert "game" between you when you started and you when you have the Chef's Hat on accidentally at a raid entrance and the guild leader wants to know why (true story). You don't buy stuff on the AH with conquest points.

Just so you don't get the wrong idea, <i>that's not necessarily a bad thing.</i> It's just not "currency" even though you collect them like money and exchange them at vendors for stuff. You can't sell stuff for honor marks. And, there aren't going to be any vendors like that in this game, at least I sure hope not! The difference is that trade will be between players, and I really doubt that people will want to track and trade 25 different valued currencies in different monetary systems. I think three is probably the maximum you can really expect people to have to deal with; even if there are more than three in the game, players will only care about normal currency, their local currency, and "another" currency, probably the guild currency if you end up considering it a fungible currency.

 

Currency

1. Money in any form when in actual use as a medium of exchange, especially circulating paper money.
2. Transmission from person to person as a medium of exchange; circulation: coins now in currency.
3. General acceptance or use; prevalence: the currency of a slang term.
4. The state of being current; up-to-dateness: Can you check the currency of this address?

In my understanding of the english language I believe all the alternate currencies other than copper, silver, and gold would fit this definition.

You can trade WoW currencies just not peer to peer only peer to environment.

 

ooo yeah i remember the serpent isle that was fantastic. the four currencies are a fantastic idea. I recommend anyone who doesnt know about this system to do a little bit of research into U7 serpent isles to understand it better

On a side note the game also brought in the animal clan system too with the wolf, lion, bear and boar clans and each clan got a tattoo on there face to recognise what clan they were affiliated with. In U7 serpent isles i always choose the wolf clan as they were my favorite.

 

@Vandigeth To under-value Montesquieu Paine post would be a grave error. Obviously you are aware of the issue and with all respect I highlight that post as I think it is one of the most important point of applying mathematical analysis to any natural system: non-linearity -&gt; non-gaussianity (and all possible problems from the fragility of economic models).

I think there is some mileage in looking at the total supply of a commodity versus its monetary base (don't know if you've read anything from Ray Daglio on the matter -- fairly poignant reading imo). I would say that it gives a fairly broad, and rough, overview of the system but it really misses a lot the details. Z has an influence on X, of course, but it is fairly insensitive (imo) to the non-linear effects of how this wealth is distributed and how quickly/ often that wealth flows.

It makes a lot of sense of consider inflationary problems, which is more fundamental than the topic here, but I do believe the notion of regional currencies was intended as a bit of extra flourish.

 

I've been rethinking about the suggestions made here.

I'd first restate that I really dislike the particular way Serpent Isle did it; I didn't like the fact that filari looked like many colored casino chips, or that guilders were glowing paper bills. I think for flavor all currency in the game to be metallic, and valued by their worth in metal, and if there are any bills they should be issued by banks for exchange. I also thought the naming was a bit too exotic. And the fact that they only each circulated in one place only with only a few citizens seemed strange.

But reading a bit more about medieval money changing and coins, I think there's a way to do this very simple, if the devs choose too.

The first obvious thing is that the coins would circulate in what would be equivalent to holds; so for example in Skyrim, the world was divided into a few holds, and each hold had at large city and small towns. I'm not exactly sure how the politics of the game world is going to work, so I'm not going to suggest exactly how the coinage would circulate in game.

Then, they would be based on basic metal values of copper, silver, and gold, and would be identified by whatever emblem was on the reverse. So for example, one coin might have a crown on it and be identified as a "crown", another with an eagle and be identified as an "eagle"; so you'd have "gold crowns", "silver crowns", "gold eagles", "silver eagles", and so on. They would also look visually similar except for the different marks on them that identify what they are; a crown, or an eagle, for instance. Possibly guilds could have their own special "marks". That would satisfy some need for them not to be too exotic sounding.

They'd then be exchanged at money changers for a fee, which could encourage the currencies to be used regionally.

I think if the idea is streamlined enough like this it could be fine.

