Minting Coins

In a recent article, RG comments on his intention to allow players to mint their own coins.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/1...ow-how-shroud-of-the-avatar-wins-at-player-g/

I thought some about this today and realized that beyond the materials used (gold, silver, platinum, electrum, etc...) the most important component to making this work is trust. Trust that the value of the coins will be stable and reliable. This causes people to save the coins and spend the coins freely without fear that they may someday be worthless.

To create this trust, the coins will probably need to be physically worth something (like whatever you could melt down the precious metal would be worth) but also backed by some kind of entity that appears to be stable and strong within the game (A player, town, guild, etc...).

Lastly, there must be no way to counterfeit these coins. Which brings up an interesting use for a player or guild coat of arms. Players will need to have access to a "stamp" that no other player can duplicate thus ensuring that their minted coins can not be copied by other players.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes a particular currency to gain favor in the world of New Britannia. I can imagine a time soon after that where players begin to use paper notes as substitutes for minted coins. The rise and fall of empires have begun in similar fashion throughout our history. Who knows what great beast may be created here...

 

Agreed on trust.

Disagree on the without fear. There should be a risk/reward or there is no fun.

Disagree on melting down to a worth, since you'd want coinage to be worth more than the metals, or you could just trade in silver and gold ingots. Historically this cultural change took place in the 14th to 18th century.

Agree and Disagree somewhat with the no counterfeit. I agree that there shouldn't be recipes to change the amount of gold in a gold piece. Instead I think counterfeit should be tied to the molds/stamps that you mention. If I get ahold of the molds/stamps used I should be able to duplicate the recipe. Thus printing more of your money.

What worked historically and presently was that some places didn't accept any currency and that you'd need to convert at a fee to get the local currency.
That way riches doesn't directly translate across borders.

 

Um gold in game is already there that is the Standard, just like the US dollar is supposed to have a Gold Value, like all other currency around the world, GOLD is the Standard.

Printing / making currency is only a value to the government / people who use it. If you make a coin, and bring it to my town, it has ZERO value to me except for the weight of the raw material used to make it.

Coinage is worth NOTHING to others, unless an agreement is made between two governments.

As for counterfeiting, if you get ahold of a die you are a criminal! And if I am the treasurer of my community and find others have duplicated my currency, ALL CURRENCY in my town is immediately returned and restamped with new dies and old monies are once again WORTHLESS.

Yeas Guilds can and should be able to make their own type of currency if they so chose but, there should not be ANY value placed in the game as a whole for individual currency EXECPT for the raw material used!!! If a town gets to put it currency in the game for a value, this game will go to $#!+.

 

It would be amazing if you could counterfeit coins. Forgery could become a new high level skill as could Item Identification to established game items.

1 Counterfeit coin could be work 1 Gold......until it has been identified and then it could be worth nothing and gets labeled with the players name who made it.

 

Not sure what you meant here. Can you give me an example? (are you talking about the ability to create counterfeit stamps?)

I'm thinking a few moves ahead (or behind depending on your point of view). If players have the ability to mint their own coins, no one will have trust in the beginning. So if you're trying to establish your coins as having value, you'll want there to be some kind of residual value (whatever you can melt it down for) in the beginning. The end game is having paper money that substitutes for the actual coin. The paper being worthless but for the promise that it is backed by the metal and trust given to it by its creator.

I think it would be better to help players establish their currencies before introducing ways to destroy it.

I'm sure that would happen here too. I can see the City of Penshire having it's own currency, and there being a conversion fee to exchange it for another currency.

 

The US dollar doesn't have a gold value. The US moved away from the gold standard in the 1970's.

Yes, gold coins are present in pre-alpha. But it's unclear how this will work at launch. Maybe there will always be basic gold coins in the game and maybe there will not. The devs have said that they want all of the best stuff to be player made, maybe that means they want the best currencies to be player made. We really don't know, and this thread is speculative.

 

I agree this sounds like fun, but as often happens in gaming - if you make a system easier to break than it is to build then you're never going to have a very robust system. That said, it's going to be very important for the player minting system to be strong enough that people will use it. If we offer ways to counterfeit coins, that's not going to be a system anyone can trust.

 

I'm not particularly for or against the idea of making your own coins but I don't understand how people are going to use these at a player vendors or NPCs unless the coin value is standardized. I would imagine there will be tons of different coins and if they only differentiate in the trust behind them then how is the game going to be able to tell the difference. Seems like a pain in the ass to find a real player to do an exchange service every time I wanted to buy something that wasn't within the realm of that coin. I could see if a huge guild had a town that was especially efficient in being self sufficient that a coin would kind of make sense. Then maybe game mechanics could be implemented to accommodate using that particular coin at vendors but then there has to be a system to monitor the coin value of every type that fits the criteria. I'd rather have development of horses or something.

