Gold Sinks don't work

You can't balance an economy using "gold sinks". It doesn't work, it's never worked, you can't name a game in history where it's worked. Let's not be stupid and try that here.

No amount of "magic" backend tweaking of pricing by the developers will ever balance the economy if you allow NPC vendors to buy from players.

Does anyone have a better idea?

 

There's nothing inherently wrong with NPCs buying stuff. How much? Of what? At what price? What's the goal?
A crafting or gathering quest is really no different from going out and killing mobs.

 

You can't have an unlimited supply of wealth available to players otherwise they will exploit it to the point that the economy no longer functions using any logical rationale.

It's like this. I'm a baron so I had baron level items, like the Double Decker Galleon. It's going to be worth A LOT because they're very limited to (right now) about 200 or so people. So who's going to buy that? Well it doesn't matter because the sale of that item doesn't inherently put value into or take value out of the world.

But gold sinks (like the ones you used as an example) do take money out of the world. And you're right, for the purpose of this conversation, the way gold usually goes into the world (via mobs) puts money back into the world.

What I'm saying is that you can't balance something that can be exploited so easily. Some people will farm the hell out of mobs for the gold, or sell tons of items to NPC's for gold. Either way the wealth of the game is going in and out of the game at the will of the players (and the players are not interested in balance). The devs don't have any real control over this system and they're fooling themselves if they think they do. (my guess is that they understand this, but it's a very complex problem and they haven't thought of anything better to do so they're just going to try to do their best)

But there has to be a better way...let's find it.

 

Drocis, what exactly are your concerns/objectives about the in-game economy.

Most games assume that the amount of currency in the system will grow over time. Gold (or whatever the currency is) comes in from killing monsters who carry gold, selling equipment and resources found, selling crafted goods to NPCs and players, and sometimes from completing quests. Gold goes out in the form of such things as purchasing equipment, repairing equipment, large purchases (houses, mounts, ships, etc...), and sometimes to complete quests.

The inflow of currency is going to exceed the outflow if for no other reason than players like to be buying nicer things over time. If these two factors balance, people will always be scrounging around for money just to maintain status-quo.

Restricting this flow can have unintended consequences. Some initial thoughts to me would be making it so once a quest giver is out of items to reward the quest, they have to go buy more. If their source of money is gone, the quest cant be given (I think that would be bad). Vendors in some games have caps on how much they can buy (Skyrim for example) which slowly regenerates over time. Again, I see some pretty significant downsides to implementing this.

The point is that game economies are quite complex and determining how they will act, or react, to changes is hard to predict. This is even more so without a clear understanding of the problem or objectives of the in-game economy.

 

The better way is what everyone does. The really important stuff isn't sold for gold.

 

It's funny how in one sentence you express your concern for a balanced game economy, and in the next you state "I'm a baron so I had baron level items, like the Double Decker Galleon. It's going to be worth A LOT because they're very limited". AKA an item you paid for with real life money.

 

I found this write up on a Diablo site. I think they sum up the problems with gold sinks very well. It's all rare to find a player that "gets it" like the author of this page does. I wish he was making the economy because at least I'd know that we were approaching the problem eyes wide open.

http://diablo.gamepedia.com/Gold_Sink

Yes it would be bad, but it's not a completely bad idea. Frankly I like the downsides of people don't getting the quests they want over hyperinflation.

This seems like gold sink slow drip to me. Again, it's the devs trying to "balance" the influx of new money with game mechanics and fuzz math.

Yeah, which is why I think the answer probably exists with giving all of the power to the players. This is a pretty radical idea as it also gives the players the power to fail and be poor and not have money to do "stuff". The average player isn't really ready for this.

 

Gold sinks work for awhile. Since we have so many tax-free deeds that probably nullifies the biggest gold-sink for many of us. Tax-free vendors too. Gold needs to come from somewhere or you cannot get it. Gold needs to go somewhere or you get too much of it. Every game experiences gold/power creep. You minimize it as best you can. The game can come out with higher denominations like copper, then silver, then gold, then platinum, then british marks, then whatever. In D3 Gold never lost it's value completely, in D2 the market turned to (SoJ's of course) but the layman collected Perfect Gems to trade because gems allowed the top tiers to reroll or try for the ever elusive best in slot item which could almost always be improved upon.

A good gold sink in my opinion is one that allows rich people to trade for gold in attempts to get some ultra-rare thing or statboost or enhancement or decoration etc. The rich players remove gold from the game by trying for it, you can increase the cost for "rolling" or whatever as time goes on to remove more gold from the game. Or you can accept that gold will continue to inflate and you try to control it over time - you make it so that coppers, then silver, then gold, then platinum and increasing currencies (as opposed to just spending 100 million coins once it's common to have 100 million coppers, you'd be spending 1 million silver or 10000 gold or 100 platinum or 1 Novia Mark) and over time you retire the earlier currencies. A bit simplistic I know

Perhaps crafting at higher tiers requires ludicrous amounts of gold and as gold inflates you allow "improvements" on item that require very high amounts of gold. There will always be someone who will drop half their holdings for a marginally better item as long as they know that item won't be moot in 3-6 months.

One game I played was that players could achieve "glory" through special event quests (available only at certain times, server-wide - not NPC spammable or exploitable) etc. which could be used for things to enhance a stat, rename an item, etc. And high level players would spend large volumes of gold to purchase these. This was not really a gold sink, but it did allow a redistribution of wealth.