 

I'm not exactly sure what I would add to this except there are some tedious things I don't mind.. and things that bring the world itself alive generally falls into that category. For me, regional currencies is one of those things. I would totally collect a treasure trove of different currencies. Especially if there were an ancient coin you could only sell to banks/mints or museums or something as a rare.

 

Adding additional currencies that can be traded at dynamically changing exchange rates sounds like it would take quite a bit of work because it would be a much more complicated system. Players would seek to exploit the differences in exchange rates to make a quick buck, by buying low and selling high. In the real world, this isn't easy because the higher the quantity of a currency, the lower the inherent value of that currency. In-game, player guilds could have a high amount of control over how much of one type of currency exists, and create all sorts of imbalance in the system. To prevent this, I imagine exchange rates would wind up being fixed, diminishing the economic utility of different currencies.

I think the largest unpredictable money sinks in game will be players buying deeds for lots and/or houses. Once all the plots are taken, and houses have been upgraded, there will no longer be large quantities of gold disappearing from the economic system, and that could cause inflation late in the game, as heroes will be taking on bigger battles and gathering more and more loot by that point.

I personally love the story potential behind the idea, and feel that once a currency system has been created and tested and balanced in the first episode, it should be easier to expand the system based on what they learned for future episodes.

 

I'd like to see a full time crafter/merchant chime in with their ideas on multiple currencies and floating exchange rates. Merchants will have to deal with this on a daily basis and will be handling money the most often.

 

I would agree that having multiple currencies for the cool factor alone is a bad idea. However, I think that regional currencies could work if they're developed by players using nothing more than market forces. The real problem with MMO economies is how gold enters and exits the game. Traditionally gold never really leaves at the rate that it enters until the game begins to die out. So you get massive inflation and wealth becomes an obstacle for new players. Development teams create stupid gold sinks because that's usually the easiest thing to do, and sometimes that works "ok" and most of the time it just doesn't do much of anything.

What I'd really like to see from SotA is an attempt to break away from the gold sink model and give all the power to the players. Give them the ability to create currency or barter and see what happens. I think it will work out better than anything you could intentionally design, but it would be a cultural shock for a lot of people early on.

This solution would also carry some of the same baggage that infinite gold carries because a digital resource is a digital resource. Personally, I think the problem stems from the fact that digital resources are historically infinite. If you make resources finite, or at least virtually finite (slow renewable), then I think it would be manageable and NOT TOO COMPLEX.

Or, you could continue what has never worked EVER in the history of gaming - give gold, sink gold. Who knows, maybe it will work great this time!

 

With regards to over-complication: I've read over this post again and concluded that people are afraid of complexity. I don't think anyone is advocating the completion of an advanced calculus course in order to work out if the baker just screwed you over for a loaf of bread; nay, we are looking to add colour and vibrancy to the world in a simple way that need not "zomg kill teh game".

Wikipedia states that there at 182 circulating currencies. How many could you name? I'm sure I could guess about 50, some of which is from noting that many are just simply "<Country X> dollars". How many of these currencies have you used in the last 10 years? (Excluding gold, silver, bitcoin etc) I count about 6 that I've personally used: NOK, SEK, DKK, Euro, Pound, Dollar. Plus there are a few more that I have in insignificant quantities. How much complexity has this added to my life? In absolute terms I don't think I could quantify it but in relative terms I'd put it pretty close to zero. Biggest problems in many peoples lives is the lack of dollars rather than the over-abundance of other currencies... just sayin'.

The fact that UAE Dirhams exist means almost nothing to me. The bulk of global trade is obviously in dollars so most of us are only concerned with dollars, and our local currency if different. Ergo, I don't see any problem with myriad currencies that are essentially 'flavour': there can be a dollar equivalent plus myriad 'local' currencies without a huge knock-on "complexity" effect that is supposedly going to create a stillborn game (ok, mild hyperbole ). Likewise we could have one dominant currency (would personally opt for something like gold but it could be New Britannia Sterling, something that fits the setting), plus a few sub-dominant currencies then are region specific. Anything beyond that would be just for fun and likely to have a near zero effect on the economy (possibly junk items as suggested before).