 

Depends how it is done. For example if 1 Gold Ore is worth 1 Gold Coin at an NPC vendor, maybe 1 Gold Ore could be crafted into 1 Gold Coin except it might now have your tag or your guild tag on it. The coin would still be accepted everywhere because it is still 1 Gold Coin.

 

you are not thinking big enough.
Gold standard in the real world was a faked value for hundreds of years where if people truly were to ask for the currency's value the system would collapse. It is completely abandoned today except as a reserve 'hostage' for international trade.

One example was that he high denominations was guaranteed or of gold, but the lower denominations wasn't. So the total worth would be much higher than the actual value of your gold. But since people trusted that they could exchange their low denominations to high ones the system worked.
Etc

Then of course other currencies have value in your town, it's just that they have less value. And that is because there is a business to be made in accepting foreign currency at a lower value and then traveling to that foreign place and buying stuff at full value.

That is where the fun comes in.

 

Set NPC Vendor = Accept Pax Lair Coins, Accept licemeat coins, Accept Standard Gold Coins

Seems like it would be rather easy to set this up to me.

 

Those two go together.
The aim of any currency would be to have a higher value then what you can melt it down to. Otherwise you make a loss on the work stamping it instead of trading the weight.
Or make it more convenient and thus of a higher value. See the Templars and travelers cheques.

So what I mean with risk/reward is what you could get your currency to be worth above its intrinsic value if melted down.
If that value comes in the form of paper, then you pay more to have less encumbrance for instance.


But being realistic here, I don't think that they want to implement all of this.
Instead I think they will all be the same value, just with different stamps for the immersion factor.
Just like any Iron Sword is still an Iron Sword regardless if it's made by me or you but they both have a makers mark.
So in effect all currencies worth the same.
That is what I think we will see.

But there is always hoping for something more complex.

 

The assumption is being made that the players who will be minting coins can mint something other than the standard coin. This is a game after all and that is rather easy to control.

 

This would be a good feature for PoTs.

Imagine if you were an established trade town, known for your steady market supply. If you required all transactions to use your towns coin, then you would need money changers. This would also be a good way to give your guild or townspeople a discount over visitors and could bring extra revenue for Town Owners (which I am not). Also, they could be traded in larger markets in the metropolises.

I am very excited to see ideas like this straight from the horses' mouth.

 

Only allowing players to create standard coins out of ore they mine is a brilliant way to control inflation. It is a lot easier to lower the spawn rate of gold ore or limit the amount of gold coins that monsters use from NPC vendors than it is to change the value of goods.

If monsters only carry player made gold like they do all other loot, then RG found a way to reinvent the (mmo) wheel and directly impact the inflation rate.

 

There would have to be guards acting as Treasury agents because the destruction of the economy would be imminent otherwise.

 

Not really....it would just become another gold sink. One moment you have 50 Gold, after closer inspection you only have 40 Gold

It would be an interesting slant on the world

 

If people only accepted their own town's coin than players would go somewhere else. There will not be any goods any one town or group can monopolize. You won't take my coin.. I'll take my business elsewhere and your town's economy can collapse.

As others have said or implied.. this is a game and an overly complex system is not practical. We already know that item prices from NPCs will be global (current thinking) and there won't be exchange rates between regions. Gold is gold. 1 gold coin = 1 gold coin. The stamp may be cool but its irrelevant to any NPC.

It is also extremely unlikely that with literally hundreds of different currencies floating around that anyone is really going to want to keep track. Much less mint enough coin to support a few hundred thousand players. (Much less 10s of thousands.. or even thousands).

If anything, my concern here would be the ever increasing currency in circulation. Allow players to mint all the gold they find into currency and you've got yourself a potentially out of control gold faucet.

 

If this game does not have its own IN GAME currency, which it HAS to, as the basis for all transactions then you are allowing some players to establish their own level of value? A player CANNOT have this much control in a game. If this happens the game will NOT survive as players will NOT stand to have some other player determining how much their resources are worth.

It would be like the US saying, and establishing the cost of EVERYTING in the world. If you think this is good, and it happen you will be in this game without me and ALOT of others will not play either.

AN IN GAME ESTABLISHED AND REGULATED CURRENCY VALUE IS THE ONLY WAY A GAME CAN SURVIVE. Players cannot have this kind of control.

 

Agreed. But if Portalarium turns off the gold ore spawns, problem solved.