But don't hate the gold sinks!

 

That is funny when you take it out of context. And I may not have explained my point very well so that's on me.

What I was trying to explain was that there are real forces of economic pressure at work here. Not everyone will have a double decker galleon so it's completely reasonable to assume that the market for double decker galleons will not ruin the economy. Where as, everyone and their brother will be able to buy and sell junk from NPC vendors and this will be farmed to death and destroy the economy just like it does every other game.

Unlike the double decker galleon, which is limited, the value never goes in or out of the game because it's always LIMITED. Traditionally, gold is not limited and neither is selling junk. So value leaves the game and typically enters the game MUCH faster than any dev team can manage for the life of a game. To avoid this, I think it's clear that every resource and every item and ever piece of gold should be limited.

The complexity of a system like this would hinge on the idea that items and gold and wealth could be and would be taken and shifted commonly amongst the player base. This brings up crazy notions like "stealing" and "looting" and "damage" and "decay" that are unpopular with today's players.

 

So not only do you want special items that you get for paying real-life money, but you also want to take away the ability for the average player to farm enough money to buy said items? You want the whole game economy to be based on "limited" items which conveniently you will have a lot of being a Baron donor?

The part you are missing is that is takes time to farm all of those items you'd sell to an NPC. It's essentially trading time for in game gold, rather than trading USD for gold.


edit: regardless, if you have a "gold faucet" aka money coming from treasure chests, monsters, etc you need a "gold sink" or else inflation kills the economy.

 

We once had a conversation in Dev+ last year where a finite economy was suggested. There would literally me a finite amount of gold per player. Vendors could only buy so much and when they were out.. they had to wait until stuff sold or until the game simulated trade between NPCs and towns to balance the current money in the NPCs markets.

Some people just hated.. it could never work because of A, B and C.. you need to have gold sinks and inflation and.. needless to say when it comes to the ideal economy there will always be folks who don't like one solution over another and who think they know how economies work better than you do.

Personally I think there is probably more than one way to actually "solve" the problem but it will never be apparent until that "solution" goes into action. But here there will be no making everyone happy.

I have one problem with the thinking here. That is the assumption that if vendors buy that they MUST be a source of unlimited money. Because others did it that way does not automatically mean SotA will. It's a variable condition being treated as a constant.

That said.. I liked the finite economy plan we came up with back then.

Finite Economy (Dev+)

 

No I want a balanced economy.

You shouldn't have a faucet either. That's part of the problem.

 

The devs have already stated that the players are going to create all but the initial amount of items. Items will not, long term, be 'created' from nothing - not on vendors or as loot on mobs.

Items will be limited in the sense that players must create them, advanced items will require base items as ingredients and all items will have some level of ongoing cost (repair).

The liklihood of abuse that comes about from stealing and looting is well known. I actually agree that decay and item breakage should be in the game as additional sinks that help remove value from the economy.

 

@Phredicon Keep an open mind on stealing...I know it can work (without abuse) in the right system. Just like ransom is going to work for looting.

 

I think one of the bigger challenges to any game economy model regardless.. is making sure that currency flows. You need players to spend. Players have a tendency to horde both items and especially money for whatever reason. You certainly need to be able to save up enough so that you can afford those gold sinks but you also want a buffer to be able to afford other things.

Not having enough stuff that players WANT to spend money on in a serious issue here. Players will make sure that they're needs are met one way or another but if there's nothing they want to spend their surplus on then it just sits there.

 

I'm still not sure I understand what problem you were trying to solve, nor what you mean by 'balanced economy'

 

Sorry...I thought it was clear in the link I provided.

By balanced economy I mean that new players don't have to pay outrageous prices they can't afford for good (not great) gear. I mean that one dude isn't selling 45 tons of iron at super high prices at the expense of everyone else in the game. I mean that the cost of items stays fairly flat over the life of the game.

I recognize that a true functioning economy has some volatility, but what MMO's always have is ever escalating hyperinflation that devalues anything and everything. What might cost you 100 gold today will almost certainly cost you 100k tomorrow. That's a problem. It's the "norm" and many players have come to accept it, but it's not "good" as it drives out new players, and rewards a small fraction of players for exploiting NPC vendors and mobs that are in the "sweet spot" of the game where it's easy to farm them and get "phat lootz".

 

Any plan for an economy can be undermined by hoarders. That being said, whatever gold faucet you put in, it needs to be driven by the generation of resources. Put 10 iron in the game and the cost of one sword comes out the faucet. If a resource is created without the amount of gold to buy that resource, then the sell price for that resource will fall. If gold is created without something to buy, the price of goods rises.

Gold faucets and sinks work great here in the US. We've got the Federal Reserve printing out money and the Defense Dept burning it up.

 

That's a great idea Mugly Wumple, I've never heard it expressed so simply. I really like the idea of having just as much gold as the other resources that are brought into the game. As those resources decay or leave the world, the gold would also have to AUTOMATICALLY exit the world (maybe via a gold decay type mechanic).

So if a player mines and mints 20 gold bars....there's no guarantee that the gold will retain it's original value. If the player hoards it, he or she would always have the 20 bars...BUT, the consistency and purity of the bars might have changed over time! That's brilliant. There could even be processes that helped retain more of the gold in the bars over time, but never all of it.

 

So the issue is hyperinflation, gotcha That is very challenging in a closed system where you have a people at VASTLY different levels, assuming that they share resource bases.