The Economy

Ok, then we agree. But that's exactly what Starr Long was hinting at in the video chat I watched tonight. That as things got out of hand they would manage them.

That never happens. The prices in games are always too high or too low. NO dev team has ever managed to pull off proper balance in any of these games because they're constantly tipping the scales and artificially influencing the markets.

 

It's an unfortunately reality that it's extremely difficult to achieve proper balance. I think a huge part of that comes from developers relying a static system that can't really manage itself.. I would be easier to tweak the economy directly than adjust and fine tune every little thing.

The particular idea I suggested I would hope alleviant this problem somewhat. The basic premise was that NPCs would adjust their prices in a given region based on what players were paying. For example.. if an NPC vendor sells swords for 500g.. and a player buys the same or similar sword off a player vendor for 400g.. then the NPCs would adjust their prices to 400g if that's the most players are paying.. If they 'hear' about people buying them for 450g later or they "can't keep them in stock" they might raise the price to 450g etc.. NPC prices would end up more or less 'player driven'.

That's a little simplified but.. ok maybe that's a lot simplified.. but in my opinion one of the major issues is an inflexible NPC market that can't keep up with the player market.. in fact I've never seen or heard of an NPC market that responds well to player activity.

 

I see what you're saying and I don't think that's a bad idea. It would ensure that "the house" always gave some competition to the individual traders that would actively attempt to hike up prices.

Still, it's not organic enough for me. Which bring up something I experienced in Darkfall Online. Because armor and weapons were important for fighting monsters (i.e. if you didn't have the right weapons and armor you couldn't kill all the monsters on your own), the economy became very level based even though there were no levels in the game. The new levels were based on whatever armor or weapons you could get your hands on. I have yet to hear why that won't happen in this game. It seems like a very similar system to me.

 

I recall there was more to the idea.. I'd have to go back and refresh my memory.

I can see what you mean about equipment. That problem can be balanced somewhat by player preparation and available defensive items. It's a lot about character durability. If your weapon isn't strong enough to kill something faster than it can kill you.. then you need to alter how fast it can kill you. Such as making sure you have potions.

It's also mob design. Do you allow a creature to be resistant to weapons of a certain quality? for example. Where as other mobs are simply meant to be impossible to kill by yourself (dragons). There will be some better and better equipment but I guess it will boil down to the differences in strength of one item has over another when all other factors are equal.

 

In the case of Darkfall Online...they probably intended people to group up when fighting many of the mobs, but the population was so low, that wasn't happening (at least for me). But even if I had a group of people, the mobs would've been difficult without better equipment. I tried to become an expert at crafting items, but then I ran into another road block, the materials I needed to become an expert were rare and expensive, and my access to them was going to be through other players for a very high price. So an unintended grind settled in for me and I just couldn't do it anymore. It wasn't worth it.

Even the crafters that came before me and managed to reach the top tier of crafting couldn't make a whole lot on their own. They would commonly tell people (anyone) that they would make items for them for free if they would provide the resources (which very few could). That way they could at least raise their skills up working with the rare materials.

Instead of going that horrible route, I'd like to see crafting take on other forms of sacrifice. Frankly, I don't think great crafters should be great fighters. There seems to be no shortage of people that don't want to be involved in PVP...so why not allow them a path to be a great crafter/social butterfly...let them kill mobs all day, but when it comes to competitive pvp, keep them away because of the path they chose.

 

That reminds me of my NWN days.. I wasn't involved in.. well any of the design decisions that went into that world as I had other things to manage but the long and short of it was that the DMs designing the world had certain expectations for the world. They split it up into factions that characters would belong to and they wanted each faction to have it's own meeting place and people would congregate in those spots etc.. except the player population was never high enough to support that. So most of those zones went virtually unused.

Fortunately I don't think player population will be a problem for SotA. It was just another example to me of not being able to force behavior through design. People simply went where was easiest or most active. They only went to other places when it was convenient or they didn't want to be disturbed.

Anyway! that was a little off topic.

 

No actually that was very interesting. I like hearing other people's experiences in other games. Also, I never take for granted that there will be so many people that population will not be a problem. Multiplayer games die over night, there's too much competition out there. Now if this game actually delivers some unique features, then sure, we might have all the players we need. But that's another reason I hope the devs are thinking about new ideas and not old ones that have never really worked (the economy being a prime example).

 

The big challenge for the devs here is especially so with a small team.. so much to do .. so little time. There's a lot of pressure to go with simple and easy to implement.. especially in the presence of the best intentions to add improvements later on. I can only speculate as I don't get to play games as I would like (being pretty much 24/7/356) but I think most game economies fall prey to this. You get it in there.. it 'works for now' and you move on to get the next important thing in.

Every little thing that isn't perfectly balanced has a cumulative affect on the economy and it's extremely complex. I'm really hoping they can do a good job with it. At least we can hopefully take some comfort is knowing it's a major concern for the team. It's a bit hard to talk about it without more information though. I hope they'll start putting questions to us soon on something specific so we can have a productive discussion.

 

Wouldn't have been an Anphillia server was it? On the ones I played we had the same thing. It was a warfare between the Cleavens (good) and the Axfell (evil). At one point some added a 3rd faction (Ranzington) and an underworld (dark elves), but only 2 factions were ever populated enough to run. However, with 2 factions each fort was able to maintain a ware economy. Players pretty much had to craft their own gear for their armory. Crafted gear sold for nothing, so it was passed to players that who rallied for resources to make them. Gold found from adventuring and selling normal items was spent on consumables and supplies (hunger/thirst system which I miss).

We had as many as 40 players in the hay-day of NWN, but it usually equalized around 20 or less as time went on. Makes me want to fire up NWN again.

Anyway, when crafters could sell gear for high amounts they did and the army suffered when the other side attacked. After that was removed it was normally the numbers that ended up winning. Although defender had some nasty NPC guards. So a working economy is important in any online RPG.

 

you compare the economy to real life but you forget to mention the amount of oversight and regulation that is placed on the economy by the government or by civilian watch dog groups

 

Nah the server is Twilight Legacy. It MIGHT still be running for those who want to login for nostalgia but I'm afraid I left a few things unfinished when player activity went so rock bottom I didn't see anyone online for 3 months. lol.. I can get pretty jazzed when I know there's at least SOMEONE who enjoys what I do but even I have my limits.

The numbers sounds pretty familiar.. was about the same in our heyday and then hung around 20 afterwards for some time after.. but when the leading DMs retired there was just no recovering. I enjoyed the fact I was free to do whatever I wanted and set about adding new stuff.. rebalancing problem areas.. etc.. and I still managed some nice events right up until the end.. good memories.. but there was just no recovering. I consider it a good experience though.

Factions never lived up to their intention but they were still a good story telling tool and players did join them for RP purposes.. but a lot of major design decisions the other DMs made pretty much backfired. heh from xp caps to encourage people to stop fighting and RP for awhile (that never worked.. they just logged off instead while the RPers sat in the tavern all day rare than go hunting mobs).. to having a low magic world but not enforcing it through player crafting which was seriously overpowered.. so our 'low magic' world became significantly more over powered than the previous one. ha!

Well it wasn't my fault! While they were building the new world I was busy destroying the old one. heh but that's another story.

Still.. on the economy side it could've been worse. Crafting was increasing costs which was horrible but farming gold was nearly balanced along with item degradation and breakage that players could get by and dropped gear was normally enough to fill in the gaps. But new characters had a long road to catch up.. old characters were generally overpowering for the world and there was very little room for middle ground.

It was a mismatch creature, crafting, loot and general economy designs.. plus certain perks awarded for good roleplay or rerolling your character once you hit level 40.

Honestly from a game design standpoint I think it was a mess. lol But it was good enough to get by and the big attraction was the roleplay. I do believe I made some good improvements but it was too little too late.

 

I like crafting but I don't like crafting and selling my end product for pennies. and if everyone can make items that's what happens you need a fair price at the vendors who buys items. PotBS is a prime example you craft and can only sell in the auction house to other players. the prices were fair but I couldn't make any money from crafting. I Quit! And if everyone can get a recipe and we all make it the same way soon its posted on the internet and now its public. So make everyones recipe to make an item different 2 boards and 1 plank to make a stool but my buddy's is 1 board and 3 planks. and you must find the recipe no trading or buying. now that make you one of few suppliers.

 

You bring up really good points that show how a simple system like the vendor gold sink approach may solve some problems, but how that same system creates unintended problems. Whereas a more sophisticated system, while more complex and requiring more work to develop, is superior because it gives more flexibility to the economy.

I don't think there's anything wrong with vendors selling items for pennies though. That's what happens in real life unless you have a special product like the iphone that gets mass marketed to idiots. Being a trader or a crafter should not mean that you're automatically rich...it's kind of a "job".

 

I don't think there's anything wrong with vendors selling items for pennies though. That's what happens in real life unless you have a special product like the iphone that gets mass marketed to idiots. Being a trader or a crafter should not mean that you're automatically rich...it's kind of a "job".[/quote]

I Agree, but the more complicated the item the more gold you make, and you should never get retail selling to a vendor but you should get more then pennies.

 

You should get whatever the market will give you. Vendors should be backed by players, not artificial static numbers set by the developers.

 

I wonder if its possible to have a "limited" number of coins in game. think the way that vendors don't have eversinking pits of money, but that they start witha descent amount and then when players who has either minted their own mined gold into coins, or found a treasure hoard can either sell stuff and take some of the limited gold of the vendor, or buy stuff, and the vendor gets more gold to buy other players stash. I am not sure if this would be a good approach, but you would probably not have the same problems with inflation, but it could very well go bad the other way, everyone keeping their gold and selling stuff so that in time the vendors are broke.

I just have to comment on this, kinda off topic I guess but; the USA has the largest external debt in the world (and by IMF the 5th largest internal debt if I am not reading the numbers wrong), sure some American companies are the biggest and richest in the world, but USA as a nation is rather poor at the time. (16,737,246,099,998 in external debt at 1. of July 2013)

 

I like the regular coin based system.

By the way, UO had deflation.
At least in the years i spent playing 98-03 or so. The market kept getting flooded with more and more goods so prices dropped on everything. As time went on more and more GM smiths were around and more magic weapons were found, more miners mined more ingots. Everything dropped in price over time. Things that never dropped? Limited resources like houses and birth rares. People here have issues distinguishing inflation from deflation.

UO was screwed almost exclusively due to duping gold.

 

Our "wealth" doesn't come from money anymore. The USA is beyond that. Money is basically imaginary in this country.

 

Didn't the gold duping get fixed? Im really curious as to how these people actually managed to dupe gold. Are these people the type who play games just to find how many exploits they can find and use to their advantage? I wonder if theres a way to see how they did it, because id love to just see how it was done. Im sure its out of date and not usable anymore, but im a curious George.

 

It sounds like Portalarium is making huge strides in monitoring the influx and expense and transfer of gold. That gives them a great idea of where the wealth is, and how much there is, and to make changes where needed, to either limit the supply of gold or increase the cost of things such as taxes or crafting ingredients bought from NPCs or repairs or any other system. That's where they can really play around with consumables.

Barter system? how would we barter for our initial puchase of houses, taxes, from purchasing from an NPC? I don't get it. Diablo 2 had a screwed up economy, eventually they went to a barter system, SoJ's were the new currency. Basically players choose an in game item that is useful/rare when they don't have a suitable currency.

I haven't seen too many MMO's with a really screwed up economy, UO when i played it around 2008 had straightened out a lot of the economic issues at that point. once duplicated gold made its way out of the system things really stabilized.

The design goal should be to have enough gold sinks in the game to pull money out about as fast as it comes in so you don't need to ever change prices on things. They just have to monitor that and ensure there is no trick to gaining gold at a faster rate than they had planned, and if so they can tweak that gold rate.